I managed to get a decent sleep that night despite the lurker on the forest floor, and when I woke up, there was no acrid stench scalding my respiratory system. I was initially confused by the wall of red needles surrounding me, but then I glanced down at the eighty foot drop between me and the ground.

Everything came rushing back to me as I took stock of the throbbing in my left arm, and my muscles were so stiff I wheezed as I sat up straighter. The rain had stopped sometime while I slept, and the sun must have just risen because the woods were tinged with a dim blue light. No birds were chirping in the trees, but I could hear the soft call of the rabbits near the river, and I tried to stretch my limbs back to life without falling right off the branch.

I immediately regretted moving my left arm, and warm blood oozed into the wrappings as the pain doubled. The dull ache in my chest was finally gone at least, so that was something, and I decided I’d take care of these sword wounds first thing.

Now that my adrenaline wasn’t through the roof, my back and left arm were searing with pain, and I had hundreds of miles ahead of me if I was going to escape the Red Forest. I probably wouldn’t fare too well out here with only one good arm, and I needed to find something to eat so I’d be able to keep up a brisk pace for most of the day.

I started climbing back down the tree while I scouted the area along the way. I had no idea where the boundaries of Hylmrek were, but with a set of ramparts that big, their clan would have plenty of warriors to patrol their lands. Plus, there was the issue of the bow I chucked into the woods outside the stronghold.

If that Viking chick didn’t find it before the night guards, then I’d have even more of Hylmrek’s warriors to worry about than I already did, but I couldn’t muster much irritation over this. I was the one who threw the damn thing, and after my first run-in with those hulking Vikings, I could understand where the woman was coming from.

Sort of.

I was confused about most of what she’d said last night, but her clan didn’t strike me as the most forgiving type of people, and I could imagine what might happen to her if the chieftain found out she murdered her own clansmen and let the trespasser live. On the other hand, those guys were quick to advise me to kill her myself, and I shook my head as I struggled to grasp what kind of laws these Vikings operated under.

Either way, I got the answers I needed out of the woman, and I knew my best bet was to head two hundred miles upriver until I made it into the northern mountains. I seriously doubted those mountains would be the Alaska Range, but if they were even remotely similar, and not infested with Vikings, then that was good enough for me.

Right now, I wasn’t sure how far I was from Hylmrek’s stronghold, which was my more immediate issue. I guessed I may have run about seven miles after I crossed the river last night, but this wasn’t nearly as far away as I wanted to be, so I hustled to get going on my day as quickly as possible.

The process of climbing down to the ground took longer than it should have since my left arm was inflamed from the effort, and I couldn’t seem to utilize the muscles properly, either. After I scouted the riverbank, I snuck down the ridge and positioned myself behind the steepest outcropping of stone I could find, and I glanced toward the cloudy sky.

The day was lightening up quickly, so I’d be a lot easier to spot pretty soon, and I didn’t waste any time as I pulled my jacket off and knelt at the water’s edge.

My entire left arm was crusted with blood, and the fabric I used to wrap my wounds was drenched all the way around. I pulled my shirt off before I cut the wrappings away with my knife, and I laid flat on my stomach to ease my whole arm into the river. The cold water countered the pain by a few degrees while I stayed where I was for several minutes, and I carefully rubbed the blood away as I tried not to piss off the wounds even more. Then I pulled my arm back out, and I sat up as I took stock of the damage.

My forearm was sliced near my outer elbow, but my jacket kept the blade from cutting too deep on this one. It was a clean cut, without too much reddening, so I figured it would heal alright, but the last strike I’d taken to my upper arm was much worse.

The sword actually hadn’t torn my bicep, but it slashed across the brachialis muscle on my outer arm, and every time I shifted the muscle, the gaping wound separated over an inch deep.

“Son of a bitch,” I sighed as a fresh stream of blood seeped out, and I let my arm go limp in my lap.

I had no means of stitching the wound up out here, but keeping enough blood in me would be an issue real soon if I wanted to get any use out of my arm today. This meant I needed to shift my priorities around, and I decided I’d skip breakfast. Once I was fixed up a little and a few miles farther from Hylmrek, I’d find something to eat, but for now, I gulped down plenty of water and grabbed my things from the riverbank.

Then something unexpected caught my attention as I stood up, and I narrowed my eyes as I looked down at the marking on my bare chest.

