Worlds Away
A Reluctant Farmgirl’s Isekai
It is not for want nor wanderlust that all adventures are brought to us. But rather the most unfortunate of happenstance, that one just so happens to be in the right place at the wrong time.
Well that or the gods have once more decided to play silly buggers with a random mortal just for the fuck of it.
My name is Mai Caldwell and I am one such unfortunate.
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Chapter 1
An Unfortunate Plot Contrivance
“Mai! I’m leaving now! See you in a few days!” called out a jolly older fellow, the kind of man whom you were always sure was either a serial killer or on some sort of narcotics. The kind that was a nightmare to sit next to on any long distance trip or made it seem to pass in a second, that kind of man.
“Okay Uncle Joe! I’ll be sure to keep the farm running all nice and smooth like always!” Mai replied with vacant eyes and a bubbly smile on her face as she gave a sloppy salute with the spoon she was using to eat her breakfast of a sugary bowl of cereal. Dinking herself in the forehead in the process, before she continued eating her breakfast, either not noticing or not caring for the fact she now had a line of milk rolling down her face from where she’d hit herself with the spoon.
Uncle Joe for his part only shook his head in amusement, long since accustomed to his Niece’s airheaded nature. And closed the door to the farmhouse, hopped in his truck and made tracks, he had a plane to catch after all and a three day trip to get to.
Mai for her part sat there at the breakfast table, eyes still vacant, her bubbly smile frozen to her face. For fifteen solid minutes she sat there unchanging and unmoving, and only when she was completely sure that “Uncle Joe” wasn’t coming back did she allow herself to move.
“Fucking finally.” Mai sighed, sagging in her seat Mai finally let the smile fall from her face as her eyes came to life with the light of an intelligent functional human being. “God is that a chore to do.” Mai whined to herself as she stood from the table and dumped her “Breakfast” in the sink and broke the eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator.
Mai loved her Uncle she really did, but he much like the rest of her family would absolutely lose their shit if they knew that poor little Maimai had an IQ over two.
Oh sure she actually was an airhead at times and more than a little dumb on her off days. But no one was actually that dumb, not that anyone ever believed her despite multiple instances that are contrary to their perception of her.
“That fucking Quack Doctor.”
Setting aside her frustrations and anger over the shit in her past before she got too distracted and burnt the pan, Mai quickly threw in some bacon, adding an extra slice for the little thief who’d be showing up any second.
And like clockwork an imperious and annoyed “Mreow!” snapped into Mai’s ear as a sudden weight landed on her shoulder.
“Hi Gooseberry! Uncle Joe took forever to leave so the bacon is taking a little longer to cook than I expected.” Mai explained turning her head to peer at the glaring cat on her shoulder.
Gooseberry for her part didn’t look impressed, the gray and black elder tabby had been a staple in Mai’s life since she was born, and was to Mai’s experience completely immortal.
Just in the three years she’d begun working her summer’s at “Uncle Joe’s” farm she’d seen the cat hit by a car, run over by the combine harvester, exploded by some freak accident, chopped in half by her ax while Mai was chopping firewood, shot in the head by Mai’s shotgun after the damn cat jumped in the path of her slug while Mai was busy trying to run off a rather annoying fox, and actually literally being smited by god… TWICE.
And every time the damnable cat would be back and acting like nothing had happened at all inside an hour. The lack of any reaction whatsoever from Uncle Joe led Mai to believe that all this was a common occurrence for the cat, and should therefore be extremely overdrawn on her nine lives budget but stuck around anyway out of sheer spite.
She was older than Mai was at any rate, and she’d just turned twenty one last month! There was something seriously off about the cat was what Mai-
“Youch!” Mai shrieked as a sharp pinching bite radiated out of her earlobe, “Gooseberry you little shit! Stop biting my ear!”
Gooseberry for her part was completely unconcerned, raising a kitty eyebrow at her before turning to stare at the bacon in the pan, said bacon being moments away from burning.
