The Pickle, the Pack, and the Pretty Something

1

John felt himself materialize a moment later with no noticeable difference to his normal destination. What was different was that John was in the middle of a forest. The transition pad beneath his feet was as out of place as John himself felt. Before he could inspect his surroundings further, the system voice spoke again.

“Shuffle complete! You have been selected to participate in The Garden’s shuffle function! Your starting location has been randomized! Your goal is to find a new shelter. The more difficult the shelter is to find or enter, the greater your prize. You and others will be unable to access your room until shuffle trial has been completed. Good luck!”

And with that, the pad beneath his feet vanished. John looked around in equal parts anger and caution. Of all the things that could have happened, of all the times it could have happened, John got “shuffled” right after telling his mom he would be perfectly safe and right before he started working with clients for Jules.

Neither of those things would be possible now. John cursed at the repeated attempts by the universe to keep him from his goals. He swore loudly before picking a direction at random and taking off. The longer he sat still, the worse he would be when night came. He needed to get a sense of the land around him.

He didn’t know if the forest he was in stretched for a mile or a hundred. He moved cautiously, already having summoned Jane to keep her nose out for any danger. John knew one thing for sure, he wasn’t going to try his luck hunting anything that wasn’t actively trying to kill him until he found out more about where he was. For all he knew, he was surrounded by beasts on par with the grizzly he had almost been eaten by.

Jane led him forward, often growling in directions adjacent to the path John chose through the forest. Far too often, in fact. It was like they were passing the homes of all the local badasses.

The slanted terrain meant that the game trail John moved along led him slightly downward while making much more distance horizontally. John had been taught by his dad that when lost in the woods, water meant life. If he could find a stream to follow, he could make his way down and hopefully back to some kind of civilization.

He figured whatever made the path would eventually go to water. The path was well trodden and considerably thick. It was definitely frequently used by something, but he hoped it wasn’t the favorite route of some apex predator.

The duo moved along in relative quiet as the hours wore on. Several times, John heard terrifying cries in the distance. But luckily, Jane seemed preternaturally gifted at evading danger. Only once did something come close enough to threaten them.

It was a snake of all things. Not a small venomous one, no for the first time in his life, John found a better snake to be afraid of. Jane let him know of the danger just in time to avoid the gigantic constrictor that fell from the trees above them.

The thing was massive. Thirty feet long at least, and by the way Jane growled, it was at least wizened in tier. The gene coloration that stretched down the snake’s head and length seemed to support this.

John had no intention of fighting such a nightmare of a snake. Instead, Jane pranced around it and kept its attention while he made tracks away from it. Luckily, such a massive snake was not suited to speed and John quickly escaped the vicinity of the reptile.

After returning and subsequently summoning Jane again, the two made their way forward once more. The entire first day passed that way; moving around whatever danger Jane smelled while steadily moving through the descending forest. About an hour before John guessed the sun would fully set, they came to a break in the forest.

The trees gave way to reveal a meeting of two slopes. The terrain John had been descending through connected with a similar, much steeper hill. This one had much less trees but many more thorny bushes and rock protrusions that John just knew were riddled with snakes.

John looked up the ravine to his right and down in the other direction. Left or right, he could either climb back up the mountain, for that’s what it appeared to be; two mountains intersecting, or he could continue down the pit between them and see what lay at the heart of the ravine.

After some deliberation, he chose to descend. Unfortunately, the day was all but over by then. Reluctantly, he moved back to the trees and found a sturdy one to climb.

After twenty minutes of finagling, John was high enough to escape the dew and situated in his travel hammock. After he was relatively comfortable, he summoned Jane once again, this time into his lap.

Not being a flesh and blood creature, she didn’t provide any real body heat, but likewise, she did not need sleep as he did. So, with his little guard dog on duty, John settled in for some rest. It took him much longer than usual, but eventually he found sleep in the trees.