“What the hell?” I muttered.

Right at the center, there was a perfectly circular scar that spanned about seven inches in diameter, and three interlocking triangles were positioned inside the ring. I’d never seen the mark before in my life, but it looked like it had been carved into my skin ages ago, and an uneasy feeling settled in my gut as I traced my fingertips across the ancient scar tissue.

I’d assumed the dull ache I had in my chest yesterday was from the crash at the Matanuska, but this symbol was placed above the same spot, and I couldn’t imagine how something so distinct could have gotten there. The lines were centimeters thick and should have been bloody or scabbed if they were carved out around the time I arrived in the Red Forest, but they were already pale and fully healed.

I retraced the strange scarring a few times while I tried to make any sense of the mark, but my arm was dripping blood all over the stones now, and I knew I couldn’t risk lingering on the open riverbank any longer than I needed to.

Every second I stayed in this spot could mean I’d end up in another deathmatch come nightfall, and I tried to regroup while I swiftly crept up the ridge to duck back beneath the tree line. Then I headed deeper into the forest, and I decided not to look back at my chest. The clock was ticking on this day already, and I could only address one disturbing factor at a time.

I dropped my jacket and shirt at the base of a gnarled tree, and I double-checked the area while I pulled my knife from my belt. Then I knelt down to study one of the black breaks on the ashen trunk.

Most trees had sap in them, but these ones resembled pines to some degree, and I could see a few beads of crystalized sap embedded at the center of the breaks. I took this as an indicator I could harvest some resin from the red trees, and I used the tip of my knife to pick a couple of the beads off before I popped them between my fingertips.

Then I grinned as fresh resin burst out, and it smelled almost exactly like the pine sap back home. The scent was a little sweeter than I was used to, but when I dabbed some of the sap on the tip of my tongue, it tasted almost the same as pine too, and I nodded before I started slicing into the bark in a thin V shape.

I only needed to collect enough sap to seal my upper wound since I couldn’t stitch it, but pine resin was also a natural antiseptic and anti-inflammatory, and the last thing I needed out here was for this larger gouge to get infected.

Once I had a V-shape cut half an inch deep in the tree, I sheathed my blade and pulled out my Leatherman tool, and I used the pliers to peel the bark back until I exposed a swatch of wood underneath. The tree was already beginning to bleed fresh sap, and I swiped some onto my finger before I held it up toward the light in the boughs.

The resin was a lighter amber color than pine, but it was completely clear without any impurities in it, and I sighed with relief as I began dabbing the sap at the corner of my deepest wound.

It stung like hell, but I kept harvesting more from the tree as I fed it into the wound, and the bleeding slowed within minutes of sealing half the gouge. Then I packed more in to finish it off, and I started on the cut on my forearm since the tree had plenty more resin pooling at the base of the V.

By the time I finished, I was able to apply an extra layer on my upper arm, and I made sure it covered the skin surrounding the gash so it would hold more firmly while I ran. I still couldn’t move my arm too much without reopening the muscles, but the bleeding had stopped, and I regathered my things to clean the residual blood off my arm real quick.

I ended up dunking my coat sleeve in the river too, just so I wouldn’t be trailing so strong a stench of blood along with me, and I ignored the mark on my chest while I carefully pulled my shirt back on. Then I hitched my jacket in the crook of my arm, and I started running north just as the clouds finished lightening to a bright gray.

I stuck within a quarter mile of the riverbank along the way, and I kept up a steady pace and a constant scan of the forest around me. I was never a cross country running type, and the sword belt I took from the dead Viking weighed me down more than usual, but I hiked regularly at higher elevations than this. Granted, my back twinged painfully with every step from the drop I’d taken off the ridge, but the flat terrain had my muscles protesting a lot less than they could have, and I was able to keep going without any breaks for over an hour.

At that point, I only stopped long enough to get water and catch my breath for a few minutes, and I continued heading north until I made it about twenty miles from where I started. I finally slowed to a walk around then while I started looking for another stick I could use to make a spear, and I found one not too long after. Then I settled in on the forest floor, and I sliced another bit of fabric from the bottom of my shirt.

My upper arm was bleeding a little, but it didn’t hurt half as much as it had before, and the topmost layer of sap was solidifying well thanks to the chilly breeze. I left it alone for now as I built another knife spear for myself, and in twenty minutes, I was hunkered down in a cluster of thorns and clipping the wings off two rabbits.

