The Echo of Metal.

I walked out of the fog to a misty, flat landscape. The area was surrounded by countless pools of still water, but there was neither a breeze nor any sign of life to be found. I approached each body of water I came to with equal amounts of caution and curiosity. Looking into them was like staring back at myself in a mirror. The ground was level, but hard and dry with the exception of grains of sand that collected along the banks of each pond. It quickly became apparent that I was walking in the middle of a dried lake bed. The whole area was dry though, and it was covered in a faded blue-gray haze. It was one of those places that was so quiet it generated its own white noise. The extent of the lake bed seemed to go on forever. “Where was I?” I asked myself.

I kept wandering the lake bed for what seemed like hours. It never got any brighter, and it never got dark. This was a strange experience, to say the least. The last thing I remember before finding myself here was leaving work to go home. The fog was so thick in the parking lot that I must’ve lost my way while looking for my car. It wasn’t too much unlike a vision I had a while back of leaving work and becoming part of a story I was writing. Only that time, everything was bright and there were cliffs that overlooked the ocean. This wasn’t anything like that. This was even more surreal.

I was getting hungry and thirsty, but I didn’t dare taste any of the mysterious reflective water that abounded here. I kept forcing myself to move forward to find any way out of this place. I jogged for a little while, but walked most of the time. Soon, my walking had evolved into a lumbering shuffle. Finally, I just collapsed under the mental and physical weight of my own dehydration. I felt like there was a voice inside me that said, “It only gets harder from here.” Maybe that was just me talking. Why wasn’t I just in my car going home? What the hell happened for me to wind up here in this alien landscape with nothing around to sustain me? I looked upward at the still gray sky above. After a few quicker, deep breaths, I sensed myself losing consciousness.

I fully expected to die. When I awoke, I was just where I was – face down in the rock and sand of this strange place. The only major difference was that when I raised my head, there was a giant structure that appeared to float in one of the largest of the ponds in front of me. It was a place defined by its metallic exterior: jagged vertical lines that extended outward from the center like rays. It also echoed the moist atmosphere around me. In other words, it wasn’t someplace particularly inviting. With no other options though, I decided to investigate further.

Abandoning all desire to keep my clothes dry, I charged into the pond expecting to swim up to the structure. But to my surprise, it was shallow enough that I could just walk right up to it. I paced around the perimeter a couple of times, searching high and low for a way into the place until I came to a small door halfway submerged beneath the water. On it was an inscription that read “Palaza Avare.” I didn’t see any handles, so I tried to wedge my hand around the cracks so I could pry it open. Fortunately, it looked as though some of the hinges and pins had rusted, so the doors popped open with just a minor bit of concerted effort on my part.

The once still water was disturbed as soon as the door opened, but there were surprisingly few ripples emanating away from it. Once I got inside, I was confronted by a long, yet non-precipitous staircase that led upwards and deep into the building’s belly. There seemed to be a glow beckoning me from the room ahead, so I wasted no time proceeding forward. As I paced down the long hallway inside, I thought about how different this world was that I found myself in, and how my adventure into this thing was just begging for more questions. What was leading me here? And more importantly, what was waiting for me? I acknowledged that it was all a mystery until finally, I got to the doorway where I was met by an enormous chamber of wealth and riches.

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