May 12th

I was only thirteen when I was taken to another world.

At least that’s what I’ve always called it. Taken. Not really kidnapped – not abducted.

Taken.

Transported.

Whisked away.

I always felt like there was a reason it all happened, someone or something was behind it all, I wanted to believe it was meant to be. I wanted to believe it meant something.

But it didn’t.

I remember being afraid, incredibly afraid — paralyzed. What started out as a normal walk in the woods behind my house all at once became something inconceivable, something I never could have imagined.

I can’t describe how alien an experience it was to see a crack shuddering open in the air just in front of me, violently splitting into physical directions I didn’t seem to be able to visually comprehend. It was the first time I’d seen reality itself break like that and, I remember becoming so dizzy. My eyes hurt and my heart was beating—I remember that specifically, my beating heart.

And the fear. I’d never felt fear like that before. It was the kind that glues you to the spot, grabs you—holds you in an iron vice grip. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t yell, I couldn’t even look away as the colors stretched and folded and oscillated in on themselves. I actually think I did throw up a little.

But, thinking back on it, if I knew then what I know now, if I could go back to that moment of fear and look into that shimmering, multicolored aurora in the woods—I’d jump in with both feet—no hesitation whatsoever. When I think about how afraid I was, how I held back… it almost hurts.

But I didn’t know it then, I didn’t know what it would mean for me. You couldn’t have paid me to go through, absolutely not. I was too afraid—way, way too afraid.

I remember being scared of a lot of things at thirteen though. I think I was probably scared of the whole world. New town, new school—everything felt like it was starting to change and would never be the same again. Adulthood had begun to loom like a giant thundercloud on a distant horizon and it was all terrifying.

I wasn’t as self-aware back then, but looking back I'm sure that’s why I was in the woods. I was trying to just get a few minutes by myself before everything changed, before the rest of my life started catching up with me like all the adults always said it would.

I guess it was silly to be afraid. It felt important at the time, everything does when you’re thirteen. Little did I know the whole growing-up process would be drastically different for me than probably anyone else who had ever lived. I had to do it twice… but I’ll get to that part later.

That day, the day I saw the portal, everything about everything changed. I didn’t know what was on the other side of that portal. I had no idea I would be leaving Earth far behind.

And even if I had known that I wouldn’t have gone, not back then. I would never have stepped through if I knew the stepping would be from here into somewhere so different.

The only thing that broke through the fear was the monster. I had never laid eyes on anything like it before. It exploded out of the world beyond the portal and ran over me before it noticed I was lying there. That's when it flipped around and cornered me. I was certain I was going to be eaten. One fear was more powerful than the other I guess, even though the idea of running from a wiilf is funny to me now. It wasn’t even fully grown, but that’s a different story from a different place. Those memories and experiences aren’t mine anymore, not really. Besides, a lot of time has passed since then and now.

In the end, I think there turned out to be a lot of reasons why I went through it. Maybe the fear played a part, maybe I was meant to. I always figured it had something to do with fate. Maybe other reasons were hiding deep down—things that came to light later, things I discovered inside me.

One of those things was Embr, standing with her hand out to me, appearing like something straight out of an adventure story — hair short and wild and a wicked, curved blade on her hip. Honestly, more than anything else it was probably her that did it, she was the reason I stepped into the swirls of ethereal color. She was what really got me through.

But I can’t write anymore about Embr right now. Not right now. Not her.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The moment I crossed through I distinctly remember how it felt. I was seeing a new world for the very first time, It wasn’t a movie—wasn’t a book—it was real. It was happening to me in real, actual life. I had taken my very first step into Nymia.

Something about hearing those indescribable sounds and seeing that impressively different sky. Feeling that otherworldly air press in on me, I somehow sort of immediately knew it was where I was always supposed to be. I knew for the first time in my entire life that I was actually completely and genuinely home. All in one moment the fear melted away and something wonderful replaced it.

And trust me, the rest is a good story.

But unfortunately, this is not that story.

That story ended. It was hard and long and grueling. It was filled with danger, but it was also beautiful and wondrous and indescribably perfectly imperfect.