2

When John woke, it was not to the glistening rays of sunlight through the trees. Rather, the rumbling warning of Jane on top of him roused him to something amiss. John patted her to quiet the fox, but needed several seconds to understand for himself what was upsetting her.

Straining his ears, John could hear the clumsy approach of something large. No, more than one something, perhaps many somethings. There was a terrible cacophony coming through the forest, like a herd of rhinoceros trampling everything in their path.

John cursed. It was always something. Looking at the trunk of the tree to find it shaking rather alarmingly, John understood that he would have to leave now or risk his tree being uprooted by whatever was moving his way. It was a very hasty and haphazard extrication from his nest, but he made his way down the tree without breaking anything.

Soon he and Jane were running down the intersection between mountains as fast as they could without tripping over rock or root. The rumbling behind them was present if not consistent, seeming to die down before increasing in intensity once again. Sometime not long after they vacated the area, John heard a tremendous crash in the distance behind him.

Without turning around. He knew whatever was breaking through the wilderness had cleared the tree line. He couldn’t tell yet if the tumult would turn in his direction, but it seemed likely to happen given the terrain they were dealing with. The most likely outlet would be down the break in mountains just as John had decided.

Cursing his eternal bad luck, John turned back to the tree line and made a shallow cut off his current path. In that way, he continued to distance himself both from the nightmare of clamor approaching from behind, and whatever might have been behind that to cause it in the first place. Soon, he and Jane were running parallel to the approaching stampede, albeit several meters inside the tree line.

John and his companion continued through the brush as slowly but surely the tide of hoof beats grew louder behind him. When it became clear that the fracas was contained within the ravine, John slowed to a stop to see what was causing the commotion.

He could have believed a herd of deer. After all, he had watched a herd of deer massacre his whole hunting party. He could easily believe deer capable of such an uproar.

Another likely source would have been a pack of wild boars like the ones he ran from after killing the enhanced one. A few dozen of them could definitely have a colossal effect on an environment. But that wasn’t what John saw either.

Instead, a herd, that’s right, an entire herd of wild alpacas galloped down the ravine like a wall of fur. John had never seen an alpaca before, much less a wild one, but he hadn’t thought they lived on rocky mountainous terrain like this. If he remembered correctly, they lived in South America, where it was really wet and humid.

He didn’t think the ground he had covered had been too wet, but then again, it was hard to say how far the alpacas had been chased. It was clear that something had disturbed their entire habitat in the middle of the night. They might have ran for hours before John woke to their flight.

The topic of preferred alpaca lifestyles was swept away when John caught sight of the second herd. Well, perhaps the right word was something like pack. More importantly, he recognized them a million times faster than he had the alpacas.

John turned immediately and jumped to grab a high branch in a tree. If his adrenaline didn’t propel him into the limbs at top speed, surely his recognition of the bloodthirsty predators nipping at the heels of the many alpacas big and small that fled for their lives. When he was safely twenty feet into the tree, he looked down at the bonafide dinosaurs below him.

Fucking. Raptors. They looked different from everything he knew of them in media or fiction. Well, just fiction he supposed. But still, there was no denying what he saw happening beneath him.

The alpacas were all pretty normal in stature, with the only appreciable difference being slight size and gene discrepancy. If he had to guess, John would have said they were all between enhanced and wizened. But the dinosaurs that pursued them made them all look like simple beasts by comparison.

Their scales were liberally covered by colorful feathers that ranged from blues all the way to fluorescent pinks. They stood around a meter at the shoulder, but their long tails and necks gave John the bizarre impression of a running banana in the yellow one he saw. Far longer than they were tall, the raptors moved with an ease unmatched by any beast he had yet seen.

John didn’t think any of the alpacas would have still been alive, even outnumbered as the raptors were if the dinosaurs had truly wanted to attack. Even as he had the thought, John noticed something he had missed below him. Literally right below him, moving through the trees like the apex predators John knew them to be were about two dozen more raptors.

