Willow
Dead Patch of Earth, Unknown, Savriâ
Falling wasn’t a new experience for Willow. Suddenly falling without any kind of warning at all, was. The only warning she’d had was her vision moving suddenly from looking up at Madrick’s face, to a very fast look at Madrick’s entire body: neck, coat covered chest, coat covered belly, bright silver belt buckle fastening two belts in an X, boots, and then the edge of the room’s floor. Still, her innate ability and years of training kicked in and she landed gracefully. She let her body coil, rapidly dropping into a crouch and then moving into a backwards roll to absorb any remaining energy.
As she came back to her feet, the first thing she noticed was how hot it was. She’d lived most of her life in south east Texas, which was hotter than she enjoyed most of the year. This was so much worse. Every breath was like sucking in a sauna’s steam. She wondered if her sweat was evaporating, or if it was just so humid that it felt like it.
The second thing she noticed were the hunched little creatures which were huddled around a huge pot, turning to look at her. They were creepy little critters with eyes of dull grey, like tarnished silver. She didn’t see any separation of sclera, iris, or pupil, it was all one uniform and off-putting color.
Before she could take in the alien monsters further, Kent fell head first in front of her, immediately followed by Naomi who landed rear-first on his back. Willow’s eyes snapped upward and she barely caught the edges of what looked like a closing mouth in the air. Can’t tell if this is a better end to the whole kidnapped while unconscious scenario than I had originally thought, or worse.
Gurgling and chittering sounds drew her attention back to the creatures and their pot. Now that she spent more than half a second, which had mostly been stuck on the creepy eyes, she could examine them properly.
They looked to be just a bit over a meter tall. Each creature’s feet had four toe-like branches connected by a thin looking skin. Each toe was splayed dramatically far from its neighbors, with the far left and right toe on each foot being perpendicular to their knobby ankles. Their legs seemed to protrude more from the back side of their somewhat bulbous abdomens, vs. being centered like she might expect of a humanoid. Those backwards legs went back sharply before they bent dramatically forward at something she could only describe as a reverse knee joint. Once the leg was just a handful of centimeters in front of the body, another joint and small length of shin joined the leg to the foot.
As for their torso, it was something like a bloated summer-squash in shape if not color. They had an almost comically large waist and belly. She would have said fat, but as they began hop-stepping forward she noticed idly that they didn’t really jiggle much. That large belly rapidly thinned as it joined their chest, which were less than half the size. They had a small neck joining to heads which were only uniform in their non-uniformity. Some of them looked squashed, others stretched, still others were perfect balls. The bottom half of their heads were split entirely from one side to the other by a wide mouth full of teeth. She could see at least two rows of teeth, a front row that reminded her of sharks teeth, with a back-row that looked like a million long needles. They had a hole in the middle of their faces which were presumably their noses. She was able to see the profile of a few as they started making their way around the pot and saw they had little slit-like features on the sides of their heads, several rows of them, which she would have thought were gills on a fish. Maybe those were ears for these little freaks?
Last, their arms were horrific. They each had three arms, one which protruded directly from their chest, and two on either side of their torso. If that hadn’t been unsettling enough, their arms each had at least six joints as far as she could see, and she could see, because the arms didn’t seem to have almost anything in the way of fat or muscle. They seemed like bone covered with weird knobbly skin. The same knobbly skin the rest of their bodies were covered with. Their skin color ranged from a washed-out red, to a desaturated purple. Each hand ended in three long multi-jointed fingers, which were positioned far apart from each-other to allow them to grip things.
This was all too much to take in and Willow realized she had been staring dumbly for several seconds. Meanwhile the creatures weird gurgles and chirps had become more frantic and excited. They were hop-stepping toward Naomi and Kent, who had started to get themselves sorted and were looking around in confusion. Naomi was fully on her feet and turned toward the noises, letting out a shockingly loud shriek and fleeing in toward Willow, tripping over Kent’s leg as he was standing and sending them both back into a heap.
