Anna

The return to Anna’s body was not nearly as pleasant as it was when she was leaving it. Her soul was literally being jammed into every crevice of her body, and she doubled over in pain. It felt like her limbs had been crushed by a hydraulic press, and she would have screamed, if not for the copious amounts of blood she was vomiting.

“She’s awake Greg! We gotta go now!” Helen’s voice rang in Anna’s ears as she vomited a fresh wave of blood. Rough hands lifted her to her feet and she managed to lift her head to the chaos around her.

“Let’s move! Grab what you can, leave everything else!” Greg barked at people around him. It seemed the whole camp was fighting, whether amongst themselves, or with others, Anna wasn’t sure. To her left, a dwarf was smashing in the skull of a geckite with his boot, not noticing a ball of fire flying towards him until it was too late. When the ball touched his face, instead of exploding, it swallowed his head. He fell to the ground in a panic, trying to smother the fishbowl of fire by rolling around in the dirt.

Greg ran forward and stabbed the dwarf through the neck with a spear. Once he was dead, an orc ran forward and rolled the body into the nearest underbrush.

“Through here before it catches.” Yelled the orc. A large group surged forward over the dwarf’s body. Anna tried to take a step and a sharp pain ran up her spine. She felt someone lift her before she completely blacked out.

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When Anna awoke, darkness had already set. The trees no longer gave off a bright green hue, instead, the forest floor came to life with an energy of their own. Fluorescent flowers and roots lit up the area, while a nearby river sparkled as it reflected the glow of several algae. The soft sounds of unknown creatures turned the atmosphere into an alien dreamscape.

Still driving off feelings of weakness, Anna attempted to call a forest companion. When she tried attaching a part of her soul to it, she felt a dangerous whiplash begin to churn within her. Warning bells sounding in her mind, the spell was completely ended to not risk worsening her condition. Using the skill again, she called a temporary friend of the forest. What appeared before her was a translucent black bear, barely large enough to not be called a cub. The bear nuzzled up to her, green magical wisps occasionally shedding from its body. Well the system told the truth about that I guess. You’d never mistake him for the real thing. There was a faint tug of energy coming from Anna that led to the bear. Focusing on the source of the pull, Anna gained an intuitive sense of her mana and stamina levels. Like breathing, you just know…

Holding firmly to the bear, now referred to as Teddy - because who could give up that chance, she got to her feet. Someone had set her down in the opening of some bushes, so she hadn’t noticed the whispers of the nearby group until now. Unsure of what was going on, Anna peered through branches to get a better look.

Mixed groups of dwarves, orcs, geckites, and humans huddled together on one side of the river speaking in hushed tones. No elves or gnomes, what the hell happened? Spotting the orc that had led others into the forest, Anna made her way to him. She told Teddy to stay behind just in case seeing him would spook the others. What was his name again, Bolas? Volas? “Hey, uh, Bo-Volas, what the heck happened?”

“It’s just Volas, you’re Anna right?” the orc corrected. “We don’t really know, trying to piece it together ourselves. Woke up, and there was a shit ton of fighting going on. Some dwarves were fighting humans, elves were gone, some asshole was slitting throats, shit went left real quick.”

“So we came under attack?”

“Probably, there were some dwarves I didn’t recognize from before. Salar here swears that he saw them have some sort of disagreement with the gnomes.”

“I didn’t swear on shit. I said I think the gnomes called someone and then we got attacked.” said the geckite that Volas had pointed out. He held a long staff in his hand, and he had swapped his tunic out for a long, puffy robe.

“Where did everyone get the stuff?” Anna asked, just now realizing that everyone had some sort of gear on, with either satchels or backpacks.

“Oh,” replied Salar, “Greg and Helen have your stuff. The system gave everyone basic equipment for their class, didn’t you read the system alerts during the crash course?”

