by Eddie Patin
"I play with you for a little while," the troll replied with a growing smile of fangs. Its long, rubbery nose almost stabbed Jason in the face. "You come with me into my home..."
Jason felt a jolt of white fear. He imagined the wicked, rangy creature pulling him into the submerged cave with one powerful, clawed hand. He imagined drowning.
"No, wait!" Jason said, reaching for ideas. "I'm wounded! My leg is hurt! Let me run away then catch me! Surely I can't get away! In fact, I do bet I can get away!" Jason pointed at the distant tree line with his face. "I bet I can get up to those trees before you catch me!"
Stupid, Jason thought. He had to think of something...
The troll raised its head and let out a high cackling laugh that renewed Jason's artery-reaming terror. Water from the submerged cave dripped off of its horrific, rubbery form onto Jason's body and face.
"You think you can get to those trees with a wounded leg?!" the troll shrieked. "Before I catch you? Me?!"
Suddenly, it was off of him entirely, standing tall over him and cackling.
God, the thing was fast!
"I'll try!" Jason exclaimed, grimacing as he tried to stand. The pain in his left leg sent streaks of agony through his body. He screamed up at the sky. When he looked back at the troll, Jason saw the monster grinning in response to his pain. "Tell me," Jason said, his voice trembling, "why is this place called the Shattered Swamp?"
"You'd best run away now!" the troll replied, flexing its fingers and claws. "The swamp was shattered by the broken god, Voro!"
Jason slung Riley's rifle onto his back next to his own. It wouldn't do much good against this creature. In all of the excitement before, he hadn't even seen where he'd hit it, but there were no marks on its torso at all now.
"Who's Voro?" Jason asked, limping backwards as quickly as he could, trying not to cry out in pain.
"Voro is the god of the Shattered Swamp!" the troll replied. "The creator of all here! Swamp not always shattered, but it is now. Now flee, soft, sweet meat, before I leap over there and devour you this instant!"
Jason turned and hustled away against the pain in his left leg until he was fifteen feet or so away from the looming monster. He turned to see the troll grinning, swaying, bouncing on the desire in its limbs to come flying after him. It flexed its claws and gnashed its teeth...
Reaching down to the focus key of molten metal tied to his left wrist, Jason felt his way through the ninth dimension to the lava world. He found the line and oriented his origin portal.
Jason rifted.
The troll was still grinning and salivating as the orange fireball snapped into existence under its gangly, clawed feet. When the spinning flame unfurled into a whirling, roaring portal, the monster seemed genuinely surprised for a moment—its black eyes and fearsome mouth widening in shock—before it plummeted through the bog into what looked like Hell beneath it. Too far away to get a good look, Jason saw red and orange light like a bonfire pouring out from the rift. Bright flames licked at the spinning, sparking rim of the horizontal gateway.
Jason heard a loud, spitting hiss and a howl unlike anything he'd ever heard a creature from Earth make before. He hobbled his way toward his rift as quickly as he could without falling down on his agonizing leg. Jason screamed in pain as he hurried, no longer caring, desiring more than anything to see...
When he was within five feet of the rift, the heat became too much. Waves of intense heat as if coming from a burning furnace blasted Jason's face and neck as he approached. The roar of the rift was matched by the hellish cacophony of a sea of lava under his gateway. Magma bubbled violently, crackling; a sweltering vision of boiling metal or rock or whatever the hell it was. Through bleary eyes, Jason caught sight of a troll-sized lump like a long wad of bacon flaring and skipping across the surface of the magma like grease on a hot skillet.
"Oh my God!" Jason cried.
He released the rift, terrified beyond belief.
The hellish vision collapsed into the bog with a pop, and the intense heat was gone.
The poor troll.
He was going to eat you!
"What an unfair way to go," Jason said to himself, adjusting the two rifles on his back and double-checking that his lightning gun was still safe in its holster. Then, he laughed at the notion of fairness when it came to a troll versus a human.
Jason paused, staring at all horizons. Checking the OCS, he saw that the eastern horizon was black. Was another storm coming?
