By: Not_Omegon
“…you will not be alone, Magn-… Marcus, far from it. There will be others that are joining you on this grand experiment, no, a journey.”
Marcus nodded along as the mysterious voice in his head spoke, already sold on the idea but now he liked it even more. “So, you really want a bunch of guys to just stampede across a new world like some force of nature? Sounds great!” Unlike usual, he wasn’t even sarcastic this time. His old friends would never believe that he was capable of such straightforwardness, but neither would they believe that a bookworm like himself would also take up the mantle of an explorer.
The voice sighed, “I… highly doubt you gaggle of perfectly selected idiots will do anything of the sort, but you will shine bright as the stars, nineteen beacons that will be impossible to not notice. Do be nice to the locals though, you are not pleasant company here, but I know you can adapt. Enough waiting now, everything is aligned just right.”
“I doubt that, but good. I will admit to some trepidation, but it is nothing compared to the will to stride forward.” Marcus swept his hair back and grabbed his pack. When the portal opened, he didn’t pause for fear of getting caught up in doubt, and made a final jump into a new world.
Marcus immediately stumbled after passing through, bending over to almost puke once his feet hit the ground. A moment later, he fell to his knees as he tried to settle his stomach and ignore the headache, but found that he didn’t land on grass or dirt. Solid stone, flattened and smoothed at some point, made up the ground that he stood on inside whatever place he was in. It was dark, incredibly so, and he fumbled for a flashlight.
Seconds later, he was back on his feet and clicked on the light, illuminating carved flat walls lined with letters or runes and smaller structures around him made of stone. Stone benches, stone tables, stone everything, and in the middle of the room was a basin with carved symbols around its edge. Marcus walked up to it slowly, taking a careful and long look at the details of the object, then touched it with a delicate finger. One of the symbols glowed briefly and a soft pop came from the basin as the bottom became displaced, revealing that it was a cover. He carefully removed it, revealing a silvery liquid inside the basin. Out of curiosity he dipped a side of the cover into the liquid and stirred it a little, and finding that nothing else happened, he then touched the wet part of the cover with his finger. After no burning feeling or red marks were found, he dipped his finger into the basin itself. Oh fuck, does that mean something bad?
All of the symbols around the basin began glowing and the liquid quickly lost its shine. It felt rejuvenating, and he thought for a moment that he had been dropped into the fountain of life but the feeling went as fast as it came. The symbols didn’t stop glowing though, and soon enough some of the other symbols around the room began to glow. Nothing else changed though, and after a moment of waiting to see if it is one massive trap or not, he went through the one exit in the room and entered a long hall. A few adjacent rooms were checked, but nothing interesting was found besides a metal rod so he continued on.
The rest of the place was empty, devoid of anything of value. There were some locked doors, but he didn’t have any keys and strange symbols on the doors began to glow when his hand got really close so he didn’t take his chances again. The lack of things to borrow for a long period of time was one thing, mainly just telling him that the facility is unoccupied, but no immediate exit was another thing. It was frustrating, he would go down hallway after hallway, leading nowhere but to another dark and desolate corridor. Winding the flashlight up again, he kept on the move, hoping to find an exit sometime soon so he wouldn’t have to die and rot away in a labyrinth.
“Agh, hell!” Harry slowly got up, taking in his surroundings as he did so. He was surrounded by the ruined walls of what looked to be a castle. Maybe just yesterday it was a grand structure, but today it was a ruin, still smoldering as if it quite literally was just fine a day ago. Melting snow covered the ground where things hadn’t been burning in the recent past. The entire place looked like it had been ransacked, there was very little to be salvaged that wasn’t irreparably broken, and what was left was useless to him besides a carving knife that he found in some rubble and a medieval mace that was laughably easy to use in the light gravity. That really drilled in the medieval aspect for him, castles and old fashioned weapons.
He wasn’t alone though. Hearing some rummaging on the second floor inside the castle, he went up to great whoever was there, it was exciting even if a bit sad with all the destruction around. Maybe it was a resident that had just lost everything, he didn’t know, but he wanted to find out and begin first contact. Running up the stairs, he called out, “hello?” No intelligible response came though, just odd screeching and quick stomping sounds like it was running. Maybe the screeching was the native language? Harry didn’t think he could learn a language like that, but he could always try.
As he reached the top of the stairs, the culprit of the screeching came barreling at him, knife raised. Harry ducked to the side and pushed his assailant to the wall with one big shove, barely avoiding the blade. “Woah! Calm down! Calm down, I’m not here to hurt you!”
