The Lords of Metal (Brütal Legend Fanfiction)

Chapter 2 - Another Land...

Mathias felt himself gradually coming back to reality. Head heavy and pounding like a hammer, body sore all over as if he had done an intensive sports session for hours without stopping, he opened his eyes with great difficulty. The first thing he felt was a calm but cool wind caressing his face. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a night sky, slightly covered in gray clouds and in which floated the moon, which oddly, seemed much closer than normal.

Beneath him, Mathias could feel that he was lying on soft ground and covered with a carpet of grass, dirt and dead leaves. Rubbing the back of his skull which made him suffer, Mathias sat up to look around him and discover with amazement where he was.

Emily, the record store, Jax... everything was gone. He was now in the middle of the wilderness, on fairly wooded hilly terrain. Damn, where the fuck am I? This was the first question that naturally crossed his mind.

His memories were still a bit fuzzy, but he still managed to see a few flashes of what had just happened before he woke up... Thirty seconds ago he was in the store of Jax, with his friend and ... Then there was this monstrous creature appeared in the smoke and which... had swallowed them in its flames?

All this made no sense to the young man who got back on his feet, continued to observe the landscape around him without understanding where he was. The air was a bit chilly, but luckily his military metalhead jacket kept him a bit warm. What he had just experienced was just impossible, he was trying to convince himself of that. He had never smoked or taken drugs in his life, so it could not be an effect due to questionable products. He pinched himself several times very hard, slapped himself, convinced that he was dreaming, but after a while he had to admit that he was wide awake.

_ "Hey?! Is anyone there? Emily?! Anyone?! Please!"

He called several times, his hands around his mouth for more echo, but he received no other answer than that of the whistling wind and some distant animal noises. Great, he thought wryly. I am lost in the middle of nowhere. How do I know where to go?

An idea came to Mathias when he noticed a tiny stream not far away, whose light current went in a northwesterly direction. He was not a specialist in survival techniques in the wilderness, but he had heard that following a stream was often a good solution to return to civilization. So he decided to walk along the little stream, hoping it would lead him somewhere.

During the first minutes, while walking, Mathias observed a little this nature around him, as if to try to see something out of the ordinary. And indeed, he noticed some, and these things left him more than perplexed, even surprised. Some of the trees looked weird, looking like they were made of shiny steel, and the branches were like... exhaust pipes, like for cars or trucks!

Other oddities were added to the decor. Some of the rocks, also appearing to be made of iron material, had a very peculiar appearance, resembling huge engines embedded in the ground and some of them measuring several meters high and long, as if intended for giant vehicles. Shrubs also left Mathias totally dumbfounded. Instead of berries, these shrubs grew in the middle of their leaves... beer bottles?! Bottles that grew like goddamn fruits, some of which hadn't even matured yet and were therefore smaller and less colorful. Mathias passed his hands over his face, rubbed his eyes, to be sure he saw what he saw, and indeed he did. Hesitating at first, he approached a shrubbery and plucked a bottle of beer from it, as simply as if he had taken an apple from a tree. He looked at it carefully from side to side, sensing that it was indeed a glass bottle like any other. But in this case... How was it possible that glass bottles grew on trees like fruit? Mathias would never have thought to ask such a question in his life, and of course, he found no logical answer.

Not very confident, he decided not to taste what it contained but decided to keep it with him, to examine it later and continued on his way through this totally surreal landscape. Inside, he was asking himself a lot of questions, but mostly wondering where Emily was and hoping that she was fine and that she wasn't far away.