I awoke to my own coughing fit, the pain of my crushed ribs causing tears to come to my eyes. I could feel something hot and wet escape my lips and run down my chin and cheeks. I went to wipe it away, and found my hand stained red. “Well shit...” I groaned, falling back to the hard sandy ground. At least I was alive, for the moment. I tried to stand up, rolling over to my side to get my arms under me, but the pain in my chest and stomach stopped me cold. All I could manage was a groan.
“Alex....” I coughed, and tried to make my voice louder. “Ophelia, is Alex alright?” I asked, seeing her sitting down a few feet away.
Her crimson eyes stared back at me, empty. I knew the answer, had heard his neck snap... but I needed to be sure. She shook her head and spoke. “He died the moment that... thing hit him.” She spat out the word 'thing' like a curse.
I could feel tears stream down my face. I had only known Alex for a few hours. But he and Ophelia were it. In this world, whatever it was, I didn't have anyone else, anything else. There wasn't some deep bond between us, nothing like that. But we had come in here together, and relied on each other. Losing him was harder than I thought.
More than that, it was my failure. I had taken on the role of the tank, it was my job to take the hits on that big shield and make sure the other two survived. I hadn't done that. Not well enough, at least.
I coughed again, the racking wet sounds coming from my lungs frightening me. The pain was immense, my ribs were certainly broken. I could see the crimson of my blood coating my own hands. “Ophelia, am I going to die too?”
She shrugged, a cold indifference in her eyes. When I had first seen her, I thought her a child. Someone close to Alex in age, perhaps 14 or 15. But her expressions, the way she fought the monsters... I got the sense she was far older. Older than me perhaps.
“Why did you come here?” I asked, eventually. I needed a distraction for a moment, and Ophelia was all I had.
I think she sensed why I was asking her questions. She thought I was going to die. Hell, I thought I was going to die. “My house is divided into seven families. One woman from each family is chosen to compete each decade to become the new matriarch of the clan. The next contest is in two years, and I need to be strong enough to compete.”
“Why not just refuse to compete? Leave, don't look back, that kind of thing?” I could feel my breathing grow more ragged, and my vision blurred, just a bit.
“I can't. My family only has two women in it currently. Myself, and my younger sister. If I don't compete, my sister will be forced to.”
Now if that wasn't a trope. I still didn't truly know much about Ophelia, but just that glimpse gave me an idea as to the sort of person she was. “So you came here, hoping to get power enough to win?” I asked, slowly trying to sit up once again. I barely managed, but I was sitting at least.
“Not to win. Just enough to survive. I can't gain enough strength to win in two years, and this was the first year I could enter a trial ground. You must be of a certain age to use a focus core, and elves can't until they are 25.”
“When can humans?” I asked, thinking that Alex had only been 14. But it was making sense at least.
“A human can use a focus core at 14. That is when their meridians are fully matured. Each race is a bit different, but if you use a focus core before your meridians are ready, the magic will damage your body instead of strengthening it.”
There was a moment of silence as I absorbed that information as well. I didn't really know what else to say, but at least my coughing had subsided.
“Niles, where are you from?” She stood, walking over and sitting back down beside me. She was small, even now, but I had seen firsthand that she knew what she was doing. She was far stronger than me, even if I was nearly twice her weight and a full foot taller.
“I think I'm from a different world.” There wasn't really a point in hiding it anymore. I willed the PSD off of my wrist, letting it take form as a tablet in my hands. I showed it to her, swiping it through. “I received this device, and it brought me here. Where I am from, there is no magic, no dungeons or focus stones. I don't know how similar this world really is, but we long abandoned weapons like swords and spears for more destructive things. So I think the worlds are quite different.”
She pushed at the screen a few times, but seemed mostly disinterested. “Do you want to go back?” she asked, her crimson eyes staring into mine. There was something more to that question, a hidden meaning I couldn't decipher. I almost answered, but another coughing fit hit me, and I sprayed the ground in front of us with frothy blood.
Oh yeah, I was dying, wasn't I? I looked at the main screen, the one that displayed my condition. Everything was colored various shades of yellow, except for the torso. That was a nasty red. A pair of lungs had appeared inside of the outline of a person, and those were red as well. Even as I watched, the entire figure of a human was tending darker, closer to red, and in some places the lines were starting to dim towards black. I really was going to die here, wasn't I?
I glanced down to the active effects section under the stamina and mana bar.
> Internal Bleeding - Requires intervention to stop
“I don't know. None of this feels real. It's like something in a story or a game. Back where I came from, the most danger I ever faced was crossing the street. Here I was captured less than an hour after arriving, and now I'm in a dungeon with an elf. An elf.” I laughed, then coughed again. The pain was starting to fade, my body going numb. “Elves, goblins, whatever that thing was? Those were stories, fables passed down. They didn't exist. I still think I might just be going insane.”
Obvious as it might seem. I've never died before. I've never even thought that I would die. My worst injury was a broken clavicle from a fall when I was a kid. No bad car wrecks, no encounters with muggers or robbers at a gas station. “Shit Ophelia... I don't want to die.” My voice was turning raspy, bubbling with each word. I laid back, groaning softly.
She leaned over me, looking down into my eyes. “I'm sorry Niles. I really am.” She smiled down at me, and I could feel her hair brushing over my skin as things got just a bit colder. She looked so sad. So very sad. Her crimson eyes leaked out tears, and I could feel them, hot as they hit my skin.