"Fuck—what am I gonna do?" he asked himself. His leg throbbed with an inner fire.
He was tempted to rift along the footprints leading toward the southeast, but he knew that with his leg like it was, he wouldn't be able to accomplish much. Hell—he wouldn't be able to step through rifts for much longer. Soon, his leg would be even worse. And what the hell was that gunk on the end of the spear? He'd get an infection for sure.
The Wilderlands, he thought.
The Wilderlands would heal him and prevent infection. It might even root out whatever poison was still in his system.
"But my friends..."
Jason pulled up his OCS and contemplated the bookmark he'd made before. He couldn't use that to save his friends, but maybe—if he understood the dimensions right—he could make a new bookmark with the temporal coordinates included, then he could come back here, to this same place and same time. If he went home right now, and went straight to the Wilderlands, the time dilation there would allow him to heal for days with its regenerative 'Vitality Element'. Then, he could just come back here to the same time! And if he was wrong, and couldn't come back to the same time, then as long as he hurried through his own universe and spent only as much time as he needed in the Wilderlands to heal, then only a few hours would pass here...
It was the best shot he had.
He could use time. Jason could figure this out. He needed to heal up, and if he did this correctly, he could be right back here in this same moment, hunting for his friends after his leg was back to normal.
He had to do it. He needed to heal his leg.
Jason pulled at the radio on his backpack strap again. He pressed the transmitter button.
"Reality Rifters, come in! Over." he said then waited. "Riley, Morgana, Gliath, come in. Do you read me? This is Jason. Do you read me? Over."
Jason stood and watched the darkness in the eastern sky.
He looked back down at the troll cave. Was that the same troll that they had beheaded already? Had it grown back a new arm and head? Or was it a different troll? Were there even more down there?
"Come on, guys!" Jason said into the radio. "Come in! Are you hearing me? You need to press the little button on the side to talk back, just like I showed you back home. Can anyone hear me? Over."
Jason listened to the drone of insects and small animals hiding in the mud.
"Riley," he said into the radio. "Morgana, Gliath. Hang in there, if you can hear me! I'll be right back! Hang in there! Over."
The words made his chest constrict. Jason felt tears suddenly coming up behind his eyes, which surprised him after being so full of pain and fried by fear.
Looking down at his OCS, Jason set another bookmark titled 'Troll Cave after Giant' and made damned sure that he was recording the temporal coordinates as well. He hoped to whatever heavens there were in the murky, timeless sky above him that he'd figured this right, and would be able to come back to the same time. It would be terrible if he was wrong and ended up wasting time; time that his friends needed to stay alive. If the three of them were killed because he took too long getting back to them, Jason could never forgive himself...
With that somber thought, Jason reached up into his collar and grabbed his home key. He opened a rift to universe 934 and felt relieved as the sight of his clean concrete garage came into view.
Jason stepped through, and went home.
Chapter 13
Stepping into his garage, limping heavily on his left leg, Jason looked around in pain and was smo
thered by the first thought entering his mind:
He was alone. His friends were gone.
This house—which now felt like it should hold all four Reality Rifters, drinking beer, eating around the little table, watching TV—was quiet. Well, quiet aside from the sputtering roar of the whirling orange portal behind him. Jason acutely felt the absence of Riley, Gliath, and Morgana. They were missing, and he had to get them back.
The second thing Jason thought of was his leg when it almost buckled under him, vivid with insane amounts of pain so strong that he saw stars before his eyes.
He cried out in agony, caught himself on the stainless steel game table, then released his hold on the rift.
The portal to the troll swamp closed quickly, finalizing with a pop.
What had that troll called it? Shattered Swamp, Jason thought. The swamp had been shattered by the broken god ... Voro?
Waves of pain streaked through Jason's body like licking flames. He cried out again, clenching the edges of the table with his hands. He looked down at the concrete and saw the case holding the troll's head, sitting on the floor askew as if abandoned.
Jason thought of his friends again.
"Hurry!" he growled to himself. "No time!"
