"Hey you. You're finally awake."
Caspian stirred, blinking blearily around. "Where… where am I?"
"You were trying to cross the borde—ah, never mind. Doesn't work out of context." I grumbled. "Hi Caspian. You're in the infirmary. You were stalking me, remember?"
"S-Sir Delinger… how did I get here?"
"I carried you. Don't worry, you're not injured. Just, uh—absolutely stuffed with drugs. Honestly, I suspected it already—you had all the signs—but it's nice to get a professional confirmation."
"Did I… black out?"
"Yeah. Hard. Listen, Caspian." I patted his shoulder, careful not to break him in half. "I'm not gonna give you money. And I'm not going dungeon delving anytime soon. I've got other priorities. But—I can still help."
His eyes flickered, a pathetic little spark of hope.
"I know addiction's hell. Hard to claw your way out. But I've been told the best way isn't just willpower—it's being in a better place. And finding something, or someone, you care about enough that you don't want to throw it all away."
I leaned back, folding my arms. "Now, I can't make you care about something. That's on you. But I can get you a better environment. At least for a while."
He stared at me, slack-jawed.
"Three months. I've already paid for your stay here. They'll give you food, a bed, and the best treatment they've got. After that, it's up to you. Sink or swim. I'm not your sugar daddy. But if you need someone to talk to, find me."
I stood, dusted my hands off, and gave him a grin. "Ciao!"
I left before he could get a word in.
Truth is, I don't know if what I did will help. Addiction's a beast that doesn't just let go because you bought someone a warm bed and three square meals. Three months isn't much. Not enough for a miracle. But it's something.
And I'll be honest—I need the money too. Keeping Julius and Areva tinkering on my body isn't exactly a charity project. Their genius doesn't come cheap.
Odds are, Caspian falls back in. Back to the old habits, the debts, the same rotten spiral. Maybe he crawls out. More likely he dies face-down in a gutter, forgotten. That's his story.
But Julius wasn't wrong. I can't save everyone. Not my job, not my responsibility. I did what I could within my means. After that? It's on him.
So long, Caspian.
I went back to the cabin after that.
"Julius, you there?"
"I'm here, John." He was in the back, sipping coffee, staring out at the trees like a painting.
"You ok?"
"Yes." He turned. "Let's do some tests."
"We already did. The Portal and Aiming Rune work."
"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you punching a hole through dimensions."
"Oh." I blinked. "So how do we do that?"
"Let's go to the wildlands."
We walked out. Not far from the cabin, but far enough. The trees grew twisted, the land itself stranger. Predators prowled in the shadows, but none of them dared. We were here to avoid casualties if my little experiment turned into Armageddon.
"The goal," Julius explained, calm as ever, "is to disturb the space as much as possible. Create a crack in reality. Pump your runes, focus it in one spot. We're not expecting a full breakthrough—just observable disturbance. If we can measure it, it's progress."
"Got it. Stand back."
I bent my knee, brought my fist up, and lit every rune I had. The air warped, light bending like it was drunk. A portal snapped open in front of me, space shuddering. The two warping runes were fighting each other, twisting like angry snakes. I looked for the other end of the portal. It's not where it was supposed to be. Where is— Oh there it is. So far out. At least 150 feet away.
Weird. It's not supposed to improve that fast. It was supposed to be gradual. I feel sleepy.
"̶J̸o̵h̸n̶!̵ ̴J̶o̴h̵n̶!̷ ̸S̵t̷o̵p̷!̷ T̸u̸r̴n̸ ̷i̴t̴ ̴o̸f̷f̷!̴"̸
Huh. Was someone talking? I really need to take that nap.
"̵J̷͔͓̈́̇͗̉o̷̪̍̆̎͘̚͝h̷̞̮̏͆n̴͕̈́͌͘!̸̢̔̈́̈͊͌̚̚ ̷͙͚̌͒I̷͇̮͂̔́͒̈́'̶̼̔ṁ̶͎̜̬̬̣̎̈͆ ̴͓̅͒c̵̯͚͚̑́͑̚ò̶̯̜̬̖͗̃̍̕̚m̶̢̬͍̈́̋͊͂i̷͓̥̅̆͒͆ͅn̵̩̜̯̓̀ͅģ̴̤̪̟̪̤̌͊̈́̓̌ͅ!̶̺̬̣̅̈́͡"̶
Something slammed into me, knocking me flat.
