The next day Abrar descended from his leafy haven and giving the snake occupied creek a wide berth, made his way into the forest attempting to find food to appease his painfully clenched stomach. Luckily the forest appeared to be full of fruits and berries and Abrar collected many types before bringing them back to his tree. Spreading his once white overall on the forest floor, he attempted to identify which of his foraged goods could be eaten. Having studied biology, he knew many fruits and berries were poisonous but he wasn’t exactly an expert as to what types not did he have any guarantees this strange place would have the same types of plants as earth. But having studied biology he knew fruits that generally contained hard inedible seeds were meant to be eaten so the seeds would be passed out in the feces. Using the scalpel he conducted a most messy dissection of the fruits and berries and discovered two types in eight that could tentatively pass the requirements. He took a bite off one of the fruits and waited to see if he would kick the bucket or not. An intense pain surged through his body as heat spread from his stomach. It was like he had drank lava instead of a fruit!
Abrar fell to the ground, writhing in pain as his body continued to heat up. Had he escaped death from the cat and the manticore only to die a slow death to the fruit? However just as fast, the pain disappeared leaving his body a bit warm but strangely relaxed. To put it in milder terms, it was like someone had given him an intense massage which did cause pain at beginning but left him utterly satisfied and relaxed. It was a most strange experience, something he couldn’t begin to express in words. Abrar struggled to his feet remaking at how light his body felt. It was like all injuries acquired the day before had vanished. A closer inspection of the numerous scratches on his body courtesy of the cat and the escape from the manticore, revealed that the shallower ones had vanished while the deeper ones remained.
Abrar looked at the half eaten apple like fruit in his fist and pondered, ‘Is this fruit responsible for this?’ After a moment of hesitation Abrar decided to risk a second bite for ‘scientific purposes’. The second bite did not hurt half as much as the first but the effects of the second bite was also decidedly less. It would appear his body would develop tolerance to this strange mutant fruits that had such a miraculous healing effect. Seeing the effects of that type of fruit decreasing with each consumption, Abrar filled his stomach with them, chasing away the hunger pangs. He had secured a food source at least.
After eating his fill, Abrar thought back to the unexplained events that had taken place since yesterday; the stone on his forehead, the hourly tremors, the sun crystal, the mutated creatures, the grey blob the cat had spat at him and finally the fruits. He could feel something tying all these incidents together but he could not understand exactly what. Abrar wasn’t the smartest of people, he was just an average guy in a mediocre university in a country that wasn’t the most developed of places. He was no great professor who could instantly cook up a theory but it still nagged at him, he was missing something obvious and right under his nose.
Abrar looked at the creek where he could see some deer like creatures drinking water on the other side of the bank. Suddenly the snake’s head shot put from underwater, lunging at a buck that had delved a bit too deep into the liar of the serpent. However contrary to what Abrar thought, the deer miraculously did not perish in the iron jaws of the snake. The white oval stone in the middle of its forehead glowed as the whole deer somehow sped away from certain doom so fast that it left an after-shadow. The snake did not give up as the red stone on its forehead glowed and the whole creek rose and flooded the banks, battering at the herd of deer.
Abrar’s jaw dropped at this magical feat, how did the deer manage to escape and how did the snake cause the creek to flow towards the deer? He looked back at the deathmatch and saw the snake biting down on the deer, thoroughly poisoning it before swallowing it in one piece. Abrar suddenly understood he was not safe where he was. The snake possessed the power to move the creek and seeing the size of the beast, he would not be safe on the treetop. It was time to move out and hopefully find civilization before he died a snack to some beast or infected by some woodland spores.
Abrar packed up his meagre berry collection in the pockets of his doctor overall and moved away from the creek. He moved carefully keeping an eye and ear out for any unwanted surprises, remembering Nadia who was ambushed by the pint sized cat.
Abrar continued to move till he accidently came across something that made his blood curl. In a small clearing, a human corpse was being scavenged by a number of small crow like birds, each possessing a small white stone on their brow. Abrar waved his arms scaring away the cowardly crows who reluctantly flew up and circled over his head cawing in anger.