The stranger didn’t listen though, and continued trying to attack him. The unfriendly contact, a reptilian dragon looking person with wings on its back and walking on digitigrade legs, was erratic and seemingly out of its mind. He wanted to reason with the manic person, but the black ‘dragonette’ as he decided to call them for their dragon shape but normal size was clearly not in the mood for talking. With a short swing of the mace, he took out a leg from underneath the hostile and sent it to the ground, then another swing to knock the knife out of its hand. That didn’t stop its attacks though as it began to try to tear him apart with its claws. He kept batting the claws of the black dragonette away with his mace, trying to reason with it. “Stop! I don’t want to hurt you! Just listen, please!”
None of it worked though, it kept screeching and swiping and he kept smacking its hands with the mace. After another thirty seconds of keeping the dragonette down and at a distance, he sighed and accepted what had to come next. This person, or even thing possibly, was hellbent on attacking him no matter what and he couldn’t change it no matter how hard he tried. With one great upwards swing, he struck the dragonette in the chin, incapacitating it, then brought the mace back down and crushed its head.
He dropped the mace and looked down at the dragonette, disappointed. Not just for the dragonette’s actions, but for his own. He never anticipated killing anyone within the first few minutes, let alone ever really. He could rationalize it, the dragonette was attacking him with a knife, not listening at all, but that felt wrong, the result wouldn’t change. It did say a lot about the hostility of the world though, it was aggressive and uncaring, as shown by the slain dragonette. Figuring that it would be nothing short of stupid to go without a simple weapon, he picked up the mace again just incase there were any other surprises. Not like a Hipoint would help him when he needed it anyways, it would probably just jam as he gets his face sheared off by another crazed lunatic.
Marcus stood before yet another wall, one that he could tell was more of a door than anything else. A second basin was in front of it, and he repeated what he did the first time. He touched the bottom, the symbols glowed, the bottom became dislodged so he picked it up and tossed it aside, then dipped his hand in the silvery liquid inside it. As that liquid too lost its shine, more symbols around the room started to glow and his predictions was proven correct. Come on, fall, show the outside world, I can hear it.
A couple pops came from the edge of the wall section and it slowly fell backwards and down a cliff. “Ah what the fuck!” Marcus looked out of the opening and down the stone cliff, thirty feet directly to the mossy ground. Before him was a forest with trees as tall as redwoods, and it looked very calm and tranquil as well. That didn’t matter very much though if he couldn’t even make it down from the exit.
He didn’t see it as much of a problem though. Taking off his pack and weighing it in his hands, judged that the gravity here was low enough to just jump. He wasn’t exactly fit so it was still a somewhat ballsy proposition, but to go boldly, one must be bold. Double checking everything attached to his pack and ensuring that his two laptops and myriad charging devices were padded and protected by layers of clothes, tarps, and his sleeping back, he grabbed his crappy yellow synthetic rope and tied one end to the top handle of the pack. He then secured his footing and began to lower it down the cliff. Twenty-five feet later, he reached the end of the line as he let go of it for the final drop, hearing a soft thud as it landed.
Slowly climbing over the edge, he held on to the ledge for as long as he could, which wasn’t very long, before twisting around and letting go. Uh oh. Marcus hit the ground and managed to roll forward, but the damage was already done. He yelped in pain but it wasn’t exceedingly bad. He rolled over onto his back and sat up, moving his left ankle around to see if it was sprained or he was just an idiot and rolled it a bit. “Hmph, just a roll.” He got up on his feet and tried walking it off, but could at best limp back to his pack. Shit, this isn’t going away in five minutes is it?
He sat back down and untied the rope from his pack and rolled it back up, then check his valuable electronic devices to see if any of them were broken. Having spent a few minutes unpacking, looking over, then carefully repacking his things, he got back onto his feet and put the pack on again, then hopped over to the nearest tree to grab a branch that caught his eye. He picked up the fallen branch and smacked one end of it against the tree, knocking off a couple smaller branches from it then figured it good enough for a walking stick.
Sighing, he looked at his surroundings for anything else. A couple deer with odd coat patterns here and there, some birds chirping and flying about, nothing really of significant note. He didn’t plan on staying out in the woods forever, so he didn’t bring the means to, nor did he have the money to do that either, but he had a carbine that he could hunt with and thirty rounds to extend his stay, along with the information on how to dress various animals in the field. He wanted to be found though, that would be where he would be able to bring the most good, so he tried the laziest way to be noticed and inhaled. “Hello!? Anyone there!?”
Hunter or Huntress 
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