Yelping, Mai quickly flipped the bacon long enough to brown the opposite side, before throwing her portion onto a plate, and then feeding the biggest thickest slice to the cat who still even to this point refused to budge from her shoulder.
“The cat tax is strong with this one.” Mai sighed before cracking a pair of eggs into the pool of bacon grease that now resided in her pan. “Mmmm… Bacon fried Eggs…” Mai hummed a happy vacant smile stretching across her face as she felt herself start to helplessly slip into that inescapably happy place that her mind sometimes went.
“Youch!” Mai screamed, yanked from the precipice of the void by an uncompromising cat. “Thanks Gooseberry, that was a bad one.”
Gooseberry just ignored her and went back to eating her slice of bacon.
Going back to her cooking, Mai was just flipping over her eggs when she heard an angry clucking and tapping on the glass window. Looking up Mai was unsurprised to find the eternally frustrating Nugget, resident escape artist and primary egg layer.
Nugget was of course a chicken and yet another of the resident oddball animals that Uncle Joe kept on the farm. Oddball because Mai herself felt more glass eyed than any of the animals here, and all had odd and unusual rituals that you had to go through when dealing with them.
Nugget in particular was one of the more egregious ones, particularly for Mai, the ritual for Nugget was relatively simple, don’t eat eggs while the chicken was awake or else she escapes. The problem? Mai loved eggs. And not being able to eat them for at least breakfast made her cranky. But doing so made Nugget cranky and would therefore escape from her coop and cause the local foxes to start hunting the recalcitrant avian down.
“Oi! Calm your tits and get back in your coop! I haven’t even started eating them yet!” Mai whined, already she could see several bright orange fox tails peeking out of the long grass of the sheep field. Nugget the cruel bird just sat there angrily tapping the window.
Groaning in annoyance, Mai pulled her eggs off the pan dropped them on her plate, and threw a pan lid over the whole assemble before marching outside, snagging her shotgun (a wonderful little single shot number because no one in her family trusted her with more than one round at a time) from where it hung by the door and grabbed a box of twelve gage slugs from the cabinet by the wall.
Knowing that infernal chicken instead of running away like a normal bird, Nugget was undoubtedly doing chicken parkour and leading the foxes out for her blood on a merry chase.
“I swear Nugget one of these days you’re going to get yourself in a whole heap of trouble and I won’t be around to pull your ass out of the fire.” Mai growled before letting the incessant pull of euphoria sweep her away on gossamer wings.
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Vacant Eyes and Childlike Glee gleamed out from a face devoid of life, shining out of a mind devoid of thought.
A ghost in living flesh.
A prison of corrupted purity.
An ocean no deeper than a shallow puddle.
A child now a woman who would never, could never grow beyond her basest instincts.
The Lone Gunwoman raised her rifle.
And Six Barrels Shot.
Coming back to herself Mai took a quick glance around. Six foxes dead. Six shells on the floor.
“All is well then. You’d honestly think these foxes would have learned by now.” Mai sighed stepping down off her porch and snagged the skinning knife that was left on the porch for just such occasions.
Twenty minutes and six fox skins later, Mai was finally eating her breakfast having chucked the fox corpses in the pig troughs. Her bacon was cold, the eggs only half cooked, and Nugget was glaring at her from within the confines of a cat carrier locked with a padlock.
It wouldn’t hold her forever, but it’d last long enough for Mai to eat her unfortunate breakfast and lock the annoying chicken back in her coop.
Said breakfast was just as sad as it looked.
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You’d think looking after four hundred and forty five acres of farmland, a collection of sheep, cows, pigs and other barnyard accoutrements by yourself would be backbreaking impossible work.
And honestly it was but Mai loved every moment of it. Sure some days she didn’t get to sleep, or eat, or stay off her feet for more than however long it took to drive one of the various motorized farming implements around the fields.
