by Eddie Patin
As the cavern lit up washed with green in his right eye, Jason flicked on the IR Illuminator on his AK's front rail, shouldered the rifle, and checked for cannibals with a brilliant spotlight that Ben couldn't see.
"Oh God, it's dark!" Ben exclaimed.
No cannibals. The cave was clear. It still stank, but as cleared out as it was—thanks to Riley and Gliath—it was a hell of a lot better than it was before, back when Jason was stuck on this world the first time.
"Hang on a sec," Jason said, turning off the IR Illuminator and lowering his rifle. His left leg panged with fire and felt like a spike was being driven through his thigh. "Shit!"
"Jason?! Are you there? Are you okay?!" Ben stammered, holding his arms wide in front of him with the thin fingers of his free hand splayed out wide. His laptop bag swung and flopped forgotten against his side. He was clearly blinded by the darkness. "Oh God—where are we?! Are you okay?!"
"Relax," Jason said. "It's just dark." He reached down to his belt and pulled out one of his flashlights. Clicking it on, he squinted his right eye against the resulting cone of light that blazed in his vision. "Here. Just don't shine it in my eyes."
Ben fumbled for the light with his free hand, took it, and shined it around the cave wildly.
God—the pain was bad! Jason grimaced and planted his cane against the cavern floor again, trying to help support his left leg. When was the last time he'd eaten anything? He didn't feel hungry or full at the moment. Did they have breakfast that morning before going to the Shattered Swamp?
Yes, he thought. He'd eaten the leftovers from the night before. Regardless, it was time to set up a place to relax then get to chowing down.
Jason started across the cave toward the tunnel that would lead to the valley outside. He breathed in the dank, humid air, trying to ignore the lingering odor of wyvern shit but also thankful that it didn't smell like sulfur. It was hot. He started sweating immediately. Jason figured that he'd set up a place to sit in pretty much the same area where Riley had rested before; somewhere just inside the mouth of the cave. He'd need a fire, and would make one just outside in the open air.
No fire today, he thought. Today, he'd eat canned food. Hopefully there'd be less pain tomorrow.
"Where are we going?" Ben asked. "What is this place?"
Jason kicked a random infinity crystal sticking out of the ground as he limped toward the tunnel. It sparked brightly in his night vision then clattered into another, which also sparked for a moment.
"This is a world—or a universe; whatever—called The Wilderlands," Jason replied, leading Ben toward the cave mouth. "Watch your head here." He ducked when he reached the tunnel. The ceiling there was only about four feet high. His left leg screamed in fiery pain when he tried to crouch. "Shit! God! This is gonna suck."
"What happened to your leg?"
"It was a goddamned spear."
"You were stabbed by a spear?!"
Jason grimaced as he struggled through the low tunnel. He scoffed. "A freaking ettin threw a spear at me, and it impaled my damned leg. It was poisoned, too, with some nasty shit that I have no idea—"
"Ettin?!" Ben asked. "As in ... two headed giant ettin?"
"Yeah, Ben," Jason replied. "That kind of ettin. A little smaller, though, about the size of an ogre."
"You need to get to a hospital! Holy shit—where are we going?!"
"That won't help me," Jason said. "That's why we're here. This place will heal me. It's got a ... regeneration effect. We're heading outside to see what's going on in the valley. You're gonna freaking love this, man. You can drop that bag, now."
Jason could already tell that it was daytime in the Wilderlands. The light from ahead grew in his image intensifier, and after several more steps around the bend, Jason turned his night vision off. He heard Ben eventually click the flashlight off, too, struggling toward the light of day, leaving the white trash bag in the tunnel behind them in a pale, ghostly heap.
At the mouth of the cave, Jason stepped into the bright and hot sunlight, squinting his eyes and gritting his teeth against the pain. He immediately leaned against the rock wall, careful not to trip on the minotaur skull there—now perfectly clean and gleaming white with dark brown horns—and put his cane back onto his elbow to keep his hands free for his rifle.
