I wake up. A bright light shines onto me, my entire body aches and hurts. I try to remember what happened as I look around at my surroundings. I am laying on a bed of flowers, and around me are walls of stone. I notice a path that leads to a archway that must lead to another room. As I look up I see a giant hole in the ceiling.

A memory comes back to me. I remember climbing a mountain, Mt. Ebott. I’ve heard rumors before of Mt. Ebott, that whoever climbed up that mountain never came back. Why would I climb a mountain like that? I must've ended up falling down a hole and ended up here. Judging from the depth of the hole I must’ve fallen a long drop, I guess I landed on the bed of flowers and they broke my fall.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” I call out. “Hello? Is anyone here? I’m lost and I don’t know where I am now. Can someone please help me get back home?”

I push myself off the ground and decide to try to continue through this place to maybe find a place out. I go through the arch way. The room is dark, the entire room is made out of damp stone that looks as if it has never been touched. In the middle of the room I see a single flower in a small patch of grass. The flower has yellow petals and a white middle part. When I approach the flower I realize that it has a face.

“What the heck?” I scream. I take a big step back.

The flower smiles at me, “Howdy! I’m Flowey, Flowey the flower!”

“A flower that talks? Is my head messed up right now from that fall?” I’m confused, I take another step back.

“Oh, you must be new to the ‘Underground’. Aren’t you? The ‘Underground’ is a place where monsters have been trapped for many many years. There was once a war between humans and monsters, but the Humans won. The monsters then were trapped in the ‘Underground’ by the humans, and they were sealed in to be never let out by a magical barrier at the end of the ‘Underground’. Monsters are unlike humans, their souls are weaker but have magical essence to them that allows them to use magic. Here, I’ll show you.” Suddenly, some floating orbs appear in front of the flower.

“Woah.” I take yet another step backward.

“These are called… friendliness pellets. They will help you on your journey. They will fly at you for you to grab them, hurry up and grab them all.” The flower sends the gleaming orbs of energy toward me, they fly toward me at lightning speed. One of the gleaming orbs of magical energy hits me right on my right shoulder. I cry out in pain from the impact as I get knocked back. I’m able to barely roll out of the way of the others. My shoulder is throbbing from pain.

The flower laughs maniacally. “Who would pass up an opportunity like this! A human soul would make any monster strong enough to get out of this horrible place. Prepare to die!” The flower’s smile turns into a demonic grin as more floating orbs circle around me and slowly come closer, closer, and closer. “In this world, it’s kill or be killed!” I get down on the hard, cold stone floor, squeeze my eyes shut, and brace myself for the impact.

Right when I think they are about to hit me I hear a small sound of crackling fire. I slowly open my eyes to see some sort of monster, covered with white fur, with a ball of fire in their hand. It has two big horn protruding from its head. It has long floppy ears on the sides of its head. It’s eyes are dark and look almost like they are staring into your soul. It is also wearing some kind of purple clothing with a strange symbol of the front of it.

“Stay away from this poor little kid!” The strange monster yelled. The monster threw the fireball, it sailed across the room.

The flower shrieked and ducked into the ground just in time to avoid the ball of fire. The flower stayed in the ground, maybe it can travel around underground.

“Are you ok? Are you harmed?” The monster ran up to me, it was worried about me. It saw I was holding my throbbing shoulder. “Oh my! You poor little child. Here I can help you with that, I’ll heal you.” The monster put its hand on my shoulder, there was a faint green glow coming from it’s hand. The throbbing stopped and it felt like it was completely fine.

“Woah, how did you do that?” I move my arm around a little bit and it feels like that it was never even hit.

“I have mastered healing magic, I can heal anything I would want to. You should come with me, I can get you to a safe place.”

I’m a little hesitant to agree, it’s a monster after all. And after that last monster I don’t know who or what I can trust around here. This monster looks even more powerful than the last one. But the monster did save me, so maybe I should trust it. I take the chance and decide I should agree with the monster to let it lead me to a place that will hopefully be safe as it promised.
“Ok, I’ll let you lead me to a safe place.”
I still need to get out of this place though, but hopefully wherever this monster leads me will get me close to the exit.