It was heaven. Just the kind of mindless and ever evolving work that Mai’s scattered mind needed.
So that’s what she did.
Day One: feed and water the animals, let the horses, cows, and sheep out onto the south fields, take the harvester through the corn fields, check the wheat fields, water the potatoes, turn on the floodlights, bring in the horses, check the chickens and capture Nugget, Pet the Dog! Water the crops, eat lunch.
Day Two: turn off the floodlights, feed and water the animals, get the dogs to lead the animals to the west field, check perimeter fences, shoot the foxes, brush the horses, and send them out to the south field, water the crops, check the chickens capture Nugget, explosion in the north field, clean up Gooseberry’s remains and make sure the cat didn’t set anything on fire this time, say hello to Gooseberry, plow and reseed the former corn field, sort and package the good corn, throw the rest into the creates for the grinders, take a shower and change your overalls, new underwear is a must, turn on the floodlights, check the fields for varmints and shoot them, perimeter fences secure?, capture Nugget, yell at Gooseberry’s remains for yet another explosion in one day, clean up the mess put out the fires, bring in the horses, stable the animals, pet the good boys!, yell at Gooseberry again, eat dinner! Capture Nugget!
Day Three: turn off the floodlights, feed and water the animals and water the crops, check the perimeter fences, check the chicken coops, shoot the varmints, pet carrier of shame for Gooseberry for yet another explosion in the north fields, put out the fires and clean up the mess, lock the gates, lock the doors, close the curtains, shower time, pass out for twelve hours, get dressed, do laundry, make breakfast, capture Nugget, eat breakfast, realize you are not wearing anything but your overalls, ignore it and let the animals loose on the east fields, let in the shipment men, flash the new guy, and maybe even the older ones, help them load everything, No Touchy, deck the new guy, receive payment for the corn, money goes in the safe not on top Mai, pesticide day, all animals inside now, hate the stuff, itchy, shower time, no need for new underwear you didn’t wear any silly, clothes… why do we wear clothes again? Silly little cloth and string things, visit the old well and glare the demon inside into submission, rituals are things that must be followed, visit Gooseberry’s “lab” the walls bleed now apparently… cool, check the gun locker, note to self tell “Uncle Joe” to buy me more slugs… where is he anyway?
And on and on it went for Mai in an ever changing yet ever repeating schedule, days than weeks peeling by in a flash with little to no change… well there was that one day where the sky went from night to day and now there was two suns and three moons… but that’s fine wasn’t there always that many anyway?
The Varmints changed too… oh there were still the foxes, racoons, and rats. But now they were joined by other more annoying comrades.
Little green men with foul mouths and attitudes, they exploded like confetti when shot, which was cool.
Tricky shadow beasts who ran off (or rather tried) with whole sheep! She fed those to the demon in the old well.
The worst was this cute little pink thing, Mai loved and hated them with a burning passion. She loved them because they were cute and fluffy! She hated them because they ate her machete and one of the harvesters, those things were expensive.
But other than that nothing changed at all on the farm. Sure the pick up men stopped showing up, and the power went out, and “Uncle Joe” never came back from his trip… but all that was fine because Mai still had the farm and her rituals.
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Closing the cabinet with a sigh, Mai carried out the last of the breakfast supplies contained within. Who knew that regular trips to the grocery store actually did a lot for keeping a kitchen supplied with food?
“Well Gooseberry you better enjoy that, because that’s the last of the food we’ll be getting before I have to start butchering the varmints and taking off the top from the produce in order to keep us all fed.” Mai stated with a sigh rubbing her temples before preparing her own breakfast… pancakes… “I hate pancakes! Why not actual cake! Breakfast cake would be so much better! Not that I even have the supplies any more to make breakfast cake… I should have made breakfast cake when I still could…”
Level Up! Cooking 9! You Ha-
Blinking her eyes rapidly to clear the sudden and annoying obstruction, Mai groaned in annoyance, “These hallucinations are really quite intrusive Gooseberry! I’m just glad “Uncle Joe” isn’t here otherwise he’d definitely tell my parents and I’d have to go talk to the Quack again.”