He had to heal himself before there was any hope of catching up with the other Reality Rifters and possibly rescuing them. The only way to do that was to go to the Wilderlands right now.
"Damn!" Jason groaned, gritting his teeth against the pain. If only he'd kept that healing potion instead of giving it to Riley! He should have given it to the cyborg by all accounts—he owed it to him—but this seemed to be a perfectly reasonable time to take one. That giant—that titan—might be killing them, or eating them, or who knows what!
Maybe the time passing here on u934 didn't matter. Jason hoped that he'd be able to get back to the Shattered Swamp via the last bookmark he'd set; back to the same temporal coordinates where he could just pick up where he'd left off; the exact place, exact time. But if that didn't work—if he didn't understand time travel correctly and couldn't get back to that exact moment in space-time (without shunting off to another universe like he did in the Nargog incident)—he could at least spend as little time in u934 as possible. Once he made it to the Wilderlands, time would move much slower.
For that, he needed to get his ass in gear!
The intense pain made Jason want to stay exactly where he was, clutching at the table and trying to keep his weight off of his left leg. He was laden with stuff: his weapons and backpack, his OCS, Riley's disc flyer, Riley's rifle...
"Move it!" he shouted at himself, forcing his way through the agony and releasing the table. Jason clenched his eyes as he climbed the two steps to the living room, willing himself through the pain, pulling himself up on the doorframe. His AK-47 and Riley's Marlin rifle—both hung from their slings on his back—got caught up for a moment on the doorway and Jason cursed as he worked the guns free and stumbled into the living room. He pulled Riley's rifle and flying disc off of him, throwing the weapon and the necromancer's tech onto his armchair.
Working against a strong urge to go and collapse onto the couch, Jason struggled up the hall to the kitchen, where he immediately filled a Hefty trash bag with over a dozen bottles of water, several wrapped steaks—some from the freezer, some from the fridge—then a clutch of canned goods. Apparently, the Vitality Element of the universe worked better when one was well-fed. He'd need a lot of food. Jason grabbed cans of sardines and a half-eaten bag of chips. He looked at the pile of food in the bag then threw in a handful of spoons. He grabbed his smallest skillet from the counter and smelled it to see if it was clean or not, but his nostrils were still full of the sulfuric smell of the swamp.
Then the doorbell rang.
"What the hell?!" Jason said to himself, cinching the bag closed and heaving it over one shoulder with a grunt. Hefty, hefty, hefty. Not wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.
The doorbell rang again. There was a knocking at the door. Jason looked out of the kitchen window. What time was it, even? It was daytime still on this world.
On this world, Jason thought with a pained smile. He was becoming a proper planeswalker, wasn't he?
Biting back his cries of anguish, Jason hauled the bag of stuff into the living room. He noticed with annoyance that he'd tracked mud all over the carpet from the other universe. Jason could tell by the shadows in the curtain next to the front door that someone was still standing out there. The shadow moved back and forth.
Fuck it, Jason thought. Who could possibly come to my door for any reason that I'd care about?
He turned away to go back into the garage. He had to get to the Wilderlands pronto.
The bell rang again. The person outside knocked excitedly, then Jason heard his name called through the door.
"Jason...? Are you home? Come on, Jason. I know you're home! Jason!"
It was Ben's voice.
"Shit."
Jason sighed. He looked down at his armor coated in pale mud, his bloody leg, jacket and gear, his various weapons strapped to him, then he dropped the bag of food and stuff and hobbled to the front door, grimacing and grunting the whole way. Ben would have to find out the details of his adventures at some point. The afternoon light from the west was filtering through the closed blinds of his front room's windows, highlighting floating motes of dust.
"Jason—are you sleeping in the afternoon?" Ben shouted through the door, then knocked again. He seemed a little more manic than usual. "Open up, dude!"
Don't open the door, he thought. You're in a hurry!
He stared at the front door for a moment, torn...
"Hang on!" Jason finally snarled back. He made it to the door in great pain. He unlatched the deadbolt, turned the knob, and squinted against the sun low in the western sky as he opened the door.
