Chapter Eleven

With a couple of weeks of food now partially secure, I was much more willing to make my own charge out past the remains of Terra Firma. Venturing out past the line onto the surprisingly earth-like grass, although considering I wasn't laying wasting on the ground lungs on fire from a burning atmosphere I guess not really that unusual. If the grass is going to be able to produce air for me to breathe then it makes sense it is something I can recognize. Having made my way further up what was once, flat coastal grass with the occasional lonely scrub oak, that had made the journey with me. I stared at the line between my alien earth and the native grass. It was remarkable, the knife-like cut rang truer in my mind than the space laser I had jokingly thought before. As I knelt down to look closer, I again corrected myself. Perhaps scalpel cut was the best term, the tops of both the old Terran and new native grass, that should have been waving over the line, were sliced uniformly instead of leaning over the boundary to the otherside.

With no welcoming party here for me, it was looking more and more like a rare natural phenomenon had dragged me to this new world. Instead of an entity trying to either kidnap me specifically or just grab some random human for probing. Looking down from my now greater vantage point, to where my pile of scrap still lay. I saw that where I had been standing when upon arrival, was not in fact the center of the globe that had transported me here. If I had to guess I would say I was much more likely to be in the outer third of it, further confirming for now, in my mind that I wasn't targeted. And, if that wasn't the case then I could only be glad I hadn't been a little further out and standing on edge when the walls came down. Before my brain could send me spiraling down that thought sequence of whether or not I would have been pulled in, left behind, or cut in half. I quickly strangled those thoughts in their crib, not willing to waste the time on more pointless thoughts before I found a good place to make my camp. I had passed a couple of spots so far on this new hillside but I wanted to look at what was on the other side of the hill crest before I made my decision.

Berating myself to stop stalling, I slowly waved my hand over the line cut between the grasses. With nothing happening to my fingers I slowly stretched a foot over and stepped my first step onto this alien ground. Pressing down more firmly with my foot, I tried to use my new senses to examine the air around me, superstitiously trying to see if I could sense alien bacteria seeping its way into my skin through my boots and socks. I again failed to enter the mindset that let me go smaller into my body. Shaking my head at my own stupidity I sighed, either I was going to die or I wasn't, I couldn't keep worrying about all of this ridiculousness that was out of my control. Taking another breath for Serenity, I grimmly warned the hamster to stay off his wheel unless something I could actually affect came up. With him firmly put into his place I took my final step to fully place myself onto the other side. With another, much quicker pause, to once again see if anything would happen. I took a deep breath, although knowing I had been breathing alien air from the time the walls came up, it seemed more real in my mind now, knowing that I was now doing what few humans throughout history could ever truly say they had done. I had stepped foot where, while perhaps not where any sentient being, but most assuredly where no Terran human (I covered my basis carefully) had ever stepped foot before. Seeing as how I had made sure to go a slightly different way up the hill than that bear, I could probably add Terran mammal to that list. While knowing the speed at which ants and beetles can move, I unfortunately thought I couldn't lay claim to being the first Terran entity that had made it this far yet.

Taking a couple of more steps with my sled coming along behind me I strode out onto the alien grass, before once more pausing to give whatever supernatural forces that might have been blocked by Earth's last lingering will, a chance to sense me and teleport me to them. Or failing that, for them to come to me now that I and everything connected to me was firmly in their realm… Despite the flag I had thrown up it seems like the Gods of this new realm either hadn't noticed the ball of Chaos and Order that had invaded their kingdom and left me behind. Or, they just couldn't bring themselves to care. With that in mind, a stray thought that had apparently been itching to get out, made its way from the dreams I had forced the hamster into, and into my brain. Kicking myself for not doing it before now, I said in a firm voice without shouting as I had still no idea what was on the other side of the crest about two hundred yards away.

“System.” With no notifications going off in my head I tried a few more.

“Menu.”

“Inventory.”

“Character Sheet…”

Throwing out several more gaming terms with no response I gave a small sigh. Well it seemed like there was no fantasy rpg system in my future, with easy power ups on the horizon. With my precautions taken, knowing I was still throwing up flags for the universe, I said to myself. “Well at least I can be pretty sure I'm not going to be teleported away from my stuff.” Shrugging my way out of my makeshift harness and pack, I waited for the universe's response, again I found myself ignored. Really this was getting quite annoying, I had food and supplies, so at the very least the universe could stop keeping me in suspense, and let the other shoe drop. Once again, the universe wasn't courteous enough to take the bait, and with no other good excuses left in my mind, I sent a quick prayer out for courage and picked up my fishing spear and made my way softly up to the crest, leaving my supplies behind so I could focus on moving quietly until I was more sure what was around. Getting most of the way to the top and with a few body lengths left to go, I lowered myself to the ground and crawled the rest of the way to the top to peak over without silhouetting myself to whatever might be on the other side.