Places and animals and mountains and plants and languages and ships and oceans and cities and books and weapons and… and people. People I met, and fought with, and fought alongside, people I lived with who taught me and learned from me, people I couldn’t imagine missing the opportunity to get to know.

People who changed my life.

And there were also people who were suffering, downtrodden people who needed saving. Like any world, there were those fighting to be free and those fighting to enslave them.

So me and my friends, we fought and we won. We defeated a great evil. We slayed an ancient magic, we put the beast to rest. Our efforts liberated the populace from under the control of a supernatural, tyrannical oppressor.

After years of planning and struggling and fighting, we saw an opportunity and made our one-against-a-thousand chance and we did it.

We won.

We gave the gift of life back to those who needed it most. I couldn’t believe that after all that time, after all that sacrifice we had somehow impossibly made a difference. All those years had meant something. Fate was with me. There was a reason I had been in Nymia after all.

But then I was sent back.

I say sent, but I don’t know how the portals work, no one does. Random transdimensional passageways appearing and dissapearing for no specific reason other than the whims of an uninterested universe. I really used to think there had been a reason behind it all. I used to think it was meant to be, but that was before I came back to Earth. It was before I was ripped from my life and violently compressed back into the scared body of a thirteen-year-old. Before I lost everything—before everything changed and everything I had known was gone.

My powers were stripped away, my strength robbed. It didn’t even leave me my old injuries or my scars. Imperfections earned through a life daringly lived were stolen from me overnight.

I was ‘home,’ or at least that’s what I told myself for a while. It was a lie though, nothing could have been further from home for me than this world.

Earth.

I was thirteen and I was doing what thirteen-year-olds are supposed to do. I went to school. I was supposed to make friends. I was expected to adjust to a life I had left behind the better part of a decade before.

And what was my future? What did I have to look forward to here? Taxes and commuting and sending emails and skyscrapers and a career and making money.

I wanted so desperately to go back. I wanted to see my friends and family. I wanted to celebrate a victory we had achieved together. I wanted to feel the Nymian air and the power of Rilnian Magic in my veins.

I went back to the woods behind my house day after day after day after day.

But it didn’t happen. It never opened again.

I never went back.

I watched each year slip away right in front of me, knowing I would give anything to spend it there rather than here. I constantly looked at the sky and hoped to catch a glimpse of double moons, aching to walk through a whispering Viivan forest, wishing for one person to speak to in a language that had become my native tongue—wishing for just one person to understand.

I lost it all… all but my memories. They stayed behind to curse and torture me. I remember every day, every night, every moment, and every friend. It wasn’t just being a twenty-year-old in the body of a gangly teenager. It wasn’t just the pain of the memories and experiences of a man squished into a child. Seven years weren’t just stolen from me, an entire life was, a whole world was.

And I can’t think of anything crueler.

Jack closed his notebook softly and laid the pen down beside it. He knew he was only writing what he had written and re-written probably a thousand times in the last six years. It was the one thing he could think to do, write every day in Rilnian, and even though the shape of the runes hadn’t left his mind, they had ceased to be comforting. His same thoughts and feelings had been put down so many times night after night in so many different ways and none of it ever made it any better. A thousand, thousand words all saying the same thing.

That he was alone.

He looked down at the wooden cover in front of him, and in the pale yellow light, he read the name Jasku.

Jasku, not Jack.

Jasku, Leader of the Seven Rebels. Jasku the Outlaw, Wyrmkiller, Shadowrunner. Jasku Uniter of Voices, Overthrower.

Jasku Warking of all Nymia.

The shapes of the runes that had previously held such power were hollow—devoid. And not just devoid either, it was deeper than that. It was as if they were keenly aware that on Earth they were missing something vital. They didn’t just feel empty… they felt less than empty.

“Kiian kyrvän,” he said quietly to himself in Nymic. He grimaced as the language in which he once could express himself so perfectly sat heavy and uncomfortable on his tongue. It barely came out a raspy whisper. “Kiian kyrvän.”

“Less than empty.”