It was perhaps late morning. The sun was shining, the sky was clear and deep blue and full of circling pterosaurs, and the valley was full of life. At the distant eastern tree line across the valley full of thick grasses and cattails, Jason saw the huge herd of duckbill dinosaurs grazing. A few dozen of them walked around out in the open like massive feeding elk or cows, each down on all fours and ten feet tall or more at the hips. Their green and brown camouflaged skin was thick and blended in well with the woods. Jason knew from experience that the herd had at least a hundred members. Most of them would be just inside the trees, grazing in the shade. Their tales were thick and long, balancing the beasts like huge boat rudders as they kept their heads down in the waist-high grass. Edmontosaurus. There were more dinosaurs, of course. That herd of strange ceratopsians was in the middle of the valley farther to the south again like usual. They weren't Triceratops. The long, gleaming horns over their beak-like snouts curved backwards, away from their faces and to the front. The lumbering beasts were as large as ambulances with colorful crests and radiating some serious 'don't fuck with me' vibes. Jason had forgotten what those were called, but he hurt so badly that he didn't feel like reaching for his OCS. Jason didn't see the Albertosaurs—the mini-rexes—and it was a good thing. Hopefully, he wouldn't have to deal with them at all, especially with Ben here. Looking to the north, Jason saw a single Ankylosaurus plodding along halfway between the cave and Lake Granby, swinging its club-tail as it sauntered up the valley like a living tank. There were no cannibals in sight. The mostly-decomposed frames of the wyvern and the Tyrannosaurus Rex down sat in the grass near the bloody slab rock formation. They were like dead primal gods.
Jason looked at Ben and drank up his friend's awe and excitement. Ben stood in the sun, holding a hand over his eyes, with his mouth agape as he scanned their surroundings.
"Dinosaurs...?" Ben said.
"Yeah," Jason replied with a smile. "There are predators, too, but none here at the moment. There are raptors. Lots of 'em. But they mostly come out at night."
Mostly, Jason thought. He unslung his backpack, took out a bottle of Ibuprofen, and swallowed four pills with a swig of water from the bite valve.
"What is this place?" Ben breathed, looking up at the soaring dinosaurs in the sky.
"I told you," Jason said. "It's a world called the Wilderlands. Or, that's what I call the universe, I should say." Jason was starting to get the idea that these places he was visiting were just single planets in their own infinite universes. He'd been using the terms 'world' and 'universe' interchangeably. Churn is a world; a planet. Earth is a world. Ebonexus is a world. He suddenly wondered about the rest of the universe here. Surely here, in the Wilderlands, he was on a planet somewhat like Earth but different, but would the qualities of the Wilderlands extend to everywhere in the whole universe of 312? Would there still be a Vitality Element, or tiny clinging vines that tear manmade objects apart ... on this planet's moon? What about on another planet light years away? Jason shook his head and turned to Ben again. "Do you recognize the layout? The ridge?"
Ben gasped. "The ridge!" He looked up and down the valley. "It's Ridgeview! Is that Lake Granby?!" he asked, pointing north.
"Kind of," Jason replied. "This is another universe. Another multiverse, really. Things are similar, but also really different."
"Dinosaurs."
"Yeah. Dinosaurs," Jason said.
"Tell me," Ben said with a grin, staring out across the valley at the Edmontosaurs. "How are you doing this? Tell me everything!"
"I will," Jason said. "But let's get inside. I need to sit down and eat so that I can heal."
"The regeneration..." Ben replied.
&n
bsp; "Yeah. Come on."
Chapter 14
Jason told Ben a lot.
He didn't tell him everything. Jason left out the parts about Morgana that were private to him. In fact, it pained Jason greatly to even think about her and what she might be going through. He wondered where she and Riley and Gliath were right now.
'Right now' is a relative term, isn't it? he thought. His friends, taken by the '67% Primordial Giant, 83% Titan', were currently on another timeline. They were in a completely different path of space-time. Whatever was happening to them in the clutches of that magnificent monster was going to happen, and it would happen to all of the infinite other versions of them along different universes parallel to the Shattered Swamp as well as according to their positions in Probability Space. But would Jason be able to go back and save them before they suffered? Would he be able to insert himself into that particular universe at the time he'd bookmarked so that he could go after them right after he'd killed that troll with his lava key?
