Sam continued to fall. He was stuck in that prison of darkness that coated every inch of his body. It honestly felt like forever since he was back in the apartment, staring at an explosion, he hadn’t even heard from Bard.

At some point he stopped panicking, stopped thinking, and just fell asleep. Only to wake up and flail about then remember where he was. Of course he didn’t actually know where he was. All he knew was that he was on his way to a new world, or that was all a lie and he’s just dead.

He hoped it was the first case.

Another long stretch of time went by. At least it felt like it. You never really had an accurate accounting of time when there was nothing going on, and Sam was stuck in darkness for what seemed a very long time. He didn’t know how long it slept, how long he fell, all he knew was that if there was a hell this was the most boring iteration of it he could imagine.

Sam started to regret agreeing to Bard’s offer after a while.I’m an idiot. Why the fuck did I agree to this? Some whack job breaks into my place, blows it up, and I say yeah sure I’ll do what you say. Normal people didn’t agree to things like that, then again normal people were not like him. A washed out cook with no future.

“Awww come on don’t get so depressing.” Bard’s voice came from… everywhere. Sam tried to look around to find that flamboyant prick but of course saw nothing but darkness. “Don’t worry, you’ll have lots of fun. Oh right you can’t see. Let me fix that.”

The sound of rushing water filled his ears, it reminded him of when he was at a beach and a large wave crashed into him while he wasn’t looking. Inky goops flowed all over him, the squirming gel-like substance made his skin crawl with it. He wanted to vomit it felt uncomfortable and wrong. He always hated squishy textures like overripe tomatoes or jello. Now he was encased in it and felt it move all around him.

Finally, the ink goop flowed off him. Being in darkness for so long made his eyes weak to the sudden sun burst that bombarded his vision. Suddenly instead of pure darkness and a blacked out vision he swam in a field of white. He groaned and rolled over, the feeling reminded him of the pounding headache that came with a hangover.

An obnoxious laugh rang overhead as he writhed on the ground “come on stop playing around, we’ve got work to do.”

“I can’t fucking see!”

“Oh right. So uhhh, how long until you can?”

Sam wanted to punch Bard in his stupid doll face. “I don’t know, you left me in that crap for… how long?”

“About… a lifetime.”

“Can you not be a cryptic asshole and just be straight with me?”

“Not really” another round of laughs came from his bassy voice. “Well, I suppose we need to kill time then.” Sam could hear someone moving around and then settling down beside him. He started to get some feeling back in his fingers and could tell they were on grass.

While he was blind he could feel a breeze run across his cheek. He couldn’t quite recall the last time he was outdoors like this. There was the hike he took in highschool. His class went on a trip into a national park. One of the guides showed them how to look for wild plants that were edible and some that were even tasty. That was… ten years ago. He remembered it like it happened not long ago, damn, he really was getting old then.

Ever since he graduated it felt like his life just flew by, nothing really amazing happening. He went to culinary school, got into massive debt, and worked in shitholes all his adult life. Keeping friendships going became a bit of a chore and he ended up losing contact with a lot of people over the years. His health had never been great but he certainly let himself go, gaining a lot more weight after school and from learning how to cook. Butter and salt did a lot to make anything taste delicious, and put on pounds.

“I really wasted my life didn’t I?”

“Hmm?” Bard hummed over to him and stayed quiet for a while. “Well, your story was going towards a dead end if you kept at it. You were going to get into a fight in a couple weeks and would’ve broken a few bones.”

“Wait, are you serious?” He was going to end up in a fight? But he could fend for himself “how bad?”

Bard snickered a bit “that girl, Chelsie the waitress, her boyfriend was going to find out about her going out with you. After getting piss drunk he was going to take a bat to your hands.”

Shit. I might have thrown in the towel after that. He sighed and threw his head back, taking in a long breath. So his life was going downhill no matter what. “I guess this was the best option… Wait. How do you know all that was going to happen?” He turned his head towards where he heard Bard’s voice coming from.

“That. Is a secret. Oh don’t make such a sour face. Maybe one day I’ll tell you, but that will have to wait. Just know that I saw a story going down a path that would’ve made for a really boring end, and I had to put it back on the right path.” Bard was smiling. He couldn’t see it but he was willing to bet that the smug bastard was grinning from ear to ear at himself over some accomplishment Sam couldn’t even understand. Oh well, one day he would get answers from the man.

“So, what now? I think I can see a bit.” He blinked his eyes over and over, slowly he started to see shapes. Trees, some rocks, to his side he looked over and saw the shape of Bard sitting down, leaning back in a half-sitting half-lying down position with his hands supporting him. Everything was still blurry and hard to make out, but at least he could see he was in the middle of what looked like a field with some trees a bit away.

“Well, there’s a farm just a short walk over the hill. But we should let your vision come back completely before trying to move. I had to fiddle around your brain a lot for this to work.”

Sam turned over and stared at Bard. “You did what to me?” Did this thing just admit to messing with his brain?

