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

  "It means that even though we're traveling through the ninth—even though this universe isn't within the tolerance of Jason 113's compatibility block—you can always get home with this."

  "What ... what's the ninth?"

  "The ninth dimension." Riley rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Shet, Jason—shut up and focus on the coordinates. I'll tell you more later."

  He did.

  Looking at the coordinates on the OCS's screen—a ridiculously long string of numbers involving far more than x, y, and z—Jason felt like the device was a window letting him feel his way to...

  It was really hard to comprehend what he felt; nothing like he'd ever experienced before.

  The fluttering came back again out of thin air like a huge flag whipping violently in the wind, growing louder and louder. A second later, there was a loud snap like the crack of a .22 rifle, and a brilliant swirl of orange sparks materialized near Jason like a spinning fireball. Roaring as it whirled and grew—almost deafening—the sound was like listening to a blazing fire and the repeating, arcing lightning of a Tesla coil. Jason had heard that same sound several times now. He hoped that it would be the way home this time...

  As the swirling, sputtering portal opened and stretched out like a huge hula hoop constantly spinning and throwing sparks all around the cavern, the space in between became a blazing orange disc. The spinning, circular plane shook and shimmered as it darkened and smoothed into a window to another world. When Jason could see through it, a warm sense of relief flooded into his chest.

  The scene inside the portal—the rift, as Riley put it—was the hill behind his backyard. The snow was almost melted in areas and the sun was shining bright. It was daytime. He could see his house up ahead through the window between the spinning mass of orange fire and spitting sparks, and his home and its surroundings looked normal. There were no weird tentacle creatures, no boiling sky, no burning obsidian buildings or eyeball-sun or viper-trees—it looked like home.

  "Oh thank God," Jason said, his voice smothered by the roaring of the swirling portal.

  The man looked back to see Riley and Gliath behind him, both of their guns slung behind their backs, each of them gingerly carrying a wyvern egg. The soldier was smiling, his dark eyes glittering in the fiery rift.

  "Looks good, Jason," Riley said, running the fingers of his free hand through his beard. "Good job. Now let’s get back and clean up, eh?"

  "Okay," Jason replied with a grin that hurt his face. The thought of a shower seemed so alien to him. He remembered how insanely weird it felt to see his parents' pretty and mundane bathroom while he was starving and thirsty and covered in injuries...

  With that, Jason led the way, stepping through the portal and into the sunshine...

  Chapter 39

  When his leading boot landed on the hard-packed earth, cold from autumn and dampened by melting snow, Jason felt a sense of relief that was just vivid and warm in his body as when he took that first bite of roasted dinosaur meat after many days of starving. Once his other boot followed and he was standing in the sunshine and crisp air of Earth again, he realized that the stench of hot humidity of the wyvern’s cave ... was gone.

  The spiraling rim of the portal roared and threw sparks all over as Jason took several steps forward to make room for the others. He turned to see Riley and Gliath deftly stepping out of the rift onto solid ground as if they’d done it a thousand times before.

  As loud as a bonfire in his face, the orange gateway swirled and sputtered and spit. Jason could still see the dark cavern full of bones through it on the other side; a stark contrast to the bright, melting landscape of the ravine behind his house. The rift spun and crackled—yes, a lot like a Tesla coil; Jason had seen one in a museum once. Back then, standing his high school science class in a dark room, when the lightning arced and roared all around the coil, it made a constant, loud sound of ripping, electric fire...

  "Let it go, Jason, we’re through!" Riley exclaimed. "Just ... stop focusing on it. Release it."

  Jason broke his visual focus on the stunning gateway. He looked at Riley’s steely, lean face and brown eyes, then looked up the hill to his house.

  As he did, the roaring of the portal wavered behind him then shut down abruptly with a pop.

  Jason's house stood exactly as he’d left it. His overgrown backyard was wilted and dry from the cold month and covered in sloppy, melting snow. His back door was closed. Jason pulled out his keys, looking down at the one that would unlock it.

  Will it work this time? he wondered.