Were the Riley, Gliath, and Morgana of u1243 meant to be rescued by Jason?
What if they weren't? Couldn't Jason just go back to his bookmark then go back in time some more to save them before the kidnapping had even occurred?
Jason had a feeling that he could, but then, he'd be shunted off to another universe. He'd be there, in the past. He'd be in another universe all the way up until that point where Jason saved his last bookmark and rifted away. If he understood the weird shit that had happened between him, Jason 1241, and Jason 1242 during the Nargog incident correctly, then if Jason went back to a place and time where he'd already been, he'd just shunt off to another universe along Probability Space, then he'd be there, himself, but his friends would be that alternate universe's version of his friends. If he accidentally got himself pushed into another universe by messing with time and managed to save his friends, but they were that alternate universe's version of his friends, then he wouldn't really be saving them, would he? The Riley, Gliath, and Morgana that he knew and loved would still be stuck on universe 1243, the Shattered Swamp, in the clutches of the titan.
Or dead, Jason thought.
But, if he saved another version of his friends, and they thought that they were the same, would it make any difference?
"I would know," Jason said to himself. He'd forever know that he lost his actual friends, and moved on with other versions of them.
"You'd know what?" Ben asked.
Jason shook his head and looked at his old gaming buddy. Ben was sitting against the opposite wall of the tunnel with his legs crossed, trying in vain to avoid dirtying his clothes.
"What...?" Jason said.
"Know what?" Ben asked. "You just zoned out for a while then said that you would know."
Jesus, Jason thought. All of this planeswalking stuff might drive him crazy someday. He was woolgathering more and more it seemed, and he'd only been doing this for a few weeks! There was so much to think about when considering infinity and his place within its meaninglessness.
"Never mind," Jason said. "So what was I saying before?" He took another bite of canned ravioli. He wasn't hungry, but he was making himself eat anyway. They'd been sitting for hours and Jason had told Ben a lot about his adventures, starting with when Riley and Gliath had slipped him the infinity crystal on that fateful weekend after their last Friday night DnD game. Jason had changed out of his Merc armor—which was covered in mud and smelled like urine from when that terrible troll had roared behind him during the storm and Jason had pissed himself. He'd taken some time to clean his leg wound as best he could using a bottle of water, wipes from his backpack, and a spare towel. Now, he was relaxing in gym shorts and a t-shirt in the tunnel after dressing his thigh with gauze and a compression wrap. He also kept his battle belt clipped on since one of its belt pouches held his focus keys. He also had his Glock 26 and an extra mag in his under-the-armor shoulder holster, because this was the Wilderlands, after all. Jason's OCS rested next to him, still hooked to his body by its double-sling, but loosened up a lot more than normal.
The spear wound was nasty. Jason hoped that it would heal okay here.
"So, the necromancer," Ben said. "You said that he was a guy named Derek who was previously a genetic engineer working in China? This is some crazy shit, man." He looked excited. Jason hadn't seen Ben this excited from just talking to him in a long time.
As time passed by in the Wilderlands at perhaps a tenth of the rate of time passing on Earth, Jason resumed his tale, sharing food and water with Ben when his old friend requested it. Ben had, of course, not brought any food with him. He'd only shown up at Jason's house to discuss their business idea and the origin of the infinity crystals.
Now, he was getting a wide-eyed look at their source.
After a while, Jason took a break from telling stories and played with his OCS while Ben took a flashlight back into the stinking cavern to collect the energy-producing stones.
"You sure it's safe in there?" Ben asked before departing.
"There used to be some baby wyverns in the back, but they're dead now. Yeah."
