by Dante King
If his senses weren’t playing a trick on him, then he had just witnessed magic. He could have still believed this was all an elaborate ruse, or perhaps a hallucination, but this felt way too real. He’d already pinched himself and slapped himself, so it wasn’t a dream either.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Real magic. And a catgirl.
And this crazy business about another fantasy world.
Was this real? It couldn’t have been. But he’d just watched a woman turn into a cat and then blow up a damn TV.
Ben plopped back onto the bed, his mouth hanging open like some kind of stupefied goldfish while his stomach coiled, his intestines wrestling each other.
“You mean the innkeeper will punish you for what I have done?” Melody asked, and it was her turn to look distraught as she stared at the TV. “I only meant to show you the power that awaits in my homeland.” She wrung her free hand and looked around her. “How can I convince you to come with me now?”
Ben couldn’t find the words to answer her, and she continued as though she hadn’t just shocked me into petrification.
“There is one more thing I can try.” She looked concerned. “Archmage Kamila thought this might be risky, but I can see I have no other choice.” She turned to rummage through her pile of clothes once more, her tail flicking nervously back and forth.
Ben shook his head to clear it a little, then took in a few more deep, slow breaths. Then he closed his eyes, the low rumble of the AC blending with the sounds of Melody rustling through her clothes.
This was not a dream.
Not a hallucination.
Not some prank.
It was real.
Now that he’d accepted that this was all real, he couldn’t help but look a little warily at the egg that was still nestled into the bed linen.
“Benjamin?” Melody asked. “Do you wish to be shown what I have? As I have said, it carries risks, but it should give you certainty that this is real, and that you must come with me.”
“What kind of risky? This isn’t something that’s going to blow me up like that TV, is it?” He wasn’t feeling all too trusting after watching Melody fry the thing with what he now believed was a real-life wand.
Melody stood up and turned to face him, a round object clutched in one hand. She fixed him with an intense stare. “This won’t kill you. It’s risky, because it will have one of two outcomes. Either it will utterly convince you to come, or it will make you refuse forever. I can’t make you come with me, I can only hope that this convinces you.”
She was speaking in riddles at this point, but it did get his curiosity piqued. Ben nodded for her to continue.
“Go ahead.”
She stepped forward and held out what appeared to be a crystal ball. It was a transparent, fist-sized glass globe with some sort of mist swirling around inside.
“How many of these kinky toys do you have stowed in those pockets?” he asked in disbelief. Could this woman get any weirder?
“Take this ball, it will show you what you need to see.” Melody held the crystal ball out to him.
He shook his head. “Fuck it,” he muttered. “I’ve already lost my mind, not like things can get any worse.” He took the crystal ball in both hands and held it out in front of him.
As soon as his fingers closed around the glass globe, his vision went dark for the second time that day, and he saw another panorama spreading out in front of his mind’s eye.
This time, the vision was of a world conquered and enslaved by a mighty ruler. Whole kingdoms lay under his command. These civilizations were filled with riches, and, as Melody had said, there were monsters. These monsters, however, didn’t guard treasure, but served the ruler, laboring under his command.
Ben’s vision brought him to focus on the ruler himself. The first thing that came to mind when looking upon the ruler was Sauron. Truth be told, Ben had always had a bit of a thing for Sauron back when he was a kid watching the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time. Sure, Sauron was the bad guy, and Ben wasn’t exactly a proponent of enslaving and murdering your enemies, but Sauron’s outfit, his stronghold, and that eye—you couldn’t get much cooler than that.
This ruler was tall, roughly Ben’s height actually, and robed in black, with an ink-dark helmet obscuring his face. While he did remind Ben of Sauron, he was a little different, like Sauron and a rock star combined into one, his robe unbuttoned and a bit of chest hair sticking out. He completed this dark lord turned rocker look with several hot babes hanging off either arm like fantasy versions of groupies.
Ben could hear these lovely women whispering words of encouragement in their ruler’s ear, urging him to grow his power. Ben could smell the way their perfume combined with the dark lord’s sweat and the heat of the brimstone firing forges beneath his palace. Ben could feel the hot winds of the magical bellows on his skin.
The forges below were surrounded by dungeons, delving deep into the earth below. These subterranean mazes housed traps that would catch unsuspecting visitors unawares, impaling, incinerating, liquefying, decapitating. For those whose skill equaled their courage, these corridors rewarded them with bountiful loot. Some of the chambers were like the scenes of torture Ben had seen in his nightmares. He shuddered at how familiar they all were.
Ben’s vision panned out again, to see great armies of monsters issuing from the gates hauling huge machines of war. Leading these monsters were wizards and mages arrayed in glittering garments etched with glowing arcane symbols. They called forth terrible powers from the heavens and sent these eldritch spells into the enehis throng.
Ben’s breath stuck in his throat as the realization bore down upon him.
This place was governed by magic.
Magic was real.
But above all, the look in the ruler’s eye said that this world was his domain. Ben’s domain, if Melody was to be believed when she’d said that he was somehow this Forgotten Ruler.