“...Yeah, I totally forgot. Thanks for the info guys.” Anna replied as she walked away from the duo. Did the alerts say that? I don’t remember any of that. It took no time at all to find Helen. She and Greg were standing near the center of the largest group gathering information. Anna wanted to stand to the side and just listen for a while, hoping that the others had pieced something together. Turned out however, that the conversation was near its conclusion, so she quietly asked her neighbor, this time a female orc, what happened.

“We were straight up ambushed. One of the gnomes set us up and called in another group, mostly humans, but some dwarves as well. A few of us saw it happen as we woke up. No clue how the hell they even got in contact. The system said none of us should know each other, but clearly, that wasn’t the case. Either way, the rest of the gnomes got their throats slit while their souls were gone. The elves were long gone before then, so fat-lotta help they turned out to be. Helen thinks they must know something, but I don’t know. Met a few elves in my time, a bunch of prejudiced assholes. Anyways, those of us that were up started fighting back. We were getting pushed back pretty hard for a while, but once everyone was awake, the other group let us just leave. They didn’t follow, didn’t trail us, just let us go.”

Some of the others nearby jumped in with a few additional details as the orc told her story. Turns out, Greg was way more useful than Anna would have thought. He managed to organize the front-line of the defense while everyone woke up, and had also carried Anna all the way here. After a head count, we found out that there were only 40 left in the group. Some were dead, but most others had chosen to leave, not trusting large groups after the ambush. Those that remained were already starting to splinter. Helen was trying to keep them together, but Salar and Volas thought it was better to split into smaller groups, to lessen the chance of being spotted.

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“Anna! Thank goodness you’re awake.” Helen called, once she spotted her.

“Yeah, I hear I have Greg to thank for saving me?”

“Don’t worry about that dear, Greg served during the war, so he would never leave you behind. I have your bag here for you.” Helen handed Anna a backpack bursting with stuff. “Why don’t you get cleaned up, and eat a little something, you lost a lot of blood. We can talk after”

“Thanks, I’ll do just that.” Anna flipped the bag over one shoulder and slowly headed back towards Teddy. Once they were a decent distance from the group, and was pretty sure they had some privacy, she set down her bag and laid down a cloak she found inside. Telling Teddy to keep watch she unpacked everything to take stock.

Halfway through unloading her equipment, Anna paused to find her hands shaking. Unpacking had calmed her nerves just long enough for the realities of her new world to start setting in. Arn was alone, and she had no idea if her help had any affect on his situation. She had also just witnessed death for the first time. Her mind thought back to the bodies strewn about their original clearing. Anna had never realized how the vacant eyes of the dead could be so frightening. It was as if they were frozen in the terror they must have felt before the end. Confusion, terror, and anger, those were the most common expressions.

The longer she dwelled on it, the more the memories began to warp in her mind. Now, instead of separate emotions, they all expressed one. Judgment… as if damning onlookers for their indifference towards death. Judging them for not taking the value of life seriously enough. The others didn’t seem too deeply affected, but who knew how they truly felt.

Then there was the issue of the other group. When the system told them that they could join a faction, she had assumed others were here, but she hadn’t expected them to be straight up antagonistic. It seemed ridiculous that they were attacked for seemingly no reason. There was definitely something missing. Was this part of the tutorial quest? Land, resources, power, religion, or animosity, those were the typical reasons for war. Land was central to the quest, but why not cooperate with other groups to ensure you had the means to protect your land. Unless they were some barbaric ass degenerates, they would want the help of others.

What’s done is done. The only real choices I have now are to stay with the group, join a smaller group, or strike out on my own.

A deep growl interrupted Anna’s thoughts. She looked in the direction of Teddy and saw that he was fixated on something in the distance. Following his gaze, Anna recognized a set of eyes. There was someone across the bush from Anna, staring at her bag.