“Well, if I didn’t you’d have to learn the language of the land here, and English doesn’t actually exist here.” Bard said in perfect English. Everything coming out of his mouth made less and less sense.

“Then how are we talking?”

“Fletvana bohr tumangar, iratner?” Bard spoke in that deep voice, in a language unlike anything Sam heard before. He could only stare blankly at the man. After a moment he coughed twice and cleared his throat. “That’s why I had to rework your brain. But I’m only making you understand the local language.” That implied there was more than one spoken language in this world. At least it seemed realistic. Now he guessed the reason his head was hurting was whatever that man did to his mind, hopefully it didn’t make him sick.

“So, I’m in another world. What’s it called?” He might as well learn as much as possible from Bard.

The man beside him stayed quiet for a while. He could hear him shift around, when he looked over Bard had readjusted himself to sit cross legged and facing Sam. “Once upon a time there were two ladies, twins…”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Sam spat out as the other man started with a very cliche opening. Was he telling a story? Why?

“Hush, just listen.” Bard cleared his throat and began again. “Once upon a time there were two ladies, twins. The elder was a timid thing, always looking over her shoulder, wondering if something was waiting to strike at her. She stayed indoors at all times, and when she did leave the comfortable familiarity of her home she spent every waking moment crushed by anxiety and doubt.” At that moment Bard took out what looked like a flask and drank from it. With a long sigh he continued his story.

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“One day, the elder sister was walking through the world, desperately seeking some way to find courage and happiness. She met someone that took her in. It was difficult at first, loving another being. Especially for one so awkward like her. But the Elder sister continued to work hard at learning to live with others.”

“What about the younger sister?” Sam realized that Bard hadn’t gone into detail about the other sister yet.

“I’m getting there. Ahem. Now then, unlike her sister, the younger was a sprite on the wind. She flitted from place to place, seeing magnificent sights and meeting new people everyday. She was the picture of a social butterfly. So much so that it made her uncomfortable to stay in one place for too long. Like her sister she also left home to find a place to belong, but whereas the Elder was afraid of rejection, the Younger was afraid of boredom and compliance.”

“Like her sister, the younger found companions, friends, and love while she journeyed across the world. She spent endless years finding new places, eating new things, meeting new people. Over the years she became known as Passion.”

“Her sister, however, stayed in her home. Rarely did she ever step from that new place with a selfish partner. The Elder grew to resent her decision to go out into the world, giving in to her fears seemed much more reasonable for her. Years of regret and shame, hate and sorrow, envy and so much more built in her and she let it all spill out of her. Her own fear turned into power and from then on she was known as Fear.”

Sam watched as he told the story, drinking every once in a while. “Passion and Fear? Weird names.”

“I said that once as well.” Bard chuckled and looked up at the sky. “The younger sister found out one day that her timid and shy sister had become something she no longer recognized. She was a creature of malice and darkness, spreading her influence over the world and forcing innocents to twist and deform into servants. Mighty beasts roamed the land and slaughtered the gentle people that Passion had traveled and worked with.”

“The sister, Passion, could not ignore the destruction and despair wrought by her sister and sought to put an end to it. They met over the waters of the Alimsra sea. Passion pleaded for her sister to stop, Fear declared war eternal upon Passion and all those that sided with her. The world shook and was brought to the brink of obliteration because of the power of the twins colliding. Passion combated her sister with joy, love, and all that is good in humanity. Their battles broke the world, broke reality itself until it was a shambling assortment of patches of safety.”

Sam shook his head. It was ridiculous, what the hell did he mean by reality breaking and there only being patches of it? “This sounds stupid. What’s the point of this story, Bard?”

Bard took another drink, then reached over and tapped him on the head with the metal bottom of the flask. “Patience. I’m getting to it, good stories shouldn’t be rushed. Now. With Passion seeing how terrible life had become for the people and animals of her home she entered battle with her sister one last time. She threw everything she had against the unrelenting miasma of fear and darkness that her sister unleashed.” Sam blinked, he could see it all. The sky twisted, stars realigned into shapes. A canvas of Indigo, bright violet, scarlet, amber, gold, and every color imaginable swirled above him. He saw a figure of a golden woman in a dress made of sunbursts and the light of dawn colliding against another woman made of onyx wearing a cloak of shadow and stars. The two slammed into one another, pushing back and forth in a struggle.

“The sisters put everything they had into the battle. The sky tore open, the ground shook itself into sand, the oceans boiled away into nothing and cooked the forests with their steam.” Sam saw it all unfold on the changing canvas above him. The sky seemed to fit with Bard’s story, to morph itself to match his words.

“Then, everything stopped.” Bard snapped his fingers and the canvas in the sky dispersed. Clouds of various colors formed and floated against the blank background. “Passion filled the void. She defeated Fear and used her power to stitch the world back together. Though, there were complications.” The sky filled with an assortment of small shapes that flew together and formed into a new world. “She used her passion for life to bring forth a new type of world, one where passion and effort become reality. It was named ‘Noutir’.”