Abrar looked at the corpse and noted that this person too wasn’t part of the MRI group. Flipping him over Abrar noticed a badge proclaiming, ‘Doctor Awan, General Practitioner’. Around his neck a stethoscope hung which Abrar self-righteously pocketed. Inspection of the doctor’s pocket revealed nothing that could help Abrar which made him disappointed. However the dead doctor’s presence was a surprise to him. Why were people not in the MRI room getting transported? Did the wormhole expand to cover the whole of the hospital? Was it going to stop at that or was it going to engulf all of Earth?
Abrar shook his head to keep himself from wondering about stuff that did not concern him immediately, he was too busy trying to survive himself to bother with the rest of world.
Abrar took out his trusty scalpel and pried off the late doctor Awan’s forehead stone off. Seeing the fight earlier, he had come to some faint conclusions about the stone but they still needed some verification. Tucking in the newly acquired stone along with the others, Abrar rose clutching his new weapon, the pickpocketed stethoscope now nicknamed the Whip of Doom. The small metal piece at the end could cause a fair bit of damage if swung hard enough.
Abrar made his way through the forest until he spotted a small cliff where the dense forest began to clear. Carefully making his way through the forest he reached a place where he saw a strange sight, next to a small pond, a naked old man squat drawing in the dirt.
Abrar was overjoyed to finally see someone alive, ignoring the nudity of the elderly hermit he rushed forwards.
“Hate the skies for being too low,” the old man kept muttering over and over in a deep glutteral voice, not even looking up at his visitor. Something told Abrar the old man was not speaking in the same language but strangely he could understand the meaning. Abrar ignored his feeling and squat next to the old man, “Good Morning Senior,”
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The old man ignored Abrar and kept mumbling his mantra over and over. Abrar noted a golden stone between the eyes of the crazy old hermit, the first time he had seen such a vibrant color. Abrar put his hand on the old man’s shoulder and shook him slightly. The old man whirled around and grabbed Abrar by his arms and bellowed at him, “HATE THE SKIES FOR BEING TOO LOW!”
Abrar was startled at the hermit’s actions, it was clear this old man had a screw loose in there. However the hermit’s words struck a chord, he had read these words before. “Kun-Peng spreads his wings and hates the skies for being too low?” He murmured. The old man recoiled as if stung and screamed again at Abrar, “HATE THE SKY FOR BEING TOO LOW!”
Suddenly the old man trembled once as huge wings burst out of his naked back, lifting him and Abrar who was held very tightly by the arms. Abrar barely had time to blink before they were soaring so high in the sky he could see everything below. He could see where the forest ended, he could see tall mountain ranges in the distance, he could see huge cities sprawling over the land and he could see a vast ocean covering the horizon in the east. However the old man did not appear to have any intentions of coming down or stopping, he continued to fly straight up as if wishing to escape the atmosphere and enter the space.
However Abrar saw something completely shocking; above his head was not the empty vacuum of space but a ceiling. The old man screaming his token dialogue smashed into the ceiling which was strangely rather flexible and shock absorbing like a wet sponge. The aerial hermit rebounded off, still holding his kidnapped visitor and dropped towards the ground.
Abrar screamed as the ground continued to close up but the old man, at very last minute, opened his wings again and soared back upwards but not before throwing Abrar into the little pond where he abducted him from. He rose once more to challenge the limits of skies, turning into a huge eagle like bird this time.
Abrar crawled out of the pond, bedraggled and traumatized by the experience he just been through; he had never even been on an airplane before and now he had been taken on a joyride by a crazy old bird man, not to mention colliding into the ceiling of the world. He had been convinced they would be smashed into pancakes seeing how fast they were going but thankfully the spongy limits of the world had just cushioned the impact, bouncing them off like a trampoline.
Wringing his clothes dry and taking a tally of his possessions, he discovered other than the fruits which got crushed, his belongings were still on him which was a relief as he would have cried tears of blood upon losing his scalpel or whip of doom.
Abrar noticed a cave on the face of the cliff and realized that it must be the abode of the bird hermit. Still holding a grudge against the old man, he decided to empty the whole cave of any valuables. However upon entering the cave he discovered that he had rated the hermit too highly; other than a mound of leaves in shape of a nest like bed in a corner, the cave was empty. Hoping to find something hidden in the nest, he pulled it apart but did not find anything but a couple of feathers which likely came from the old coot himself.
