Chapter 7: Broken Reality

The world was spinning around me. A world that wasn't mine, one where Texas didn't exist. North America didn't exist. Earth didn't exist.

The people at my table, these strangers, natives of Gandria, were talking to me but I couldn't hear them, I could only see their mouths moving. Their mouths seemed to form words that didn't look a thing like English. “Wha-?” I heard myself say. But it too didn't feel like English, it was some other language. I was speaking another language I hadn't ever heard before. But how was that even possible, I had only ever learned one language, how could I be speaking a totally different one I didn’t even know the name of?

A hand touched my shoulder and my vision swam toward who it was. Hazel. She stared into my eyes with her light green irises, a strand of her brown hair covering a part of the left one. My eyes went to the side of her head, directly at her strangely long ears.

She snapped her fingers and the world began to come back to me. “Take a deep breath.”

I did so.

She exhaled.

I did the same.

“Good, just breathe.”

I closed my eyes. I remembered a broken memory of my father. I couldn't remember a single feature of him, just his voice. He told me that when he felt anxious, he took deep breaths and thought about the ocean. I was near the ocean here, I had killed a man there.

It felt like that couldn't have been real. Me, kill someone? The only thing I had ever killed before was a deer with a rifle. I never once thought about killing a man. But I did, I killed a man here, in this other world. I had to do it or he would’ve killed me. I would’ve died because this place is real. The ocean was behind me as I did it. The waves rising and crashing back into themselves just as they did on Earth. They rose again, fell. Up, down. Rise, Fall. I felt my breathing grow normal.

This was real.

“Feel a bit better?” she asked, her hand still holding my shoulder.

I nodded slightly and then looked at the rest of the group. Finn's face didn't have the squinted, interrogative look as before. Instead, it was softer, almost concerned.

Gronan gave me a slight smile and pushed my ale closer toward me. I wrapped my hand around the wooden handle. It was rough and unpolished, unlike the inside of the mug. I took a sip of the ale. The sweet then bitter liquid touched my tongue. It was real, this was real. I was really on a different planet.

Hell, this could be a different universe.

I remembered someone once talking about a theory of multiverses before. I wondered what they would think of this world, of this possibly different universe. Whoever that person was.

I put the mug back onto the table, taking in another long breath before exhaling. “Sorry, just a little hard to hear I'm not on my planet anymore.”

Hazel's hand squeezed my shoulder before it dropped back to her mug. “It is okay,” using both of her hands, she picked her mug up and took a sip.

Gronan and Finn looked at her and kept silent, not willing to say a word.

Putting the mug back on the table, she said: “We are not used to hearing about people coming to our planet, either.”

The table was silent for a moment, everyone shifting uncomfortably as we all seemed to be figuring out what to talk about next. “What was that thing you did back at the goblin lair?” Finn asked.

“I...I don't know. I think it came from this,” I unbuttoned the top two buttons from my white shirt, revealing the golden eye-shaped object embedded in my chest.

A disgusted face flashed over Finn, “What in Gahen is that?”

Gronan leaned over the table, looking at it closely. His face looked stricken with something like fear. “I've seen one of those, back in my dwarven hometown of Nuestroniis,” He let out an uncomfortable chuckle and took a sip of his drink, leaning back in his chair as he stared hard at my chest.

“You're a dwarf?” I asked. “Wait, so what does it mean?”

“Yup, and well, it means you’re a Soul Hunter.”

“What does that mean?”

“You take souls,” Hazel said. “I have never seen one, they are supposedly very rare.”

“What do I do with the souls?”

Hazel picked her mug up, pointing it at me as she spoke, “You said you healed on the beach, did you not?” She took a sip.

“I did, or I think so,” I said with a shrug. “Do Adventurers not heal?” I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. This was all too much to take in. “Hell, what is an Adventurer?”

She shook her head. “We heal much faster than the average person or creature, but we do not heal as fast as you. To answer your question of what an Adventurer is, Adventurers are embued with an Adventurer's Soul either through killing another Adventurer and taking their soul, or by doing something incredibly, foolishly brave.” She took another sip. “Not much is known about Soul Hunters, but I did read a book once that stated that Soul Hunters use souls, petty and Adventurer Souls, to garner abilities such as healing. And apparently energy blasts like we saw,” She flicked her eyes toward Gronan. “Living in Nuestroniis, you must know more.”

