by Noah Layton
The things that were pursuing me, a dozen of them in number, were covered in a dark, reddened mess of scales and feathers. Their legs and arms were lean and spindly, and claws with razor sharp blades were embedded into their limbs where their hands and feet should have been, akin those of some kind of gigantic eagle.
Each bore a huge pair of feathered wings held in place by grey reptilian scales which flapped intermittently, lifting their terrifying forms from the ground, framing their horrifying heads; their heads were those of psychotic, ravenous birds crossed with that of a reptile, snapping beaks releasing violent screeches while their black, dead eyes had only one thing in mind.
Me.
I forced my legs to keep running even if I knew that I was well and truly fucked.
Seconds later I chanced another look over my shoulder as I continued up the incline, wondering, hoping to any deity looking my way that they would intervene.
They didn’t. Something else did.
The creatures on my heels slowed, and I looked once more over my shoulder with a nervous laugh.
The moment I turned back in the direction that I was running, new assailants appeared.
There were six, outnumbered two to one by the things chasing me, but that didn’t make them any less intimidating in the slightest. They were evidently human in shape, at least much more so than the rabid humanoid things that had been chasing me. They floated several feet above the ground thanks to the huge, angelic wings protruding from their backs. Their bodies were covered in scuffed golden armour, their faces covered by masks or helmets that obscured their faces from view. Some brandished spears, some swords, while one carried a bow with an arrow at the string, ready to be fired.
The two groups halted, staring each other down. They were thirty yards apart, but I had no doubt that they could cross that distance in a second.
And there I was, right in the middle of their battlefield. Neither group paid me a second’s notice. I was nothing but collateral damage in what was about to be a chaotic battle.
‘ATTACK!’
The voice came from the figures with angel wings, somewhere from the front. A spear was held high in the air, and with a mass of shrieking and a series of war cries, the fight began.
It was all I could do not to get myself murdered.
I jolted to the left sharply, aiming to escape the battlefield, but my guess had unfortunately hit the mark; the two squads were in the throes of battle almost instantly, and I was scrambling through their sparring forms to escape.
Shouts of anger and pain went out behind me, and straight ahead two of the angel-winged fighters took on five of the creatures. An explosion of clanging and screeching sounded out, but the creatures brandished no weapons in their attacks; their razor sharp claws were the tools of death, striking at blades so sharply that sparks flew out.
I dashed to the right, straight into the path the angel-winged assailant with the bow and arrow; he grabbed my shoulder and threw me to the ground.
‘MOVE!’
He yelled after I had fallen to the ground; I only realised the reason a moment later. No sooner had I hit the ground than I saw one of the creatures sprinting at me. Its gaping maw opened wide, screeching hysterically just a few yards from my face as it threw itself at me. The archer was too fast for it, though; he drew an arrow back sharply, releasing it straight at the creature and striking it straight between the eyes.
While he took off, happy with his kill, the creature’s momentum carried it to me. It’s body, now void of a soul – if it had had one to begin with – collapsed atop me.
The weight of this brand new corpse was unbelievable, but the pure adrenaline that pounded in my veins like lava gave me the strength to shove it from atop me. I pulled myself from beneath its wings, scrambling in the direction I was originally heading.
My path was clear, and as I arced around the small section of the battle that had landed right before me, I thought that I was free – and in a way I was.
I just hadn’t anticipated how many options I had for an exit.
The next thing I saw was the ocean spreading out before me. It was scattered with innumerable islands, stretching off into the distance.
Either this was a hell of a drug trip or I definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
That view was so damn good, though, because I was so high up.
I screeched to a halt, stopping just before a hundred foot vertical drop that led to the crashing waves of the ocean at the foot of the cliff, waving my arms to keep me on the ledge like some cartoon character – the only difference being that I managed to stay there.
‘Holy shit…’ I panted, taking in the view. Not a great time, but it was like nothing I had ever seen. A tropical archipelago made up of at least a hundred islands that stretched off to the horizon bafflingly.
And just a short distance away, the battle continued to rage – but it was growing quieter.
I turned back to the battle. Some of the creatures were rushing to the safety of the forest, while the angel-attackers who had arose from the hill were finishing off the last of the remaining creatures, spearing the heads of those injured upon the ground. But they hadn’t been completely successful; one of their group lay dead in the grass nearby, his throat cut open by the sharpened talons of a creature.
They finished up their task, picking off the last and ensuring that they were dead, before steadily turning their attention to me.
‘Shit.’
I looked back at the drop. Like I said, a hundred feet, and that was optimistic.
Looking back over my shoulder, the winning side approached. There were five remaining, their armour splattered with blood and their weapons bearing the same marks of war. Moving through the grass, they stained the greenery with the signs of their victory without even trying.
‘Stay back!’ I shouted, trying to get my voice to hold steady.
They didn’t respond. They just stared at me from behind their helmets and their masks, their handles of their various weapons still clasped in their hands.
