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

  The two closed the distance, hiking up the hill with ease. The human seemed annoyed with the rain, shielding his eyes and darkly-bearded face with one hand, carrying a beautiful lever-action rifle with the other. Jason noticed that his trench coat was actually a duster—like the kind of trench coat that cowboys wore in movies. The man’s chest was strapped with a bandoleer of rifle ammo, and he had a large bag hanging from one shoulder. Under his coat was an odd suit of armor—part space-man, part motorcycle suit. Recognition hit Jason like a ton of bricks. He was the man from the movie theater! But before he could speak a word, Jason's eyes went to the tall, dark one, and he gasped...

  Walking behind the soldier-cowboy was something like a seven foot tall werewolf. It was shaped like DnD's hybrid form of a lycanthrope—a huge, muscular version of the animal form and the man form blended. Only this creature wasn’t a werewolf—it was more a werecat! Or rather, a black leopard—a freaking panther—covered in sleek black fur that was wet from the rain. Bipedal and shaped like a long and lithe furred man with panther parts, the creature regarded Jason impassively with intense yellowish-green eyes that almost glowed in the rain. The werepanther carried what looked like a long, semi-automatic shotgun. Straps and bandoliers of shells crisscrossed its black, fur-covered chest, a big pistol—a Glock?—hung in a drop holster on one beast-like leg, and there was sort of stretching rig of armor plating protecting its torso, shoulders, and the outside of its thighs. A long, black tail flicked around behind the beast-man as it took easy steps with bare paws up the slope.

  "Hey there, Jason!" the soldier exclaimed, shouting against the rain. He smirked, squinting against the downpour. "I’m sorry, man! I didn’t want to ruin your epic showdown, but it looked like you were out of tricks!" Jason could see the guy's face better now. He had almost no body-fat, had a thin, hawkish face with a big nose, friendly eyes, and a scar running over one cheek. His dark beard was short but scraggly, and his functional mess of dark-brown hair was drenched and flatted from the rain. The soldier slung his rifle and approached close enough to shake Jason's hand. He had dark, cheerful eyes. "I tried to save the skull, but that wyvern was about to take a big bite out of you, so I had to drop it!"

  Jason stared at the man’s face dumbly, then caught the movement of the werepanther turning his shotgun down to the cannibals in the valley again. The savages were all sprinting around, afraid to run in too close, making all sorts of noises. Two of them dragged the dead body of their shotgunned comrade off into the woods. Jason knew that they would immediately start eating it there.

  Looking back at the soldier again, Jason shouted against the noise of the storm, "You’re that guy from the movie theater a few weeks ago! Who are you guys?!"

  "A few weeks?" the man replied with a smirk. He looked up at his dark beast-man comrade and laughed. He met Jason's gaze again. "Let’s get inside the cave, man! We’ll explain everything. Are there any monsters in there; do you know?"

  Jason shook his head, slicking the water through his filthy, matted hair and wiped his eyes.

  "Ah ... just a couple of baby wyverns maybe. There’s a nest in the back."

  "Ha!" the soldier replied, shaking the rain out of his head. "Eggs?!"

  "Yeah. I saw a few I guess..."

  "Awesome!" The soldier elbowed the tall werepanther. "Gliath, there are wyvern eggs in there! We can sell those, buddy!"

  The huge, black leopard-man gave his partner the briefest emotionless glimpse, then nodded and looked back down his sights at the nearest cannibals dashing around in the rain again.

  "Okay, let’s go!" Jason exclaimed, stepping around the wyvern and moving carefully in the mud and splattering water. When he saw his bladed spear sitting in a splashing puddle down the slope, he bent and retrieved his weapon even though it hurt his wounded leg.

  Where’d these guys come from?! he thought.

  Would they help him get home? They had to be here to help him get home—they knew his name! Suddenly interacting with two more sentient, speaking lifeforms felt really surreal...

  At last, the insane battering of the heavy rain stopped when Jason crouched into the mouth of the cave, stepping into the tunnel running that ran with rainwater. The cacophony of the storm was outside now. He could hear again!

  The other two followed him inside. The werepanther gracefully stepped in last with his shotgun barrel still pointed outside.