As Bard spoke the broken lights in the sky coalesced and formed into a circle, with two lights, one a bright yellow the other a white light, rotating around the new world. Sam watched as the world grew on the image. Mountains sprang up, lands formed out of the seas, forests bloomed, and life began on that once dead land.

Soon the light show ended, the images in the sky faded away to reveal a brilliant shining night sky. Sam stared up at the thousands of small lights in the sky, looking at the moon - a bit larger than the one he was used to - hanging in the sky and slowly crossing the field of stars. Swaths of deep violet, red, and even a spot of orange painted the backdrop. It looked like images of Nebulas he saw in planetariums as a child. He had only seen the sky, but he knew that this new world, Noutir, was beautiful.

“So, this is Noutir… It’s kind of… cool.” Sam said. He had never been one to get emotional or deep when thinking of art. But this experience did make his chest feel a bit tight.

Bard was chuckling softly to himself and bellowed out in his bassy voice. “It is pretty cool. Well, it seems your sight has returned.” The man stood and took Sam by the wrist, pulling him up. Sam stumbled a bit as he stood, his legs felt as though he just woke from a long sleep.

The surrounding area turned out to be more of a valley than a flat forest. Off in the distance Sam could see they were between a few mountains with patches of dense trees with open spaces between them. The field they stood in had tall flowers and grass sticking up all around them. He noticed for the first time that the area smelled wonderful, full of herbs and fragrant flowers with purple and yellow petals.

Then he looked down. The long sleeved t-shirt he was wearing had been replaced with a loose tunic cut down to the collar bone and hanging around his shoulders. His jeans were now baggy pants that were tied with string around his ankles and a long sash tied around his waist. He had no shoes or footwear. Then he noticed something else.

“You couldn’t make me skinny?” He groaned as he tapped the familiar gut. If he was going to go on an adventure in some new world straight out of a fantasy he’d have liked to be in a new body.

“Nope. That would have meant killing a newborn and shoving you in that body. Too much work and it’d mean you have to live as a baby.” The prospect of having to go through puberty again did sound horrifying. What would that even be like in this world?

“That… does sound really shitty.” Sam sighed and relented. At least he was able to enjoy life. “So, what now?”

“Follow me.” Bard let go of him and started strolling through the field of flowers and deeper into the valley. Sam stepped gingerly, his legs tingled with that shocking feeling of blood rushing back into a limb that was asleep. Every step felt like it was on glass and nails, he tried stretching his legs out with every step but it barely did anything to alleviate the pain.

“Fuuuck.” He wanted to lay back down but despite his protests Bard continued to walk along, swinging his legs back and forth joyfully, skirt swaying with every exaggerated step. Sam forced himself to keep up with the man.

They walked for what he could only guess was an hour, maybe a bit longer, and finally they climbed up a hill. In the distance Sam could see a collection of four buildings, one of them had light coming from a window that had no glass but rather a slotted wooden panel.

“Is that a farm?” Sam huffed out his question as he stopped on top of the hill, hunching over and pushing his palms to his knees to keep himself up. Bard said it was a short walk, his idea of a short walk made him want to puke. Every breath felt like needles in his lungs. Shit, I don’t have any smokes. How long would he make it without a cigarette in this world? After their walk the first thing he wanted was something to smoke.

“That’s right. There’s an old man and his wife living there. He stays up late drinking to relax after a day of labor.” Bard smiled and hummed to himself. “Ah, before I forget. You shouldn’t tell anyone about being from another world, might cause some problems.”

“I figured… I’d rather not explain stuff like that.”

“So, you’ll need a life to make people believe you’re from here.”

“Great… So who am I?” Sam wanted to punch Bard again. Everything about this was getting more and more complicated.

“You’re Sahmat, son of Sardur and Kritra. You were born and raised in Lawashar.” The man smiled and nodded to him. “That should be easy enough for you to remember right?”

Sahmat. His name was Sahmat, from Lawashar. Wait… “My name… is Sam?”

“Sahm. I thought it’d be easy this way.”

“I… I guess.” With a sigh he looked over at the farm in the distance then back to Bard. “So how do I… do this? Wait, what about my home? Shouldn’t I know about it?” It wouldn’t be good if he said he was from some place and knew shit about it.

“Oh don’t worry, Lawashar was just recently raided and burned to the ground.”

“Shit. How long ago?”

“About two hours. You ran over the mountains and through the valley to the nearest village and ended up here with a pretty bad wound looking for help.” Bard smiled and turned to Sam.

“What wound? I’m not hur-” his voice was caught in his throat. A sharp pain shot through his core and when he looked down to his stomach he saw a knife, about half of it was plunged into his flesh. Holding the knife was Bard’s hand.

“Welcome to Noutir. Good luck now Sahm. Be sure to have some fun.” He let go of the knife. Sam tried to reach for the bastard’s throat but he disappeared and Sam found himself tumbling down the hill. He screamed out in pain.