The two options were so obvious that I didn’t even need to give them names. I’m fucked and I’m fucked 2: the sequel would both have been sufficient, though.
I glanced at the sharpened blades, the light twanging off their polished steel like that damned cappuccino machine back on… Earth? Hurriedly I looked down to the base of the cliff. No rocks protruded from beneath the water that I could see, but there could be plenty lurking beneath the surface that I would be split open on like a gutted fish.
That was assuming that my organs didn’t collapse from the blunt force trauma when I hit the surface. Or both, which would only be marginally worse considering I would be dead either way.
The drop was a possibility, though. I could come out of it alive.
There wasn’t a scenario where I would remain alive if I stayed up here.
‘I hate my life,’ I muttered, and leaped from the edge.
Wind rushed past my ears. I couldn’t hear a thing beyond the high whistling that surrounded me. My stomach felt like it had snuggled up alongside my heart, both pulsing just as fast as each other.
If I died, this would be a beautiful place to do it.
In every movie I had ever seen with a scene like this they always tucked in their arms and straightened their legs, streamlining themselves. I did just that at the halfway point. In mere seconds I would hit the ground.
Suddenly something whipped past my face, a random blur that jolted past my line of vision. I looked down just in time to see the source come flying back up towards me, wings and all. It wrapped its arms around me, and in an instant I was travelling upwards rather than plummeting into the ocean.
I was face to face with one of the helmeted warriors that had confronted me on the cliff edge. Up close like this I could get a clear look, a clear look at a pair of startling blue eyes and a devious smile.
CLUNK.
The angel-winged assailant headbutted me, and just like that I was
out cold.
Chapter Three
Swords and Wings
Right around the time I woke up on the concrete slab later that day I was seriously re-evaluating my life choices.
As my consciousness returned I stayed perfectly still, blinking in the panels of light that descended through the bars guarding the only window in my cell.
At least that was what it looked like from where I was laid – bare walls, a bucket in the corner, and a heavy, barred wooden door.
Yeah, it was definitely a cell.
I dared to move, sitting up, and the immediate dull pain from the strike to the head exploded through my face like a hit from a sledgehammer. A touch from my fingers at my hairline sent a sharp, stinging sensation through me.
I sat on the edge of the raised slab, held up against the wall by two chains and felt my foot knock against something on the ground. A cup of water. I examined it, smelling the contents, and resolved to drink it down.
If they were trying to kill me they could have done it in a lot of easier, faster ways than poisoning me, and even if they were, I didn’t care – I was that dehydrated that I would have drank from the sea, ironic as it was to even consider.
I downed it in an instant, glad at the tastelessness of it, and set the cup back down upon the floor.
Questions abounded from the moment that I could form coherent thoughts; where the hell was I? How did I get here in the first place? Who were these people that had attacked me, and why did they have wings? Were they people at all?
The remnants of that adrenaline rush remained behind, though, and with it one question remained; why hadn’t they killed me? What use was I to them?
I pushed up from the slab, crossing to the window and looking out through the bars. There was no glass to separate the room from the elements, but prisoners in most cultures weren’t ever afforded luxuries so it didn’t exactly surprise me.
A view of the archipelago stretched out before me, more and more islands of varying sizes, some enormous and looming and some small, hidden in the shadows of other islands. At first all I could notice was their sheer majesty, swamped with tropical forests, small streams that trailed along precarious routes into the sea, and radiant beaches. It was a paradise… And as I looked closer, I noticed… Were there buildings, too? Ancient stone structures, towers with sloped roofs, and…
The door to my cell clunked and I turned away from the window, waiting for my visitor to enter. The sounds continued for several moments, telling me that there were more than a few locks keeping me in here, before one final, panel slid out of place and an unseen handle turned.
In the doorway one of my winged attackers stood. He was clad in the same gold armour, his head covered by another gold mask akin to all the others that I had seen on my kidnappers.
For a moment all he did was stand in the doorway, staring at me, until he turned to another guard nearby and nodded. He then entered the room, the door closing behind him.
‘Look, I don’t know what the hell’s going on here,’ I started. ‘I don’t know who, or what you guys even are… I just wanna get out of here and get back home.’
Kansas again, Dorothy.
‘Are you gonna say anything?’ I continued. ‘Is this some kind of sycophantic game you people get off on?’
The guard sighed deeply, his chest rising and falling.
‘How did you get here?’ He asked simply. There was something off about his voice, muffled beneath the mask.
‘I don’t know. I was in this house… My house, I guess, and something happened, and the next thing I knew I woke up here on your island, stuck in that fight between you and those… Things.’
The guard stared at me before turning and examining the room. He nodded, reached to the base of his mask where it met his chin, and pulled it away.
Shaking his head in the process, I found that I wasn’t looking at some grisly, battle-hardened guy at all – I was looking at a beautiful, sun-kissed girl in her early-twenties, sporting dirty blond hair that fell down over her armoured shoulders.
