The Wyvern in the Wilderlands: Planeswalking Monster Hunters for Hire (Sci-fi Multiverse Adventure Survival / Weird Fantasy) (Monster Hunting for Fun and ... Hunters and Mythical Monsters) Book 1)

by Eddie Patin

  "I gotta say, Jason," Riley said, smiling nervously. He scratched his beard. "It wasn’t supposed to happen like that, man. I’ll tell you upfront because I like you already, and I can tell that even though you’re not a physicist you’ll do well with us." He scoffed and smiled. "And honestly ... I don’t want to go back to planeswalking without a Jason—there’s no going back to that after having a Jason Leaper at your side."

  "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Jason asked, feeling a dull, constant anger simmer under the surface. But he knew that he was too tired to let his temper boil over. "I almost died, Riley. Several times! I spent several nights up in freaking trees. I’ve been bitten, and clawed up, and poisoned, and hit with clubs. I was half-expecting to die fighting that damned wyvern..."

  "The life of the hunt..." Gliath said suddenly, letting out a low, growling huff.

  "Yeah, maybe that’s fun for you, Gliath," Jason retorted, "but I’m just a dude who likes to play video games and watch movies with a bad knee and a quiet house."

  "Jason," Riley said carefully. "It’s hard for me to say but ... I screwed up by giving you that stone like I did." He scratched his beard and looked away as if searching for a way out, then settled into Jason's gaze again. The solider looked embarrassed. "I reckon ... seeing this world and its level of technology—or lack thereof—and seeing you ... ah ... as you were ... I didn’t think you had it in you. But instead of talking to you like Jason 113 suggested we do, I left the stone with you to see if you could..." He scoffed. "To see if you could manifest your power before I bothered with anything else." Riley paused, looking up at Gliath for support. Jason didn’t know what he saw in the leopardwere’s eyes, but Riley looked back down at him again.

  Jason took a swig of beer. "I wish..." he started, then stopped when Riley opened his mouth, awkwardly looking to say more.

  "It was wrong, man," Riley said. "We didn’t know you’d fall into the rift like that, and we didn’t know that time was so different there. I’m just a soldier, Jason. We’ve always worked for the other Jasons. We’re not the leaders. Jasons—you—are usually the leader; always, actually. When you fell through that rift, we tried to catch up to you as quickly as we could. I’m sorry it happened that way." Riley put a hand on Jason’s shoulder and Jason felt the anger diminish. "For what it’s worth, you really proved yourself over there. I’m impressed. I know Gliath is, too..."

  Jason stared at the two of them for a while. The clock ticked. He stepped through them, and grabbed another left-over slice of pizza from the fridge. It was still good, but getting dry. He felt like he could eat and drink for hours then go into hibernation for a long time.

  "Tell me about the OCS," Jason said.

  "You’ve already learned about what it is," Riley said. "It’s a kind of computer and scanner; also a huge database. One of the first Jasons created them, and they’ve been passed from Jason to Jason, according to the ones I’ve known. The OCS you have there was in the possession of Jason 113 for—I don’t know—twenty years or more? Every time he went to a new universe he catalogued the place according to his own number system. He named your universe 934. The Wilderlands is 312. My world—according to his own numbering system—is 244. His own was 113, where we had our base last until the universe was destroyed."

  "What’s the last universe documented?"

  "1240," Riley said. "That was the universe that destroyed his. It's his last entry."

  "How did it let me open the portal to here so easily?"

  "It’s programmed for your mind by the other Jasons, who are pretty much just like you. It’s hard for me to use—I only understand the most basic stuff—but it should be easy for you in time. It was designed by you—sort of. You can set coordinates to other universes along any dimensions—except for most of the ninth—and change coordinates, put in as many notes as you want, explore other places by changing any number of variables; anything you wanna do, really..."

  "What’s wrong with the ninth?"