“Great, just follow me.” The monster leads me through another opening into the next room.

The new room we are in has walls made out of a grey brick, the ground has a slightly darker color stone. There is an erie quiet. It feels a little chilly here. Directly in front of us there is another door, except this one is closed. There is a sign on the wall in front of us that reads: Only the fearless may proceed. Brave ones, foolish ones. Both not walk the middle road. To the right side of the room there are six buttons arranged in a pattern, four to the side, two to the middle. There is also a lever lever next to the buttons.

“We are currently in the Ruins. The Ruins is only one of the many places you can visit here in the ‘Underground’. There are a few puzzles around here, I’ll walk you through them.”
The monster walks up to the buttons and pushes in each of the buttons except for the ones that are in the middle. It presses each button as if it has done it a million times, and then it reaches for the lever and pulls it down. The door swings open.

“Come with me again.” The monster motioned for me to follow.
We walked through the door and progressed to the next room. The next room contained the same type of cool temperature, and dark bricks. It also had some vines creeping down the walls. I noticed relaxing a sound of running water. I looked to my right and found two small rivers with bridges over top of them so a person, I mean monster, could cross the gap without needed to get in and get wet. I find three switches on the walls and a sign that reads, “Stay on the path, and then two out of three will give you the way.” There is another door at the end of this corridor too, and of course, it is closed.

“Oh great, another puzzle,” I exclaim with sarcasm.

“This will help you on your way through the ruins. It will help you learn how to solve the puzzles that are scattered through here so that you will be able to progress if I’m not here to help you.” The monster pauses for a second then continues, “I’ll let you try to solve this puzzle by yourself, if you need my help just ask me.”

“Alright, it looks pretty easy so I’ll try.” I notice that there is a path of the type of bricks on the wall that is on the floor. I read the sign again outloud, “Stay on the path, and then two out of three will give you the way.” The path on the floor leads to two of the three levers. I follow the path and pull the first switch, I hear a soft click sound. I glance at the monster and it nods at me. I follow the path again to the next switch and I pull that one too. I hear another soft click and then the door swings open.

“Great job.” The monster seems happy that I figured out the puzzle on my own. It almost seems like it’s smiling. “We shall now continue.”

We continue through next door. This is a small room that only has a small dummy in the center of it. The room is colored and made exactly like the previous rooms with a door on the opposite wall, but this door is luckily already open.

“I will now teach you how you can survive the monsters in the ‘Underground’. Some monsters here are friendly, like me, but some are not so friendly towards humans, like that little Flower we encountered earlier. But you shall not worry, I think I have showed that flower enough times now to not lay a single petal on another human. I will protect you from any other monster that will hurt you. However if i am gone and not able to help you, then you will have to learn how to avoid getting hurt. I’ll teach you with this dummy.” The monster motions toward the dummy with its hand.

“OK, so what do I have to do? Do you want me to try to punch it?”

“No, you are going to talk to it. Violence is not the way to victory.”

“What? Talk to it?”

“Correct.”

“So you want me to have a conversation with a dummy?”

“Yes, what’s wrong with that? It will help you to survive, it will teach you how to calm down monsters if they try to harm you. It will also show you how to stall for time so I can come to tell the monster to leave you alone.”

“Fine, if you really want me to.” I walk up to the dummy. I can see the cloth and fabric that it’s made up of. “Hello there?” I pause and think of something to say. “Um… What are you doing?”

The dummy falls backward and rolls away to the corner. It’s almost like it was bored and didn’t want me to bother it. I look behind me back at the monster with a puzzled look on my face. The monster gives me a nod, I guess I did good?

“Let's head into the next room,” the monster motioned for me to follow. We head through the doorway, leaving the dummy behind.
This new room had a path on the ground that weaved around the room in a weird pattern. There was a corridor to the right that continued through the ruins. I notice another sign on the wall. It read: “The path is the same, follow it and you will continue on.”

“Stay exactly behind me for this next puzzle, I don’t want you to be getting hurt. Follow my exact footsteps.”

“Alright,” I nodded towards the monster. The monster walks through the corridor, I follow slowly behind. As I am following I hear some sort of sound, like a weird ribbit from a frog. I turn around, my eyes try to track where the sound had came from. But before I knew it, I felt a sudden jolt of pain and I was on the cold, hard stone ground.

