His heart already at a rapid pace leapt into his throat on the way down. He managed to get his hands mostly beneath him for all the good it did. A crisscross impression on his face bought his attention in moments. A rope net trap?!?
He attempted to roll free though was somewhat hindered by the orb pole and .357 occupying his hands.
Jumping back up to his feet became more of an undignified clamor with how his foot had managed to get tangled in grass and roots, and how he was busier checking his surroundings than looking at the intricacies of untangling his foot.
Eventually he managed it however, and more importantly verified that he wasn’t going to be immediately attacked on this side, and noticed a lack of ropes either. When he looked closer he found only a stick with a particularly perpendicular off-shoot.
Relief crashed through him harder than the demon-apes ever could have, and he crumpled back into a seated position, the reprieve interrupted only by sporadic glances around to make sure nothing was going to attack again.
Once his heart fell back to subsonic speeds, his mind drifted more into anxiety than panic, and his will to remain stationary routed, he stood up and began to investigate his surroundings more thoroughly.
Then the pain hit. Every ache and over stressed mussel, every bruise and scrape suddenly given voice with a vengeance at being silenced by adrenaline. He stalled a moment flinching with a hiss before reopening his eyes and investigating his surroundings. As he had seen through the portal there was a lot of greenery. There was nothing but dense woodland for what little distance he could see through the various shinnery. Most importantly though, there was no sign of any Ape Demons or other immediate threats. He holstered his .357 for now.
Then he checked himself over. Some minor bleeding from various abrasions but nothing that wouldn’t clot on its own, nothing looked terribly swollen, at least. A gentle pat down of himself revealed several tender spots that he was growing increasingly aware of, but no overtly sharp, or excessive pain that might indicate… internal bleeding? Or broken bones or something. So he was at least in one piece and hadn’t lost anything he was aware of to the portal.
He also still had the orb and its staff, his phone in his pocket, his .357, wallet and a few loose rounds.
He went to check the time on his phone, shutoff. He held the power button. With a creeping sense of dread
No, It had a full battery this morning, maybe an hour and a half ago? Two?
Hmm maybe the portal drained it somehow. The town had been having issues with batteries too.
He didn’t even get a ‘charge me’ notification, and dropped it back in his pocket.
Probably Bricked, or will be by the time I get back. Maybe I can get lucky enough to manage a way to charge it later, somehow. Or it will be usable once I get back, maybe.
He started to wal-- stagger his way in a direction that looked like it had the least overgrowth a few steps before he thought better.
He stepped back to the area where the portal had been. There was nothing that made the area stand out at all. Other than the sticks he remembered landing on, he couldn’t tell it apart from the area around it, so he grabbed a good sized fallen branch and shoved it into the soft loam to mark the location. Then he attempted to rub some bark off of the nearest tree, but it wasn’t similar to the oaks that would allow him to do so relatively easily, and unfortunately he didn’t have any knife or Leatherman with him to simplify the task.
Looking closer at the local flora, the trees looked to have a much tighter, thin bark, reminiscent of an elm or pine tree. The leaves were vaguely normal leaf shaped. Everything else about them was… odd. They grew sturdy trunks with limbs that ended in naturally formed… ‘bunches’ or maybe ‘shells’ of limbs and leaves that were open on the bottom.
Additionally, the local undergrowth broadly seemed to come in two types that he could see, thick shinnery type bush style that was more dense and stout than its short-ish stature seemed to call for, even when compared to hardy shrubbery he was used to seeing in Texas. Then there were vines that wanted to climb over everything with broad fern-like leaves of a gosmer-esque quality and thickness from highpoints, and select locations.
Looking at the ground where he had been walking he noted how the local grass approximations took to footprints and what the difficulty of tracking would be. First impressions were interesting. The gossamer vine-fern was very prevalent, making an attempt at being ground cover anywhere it didn’t have a route up. They had a strong but brittle central stem that broke cleanly when pressured. The fern-like leaves however were strong. Probably a budding reproduction cycle?
Unfortunately this meant that the fern-vine was practically custom built for making tracking easier, as anytime he stepped on, or past one he was likely to snap some off and create an easily readable trail. Luckily the other prevalent ‘grasses’ held truer to the label, and in fact might even be MORE springy and durable than those he was familiar with. So while they wouldn’t hide a trail perfectly, he imagined they would make it more ‘art’ than ‘science’ for anyone who wasn’t immediately behind him. IF he kept from making any other markings of his passage… then scent, and anything high-tech enough to invalidate his efforts would be the most likely to get him killed. Unfortunately there wasn’t really anything he could do to mitigate those at this point.
