The Duelist

by Eric Vall

  The leviathan was huge. It was probably the size of a standard high school track field with metallic scales and broad stripes of black and deep green. It reminded me of the koi fish I saw when my foster family took me to an aquarium when I was ten. A koi could keep growing in size as long as their environment supported it.

  This behemoth sure had enough space in this endless ocean, that was for certain.

  For a moment, I thought I was gaining a little edge and pulling ahead since I wasn’t swimming over its spiny dorsal fin anymore. Now, I was keeping stride with it more toward its massive head.

  Its eyes were the size of two Volkswagen Beetles, and they swiveled upward to gaze at me. Each pupil was a thin sliver of black like a reptile’s, but the eyes themselves were the color of highly polished chrome. The sun was reflecting off them, and every so often, I would be blinded by a flash.

  I was getting tired, and the island didn’t seem to be getting any closer. The leviathan’s pupils dilated.

  Suddenly, a sound that reminded me of the call of a humpback whale shook my bones and made my teeth ache, and directly after this sonic-like boom, the leviathan torpedoed ahead by a full quarter mile before it exploded out of the water in front of me.

  “Holy fuck!” I screamed as it flipped its body over my head in a fantastic breach. It kept its silver eyes on me the whole time it arced backward through the air, and water and long tangles of purple seaweed fell down on me from above. There was no way I could outrun what came next, so I just braced myself to ride the tidal wave that hit me.

  I barely managed to gulp in a breath before I tumbled ass-over-elbow through the surf, and I hoped I wouldn’t hit my head on a rock or some sort of coral reef.

  That would really fuck up my plan of not dying.

  My lungs were screaming at me for air, but I was so disoriented I didn’t know which way to kick to the surface. I tried to open my eyes, but the waves sent me spinning in different directions. Over and over I tumbled until I slammed into the seabed, and the remains of my precious oxygen escaped my mouth in a flurry of bubbles.

  At least now I knew which way was up.

  I dug my heels into the sand and pushed as hard as I could. Then I kept my eyes on the glimmering sun and tried to ignore the blackness that crept into the edges of my vision. I kicked in time with my heartbeat and clawed my way to the surface. The ocean that had seemed so free and easy before was now working against me. It was like there was a force wrapped around my legs that wanted to pull me under and keep me there, and I struggled harder against it.

  My head pounded. Shit. I wasn’t going to make it. I was going to pass out…

  Abruptly, my head broke the surface, and I gasped for air. I coughed, spluttered, and wiped the water out of my face. Then I looked around wildly for the monster fish, but there was no sign of it. Just miles of blue ocean in all directions except one. The silver lining of all this nearly drowning and being eaten alive was the giant wave created by the koi pushed me closer to the island. In fact, I was practically right on top of the shore, and this was lucky for me because I was exhausted. Especially from trying to force down the panicked “ohmygodthisisreal” stuck on a loop-track inside my head.

  My arms and legs felt like boiled noodles, but I made my way stroke by tired stroke. Soon, my feet could touch the bottom again, and I crawled the rest of the way to the beach and collapsed onto my back. Then I just laid there tangled in the smelly purple seaweed and took deep breaths.

  “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! What the fuck!” I rambled and clapped my hands over my eyes. “What the flaming fucking hell was that?”

  I might have been freaking out just a little.

  I spent a few more seconds internally falling apart before I abruptly sat up and clutched my hair again. I needed to snap out of it. No matter the hows or the whys, it seemed as if I was actually here.

  Wherever here was.

  This was reality, or close enough to one where my brain registered my surroundings as being undeniably physical and undeniably deadly.

  There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I better nut the fuck up.

  “Right,” I said and dragged myself to my feet. “I need a plan.”

  The surf tugged at my ankles as I trudged farther up the beach toward the sheer cliffs. It was like the ocean was almost sad to let me go, but that was crazy because it was just a body of water, and it couldn’t be sad, could it?

  “Maybe I need to stop pretending this is Earth?” I asked myself as I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand and looked toward the distant cliffs.

  The rocky walls were high, and they ran exactly half the length of the beach. In front of me, the cliffs tapered off suddenly, and the man-made structure I spotted earlier began filling in for where nature stopped. Whoever, or whatever, built that wall obviously wanted to use the island’s natural defenses to fortify their fortress, but what were they trying to defend themselves from? I didn’t have any answers, but I could take a wild guess. As beautiful as this place was, it was hostile as well, and I knew my chances of survival were better if I could make my way to their settlement.

  First things first, though. I needed to do something about my shoe-less state. Those bluffs looked like they had sharp rocks, and I would be going nowhere fast if the bottoms of my feet were all sliced up.

  “What can I find?” I looked around the beach for any pieces of driftwood. Maybe I could fashion myself a pair of sandals I could strap to my feet with strips of that seaweed, so I grabbed some of the purple stuff from where it was stuck to my shoulder. The seaweed smelled like old tuna cans left out in the garbage for too long, but the purple tendrils were slightly elastic like silicone and almost impossible to tear with my hands.

