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

  Jason plummeted into the unknown, feeling like he was falling, and the sounds around him warped and muffled as if he was underwater.

  Then, in the next instant, Jason felt like the ceiling and the floor had flip-flopped. He fell up, his face suddenly hit with a wave of heat and wet air. Almost immediately, he crashed onto dirt and rocks in darkness, clattering into a pile of what felt like lots and lots of bones...

  Chapter 7

  Jason hit the crumbly, hot floor of dust and dried, caked mud.

  He sprawled on the ground in the dark space, an orange glare of fiery light nearly blinding him. Things clattered and snapped and made a racket around him. From the sounds and the feel of hard lines and curves pressing against his body and his scrambling hands, he knew that he was in a massive collection of bones. His right hand found some soft and slimy edges of what might have been rotten meat and gristle on a gnawed-on ball-and-socket joint, invisible in the shifting darkness.

  The flaring orange light—like a fire burning behind him—suddenly winked out with a pop.

  When Jason took a great breath in surprise, he inhaled a stench of decay and snake shit and rotten odors that immediately threatened to make him puke.

  Fear swelled in Jason’s stomach and chest like a burgeoning fountain, and his knees and elbows turned to jelly.

  A ripple of blue sparks and tiny arcs of lightning spread away from his impact on the bone-littered ground as if Jason had landed in a pool of faint, blue light. The arcs of electricity and rippling glow emanated from countless little, blue crystals just like that one Jason had in his pocket. Their cloudy, sapphire light danced away from him into the unseen distance of the black space. He caught horrific glances of monstrous skulls and bones; ribs and spines and teeth...

  Then, just as quickly as the sparks had spread out through the crystals like ripples in a pond, the blue light was gone, and Jason was plunged into frightful darkness again.

  "Shit!" he hissed, struggling to find his feet under him, even though the white fear coursing through his body made it hard to move.

  As Jason gasped in terror for breath, he felt the heavy, humid air fill his lungs with the terrible stench of the place.

  Eventually, kicking through several bones as he planted the soles of his boots onto the dried-mud floor, Jason was able to stand. His quick, desperate breaths filled his lungs with a hot, humid stink. He looked around and saw nothing but darkness. A few crystals sparked near him, disturbed and stimulated by the bones and rocks he displaced getting to his feet.

  Then, Jason remembered his gun and cane. His hands were empty—he must have dropped them!

  The air was hot and muggy, and Jason’s fleece jacket immediately started him sweating. His breathing raced ragged and fearful and he scanned the dark, looking for something—anything—to tell him what the hell was going on! He peered desperately around the darkness where he’d fallen, looking for his weapons, but he couldn’t see shit.

  With a quick leap of insight, Jason reached for his special pouch on his chest and pulled out his phone. He turned on the display.

  The last video he was watching was replaced with the black screen that said:

  Connection to server lost.

  Touch to retry.

  At the top of his phone’s screen, Jason noticed that his bars were gone. His network was gone.

  "Shit..." he whispered, glancing all around in terror when his voice echoed.

  Jason’s heart beat loud and fast in his ears.

  He exited YouTube and scrolled through his programs until he found the ‘flashlight’ app, then turned it on, creating an instant point of brightness from the LED light that served as his phone’s camera flash.

  "Oh my God!" Jason exclaimed, panning the light around at his surroundings...

  It was a cave—a big cave, with a bowl of dirt and mud in the middle full of bones—so many bones! And not just white bones; they were caked with dried gristle and gore and leathery scraps of torn and dried-out skin. As Jason waved the back of his phone around, the LED gleamed off of dozens—maybe a hundred or more—of those same strange crystals sticking out of the ground. The piezoelectric stones were hard to see partially-embedded like they were, but they winked at him as he passed his phone by, reflecting the LED light.

  "Where the hell am I...?"