Once the meat was skewered and roasting over a small fire, I pulled out my sharpening stone, and I started sharpening the dagger I stole from the dead Viking since it needed it badly.

The trees here were more of the same, of course, but the air felt damper and a little colder, and the thorns had gotten less abundant over the last five miles or so. A new plant species started to appear that actually seemed to like growing farther from the riverbank, and it reminded me of ivy, but with large, deep-purple leaves that had eight prongs on them. The vines didn’t only climb up the ashen trunks, they sprawled across the forest floor in smaller, spindly crops as well, and the flying rabbits who congregated on the white stones ventured into the woods to feed on the leaves and stems.

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The rabbits were much more skittish when they weren’t camouflaged near the river, so they scattered in the air whenever I got within five yards of the purple plants, but I hoped this was a sign my diet would be more varied soon. I wouldn’t be able to sustain myself on one type of meat for weeks on end, especially one as lean as rabbit, but this notion only reminded me I still had no idea what I was doing here, or how long I’d be in this world.

I switched to sharpening the sword as my brow knitted at the thought.

During the miles of running this morning, I’d mulled over many things, and I was almost convinced I wasn’t on Earth anymore. I couldn’t be certain just yet, but my talk with the Viking woman last night hadn’t reassured me of much in this department, and the fact that I’d probably never see her again made the idea of sticking around in a new world way less intriguing.

The jury was still out on where exactly the Red Forest was, and the term she’d used to name the place in her language was completely foreign to me, but this wasn’t all I’d thought about during my run.

I’d also considered the situation with the mark on my chest, and ultimately, I came to the conclusion there wasn’t much to be done about it. I had no idea where the strange symbol had come from, and I didn’t recognize it from anywhere. This was unsettling, but it was literally carved into my skin now, and as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything I could do to change that. Maybe it would lead me to a few answers down the line once I made it out of the forest, but random scars on my body were low on my list of priorities for now.

I focused on sharpening my small collection of blades while I kept half an eye on the woods, and I was so hungry and exhausted that I scalded my mouth devouring the cooked meat before it had cooled. I had no regrets, though. These flying rabbits were delicious, and I’d run farther in the last two days than I had in the last year.

But I still had hundreds of miles to go, and I didn’t want to sit around my cooking spot any longer than I had to. I wanted to be well beyond the bounds of Hylmrek before I slept tonight, and as soon as I finished eating, I tamped out the last of the flames. Then I pocketed the fabric I used for my spear, sheathed my knife, and eased my injured arm back into my jacket.

I cringed for the first ten minutes of my journey, but eventually, my muscles loosened up again, and I was able to fall into an easy rhythm that was only a little slower than before. I didn’t run into any more Vikings all morning, and even the wild cats didn’t make an appearance. The view in the forest was so unchanging I mostly checked out after another hour of running nonstop, but about an hour and a half past that, I had to start walking instead.

My hips ached from lugging my boots around all this time, and my back had given up on life hours ago. It was just a flaming knot back there now, and I was seeing spots in my vision after breathing hard for hours on end. I guessed that all in all, I was around thirty-five, maybe forty miles from Hylmrek’s stronghold, but I couldn’t be sure since my pace had started to lag a couple hours ago. I knew I couldn’t keep running all day long if I wanted my legs to still be functioning tomorrow, so I resigned myself to walking as far as I could make it by sundown.

Despite the haul I had ahead of me, knowing I wouldn’t be facing any more of Hylmrek’s warriors almost put a smile on my face.

Seeing a wider variety of wildlife perked me up too, and I started keeping tabs on the creatures more than I scanned for Vikings. The beasts were heartier upriver while the plants got less coarse, and the purple ivy outnumbered the thorns tenfold in this part of the Red Forest. Black lichen blooms dotted the white stones and covered whole slabs in some cases, and I found a new species of bird that resembled a magpie, but was twice as large, nesting in dirt burrows near the riverside. They were hunting both the flying rabbits and the creepy weasels, but I saw less and less of the latter as I walked on.

Instead, the badger hybrids predominated up here along with something that yipped like a fox and never came out of hiding, and I wondered what it was about this area that attracted a more abundant ecosystem. The temperature was ten degrees colder in these parts and dropping, but three new hawk-like birds crossed my path with their sharp eyes scanning the forest floor for prey, and I decided I’d made the right decision by heading north.