“Why are you crying?” I asked, barely audible even to my own ears. I tried to reach out to her, but my hand fell away. I didn't have the energy to reach her.
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“I thought.... we might become-...” and everything went black.
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I nearly fell as I felt the motion of the bus under my feet. A very manly, dignified sound left my throat as my senses came back to me. Certainly not a tiny squeaking scream, not me! The Paradigm Shift Device was still in my hand. I checked the time and date on my real phone, shaking my head in disbelief. Same day, same time. Not even a minute had passed. Was it all a dream? I put my phone away and re-opened the PSD, reading the new text that had appeared on the screen.
> You have died. Because of this, the trial period of the PSD has ended. You have been returned to your world.
>
>
> You must make a choice.
>
>
> Would you like to use the PSD to return to the other world permanently? Dying again will NOT return you to this world.
>
>
> Yes / No
I put the PSD in my pocket without selecting either choice. “I died?” The whispered words left my mouth as the bus arrived at my stop. I got off, glancing up at the darkening sky. It was spring, so it would be some hours yet before darkness truly took over, but the tall buildings of the city blocked out the direct light, giving everything a gray, dusky feel.
I made it back to my apartment without incident, and set the PSD atop one of those wireless chargers they make for phones. I figured it was worth a shot, considering it seemed to use modern technology. I couldn't tell if it was working though.
> Would you like to use the PSD to return to the other world permanently? Dying again will NOT return you to this world.
>
>
> Yes / No
That was all that would display on the device no matter what I tried, so I set it aside to charge. You know, if the charger was even working. There was no battery indicator, so no real way to tell.
“Food... everything seems better with a full stomach.” I was talking to myself again, not really a great sign. My apartment was small, but well furnished. One bedroom, one bath, a kitchen and a living room. Expensive in the city, but my job paid for it, if not much else. There were leftovers in the fridge from the previous night. I heated them up and sat on the couch, staring at the blank television. I had a few bites of food, but the memories of that other world kept playing in my head.
Especially that last moment. The look on Ophelia's face. Like her last ray of hope had just gone out. That world had been full of tropes of all kinds, it really did feel like a game or an anime. I could even fathom a guess as to why Ophelia had looked like that. Likely, she had faced some kind of ostracization, and had thought that someone from another world might be able to empathize with her. I could understand that. Whatever a demi-vampire was, I doubt it was something that society in general approved of. I couldn't remember a piece of media where the vampires were truly good guys, or even really neutral. They were always the villains.
I pulled out my phone. The real one, not the PSD, and looked through my contacts. I didn't have much family left. A brother who lived in Germany, a few scattered relatives around the states. Mom and Dad had passed away a few years back from illness. They had me late in their life, but my brother early. He had already moved out by the time I was born, so it wasn't totally unexpected. My job was... fine. But I wasn't saving lives or anything. Maybe I should go back?
The food was as tasteless in my mouth as that weird salamander jerky had been. But I finished it, and rinsed off the plate, leaving it in the sink for tomorrow. I didn't have blood on me anymore, but I could still feel like, a phantom sensation that left me craving a shower. In the mirror, I saw a stranger looking back at me. It was my face, but darker. Large circles under my eyes, a slightly haunted expression. No scars, cuts, bruises. There wasn't a thing on me but my memories as a memento of those few hours in that other place. I could chuck the PSD out the window and forget about it, if I wanted to.
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Sleep that night didn't come easily. I tossed and turned, every time I closed my eyes memories of that monster came back. I could remember the feeling of my bones crunching in its arms, hot pain and cold ice as blood went places it was never meant to go. I woke up coughing several times from dreams where I was choking on my own blood. But eventually I fell asleep.
She was in my dreams. Ophelia. Her short, lithe frame danced in and out of the shadows, the faint light of the torches on the wall giving me brief glimpses. Her crimson hair flowed out behind her like a cape as she cut through shadowy figures. But something was behind her. Something big, that hugged the walls and avoided the light. She didn't seem to notice it, and there wasn't a person there to watch her back, nobody to warn her. I tried again and again to call out, but to no avail. My voice made no sound, and she never saw or heard me.
As powerful as she was in my dream, cutting through every adversary without a hint of hesitation or wasted movement, she never once saw the shadow behind her, closing in and ready to strike. I woke up screaming her name, visions of her blood staining the floor in a pool from her lifeless body.
“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.” I paced back and forth, occasionally throwing glances over at the PSD. It was early, not quite 4 AM, and the city was just waking up around me. Just the night before, I had been really considering going back. But those dreams. If I went back, would I just die again? Why did I get the PSD, why was it that place, at that time, with those people that I ended up?
But I couldn't leave that girl to that fate. Call me a pig. Call me a misogynist. But when I see a girl crying over me, I just.... It felt wrong to just let her go to her fate alone. And that dream with her in it, it hadn't seemed like a dream at all. It felt like deja vu, a certainty to it that it would happen, or that it had already happened. I picked up my phone and called a few people, leaving voicemails with my boss, my brother, and my landlord. I wrote a note, and taped it to my fridge. I didn't know what would happen to my body. Or if this was the right choice at all.
> Would you like to use the PSD to return to the other world permanently? Dying again will NOT return you to this world.
>
>
> Yes / No
>
>
> I tapped Yes.