It was almost funny, really. The little creatures were definitely weird looking, but not really scary, per se. That was when Willow noticed that several of the little knobbly clawed hands had what looked like crude knives. More like sharpened rocks, but clearly weapons. She didn’t have any basis to judge their body language from, but as they approached swinging the “knives”, it seemed plenty threatening. They also seemed to be mostly intent on her clearly distracted companions.
She wasn’t really sure why Madrick had sent Naomi and Kent here with her, he’d seemed to imply he was only interested in her during their very brief and very weird interaction. Regardless of reasons, they were here and didn’t look like they were in any condition to defend themselves. Willow quickly moved forward, stepping around and in front of the two as they worked to right themselves.
Dropping into a defensive stance she shouted at the creatures, hoping the UICI could translate if they were smart enough to understand, “Stop there! We aren’t here to cause trouble.” Out of the six of them, the two closest to them paused. For the bare moment that they hesitated, Willow thought maybe they weren’t as monstrous as they looked and they could be reasoned with.
Then the nearest one screamed and leapt forward. The jump was absolutely incredible, eating the remaining three and half or so meters between them in a moment. Still on guard, Willow was surprised but not caught flat footed. She pivoted right and took a long strafing step in the same direction. The movement put her in the perfect position so that when the creature landed, seeming baffled to not see the strange caramel-skinned creature it was targeting in front of it, the full-force rabbit punch was received with no chance to defend or dodge.
Willow nearly vomited when her hand went into the creature’s shockingly soft skull. Then she yelped and spun into a snap kick with her right heel, having felt a sharp pain in her arm. Her foot connected with the chest of another of the creatures, throwing it violently back. She glanced at her arm and saw a shallow, but long, slash across it. She winced, multiple opponents… Coach always said I was sh… bad… at fighting multiple opponents. If you can hear me, oh wise Jim Conahey, thank you for insisting on making me practice anyway.
The two she’d struck so far had been in the lead and had apparently both done that leaping thing. The others hadn’t arrived yet, and had actually paused when they saw two of their number fall so easily. For just a brief second Willow thought that maybe she’d be able to scare them off. She took a threatening step forward and let out her best intimidating yell. It seemed to be working! Then the one she kicked sat up, shook it head, and screeched.
They all charged together. This time they came as a small swarm. Five opponents was a lot, or would be if they were human and skilled. These things though, they seemed both entirely untrained in any kind of fighting arts and so far they appeared stupid.
That being the case, she followed the advice of one of the instructors coach had introduced her to. Mr. Joseph was an ex-marine who taught a variant of Crav Maga. He had been one of her favorite instructors. The specific advice she was following now, “When you’re facing a lot of unskilled opponents, move through them. Don’t worry about fighting any of them. Just put them down. Don’t give them a chance to use their numbers. Put them off balance as a group.”
She charged. The creatures hesitated again and Willow took full advantage. She had a feeling she still couldn’t use her focus or her moment, but she didn’t need it here. As she passed the front line, she threw out an arm and clotheslined the smaller enemy which was so small she almost missed, but caught it in the throat with her fist. She didn’t stop, she slowed only slightly as she entered the enemy line proper. She threw quick downward jabs and kicks, but nothing that would truly slow her down. Nothing that would have connected with a skilled opponent. In this case, every strike landed.
When she reached the end she leapt, bringing a hard axe kick on the round head of the last enemy in their ranks. It squelched disgustingly. Don’t think about it. More enemies. Have knives. People to protect. Even if she wasn’t using her focus, she was still focused. She spun and charged back at the still disoriented and reeling enemies. The next part of Mr. Joseph’s advice now made sense, “Once you’ve gotten through your enemies, they’ll either be off balance and ready for you to take them down - Or they’ll be collecting themselves and you should run. If they can reorganize, it’s unlikely the same tactic will work again, even with unskilled opponents. Remember, people learn. Desperate and endangered people learn faster.”
She charged back into the reeling and furiously chattering creatures.
