Where am I?

Okay, I’m going to be real. I was more than a bit confused about… everything.

I had been jogging in a park until a moment ago. It wasn’t like it had sprawling trees that reached the sky and hearty trunks that managed to survive a few hundred years of human encroachment into nature. It was just a public park with grass and some evergreens, like you would expect being in the middle of the city, paid for by local taxes that everyone whined about being cut from their paychecks when there were still potholes in the middle of the street older than some of my nieces and nephews.

Then everything went dark before I found myself somewhere far different.

It was a largely open space set within architecture that just wouldn’t be found where I lived. The ground wasn’t asphalt or concrete. It was flagstone that was spread out circularly until it met the walled edge of the perimeter. Silver lanterns ringed the plaza, crackling with a harsh light. And there was a massive crystal just floating in the center above a fancy pedestal of some kind.

Looking past those, I could see stone buildings that were even more out of place in a big city. They were surrounding most of the plaza, tall and wide, while not directly connected with one another. It reminded me a bit of my college campus, with this being the central courtyard between the different buildings. As for the direction that the buildings didn’t cover…

What greeted my eyes was a sprawling cityscape in the distance. It seemed like some kind of tiered, fortified city. One that extended up into the air like a mountain of buildings stacked onto each other between the walls. The entire thing was also surrounded by crystalline structures on all sides, rising into the air like spears attempting to pierce the sky…

Did I suffer from heatstroke again?

I mean, it wouldn't be the first time that happened. I wasn't used to how the working conditions for contractors tended to be... less than stellar at times. You had to look out for yourself, and I was still getting used to that since I had just started living on my own. The cost of the trip to the Emergency Room alone nearly setting me back another two thousand dollars made the lesson stick.

But I really might be suffering from heatstroke again, because the shaded sky was bleeding right before my eyes.

Droplets of black rained down from the Ring of Fire created by the eclipse. Not all of the black rain came towards us, but each droplet that did was the size of a person. It was fitting because the moment it hit some kind of invisible barrier around the plaza the droplet slowed down enough to harmlessly hit the ground and peeled away to reveal there was a person inside.

Was that how I ended up here too?

The number of people in the plaza steadily increased as the black rain continued. Some young. Some old. Some men. Some women. I could count at least fifty and rising from eyeballing it alone, and many of them weren’t even speaking English. That made things worse as it became steadily clear from the different skin tones, clothes, and ages that a lot of us came from different places and none of us seemed to recognize our immediate surroundings.

Eventually, people started to approach the walls surrounding the courtyard only to find that they couldn’t cross the threshold. That same barrier that slowed the falling black droplets also seemed to keep us trapped inside. That only made things worse.

Foreign words. Exaggerated gestures. The ones who could understand each other were clumping together in their shared confusion for safety as they tried to figure out what was happening. It was like watching mobs starting to form together and tension was mounting as a few began approaching the others. Not hard to see why you would feel more than a bit nervous about having a group of strangers approaching you with no idea of what they were saying or where you were.

It was a powder keg just waiting to explode.

“Multaj el ili malsupreniras! Elkonduku ĉiujn ĉi tien!!”

It was then that words in a language I had never heard pulled my attention beyond the walls, where I spotted people emerging from the buildings. They were men and women; with the majority dressed in some kind of work uniform that had sashes with several symbols. Among them one I did recognize—a Red Cross.

The others were… well, I wanted to say that they were medieval reenactors or something. They weren’t dressed in full plate mail, but they did have on what I think was called a Gambeson. It looked like a plump long-coat that came down to their waists, held in place by a belt. The colors were the same and the boots and gloves gave me the impression they were standard-issued.

They were also the only people who seemed to have some level of understanding about the situation, as they made gestures to stay back and continued speaking in foreign words. Not just whatever language the one earlier said. I might have failed my Spanish classes in Middle School due to lack of interest, but I recognized some words. And cultural osmosis had made it so that Mandarin and Japanese vocabulary weren’t completely foreign to me.

Finally, I caught it when one of them spoke in English as a member of the crowd called out to her.

“Explain soon. Pre…preparing.” Her accent was unlike any that I had heard before. And I suspected that English wasn’t her first language. She sounded much more comfortable as she followed up with, “Brulantaj ĉieloj… Kiel ni ordigos ilin ĉiujn?”

At the very least, having people who could understand us to some degree and seem to know more about what was going on gave everyone inside a reason not to turn on each other. There was still tension, but at the very least, no one was liable to start throwing hands with one another stuck in whatever we were in. Yet.

Then the Moon and the Sun separated, bringing the eclipse came to an end.

A wave of exhaustion and vertigo washed over me at that very instance. I felt… cold and tired and dizzy, like I was ill. My head felt like it was starting to split apart, leaving me on my knees and struggling not to pass out as I heard cries and shouts coming from others that told me I wasn’t the only one.

“La konekto ĵus distranĉiĝis!” One of the people in uniforms called out in that strange tongue. “Atendu kelkajn minutojn ĝis ili senkonsciiĝos antaŭ ol movi la maljunulojn kaj junulojn unue!”

“Sed estas tiom multaj kompare kun la normalo,” another said with their voice getting more distant. No. No, I think I was starting to lose consciousness. “Mi ne povas imagi kiom da ili falis ĉe la aliaj lokoj.”

“Kiel supre kiel sube.”

Everything went dark once more.