  He looked back at Riley and Gliath who stood behind him, seemingly waiting out Jason’s moment of being stunned and ponderous. The soldier had a smirk on his bearded face and his arms protectively around the wyvern egg, which was a dingy tan color in the sunshine.

  "Is this home?" Jason asked. "I’ve seen this before, but they were the wrong worlds. Is this really the right world?"

  "Look at the OCS," Riley replied with a nod to the device hanging from Jason’s shoulder. "It should say universe 934. That’s your home world. Eh ... home universe."

  Jason reached down to pull up the machine, hit the button that would turn the screen on, unlocked it, and saw all sorts of data running vertically through the readout as if he had asked his computer to list a huge directory in DOS. Data whisked through the screen faster than he could read it, then stopped. Touching the screen with one grubby, painful finger, Jason pulled the readout around, scrolling until he found a line near the bottom that listed "Universe 934, Sol 3: Earth, North America, United States of America, Colorado, Ridgeview," and then a lot of numbers; maybe coordinates—he didn't know. It occurred to Jason that he was reading the screen just fine, despite standing in bright sunshine. The OCS didn’t suffer from glare at all; it was crystal clear. It was a strange quality but a fascinating and very useful detail.

  "This looks like the place, I guess," he said, feeling a smile creep onto his face. Even though these two strange soldiers seemed confident that they were all standing behind Jason’s actual house—and the OCS said that they were—Jason couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was just another trick; another let-down waiting to happen. Maybe this place was really another parallel dimension full of shadow people or who knows what...

  But he didn’t say anything. He tried to hide his fear. Letting the OCS drop down to his side again, Jason looked up the slope, then pulled his cane from his ripped-up and filthy CamelBak by reflex. He climbed the hill to his backyard, careful to lean on the cane so that his bad knee wouldn’t hurt like it always did. All that really bothered him, however, was the sting in his left thigh where he’d suffered that terrible slice from the big raptor the other night.

  Jason approached the back door, feeling like he was a moment from being disappointed.

  He stuck his key in, held his breath, then unlocked and opened the door.

  "Oh thank God!" he breathed to himself when the key worked, then looked back at Riley and Gliath, who were following behind him. Riley was smirking again.

  "See?" Riley said. "All's well."

  Jason’s kitchen was exactly as he'd left it except for a big pile of empty and messy cat food cans on one counter. As he stepped inside, stomping his boots on the rug before tracking snow and mud into his kitchen, Jason walked down the hall and looked at his painting of the Dreadwraith. The depiction was a lot like the Tyrannosaurus Rex he'd led to its doom outside the wyvern's cavern, and he felt weird looking at it, as if he was viewing it with new eyes. The man looked around at the hung photos of him and his parents. Everything was the same...

  Stepping into the living room, Jason’s eyes immediately fell on a big pile of paper and box trash—two big gun boxes and all of the stuffing from inside, discarded shrink wrap, cardboard ammo boxes, plastic bags, torn off labels and such—then his eyes landed on a rumpled blanket stretched out on the couch; one of the blankets he normally kept in the hall closet.

  It looked like Riley and Gliath had been living here whil
e he was gone.

  Jason walked over to his TV, turned it and the sound system on, then flipped on his X-Box. After booting up, flashing the familiar logos, he selected a game, immediately heard the blaring music, and was asked whether he wanted to start a new game or continue from where he left off. It was the same game he’d played last. Everything was as if he’d never left ... except for the mess from Riley and Gliath.

  The music played for a minute as Jason stared at the screen, then, he was interrupted by Riley who stood in the hall, silhouetted in front of the daylight coming in through the back door behind him.

  "What are you doing?" the soldier asked.

  Jason stared at the game then shook his head and turned everything off. The living room became silent again.

  "I don’t know," he replied. He wondered that himself; why one of the first things he did upon returning to his house after being stuck on a wild, primordial world for the last two weeks was to turn on a video game. Maybe it was a comfort thing. Maybe he was still making sure that this was real...