I am covered with some dirt on dust that was on the stone. My body hurt and throbbed from the impact of whatever hit me and the fall to the floor. I glance around me to try to get a glimpse of what hit me, and then I see it. There is a giant frog in front of me. It’s big beady eyes stare at me. The white furred monster is too far ahead and didn’t notice that I’m being attacked.

“Ribbit,” the frog croaks. It lunges at me again, I barely escape with a roll to the left. Suddenly in a small flash, there are large glowing flies around me. “Ribbit,” the frog croaks again. The flies start moving towards me. I duck under one and back away quickly from the rest. I end up bumping into a wall and I’m surrounded.

“Help me!” I scream out for help.

The monster finally turned around and notice me. It ran back towards me and the giant frog, a fireball slowly forming in its hand. It grabbed the giant frog with its open hand and hurled it away, and while the frog was still in mid-air, it threw the fireball and directly hit the frog right in the head. The frog ran off and away from us like a scared little bunny.

“Thank you again,” I say to the monster.

“It’s no problem human, I am sorry that I was not able to notice sooner. Let's continue so we can get to the spot where we can be safe.”

We continue to the end of the corridor where there the ground is covered with spikes.

“Remember what I said, stay behind me or else you will end up getting hurt,” The monster says.

The monster steps where a spike is. I jump back in surprise. Why would it just step on a spike? I look down at its foot and realize it’s not hurt at all. The spike retracted so that the monster didn’t get impaled. The monster takes another cautious step forward, the spikes retract again. I take a slow step forward to the spot the monster was just standing, still retracted. It continued back and forth, the monster took a step, I took a step. We slowly snaked around the room, I soon realized that we are weaving around the room in the exact same pattern as the path in the previous room. We eventually go to the end of the room, we didn’t make any wrong steps so me and the monster are both still perfectly fine.

“That wasn’t so bad, right?” The monster said to me. I nod my head at the monster. “Good. The next room is where my house is, we can go there and then we can be safe.”

We walk into the next room and all there is, is a wood door that looks insanely out of place in contrast to the dark stone walls around us. The monster leads me to the door and lets me in, I hesitantly walk inside.

The inside of this monsters house looks so nice. The floor is made of a light color of wood and the walls are painted beige. To the upper left corner of this room is a large house plant, and the upper right corner holds a bookcase. There is also a staircase that leads downwards, probably to a basement, and also a door on both sides of the room.

“You may explore around the house, I have to go do something,” The monster strolls to the left door into what looks like a living room with another bookcase, a fireplace, a rocking chair, and a table with a flower on it in the room. I decide follow the monster to wherever it is going.

From the living room the monster goes into another room which looks like a kitchen. The kitchen has a black and white tiled floor and slightly darker colored walls. There are all the things that you would find in a normal kitchen, like a fridge, an oven, cabinets, a sink, and tools like frying pans. I spot the monster opening up the oven and taking something out. It sets a pie on the counter, it’s steaming from the warmth. It looks delicious.

“Hello there human. Are you done looking around?”

“Ya, I’m done,” I reply, “It’s a very nice house.”

The monster smiles at me, “I’m glad you find this place nice. I have also baked this blueberry pie,” The monster motions toward the pie with its hand, “We can both enjoy it with a nice hot cup of tea or hot chocolate.”

“Thank you,” I reply, “That is so nice of you.” I smile at the monster.

The monster gets the pie, tea, and hot chocolate ready. I wait patiently at the table that I saw earlier. The monster comes into the room from the kitchen, holding the pie and two kettles. It places them down on the table. It puts down a slice of pie on each of our plates.

“What would you like, hot chocolate or tea?” The monster asks me.

“I would like some hot chocolate please,” I answer.

The monster proceeds to pour me some hot chocolate that had a ton of marshmallows in it, and for itself some tea. I dig into my food and munch it up like I haven't eaten in days. It was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. I ended up eating 3 slices of the pie and drank the hot chocolate to wash it down.

“That was delicious, thank you for the meal,” I thank the monster.