He glanced at the orb which seemed to be on the tail end of shutting off, or failing to function. He had no idea how to tell which, other than the lack of sparkles coming out, and that it wasn’t doing some kind of Hollywood stutter stop. So, that was probably good? Maybe he’d be able to get it to work again to take him back home. Wherever that was.
Of more immediate concern was the possibility of some sort of radiation, or unique aspects that might make it a literal beacon to anyone looking. He was tempted to prioritize getting away from it to keep from absorbing any weird radiation it might be giving off after having the shell (maybe shielding?) busted up like that. But if he was being followed via the orb, then getting his only way home taken away to protect himself, was rather moot. It would just have to come with him.
He continued swiveling his head, but was unable to see anything that might make for a good landmark. Finally he listened to the growing vague anxiety of being caught by… basically anything that might be curious about the portal and come looking, probably via some method of triangulation or tracking. He had no knowledge of where he was or what might come looking, but he’d rather he got first look than get found with his hands in his pockets and hope they were helpful. It was time to be anywhere but here.
Just as he was about to head in a direction vaguely in line with the portal's opening, he heard voices coming his way from that same direction. He froze for a moment before ducking behind shrubbery and slowly shuffling his way further from the ex-portal location. The game trail he had ducked into ran at a slight off angle from the path the voices were originating from.
If he kept an eye on where he placed his feet, kept the Orb and its staff from tangling and banging into the growth or ground; then the undergrowth proved to be wonderfully quiet. He was able to keep low as the locals sauntered into the area. Oliver was rather dumbstruck by their appearance. He had expected advanced aliens, or more likely, more demon-like apes with a grudge. But as he caught glimpses through the deep shrubbery, they appeared instead, human. First guess would have been Polynesian heritage, though there were oddities.
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They were wearing an assortment of rags that used to be various clothes, and their most complex weapons were crude bows that were literally a tree limb strung at the ends. Two had such bows, and the other 3 had crude spears.
What? … is this it?
Not only did they appear to be people barely figuring out how to manage wilderness survival, they didn’t appear to be good at hunting or awareness in general. He hadn’t had time to hide well, and though he was sure his black light hoodie helped disguise him some, If they were paying attention to their surroundings he felt they should have noticed him.
These people are not hardened by fighting, closer to refugees stomping about the woods. Which makes no sense.
They marched past him jabbering in some musical language, occasionally poking at a nearby shrub as though they would find anything like that, while failing to look at really much of anything.
Searching out of obligation not desire? Not like I would be able to hide in the shrubs they are searching. Maybe they don’t even know what they are looking for, only a general direction… Or maybe they aren't even looking for me specifically?
He let the mystery of their mismatching behavior drop from his mind as they disappeared around a bend and crept back out and looked at the game trails he was on, and the one they had come from.
He thought about his options. Check wherever they came from? Away? He quickly decided that for all intents and purposes he was lost in an alien environment, with the portal being his only point of reference aside from their direction of origin. If somehow he was on earth, then the peoples’ skin tone placed him somewhere vaguely Pacific, Greece, Spain, or northern Africa, maybe? But he had never seen plants like these before. The trees with almost pod-like branches would have certainly been featured in some nature documentaries. They looked like something out of Star Wars. Maybe another dimension or time travel?
Following the… hunting party, if they could be called that would EVENTUALLY get him spotted, regardless of their incompetence. He had no desire to place himself at their mercy. Certainly not before he knew their motivations.
Likewise, whatever group or encampment they had come from was probably not something he wanted to be at the mercy of until he understood them better and if they might be sympathetic.However, wandering aimlessly through the woods was not likely to help him much. He’d cautiously check their direction of origin and see where that left him..
His mind hardly stilled as he crept through the bizarre woods. There were far too many things that he was distinctly uncomfortable with going on simultaneously. He quickly gave up on staying in a half crouch to reduce visibility. He was simply too sore from his escape to manage it, but he continued to step carefully, avoiding stepping on locations that would leave a clear footprint as best he could, and ducking past, or under the vine-ferns to keep from leaving a trail.
With the ‘hunting party’ and their voices having faded into the distance, he could hear various creatures as they began to move about, and call to each other once more, none of their noises familiar to him. Occasionally he would see something that would quickly startle and flee his presence, small birds, squirrel like creatures and the like. Plenty were ‘earth like’ but he couldn’t claim familiarity with any of them specifically.