  Armed with a plan, I set out to find two similarly sized pieces of wood. There was plenty littered on the beach, but I noticed none of them resembled those aspen-willow trees I’d encountered earlier. Every now and then, I would glance out over the horizon to see if that strange island had reappeared, but there was no trace of it. Just more blue, crystalline sea.

  After about twenty minutes of searching through the various pieces of driftwood this island had to offer, I finally found two similar in size and shape to my feet. The wood was a dandelion yellow and had a texture similar to that of tire tread. Its hardness reminded me of oak, but it was also really thin and flexible. It would provide the traction I needed to hike up the jagged slopes, and it would do well to protect my feet in the process.

  After I gathered more seaweed of various lengths, I took the first piece of wood and secured it against the sole of my foot like an ace bandage. I tried a few different styles depending on comfort and practicality before I settled on a prototype of a gladiator sandal. I wrapped the weed halfway up my knee for added ankle support and made sure to crisscross it firmly but not too tightly. If it wasn’t Barney-the-dinosaur purple, it would actually look pretty cool. When I was satisfied, I did up the other one and tested them by walking around.

  The open design of the sandals enabled the breeze to flow over my toes, which was a bonus because it was really getting hot out, and I could tell my feet were going to start sweating. That was one of the things I’d never liked about my Iron Rangers. They were always hot as hell, and I figured these new makeshift sandals were going to be a good enough replacement for the boots I’d left back in the ocean.

  I figured it would take me a bit over an hour to walk to the stone wall I saw in the cliffs, but the sun hovered directly overhead like a blazing cauldron of boiling magma, and I wished I had something to carry water in. Once I started uphill, there would be no chance for me to run back and get some from the ocean, so I filled up on more of the strange saltless seawater, stripped off my AC/DC t-shirt, and tied it around my head do-rag style.

  “Nut up, buttercup,” I muttered to myself and began my trip.

  Shortly into it, I noticed I wasn’t breathing as hard as I thought I would. I was just getting into an area where the hills finally
made way to rubble and fallen boulders at the cliff’s ascending base, but I circumvented most of them and stuck to the soft slopes even though there was a risk of sliding back down. My improvised gladiator kicks did their job, so that was one less thing to worry about. Still, even though I’d somehow gotten a second wind, I was starting to feel the bite of thirst. The sun was almost unbearable, and I was sweating a lot. If I didn’t replenish what I was losing soon, I would be up shit creek without a paddle.

  I continued on.

  Eventually, my muscles began to protest, so I took a seat on a boulder for a moment and massaged away a fierce charlie horse in my leg. My sandals were passable, but they were shit for arch support. I dug my knuckle in harder as the pain twisted deeper, and I breathed hard and looked around to survey my progress. It seemed like I’d been hiking forever, but I wasn’t getting any farther.

  I was about halfway up so far, and I could see where the natural cliff began to transform into a sloping valley. From there, the wall stretched to the east parallel to the rest of the shoreline, and the closer I got, the more I could tell it was an impressive feat of building.

  For one, the wall was truly massive. Like a combination of the gates of Mordor and the wall of Ba Sing Se. The stone was a smooth sand color, but all along the top were deadly looking spikes. Every thousand yards or so down the battlement there would be a square archer’s tower complete with rectangular crenels, and it gave me hope that whoever had built it was a sophisticated species.

  A breeze drifted through the stagnant air, and with it came a sound that made me sit up straight. Maybe I was just hearing things, but no. There it was again.

  The unmistakable sound of flowing water.

  I forgot the pain in my leg, jumped to my feet, and followed the sound down into the valley until I found the source. A small natural stream flowed from a lake shrouded by the pine-looking trees all around. I hurried to the bank and crouched down to bring a palmful of water up to my dry mouth.

  “Blech!” I spat out the water at the shock of salt I received on my taste buds.

  Ugh, that was nasty. Why was everything backwards on this world? Fresh water oceans and salty lakes and streams? God, I just wanted to go home already. Sure, I had a shitty studio apartment in a part of town that wasn’t really the best, but at least everything made sense there.

  “Quit whining, you sissy la la,” I scolded myself.

  Something caught my eye when I leaned back on my heels. Against the naturalness of the landscape, a series of rusty iron pipes stuck out from the lake like a sore thumb. I rose to my feet and traced the pipes with my gaze. There were dozens of them snaking their way across the ground up toward the wall, and it looked like an irrigation system. If I followed it, there was a good chance it would lead me to the city. Or at least to some drinkable water source.

  “Now, we are getting somewhere,” I said as I pressed on.

  This was it. The wall loomed closer and closer until I was in its shadow, and I kept glancing up through the canopy to look at it. I started to hear more sounds as I trudged on. My back and thighs were sore, but I didn’t care. I could make out the roar of voices now. And some music even. Whatever was going on behind the wall sounded festive, and as crazy as my situation was, I admitted to myself I was a little excited, too. The theory I got abducted by aliens hadn’t been ruled out after all. Maybe I was about to witness some cool alien culture. It was all very Star Trek, and I couldn’t help but be curious.