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Naomi
Dead Patch of Earth, Unknown, Savriâ
When Ki’ai’en had explained what he thought Madrick was going to do to her and Jonah, Naomi hadn’t really truly believed it. Yes, she’d died and come back to life… But a man opening portals? Sending people to other worlds that easily? There should be a big complicated ring surrounded by runes, chevrons even! A gateway! A ritual diagram on a floor with candles all around! Something more than some guy dressed like he only shopped at Halloween superstores and renaissance fares waving his hand for crying out loud!
Despite her misgivings, things had gone more or less as Ki’ai’en had thought they would. Willow woke up, started freaking out, rightfully so! And suddenly the guy just declared she was his disciple, then opened a freaking portal directly under her. Just like Ki’ai’en said. Jonah had leapt through the portal like he was doing a shallow dive, for some reason, and she’d followed. That was also just like Ki’ai’en said. She was thankful the drop was just a half meter or so or Jonah may have actually been hurt with his rough fall and her immediately landing on top of him.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Then just as she’d managed to get off of Jonah, who she felt guilty about knocking the air out of, she saw a bunch of little demon things! They were the creepiest and most unsettling little shits she’d ever seen! Her heart was pounding so fast as she tried to flee, just to trip over Jonah and fall over him again. She scrambled out quickly and got to her feet, helping him up without even looking as she desperately checked to see how close to eating her the little demons were.
That’s when she saw Willow destroy them. She moved through them like they were nothing. She was like a tornado, running between them without a single one managing to touch her. More than that, she seemed to punch or kick every single one on her way to the back. Then she crushed the last one’s skull, spun on her heel, and almost seemed to glide toward the now extremely disoriented group of nasty things. Then she killed them. Unlike her initial run, it wasn’t beautiful. It was horrifying.
She pulled back a fist, punching into a skull. Then she quickly took it out, shaking it, moved to the next, punched again, her first still went in but not as deep. By the third one she seemed to have found the right amount of force to kill the imps without actually putting her fist through their heads. Then she just did that twice more and there were no more little demon things. There were just three humans and a pot.
Naomi was panting, her adrenaline racing. Jonah had finally regained his feet, and Willow was calmly looking around with a disgusted expression, holding her hand up like she’d picked up something nasty and wanted somewhere to wash up.
Now that she looked around, Naomi could see there was nothing to wash up with. They were standing on what felt like hard packed clay. Looking around, they were in a large area of grey-colored cracked earth. There was no grass, no trees, no convenient stream or napkins or anything to clean off the gore. She saw what looked like trees in the distance, but they were much too far to be useful in the present. Willow apparently came to the same conclusion as she groaned, then proceeded to wipe it off on her jumper’s trousers.
“Uh… Thanks for… Saving us,” Naomi finished lamely.
Willow looked up at her, flashing her a quick smile, “No problem! Now, onto the most important matter at hand…” Two sets of eyes stared at her, clearly more than willing to follow her lead, as it sounded like she already had a plan.
She pointed toward the corpses, “What do we call those things? I’m leaning toward ‘spindle hoppers’. Is that too on the nose? Maybe ‘pop-hopper?’ They remind me a lot of those little popper toys I used to play with as a kid…” She trailed off with an intense thoughtful expression.
After several moments Jonah answered slowly, “Uhh… Sure, pop-hopper is fine.”
Naomi stared at the bodies for several moments, not entirely sure why pop-hopper instead of something like ‘arm-ey-imp’, or maybe ‘pear terror’, given their somewhat pear-ish figure. She wasn’t the ones that killed them all though, so she just gave a tentative, “Sure.”
Willow smiled again, clearly pleased, “Good! So with that critical decision made…”
She stopped and looked between the two of them, clearly doing her best to maintain the smile, “Ah… I don’t really know what to do next.” She looked around, smile finally fading as her face went through a huge range of emotions which Naomi couldn’t even begin to parse. Jonah walked over to the pot, eyes shooting looks at Willow which Naomi couldn’t decide were worshipful or wary. Both?
He made a face and gagging sound, staggering away. Still gagging and clearly trying to keep his last meal down he waved both women away from the pot frantically, “It’s nasty. I don’t know what they were doing, but I’ve never smelled anything that bad.”
