Through the smoky fence, I watched a shadowy figure lurk among the massive tree trunks. I squinted, trying to decide if they looked human. Or humanoid, yeah. Probably.
I couldn’t tell for sure, so I peered closer ... and the figure vanished behind a tree. Hm. I almost called out, but I was wary of Things Beyond the Gate. Maybe once I got stronger I’d--
A shadow darted across the bushes beside me and without thinking, without hesitation, I dropped into a crouch.
A leaping thornspider missed my head by inches.
I started running before that fucker landed on the mossy ground--scrambling back toward the shrine, because it was so much closer than the temple. Only fifteen steps away. Which would take me four seconds, maybe.
Except after two seconds, another thornspider dropped in front of me. Directly in front of me. In the path between me and the shrine. Then it reared back on thorny legs, rising almost to my height, with fangs bared and claws outstretched.
I didn’t need to look to know that the first spider was closing in on me from behind. I was caught. Trapped between them. My mind groped for ...
Something.
Some path.
Some strategy.
Some power.
It was right there, so close, just out of reach, just barely out of reach, but ... too far to grasp.
So I howled, “Fuck you!” at the spider and ran even faster.
These things were deadly, but only a third of my weight, and I hit that fucker with a game-ending tackle. A dozen thorns sliced into me but I was out of my mind with fear and rage and I carried that serrated bastard toward the shrine and up the two steps and into the shrine.
The spider started trembling violently, then exploded in my arms.
* * *
I woke in the night, shivering and covered in gore.
Everything hurt.
I was afraid to check my health.
I covered myself with moss from my domain and lost consciousness again.
* * *
In the morning, everything still hurt. Everything hurt worse.
I was in bad shape.
I spent hours lying on my side and watching the world with unsteady vision. The courtyard looked shimmery, like smoke. Except more colorful, like a kaleidoscope. Except less fun, like a hungry, bleeding man losing hope.
No. Screw that. I hadn’t been summoned to a new world to lose hope.
I was an archmage, dammit. Quests appeared in my mind. I controlled my own extradimensional domain. And I’d killed that thornspider unarmed. I’d blown that fucker into a thousand pieces. An adult one, too, that time.
“Ha,” I gasped. “You creepy crawlies don’t stand a chance.”
Then I realized I’d said ‘creepy crawlies,’ which wasn’t a normal phrase for me. Damn. I felt a little hot, too. Was I feverish?
Possibly.
Still, I really had exploded a thornspider, and--
And motion caught my eye through the gate again. The same figure--looked the same, at least--was walking through the distant trees in the primeval forest. It was holding a bunch of dead rabbits in one hand. Not rabbits, but some kind of prey animal and--and the guy looked human. Looked like a guy, too. Maybe. I couldn’t see much beyond the smoky gate, in the shadowed forest, through my teary eyes.
Yet as I watched the gate, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to survive the courtyard. I wasn’t going to make it. The thornspiders were too much for me. I couldn’t handle them. I couldn’t handle any of this.
Fuck getting stronger, I needed to leave.
I needed food, I needed help.
Committing myself to the decision, I rolled onto my knees. Which took way too long. Then I stood. Which took longer. I steadied myself on the crab-person--the crachen--statue’s clamshell head. I waited until the dizziness passed, then checked for thornspiders.
Then I waited for the dizziness to pass again, and took off toward the gate.
I moved at a sort of pained shamble. I felt almost drunk, as the world came in and out of focus. I focused on the pebbled path, a green-barked tree. The smoke gate. A berry cluster on a bush. A high burl on a tree trunk. A blue smear of sky. The smoke gate. My sneakers scuffing. The yellow flowers, the smoke gate, the thornspider, the path--
Shit.
Shit! A thornspider, stalking closer to me.
Fear cleared my mind as I realized what I’d seen, and my vision cleared a moment later. Okay. A thornspider was scuttling toward me from the right, following the curve of the fence toward the gate where I was heading. It was ten times farther away than I was, but also moving ten times faster.
My conclusion remained: shit.
I kept shambling. No choice. The gate was closer than the shrine and frankly, I was pretty sure that I’d collapse if I tried to turn back.
I reached the gate an instant before the spider reached me. I grabbed the latch and a weight slammed into me from behind. Thorns and fangs pierced me but the smoky gate opened and I tumbled through into the forest.
* * *
The thornspider landed on my back in the forest, shivved me with a claw--then sprang away, spooked by the abrupt change of scenery.