Abrar examined one of the feathers but it seemed indistinguishable from any eagle feather he had seen before. He however got a nasty surprise when he ran his finger along the edge of the feather idly; a fine cut appeared on his finger despite the light brush; the old bird’s feathers were sharp as knives!
Abrar held the two feathers in his hand and wondered how he could use the two extremely light but sharp feathers. He suddenly had a brain wave and using a few strings made from strips of cloth, managed to secure the two feathers to the stethoscope whip. The metal bell would supply the appropriate weight to swing the makeshift whip while the two feathers would provide a cutting edge; he finally had a weapon to fight against any beast that attempted to prey on him so long as they weren’t like the manticore or the snake.
Finally free from worries, Abrar decided to work on the riddle of the forehead stones. He had formed a number of conclusions from what he had seen so far; he knew that every complex creature here possessed a stone, he knew the stone allowed for strange magic like abilities and he even knew the color of the stone determined the strength of the creature. From what he had seen the gold color of the Roc hermit was the strongest seen so far, followed by the red of the snake, followed by the brown of the manticore while white was the weakest and most common.
Despite having understood the secret of the stones to some extent, he was none the wiser as to how the information could possibly be used, how one could cast magic. Abrar fantasized himself standing at the top a mountain, raining fiery death on his opponents bellow. Having had no contact with magic his whole life, the thought of mastering magic was too enticing for him to ignore.
Sitting cross-legged, Abrar pondered on how exactly could he master the magic within the stone. He tried a number of fantasy novel tactics such as chants, commands but no success. However his trial and error method struck gold when he tried to visualize the effect he wanted to get done, inspired by the Force. A weak flame burst in his open hands but died almost immediately. Abrar was extremely motivated by his brief success and resumed his training of the fireball of destruction.
After a few hours announced by the ground shaking tremors, Abrar had only managed to keep his weak flame alive on his palm. It was clear he did not have much talent for fire magic as he had never had any direct contact with it. Yes, he had seen fire all his life and knew the physics behind it vaguely but he had never held much interest in it and never had thought of it before.
Giving up on flames, he spent the next few hours attempting to try other types of magic he could imagine. Sadly the results were rather unremarkable; a tiny ice cube, a wet hand and a few electrical sparks that had managed to shock his wet hands. But Abrar was not demoralized! Whatever meagre successes he had ever still better than what he had prior to this experiment, if only he could find his ‘niche’ maybe he might become a bona-fide mage!
Abrar spent the next couple of days attempting to gain a deeper understanding of the mysterious force of magic. He only exited the cave a couple of times to forage for fruits, to drink water and attend the calls of nature. No predators appeared to enter the area around the cave probably due to fear of the gold stoned Roc or rather Kun-Peng who had been masquerading as a human hermit.
In these few days Abrar had managed to find a type of magic that he control comparatively way better than the others like fire and water. This was the mysterious magic of space! In the portal Abrar had felt the intimate touch of space. He had passed through the dangerous vortex filled with rips in the fabric of space, he had felt a few tears on his body. On a whim he had attempted to reconstruct a spacial tear despite having minimal knowledge of its workings and only relying on his memories of the experience. The tear he had formed appeared to be a crude black line unlike the invisible tears he had experienced but it certainly seemed sharp enough; throwing a berry at it had resulted in the berry getting shredded to pieces. However this magic appeared to have a massive drawback; the spacial tears were stationary and could not be thrown at targets, also the tears lasted for at most five minutes unless he dispelled them himself earlier.
Abrar’s studies of the stones had led him to understand that the stone appeared to be absorbers of magic present in the environment. The amount of magic the stone could absorb was limited by the color of the stone. However how much of the magic could be used depended on the host body; using magic tired the body and too much fatigue would make you faint so you were limited by your body as to how many spells you could throw or how much power in each spell.
Having gained some confidence in his newly acquired skills, Abrar decided to move towards civilization he had spotted when carried into the air by the hermit.