  The music and festivities were getting louder, so I followed the pipes up one last hill and stopped when I got to the top. Now that I was on the other side of the valley, I could see the cliffs were actually a remnant to a giant crater, and where the crater faltered, the wall took over. I wouldn’t be surprised if the wall wrapped around more than three quarters of the whole island. At the top of the crest, the pipes branched off and crawled like vines along the ground until they attached themselves to the wall and disappeared somewhere inside.

  I made my way to the wall so I could examine the pipes up close.

  The wall looked older like it had been made centuries ago, but the pipes looked like a new addition, since they were haphazardly stuck into the wall like they were an invasive weed digging its roots in.

  This didn’t look like the end where the entrance was. In fact, when I looked down the length of the wall, there didn’t seem to be any break in the stonework that suggested any sort of gate. I could try to walk the circumference of the wall to try and find it, but that would take time I couldn’t afford.

  I looked back at the piece of wall in front of me. Around the area where the pipes were built in, a type of mortar acted as a seal, so I used my fingernail and chipped a little off from one of the bigger pipes to see what it was made of. The material crumbled away fairly easy, so I used a bigger rock to scrape and chip harder until dirt and other debris came tumbling out, and I broke through the outer part of the wall.

  Behind the outer layer of the wall, there was a filling that was traditional for medieval fortresses. If I could shift enough of it around the pipe, I could find my way in.

  The wall was thick, so this took me the better part of an hour, and it was becoming more difficult the farther into the wall I dug. The more of the inner filling I moved, the more of it fell to fill in the space.

  At one point, I thought I was going to be buried alive, and I panicked a little. Then I heard a deep rumble above me and dug faster. A rock smacked my shoulder, and that plus the darkness was driving me a little crazy.

  “Come on!” I screamed. “I do not want to die in a wall like some stupid Edgar Allen Poe character!”

  The mortar on the other side broke open, and I fell out of the wall head first. I somersaulted a few times and finally stopped at the bottom of a steep slope. Then I gasped to catch my breath and blinked up at the sun.

  Oh, how I had missed the sun.

  “Fuck you, wall, fuck you, Poe, and fuck you, Ms. Rogers’ ninth grade literature class.” I brushed some of the dirt off me with the shirt I was wearing on my head. I was a mess, but at least I was now on the other side of the wall. Then I put my shirt back on and looked around. “Woah.”

  The valley the crater left behind was gargantuan.

  Vast sweeps of farm lands and forests stretched out in front of me, and in the center of the crater another stronghold existed that might have been a palace. A small distance from that was a rustic looking village… and the source of the merry celebration I heard before.

  “Treyvn!” a small voice rang out from my left, and I sunk back into the shadow of the trees behind me.

  A moment later, a normal looking little boy came from the farmhouse near where I fell out of the wall. He waved for someone to come closer before another child, a girl, walked up to him and grabbed his hand. She was human looking for the most part, but unlike the boy, a plumage of brown feathers sprouted from her head. That plus the small wings on her back made her look like a little sparrow.

  What.

  The.

  Fuck.

  The boy looked at her and said something, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  Suddenly, my vision doubled, and a low droning noise filled my head. My hearing tunneled out, and it made everything sound as if my head was in a metal wash bucket. I jammed my fingers into my ears and wiggled.

  “Dou vu lo ta?” the boy spoke again.

  I shook my head again to get my hearing to work properly.

  “Vera! Vera! Da te Vakos really have a magic cow, Treyvn?” the little girl asked, and I blinked in surprise.

  “I don’t know, Misha,” he said. “But if we hurry I bet Vako will give us some of his famous Sun Day rolls.”

  “Yay!” the girl squealed in delight. She skipped along with presumably her brother past my hiding spot, and I watched the two of them make their way to the square.

  I stepped out and walked to the main road, and I wiggled my jaw a bit to get my ears to pop. It kind of felt like being on a plane a
t high altitude. Well, whatever the hell that was about at least I could understand the locals now.

  Invisible translation technology? Check. Definitely Star Trek material.

  “When in Rome,” I said to no one and followed the path toward the excitement.

  Hundreds of banners, pennants, and posters, all with a golden spiral sun logo on them, led the way to the festive celebration, and my head was on a constant swivel as I tried to take everything in.

  People of all sorts milled from stall to stall and crowded the streets. Some looked human, but most were a combination of human and animal. There were people with feline characteristics that had pointed ears on their heads and long swishing tails. Some were strikingly tall and had reptile features like deadly looking claws and horned-spikes sprouting from their backs. And some even had beautiful antlers decorated with flowers and jewelry on their heads. There were even some species I didn’t have a name for, but by far, most of the people in the village had bird-like qualities about them, so I assumed they were the natives based on how many there were.

  Something knocked into me from behind, and I moved out of the way of two satyr-children chasing each other around various vendor stalls selling all kinds of crafts and wares. Minstrels that looked like rabbits and foxes played odd instruments and danced along the cobble stones. Various smells of cooking meats and spicy-sweet aromas wafted in the air, and my stomach cramped from the lack of food. The last thing I remembered eating was three dollar-menu tacos and a flat Mountain Dew for lunch. That seemed like days ago, but I tried to keep from drooling like an idiot as I stumbled along through this alien bazaar.