With my cheek pressing into a pile of leaves, I watched the spider leap onto a trunk and scuttle into the branches.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Then I looked back to the courtyard gate and ... it wasn’t there. Nothing was there but more forest. Endless trees. The fence and the courtyard had completely disappeared. The temple, the pond, the orchard: all gone.
Except, wait.
No.
A faint curl of smoke hovered in the air above the forest floor. A hazy vertical thread, like a crack in the world. Was that the gate as seen from this side?
Or was I losing consciousness?
Or hey, maybe both!
I snorted at the thought and didn’t faint. What a badass. Instead, I rolled onto my stomach. Then I gingerly, painfully, managed to rise onto my feet. I stood, hunched over and gasping, then peered for a baffled moment at a fallen tree from which hundreds of saplings grew. Maybe for more than a moment, kind of losing myself for a bit.
Finally, I shambled onward, heading for where I’d seen that figure disappear into the trees. I couldn’t spare any breath, but I kept thinking: Help. Help me. Please, help.
The forest turned hazy. I tripped, crawled, then found myself sitting on a wide root. Monkeys screamed and birds called in the canopy overhead. My shoulders slumped and my head dropped until I saw nothing but the forest floor. Mushrooms grew on rotten leaves and line of ants the size of my thumb climbed the shedding bark of the tree.
“You’re looking pretty rough there, friend,” a man’s voice said behind me.
“That’s weird,” I mumbled, still looking at the ground. “Cause I’m feeling pretty smooth.”
“Where are your people?”
“California,” I said, and realized that we weren’t speaking English.
Because when I’d said that word in English, it had become clear that everything else was in some other language. One that I apparently spoke fluently.
“Your people?” he repeated.
“I ... I don’t know.”
A footstep sounded, coming closer behind me, then I heard an intake of breath.
“Plagues,” the man swore. “You’re just about dead.”
Health: 4/21
“Just about.”
“Welp,” he said. “I can’t leave you here.”
“Oh. Good. Thanks. I ... I need help.”
“You need a gold bead, but let’s start with bandages.”
When he stepped in front of me, I managed to lift my head. He looked like a ranger in a gritty fantasy movie, wearing green-brown tunic beneath a reinforced leather jacket or hauberk or jerkin. His dark leggings were tucked into his well-used boots. The long spear in his hands was not quite pointing at me. Pouches and containers dangled from his belt, as did a sort of holster for his strung bow.
Also, he was a blue-skinned demon.
Blue. Demon. He had yellow eyes like those wolves. He had pointy ears, also kind of like those wolves. His features were angular, and there were two backswept horns on his head. So ... so he was a blue-skinned Infenti. Well, or so I guessed ...
INTUIT: Infenti, Level 6
Yep. Infenti, and double the level of the toughest of those thornspiders.
“My camp’s not far,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, when I found my voice.
He eyed me. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah. Sure. Uh, but I can’t quite stand.”
He eyed me again, then twirled his spear and fastened it across his back. He crouched beside me and put my useless arm around his shoulder, then helped me stand. I gasped. When he straightened, my legs supported most of my weight but not all. I leaned on him and focused on walking--left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot--across the forest.
He paused and said, “Glass boa.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I took the opportunity to catch my breath. Walking was hard.
After a time, he started moving again, and soon we reached a campsite with a lean-to at the base of a tree, anchored by high roots. A stream sounded from the other side of the tree, and saplings and bushes grew densely nearer the water. Carcasses hung on hooks embedded in a low, heavy branch, and laundry dried on a line. A fishing rod leaned against the tree trunk. Rocks lined a firepit with a pile of ashes.
It looked like he’d been living there for at least a few weeks, maybe more.
“Where ... “ I took a breath. “Are your ... people?”
“Back home, praying I’m alive.” He led me to a root. “Here, sit.”
I sat, hissing at a new throb of pain.
“What’d you run into?” he asked. “That doesn’t look like puma to me.”
“Thornspider.”
“Never heard of ‘em.”
“Lucky ... you.”
The man flashed a smile, full of sharp teeth. “That’s the first time anyone’s said that to me in a long while. Okay, let’s see what we’re working with ... “
He checked my leg, then my shoulder, then my back. He vanished for a minute--or maybe for ten, I still felt dizzy and drunk--then filled a pot with water and started the fire beneath it. He stripped off my shirts and cleaned the slashes and punctures on my back then helped me to a bedroll on the ground inside the lean-to and took off the rest of my clothes and washed the rest of my injuries.
When he saw my infected calf, he grunted.
When he saw my arm and shredded hand, he grunted again.
“Bad?” I asked.