  Jason’s heart started to slow down, but he had to fight back nausea as he still heaved in heavy, panicked breaths of heavy, humid air. He was afraid—scared as hell! But his eyes darted around the strange cavern, searching for answers; searching for a way out. Maybe there was a way back home from ... wherever the hell he was...?!

  How did he—?!

  There was a sudden sound—a big bone, or a rock falling around a corner. Jason spun around, kicking several more bones out of the way of his boots.

  Fear swept through the man like a cold wind gusting out from his heart.

  Up ahead, the meager light of his phone didn’t quite reach the back of the cave, but he could see that the walls tapered there, leading to a natural tunnel.

  Something over there, he thought. Don’t go there.

  Shining his phone down at the ground around his feet, Jason searched quickly and desperately for his Glock, then his cane. Both items were black, but they were also the only manmade-looking things on the ground. He found them easily enough. Tucking his cane under one arm, Jason moved his phone to his left hand and picked up the Glock with his right, taking a moment to wipe the dirt and dust off of the weapon with his jacket sleeve.

  Jacket. Hot. It was hot as hell in this stinking cave.

  Turning away from the small tunnel where something moved in the dark, Jason saw that another larger tunnel led away in the opposite direction—a wide natural corridor a bit taller than his head. Taking a few steps in that direction, Jason set off another wave of crystals sparking through the cavern with a chain reaction of eerie, blue light. He stumbled through bones of all shapes and sizes heading toward the big tunnel.

  Jason tripped, looked down, and saw a bone—something like a femur—that was as long as he was! Jason gasped, and looked around at the other bones connected to it, bending low with his phone. The LED lit up a monstrous decomposed leg that had ancient, tattered sinews and rotten threads of muscles still attached.

  "What the hell is that?"

  Looking at the other remains, Jason saw all sorts of bones—animals by the looks of them, although he couldn’t identify what was what. There were many shoulder-blades and thin, curving ribs. Lots of long spines and tails even. In large clumps here and there were piles of bones larger than Jason’s own body that formed strange shapes and large masses that the man didn’t recognize. Jason thought that one set of remains was a deer carcass, but it had long, strange feet that ended in claws like ... maybe it was a big turkey or something? There were skulls here and there as well, but Jason didn’t stop to look too closely.

  The cave was terrifying and combined with the hot, humid air, the man struggled against the smell of death and rotting bodies. There was an uncomfortable, underlying scent of barbeque that stood out from the intense funk, and the aromatic mixture of cooked flesh and other more terrible odors put a sicky-sweet taste in the back of Jason’s throat that threatened to make him vomit.

  His throat bucked and heaved, and his mouth was suddenly filled with the taste of his coffee again. He swallowed it back down and pressed on, stumbling through bones and chunks of rocks and ridges of dried mud, making his way to the tunnel.

  All along the way, the crystals shimmered like ripples in a pond, lighting up the scattered remains of countless animals strewn across the cavern with a blue glow.

  It was beautiful, and morbid, and Jason felt real terror for the second time in his life.

  When he reached the edge of the tunnel and looked ahead to where it curved around—the ceiling dropped down to about the height of his shoulders for a while—Jason felt a small relief. There was a hazy, dim light up ahead. Jason was starting to feel impatient and une
asy about using the LED from his phone. It looked like the way out was up ahead, but if he needed to go on any longer without seeing a path to outside, he'd have put his phone away and take a real flashlight out from his pack.

  Continuing, Jason paused when he passed by the curving skeleton and grinning skull of what must have been a huge snake; a great, big python. The ribs scattered around it were oddly placed. The man paused, trying to make sense of the strange place, but instead followed a compulsion to keep going. Jason felt one thing screaming inside him: he had to get outside. Once he was in the fresh air again, he knew that he could figure things out.

  He had to get home.

  The bones were mostly concentrated in the cavern—thank God—and now, Jason made his way carefully along the right wall of the wide, curved tunnel, his heartbeat slowing but still strong and violent in his ears. He moved carefully, ducking to keep from hitting his head. His breath was still bathed in the foul, humid air. The light from outside grew closer and closer like a bright, golden prize...