As I peaked over, I realized it wasn't quite a ridge line, instead it was fairly flat for a couple hundred yards before it dropped away into some sparse treetops. With my rangefinder smoldering with the rest of my battery powered equipment I could only make a rough guess, but with the ridgeline being so wide and not seeing anything on top to give me pause. I quickly turned in a circle scanning everything, and still not seeing anything large animal life to give me pause, I decided to continue on without my stuff. Planning on just a quick look into the next valley to see if there was an easier water source to get to. If so, I would make camp there rather than trying to make my way down the cliff to the creek that the abortive Terran pacific invasion had nearly wiped out. Walking at a steady pace with my head scanning from side to side slowly, looking for any movement, I counted off the paces in my head out of habit, so I wouldn’t lose my gear accidentally. At a hundred paces and about a third of the way across. I paused and crouched down for a few minutes to listen. While I was waiting for any animal life that might have been scared into silence by me to go back to being active. I looked across the remainder of the flat ridge to the mountain top pointing its snow-covered crest at the sky. I realized that I was most likely a lot farther away from it than I had initially thought. Now I was thinking it was more likely that I would have a couple smaller foothills heading down into a long valley with that monstrosity on the other side instead of more foothills just leading straight up to it.

The biggest reason I had for thinking that was the ridgeline in front of me, it was cutting off the part of the mountain covered in snow. If all I could see was the snow peak from here. There was no way that mountain was anywhere within a hundred miles of where I crouched now. Looking out at the immensity of it sticking up into the sky, I started figuring that in addition to upping the distance to it in my head. I was also going to have to start upping the height. Initially I was thinking it was going to be around Seven to Eight thousand feet, something comparable to looking at the Sierra peaks from the Sacramento basin. But, I started revising my thoughts to thinking it was much more like looking at Mount Fuji or Mount Kilimanjaro (both of which were on my bucket list to climb), so if the height was similar to something like that, then that percentage of was more reasonable than if the peak was closer.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As I was trying to pretend that I could accurately do the calculations to guess the height of the mountain in my mind that was weeks of travel away at best, like it would make some kind of difference. I heard a massive roar ring out from across the ridgeline.

Taking a guess, I assumed the bear that was with me had run into trouble with something local. Picking my spear up from where I laid it to rest on the ground, I started jogging softly, over to the opposing edge, anxious to get a first glance at the native life forms while their attention was on something other than me. Moving in as quietly as I could, I paused about half a football field away from what looked to be the ridgeline and started walking, for several reasons. First, I didn't want to make any noise or draw attention to myself before I knew what was going on. Second, I didn't want to actually be going so fast that I accidently found myself going over the ridge announcing myself with a roll into the middle of the two fighting groups. Lastly, I wanted to catch my breath so I was in the best shape possible if I needed to get the hell out of dodge, although I wasn't to worried as the bear's roar seemed angry not scared, so unless it was a dragon toying with it I shouldn't be in to much trouble, I thought to myself that I really needed to stop sending flags out so recklessly.

Slowly walking forward, I began taking slow, deep breaths rather than panting to try to get myself back down to a resting heart rate. I crouched lower as I neared the edge, setting my spear down before getting onto the ground myself. I began inching forward slowly, so that I might leave as small of a silhouette as possible when I reached the edge and also taking care to not make any sudden moves that might give me away as I crested.

Looking over the ridge, I saw that I was massively underestimating how far away and therefore how large the mountain ahead was. The foothills after the ridge I was on looked to descend for at least another ten or fifteen miles. But they did so in a slow rolling way, that didn't look too awful for getting down. The only major source of worry for me being that the nearest large water source looked to be about a fifty miles to my right, as I looked down into the valley and saw a large river, that no doubt came from the mountain cutting its way across the flatlands and through the foothills on to the right, as it made its way to the presumably down to an ocean of this world. With only three quarts of pure water left in my pack I wasn't looking forward to the trek that was going to be to get to it. Especially if I was going to take the time to cook the fish, but securing my foodsource was also important and I had a couple of ways to get small amounts of water until I could get to the only running source I could see at the moment. While I had a water filter in my pack, if I didn't come across any other moving water sources I would have to take the time to try and either dig for water, or use some of the clear plastic I had in my survival pouch to make a quick and dirty transpiration bag or evaporation catch. Both of which would also slow me down and increase the amount of food I needed.

While at first glance I knew this was going to be annoying, but with the view out in front of me I couldn't bring myself to care about it at the moment. As I stared out over the magnificent vista, that humbled my previous first place memory that was the amazing view of Yosemite valley. I was instead stuck by how much this was like looking out over the pacific. Except here instead of an endless blue stretching out until I saw the sky, I was looking down at an endless sea of green in all shades. From the lighter grasslands to the darker hues that made up the forest-like islands that dotted a valley that was so immense that I couldn't see across to even the beginning. Looking out at what I would only forevermore refer to as Mount Tai in my mind. Not even the pictures I had seen of Kilimanjaro, could even carry a candle to the immensity of the mountain that was sticking up in what was clearly at least a thousand miles in the distance. With the wooded areas in between the only river I could see and myself, I could at least be assured of finding some small bits of water and the amount of fish I had. If my food hopefully lasted the week or maybe ten days it would take me to get there. If not, I would have to make the choice of breaking into my sealed emergency food packs, or go hungry and hold them for a more desperate time.