The vision ceased. Ben blinked in the late morning sunlight and looked up at Melody, whose brow was furrowed with worry. She looked back at him, expectantly, as if not sure at all how he’d react to what he’d seen.
“Your Archmage was right, Melody. That globe did do one of two things.” Ben grinned to himself as Melody tensed, her tail flicking madly behind her.
“And what did it do?” she asked, her tone slightly frustrated.
After what she’d put him through this morning, Ben had no qualms putting her through a bit of suspense.
Seeing the horrors of his dreams, all those nightmarish visions of his childhood and beyond, had been bracing. What he hadn’t expected, however, was to learn that the monstrosities of his dreams were his to command, that those being tortured were his enemies, or that the dreaded maze-like dungeons were under his dominion.
Something else he'd heard from his shrink cousin was that a good way to defeat your fears was to confront them. Sure, that made some sense. But at that moment, Ben realized that the very best way was to discover that you were the very thing you feared.
Hell-fucking-yeah.
“Alright, you’ve convinced me,” Ben said, a note of finality in his voice. “Let’s do this thing.”
Melody let out a squeal of joy and threw her arms around him, pressing her hot cheek against his. “I’m so happy you’ll come with us. In the back of my mind, I’d worried you’d tell me ‘no,’ and that I’d have to raise our monster child all on my own. My career as an Acolyte would have been ruined!”
“A…monster child?” Ben asked as Melody released him from her embrace. He stared at the weird egg, shaking his head in dismissal. “You know what—forget it. I’ve heard enough crazy shit for one day. Let’s handle this one thing at a time—how do we get to this world of yours?” He paused before adding. “This world of mine, that is.” A small smile formed on his lips.
Melody straightened, bending over and grabbing her clothes off the ground, preparing to put them on. “The Archmage gave me a portal stone
that will take us back to an isolated region of my homeland, one where we can avoid the eye of those who would seek to harm you. There, you can build your strength and acquire more power. It is here where the Forgotten Ruler took his final stand.”
She stepped into her black thong, followed by putting on the matching bra. Then she dropped the skin-tight top over her body, then shimmied her curvy lower half into her jeans.
“Sounds great,” Ben said, grabbing his own clothes, still unable to fully process all the weird shit she was telling him. “And just to be totally clear, I’m not doing this for the sake of the power you’ve promised me.”
“Is that so?” she asked, clearly intrigued, and a touch confused.
“Uh huh,” he said as he pulled his black Motörhead t-shirt over his head. He grabbed his boxers, put them on, followed by his jeans. “I don’t want to be a tyrannical ruler like the man in the vision you showed me.”
“Tyrannical? He had all the power, and power is what makes someone strong. If you possess more than someone else, then they should rightfully be beneath you.”
“That’s an…interesting philosophy,” Ben said. “But not in vogue right now. But I guess I can see where you’re coming from. I wouldn’t use my power for evil in your world. I’ve never been able to make much of a difference here on Earth. Here, you want to get anything done and there’s a million bureaucracies you’ve got to deal with first. But with the power I wielded in that vision, if I really am the reincarnation of this Forgotten Ruler, it means I might be able to make a difference in another world. And who knows? Maybe I could come back to Earth with this power and right some wrongs here, too.”
“Bureau…crassy?”
He had to envy the innocence at never having heard that word before.
“Never mind,” he answered with a shake of his head.
“You wish to remake these worlds in your image?” Melody asked, and her face became a little flushed.
“That sounds a lot like something a god would do.”
“The Forgotten Ruler was a god. You were a god. It may take some time before you reach the pinnacle of divinity again, but one thing is for certain: you have the potential.”
“I’ve heard of a god complex, but I’ve never heard of god potential,” Ben said. Despite how much he knew about power corrupting, he couldn’t help but be drawn by its allure. Hell, if he could somehow become a god by going with Melody to this other world, then there was no fucking way he would stay here as some run-of-the-mill code monkey.
Melody looked at him blankly as he was saying all that. “You say such funny things, Benjamin. You will have much to learn about magic in our world.”
“Well, why don’t you take me there and we can start learning right away?” he asked as he finished slipping into his bomber jacket.
He grabbed his rucksack and thought about what he’d need to bring with him. He discarded his laptop, his tablet, as well as a plethora of USB cords and chargers. He kept his notepads and pens, since he figured he might need to jot down a few things while in Melody’s world.
Ben paused to glance around the hotel room, his eyes landing on the items at the in-room bar. “The hotel can just add it to the room fee,” he said to himself. “Not like I’m going to be around to have to pay it.”
He snatched up the candy bars, a few little bottles of spirits, as well as the packet of mixed nuts, along with the two bottles of distilled water. He went to the bathroom and took off his clothes again before giving himself a quick sink wash. Then, he grabbed all the soaps and shampoos and stuffed them into his rucksack.
After scanning the room again, he took the thin blanket that went on top of the bed, rolled it up tight, and secured it to the top of the rucksack.
“Are you ready now?” Melody asked him.
“Just one more thing,” he said as he fished his car keys out from his pocket.
He went out into the bright morning sunlight, warding it off with his arm. His car was sitting in the lot, and he opened it up before reaching under the driver’s seat and grabbed his mini first aid kit. After doing a quick look over the rest of the car, he decided he didn’t need anything else.