  Jason stumbled along through dried-out swathes in the mud; ridges that caught at his boots and tried to trip him. He splashed through a puddle and had to duck down to avoid hitting his head on the rock tunnel ceiling, which was making Jason focus a lot on the pain in his right knee again now that the numbness of adrenaline was wearing off.

  Eventually, the tunnel was bright enough to see, and he was able to put his phone away back into its pouch. Jason pulled his cane out of the crook of his elbow and started using it against the caked tunnel floor to take the pressure off of his bent leg. When he finally reached the end of the tunnel, he had to shield his eyes from the bold daylight that pierced his vision before he adapted to see.

  Jason gasped at the world.

  "Oh my God..."

  Impossibly, Jason looked out onto a scene like something out of a movie; something from a dream. Outside the mouth of the cave was a vast, wild world of primordial, tall pines much larger than he’d ever seen in Colorado and thick underbrush of brilliant green ferns and flat leaves and thick-bodied flowers and growths that Jason didn’t recognize.

  The weather was hot and sunny, and the sky was as intensely blue as the forest and land around him was green.

  Like a tickle in his mind, Jason suddenly realized that the vista in front of him—outside that cave full of bones and rot—looked a hell of a lot like Ridgeview, Colorado! How could he not notice? He’d spent years walking all over the town near his house, especially the park lands around the ridge itself. And before him, across a great valley and rising forest ... was the ridge! His hometown's main landmark was covered in dense trees and dense foliage, but that was definitely 'the ridge' running from north to south. Outside the cave, a gravelly slope led down to a strange, flat rock formation. Past that was a wide valley bearing a lot of resemblance to the sloped field behind his house—previously full of scrub oak and pine trees—that ran between his backyard up to where the ridge started back home. But here, past that lush valley full of waist-high, waving green grasses and cattails, was a heavy forest of ancient trees extending all the way up to the ridge itself. And up on top of the long rocky formation, Jason recognized the same bald patches of granite rock and boulders. This wilder version of the ridge ran the same length in the same directions and there! There was Lake Granby, sparkling blue in the sunshine!

  "What in the holy hell...?!"

  Was this Ridgeview? Was this still Colorado?

  "Where the fuck am I...?!"

  With this Ridgeview, Colorado far in the past, back before people? Hell—back before Colorado had become temperate! Jason recalled that in Earth's past, way back during the dinosaur times and when the continents were still moving around, Colorado had been tropical.

  It was like ... like he'd gone back in time!

  The buzzing drone of insects was heavy and the air was hot and humid.

  Jason spun around to look at the mouth of the cave. He had to see if the slope ran up behind it; had to see what was going on where his house was supposed to be! But apparently this strange, wilder world wasn’t completely identical to his own. Some of the slopes were steeper, and the valley here was flat where it was previously a sloped hill heading up all the way to the ridge. But ... this was Ridgeview. Mostly Ridgeview...

  Jason felt sweat running down over his brow, tickling his nose. It was hot. Not winter anymore—no snow. It was like ... being in the tropics!

  Here, out in the open, Jason heard a plethora of strange bird-like sounds in the surrounding trees. There was the skittering and rustling of leaves. And there were more animal sounds too—bird calls and insects buzzing (cicadas? Jason thought)—coming from the dense forest down across the choke-point in the valley and behind him up the hill.

  How did this happen?!

  The hill above the cave’s mouth rose out of sight and disappeared into a forest—thick and old, just like across the big, green valley—on either side of the cave as well. Some of the trees were huge pines mottled with moss. Others were bizarre trees that Jason didn’t recognize. They had similar bark to palm trees, but with fronds extending from their trunks like branches. The fronds started near the ground and went all the way to the top, twenty feet or more in the air.

  Something suddenly moved in a nearby bush of broad, flat leaves fat with water. It rustled through the underbrush—making Jason imagine a cat or a squirrel—and the man scrambled to bring his pistol to bear, his heart suddenly pounding in his ears again.