“That I do,” Gronan said, his eyes distant. “One destroyed my whole city.”

I felt myself go cold as the words left his mouth. “One? As in one person?”

He nodded and then cleared his throat, his eyes coming back to reality. “Well,” The waiter that took our order came back to the table, four big plates dangling precariously on his arms. He set them on the table, two plates of huge, double-stacked waffles with a thick syrup drizzled over them and what looked to be chopped-up chicken on the side. The other two plates were slabs of what seemed to be medium steaks, cut in half. On each plate, there was a silver fork. “Looks like our food's here,” Gronan said happily as he took his plate of waffles and pushed my plate of waffles toward me as the two siblings took their steaks. “Thank you, kind sir,” He told the waiter, handing him four bronze coins.

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“Enough of the depressing talk,” Gronan demanded as he forced his fork into his waffle. “Let's enjoy a meal to celebrate us living on after our first job!” He shoved a massive bite into his mouth, bits of syrup ending up in his beard.

I picked up my fork and began to cut a bite out. “This sounds dumb but, how does a place like this have silverware?”

“Does your planet not have forks?” Finn asked, picking up one-half of his steak with his fork and biting into it.

“We do,” I picked up the piece I cut out and held it up, the waffle looked close to the ones on Earth, though the dough seemed to not be fully cooked through and was a bit darker. “But my planet, well, let's just say it has a lot more technology than this one, everyone has forks. I just didn't think a place still using candles to light up the room would have forks.”

I saw Finn's eyes narrow just slightly and gave a glance over to Hazel. “What do you guys use to light up a room?”

I waved the question away, “It's really complicated and would take too long to explain.”

Gronan swallowed his bite and spoke up, “There's a massive silver mine in District Two. It produces the silver and then District Three melts everything into forks.”

“Where's those two Districts from here?” I stuffed my bite into my mouth. Immediately, I was hit with the taste of the syrup. It was much thicker and richer than any maple syrup I'd ever gotten back at home, yet it wasn't fully sweet either. It almost had a smokey aftertaste to it. As I bit into the bite, I realized the waffle was definitely not fully cooked, instead, it was almost chewy. With every chew, there was more of the syrup taste and a hint of something like blueberry. I blinked several times as I continued to chew.

Holy hell, this is fantastic!

“District Two is to the northeast and is where many dwarves live,” Hazel said through a bite of steak she had cut out, “And District Three is to the Northwest, which is a desert.”

“Well, aren't you a smart lady,” Gronan complimented through a bite of his waffle.

She shrugged.

I continued to eat my incredible waffle, taking a few bites of the musleig to break it up. It tasted a lot like chicken, but it was a bit meatier, almost a mix between chicken and pork, and the sauce was smothered in a rich gravy. I felt like I was in heaven. As I ate, I continued to grill the group on every question I had about this world, wanting to know as much as I could. “How many districts are there?”

Hazel answered, “There's five, they all expand vast amounts of land, the districts themselves are gated and are ways of showing the danger levels of the creatures that reside inside. Here in District One, the majority of the population lives, though most of it is smaller villages except for two major cities on the opposite sides of the district.”

“Are all of the districts on one continent?”

“No, these three districts make up this continent, Anestra. Named after the empire that runs it, the Anestrian Empire. There are two other continents, District Four is on the continent of Enfild where everyone there is always at odds with one another and overwhelmed by all of the powerful creatures that reside there. Then there is District Five, which not much is known about but seems to be mostly an abandoned island surrounded by a dense fog.”

“So do other district creatures not go into other districts?”

“It happens, but that's the point of the walls here in Anestra. But sometimes they do slip past the walls and wreak havoc.”

“So how are the other districts in Anestra not in chaos with the stronger creatures around?”

“Other Adventurers mostly, I've heard they help keep the population down through hunts. Here in District One, many Adventurers are around just spread out other than the two cities, and are beginners like us. The further you get into the districts, the more experienced the Adventurers get. However, even in these three districts, not much is known about how Anestra orders all of the Adventurers around. Most of what I know of Anestra is basic knowledge and its history.”

