Blinking as he swallowed the last bit of fluid in his mouth Tom stared up at the bright clear blue sky above him and frowned at the lack of scrub trees that had been there a second earlier.

The weather also seemed to be changing as a moist warm breeze took over and he could feel his skin damped with condensation and sweat almost immediately.

Then the noise registered, the sounds of the small town he had been working in was gone, replaced with the dark guttural chanting, the type of sinister repetitive words that you can’t translate but understand in a deep primitive and primal part of your mind.

Hollywood had been trying to imitate the style for as long as they had sound to add to movies and nothing really came close to the real thing the blue collar worker was now surrounded by.

Glancing about in wide eyed shock Tom found himself standing at the zenith of a ziggurat of brownish red stones near the center of a small adobe city in a jungle that seemed to be pulled straight out of South America, surrounding him and the cultist was a group of thirty bowing and scraping men bedecked in crimson and gold as what could only be described as a stereotypical villain stood across from him, a stone table separating us.

Looking the man over, Tom saw him bedecked in crimson robes that billowed open at the chest displaying a muscled chest and abs, a curled pair of ram horns that seemed to grow from from the man's leopard skull headdress as a pair of sinister yellow cat eyes blinked several times in shock at his sudden arrival.

Glancing down between them Tom finally noticed the stone blade buried in the chest of a short female that was splayed out on the sacrificial altar, her blood already coating the stone as dark black threads seemed to crawl up from the wound and sunk into the man's hands where he had them buried inside her chest as he stared in wide eyed shock at Toms sudden presence.

With another blink the Cultist opened his mouth to say something before Tom acted.

With the skill of hours of long boring practice back home as he waited on rooftops all across his hometown Tom flipped the hammer from his belt and without a second thought brought the nail driver down squarely between the bedecked priests eyes with every ounce of power he could muster in the swing, silencing him before another sound was made.

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It was a mighty blow, nearly a decade of repeating the action ten thousand times daily meant that if he wanted to, Tom could drive a nail through concrete with a single blow.

He knew he could, he had done it once.

That particular event had gotten him a round of beer at the local watering hole and a rather angry talking too by the owner, apparently business owners took a dim view of nails being driven into their sidewalks, even if he had been the one to make the bet in the first place.

Like a puppet with its strings cut, the surprised cultist crumpled to the stone floor on top of the temple, a cracked helmet and a bit of blood leaking from within, Tom stared at the unmoving form for a split second of surprise at what he had just done before his mind hiccupped in shock.

He had just disrupted a literal human sacrifice and was currently surrounded by a bunch of bloodthirsty fanatics that had no obvious problem carving a young girl's heart out of her chest.

Oh, and he had just skull fucked their chief wackadoodle in the face with a goddamned roofing hammer.

Leaning over the sacrificial alter and slinging the hammer at the downed mans head again just to be sure Tom decided that it was well past, as his brother would say, ‘fuck off o’clock’.

Ignoring the chanting that was still ongoing by the oblivious cultists surrounding them Tom scooped the girl up and with a grunt at her limp form sprinted towards the edge of the temple, slipping past the open ring of cultists without a thought.

Tom knew that he should be careful with the injured girl with a stone blade stuck in her chest but at the moment he was more concerned with speed and stealth than delicacy in the current crises. He was halfway down the temple stairs when the chanting from above was interrupted by a short yell of surprise.

There was a moment of silence as he could imagine the cultists staring at their downed grand high potentate and missing sacrifice before a rising cry from up top warned him that the jig was up.

"Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!" He gasped as he abandoned stealth in a mad sprint desperately for the bottom and the possibility of safety in the jungle beyond.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs Tom said a short prayer of thanks to whoever was listening that the town surrounding the massive stone temple was devoid of people as he adjusted his grip on the small form in his arms and added as much speed as possible.

Tom was not the most athletic of people on earth, he had especially never been much of a runner indeed just the week before he had declared that if he ever needed to run things had already gone to hell and he would be better served just accepting it.

With the rising shouts from behind him, Tom cursed his egotistical and foolish younger self and made a mental note that if he could get away from this without being ritualistically disemboweled he would put a concerted effort into working on his cardio in the future.

Holding the body closer to his chest Tom ignored the burning in his legs and the ragged breathing as he aimed for the jungle he could see at the far side of the city wall three hundred yards away.