  Jason took a moment to breathe without rain trying to invade his lungs. He shook the water off of him, wiped his face and ran his fingers through his hair. He saw the other man doing the same. Wherever that guy came from, he seemed just as mortal and just as uncomfortable being outside in a heavy rain as Jason was. Looking up when he heard the jangling of equipment, Jason watched the beast-man shake its head like a dog, spraying water all over and fluffing out the thick, black fur around its mighty neck.

  "Okay!" the soldier finally exclaimed, his voice echoing oddly in the tunnel. "Dude—we’ve been trying to get to you, Jason Leaper! It’s been a challenge—I’m happy to see that you’re still alive! Also, it looks like we got here right on the edge of time, eh?"

  "Who are you guys?" Jason repeated, giving an experimental squeeze to the compress on his left leg. It hurt. He winced. "I saw you in the movie theater two weeks ago—you, at least," he said, pointing at the soldier. "There was another man with you; not ... uh ... that thing!" Jason pointed at the werepanther, who looked down at him with indifferent yellowish-green cat eyes.

  "Yep, that was us alright," the man replied. "Okay—you have no idea what the fruk is going on, do you? I’m Riley Wyatt. This guy," he said, clapping his werepanther companion with one gloved hand, "is Gliath Voidheart the Deathhand. We’re your friends, Jason. Or, rather, we were friends with another Jason Leaper, Jason from Universe 113. He sent us to find you when he died."

  "What?!" Jason replied, feeling like his spatial sense in the cosmos was slapped in the face. "Another Jason?!" His mind immediately flashed through the images of the two other Jason worlds he’d seen: the weird one where the Jason had a messed-up face, and the other normal one where his mom and dad were alive and Jason was living well in Dallas, Texas. "Why me?"

  Riley smirked, and his eyes sparkled. "I have no idea, man. I didn’t know who you were myself before shet went crazy in Jason 113's universe and he sent us here—or, rather, to your Earth in universe 934."

  "934?"

  "Yeah, your world—Earth as you call it—is in universe 934. That’s not where we are now, of course, but you’ll get us back there, won’t you?" Riley laughed. He scratched his short, dark beard.

  "Um ... yeah ... about that," Jason said with a frown, suddenly rummaging around in his pockets until he found that small wad of cash he’d been carrying for the portal. He pulled out the crumpled bills. "I’ve been using this to open the portal, but I haven’t found my way to the right ... um ... universe yet."

  "Really?!" Riley asked with a sideways grin, looking back and sharing a look with Gliath. The big leopard man said nothing. Instead, he gave out a deep huff, shook out his fur some more, then stared back out into the rain. "Well that’s fruking awesome, Jason! You already figured out the concept of focus keys? That’s cool. I mean—currency like that could bring you to all sorts of universes where they have the same money, but it was a really good idea. "

  "Thanks," Jason replied, feeling far out of his depth. After a moment of his mind racing, he pulled out the strange, piezoelectric crystal from his pocket. Under the movement of his thumb, it glowed blue inside like cloud lightning. "What’s this? This brought me here." He looked down the tunnel and spoke up again before Riley could reply. "Where the hell is here, anyway? I think I’ve been here before ... as a kid?"

  "Ah," Riley said, crossing his wet arms and battling a strange expression forming on his thin, bearded face. "That is a piezoelectric crystal; a special one. We call it an infinity crystal. And to answer your other question, this place is a parallel world in universe 312. Jason 113 called it the Wilde
rlands. You have a permanent rift to the world—presumably leading inside this cave?—in your backyard."

  "But how’d I get here?!"

  "Well," Riley replied, fishing for words, "You must have used that infinity crystal, right? When you were close to the rift, you opened it with the stone, because you Jason Leapers have a tendency to use focus keys to ... look for more sources of the same thing, you know? Or sometimes focus keys are just tied to a particular set of coordinates for various reasons. The crystal brought you here, probably because there are a lot more crystals. Or maybe because those crystals always lead here—who knows. Weird shet. That currency of your world in your hand can bring you to worlds with more like it. Now—"

  "I found this infinity crystal in front of my front door one day. Where’d it come—?"

  "Hey, speaking of lots of crystals," Riley exclaimed, cutting Jason off, "there are a bunch of them deeper in this cave, right? Jason, how about you show us where the rift is, okay?"

