8 Welcome to the Fucking Jungle
The world didn't fade back in so much as it slammed into them.
One moment, there was the nauseating vertigo of being turned inside out and spun through a kaleidoscope. The next, Rimo was on his hands and knees, vomiting nothing but bile onto soil that was the wrong color—a deep, bruised purple. The air was thick, hot, and wet, clinging to his lungs like a sweaty blanket. It smelled of rot, blooming flowers the size of his head, and something else… something metallic and predatory.
"What in the seven holy hells was that?" Kai gasped, stumbling to his feet beside him. His face was a pale green. "I feel like I just got drunk on cheap gin and kicked down a flight of stairs."
Athena was already standing, her body rigid with tension. She wasn't looking at them; her gray eyes were scanning their surroundings, wide with a terror she couldn't suppress. "The mana… it's… it's screaming."
Rimo forced himself to look up, and his breath hitched. The familiar, gentle woods of Sunhaven were gone. They stood in a jungle so dense the light was a filtered, sickly green. The trees were monstrous, twisted things with bark like scaled armor, and vines thick as his thigh hung like slumbering serpents. The sky above was a swirling, angry magenta. A blood-red sun, too large and too close, glared down through the canopy.
They were nowhere anyone was supposed to be.
"Okay," Kai said, his voice shaky as he tried to summon his usual bravado. "Okay. Not the forest. Minor detour. Anyone recognize the flora? No? Great. So we just… find a friendly local, ask for directions back to the orphanage."
A sound cut through the humid air, freezing the joke in Kai's throat. It was a deep, chittering roar that didn't belong to any animal Rimo had ever heard. It was the sound of grinding bones and shattered glass, and it was close.
"Shit," Rimo whispered, the word leaving his lips before he could stop it. The cold, analytical part of his mind, the part that was Aris, was already screaming, a constant, silent alarm bell in the back of his skull. Danger. High. Multiple vectors.
"What was that?" Athena asked, her voice admirably calm, though her knuckles were white where she gripped her book.
"Nothing that wants to give us directions," Kai muttered, his hands coming up, a flicker of flame sputtering between his palms. The fire, usually so vibrant, looked weak and pathetic in the oppressive, alien atmosphere. "My magic… it feels heavy. Sluggish."
The ambient mana is chaotic and hostile, Aris's knowledge supplied, unbidden. Conventional spellcasting is compromised. Efficiency reduced by approximately sixty percent.
Rimo didn't repeat it aloud. He didn't have to. The look on Kai's face said he already knew.
"We need to move," Rimo said, his voice low and tight. His body was already in motion, his feet finding purchase on the slippery, purple ground without conscious thought. "Now. That way." He pointed away from the direction of the roar.
"Why that way?" Athena asked, even as she fell into step behind him.
"Because the other way smells like a slaughterhouse," Rimo said bluntly.
They moved, and the jungle closed around them like a fist. Every step was a struggle. Thorns that dripped a sizzling, clear liquid tore at their clothes. Strange, bioluminescent fungi pulsed with slow, malevolent light. The air was so thick with moisture it was like breathing soup.
Kai tried to use his magic to clear a path, but a simple gust of wind spell fizzled out after pushing back a single vine. "Dammit! It's like trying to swim through tar!"
"Conserve your energy," Athena advised, ducking under a low-hanging branch. "Use it only for direct threats."
"Oh, you mean like that?" Kai yelped, pointing.
Something dropped from the canopy above them. It was about the size of a large dog, with six multi-jointed legs and a carapace of gleaming, oily chitin. Its head was a nightmare of compound eyes and mandibles that clicked together with a sound like dice rattling in a cup. It didn't roar; it hissed, a high-pitched, aggressive sound that set Rimo's teeth on edge.
It was a Skitterclaw. The name popped into Rimo's head from the same place his knowledge of city alleys had come from.
"Back up!" Rimo commanded, shoving Kai and Athena behind him. He grabbed a fallen branch, hefting it like a club. It was a pitiful weapon.
