by Eddie Patin
"What do you want to sell them for?" Jason asked.
Ben smiled and sighed loudly at the valley. "Hard to say. We've got all of the supply, right? They're priceless. Free energy. Small, yeah. They can only charge phones and stuff. But free. Maybe a few thousand dollars for one of em? I'll see what I can sell them for and experiment with the first two dozen. How many of those crystals are here?"
"Don't know," Jason said. "Maybe an endless supply."
Ben sighed and smiled again. "Good times, buddy. Good times ahead."
Jason sighed. He wasn't so sure.
"Just be careful."
"Don't worry, old friend," Ben said. "This is gonna be great. I've got a manufacturer lined up for the chassis, and I've got everything I need to make an online store. I've already started on it, actually. I've been working my ass off on it!" He laughed. "This is really something. You just keep providing the crystals from this crazy world and I'll make us a ton of money. We'll split the profits, 50/50."
As the sun went down, Ben asked Jason which dinosaur was which. Jason pointed out that the duckbills were Edmontosaurs. He scanned the ceratopsians with his OCS to see their more obscure name again: Einiosaurus procurvicornis. When Jason followed the 'link' to read about real Einiosaurs back on Earth, he was surprised to see that they were considered a medium ceratopsian; not nearly as huge as the ones here. But then again, the Einiosaurs on the Wilderlands were only a 93% match. Perhaps the Wilderlands version of those dinosaurs had evolved to be a lot bigger. He also pointed out a group of tall Gallimimus runner-types sprinting up the valley like huge ostriches with naked pink necks and huge, fluffy dark-brown feathers that coated them all the way down their long tails. He pointed out the various pterosaurs, but they were very hard to catch with his OCS's scanning laser. They turned their attention to the woods around and behind the cave mouth and Jason pointed out a Microraptor; a small flying dinosaur with glossy black feathers and an appearance of four wings because of the long feathers of its legs.
"Help me make a fire, will ya?" Jason asked. "I'll need one for the night."
"Sure."
They walked down the slope. Or, rather, Jason hobbled slowly down with his cane, gritting his teeth, while Ben walked. It wasn't long before Ben offered to just collect the wood himself as long as Jason covered him with his rifle.
Jason told Ben about the wyvern and the Tyrannosaurus Rex—his Dreadwraith from the dreams of his childhood—and how each met their respective demise as Ben collected wood. Wandering around the bottom of the slope, Ben gathered dead wood and sticks left over from the old 'fire stealing' ritual that the cannibals used to perform when the wyvern was alive, stacking up piece after piece in his long, slender arms.
After Ben had collected several armloads with the awkwardness of a true city boy, he and Jason started a fire near the mouth of the cave.
The pink and orange sunset faded to blue and the fire grew from the tiny flame of a cigarette lighter to the steady blaze of several thick sticks. The woods became alive with trills and cawing calls. When the huge, flat leaves of some nearby bushes rattled, Ben turned on the flashlight he'd borrowed and shined the LED beam on a raptor as tall as their waists emerging from the brush. The predator considered them with sideways glances. Its feathers were dark brown with tan and white markings, and its long, broad tail tuft swished back and forth. Jason cast a glance down at the sickle like claw hidden within the downy quills of its feet.
Ben gasped. "What's that?"
Jason clicked off the safety of his rifle and shouldered the weapon in case the little creep was intent on shuffling off of its mortal coil. Even with his AK, Jason felt a trickle of dread looking at the beast. He'd had many run-ins with raptors back when he was stuck here before without much firepower or the ability to resupply. He'd felt the slicing sting of those claws; the bite of their curious snouts and needle-like fangs had pierced him several times.
"It's a raptor," Jason said. "A good-sized one, too. We should head inside. They'll be coming out now to find food."
"It looks like a weird, big chicken," Ben said. "Or like some kind of eagle or hawk that runs on the ground. But it's got a snout instead of a beak ... and a tail!"
"Yep. It's dangerous. Come on."
They went back inside, Ben lingering near the cave mouth and the small fire as Jason grunted and grimaced his way through the pain in his leg. When Jason settled back into his spot a ways down the tunnel, Ben joined him for a little while, then eventually asked to go back home.