  A leaf moved, but that was all.

  Jason broke his eyes away and looked around for movement. He loosely scanned the big eagles soaring around in the air, silhouetted by the sun. They were huge! Then he looked down into the valley again when he heard rustling sounds in the thickets down there. He watched in confusion as several large, strangely-colored chickens darted out of the underbrush and ran across the rock formation, disappearing into more brush to the north. Their tail feathers were way longer than they should have been.

  There was a grunt down the hill, and Jason gasped when he suddenly saw a dusky colored man down there, looking up at him. The guy was almost naked with muddy, grey skin, dressed in nothing more than a leather loin cloth. He was decorated with animal bits and feathers.

  The man was too far to make out more detail other than the fact that he held a club of some sort in one hand topped with a lashed-on stone.

  He turned and loudly sprinted away, disappearing into the bush.

  Then more of them appeared, carrying the body of a giant bird.

  "What...?" Jason said to himself.

  That’s when Jason realized that the flat rock formation below the cave was covered in dried blood and surrounded with bones and charred, dried-out wood. The dead remains around the rock slab weren’t as thickly-packed as the carcasses back in the cave, but the abundance of rotting animal bodies was noticeable.

  As the strange men worked together to carry the dead bird—an ostrich perhaps?—Jason was reminded of movies with cannibals and savages carrying white men strapped to big logs to be roasted over a fire. The primitives paid Jason no mind as they carried the dead animal up onto the big rock slab, then, they plopped the body down onto the bloody stone formation. Then, suddenly riled into action by an unseen force, the nearly-naked people scrambled to collect logs and sticks and whatever wood they could find around the area, throwing it all down around the corpse. They stacked wood around it around the big, dead bird with frantic speed, leaping and hopping and making monkey sounds.

  Is this Ridgeview? Jason thought. Or was he suddenly transported to some really isolated spot in the Amazon jungle or something?

  He had no way to know whether or not those people were dangerous. Primitive, sure, but were they hostile? Were there still any hostile tribes left on Earth? Any unknown communities of savages living in dark jungles in Africa or South America?

  These people must know about civilization. Even if they’re still embracing their old ways and culture, there must at least be a semi-
modern town around here, right? Jason couldn’t tell from where he was standing if they were Africans or South Americans or Pygmies or what—but they had to be familiar with the Western World, at least from having visitors, right? Were there still any uncontacted tribes out there?

  Unless I'm back in time, Jason thought.

  Jason realized that he must have looked really strange with his winter walking gear on, standing at the mouth of the cave above the slope that led down to those men, but they sure looked strange to him, too.

  Holstering his Glock 26 to avoid alarming any of the natives, Jason raised his right arm to wave, opening his mouth to call out to them—

  A shrill animal screech sounded from above; a huge, visceral sound that shocked Jason to the core and sent a blast of icy fear shooting up his back.

  Jason crouched in surprise and looked up.

  There was a huge, strange bird circling up there. It was...

  No, not a bird. It was monstrous! Gigantic! The beast had two massive leathery wings that stretched out perhaps twenty feet or more, and a long, snake-like tail drifted behind it in the wind. Jason gasped when he stared at the long neck and the head shaped a little like a crocodile’s. Even with the glare of the sun shrouding the monster in shadow, Jason could tell that numerous spikes and spines sprouted from its head and ran down its neck toward its body.

  It wasn't a giant bird.

  It was a goddamn dragon.

  The monster circled right above Jason, getting bigger and bigger...

  Shit!

  Panic filled the man as he realized that the monster was descending toward the mouth of the cave ... right where he was standing!

  Jason scrambled to the side and plunged face-first into the thick forest and flat leaves and fern fronds. He stumbled several blind steps into the underbrush, pushing through thorny vines and scratching branches, ignoring the sudden screaming pain in his knee, praying that the monster didn’t see him as it swooped in to land...