Taking a deliberately long breath, Anna moved her hand slowly towards the backpacks' side. So far, there were only basic provisions in her bag like food, clothes, and water. The only exception was a machete-like blade attached to the side of the backpack in an integrated sheath. Keeping her eyes on the intruder, Anna unsheathed the blade and held it in a vice like grip with both hands. She sent a mental command to Teddy to protect her and prepare to pounce at any sign of danger.

Hands still shaking, Anna called out, “I see you, what do you want?”

Her words broke the stand-off as a small lizard leapt through the bushes straight towards her. It’s mouth opened to reveal a set of sharpened teeth as it ran forward on two feet. In its clawed hand was a small sword that it raised to strike.

With a roar, Teddy knocked the creature off of its feet and bit into its shoulder. Its cry of pain jolted Anna’s brain into working once more. She watched as the lizard repeatedly stabbed Teddy in the side and used its free hand to try and gouge out the bear’s eyes.

Anna felt her energy drain faster with each stab. Realizing she needed to do something, she dropped her sword and called forth a vine whip, hoping her mana held out long enough. She sent the whip forward and wrapped it around the lizard's sword arm. With a thought, she summoned thorns from the vine that dug into the beast's scaled flesh. Using her body weight as leverage, she furiously yanked the whip back and held tight.

With one arm held away from its body, Teddy pinned its other arm with his front paws and went to town with his fangs. Each bite tore chunks off of the creature's torso before her bear turned his head to the side and wrapped his mouth around the lizard’s neck.

She shut her eyes, but wasn’t saved from the sounds of a feasting bear. When the vine went slack, she cautiously opened one eye, only to immediately regret having working eyeballs at all. Teddy was still eating the lizard and Anna dry heaved as she saw sinew stretch and finally snap from tension.

Without realizing it, she sent a message to stop her bear, as it whipped its head around apologetically. That certainly did nothing to help, however. The sight of a bear, sadly munching away at an eyeball with blood covering its face is true nightmare fuel. Teddy sat down on his haunches, swallowed, and flopped onto his back, stretching one arm after the other and reveling in his well earned victory. Can he actually eat? Anna heaved again.

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The rest of Anna’s time was uneventful. She rushed through her tasks as she felt her mana dwindle, afraid that Teddy would disappear before she returned to the group. Jumping into the river wearing her clothes, she decided to wash two birds with one stone. I don’t know whether to be happy or feel gross that the water is warm…

After cleaning herself and hanging her wet clothes on a nearby branch, Anna changed into the most comfortable set of clothes she had ever worn in her lives. Her new pants were gigantic and had soft cotton insides. They closed near the ankle with ties and had a similar mechanism to hold the pants up around her waist. Her shirt had the same breathable design and both of her long sleeves were tied comfortably around her wrist. She tucked the bottom of the shirt into her pants.

Giving her new belongings a quick once over, she ate a dry biscuit and filled a canteen she found in the river. She had roughly two days worth of food in the form of dry biscuits, a blanket, one additional set of clothing, a machete sword, blank paper, a blindfold, a cloak and a single-edge knife.

Anna decided she would hold on meditating until she got back to the group. The safety in numbers also solved one of her other problems. There was absolutely no way she was willing to risk running around the forest herself.

Putting on the cloak she gave her bear a quick pat on the head from a distance to avoid the blood still covering its face, then she cut off their connection. She would need her remaining mana to drag whatever the fuck attacked her back to camp with her thorn whip. Her return to the group took almost three times as long as her departure, as the body kept getting caught on twigs, bushes, and random roots sticking out from the forest floor.

When she made it back, she felt relieved that no one had actually left the group. Volas, Greg, and a few others had found large branches and made long torches that they were sticking into the ground at intervals at the edge of the camp. A dwarf walked around to each of the torches and pressed his finger against them, after a moment, they would ignite.

Looking around, Anna spotted Helen walking around the camp, talking with people and waved her down. Helen waved back and started to walk towards, but stopped several feet away, exclaiming, “What in the good Lord’s name is that?!”