  "The ninth dimension is how you to travel to really different universes, from multiverse to multiverse in any way you can imagine. You can find some really bizarre shet—places that have drastically different laws of physics than here or 113 or in my home universe. Really fruking weird shet—you wouldn’t believe some of it. Some of the weird shet can drive you insane or kill you in ways you can’t even comprehend. A lot of universes with very different physical laws are completely incompatible with universes like ours. If we set foot in there, we'd be killed instantly; turned into salt or sound or transformed into particles of anti-matter—who knows. Jason 113 took us into a universe that was incompatible with his own, and when we escaped, the air of the place came with us and destroyed his Earth. Because of that, Jason 113—according to what he said anyway when he died—put a block of some kind on this OCS to keep you restricted to within a 95% tolerance of u934 to keep the same thing from happening again."

  "Shit..." Jason said, trying to comprehend the vastness. He pretended to entertain the idea of how weird infinite universes could be, but realized that his imagination honestly couldn’t even touch beyond the edges of possibility.

  "Oh, and that’s another thing," Riley said. "He attuned the OCS to your universe. The OCS is also a scanner so he put its informational set-point—as he put it—to here."

  "What’s that mean?"

  "You can scan stuff with the OCS to see what it’s classified as or what it’s closest to. If you look through the history later, you can see when we scanned the rift yesterday just after you fell through. There’s a read out with lists of the dinosaurs and other animals, the plants—stuff like that. So, for example, if the OCS tuned to your world, then that big dead dinosaur outside the cave would be called a Tyrannosaurus Rex, right? But if it was attuned to a different universe, the same scan might show something else: uh ... whatever people of that universe call their own version of a T-Rex."

  "What do your people call a T-Rex?" Jason asked.

  "A T-Rex," Riley replied. "That’s the same."

  "But why me, Riley?" Jason asked, also looking up at Gliath, who stared back down at him with impassive yellowish-green feline eyes. "Why’d Jason 113 send you to me?"

  Riley smirked and clapped Jason’s shoulder again.

  "Well, there’s stuff he said, and stuff he didn’t say, I’m sure," Riley replied. "I don’t remember him ever coming to this world, but he knew about the Wilderlands and he knew about you. The obvious reasons are because you’re younger, you’re from a similar universe to 113, you don’t really have any family or attachments..." That left a small stab of sadness in Jason’s heart. "The fact that you have a permanent rift to the Wilderlands in your backyard was a big plus, I'm sure. That place is a great source of infinity crystals and precious metals—and there's that vitality element. Pretty useful. This Earth would also be a good place for a new Reality Rifter base once we—"

  "Vitality element?" Jason asked. That was an intriguing concept.

  Riley smirked and ran his fingers through his beard. "Yeah, that’s just a term that Jason 113 came up with. It's in his notes on the OCS. The Wilderlands isn’t exactly within that 95% tolerance, so I doubt you could get there with the OCS, but you can get there with a focus key." He jingles several crystals in a jacket pocket. "We have tons of those. Also a permanent rift is a permanent rift, right? Wait—you mean you haven’t noticed the healing effect there?"

  Healing effect? Jason thought. He ran that over and over in his mind and all of his considering that that his wounds weren’t as bad as he thought slowly dawned on him. His left thigh was totally sliced open by that big raptor and it had ... healed?

  Jason gasped, and he reached down to massage the muscles around his bad knee. He realized that he hadn’t really been feeling any pain in his bad knee since ... when? When he ran away from the wyvern after it killed the Tyrannosaurus Rex?

  Could it be?!

  Suddenly squatting to the floor and popping back up again, Jason felt the sting in t
he cut on his left thigh, but his knee didn’t stab, it didn’t pop—it didn’t hurt at all! Could his permanent injury from his plane crash all those years ago really be ... erased? He flexed his right leg and didn’t feel anything painful. There was no familiar twinge, no grinding around his kneecap, and no threat of irritating the quadriceps above it. The pain was gone!

  "Holy shit!" Jason exclaimed with a grin. "Vitality element?!"

  Riley smiled and folded his arms across his chest. "Did you mention a bad knee, Jason? Is that why you walk with a cane? How’s that bad knee now, Jason?"

  "Oh my God, Riley! I think my knee is better!"

  "It’s a trait of that universe; a kind of regenerative effect. You didn’t notice your injuries healing? You were pretty fruked up over there..."