Each of these were taller, almost as tall as a man. The gene apparent was on each raptor’s feet. A differing level of gene progression traveled up the legs of each dinosaur running stealthily through the forest beside the rest. As John was studying them, a single raptor slowed to a stop beneath his tree and began to sniff the air around it.

John’s heart leapt within his chest as the beast slowly looked upward until its eyes met his. All his worst fears coming to life, John just watched as it looked to its passing fellows and released a series of guttural grunts and chittering. Without so much as a pause in their pursuit, two raptors broke away from the pack and headed off into the forest.

The raptor at the base of the tree didn’t stick around, after giving the air one last sniff in his direction, it moved on to catch up with its mates. John just watched as the pack quickly and effortlessly moved ahead of the stampede of alpacas. John watched in growing horror as the intelligence of the beasts dawned on him.

The ones on the heels of the alpacas could easily have torn into the stragglers. In fact, not a single alpaca had gone down that John could see. Instead, the dinosaurs seemed to be herding the animals to the most advantageous spot for them.

Even as he had the thought, the stealthy reptiles cut out of the wood line several paces ahead of the herd. John saw in an instant how clever the trap was. Not only had they sandwiched the furry beasts between their two forces, but they had waited to do so for a spot in the mountains that was entirely too rocky for the animals to quickly escape to the sides.

John watched in horror as the two groups of raptors converged on the alpacas. It was absolute carnage. The hoofed animals split to the sides, but either side of the sloped ravine was a mess of rocks and roots. The dinosaurs had much less difficulty maneuvering the area with their excellent pedal abilities.

The next moments were a nightmare of horrendous shrieking of a kind that John had not known llamas capable of making. He didn’t dare watch the scene unfold, as he already had difficulty sleeping and needed no more reason. But even with his fingers tight in his ears, he couldn’t escape the sounds.

3

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It was a long and spine-tingling time before the forest grew quiet again. It was twice again as long before John heard the pack of predators recede into the trees. Eventually though, an eerie silence blanketed the entire area.

The light of day was quickly spreading across the land as the sun rose higher. In that light, John could see an absolutely haunting scene of carnage painted across the landscape. Fur, blood, organs, bones, and many unidentifiable tidbits liberally covered the entire ground for as far as John could see.

There wasn’t a living thing in sight, but John could see plenty of dead ones. Exclusively the alpacas, every corpse he saw was so ravaged that even if he searched for the gene, none of them were likely to have more than a few pieces scattered with the rest of offal the raptors were seemingly uninterested in. John wouldn’t waste his time on the mess.

What he would do, and in truth, had to do was get the hell out of there. The pack of dinosaurs were as intelligent as any human he had ever met, and their teamwork was far superior. A lone human in their territory was likely to end up as another unrecognizable corpse in their wake.

It was safe to say that John was in deep shit. He had no idea where he was going. He had a few days’ food but who knew how long he would be lost before he found a qualifying base to complete his trial. What he did know was that climbing down the tree and wandering through the carnage below would be foolish beyond belief.

John instead summoned Jane to the base of the tree. The mental command he gave her with the summon was to cause a ruckus before taking off back up the mountain. Jane obediently strolled to the nearest section of the messy alpaca remains and tipped in pleasure as she tore into the flesh more out of obligation than desire for the lower tier meat.

John watched the woods around him for the sign he feared. It didn’t take long for the universe to prove him right. As Jane happily leapt from corpse to corpse, throwing intestines and bones here and there like a puppy with a chew toy, John saw them move.

The same two raptors that he had seen break away from the pack earlier emerged from the brush like ghosts. Their angry hiss was nearly all that could be heard as they expertly advanced on Jane. John’s mental order came with urgency as he switched Jane from aggravate to evade.