"What, you don't want to spend the night here with me?" Jason asked with a smirk.
Ben laughed and scoffed. "It's tempting, but I'd rather not."
"Okay," Jason said, grabbing the home key around his neck. "When you get back, please lock up on the way out, alright?"
"You got it," Ben said, looking around as if wondering what Jason was going to do next.
For a moment, Jason planned to climb painfully back to his feet to head down into the cavern, but he figured that he'd be able to open a rift at the bottom of the tunnel from where he was sitting instead. It was in sight, and only twenty feet away, tops.
He was right. Jason oriented himself through the ninth dimension—following pure instinct—to open a portal a good distance from himself, just like he'd done back in the garage with Riley before. The rift opened with a brilliant flare of orange fire that lit up both the cavern and the tunnel, and it roared and spit sparks to Ben's obvious delight. Jason's garage appeared in the whirling window to the destination.
His friend turned and smiled at him.
"Great!" Ben exclaimed, shouting above the noise. "Be careful, Jason. I'll lock up your house. How long will you be here?"
"At least a few days, I expect," he replied.
"A few days?!"
"Yeah," Jason shouted. "But don't worry. That'll just be a few hours on Earth."
"No shit?" Ben asked. "Well, stay in touch, man. We'll talk again soon. I'm gonna go make us rich." He smiled.
"Alright!" Jason replied. "Don't get in trouble!"
Ben smirked and waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry! See ya later, my friend."
"See ya."
With that, Ben turned, carefully navigated the rest of the way down the tunnel, then paused in front of the roaring portal. He stopped, turned around, and tossed Jason's flashlight back up to him. The light landed in his lap. Ben always played the Dexterity-based character in their DnD games. He was an agile guy. Then, he turned away and cautiously stepped through the rift.
Jason waited several seconds until Ben was completely out of sight, then he released his hold on the rift. It collapsed in on itself almost immediately with a pop.
It was quiet again.
Turning to the twilight sky that he could see beyond the distant fire, Jason sighed. He heard the noises of the raptors outside, along with the ever-present drone of the many insects crawling around in the jungle and burrowing through the fallen trees and primordial mud.
Seeing that portal—seeing his garage—left Jason mighty tempted to go home and sleep in his bed. The last time he'd slept in the Wilderlands, he was here against his will. It seemed crazy to sleep here again on purpose. The ground under him was hard, dried mud that was once thick and carved up by a slithering wyvern's wings and tail as it squirmed back and forth through the tunnel between its hunting grounds and its foul lair.
Stretching his neck, Jason saw that the fire was burning fine for now.
He pulled out his phone, put it on airplane mode so that it wouldn't use up all of its battery searching for cell towers that didn't exist, then he set a timer for two hours to wake him up. Then, Jason settled in to sleep for a while. He hoped that he wouldn't be surprised in the night by raptors, giant spiders, or cannibals. Mainly, he was worried about his friends. Jason pictured Riley, Morgana, and Gliath all being tortured by an evil, broken god; the primordial giant that trolls and ettins called Voro.
Jason closed his eyes and went to sleep worrying about his frie
nds.
Chapter 15
Jason's last dream of the night was of being in his bed, holding Morgana as they slept naked in the sheets. It was hot in his room, so they'd cast off most of his comforter, and as the light of morning peeked through his distant window blinds—distant as if far up the tunnel—Jason smiled as his eyes traveled over Morgana's sleeping form. For just a moment, he smelled her skin and the sweat in her hair. Then, he smelled sulfur and mud. The young woman was unconscious next to him, her body twisted as if she'd fallen randomly from standing. Her smooth, tan skin was coated with mud, red algae threads, and slime from the bog around the troll's cave. His bed was littered with bones.
Without moving her head or opening her eyes, Morgana asked, "Where are we going today, Jason?"
He woke up.
Morgana's voice still rang in Jason's ears as if she'd just spoken to him, right next to him in the tunnel of the wyvern's cave.