They really were quite intrusive, and had been showing up rather periodically ever since the sky went weird and the sun and moon multiplied.
Walking over to the stove still whisking her pancake batter (thankfully it didn’t have any eggs so she wouldn’t have to deal with Nugget), Mai quickly set it aside while focusing on the stove.
It hadn’t stopped working yet, but every time she used it Mai always felt oddly drained after. Which wasn’t great when you were using something to cook.
Biting her lip in concentration, Mai grabbed the dial and slowly turned it until she heard a soft and satisfying clicking. And then… just like always a bright blue azure and gold flame burst within the burner.
And then… the draining started…
Experience had taught her that she had five minutes to get her cooking done before she felt too drained to continue. Less if something happened that required to put her cooking aside so she could deal with it.
“Just enough time for breakfast… It’s okay it’s fine… you’ve dealt with this everyday for months now Mai you can do it again…” Mai told herself straining her limited mental faculties, once to focus on the flame, and again on her cooking.
If she stopped focusing on the flames then they’d go out. And if she didn’t focus on her food then she’d inevitably end up ruining what little food she had left.
Four minutes later feeling hollow and empty, even more of a shell than normal.
Mai sat slumped at her breakfast table grudgingly eating her pancakes, no butter but she had syrup, her orange juice was warm though…
And of course it was. When the power died, so did the electricity in the fridge.
Still better than water though…
Sighing as Mai finished her breakfast and felt the drained void in her soul replenish, Mai stood up and got dressed in her last pair of overalls.
Nothing underneath she was out of clothes and washing them was such a chore without a working washing machine.
Mai grabbed her shotgun from the side of the table where it now rested. Always within arms reach, she’d learned that after the first week here.
Clicking open the rifle, Mai saw her last shell.
It was tarnished and worn, numerous punch marks decorated the primer from too many repeated strikes from the primer. But Mai left it in.
It was her last shell after all.
Unless the ammo fairy had visited her sometime in her fitful and light sleep…
Tapping her pocket where she kept her last box of spent shells… still empty…
That was fine though Mai had all the ammunition that she’d ever need! Honestly it was probably a good thing that the ammo fairy hadn’t visited, since it was likely that Mai would have shot her!
“Yeah… that’s right! No need for ammunition. I've got all the ammo I’ll ever need… yeah…”
Walking towards the backdoor to her farm house, Mai quickly diverted to look out her now boarded up windows… the glass in them had been shattered long ago hadn’t they.
Standing there Mai’s eyes told her that the coast was clear… but they had lied to her before…
“Gooseberry? Pull me out if I stray too long okay?” Mai asked, glancing back towards her cat.
Gooseberry for her part simply nodded in acceptance. She too was used to this ritual… not that she wanted to be… she was a cat after all… But even her rather nebulous nature knew the practicality of keeping her chosen human alive… alive if not safe…
Nothing was safe… not anymore…
Receiving the cat’s acknowledgement, Mai once more faced the window… and let the void take her.
Instantly Euphoria and Tranquility rushed over Mai’s empty mind. Sweeping her away once more on gossamer wings.
Level Up! Voidwalker 35! You who have stood within the void are greeted and Embraced as Kin. Let none hide from your sight oh Bastion of Empty Light.
45 Trait Points Are Still Unassigned
Empty Eyes devoid of light and life peered across hallowed fields.
Creation left untangled and bared.
An Angel with wings of terrible light surveyed her holding and found them wanting.
The ghost, now transcendent.
The prison, a fortress.
The ocean lain baren, and caked in salt.
Innocence corrupted now cast in steel and forged in war.
Survival writ terrible.
The Angel strode onto her farm, and war followed in her wake.