Before the two dinosaurs could break out of the forest, Jane was running swift and dexterous up the mountain intersection. John waited for the raptors to pass him by and begin the open pursuit of his soul companion before quickly climbing down to the ground. Jane had expertly kited the carnivores away.

When his foot touched the lowest branch, his weight compromised the limb, causing it to crack under him and drop him the last few feet to the ground. John rolled back to his feet and took off running into the ravine and down away from the dinosaurs. But when he broke the tree line, he looked up to see the progress of his ruse.

That’s the moment that John’s heart stopped briefly in his chest. The reason was because only one of the raptors was still chasing Jane. The other had stopped the chase to turn at the sound of John’s exit from the tree. It had heard him, and by the looks of its remorseless face, it didn’t take kindly to his attempt to trick it.

John spun away and sprinted down the mountains as fast as he could possibly go. He knew even before he started running that he would never make it to safety, even if there was such a thing out there. His wizened ant armor appeared around him as he heard the raptor behind him start braying like a mix between a donkey and a hyena.

It was a very wheezy honk, almost like the sound a dog makes when something gets stuck in its throat, but with an undeniably angry tone. Moreover, the sound was unreasonably loud, like it came from right behind John and slammed into the hills all the way to the base of the mountains like a gunshot every time it exclaimed.

John turned to face the raptor, Lunar Stag bow popping into his hands with his deadly arrow already fit to the string. The scope snapped out to aid him as he drew the string back without delay. He found the largest vital spot he could see and lunched his arrow at the beast faster than it could react.

At least, he didn’t think it could react in time. But John was flabbergasted when the raptor not only saw his attack as it happened, but cocked its head to the side like a bird as the arrow left the string and leapt surely to the side like a pouncing cat before bounding in pursuit of John. His arrow didn’t come anywhere near the dinosaur, and he knew for sure that his bow would never be adequate to kill one with their speed.

John returned the weapons to his soul wall and fled down the mountain without looking back. He even convinced himself to keep running when the sure footsteps of the raptor come close enough to feel the impacts in the soles of his feet. Unfortunately, this mind over matter mindset did him no good when he felt something at least twice as heavy as a large dog plant itself firmly on his back.

John hit the ground like his body was a shuffleboard stick, his helmeted face scooted across the ground for a few feet before his legs slammed back down like dead weight. John felt an immediate pressure on the back of his neck, but before he could cry out, it was gone. The raptor had tried to bite through the armor but came up short. But still, the tighter fit of the armor was proof of the damage the dinosaur’s jaws could do.

John was about to roll over and defend himself when a taloned foot hooked itself under his stomach and did it for him. The terror he felt as he looked into the cold eyes of his attacker was something akin to paralysis in John. He almost froze entirely, but at the striking bite the raptor unleashed made John almost instinctively out an arm up to protect his neck.

His arm was immediately crushed in the bite of the raptor. The armor crumpled like a can under a boot, clearly not as durable on the arms as the neck was. John screamed in pain as his wrist and forearm were mangled by the bite.

His arrow was in his other hand in a second and he jabbed it toward the face of the raptor. Like a boxer evading a left hook, the beast popped backward before nipping at John’s hood arm. Luckily, it only glanced off the ant chitin before its jaws snapped shut with a sharp click.

John jabbed out several times with the arrow, but he couldn’t match the reflexes of the wizened raptor. It dodged every attempt to poke it effortlessly before it lashed out like a snapping turtle and clamped onto his hood arm at the base of the wrist. John screamed again but he wasn’t about to let the raptor have its way.

He quickly returned and then summoned the Drowsy Muckray arrow to his mangled hand in less than a second. As he did so, he pushed his arm as far into the mouth of the raptor as he could, wedging it open a few precious millimeters. Then he yanked his arm as fast as he could away from the beast.

He didn’t get his arm free, but that hadn’t really been his intention. Instead, he moved his arm until his open hand could clasp the bottom jaw of the dinosaur. Then he held on as tight as he could while the beast tried to release him.