It was humid and warm. The odor of the place swept through Jason's senses and his skull constricted until he had a headache within seconds of seeing Morgana in his dream.
"Fuck..." Jason muttered.
He was lying partly propped-up against the tunnel wall, barely within sight of the cave's mouth and the bright light coming from outside. The heat wasn't stifling yet, but it was pretty warm. It had to be early morning. Jason supposed that if he climbed to his feet and hobbled outside, he'd see the valley full of mist.
Then the pain and stiffness came in.
As soon as Jason stirred, the soreness of his body cried back at him. As soon as the numbness of sleep washed away from his wounded left leg, the pain started in again with a vengeance.
Jason winced as his thigh began to throb.
Okay, he thought with a grimace, looking down at his bandaged leg. It's not like a ten out of ten anymore. Maybe more like ... a seven.
"I can deal with seven," he muttered to himself.
Jason didn't sleep well. He used his phone to wake up several times during the night to stoke the fire and each time, he cried out and grunted as he struggled up and down the low-ceilinged tunnel. He'd never seen raptors come into the wyvern's cave before, but this wouldn't be a good time to be taken by surprise while sleeping. Wounded like he was, Jason might not be able to fight off the little bastards if they tried to eat him during the night.
When he did sleep—fairly easily falling back into fitful slumber whenever he tried—Jason dreamed about uncertainty and fear. He dreamed about his friends and hoped that he'd be able to save them. He'd sometimes jumped out of fleeting night terrors where he knew that they were already dead and that there'd be nothing he could do to change that.
Jason saw all three of his friends in his dreams, and he wished that they were with him; that they weren't lost in another universe and in the clutches of a mad titan.
After limping and straining his way up the tunnel to step outside to piss, Jason carefully un-wrapped the compression bandage around his thigh while assessing his surroundings. It was morning as usual in the Wilderlands, foggy in the valley full of herbivores lumbering around and feeding in the haze. He gingerly pulled the gauze stained with body fluids and god-knows-what away from his wound, wincing as he unstuck the sticky sections. Then, he poured part of a bottle of water over the wound, hissing at the stinging pain that followed.
Jason wasn't very well-versed in first aid. He knew the basics; he'd been a Boy Scout growing up and had also taken classes here and there. Back when he was into Scuba diving before his parents died, he had to get certified in CPR. Looking at his ugly wound, Jason figured that it'd be better to use a disinfectant or Hydrogen Peroxide or something instead of pure water, but he also knew that he didn't have to worry about infection while in the Wilderlands.
The wound looked downright terrible. The larger hole in the front of his thigh was ragged and discolored, swollen and ugly as hell. It looked as bad as it felt. It was tight, bruised, and felt like half-molten rocks were grinding around in his leg whenever he limped on it. But, it also wasn't as bad as it was the day before.
"How long?" Jason asked himself as he looked at his damaged leg.
Frowning, he pulled out some fresh gauze, threw the old gauze onto the dead fire at the cave's mouth to burn later, and redressed his leg.
Jason watched the herd of Edmontosaurs for a few minutes as they grazed and slowly moved as a group through the eastern tree line. Then, he returned to his sitting spot, carefully and painfully lowering himself back down.
He made himself eat even though he wasn't hungry.
"Eat," he said to himself. "Heal."
Most of the food that Jason had brought along wasn't perishable. He stared at the minotaur steaks he'd brought with him. The frozen ones were still cold. He thought about cooking them all up at once to keep them from going bad, then having one for breakfast, but Jason was in a too much damned pain to haul his ass back up to the fire and grill some meat. He hoped that they'd still be good whenever he tried to cook them. Lunchtime, he thought. For breakfast, Jason peeled open the top of another can of ravioli and shoved chunks of cheap pasta coated in thin marinara sauce and filled with meat paste into his mouth. He didn't enjoy it. He wanted to be back in the Shattered Swamp locating his friends.
Looking around the tunnel, Jason thought about everything he'd have to do in the next few days that he was stuck here.