  Riley’s blatant avoidance of talking about the crystal's origin was obvious to Jason, and he felt some heat rising in his face, thinking about the possibility that it was Riley's fault that Jason had used that stone. Those guys were watching him that day, and they came looking for him when the other Jason died. That happened at the same time that Jason found the infinity crystal outside his front door and accidentally fell into what they’re calling the Wilderlands...

  But he was, still here, still in this hot, humid world of predators and death. The intense rain made the oppressive stench of the wyvern’s cave even worse. Jason could feel the rotten bodies and decaying bones and tendons almost cling to his skin. The repugnant molecules of decomposition and old wyvern shit floating in the air seemed to coat the back of his throat.

  His 'prehistoric vacation' was somehow connected to these guys—Jason knew it. But he could hold off and discuss that later once he was finally home...

  "This way," Jason muttered, leading Riley and Gliath deeper into the cave. His wounded leg hurt. The many scratches and cuts on his body itched in the nasty air. He paused halfway down the tunnel, realizing that his flashlight was dead from that terrible evening after his attempt to kill the wyvern with a T-Rex nosedived and everything went to shit. Suddenly, a tactical light appeared in front of him, held by Riley.

  "Take it," the soldier said. "You need it?"

  "Yeah," Jason replied, taking the light and turning it on, illuminating the tunnel around them. "I had an accident with my flashlight a few nights ago."

  "Man, you must have had some crazy fruking adventure," Riley said with a chuckle. "You really look like shet, man. You smell terrible, too." He laughed toward the werepanther. "This guy went full savage on us, didn't he, Gliath?" He looked back at Jason again, smirking. "You’re downright primal, man. You made a spear with your pocket knife, eh? Oh, and hey—I gotta say: that was some ingenious stuff you did with your ropes and the wyvern. I’d never try to fight a fruking wyvern in melee combat—maybe Gliath would—but that was intense, Jason! That was some crafty monster hunting..."

  "Uh ... thanks."

  Riley looked back to his comrade as they walked low through the shoulder-high tunnel down toward the cavern of death. "This Jason’s more of a monster hunter than I thought he would be! What do you think, Gliath?"

  Jason heard the beast-man’s voice emerge, low and rumbly, which shocked him.

  "It was a respectable use of resources, Ranaja," Gliath replied. "Jason Leaper 934 fought the beast as a warrior. I am pleased that he is alive, though if we did not intervene, Jason Leaper 934 would have died a warrior’s death."

  Jason led them down into the middle of the cavern, then kicked a few bones out of the way of where he was pretty sure the portal was before.

  "Holy shet!" Riley exclaimed, looking around. "Look at all of them!" At first, Jason thought the soldier was talking about the bodies. Bending over, Riley picked up an infinity crystal that was lodged in the mud, tapping it to make it spark inside. "There must be dozens of them! And who knows how many deeper underground? Gliath, can you check for wyvern babies while I get some of these crystals? Holy shet—we’re rich!"

  "Yes, Ranaja," the leopard man rumbled. He stalked off toward the back of the cavern, pushing a shell into his shotgun’s mag tube. "Shall I give Jason Leaper 934 the food?"

  "Good idea," Riley said.

  Food?

  "You have food?" Jason asked, his stomach suddenly growling in anticipation.

  "I had Gliath put together some stuff from your refrigerator back home before we came here," Riley said, collecting crystal after crystal, stashing them into his coat pockets. "Fruk—it stinks in here..."

  "Thanks," Jason replied, then Gliath handed him a plastic bag full of stuff. What could it be? he wondered, saying thanks again to the imposing beast-man, who turned and headed to the back tunnel of the cave.

  Shining Riley's light inside the crinkly grocery bag, Jason felt mixed emotions and confusion as he looked at a mishmash of random stuff. There was a slice of leftover pepperoni pizza from Thursday night; two weeks old now, but it still seemed good, oddly enough. His half-empty pack of sandwich ham slices was there, as well as an unopened can of Zelda’s cat food, a bottle of water, a stick of butter still in its wrapping, and a bottle of soy sauce.