It shook its head violently back and forth, but his armored grip refused to be shaken. After the first barrage of spasms passed, John used his waiting arm to jam the arrow as far into the neck of the dinosaur as he could. It shrieked in rage and pain as he ripped it back out and slammed it home three more times.

He finally let go of its jaw as it jumped backward, but by the time its feet had landed back on the ground, it stumbled sideways and fell to the side. John didn’t even take the time to make sure it really fell before he was climbing painfully to his feet. He ignored the sharp pain in both his arms and one of his hands and pushed himself up.

He took off running as fast as he had ever ran before. In an instant, Jane was recalled to his side, having successfully kept the attention of the second raptor long enough for him to deal with its fellow. They ran down the mountains like a pair of lightning bolts as John heard the enraged cry of the remaining raptor somewhere not far behind them.

Before he could worry about their remaining foe, John heard the worst sound he could have imagined. Dozens of answering calls echoed through the forest to his right and behind him. John’s heart almost stopped despite its frantic beating as he realized his worst fear had come to pass: the pack had returned.

John marked their progress by ear as they continued to let out aggravated barking noises all throughout the trees. As long as he could hear them, he was confident in his safety. But the universe didn’t share his foolish assumption.

Out of the trees ahead of him came dozens of raptors, already angled in his direction as though they had simply been waiting for him. The seemingly predetermined landscape of the alpaca massacre came back to him as he saw the group of dinosaurs grow larger ahead of him. John he cursed at his own stupidity.

The calls he had heard behind him had only been motivation to drive him into the ambush. A hundred pray or a single target, it seemed the beasts trapped their prey with the same tactic. And John had been no more capable of avoiding it than the alpacas were.

In fact, John had even seen the brutal execution in action before it happened to him. How had he not known that this was going to happen? He shook his head at the hubris and stupidity he had shown.

Wizened Mongoliensis killed. Soul Augmentation gained. Wizened gene available for harvest.

John hadn’t even heard the title of the soul before he had summoned it. When he did, instead of the soul taking form as a weapon or item, it remained in his soul field. However, unlike his first attempt at summoning his Drowsy Sunflower soul, this time, there was a reaction

Would you like to augment Wizened Ant Guard Armor?

“Yes!” John shouted to the air.

The process began in earnest just before the pack of dinosaurs converged on him from both sides. Luckily, the process was as fast and effortless as the last transformation had been. Within a couple seconds, the voice spoke again.

Augmentation successful! Wizened Ant Guard Armor has become Wizened Chimera Armor!

4

John immediately felt his legs lurch forward at a noticeably faster pace just as two of the largest raptors leapt at him from ahead. He shifted left and right with each step, his new armor easily changing his entire trajectory every time a foot touched the ground. Not only was his speed greatly increased, but his reaction time while wearing the new armor had been magnified to something approaching precognition.

Every raptor ahead of him seemed to move more slowly than before, and when they attacked him their movements were clearly broadcast to John. He successfully, if not easily evaded each pounce, strike, and tail swipe the approaching dinosaurs threw at him. Meanwhile, the pack members behind him were hopeless to match his newly increased speed.

John continued to evade the beasts, but they showed their tactical prowess once more when four wizened raptors charged him on the ground while three leapt into the air to intercept any aerial maneuver he might try. John’s lips curved upward at the ingenuity of the dinosaurs. It was a well-founded speculation that these would have been the apex predators of earth had they not gone extinct.

Bt John was not to be tricked. He leapt as high as he could directly at the air bound raptor most in his path. It opened its jaws to snap at him, but before it could, Jane burst into existence right in front of him. The fox intercepted the raptor and the two crumpled in place just in time for John to place a foot on the falling dinosaur and launch himself further through the air.

Jane was back in his Soul Field before he even hit the ground and he landed in a sprint. The latest maneuver had been the last ditch effort on the part of the raptors to bring him down. Seeing as it failed, they had little hope of catching him in another trap. John ran in at top speed, ignoring the still throbbing pain in his arms.

