The creatures circled James. One was larger, its right eye bleeding, marring the colors of its muzzle. The second, a lither version of the same animal, seemed to blend into the surroundings as it moved, a strange and frantic energy surrounding it, making it harder to track.
James wasn’t certain if he was hallucinating, if the alcohol was still causing problems, or if his adrenaline was simply running off the fucking charts, because he swore the creature seemed to be passing in and out of reality itself.
A new piece of trivia magically appeared in James’s mind at that moment. ‘The Woodland Boppa Females can often gather the energy of Heaven to make themselves blend into the world around them.’
Just as that information started to register, the larger, wounded creature, charged. James’s body moved, once more, with limited input from the man himself. He stepped back, waving his makeshift knife. Once more red blood sprayed, and once more it didn’t belong to James.
The creature hissed and jumped back, a second gash bleeding just under its remaining good eye. One inch higher and the creature would have been completely blind.
James couldn’t breathe. His heart thumped in his chest like a hammer striking steel. He swung his head like a swivel, but he had lost view of the smaller Boppa.
Another incredible burst of terror hit James like a brick, and he reacted once more without thinking, dodging a silent but terrifying paw swipe from the shadows. The creature’s claws continued their momentum, striking a large tree and cutting deep into the hard bark, shooting off blue sparks on contact.
James didn’t miss a beat. With a tremendous speed, a speed he never knew he possessed, he jumped into the monster’s flank, stabbing forward with a force and frequency (and with a ferocity) unlike anything he ever felt before. The sound of the glass hitting flesh squelched like a boot being lifted from the suction of thick mud, almost like a plopping noise. Warm blood flowed like water from a stream, and James could taste iron on his lips.
The second Boppa, seeing its mate being disemboweled, turned tail and fled without a single regard, its callous eye watching James as it retreated, seemingly no longer interested in what it once considered prey.
James, left alone, didn’t stop his flailing. He continued plunging his ‘knife’ into the creature time and time again, well after its death. His breathing grew labored and his eyes unfocused. He looked like a wild man in that moment, as all his aggression, tension, stress, and despair were unleashed upon that corpse. He screamed a guttural cry, high in pitch but not to the point of cracking.
After a few moments he stopped and dropped the knife. He held up his bloodied hands and couldn’t tell where the creature’s blood ended and his own began. His knife, being a mere shard of glass, never had a proper handle and had cut into his own flesh many times. Despite this, he felt his hand healing at an observable pace again… And he felt something else too.
A newfound strength surged through James. He felt as if his entire body was just dunked in a vat of ice-water. He stood up, ramrod straight, and felt like his body was suddenly stronger, faster, and lighter.
James looked down upon his prey and, from the bottom of his chest, he laughed. He laughed loud, like thunder, and boomed in his newfound joy, the joy of being alive.
“Diane?” He asked no one in particular. “Who gives a fuck about her! If she doesn’t love me back, SO FUCKING WHAT!?”
James spoke strongly, but soon his laughs turned to sobs. He was confused, broken-hearted, and covered in blood. He looked like a madman. He felt like a madman.
He also knew one other fact: he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
He was somewhere else. Somewhere between The Divide and the Raining River, in the Eastern Woodlands of the Helvesta Steppe. Wherever the fuck that was.
As he finally calmed himself down, James could finally hear a faint sound echoing over the returning birdsong. He heard the gurgle of running water. With shaky steps, he made his way over root and past low branches, ducking low to avoid the spindly arms of what resembled pine-trees. In his head he knew them to be branches of a Western Ninetails Cone… Another strange name.
James started to understand the unusual information in his mind, piece by piece. He started playing with it, and determined he needed to know its limits.
By simply focusing his attention on something, anything, information would appear in his head about the object, plant, or creature. Some of the information proved to be a great boon, like when he found the bark of a certain tree that repelled carnivores. Other pieces of information (in fact most of the information) proved to be utterly useless.
The forest sloped downhill. The glade opened up ahead, and James could make out what looked to be a path cut through the trees ahead -- no doubt the stream he was looking for.
The banks were steep where he met the stream, and so he followed the bank towards the sun in the sky. He knew it was morning, because the daylight continued to increase since he first woke, but he wasn’t certain if whatever world he was currently in followed the convention of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. In fact, he wasn’t even certain he was even truly alive. For all he knew, he had died and was in some kind of purgatory. He mused with the thought that he was now in another world for a moment, and then he settled on that thought. He wasn’t certain what to do with that information, though. So, instead of focusing on that, he decided to follow the bank of the stream down the forest slopes, towards the rising sun.
The bank leveled out near the gnarled roots of a massive tree with low hanging blue leaves. James walked under the tree’s branches and brushed his hand across the bark, feeling the rough texture of what he assumed to be (according to the information popping into his head) a thousand-year-old tree. The roots of the tree looped over the stream and ducked into it in spots, letting the cold water flow through it unhindered. James ducked under the roots and undressed. He looked closely at his clothes for a moment, not remembering ever putting them on in the first place, since they weren’t what he was wearing at the bar earlier, but then he set that thought aside too. There were already enough mysteries to be solved, and the random clothes appearing were the smallest ones and the smallest priorities too.
James first drank deeply from the stream and then washed the blood from his body and his clothes. He found a small pool of water and looked down upon his reflection again, finding a stranger’s face staring back at him.
The reflection showed a young man, probably in his mid-twenties, with curly brown hair and a haggard but strong face. He had a square jaw and his muscles were well toned. He looked strong.
“Who is this?” James asked in a soft voice, brushing his hand along the surface of the water. More intrusive thoughts flooded his mind. He wondered where he was, who he was, and why he was here in the first place. Had he come to another world? Had he taken over someone else’s body? Or was this his body from the beginning? Did some Divine being put him here and if so, for what purpose?
He thought about never seeing his coworkers and boss again, and he cracked a smile… But then his thoughts slipped onto Diane. The thought of never seeing her again shattered whatever vestige of a good mood he had managed to create earlier. A raincloud poured upon his heart. Even if the last words she said to him were: “I never want to see you again,” James still wanted to see her again. He wanted to hold her again. He wanted her to forgive him, and he wanted to forgive her.
Sadness and pain flared into anger. A fire burned in his heart and James howled. He slammed his fist down on a rock in the stream, expecting the pain to sober him, only to find the rock break upon contact, shattering like a cheep plastic toy.
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