  Did Riley asked the werepanther to put together the food? Jason thought, shaking his head and laughing, pulling out the cat food can and considering it in the light of the LED. Liver and Chicken Dinner. Well, the lycanthrope got it half-right. Jason quickly ate the several slices of ham, the piece of pizza, and drank the bottle of water as he heard Riley’s hunting steps around him. He listened to the soldier collect piezoelectric crystals from the cave floor, digging among the wretched dinosaur remains.

  There was a sudden boom so loud that it hurt Jason’s ears and he dropped the bag, clamping his hands around his head. He could hear a high-pitched shrieking, then there was another air-shattering boom, and all was quiet.

  Gliath returned from around the corner—his shotgun barrel smoking in Jason’s beam of light—and said, "The wyvern hatchlings are dead."

  "How many eggs?" Riley asked.

  "Two, Ranaja."

  "Well," Riley replied with a shrug, putting a crystal in his pocket and scuttling quickly through the bones past Jason toward the nest. "Better than nothing, eh? They’ll sell well anyway ... if anyone wants a pet wyvern." He looked back at Jason with a smirk before disappearing into the deep corner of the cavern.

  "No thanks!" Jason shouted after him, stuffing the last of the ham into his mouth. The taste of processed meat was so strange to him after surviving on whatever he could find in the Wilderlands for the last several days. Its texture felt weird on his tongue.

  Moments later, as Jason put everything back into the plastic bag and cinched it to one pack strap (Pack it in, pack it out, his dad used to say), Riley and Gliath walked back to where he was standing. The soldier had one egg under each arm like big footballs.

  Riley carefully set the eggs down near them then approached Jason with a device that was some sort of metallic, thick tablet, pulling its double-sling off from around his body. He handed the device to Jason with a smile and eager eyes.

  It occurred to Jason suddenly that he was the only one using a flashlight. Riley and Gliath could apparently see in the dark.

  Jason took the device, noting its solid, metal frame and hard edges. It was maybe the size of a big, thick book with a flat glass screen that was currently off—maybe more like a large and really heavy-duty electronic tablet. The piece of equipment was deeper in the back as if it had a monstrous, tapered battery pack inside. Of course, if it came from another world, there was no telling what this thing was made of. It was definitely lighter than it looked, and seemed a lot sturdier than its light weight suggested. On the lower rim of the screen's metal bezel were the letters:

  O.C.S.

  "OCS?" Jason asked, looking up at Riley again, who watched him intently with a smirk. "What’s
this thing?"

  "This ... is your OCS. It was the OCS of Jason Leaper 113, and now it belongs to Jason Leaper 934—you—assuming ... um ... you want it. The letters stand for Omniversal Cosmic Scanner."

  "Omni—omniverse?" Jason asked, looking down at the thing. "What’s that? Some sort of multiverse?" His mind flashed back to DnD again.

  "There’s a lot I’ll have to tell you about, Jason," Riley said. "But let’s get us home first, okay?"

  "How do I turn it on?"

  Riley reached over and pressed a button that Jason hadn’t noticed, turning the screen on. He unlocked it with the swipe of a finger, just like with a smartphone. There was a data readout of some kind, full of information, genus and species names, coordinates, slider bars—all sorts of stuff.

  "Hang on," Riley said, pulling it back to him for a moment. "You’ll have to spend a lot of time learning about this thing, but for now, I’ll just put in the coordinates to u934."

  Jason watched Riley navigate to another screen, scroll through many adjustment areas, then ended up with a text box near the bottom of a long list of data. Looking over the soldier's scanning, Jason made out the words 'Wilderlands Rift' and 'bookmark'. There was a slew of numbers and mathematical formulas beneath the words—stuff that Jason didn’t really understand. But the moment he started reading the extensive formula, that familiar fluttering sound started up in the cavern again...

  "What’s going on?" Jason asked. The sound faded.

  "Just focus on the coordinates," Riley said. "It’s a condensed dimensional formula for the rift behind your house back in u934. We’ll have to travel through the ninth to get back there and it's outside compatibility, but that shouldn’t be a problem—this OCS has u934 as its informational set-point, so you can do it in your head. Just focus and you’ll get the rift open, just like you did with your world's currency and the infinity crystal..."

  "What the hell does that mean?!" Jason asked. Informational set-point? Compatibility?