"Oof!" I groaned. "Wha—?"
"John. You ok?" Julius crouched beside me.
"Yes. Actually… no. My eyes are blurry. Everything's hot."
"You're bleeding. Look."
He conjured a mirror. My right eye bled, skin charred around it, already knitting back together but I still looked like a discount Two-Face. My arm and leg runes smoked, stinking like burnt pork.
"That's bad."
"Yes." Julius didn't even blink. "But also good. We confirmed you disturbed space. Reality itself trembled."
"That's great!"
"Now we just need to amplify it… by about a million."
"That's bad."
"Achievable. With more runes."
"That's great."
"But you barely survived seconds. More runes will make it worse. We need to beef you up."
"That's bad."
Julius smiled faintly. "But that's your specialty. You're good at adapting. At getting stronger."
I smirked back through the pain. "You're right."
"This is… this is great news." I whispered.
"It's great news for science," Julius said.
"Wanna grab lunch?"
"You mean dinner? It's night."
"You know what I mean."
"What are we eating?"
I thought about which restaurants were still open in Alimony, then decided I didn't feel like seeing people tonight. "Let's do it old-school. I'll catch our food. We're in the wildlands anyway."
Julius groaned. "That's going to take forever."
"You can afford a few hours off from your research."
"…Fine."
"Good. You prep the fire. I'll bring the meat."
Two hours later we had a half-burnt, half-bloody hunk of animal roasting over the flames. It tasted like dirt and regret. We had no spices, and yes, I might've charred it a little.
But damn, I loved it. Reminded me of the old days—me and Julius stumbling through experiments, making mistakes, pretending we knew what we were doing. We were dumb back then. Still are, if I'm being honest.
We ate most of it. Well, I ate most of it. Big body, big appetite. The scraps went to nature.
By morning, Julius packed up for Alimony. I stayed behind, watching the wildlands wake. No need to return to civilization yet. We already talked it through.
I have a job to do. Locate my next rune.
For this hunt, I'm going to try my luck just wandering the wildlands. Out here, you never know what you'll bump into—could be a stray cat, could be a cosmic dragon with eighteen heads. Roll the dice.
I've stayed in the wildlands for extended periods of time, but even I don't know its true depths. The deeper you go, the stranger it gets. The beasts are dangerous, sure, but they're not what keeps me up at night.
The wildlands mess with you. They twist your senses until you're running in circles. They stretch time, snap it back, make you lose whole hours. Worst of all, they trap you in your own head. No claws, no teeth—just you against yourself.
Go deep enough, and you might never walk out again.
It's perfect. Exactly the kind of place that'd cough up something that bends space.
So this time, I'm going deeper than I have ever done before.
A week into my journey into the wildlands. I'm currently knee-deep in a swamp that smells like rotten eggs. Most of the beasts just stare at me like I'm a weird piece of furniture. Either their survival instincts are actually useful, or my aura is loud enough to make them rethink dinner plans.
The ones that still try to bite me are the dumb ones—mosquitoes, in this case. They can't pierce my skin anymore, but I still felt the need to commit genocide on their entire species. One day, you malaria-carrying little pricks. One day.
The other attackers are the confident types. Big, stupidly confident. Like this cat the size of a carriage that burst out of the trees and tried to behead me like it's opening a bottle.
I punched it. It whimpered, which honestly strung my heart strings a bit. It's a big fluffy cat! It's very cute. But it came at me again, angrier and weirder.
This time—get this—it twisted midair like it was walking on a floor I couldn't see. My punch went clean through empty air.
"That's fascinating. How'd you do that?"
Its eyes narrowed like it was considering whether to answer or just run. It chose running. Leapt up, walked on thin air, hastily escaping.
Expected. Most things here aren't trying to kill for sport—just trying to survive, unlike the bloodthirsty dungeon creatures.
I continued on. The Wildlands is… beautiful, if you're not constantly fighting for your life like me. I have come to appreciate the strangeness of it all. True, there were twisted thorny trees, poisonous clouds of gas, mosquitoes, cockroaches, crickets that make sounds so high it deafens you, mosquitoes, sinkholes that lead you to the underworld and have I told you about the mosquitoes?