  "I didn’t," Jason muttered, still grinning. "But ... it all makes sense now! And with my left leg wounded by the raptor, I didn’t..." He trailed off. He never noticed his bad knee not hurting back when his left leg hurt so badly. And the wounds never became infected, even though he was constantly terrified of infection killing him the entire time he was out there.

  "Join us, Jason," Riley said. "Become our Jason Leaper. There are wondrous things out there for you to see and experience, and we need you, man..."

  Jason snapped out of the wonder about his healed leg and met Riley’s gaze. For all of the adventure and the good and wild things that came out of his unwanted excursion into this 'Wilderlands' place, he still couldn’t shake the fact that Riley had intentionally put him in mortal danger. He had a strong feeling that Riley truly cared about the other Jason—Jason 113—and it felt like the man was actually sorry about the whole thing. But Riley was reckless. And from a lot of what the soldier had said to Jason thus far, it seemed that Riley was really just looking for another ride to riches; another portal operator to keep him better able to look out for number one...

  Jason definitely had mixed feelings about the man.

  What would his dad think? Dad was a great adventurer, albeit bound to Earth. He was a great man and never said no to a voracious drive to explore. Dad had loved to hunt and learn and experience the world. His father loved to fly, and one day it killed him. The adventurous life didn’t seem like the right choice for Jason—he would probably just get himself killed one day as well. Jason didn’t know what the right life was for him, even though the idea of seeing wild other universes and surviving mind-bending danger in pursuit of riches and cool toys thrilled something in the back of his mind. He damned sure knew that he couldn’t just go back to a life of dead-end jobs and playing video games in his time off ... could he?

  Jason felt lost now.

  He could really go either way, though part of him knew immediately that he would live with a crushing sadness if he sent these two planeswalkers away and never saw them again...

  "Can I have some time to think about it?" Jason asked. He placed the OCS onto the dining table.

  Riley cocked an eyebrow, seemingly surprised at the response.

  "Uh ... yeah ... sure ... I reckon so," the soldier said.

  "In the meantime," Jason said, "you guys are welcome to stay the night. But please put all of that gun-stuff trash and the cat food cans out in the dumpster out front, will ya?"

  "Sure, Jason," Riley said, staring at the OCS on the table.

  "And Riley," Jason said, looking back at him as he turned toward the living room. "Thanks for saving my life."

  Chapter 41

  The morning was cool and crisp.

  Jason walked along the path, dressed in fresh exercise clothes and a backup fleece jacket. He'd cut up his main jacket to make a bandage back in the Wilderlands. He also had a backup coffee cup—a plastic one not as nice the metal one he'd left back in the spider cave.

  The coffee tasted great—dark and flavorful—and he took slow, careful sips because it was hot and fresh.

  With gravel and the small bits of remaining snow crunching under his boots, Jason hiked rapidly, full of energy and vigor, up the trail that ran along the western side of the ridge. He knew that if he crossed through the woods on his east, he’d find Doe Creek, but he wouldn’t have to worry about crocodiles. He wondered if an Earth-equivalent of the spider cave was up there somewhere on the ridge in his own world...

  Ridgeview, Colorado was shaped largely the same as the Wilderlands. As Jason hiked north in the general direction of Lake Granby—which was most assuredly freshwater here—he looked out over the valley to the south, which had a wide green belt and hiking close to the woods and was otherwise full of suburban houses stretching off to the west as far as he could see. The man knew that if he hiked for longer than he normally would, he’d find the lake up ahead, and he was mighty tempted to. He wanted to see if that sandy cave near the shore—that life-saving sanctuary—was here in this world. His mind flashed back to the taste of urchins. He recalled the mighty Ankylosaurus walking along the beach, glaring and stamping its elephant-like feet at the sand...

  After enjoying the quiet morning for a while, Jason opened YouTube on his phone and started scrolling through his personalized feed. There were gun videos, some political videos, and lots of videos about starting online businesses, organizing your life, finding your purpose, all video thumbnails of dudes smiling next to click-bait titles. He listened for a few minutes, skimming from video to video before eventually turning it off so that he could listen to just the wind and the birds.

