Prologue

Ben Tennyson was no stranger to danger. He'd fought warlords and criminals and prevented an invasion of the Earth before he'd turned 11. Ben was confident in his ability to deal. So, when the floor opened up beneath his feet in Azmuth's lab he didn't immediately panic. Screamed yes. Panic, no.

Portals, in Ben's experience, had been rare but not unknown. He could survive landing in the null void – probably. But instead of the veiny, tissue dimension of the Null Void, the space they'd fallen into staid a vast white nothingness somehow bleached of both colour and light. Close to blind, Ben reached for his watch, managing to turn only to be batted aside by a heavy overwhelming force, which seemed to squish his entire body under the weight. Ben screamed as electricity coursed beneath his skin, his body going rigid with pain.

Then, without any indication as to why, the white light surrounding them turned red, then pink, then a dark heavy purple until suddenly they met the ground with a crash, the grounded energy the only mercy to be found on the unforgiving soil. Free from most of the wattage, Ben rolled over, yanking a wire imbedded in his arm out, biting his tongue to keep from screaming again.

Heaving for breath with a thin layer of blood coating his tongue, Ben came back to himself slowly. Turning his focus first to grey threatening sky above them and then to the clap of thunder which echoed in the distance. Gradually, his field of vision began to widen again, letting him notice the enormous dark red trees with black leaves and pulsating vines, which stretched up high into the sky above. Ben's brain immediately assumed they'd landed on an alien planet. Inhaling deeply he found the atmosphere breathable, if a little damp.

"Be-Ben?" Gwen voice cut through the buzz of Ben's thoughts; her words shakier than they should be. Rolling onto his side again, Ben tried to find his cousin. Their crash landing had left a vaguely smoky crater, with cables, concrete and chunks of monitors imbedded in the enormous trees. As usual, he spots her hair first, a bright spot of orange in the corner of his eye.

"Here," Ben groaned back; his voice hoarser than he was expecting. He tries to roll to his feet only for his arm to give in with his nervous system radioing in a rapid (and loud) no-no-no-no.

"Be-n!" Gwen yelled again, hiccupping back tears. Ben tried again; this time careful to put as little pressure as he could on his left arm. Shaky and far from stable, Ben got to his feet and staggered over to his dweeby cousin. He found her flat out the ground shaking with tears as she tries to shift an enormous piece of rubble off her foot.

"H-ey, doofus? You okay?" Ben asked with a bravado he didn't really feel.

"Oh yeah- I'm, I'm fine, I'm enjoying a pedicure from mole people!" Gwen snarled, blue spheres of light flickering around her fingers as she tries to dislodge her foot. "Why don't you help and turn into four eyes, doofus; Actually be useful for once," Gwen ordered, her own attempt at an attitude not very believable either.

Ben went to do just that, only to hesitate. The face of the Omnitrix had been smashed open, exposed circuitry and missing pieces of metal plainly visible. "I don't think I should," he admits, more scared than perhaps he'd ever been. The whole reason they'd travelled to Galvan prime had been to remove the watch. Ben had wanted a break, at least for a few years to be normal. But just as Vilgax couldn't take it off neither could the Tennysons. So they'd piled into the Rustbucket and gone to Galven Prime, Gwen tagging along mostly for curiosities sake.

The Omintrix didn't look very indestructible anymore. Gwen froze and twisted, breath hitching briefly in pain before she opened her eyes again and looked at his wrist with horror.

"Oh, yeah, that looks…" Gwen paused trying to swallow the fear that was lodged in her throat, "bad," she finished lamely.

"Yeah no kidding dweeb," Ben rolled his eyes. "Why don't I try shoving it and you try and pull it out?"

Gwen nodded at which point Ben shoved with all his might. The rock barely moved but it was enough for the redhead to remove her foot from where it was wedged. Shaking again, they both crawled away from the potentially dangerous debris and into open, maybe safer, space.

"Ow!" Gwen yelped when she hesitantly touched her foot which was now starting to swell.

"Is it broken?" Ben asked cradling his arm.

Gwen shook her head. "I don't think so, just, painful – you?" She asked motioning to his arm.

"No, just, just really, really sore. I got shocked whilst we were- whilst we were falling." Ben twitched as his body remembered the feeling of all those volts surging beneath his skin. "Where are we?"

Gwen shook her head and shrugged, as clueless as he was. "I don't know, those trees, they kinda look like Fir trees, maybe but, I can't see any stars…" she shook her head, putting aside her confusion in favour of solving her pain. Searching her pockets, she mourned slightly as she pulled out her crushed cell phone and a now slightly charred spell book. Flicking through the pages she found the spell she wanted. To Ben it looked like a page of circular squiggles and triangles, but his cousin seemed to find some sense in it. She pointed at her foot and spoke:

-Matyan demdera Genaga-1

The spell swirled around Gwen's foot in hazy blue mist, the enormous bruise of broken capillaries and swollen flesh sluggishly repairing itself. After about 2 to 3 minutes, she came to her feet, wincing only slightly when she put her weight on it. "Okay, now your turn." Gwen said turning to face her cousin, ignoring his frown. "Quit being such a baby, it barely even hurts." She repeated the spell, though this time she pulled the dirt off the surface. As usual, Gwen's magic felt weird, like standing in hot spring too long or staring at the sun. But it was a comforting sort of weirdness.

Lightning snapped across the sky, jolting yet another rush of adrenaline in the two teenagers.

"We, we need to find shelter." Ben announced looking nervously at the various metal cables that were now slung like vines across the trees – an open invitation for a lightning strike, and Ben did not want to fry again. Once was enough.

Gwen nodded, flipping through her spell book to one of the pages she'd bookmarked earlier in the summer. "Here, if we put together a frame I can fill in in with clay from the soil – make it sturdy enough to keep out the rain."

Relived to have a reason to mock his cousin, Ben sighed dramatically. "You are such a nerd, why would you even learn that kind of spell dweeb?"

"So if Grandpa' snoring got bad again, I'd be able to escape - unlike you dofus," she stuck out her tongue. Picking up a piece of shrapnel, she quickly carved a rounded symbol onto the bark of the tree. "There, now we can find it when we go back."

Ben nodded and together they trooped into the woods, looking for a decent campsite, Grandpa Max's teachings rattling in their ears. Eventually they decided to use the exposes roots of a particularly big tree, that had been knocked over by a storm at some point. Soil, rain and time had already formed the beginnings of a shelter between the exposed roots. Clearing what little life lived there - mostly bugs which Ben felt no guilt over evicting, Gwen's magic hardened the roots and filled in the gaps, making a small, mostly rainproof room. Damp and more than a little cold, they huddled unhappily before a fire they'd hastily made at the mouth of their shelter, watching the flames carefully until exhaustion finally pulled them under.

1 Healing Spell