The Skitterclaw lunged. It was fast, a blur of chitin and sharp edges. Rimo's body moved on its own. He didn't swing the branch; he thrust it like a spear, jamming it straight into the creature's gaping maw as it leapt. The beast shrieked, impaling itself on the wood with its own momentum. Ichor, black and foul-smelling, sprayed across Rimo's tunic.
He stood there, panting, holding the branch as the creature twitched and died.
"Holy shit," Kai breathed, staring at the dead monster. "You just… you didn't even flinch."
Rimo stared at the ichor on his clothes. He felt nothing. No revulsion. No fear. Just a cold, clinical satisfaction. Target neutralized.
"It was… luck," Rimo lied, his voice hollow.
"That wasn't luck," Athena said softly. "That was a perfect counter-thrust. You used its own speed and mass against it. That's advanced combat theory."
Before Rimo could respond, the chittering started again. But this time, it wasn't from one direction. It was from all around them. In the sickly green light, a dozen… then two dozen… pairs of glowing, faceted eyes opened in the shadows between the trees.
The branch fell from Rimo's numb fingers.
"Uh, Rimo?" Kai said, his voice cracking. "I think we just found its friends."
The pack of Skitterclaws emerged from the gloom, their claws scraping against the strange purple stone of a crumbling ruin they hadn't even noticed they were standing in. They were surrounded.
"Okay, fuck this," Kai snarled, panic finally overriding his shock. He threw his hands forward. "IGNIS BURST!"
A wave of fire, weaker than it should have been but still terrifyingly bright, erupted from his palms. It washed over the front line of creatures. They shrieked, their chitin blackening and cracking, stumbling back from the heat.
But there were too many. The fire died down, and the ones behind simply climbed over their scorched brethren, their clicks now sounding angry, hungry.
"It's not enough!" Athena cried, grabbing a rock and throwing it with pathetic accuracy.
Rimo's mind was racing, the cold part of him and the terrified boy warring for control. Form a defensive perimeter. Use the larger stone block to your right as an anchor. Kai's area-of-effect spells are our only viable—
A Skitterclaw, smarter than the others, flanked them while they were distracted by the fire. It came from the side, its target not Rimo, but Athena.
It was fast. Too fast.
"ATHENA!" Kai screamed, but he was too slow, his mana still recovering from the burst.
Rimo saw it happen in slow motion. The creature lunged, its serrated claw scything towards Athena's unprotected back. He was too far away. He couldn't get there in time.
A primal, helpless terror—a fear not for himself, but for his friend—exploded in Rimo's chest. It was a feeling so vast, so overwhelming, it swallowed the world.
NO!
The thought was a final, desperate scream into the void.
And the void answered.
His vision didn't just go black. It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of tar over his head. The sounds of the jungle, the shrieks of the monsters, Kai's yell—everything was snuffed out in an instant. There was nothing. No sight. No sound. No feeling.
It was the most profound silence he had ever known.
Then, like a candle flickering back to life, sensation returned.
He was standing. His body felt different. Lighter. Stronger. The paralyzing fear was gone. In its place was a cool, flat calm. He looked down.
The Skitterclaw that had been about to eviscerate Athena was now a twitching, dismembered wreck on the ground. Black ichor dripped from his fingers. He hadn't used a weapon. He had used his hands.
He looked up.
Kai and Athena were staring at him, their faces masks of pure, unadulterated horror. They were backed against the stone block, not fearing the remaining Skitterclaws, but fearing him.
Kai's mouth opened and closed, no sound coming out. Finally, he managed a strangled whisper.
"Rimo?"
The boy who looked like Rimo tilted his head. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It was a smile that had never seen sunlight, a smile that knew only white rooms and the sound of screaming.
His voice, when it came, was calm. Flat. It was Rimo's voice, but all the music, all the warmth, had been scraped out of it, leaving only a cold, hard edge.
"No," he said, his golden eyes sweeping over the circling monsters with utter disdain. "My name is Aris."