He didn’t know where he would go or how he would escape, all he knew was that he couldn’t stop running. He sprinted on as the ground eventually leveled out at a gradual pace. If he wasn’t so focused on the murderous pack behind him, he might have noticed sooner when the massive tower came into view.

When he did notice it, he blinked his eyes in disbelief, unable to understand the magnificent building at the heart of the mountains. He didn’t slow his pace, but after a few seconds, he noticed the ferocious nature of the sounds behind him had died to an almost imperceptible level. At a glance, John saw that none of the raptors were behind him anymore.

They made a rigid line of aggression nearly fifty yards behind him. John looked to the ornate tower in relief as he understood that they wouldn’t come any closer to the grand building. Whatever it was, John owed it a million favors just for existing in this desolate place. Without another thought, he zipped across the remaining distance and up the stairs three at a time.

When he made it to the top, the entrance doors loomed over him like twin titans. There was a massive knocker attached to a velvet rope that hung down to one side. There was no way John’s arms could pull a heavy rope to bang the knocker, so instead, he walked to one of the great doors and used his armored foot to kick it three times.

The doors were made of a metal John had never seen. They were so sturdy that his kicks barely counted as a knock. It was more like a faint tapping than a true reverberation.

Nonetheless, a few seconds after his attacks on the door, a sound like a massive lock disengaging could be heard through the metal. The sound was so sharp that John also felt the strong friction of the lock moving pass through his feet. Another second later, the doors swung open.

John wasn’t surprised to see the most ornate and decorative building he had ever stepped foot in. The walls were extravagantly adorned with paintings, carvings, and innumerable tapestries. Far above, the walls had massive slits in them that let an impressive amount of light in to reflect on golden sections of the walls.

But what did surprise him was the complete lack of floor décor. The massive building was entirely devoid of anything but a large transport pad in the center. John thought he had found a way to complete his trial, but when no voice spoke in his head, he assumed the building didn’t count as a base. He didn’t see any other option within the tower, so he went to the large pad and stood, waiting for something to happen.

“Would you like to visit the realm of the Gods?”

John heard the words. They spoke clearly and directly into his mind just like every other time The Garden spoke to him. But the question was so absurd that he just stood there like an idiot, trying to comprehend what he heard.

“The realm of the Gods?” John asked

“Destination confirmed. Starting Transition”

“Wait, what? I didn’t-”

John was swallowed by the temporary darkness before he could finish his protestations. And in the space of a breath, the light returned. He swallowed his complaint like an unchewed bite when his eyes landed on the single occupant of the small and opulent room he was standing in.

It appeared to be human, but no human John had ever met had such perfect skin, easy grace, or whatever the faintly glowing outline the being had illuminating it at the seams. It looked female, but there were no definite indicators of it’s true gender if any. It sat in a comfortable chair and looked into John’s eyes like a collector observing an interesting specimen.

“A human? Very interesting. You are the first being to enter the Crater Heart Temple in many cycles. You look hurt. Please, be at ease,” it spoke with a female voice just as it appeared to be.

The woman waved her hand at him like an impatient person dismissing a fly. Without so much as a set bone, John’s arms were instantly healed. One second, they were throbbing with the pain of his encounter with the raptors. The next, it was like the pain had never existed.

John gasped in relief as he was suddenly whole and well once again. He looked at the woman across from him in wonder. He had never believed in God, but whatever this being was counted as divine in his eyes.

“What-” John began but the woman raised a hand to silence him.

“Please. Your questions will have a price. Allow me to explain what you are permitted to know for free before you start the tax on yourself.”

John raised his eyebrows at the information, but only nodded for the woman to continue. She waved her hand again and the room changed to that of a quaint dining room with a small table and one extra chair for him. She smiled warmly at him before gesturing to the seat.

“Please, join me.”