All of those are true, but it also has serene lakes straight out of a fairy tale, where I can wash the blood and grime off.
It also has the most fantastic creatures, like that one time I saw a towering golden stag. I remembered its eyes being calm and intelligent. We acknowledged each other from a distance.
There are towering trees that gift me shade and sweet fruit. Squirrels—actual cute little squirrels—that beg for food and let me pet them. Whole salt flats stretching so far they make me feel like I'm standing on another planet. Which, technically, I am, but still.
I've seen the most beautiful sunsets and sunrises here in the wildlands. Skies burn gold and purple in ways that make me forget I'm stuck here.
It is both terrifying and calming.
On this wildlands trip I've got two goals: one, find my next rune; two, train the ones I already have. I'm going to push them to their limit, until that limit becomes the new baseline.
It's why I've been abusing the Portal and Warp Runes like a man with a mortgage. Need to grab something across the room? Portal. Walking somewhere boring? Warp. Looking under a rock? Use the portal as a peephole. The Aiming Rune is always on; it made me better at spotting stuff in general, which is invaluable when everything around you looks like a "don't step here" sign.
I haven't tried the combination rune technique again, since I actually might accidentally kill myself if I use it without supervision. But I noticed that the Portal rune's range has increased to 17 feet after that stunt. Even the Warp rune seems to be faster. The combination technique seems to be the fastest way to stretch and improve the limit of my rune's ability.
While I'm practicing, I keep moving. The Wildlands don't do landmarks. Trees move, hills rearrange themselves, and the map is apparently written in Morse code. So you don't wait for anything to show up — you keep walking until it hits you.
Case in point: I'm tailing a fox. No majestic reason. No prophecy. It's cute, it darts, it gives me an excuse to follow something that won't try to rip my throat out. I don't expect it to lead me to a space warping monster, but it keeps me moving while having fun.
Eventually the little bastard burrows into a hole too small for me. End of our adventure together, right? Except it sparks an idea: I have been wandering the surface for a while. Maybe it's time to explore the depths? I'll find a big hole in the ground and throw myself in it.
I'm willing to bet that there's bound to be a big scary monster inside one of those holes. One of them might even have space powers!
"Thanks for the idea Foxy!" Off I went to find a hole just the right size for me. They are quite a bit abundant here.
First hole I found? Dead end. Nothing mystical, nothing dangerous — just an abandoned den that probably belonged to some animal that either moved on or got eaten. Smelled like both. I poked around, found nothing, and moved on.
Second hole though — that one had some promise. Narrow, winding tunnels that twisted like they were designed to make you claustrophobic. I followed them down, hoping for something interesting, and almost regretted it when I saw the owner: a giant worm, as tall and as long as a train, chewing through the earth like it was warm bread.
Disgusting? Absolutely. Slime everywhere, little bristles twitching, the whole body pulsing as it wriggled. But… I dunno. It just kept digging like it had the most important job in the world, minding its own business. Big, gross, and somehow… cute. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's the way it wiggled.
I left it alone. Goodbye, Wormy.
And that's how the next few days went. Holes upon holes. Most were just dead ends. Sometimes they had tenants — foxes, badgers, strange glowing lizards. They didn't attack me, just tried to look scary, puffing up, hissing, rattling, making noises like they wanted me gone. I respected that. If I were their size, I wouldn't pick a fight with me either.
The only one that actually did attack was a bear. Big, angry, came at me like a runaway wagon. I roughed it up a little, made sure it knew who was stronger, but I let it go. Saw the cubs hiding behind it, and, well… I get it. Can't fault someone for protecting their kids.
So yeah. A few days of holes, dirt, animals, and me wondering if maybe the Wildlands were just trying to prank me.
I was about ready to give up on this hole-hunting nonsense when I finally stumbled onto the real deal: a proper cave. Stalactites hanging like teeth, stalagmites jutting like spears, the steady drip-drip-drip echoing through the stone. Not some cramped little animal burrow
The cave was big. Not just a hole, but wide and tall, with stone teeth hanging from the ceiling and spikes jutting from the floor. The kind of place you know has been sitting here for a long time, waiting.