Ben stood there, silhouetted against the bright afternoon, dressed in his usual designer-brand casual clothes and a light jacket. He had his laptop bag against his side slung over one slender shoulder, and his eyes popped white against his dark face the moment he looked Jason over.
"Jason! Holy shit, man!"
"I know—come on!" Jason waved him inside and grimaced against the pain that almost made him sick as he backed into the house. "Get in! Have to hurry!"
"What the hell ... what's wrong with you? What happened to your leg?!"
"Come on! Close and lock the door on your way in, Ben!"
Jason led Ben inside and his old friend obeyed, closing and latching the door as if in a daze, staring at Jason's getup. "What are you wearing? What's with the assault rifle?"
"I've gotta go, Ben," Jason said, hobbling back to the garage and waving Ben to follow him. "My other friends are in trouble and I've gotta get to this other world before another minute passes!"
"Other world?!"
Jason looked back at Ben then cried out in pain when he put too much weight on his left leg. It was throbbing and burned as if a blowtorch was leveled at the place where the spear had skewered him. His leg almost buckled again.
"Dude—I told you. Or maybe I didn't. It's all sort of muddling together. You wanna see where those crystals came from? You can come with me, but we have to go right now so that I can slow down time."
"Slow down time?!"
"In or out, Ben? Gotta go!"
Ben stood, his face surprised and taking everything in with a shock. He quickly nodded.
"Uh ... yeah, in! I'm in!"
"Then come with me. Grab that trash bag and follow me into the garage."
"Okay."
Jason paused next to the garage door and plucked his cane out of its spot. He'd almost forgotten it. It seemed funny to be taking his cane back to the Wilderlands again, although now, it was his other leg that was fucked up. The slick, plastic-like polypropylene of the walking aid felt comfortable in his hand. It was an old friend. He'd killed raptors and fought off cannibals with it.
With a lot of pain, Jason lowered himself down the two steps to the
concrete floor of the garage again, looked behind him to make sure that Ben had grabbed the trash bag full of supplies, then faced the empty center of the area.
"What—?" Ben started, then stopped, standing behind Jason on the stairs, confused and watching.
Jason opened his focus key pouch and fished out the infinity crystal. He quickly unwrapped it, held it in his hand, then flexed that part of his mind that was getting easier and easier to flex.
The rift opened like it always did: starting with an orange, basketball-sized fireball that appeared in the center of the garage, spinning wildly. The fireball quickly unfurled into a vertical disc the size somewhat larger than a man. It roared like a jet engine and threw sparks all over the garage.
"Oh my God!" Ben cried from behind.
As the rim of the rift whirled, sputtering as it spit sparks out from its mad, clockwise spin, Jason watched the center of the gateway smooth out until darkening and gradually revealing the black interior of the wyvern's cave.
Jason quickly wrapped up the focus key again, returned it to its pouch, then carefully zipped it closed.
"Follow me!" Jason shouted above the roar. "Just step through. The ground on the other side is the same height."
Ben nodded, his dark, thin face stretched into an expression of shock and more than a small amount of fear. His eyes were wide and white, staring at the rift. They flicked back to Jason.
"Is it safe?"
Jason laughed, even though he was almost vomiting from pain. "Yeah, it's a safe place; mostly." He unslung his AK-47, nestling his cane's crook in his elbow. "Just cover your ears if I have to shoot. It's a cave, and I might blow out your eardrums."
Ben gulped. Jason saw his friend's prominent Adam's apple move up and down.
With that, Jason stepped through into the dark, humid stench of the cave. Ben followed, slow and careful, halfway to being terrified. The pain in Jason's leg was overwhelming and he hoped that he'd be able to hold out long enough to heal before blowing his own brains out to get away from the agony.
As soon as they were through, Jason collapsed the rift. It disappeared into a single point with a pop, and they were cast into utter darkness. Jason quickly reached for the webbing of his left hand and pressed the subdermal switch that would activate his image intensifier.