Less Vikings and more hunting was exactly what I needed.

Then I saw a wall of wood standing on end through the trees ahead, and a stream of curses cycled through my mind as I realized I was coming up to another stronghold.

It took me half a second to dive behind the cover of an ancient tree, and my first thought was I was probably being watched by a band of Vikings already. Hell, they could have been trailing me for miles while I wandered aimlessly into their territory, and it was too light outside for me to find any kind of easy cover.

I was also too worn out to take off on another ten mile loop-de-loop, so I scanned the forest for the lowest branch I could find, and I ducked close to the ground while I bolted over. Then I hauled myself up as I tried not to use my left arm more than necessary, but it was still throbbing as much as my back by the time I steadied myself against the trunk to climb a little higher.

I checked everywhere every few seconds as I slowly worked my way upward, and once I was sure I couldn’t be reached by any stealthy means, I looked toward the ramparts once again.

Now that I had a clearer view, I noticed the defensive walls couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet high, and they were made of scraggly bundles of branches instead of whole trunks like I’d seen at Hylmrek. There were no burly guards pacing the outer perimeter either, but three lookout platforms were mounted around the interior of the walls. Luckily, two of them were unoccupied, and whoever was guarding the third had his back turned to me while he sat down low with his head dropped to the side.

I craned my neck to check that no one else was on patrol, and then I started the trek along the sturdier branches from one tree to the next.

I was getting so used to traversing the treetops that I made it four trees over in half the time despite my injured arm, and the closer I came to the scraggly wall, the more curious I got. I could hear the bustle of a busy day taking place on the other side, but the smell of roasting meat and hot iron lured me in more than anything else.

Then I got my first glimpse of a genuine village within the Red Forest, and I crouched down low in the branches while I studied the humble, triangular huts.

They weren’t much more than branches covered over with heaps of forest debris, but the huts varied in size, and the oldest ones were grown over with deep-purple vines. Others were just being built over ash-covered clearings, and dozens of these huts were crammed together on either side of dark dirt lanes. Large water troughs were placed every twenty feet or so along the lanes, and they looked to be used for gathering rainwater while smaller troughs were placed beside huts to catch the runoff from the roofs.

For a space no larger than half a city block, the enclosed village was overrun with inhabitants, and any hut that had a small yard out front had no less than five people occupying it.

More importantly, the villagers didn’t look like Vikings at all.

None of them were armed, they were all dressed in what may as well have been rags, and half of them didn’t have anything on their bare feet. Every threadbare shawl was stained with layers of dirt, food, and possibly blood, and some of the villagers sat straight in the water troughs to wash themselves with their rags still on. The majority were toiling in the yards or hunched at tables under lean-tos, and that’s when I realized half of these huts were actually makeshift shops.

There were tanneries with hides tied up on scraping beams to be fleshed, and five stooped old men seemed to have a whole carpentry shop set up in their muddy yard. A boy who couldn’t have been six was struggling to roll a loaded barrel three-times his size down a lane, and he was headed to a large hut that had a dozen more barrels lined up outside already.

Then I noticed a group of dwarves working a trio of forges under an open-air shelter.

I leaned a bit in curiosity.

Their workspace was the sturdiest out of all the ones I saw, and they had hatches above their forges so they could open them while they worked. Stacks of smithing tools were laid out on their worktables along with actual sheets of what looked like steel, and I blinked a few times while I wondered if I was imagining all this.

Then my attention drifted to an elderly woman nearby with long, pointed ears, and my eyes went wide.

“The fuck?” I whispered to myself.

The closer I looked at the villagers in the lanes, the more I found people with ears just as pointed as hers, and as it dawned on me some of these occupants were actually elves, my fingers began to tingle in shock.

“Yeah, this… this isn’t Earth,” I muttered as I watched an elven man spin a small blue orb of light several inches above his palm. “Holy shit.”

The realization should have hit me like a train wreck, but I was too in awe of everything I was seeing to fully absorb the fact.

Bearded and soot-faced dwarves were forging broadswords by the dozens in this village, and an elderly man kept his spinning wheel turning with a twirl of his finger from three feet away. Elven women tapped on flower pods to make them bloom in seconds despite the cold weather, and a man who looked to be half-goat was using his hooves to mix a vat of fresh clay just inside his hut entrance.