“I’ve seen worse,” he told me.
He spread paste on my wounds, then poured a savory broth into my mouth and told me to sleep.
“Hey,” I said, as he turned to leave.
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“Go to sleep,” he said again, and stepped out.
Wincing at a flare of pain, I pulled the covers over me. Then I laid there, blinking at the room of the lean-to. Sleep wouldn’t come. Because even though I was too numb to feel the appropriate amount of shock, I’d just met a blue demon-guy. He’d helped me to his camp in the primeval forest and given me medicine. The blue demon-guy had.
While being--this was key--a blue demon-guy.
I’d known for days that I’d fallen through an impossible rabbit hole, but still: holy shit. Some Avatar-looking huntsman had found me on the brink of death and brought me to his forest campsite? That was absolutely amazing, but also not exactly a soothing scenario. So while I drowsed a bit, I didn’t quite fall asleep. That’s why I was awake when the guy ducked back into the lean-to.
My heart clenched with sudden fear. Oh, here it comes. Here it comes. This had been too good to be true. You find a random demon in the big bad woods, and he’s kind to you? No fucking way. How naive could you be? He was definitely going to eat me or some horror movie shit.
Except when he caught my eye, he said, “You’re awake. Good. Sort of.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
He sat beside the bedroll. “You’re not going to heal naturally. You need a golden bead.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“So your choice is--what?”
“I don’t know what a golden bead is.”
“You ... “ He took a breath. “My name is Oksar.”
“Alex,” I said. “Are you, uh, from around here?”
“Ha. No, I crossed a bridge a while back and, well ...”
“A bridge?” I asked, wondering if that meant a portal to another dimension.
He frowned at me. “You don’t know what that is either? Where are you from?”
“America?” I tried.
“Okay. So what are you doing here in Waldhill forest, without any food, or weapons, or ... anything? Except those clothes.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know! I just ... woke up in this temple. On an altar. In a, a world with ... quests and levels and ... spiders and I--what I’m doing is trying to ... to keep my shit together. I’m trying not to fall completely apart, that’s what I’m doing here. I’m trying not to cry like a baby.”
And then I immediately failed at that particular goal. Which was embarrassing, but everything hurt. Everything hurt. I couldn’t breath without pain, I couldn’t roll over without agony, and it was all too much.
Oksar didn’t seem to care about my brief breakdown. When I settled down, he just said, “Let’s heal you first. That’ll help.”
“With a golden bead?”
“Yeah.”
“I like that idea.”
“The thing is,” he said, “a golden bead is worth a month’s income on most islands. And, uh, we just met.”
“Ah,” I said.
“And you’ve got nothing to trade but the clothes on your back.” He grinned devilishly. “Lucky for you, I’ve never seen clothes like those. The shoes are remarkable.”
“I spend way too much on sneakers.”
“And the ... the weaving of that moose-monster on the undershirt? I’ve never seen that level of fabric art. The stitchery on the shirt, the pockets on the trousers. The stretchy undergarment.”
“Boxer briefs,” I said.
He ignored me. “So here’s my offer. I’ll trade a golden bead for your clothes. And I’ll throw in some of my old clothes, too, so you’re not bare-assed.”
“Deal,” I said.
“Alex,” he said. “No.”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to haggle.”
“I feel like shit. This bead will heal me?”
“Yeah.”
“In exchange for my torn clothes?”
“Your exotic, possibly-priceless, torn clothes.”
I made a beckoning gesture. “Bead.”
“Okay, but ... I’m in your debt an additional consideration that is due to you, to be agreed-upon later.”
“Yeah. You totally owe me for saving my life.”
“Here.” He gave me a golden boba. “Swallow.”
To my surprise, the bead tasted like mango. Like actual mango boba. And even more to my surprise, all my wounds started tingling then warming. Warmer and warmer, almost hot, but not quite. My hand, my arm, and my calf felt hottest. And my spine. And one knee and ...
That time, I slept.
When I woke, I felt better. No, I felt good. My palm, my shredded palm, was whole again. Nothing remained of the damage but a few thready scars. I rose from the bedroll and stretched. My joints cracked and my calf took my weight without complaint. I twisted around--my spine felt better than ever--and saw a thin scar on the back of my leg, running from my knee halfway to my ankle. It looked like I’d been injured a month ago or something.
Healing magic.
Goddamn! I felt great. Better than ever. The pinky I’d broken years ago in a skateboard accident was straight again. I even felt ... taller. My breath felt deeper and my vision clearer.
I flexed a little, then I laughed.