Once he’d managed to get far enough away he couldn’t smell or see the contents anymore he explained more, “It looked like they had whole creatures in there. Some small hairy things. Maybe like rats or something? I’m not sure. It was all in something that looked like swamp water.” He gagged again just at the memory and neither woman made to approach the clearly disturbing pot.
Giving Jonah space to recover from the experience, Naomi turned the conversation to more practical matters, “What’s next?”
Willow blinked at the question as if startled by it, “Ah… I… I have no idea?” She looked around, wincing, “I don’t see any buildings or smoke in the distance that might indicate civilization or anything…”
Willow suddenly looked worried. The generally extremely controlled and mostly still girl was running her thumb along her lips and staring down with an intense concentration as she did her best to puzzle out next steps.
After a few seconds of thought, she looked up toward Jonah as he rejoined them in a little triangle formation. He shook his head, “I’m not really sure either. I really don’t know anything about the wilderness or surviving it.”
Naomi looked around again. The trees she could see seemed to start about the same distance away in any direction. They were in the center of a weird dead circle. She wasn’t sure how or why, though the creatures they, well, Willow, had fought and their pot being in the middle were certainly hints. What they were hints of, she had no idea.
She started thinking out loud, “Well we’ll need shelter and water first. It’s really hot, but it’s also shaded right now.” Looking up, she saw this was due to what appeared to be a heavy mist or fog that hung in the air several hundred meters up. It was strange, as she’d really only seen mist from above or the same level, not below. Shouldn’t mist fall down since the moisture in the air is denser?
Putting the strange phenomena aside, she continued, “We should assume the sun coming out will make the heat much harder to bare. Not to mention it’ll more directly burn away our sweat and cause dehydration to set in faster.”
The others were both looking at her when she brought her gaze back down from the strange mist. It made her nervous, but neither looked like they were ready to argue or complain about what she was saying. She continued, “So we should move toward the trees. It looks like it turns into a forest, which will at least give us some relief from the sun when it comes out. Trees also generally mean there will be sources of water somewhere nearby. Either that, or it rains here frequently enough for them to survive.” Or they’re mutant trees that don’t need water, or there’s an underground spring or something and we’ll die of dehydration before we can figure that out. She sternly pushed the negative thought aside and waited for both Willow and Jonah to nod.
Willow gave her a bright smile, “Great! Then I nominate you leader, since you have an idea of what to do.”
Looking at Jonah, Naomi was a bit surprised when he just nodded, “Sounds good. We’ll follow your lead.”
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Leading other people across a dead landscape toward an unknown and untamed forest was a very new, very strange experience. On one hand, it was quite literally a dream come true. On the other hand, she felt woefully unprepared. In all of her daydreams she’d always had time to plan an expedition. Of course, she had never bothered to plan anything. If she could manage to get out of bed, she generally used the small burst of energy to do laundry and the dishes before she inevitably collapsed on the couch to watch TV, then she’d realize it was time for bed and the cycle began again.
The days she felt good were the days she played games. She enjoyed the games she could feel useful in the best. Base building was good, some MMOs, though she wasn’t able to play consistently enough and sometimes playing would send her spiraling badly when she realized how useless she really was.
The absolute best games were survival games. They weren’t about min-maxing, they weren’t about knowing everything ahead of time, and they weren’t competitive. At least the ones she played. They were all about helping a smallish community of people survive and prosper, starting from nothing.
As she lead the others, Willow struck up a conversation with Jonah. It almost felt like she was playing one of those games now. It felt exactly like she’d always dreamed it would. Being part of a party, for real.
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Willow
Dead Patch of Earth, Unknown, Savriâ
The walk really wasn’t horrible, other than the heat. It was way too hot. The strange thing was, she didn’t feel nearly as thirsty as she thought she should. She was sweating so much that her jumpsuit was quite literally soaked through. Despite that, she did her best to stay positive.
