Hauling the surprisingly light corpse behind himself, Thomel left the forest behind and re-entered the meadow.

Looking up he noticed that a few clouds had appeared in the vibrant-blue sky. Rather than subtract from the natural beauty, they instead added to it, making the sight even more wondrous.

Thomel had never been overly fond of nature since he grew up surrounded by it and its cruelty.

But right now he couldn't be more content. All the worries he had about what he should do were gone, for a few minutes he could just pretend that everything was okay.

Following the sound of running water, he brushed past, and through, the tall grass, leaving a trail of downtrodden plants in his wake.

Feeling a bit bad he looked back behind himself to see how bad the damage was but his worries were alleviated by how the grass was already regaining its posture and standing upright once more.

With this knowledge he began to take even longer and firmer strides, pulling the corpse roughly behind himself as he practically jogged towards what he only assumed could be a river.

Striding out of the dense grass, he almost fell into the fast-paced body of water, as his left foot met nothing but air.

Hastily, he drew back and sat down, at what he could now confirm to be a river.

The water was transparent and the light cast by the sun easily penetrated its surface, allowing Thomel to gaze at the multicoloured stones that the riverbed had collected.

Green, blue, red, and everything in between gleamed in the soft light the sun had so warmly gifted. It reminded him of the brotherhood but he cast that thought of his mind as soon as it rose up.

Most of the rocks were the size of his fist but a couple were the size of his head.

He was debating pulling a few out and making a seat for himself when he spotted movement on the opposite bank.

Leaping to his feet, he hesitantly shouldered his gun, prepared to flee if what emerged was beyond his capabilities.

What emerged from the towering grass made his eyes go wide.

It was a bunny of all things.

A neon-pink bunny with tiny, little, red eyes. It wouldn't look out of place as a digital avatar.

How was something this small and brightly coloured able to stay alive for so long?

Maybe it was poisonous?

That would explain why it was so brightly coloured and seemed to have no fear of Thonel despite him being nearby and standing in plain view.

Hopping lightly forward, the rabbit leaned down and drank deeply from the rapid river.

Its tongue was coal-black and seemed extraordinarily long for a rabbit. It was probably as long as his whole forearm and as thick as his thumb.

Once it had its fill, the bunny looked up at him, gazing at him deeply with those vivid, red eyes.

Then something snapped, a deafening crack rang out, as the bunny's bones splintered and the rabbit contorted backwards, like a meaty pretzel.

Thomel looked behind it in shock, expecting to see some splash of blood from the dead bunny illuminate an invisible foe.

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When the blood simply sprayed onto the grass and spilled into the water he realised there was nothing behind it and panicked.

The only explanation that he could come to was that magic had been used to cruelly crush the poor bunny and compress it.

Of all the things these new worlds had to offer, only magic had posed a serious threat so far.

Guns were the great equaliser of physical force, not magical force.

He wasn't at all prepared to be going up against a magical being, not now and likely not ever.

Eyes darting everywhere, he nevertheless shouldered his rifle and prepared to fire at the slightest hint of movement.

But nothing happened, the tall grass just kept on being battered gently by the soft breeze likenothing was amiss. The rabbit's corpse was the only thing that was moving abnormally, he could see it turning into sludge as the skin meltedand withered out of the corner of his eye.

Then his boon activated and system-given power flooded his limbs. Everything became so much easier, he instantly spotted dozens of hazel beetles clinging to and devouring the blades of grass.

He could smell the individual scents of different plants and even his thoughts seemed faster but above all else, he could feel his veins and arteries swell as his blood pressure shot up.

He was afraid, deeply and truly afraid.

And at last, he knew what the threat was.

The bunny rose up, its leg splitting apart as what looked like the feelers of a centipede emerged from them, its ears became gnarled and shortened.

The black tongue shot out and unravelled into a hideous human finger, as its eyes shed tears of perverted joy.

Impossibly, its small frame was morphing into a bloated carcass of malice and sadistic glee.

Spikes formed from the ridges of its broken spinal column popped out along its back, the tips were a horrifying unblemished white, marred only by the scarlet lines that trailed down them and into the beast.

These spikes in turn exploded into a hideous and fast-growing mass of bone and cartilage, corrupted hands reached out towards him and then fell apart into a mummified dark brown mass, while new ones grew from their remains.

The human finger that had once been its tongue sprouted eyes all along it, each one staring unblinkingly at him with red pupils.

An endless tide of steaming, red blood spurted out of the creature during its eldrtich transformation, the very ground it touched becoming ashy and grey, devoid of all colour and sapped of something Thomel couldn’t even begin to understand.

It wasn’t just the ground this thing drained either, the abomination seemed to be turning everything around itself black and white.

It was almost a comfort to Thomel because he could pretend that he was watching some archaic cartoon.

The teeth it had fell out and littered the ground in droves, almost like seeds, they morphed into bony replications of weeds.

He forced himself to look away from its mouth once the teeth began to pop out like popcorn and create a pile of false fauna.

The worst part about all of this wasn’t the transformation though, it was the buzzing within his mind.

This horrifying thing was peering into his thoughts, peeling him apart mentally like how one might peel an onion.

It was why he was still standing here and not already gone but he refused to think that, he was trying desperately to cover up that tidbit of information with the more primal urge to escape.

Humouring him, the former bunny let him go, whispering into his mind. “Run.”

Snapping his gaze away from the eldritch entity he turned and sprinted as hard as he could, pushing through the tall grass with all the grace of a bull.

It felt like he was flying, he was able to easily cover half a dozen yards in a single stride. In just a few seconds he was a tenth of a mile away from the fiend.

But he knew that no matter how fast he could run, whatever that monstrosity was, it could run faster. That’s why the boon had activated after all, he was the hunted not the hunter now.

Praying that he was far enough away from it that it couldn’t detect his thoughts anymore nor freeze him psionically, he took out the disc and hurriedly activated it.

He only just managed to do it as icy cold fingers intruded upon his mind and simply cut his brain off from the rest of his body.

Slamming into the ground he could see a sudden shape appear behind him in his peripheral vision. It had arrived.

It reached out to embrace him but just before it could the disc activated within his clenched fist and he was gone.