  Jason turned back to Riley and saw Gliath’s monstrous shadow moving around in the kitchen. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the high-pitched meow of Zelda, running up to him from the bedroom area. Her white body gleamed in the dark hall and against the carpet. Jason's petite cat rushed up with another cute, high-pitched greeting, immediately pushing her brown-spotted face into Jason’s leg.

  "Oh my God—hi there!" he cooed, bending down to pick up his cat. "Hi, Zelda! Are you okay? Have you been surviving okay? You won’t believe what I’ve been through!"

  "Your Felis catus is okay," Riley said with a smirk, walking up. "Gliath’s been feeding her, actually. He found the cat food."

  Jason petted his cat for a while, holding her soft fur up to his face. He kissed her neck, then she started scrambling to get down so he let her go. The white cat with the brown spot on her face darted away toward the kitchen, tail high and straight.

  Gliath’s deep voice grumbled from over there. "Greetings, little one..."

  Jason looked at Riley flatly.

  "So what the hell’s going on here?!" he asked. "How did all of this happen? Why have I been in—what did you call it?—the Wilderlands for the last two weeks?"

  "Well," Riley said, looking a little sheepish again. He sauntered over to the couch and sat down, putting his heels up as if he'd sat there a thousand times before. "I’ll tell you, Jason. I’m a little embarrassed, actually. See—you fell into the portal and ... that wasn’t supposed to happen. Gliath and I have been working hard to catch up to you to bring you back ever since. Did you ... two weeks you said? How many days do you think you’ve been gone?"

  Jason paused, looking down, running the entire nightmare through his head. How many nights had he spent up in trees? And there was at least one night in the first shelter, and at least a couple in the spider cave, and two in the cave by the beach...

  "It’s hard to say," Jason said. "It all kind of runs together but it feels something like two weeks, or close to it."

  "You fell into the portal on Sunday morning, right? Late morning?" Riley asked. It felt like the soldier was just humoring him—Jason was sure that the man knew the answer.

  "Yes."

  "Well..." He smirked. "It’s Monday afternoon right now."

  "So ... a little more than a week?"

  "No," the soldier replied. He stood again and walked to Jason, putting a gloved hand on the man’s painful shoulder. "Monday ... as in the next day. There’s something called time dilation. It happens when you're dealing with worm holes and some universes—especially across the ninth dimension and totally different multiverses. Some universes run at different uh ... speeds along the fourth dimension. They're all different. Some a little; some a lot."

  That was a shock.

  Jason heard the words but they hardly made sense. Or, rather, he comprehended most of what Riley had just said, but he still couldn’t believe it.

  "It’s Monday—the next day Monday?! Like ... tomorrow?! I was in that world for freakin days!"

  Riley smirked, cool as a cucumber. "And to you, it was days. But back on u934 here, it’s been a about—" He stopped to pull out and look at a device a lot like a smartphone, which he pulled out of a pouch with amazing efficiency. "—twenty-six Earth terrestrial hours? Eh ... twenty-seven, according to the way this planet rotates and you people record time."

  "Holy shit! That’s amazing!" Jason exclaimed, staring the clock the living room wall. It read 2:37.

  How could it be? Jason suddenly remembered back when he'd escaped the wyvern in the cave through a portal that put him in that terrible red world; the place where he choked on the atmosphere. He'd seen the beast moving through the lens of the portal unnaturally fast; extremely fast. Back then, Jason had realized that time was different between the Wilderlands and that hellish world he was on, but he didn’t ponder it long when it felt like he'd landed in a cloud of tear gas...

  "Some of this planeswalking stuff is fruking weird, man," Riley replied with a grin. "It can really cook your egg..."

  "Cook my egg?" Jason asked, scratching his scruffy chin. He sure didn’t grow out a day’s worth of beard stubble. The man was most of the way toward having an actual beard. "How can different universes ... um ... the speed of the fourth dimension? You mean time?"

  Riley shrugged. "Yeah ... there’s a lot I can tell you about the different dimensions and how universes and multiverses work, but you might want to ... you know ... make yourself a little more comfortable first?" The soldier gestured up and down Jason’s body and Jason realized that he stuck out like a sore thumb in his living room of normalcy. He looked like a man who'd survived being shipwrecked, filthy in the tattered remains of his gear and clothes, still clutching his cane. He must have really looked like hell.