He returned to the hotel room, where Melody was waiting. Her lynx-like ears were poking out of her purple hair, and he almost did a double-take before remembering that this was, indeed, the same woman he’d met in the bar last night. She hadn’t had those ears then, and her hair hadn’t been quite that purple, nor had she sported a tail.
Still, she was damn gorgeous. And strangely, the beast-like additions only made her hotter.
“Alright,” Ben said as he closed the hotel room door behind him. “Let’s move.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She flicked her gaze over to the bed.
He turned and glanced at the egg. The object that apparently carried the child of their union. Well, that thought was far too crazy to deal with right now. But still, he couldn’t exactly leave the egg behind. He could only imagine the kind of hullabaloo that thing would cause if someone found it and it ended up on InfoWars or something.
When Ben grabbed it, he noticed right away that it was far heavier and denser than it appeared. It had to weigh almost fifteen pounds. He removed a few extra t-shirts from his rucksack to make sure the egg would fit, then cushioned it with clothing and the hotel blanket.
“Perfect,” Melody said after he’d slung the full to bursting rucksack over his shoulders and fastened the straps over his chest.
The beautiful catgirl pulled a stone about the size of her palm from one of the pockets on her ridiculously tight jeans and held it out in front of her.
“How exactly do you keep pulling so many big things out of those jeans?” Ben asked.
“Magic.” Melody’s lips curled mischievously.
“You couldn’t keep the egg in there?”
“Even if I could, it needs to be close to you if it is to hatch.”
“Hatch?”
“That’s right. What else do eggs do?”
“They can make a nice omelet. This one feels like it could make one big enough to feed an army.”
“Why would you feed our child to your army?” Melody gasped. “You, Benjamin of Davies, may very well become a far more twisted ruler than your predecessor.”
“It was, uh, just a joke.”
“You ought not joke about such things,” Melody said with a scowl. “Now, shall we depart?”
Ben was too far down the rabbit hole to back out now. He nodded.
With a flick of her wrist, Melody flung the stone into the air.
A sucking, tearing noise filled the room, and a bright burst of energy spread out where the stone had been. A circular disc of light shimmered in front of Ben.
“A magical portal,” Melody explained. “And our means of leaving your world behind.”
“Cool,” Ben said. He wished he had something more badass to say, but that was all that came out of his mouth. He’d have to work on that if he were going to be a badass emperor.
Melody stepped through the shimmering portal and vanished.
With a deep breath, Ben squared his shoulders and stepped through behind her, into the unknown.
Chapter Two
Benjamin and Melody emerged from the portal onto a green hillside. Only a few feet in front of them, the slope plunged into a deep chasm. Behind them, it reared up into a steep mountain face that seemed to rear ever upward.
Ben took a long moment to process what the hell was going on, what had happened to him.
“I’m in a new world,” he said aloud.
He’d woken up that morning prepared to bask in the afterglow of hooking up with the hottest woman he’d ever seen in his life. And now he was stepping out from a magical portal onto the surface of an alien planet.
His eyes tracked over the sights around him, taking in the strange, but oddly familiar landscape. The sky was blue like earth, the grass green. But it was more than that—the sky was a deep, brilliant blue, the gras
s under his feet emerald green. It was like Earth, but more.
And that wasn’t all. He had an egg in his pack that supposedly held his monster offspring. What kind of parent would he be? Hell, what kind of ruler would he be? If Melody was right, he’d eventually be the lord of all he saw.
A grin spread across his face, a cool wind whipping over his body.
He was ready.
“Benjamin?” asked Melody, her tone suggesting she could sense he was caught up in the wonder of it all.
Ben cleared his throat, focusing on the moment. He turned his attention to the path ahead—specifically, the huge chasm.
Then he noticed that the only way across the chasm was over a rickety rope bridge.
Classic. If movies had taught him anything, a bridge like that was the exact thing you’d think to see over a yawning, endless chasm—the kind of bridge that would shake with the wind as you hopped from wood plank to wood plank, the rope fraying as it struggled to support your weight. Ben half-expected to pass Indiana Jones crossing from the other side, his adversary hacking away at the rope with a machete.
“Of course, it just had to be a flimsy rope bridge over a bottomless chasm, didn’t it?”
“Hmm?” Melody was gazing absentmindedly into the distance and not paying him much attention. “Sorry, Benjamin—it’s only been a week, but I missed the air in my world.”
Ben took a deep breath. She was right, there was something different about it. The air was thicker, and he could feel the increased oxygen bringing strength to his limbs. There was a freshness to it, a sweetness. Was this what air was meant to taste like without millions of cars spraying smog into it?
The sun was just rising over the horizon. He guessed they’d skipped back a few hours. He found himself wondering if he could get jetlag from a magical portal.
On the other side of the bridge, an overgrowth path led down a slope into a dense forest, where it disappeared into the fir trees. The sweet song of early morning birds came from the trees. The birdsong was strange, unlike anything he’d heard on earth. Their chirping struck him as more…conversational, like there was an intelligence behind it.