We all finished our food and drink and Gronan pulled out two silver coins, placing them onto the table before wiping his beard meticulously with a napkin.

“So, how does money work here?” I asked, pointing at the silver coins.

“They're ranked,” Gronan said. “It starts at bronze, then silver, then gold, then platinum, then diamond.”

“How much do we have?”

“We have one silver piece and fifteen bronze pieces left. The silver piece is part of the group fund, the other fifteen bronze were divided amongst the three of us when we formed thai group. The coins each go up by ten, so ten bronze is one silver and so on, so we have the equivalent of two silver and five bronze.”

“Which isn't a whole lot, for an Adventurer at least,” Finn added.

“But we will get much more after turning this first contract in,” Hazel said. “It is one of the greatest perks of being an Adventurer, at least I assume it is.”

Yup, that headache was definitely here now, dully pounding away in my skull. There was so much more I wanted to find out about this world, but I was already having a hard time keeping track of everything I'd learned just now. I just nodded and decided to just get all of my other questions answered during the rest of this seemingly endless adventure I was now on.

We all began to get out of our booth. Gronan stretched and I noticed him rub his side where he had been hit during the goblin fight. “Are you all ready to go to the room?”

We all nodded and Gronan took point, going toward the hallway opposite of the one we went to to get a bath. At the end of the hall was room 125 which Gronan opened the door to and we all went inside.

The room was another blank, wooden-walled room. The only detail of note was the purple carpet, the two queen-sized beds, and a small wooden bedside table in between them with an alight candle and a small leather purse sitting on it. Gronan went to the purse, unzipped it, and pulled out a glass vial that held within it a clear liquid. He pulled the cork out of the top and took a small sip. He swished it in his mouth before swallowing it and then handed it to Finn. The siblings did the same before Hazel handed it to me. I stared at them in confusion.

“Go on, drink,” Hazel said, pointing at the vial.

“What is it?”

“Cleansing wash. Do you not clean your teeth in your world?” For a moment she looked a bit disgusted.

“What, yeah we do, just not with this.”

“Then with what?”

“We brush our teeth with a toothbrush,” I said with a shrug.

“You...brush your teeth? Like, with a brush?” Finn asked.

“Um, yeah that's what I said. You put toothpaste on it and then brush your teeth with it.”

They all looked at me with a dumbfounded look. I rolled my eyes with a sigh, “Okay whatever,” I took the vial and took a sip of it, swishing it in my mouth. I felt every bit of food and gunk I had in my teeth suddenly come dislodged. I swallowed and felt my teeth with my tongue, they felt as if they had been brushed a hundred times over in that span of a few seconds. “Damn, okay maybe my world could use that stuff too.”

Hazel chuckled. “And you say we do not have the same technology as you.”

“We still have better lights than candles.”

“It only costs you clean teeth,” Finn said, unbuckling his tool belt and allowing it to fall to the floor.

Hazel smiled, “Night, Moss Teeth,” She laid her bow against the side of the bed before getting in its covers. Finn hopped in beside her.

I looked at her in mock shock, “I do not have moss teeth.”

“Not anymore,” Gronan said as he put his battle axe on the wall.

The siblings cackled in laughter.

Gronan got in bed and turned over to the candle on the bedside table, “Now, get in bed.”

It hit me then, “I have to get in bed with you?”

“You don't want to snuggle with the big dwarf?” Gronan asked with a wide grin. “I suppose the floor could work.”

The siblings began laughing harder.

I sighed, “Alright, fine,” I got into the bed on the other side of Gronan. There were two pillows on my side and I took one of them and stuffed it between us. “But this is our border.”

Now Gronan was laughing too. The light went out then and we were plunged into darkness. As the laughter died down, Gronan patted my shoulder. “It's good to have another person in our small group, goodnight.”

I and the siblings said good night back.

I closed my eyes. It had been a long, long day but I hadn't even realized just how tired I was. It seemed in only a few moments of laying there, I slipped into the world of dreams.