Another roar rang out from my left, and I shook myself away from my future plans on crossing the magnificent vista in front of me. Looking down to see what could be upsetting a black bear this much because while they weren't their cousins the grizzlys, they were still apex predator's. This last roar seemed to have an element of pain to it, not just the challenging roar of one of the top predators of Terra, that only humanities brains and thumbs had stopped from being the absolute peak of the food chain in North America. Looking down to my left, I saw something that immediately had me again trying to call out for the system in my head, only to again be left with silence, no blue boxes answered my call. So with a heavy heart I decided to quietly sneak closer to the encounter because if no blue boxes were showing up in my mind, that could only mean that instead of being transported into a world of easy experience and power ups, then it seemed much more likely that I had entered a realm that Tolkien had visited in his dreams. For in front of me, trying to swarm the bear in an effort to drown it with their numbers stood, not the little gray men that flew on space ships. No instead, I beheld nearly twenty green and red goblins, half of which still held crude spears in an effort to ward the the bear off. The other half, had either lost theirs into the bear, or had them broken apart, as the bear had crushed them with swipes of its massive paws. While I would have normally been content to let the bear and goblins fight it out on their own. With no idea if these were perhaps the if not good creatures that made up the part of the horde of a certain game I had spent way too much time on in my twenties, instead of the stereotypical monsters that spewed forth from Tolkien's mind. With no dog in the hunt, it shouldn't have mattered to me how many goblins died before they took out the bear. With no system to light my way, issuing a quest telling me to either defend the goblins from the bear or the bear from the evil goblins. It should have been an easy choice. I had hunted bears myself in Alaska a couple of years ago. I didn't have a problem with the little fellows defending themselves from one or killing it to put food on the table. As small as they were, the goblinoid-like creatures were undoubtedly just defending their tribe and lands. I should have been willing to at the very least let them wipe each other out. But as another four goblins came forward with their spears to stab the bear, and with another roar the bear swiped his paw across them and sent two of the four tumbling back limply. I ignored all of that. None of it mattered, because farther past the immense black bear, who stood up towering over the small waves of green creatures assaulting it. There stood a singular being slightly larger than its brethren, this entity exuded what I could only call an evil presence that had me retching in the back of my throat. While having always taught my children growing up, that looks aren't the end all and be all of judging someone, only their actions can ever tell you who a person really is. This horrid monstrosity gave a lie to that saying, as I grew closer I was able to make out more of its features, each demanding from me that I help the bear from my native world end this evil thing's existence. From the jagged teeth to bone necklaces, from wicked jagged black tattoos to shit stained pants, all of which humanity has had in its past and were not the reason I had started running forward unconsciously, teeth bared in determination to wipe out this evil from my sight. No, all of that could be cultural understanding. No, as I drew closer, still unnoticed and breaking into a sprint in an effort to more quickly remove this horrid thing from my sight and mind, was the ball that was forming in front of its body. Black, gray and red light all streamed from his hands as he waved them around, in what were undoubtedly mystical formations. As he sent his energy streaming into growing the speck into a ball while his men held the bear off from him. Not even this sight, evil though it was in my mind, was enough to send me hurtling the last thirty yards at a full sprint now that I was finally in range. Because I had made enough poor assumptions in my life that had turned out to be wrong. No, as I reached the final twenty yards and arrived at a range I felt sure of hitting the shaman, with my still being unnoticed as they were occupied with the larger threat in front of them. No, as I released the spear in my effort to abort this evil, it seemed to finish what it was saying with its foreign tongue. As the mystics' hands stopped glowing, it ripped a knife from what I could on hope was a rope belt and drove it down into a small glowing, blue goblinoid creature. A being that the shaman's two largest subordinates were holding still in front of the caster. Just as my spear started its dive home into the center of the shaman’s back, as I followed the rule to always aim for the center of mass. The glowing blue light that had been coming from the captive goblin's body was dragged into waiting the hell ball as the knife was driven into its heart, seeming to sever the light that had been streaming forward. The ball of light that had been gathering, now slowly began moving forward, inexorably towards the bear, after having collected the rest of the sacrifice’s life force into its center. But, while the captive's body was dropping to the ground, I didn't curse in disappointment. Because while my spear flew true, right into the middle of the shaman's back, saving the captive goblin hadn't been my purpose. No, for I had seen the smile on the glowing blue goblins face, it knew its purpose and was happy to give its life to help cast that hellball into the bear. No, ending the evil that would use another's life force for magic, however willing, was enough to put a slight smile to my face as the shaman tumbled forward to the ground, hitting right into the center of its own fireball.