Jason stared at the bookmark titles "Troll Cave after Giant" and hoped that he wasn't wrong about his plan to go back to that temporal point. He double and triple-checked that he'd saved the coordinates with all of the dimensions selected and dreaded not being able to return to that time. He couldn't stand the idea that time was passing there and he wouldn't be able to go back; the thought that his friends were suffering while he was sitting around eating ravioli.
What would that fearsome giant do to them? Why did he collect them like that in the first place? How did he knock them all out? Jason recalled feeling something strange and oppressive pass over him—through his mind—at the same time as Riley, Gliath, and Morgana had dropped. Why hadn't he collapsed as well?
A long, pulse of pain swept through Jason from his wound, making him throw his head back and clench his eyes shut until it passed. The pain in Jason's left leg came and went, sometimes dwindling when he'd sat still long enough, sometimes blazing and fresh as if jagged shards of red-hot metal were twisting around in his thigh.
"At least I'm not bleeding," Jason muttered through the pain. "At least I'm not still poisoned."
Looking back at the OCS when the wave of agony had moved on, Jason pulled up his initial coordinates for universe 1243. At the time, back when they'd first rifted to that murky world of giants and terrible, black storms, he'd named it 'Troll Swamp'. Now, he changed the name of u1243 to 'The Shattered Swamp'. He added in notes about the ettins and their poisonous spears and the regeneration abilities of the DnD-like trolls. He remembered with a wave of revulsion the disembodied arm grabbing his foot with its claws and long, gangly fingers. Jason notated the quick and regular storms of black vapor and blue will-o-wisps. He realized that he could go into the fauna readings and leave notes under that data as well. Navigating to the entry of the titan, Jason wrote:
"As tall as a storm giant, bluish-turquoise skin crawling with weird, colorful elemental-looking energy. Wore sandals and a Roman-like tunic that didn't cover his chest. Rainbow fire hair like Skinner's. Made the ground solid under each step. Cast some sort of 'sleep' spell on everyone. No visible weapons."
Jason paused. Was that really correct? Did he remember that right? That description seemed like something so strange; of a creature too different than the swamp-dwelling, savage giants that lived in a place like that. Then again, the troll did call the titan a god.
"Voro, the broken god," Jason muttered to himself.
Later, just before sunset, Ben convinced Jason to step outside with him again. He'd collected dozens of infinity crystals; as many as he could stuff into his laptop bag to fit with the stuff that was already in there.
"You've got to be more careful, Ben," Jason said as they leaned against the outer wall of the cave. Looking around the cave mouth, Jason could recall exactly where he'd set up his paracord loop traps for the wyvern on that crazy, rainy day. It was wild ho
w things had turned out.
"What do you mean?" Ben asked. His clothes were dusty. He looked like he'd been on an archeological dig, and his dark skin glistened with beads of sweat. "God damn—this is really beautiful out here! I can't believe you survived in this place like you did for two weeks."
"You can't be just showing that stuff to anybody. Who's this woman at the university?"
Ben smiled and scoffed. "Don't be so uptight about it, man. We're gonna sell them, aren't we? We'll be revealing those infinity crystals to everyone at some point!"
That made Jason very uncomfortable. He really wanted to put an end to it right then and there before he was ... who knows ... targeted by the government or something. He couldn't shake an intense paranoid feeling that Earth would not be kind to a man that could rift to other universes. If he and Ben tried to profit from this, it would only be a matter of time before some megacorporation or the US government or who knows who became interested, examined their Infinity Chargers, and tried to somehow seize the technology for themselves. And where would that lead them? To Jason, of course.
Jason wanted to shut down the whole idea then and there, but he didn't. He didn't know why he couldn't speak up about it. Maybe he didn't want to disappoint Ben. Ben was his last friend from his old life that was still around. He'd known Ben since high school. Hell—even if he told Ben to kill the whole 'Infinity Charger business' idea, who's to say that Ben would even listen? He already had the prototype, and now he had several more crystals in his bag. He might still try to do something with them that might get Jason in trouble. And even if Jason didn't allow Ben to access any more, maybe he'd become angry and turn against him or something. He might cause trouble. Jason had a lot of secrets now, and he needed to keep them secret.