I walked in slow. The sound of my feet echoed, and the deeper I went, the more it felt like the outside world didn't exist anymore. Just me, rock, and water dripping somewhere in the dark.
Sometimes the walls pressed in close, and I had to turn sideways or squeeze through cracks. Other times it opened up wide, like a hall built for giants. The stone was alive in its own way — every drip carving it bit by bit.
There were rivers underground, cold enough to bite. I swam through, holding my breath until I found the next pocket of air. Glow worms clung to the ceiling, little green-blue dots shining like stars.
The cave had its own creatures. Eels that flashed with sparks when I got too close. Spiders skating over the water like it was glass. They weren't after me — just doing what they do.
After a while, it got too dark for my eyes. I scooped up a few glow worms and carried them with me. Not much light, but enough to keep going.
Then the tunnel opened up into a cavern. I stepped out of the water and just… stopped. Fireflies floated everywhere, glowing soft and warm. It looked like someone had set the air full of tiny lanterns.
It was quiet, but not empty. The kind of quiet that makes you breathe easier. I stood there for a while, letting it sink in.
The Wildlands are strange, dangerous, always shifting. But sometimes it gives you places like this. Not a fight, not a trick. Just something worth seeing.
I slept there, head on stone. My body was fine — it always is — but my soul needed the rest.
"Good night, fireflies," I mumbled, meaning it.
"Hi, babe." She smiled like she always does.
"Hey. It's been a while." I smiled back, but I felt stupid saying it.
"Been a while? We live together." She cocked her head, confused.
"Oh… yeah. We have. Weird. It just felt like I hadn't seen you in a long time." The words came out smaller than I meant.
"Babe? Are you all right?" Her worry landed in my chest.
"Yes. Why'd you ask?"
"You're crying."
"Oh." I blinked. It was true. Tears were running down my face and I hadn't noticed. She wrapped her arms around me like it fixed things.
"John. You need to wake up."
"I don't want to." I heard myself say it, and knew what she meant. The world out here was loud and stupid and forever-moving. In the dream she was quiet and right where I wanted her.
"You have to, John. Please?"
"I'm just so tired," I said. "And I'm scared I'm forgetting your face."
She tightened the hug like she could glue my memories back together. "You won't. I believe in you. So please—wake up now."
I woke up drowning.
Not the poetic kind. My lungs were full, water in my throat. The whole cave turned into a bathtub. The air pocket I'd slept in was gone.
I'm a light sleeper. I should've woken the instant the level rose. That told me it wasn't an accident. Foul play. Somebody—or something—wanted me unconscious down there.
I kicked, head splitting, lungs burning. I swam up for air but the water pushed against the ceiling. I dove, clawed along rock, hunted for any little pocket of breath. The cave's creatures didn't help; spiders and glow-worms and those eely things carried on like this was Tuesday.
Sleep kept tugging at me. Definitely foul play. The carbon dioxide build up is also helping. It lulled me into the black. I knew one way out—brutal but fast. The cave was beautiful and quiet and stupidly fragile; I hated the thought of wrecking it. Still, I had a choice: let somebody drown me in my sleep, or break a hole and live.
My fist found the roof.
Stone shattered like rotten bread. The earth above me split, geysers of mud and roots and water blasting up. Spiders that had been clinging to the stalactites were crushed or flung into the chaos. Eels flew skyward and landed confused in a new world. The little cloud of fireflies that'd been my bedside lamps winked out altogether.
I coughed the water out of my lungs and gulped real air until my sides burned. Alive, dripping, and raw-mouthed, I stared at the mess I'd made and felt that awful double hit: furious and apologetic at once. Furious, because something—some cruel trick—had used her memory to lure me into sleep. Apologetic, because the cave was its own small, perfect world and I'd just demolished it.
I do not know what induced my sleep and tried to drown me. Perhaps there is a creature down there I could not see, or perhaps it's the cave itself. No matter. Its home was gone now.
In a way, I am thankful. Thankful that I got to see her again, even in a dream. Even now, the details of her face are starting to elude me. It's been so long since I've seen her.
I left. The stars hung patient and indifferent overhead. I'd had enough dreams for tonight.