  He used his cane as he walked, but he didn’t need it.

  Two miles from home, Jason stopped at a concrete barrier that he often used to stretch his legs. Before pulling up one foot for a hamstring stretch, he retrieved a golden nugget from his pocket—one of the several he had picked up from the creek when that crocodile had surprised him. He had picked up a small handful of them. As Jason stretched, he contemplated the little yellow-metallic chunk about the size and shape of a chewed-up piece of bubblegum.

  Looks like gold alright, he thought.

  And there was a lot more where that came from.

  He thought about his first structure that he'd built from fallen timber and paracord, back when his sheet of rawhide was a roof instead of a bed. That frame must be totally pulled apart by now, wrapped up in those weird, tiny vines that grew out of the dirt.

  When Jason switched legs, he shifted the heavy weight of the replacement pistol he wore in his belt. He was wearing his dad’s old Beretta 92SF, which was a good bit heavier and bigger than his trusty Glock 26, but the Glock was gone, disappeared into the underbrush somewhere north of the wyvern’s cave. His dad’s Beretta was a full-sized 9mm pistol—not as ideal for concealed carry in his waistband—but it would have to do for now.

  Jason wondered if he’d ever be able to find his Glock, or would that strange world pull his pistol apart with its tiny vines, just like it did to his shelter?

  The thought made Jason sad. He loved that pistol, and it had saved his life on many occasions now, going through the Wilderlands with him. Jason would never leave the house unarmed ever again. Of course, he was usually armed constantly anyway.

  Every one of those 9mm rounds had ended up with a purpose or with some predator or cannibal's name on it. Maybe he missed a few, and a few were wasted on the mini-rex and the wyvern. But everything he did with that Glock 26 was to save his life.

  "In fact," he said to himself. "I did pretty well for a normal guy with a backpack and a pistol..."

  With a small thrill growing in his heart, Jason wondered what it would have been like if he'd gone to the Wilderlands on purpose, better prepared; better armed. He thought back to how easily Riley took down that wyvern—the terrifying apex predator of the region—with his big bore lever gun. What would it be like to go to a world like that to, say, hunt dinosaurs for fun? Or to fill of a freezer back home with dinosaur meat? What if he went there and didn’t have to worry about water or food or shelter? For that matter, what would it be like to go to other worlds—just as weird and dangerous—and hunt for gargoyles, or mant
icores, or giants, or dragons or who knows what with big guns and technology and make a lot of money afterwards?

  Could he do that?

  Other Jasons did it—all over the omniverse, apparently. And Jason Leapers were special!

  Jason switched his leg and sunk into a deep hip stretch. His thoughts went back to Riley and the angry undercurrent that surrounded his feelings about the man.

  But how could that guy just throw him to the Wilderlands like that?!

  This time, however, the spike of anger was tempered and Jason found his mind cooling off quickly.

  "It was an accident," he said to himself. "He screwed up. He said so."

  Besides, Jason thought. If Riley and Gliath had just approached him like they were apparently supposed to, what would Jason have done? What would he have really done?

  "Sent them away," he answered his thoughts, switching to his other leg. If Jason hadn’t gone through what he did—which surely hardened his character over those two weeks of hell—then he would have never just jumped up from his humdrum life to run away and explore the omniverse with two weird dudes spouting an impossible story...

  Jason needed the Wilderlands.

  For as terrible as his experience was, it did knock him out of his slump, and he knew it.

  Turning back to the south—scan for mini-rexes! he thought—Jason began the hike back to his house where he knew that Riley and Gliath would be waiting to hear what he decided. Could he really take on this crazy new life?

  Part of Jason desperately wanted to.

  A smaller part of him wanted to keep things the same.

  Heading south along the ridge, walking past all of the neighborhoods near his, Jason suddenly felt great. The sun was on his face and the breeze was cool. He felt better than he had in a long time, even though his left leg hurt and parts of him still stung and felt tender.

  Jason walked faster and faster, then lifted his cane from the ground and broke into a run.