My gaze landed on a pale and gaunt woman in a tattered purple gown next, and her palms were raised toward a hive of bees while she sat alone in her yard on a weathered chair. She had the features of a regular human from where I stood, but as she slowly shifted her hands to the side, a swarm of honeybees drifted where she directed them like they were under a spell. Then the bees landed in a wild little patch of flowers that grew in a trough beside her, and the woman yawned while the swarm began pollinating the blooms.

I shook my head in disbelief as the haggard woman conducted her swarm back and forth between the flowers and the hive a few times over, but my attention eventually drifted to her face.

The woman in the purple dress had dark bags under her drooping eyes, and I expected her to pass out any second, but she kept dragging her eyelids open while she worked. On closer inspection, I realized even the bees seemed too tired to fly, and I glanced up the road to the boy with the enormous barrel.

He’d gotten his foot crushed under the wood when the barrel rolled back on him, and only one man in a torn-up tunic shuffled over to help him. I could tell from one glance the man was too old and shaky to do much, and he had to have been as worn out as Larry at his age. Then he hollered for another man to give him a hand, and as I heard him speak in English, clarity came crashing over me.

His accent was closer to someone from the UK, if a little rougher around the edges, but the Viking woman at Hylmrek said I spoke the language of the slaves, and I considered the closed-in and humble village before I looked back at the guarded entrance.

The iron doors of the village were barred from the outside, like the occupants weren’t allowed to leave, and I had only just pieced the ragged scene together when frantic screams rose up somewhere in the dirt lanes.

The sleeping guard shot to his feet on his platform a second later, but it was already too late.

An onslaught of Vikings were dropping over the scraggly ramparts on the far side of the slave village, and the guard turned to grab something from the floor of his station as two huts caught fire. Then a flock of blood-red birds shot into the sky in a streak of feathers, and I lost track of how much was happening as the one guard in the village dove from the wall and ran into the forest to save himself.

Whole rows of shops were in flames already while slaves of all ages tried to escape, but the entrance wouldn’t budge, and the incoming Vikings were faster than any of them.

These warriors weren’t wearing the same garb of Hylmrek though, and I furrowed my brow at the deep, bluish-black sashes the Vikings wore.

I didn’t recognize the pelts, but this clan wore charcoal markings that differed in design from the four I’d met so far, and their black leather armor was studded with spikes along the shoulders. All of them wielded nothing but broadswords as they swarmed the streets, but when I looked more closely, I could tell they weren’t striking out at the inhabitants.

Half of the Vikings were only trying to terrify everyone into a frenzy as they threw torches into huts and threatened to slice off the limbs of everyone they chased down, but the other half were rounding up as many slaves as they could catch.

Whichever clan these guys were from, they were here to raid the village of both goods and people, and they threw bundles of wool and half-roasted game over the ramparts.

Then the woman who’d been enchanting the bees shrieked as she was thrown from one Viking to another like a bag of rice, and the hive she tended was thrown along with her as she was dragged screaming through the lane. My grip on the branch above me tightened to a vise as I watched her captor try and throw her over the ramparts, but the jagged prongs of the wooden wall caught her halfway, and she wailed as someone outside yanked her to the ground on the other side.

There had to have been at least sixty Vikings plundering the place by now, and everywhere I looked, scrappy bodies were being dragged, kicked, and thrown around the village. Every instinct I had told me I should do something to help the slaves, but the entrance was blocked by fifteen warriors now, and I knew I was no match for a troop like this alone.

Blood-curdling screams filled the air while the smoke of the charring huts permeated the forest around me, and all I could do was watch while old and young peasants of every race were beaten and driven to the ramparts en masse. More than half the slaves had been rounded up, but the raid continued in a fiery blur, and I lost track of how much time passed while the Vikings’ onslaught seemed to have no end.

Then I felt the tree shuddering under my boots, and for a second, I thought another of the mauling cats had arrived just to turn this whole thing into a genuine bloodbath.

But when I squinted through the smoky haze, I realized it was worse than that.

Only scraps of the wild cat’s pelt streaked past on my right, along with leather armor and battle axes, and whatever beasts the warriors of Hylmrek were riding thundered straight through the barred entrance of the village.