‘Don’t know if I really appreciate the term ‘guys’,’ she said, her voice sounding much more feminine away from the confines of the mask. ‘But I suppose its better than being referred to as things. Not that you were exactly wrong with that statement, of course…’
‘Wait, you…’ I stuttered, ‘You’re a girl?’
‘Of course I am,’ she scoffed.
‘Right… This just adds more questions to my list.’
‘What would you like to know?’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Ariadne. I am one of the Alerian harpies. What’s your name?
‘Kit Jones.’
‘Nice to meet you, Kit.’
‘Right, but… What are you? How the hell do you have those things?’
‘What things?’
‘Your… Wings.’
‘The real question here is where are your wings? We checked your back after I knocked you out and you don’t have any scars where they could have been cut from.’
‘I never had wings in the first pl- wait, it was you who knocked me out?’
‘Indeed. Apologies for that. We were unsure about whether you were a threat or not.’
‘I’m not a threat to you, believe me. I just don’t wanna be speared to death by you people.’
‘We don’t do anything like that. The question remains though; how come you don’t have wings?’
‘Because nobody in my world is born with wings. Does everybody in your world have them?’
‘Everybody.’
‘Everybody?’
‘Everybody.’
I ran my hands through my hair and shook my head, walking around the room.
‘This is insane,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Okay, so… I picked up this thing back in this house, and it transported me here to your world. I’m still convinced that this is all a hallucination and none of this is real, but either way I landed here.’
‘Oh, we’re very real,’ Ariadne assured me. ‘And I don’t have any reason to lie to you or to hurt you. We don’t have any use for you, whoever or whatever you are, so if we wanted to murder you we would have let you drop from that cliff. Might I say that that was very brave of you, by the way, particularly considering the sheer… Uhh… Lack of wings that you possess.’
‘Thanks.’
‘One thing I’m still a little foggy on, though. How did you actually get here? I mean, I need to report this back to my superiors and telling them that you were transported from another world may not go over well with them. It’s a strange story.’
‘Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I inherited this house from a grandmother that I didn’t even know existed, and I went to check it out. Upstairs there was this… Thing. This orb. It was glowing red, I picked it up, and the next thing I knew…’
I glanced up at Ariadne just as I finished that last part. Her skin was a beautiful colour, but it had drained completely now as she stared back at me, her mouth hanging open a little.
‘What is it…?’
‘Uhh… Could you excuse me for a few minutes? Maybe a little longer…’
It was a question, but before I even had a chance to respond she had knocked on the cell door, it had opened, and she had disappeared outside before it shut again, followed by a swathe of locking sounds.
It took ten or fifteen minutes by my count for Ariadne to return – my phone had died and I seriously doubted that there was a plug socket anywhere in this world – during which time I recounted what I knew so far. Islands. Every humanoid being had wings. They had buildings across all of these islands from what I could see in the distance. There were monsters that could literally rip you apart with their bare hands, or talons if we’re being specific about it.
And these people who had captured me were organised – this had to be their base.
When Ariadne returned she wasn’t alone. She stepped to the side, while a girl clad in flowing silken purple robes
followed her in. She was also in her early-twenties, bearing a pair of wings that were tucked back just like Ariadne’s. Her hair was a golden brown, flowing over her shoulders smoothly, framing a beautiful face and piercing green eyes.
‘It’s nice to finally meet you,’ she said. ‘Ariadne has told me about how you arrived here. Could you tell me anything else about it?’
‘I already told you everything that I know,’ I replied. ‘I touched that red orb and I landed here.’
‘This red orb that you speak of – what happened to the orb itself before you found yourself in our lands?’
‘I don’t know. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what happened. Look, I’m sorry if this thing was important to you, but I honestly don’t know what happened to it or where it went.’
The new girl stared back at me before shooting a glance at Ariadne that I couldn’t help but catch.
‘I think it’s time we took you for a walk,’ she said, with another nod to Ariadne, who returned the nod. They both stood to their feet, the unnamed girl knocking on the door while Ariadne crossed to me, retrieving a rope from the belt of her armour.
‘Where are we going?’
‘For a walk,’ Ariadne said. ‘Apologies for any discomfort, but I’m gonna need to bind your wrists.’
‘Do I have a choice in that?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
I let Ariadne do what she had to do and she wrapped her hand around my upper arm, leading me out of the cell. We emerged onto a long corridor, from where the unnamed woman led us, flanked by two further winged guards, one on either side of her.
As we walked onward, the muscles in my arm twitched and Ariadne squeezed it in response.
‘Did you just squeeze my bicep?’ I asked unashamedly, shooting Ariadne a look.
‘What? No, of course not…’
‘Right…’ I said, managing a genuine smirk at the sight of her tanned cheeks going a little red. They may have been holding my captive but I knew what that was.
I was never around girls this hot usually, not even at college, and especially not ones who took to squeezing my muscles.