His Merc armor was laid out near him. It was filthy with dried mud and muck from trudging through the swamp. Granted, the swamp hadn't been as muddy as Jason had thought it would be, but he had fallen down to the boggy ground a few times. Jason had also peed himself when that troll slinked out of its watery cave during the storm and roared at him. Fucking terrifying. A human was never meant to experience such a fright, so Jason didn't exactly feel bad about soiling his suit. He'd have to either haul that suit across the valley and through the forest to wash it in Doe Creek where the crocodiles waited ... or just wait until after rescuing his friends and just deal with a dirty suit.
Jason's minotaur-hide jacket and his CamelBak backpack sat next to his sleeping spot. For rest and sleeping, Jason stayed dressed in hardly more than what he'd worn under his Merc armor: synthetic gym shorts and a t-shirt.
Looking at his AK-47, then at his backpack sitting in the dry mud next to his resting spot, Jason grunted and grimaced as he sat up to reload it. He hadn't reloaded his rifle since after shooting down the first of the three ettins that had rushed him shortly after rifting away from the cave. He pulled the magazines out of his jacket pockets, dimly remembering reloading after shooting at the troll and the first ettin that had charged him around the bend before then.
Jason then pulled the mag out of the AK after making sure that the safety was on, and pushed out the remaining rounds. There were twenty-two left and one in the chamber. Checking his other magazines, he found one down to only six.
"Shit," he muttered, then grimaced in pain to reach his backpack and his backup boxes of 7.62x39mm ammo
Reloading his mags and shoving one back into his rifle's receiver, Jason carefully set his AK-47 down in the mud again and shoved the other magazines back into his minotaur-hide jacket. He knew that he still had another full one tucked into his backpack, as well.
Now to wait, he thought. Wait and heal.
Jason stared into the cave below him. He turned on his night vision and scanned the dark interior—at least what he could see from a little ways up the tunnel—and wondered when he'd need to recharge his image intensifier's battery.
"I could do it with an infinity charger," he muttered with a chuckle.
Jason frowned again. His friends being in danger was a constant weight on his shoulders; a thick fog of dread surrounding his mind. There was no way to find any contentment here, waiting and healing. Riley, Morgana, and Gliath were depending on him for rescue ... if they weren't brutally murdered already.
"God, I hope they're okay," Jason muttered.
You know you're right about the temporal stuff, he thought
. Don't worry. There's no point in worrying.
He was probably right.
If Jason's understanding about the fifth and sixth dimensions were correct, then when he was healed and mobile again, he'd be able to simply rift back to the coordinates he'd saved after dropping that troll into the lava world. He'd be a little behind his friends and the giant; as long as it took for him to wake up wounded, rift back to the cave, kill the second troll, and set the bookmark. What was that? An hour, maybe?
It'll be okay, he thought.
"I sure hope so..."
Jason picked up his OCS. He unlocked the screen and checked again that his bookmark 'Troll Cave after Giant' had included coordinates along the temporal dimensions. It looked fine.
He pulled up the Wilderlands, u312, and began looking around the data. He skimmed through the fauna listings, noting many dinosaur species that he recognized. He saw 'Alamosaurus sanjuanensis' and realized that it must have been those sauropods he'd seen on the other side of the ridge where he'd found the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and on the north side of Lake Granby. He recognized many Genus names, and he saw many more that he didn't know. He found the 'Homo Sapiens 93% match' that they knew were the cannibals. Those savage assholes also had 'Lore' scores of 57% Lizardman and 24% Goblin. Odd that such a low score would even show up on a Lore assessment, Jason thought. 24% was almost nothing. Of the many, many names he saw listed in the databank—all links that he could touch to investigate further down rabbit-hole after rabbit-hole of information if he wished—Jason noted that two names he expected to see were absent. He didn't see anything resembling the wyvern he'd fought listed, and he didn't see T-Rex either.
"It must be based on location," he said to himself, searching around the complicated screen of data. "There."
Jason found a small data field expressing that the readout was compiled based on the immediate ten miles around the area of his bookmark, which was the permanent rift in the middle of the wyvern's cavern. He also found a 'search' area, touched it, and saw several customizable fields that included distance from inputted coordinates. The distance field was already set at ten miles.