He spotted places where the pod-branches had fallen to the forest floor. Even a newer looking one, but it looked as though the tree had shunted it and was growing new from the branches stump. The opening of the pod had a trail of clawed paw prints going in and out. He left it alone as he continued.
He’d never been good with time but if he had to guess… probably 40 minutes of slowly creeping along the path (though would have been closer to 15 had he kept anything like a decent pace) He began to hear a growing clamor of a camp in the distance. His speed slowed further as he approached. Then again as he began to smell it when the wind shifted. It was certainly a camp, Of sorts. Tent city was a better descriptor. Filthy and disorganized, its people even more so, most looking at least somewhat worse than the group that had left. There was no visible fence or boundary, other than the vague circle where they had not trampled or cut the plants back.
He backtracked to the nearest game trail, and paid more attention to the ‘crossroads’ and surroundings than he initially had. The branching trail bore signs of recent heavy activity, but wasn’t nearly as worn as the old path that went into the camp. That told as much story as anything else.
Animals preferred to take the path of least resistance. They had previously pathed through the middle of where this camp now was, but then the humans had moved in and started using the main path for patrols, and likely hunting parties. The animals were quick to avoid them even if it meant carving new paths, and had been traveling around the camp to avoid them since.
Considering how beaten down the new path was, there was clearly plenty of wildlife within easy reach, but the people still looked half starved. That left a few possibilities. First, that the people weren't ALLOWED to hunt the animals in the area, and feared reprisal more than their own stomachs. Second, that at least some of the wildlife wasn’t edible, or at least dangerous for consumption. Finally, what Oliver considered most likely; the camp was largely incompetent on how to survive and be self-sufficient.
Recalling what he had seen of the camp, the mismatch of materials and attitude he could imagine they had done the equivalent of raiding an outdoor store and then made attempts to do activities they associated ‘camping’ and ‘survival’ while holding very little knowledge on how to actually accomplish said goals.
To top it off, they were likely despirited by whatever had forced them into such a situation, desperate and extremely prone to mob mentality over rational thought.
If the church had been a risky and uncomfortable prospect to visit, then this camp was an unaware deathtrap, even if he assumed they were merely patrolling/hunting around, and not hunting for him already.
Ignoring his protesting mussels once more, he crept along the new game trail. Despite being far enough away from the camp that he couldn’t see it, he stilled every time he heard a new commotion from the camp, and watched for any motion along the game trail.
Eventually it intersected another of the camp's commandeered trails. He crept to it, listening and watching through the foliage for more of the campers on patrol. Seeing nothing he stepped out and checked the wear. This one might have been slightly more beat down than the other had, at a similar distance from the camp, but not by much. Though the consistency of fresh growth, even on broken or abused foliage was making him think it was deep into the spring season here compared to an early spring back home. Hopefully he would find a decent location to hunker down, or leave entirely, before any serious rains blew through.
After stilling and straining his ears and eyes for any signs of someone approaching, he moved towards the camp to confirm his current angle and distance. Risky, but he didn’t have any other relevant points of reference, and getting lost due to overconfidence could be a greater risk to his survival.
He had progressed perhaps a third of the circumference of the camp, and judging by the distance he had traveled from the intersection, had ended up being angled further away than he had previously thought.
He waited a bit in the brush offset from the trail, where he could peek into seeing bits of the camp without being noticed. He didn’t notice anything more than people continuing to be distraught and lazing about the camp. He was about to leave when a man with thuggish escorts wielding pipes, branches, and other ‘billy-club surrogates for the desperate survivor’ showed up. The man began shouting some rhetoric, the people began to gather around, visibly perking up at his presence, as he waited for them to crowd in to listen to him.
Oliver got the sense that this was something that was a known and expected event. The campers finding this an amusement. The brutes had set up some manner of soap box on slightly raised ground, before standing in a manner to prevent the crowd from clustering too close. With most of the camp gathered, and himself positioned, he began to lay into things.
At first the people seemed mostly amused and laughing at the mans antics, and he, supportively nodding along with their amusement. Then he said something in an aggressive tone that made the people look thoughtful, before chasing it with a blistering tirade while they were busy mentally adjusting. By the end he must have asked some kind of question as he got a few staggered shouts of “iez!” as a form of agreement, not many though.
The man continued to rouse support but with no understanding of what was being said, Oliver decided it better to make use of his distraction to leave. He crept the same angled direction he'd taken through the undergrowth to the trail at a point out of sight, and made haste back towards the game trail intersection before the camp might disperse once more.