The monster laughs, “It was no problem human.”

“Now that I have had something to eat, can you show me the way out of this place. A way out of the ‘Underground’?”
“I’m sorry but I cannot let that happen,” The monster says in a grim tone.

“Why not?” I ask, “I need to get out of here and see my friends and family.”

“Because when you escape the ‘Underground’, then the king would find out. The king will follow you out of the ‘Underground’ and try to catch you to free the rest of the monsters out of the ‘Underground’. Then most of the monsters would most likely try to take revenge on the humans.”

“But I need to get out. I need to go to my own family and friends, they are probably worried about me.”

The monster stands up, “Please wait one second, I must leave for a second to go do something.”

The monster leaves the room, I can hear it step down the creaking stairs. I stand up and decide to follow it.

At the bottom of the steps is a long corridor with some vines of the walls here and there. The monster is walking to the end of the corridor where there is a large door with light coming out from behind it.

“Please do not follow me,” The monster says, “go back upstairs. I’m going to block the exit.”

“Wait! No!” I run for the exit, each step making a loud echo.

The monster blocks my path to the door. “Then prove to me that you are worthy enough to survive.”

The monster has a menacing look on its face. A fireball starts to form in its hand. I am stunned in fear. The monster throws the fireball. It sails towards me through the air. At the very last moment I’m able to duck down. The fireball flies past over my head. I stand back up and stare at the monster with a terrified look on my face. The monster raises its hand up into the air, four fireballs, two on each side of the creature start to form. The monster points its hand toward me, the fireball woosh towards me in duos. I jump to the left to avoid the first two, but the second two I wasn’t ready to avoid again.

I notice that the monster suddenly gets a worried look on its face. Right as the fire balls are about to scorch me, the fireballs quickly avoid me. I realize that the monster doesn’t want to hurt me, it just doesn’t want me to leave and be in danger.

I walk towards the monster with no worries. The monster once again has the menacing look on its face again, but I’m not worried. The monster raises its hand high up into the air again, fireballs circle around me and slowly close in. I’m still not scared, not a single sliver of fear in me as I continue forward. The ring of fire around me makes a path for me to continue forward right as it is supposed to hit me again. Just as I thought would happen. I walk up the monster.

“I don’t want to fight,” I say to the monster, “Neither do you. Just please let me past.”

The monster doesn’t say anything, it just continues to have a menacing look on its face. It tries to attack me with fire again, the fire extingustions before it hits me without me even needing to move a single muscle.

“See? You don’t want to hurt me. Just let me through,” I say to the monster.

“I am sorry human, but I just cannot allow you to do it.”

“But I have to go back to my family and my friends. They are probably extremely worried about me.”

The monster stares off, it seems like that it is lost in thought. It looks really sad all of a sudden, like that it is about to cry.

“What’s wrong?” I ask the monster.

“You remind me of my own son before…” The monsters voice falters away. “You may go on ahead. Goodbye human.” The monster slowly walks away, its head is down looking at the stone floor.

I turn towards the door. This is it. I think to myself. I get to go back home. I take a step forwards towards the door. I reach my hand out and push it open, light floods the dim corridor. I never realized just how dark it was in there. I take a step forward out of the “Underground” and onto the surface.

I glance around the landscape. There are big trees looming over the tall grass that is as tall as me. The beautiful bright blue sky makes everything look so amazing compared to the dull colors back in the “Underground”.

This experience of the ‘Underground’ was… interesting. At least I don’t have to go back down there again. I make my way through the tall grass. I hear some sort of weird noise. I glance around me to find the noise. Nothing. I look up, I see it. There is a helicopter flying through the sky, I instantly knew that was my way back home. Luckily the helicopter is low enough to the ground to see me jumping around a screaming to try to see what was wrong.

The helicopter comes and lands in the soft grass. Two people step out of the helicopter and walk over to me.

“What are you doing here?” The one to the right screams.

“Long story,” I answer.

They tell me to get onto the helicopter and tell them where I live and what my name is. I follow directions and they realize that I’m a missing person.

I get taken back to my home and everything soon enough returns to normal. I still won't forget about this crazy experience though. This is one of those things that is just unforgettable, weather you like it or not.