  "Yes!" Jason said, tearing off his pack and pulling out his cell phone. He held the button down to turn it on and felt tears swelling up in his eyes for some reason when he saw his service logo swirling up on the black screen. He dropped his defeated CamelBak to the floor. It was pretty-much ruined. "I can eat, and take a shower, and change my clothes, but ... I have so many questions! Like, what’s up with the Jason Leapers? Why did one of them point you to me? And where did this OCS come from? Where’d the other Jason Leaper come from and how did he know me? And how did you find me?"

  Riley scoffed then crossed his arms on his chest. He scratched his beard.

  "Jason 113 was the other Jason," he said, sighing. "He was my friend. I traveled with him for several years. He was the leader of the Reality Rifters—well, he was after Jason 47 passed us on to him."

  "How many Jasons are there?"

  "Infinite, I suppose," Riley replied with a shrug, scratching his big nose. "I’ve known Jason 113 the longest, and you’re the third Jason Leaper I’ve met. You’re younger than him—younger than Jason 113 I mean..."

  Jason could detect some sadness in the soldier’s voice and as Riley paused, looked around, then sat on the couch again, Jason moved with him and sat in his armchair. The soft cushion felt amazing after spending the last several days sitting on the ground, on rocks, or on tree branches.

  "What was he like?" Jason asked.

  "113?"

  "Yes."

  "He was ... confident. He was strong and always knew what to do, and he was patient, which was a big deal for Gliath and me. He took us on after my previous Jason—Jason 47—had an ... uh ... accident when we were chasing a bounty. Gliath and I have been with Jason 113 for around four years. Jason was our leader. He was really smart and could build great things." Riley patted his boots. Jason’s eyes flew down to the hi-tech looking footwear and he had no idea why they were significant. He made a mental note to ask more about it later. "Jason 113 cared about us. Gliath and I did our best to protect him over the years and learn from him. We got rich with him but ... it’s all gone now."

  "What’s gone?"

  "All of the tech and items and resources an
d gold we'd gathered together over the years. I’m sure it was all destroyed when the Reality Rifter base was torn apart back when ... back when Jason died. All we have now is what you see us wearing, plus those sweet guns we picked up from your world to help us save your duck."

  Duck? Jason thought.

  "What’s the Reality Rifters?"

  "Oh, that’s our group," Riley replied with a grin. "It's like a mercenary company made up by Jason 47, but it was more of a business than an actual merc group. Up until shet went diagonal and Jason 113 died, it was just him—Jason 47 before him—and me, and Gliath, and the two other Reality Rifters, Artemis and Goran, but they’re gone now too. Others have come and gone, but the five of us were the main group."

  "Like a business?" Jason asked. "What did you guys do?"

  Riley smirked. "We’re interdimensional monster hunters. When that crazy universe 1240 started tearing u113 apart, our whole base—which was Jason’s house, just like yours here," he said while looking around the living room, "Jason sent us here to find you; to keep the Reality Rifters alive. He sent us specifically to you—I don’t totally know why—to see if you could ... um ... join Gliath and me." The soldier smirked, then scratched his beard and looked off for a moment.

  "Why are Jasons so special?"

  "Don't you want to take a shower and shet?"

  "Just ... real quick...?"

  "Well," Riley replied, "From what I understand from ... well ... both Jasons 47 and 113 is that a lot of Jason Leapers across the omniverse are special ninth dimensional beings. You guys can open rifts and manipulate pathways through the higher dimensions from universe to universe by yourselves, with your mind. Everyone else—all the merc groups, governments, and other planeswalkers except for powerful, multidimensional ones—they need special equipment to rift, and it's expensive and time-consuming. But Jason Leapers can do it without any technology or special gear! You did it with the infinity crystal, so it looks like you can rift too. The Reality Rifters was started by a Jason and the way I see it, we’ll always need a Jason. Jason 113 seemed to think that you were the right guy..."