The weird little monsters that she’d fallen almost literally in the middle of hadn’t killed and eaten her. She was clearly in a world of magic, which was just exciting all by itself. She even had companions! Companions who she didn’t feel guilty about indirectly dragging into a dangerous and potentially deadly situation. Yep, I don’t feel guilty because there’s nothing to feel guilty about. It’s not my fault. You hear that, guilt?! Go away! It’s not my fault!
Failing to convince her unwanted emotional tag-along, she looked for something more productive. She needed to get to get to know her new buddies!
“Naomi, Kee-Jonah.” Kent narrowed his eyes at her, definitely not realizing she was still thinking of him as Kent. She continued smoothly, “What were your lives like, back on earth I mean?”
Naomi glanced back at her, then returned her focus to leading them forward. Willow wasn’t exactly sure what she was keeping an eye out for, given they could see literally everything on the burned earth. Every little stone and boulder was obvious for kilometers. Jonah just looked away from her.
She winced, “Sorry, I guess dying is still a bit of a sore subject?”
“Not really.” Kent answered first, “It’s just my life wasn’t really anything much worth talking about.”
“What? I don’t think I understand. Why wouldn’t it be?” She wished she could watch him and watch where she was going so she could read his expressions. I’m supposed to look at people when they talk to me, darn it! Unfortunately, the dead ground was just uneven and pitted enough to require keeping at least some attention on walking, without truly being treacherous or interesting.
He sighed deeply, “I just wasn’t able to do a ton and wasn’t particularly good at anything that I did do. I had really really bad sight. Without my glasses everything was essentially one big blob of indistinct colors, barely even shapes… With my glasses I could make out shapes, but not really much else. I was also born without the ability to use my legs, at all. Things were… Rough. So I don’t really have anything super interesting to tell you about myself, y’know?”
“Oh, well…” Willow was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to say what she was thinking. “That doesn’t sound particularly fun, I won’t argue… But I’m definitely interested to hear about how life was for you like that, you know? It’s really different from the life I had. I’m sure some of it is probably hard to talk about, and we probably shouldn’t start with that since we literally met like… Today? Yesterday? Something like that.”
She glanced his way and saw he was looking at her, they locked eyes for a moment before they both turned to look forward and avoid stumbling needlessly. She continued, “But I’d definitely love to hear about what everyday was like at least? I’m sure it seems uninteresting to you, since it was normal… But… To me it sounds pretty fascinating to learn how you overcame those challenges every day.”
Naomi chipped in quickly, “Yeah, I’d love to hear about it too!”
After walking a bit longer in silence Kent let out a soft chuckle, “Alright, well… I worked as a day trader to support myself. Aside from that, I think I spent the most time listening to audio books. A normal day kind of went like this…”
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The walk had gone much faster once Willow had managed to get Kent talking. Naomi, on the other hand, was mostly quiet. She’d spoken a bit, and answered a few questions, but seemed pretty reluctant to talk about herself. She was happy enough to engage in the conversation, just as long as the focus wasn’t on her directly. She interjected to add thoughts, or ask questions, but avoided or redirected questions about herself.
Still, they walked in the blazing heat for five hours and it hadn’t felt all that bad. Only when she thought about the heat. She knew it had been five hours, because the clock in the top right corner of her UICI let her keep track. Without that, she’d have had no real clue. If there was a sun hidden behind that weird layer of gas in the air at all, she didn’t know if it was moving. The day hadn’t gotten any brighter, darker, or cooler, and thankfully not any warmer. Everything seemed stuck in a moment of time here. A bad, sweaty, hot moment.
Now, though, at last, they reached the trees! They had started passing by stationary trees a while ago, then small groups, and now they were entering what could only be considered a forest. Or is it a jungle? What’s the difference, again? As soon as they stepped under the canopy of feather-like leaves of the oddly smooth-barked trees, it was like they’d stepped indoors. The temperature dropped dramatically. She’d guess it was at least a 20 degree celcius difference.
She threw her hands in the air and shouted in triumph, “WE FOUND THE FOREST OF A/C! WE’RE SAVED!!!”