LightReader

Chapter 2 - Where am I?

Good catch, here's the version with all em dashes removed and replaced naturally:

"Uh, damn, what the fuck happened?" Adam muttered in confusion upon awakening.

His last memories were hazy, but he remembered being blasted off a bed by a shotgun.

The burning pain still lingered fresh in his mind, but when he looked down at his bare chest, he saw nothing other than the sculpted abs cultivated from years of exercise.

"A dream?" he idly spoke, wondering what had happened.

Upon the realisation that he was alive, he finally took note of his surroundings.

He was surrounded by a lush green forest, a scene which only served to confuse him further.

Had that bald asshole not shot him, instead opting to knock him out and dump him in a forest?

It was a strange choice, but it was better than dying, so he had no room to complain.

His situation still wasn't exactly great, considering he was stark naked in the middle of an unknown forest.

He didn't have his smartphone, so he couldn't use a map or call for help. He also had no idea where he was, meaning he was completely lost.

"Fuck, maybe he did want me to die."

Adam ran a hand through his hair and exhaled slowly. Panicking wasn't going to help him. He had been in plenty of bad situations before, though none quite as bad as being naked in an unknown forest, but the principle was the same.

Stay calm, assess the situation, and adapt.

He pushed himself to his feet and scanned his surroundings. Dense trees in every direction, thick undergrowth, and a sky above the canopy that looked strangely clean. A sight he wasn't used to seeing back in his polluted city.

The air was clean too, now that he thought about it.

"Just how far away am I?"

He took a step forward and immediately froze.

From the bushes emerged a small rabbit.

A rabbit with a long horn growing from its head.

Adam blinked, thinking he was seeing things.

It was still there.

Was there a species of rabbit with a horn...?

He had never heard of such a thing, let alone seen one anywhere near his city.

Though he preached calmness, his strange surroundings were letting fear creep into his heart.

He crouched down slowly, studying the creature. It stared back at him with wide, glassy eyes, completely unbothered by his presence. The horn growing from its head was perfectly straight, sharp, and about four inches long.

A rabbit. With a horn.

Adam stared at it for a moment, then stood back up.

"Weird breed," he muttered, and kept walking.

He had bigger problems to deal with. Namely, he was naked, hungry, and had no idea where he was. Everything else could wait.

The forest was dense but not impenetrable, and he moved through it with the quiet focus of a man who had learned long ago that spiralling got you nowhere. Find water first. He could hear a faint trickle somewhere ahead, which gave him a direction at least.

He was maybe ten minutes into walking when he felt something strange.

A sharp pinch at the side of his neck. Brief, almost negligible, something akin to a mosquito bite.

He reached up instinctively and felt something small and thin fall away between his fingers.

He had just enough time to look down at his hand before his legs went completely numb.

He hit the ground face first, fully conscious but unable to move a single muscle below his neck. He could feel everything. The soil against his chest, a twig digging into his ribs, and most importantly, the faint rustle of something moving through the bushes toward him.

Shifting his head slightly, a foot appeared in his field of vision.

Small, bare, and green.

It was followed by a face as its owner crouched down in front of him. A girl, roughly the height of a child but with the proportions of a grown woman.

A grown woman with green skin, large amber eyes, and pointed ears poking through wild dark hair. She looked him over with an excited, satisfied expression, as though she had just claimed herself a grand prize.

She said something in a language he didn't understand, then grinned at him, revealing two small pointed canines.

Then everything went dark.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he registered was that he was restrained. Arms and legs tied as he lay on a soft mat.

He appeared to be inside some kind of tent, but that wasn't what concerned him.

On top of him was the green woman he had seen before passing out.

The woman, seemingly some sort of goblin straight out of a fantasy novel, had taken him down with a paralysing dart. Though from everything he knew, a goblin wasn't supposed to look quite like this.

Up close she was undeniably attractive in a way his brain was struggling to process given the circumstances. A lean figure, sharp features, and an expression that made it abundantly clear she was in charge of this situation and knew it.

She was also looking at him like he was the most interesting thing she had ever laid eyes on.

"Okay," Adam said slowly. "What the fuck are you?"

She tilted her head at the sound of his voice, clearly not understanding the words but apparently entertained by them. She responded in her own language, something short and casual, then placed one small green hand flat against his chest.

Adam looked down at her hand. Then back up at her face. Then he thought about the chain of events that had led him here.

He wasn't an idiot. As shocking as it was, the conclusion came quickly. He was in another world. The pain had been real, and rather than going to hell, which let's be honest was the only destination available to him, he had been thrown somewhere else entirely.

A world with horned rabbits and attractive goblin women, apparently.

The goblin on top of him frowned, perhaps annoyed that his attention had drifted elsewhere, and leaned forward until they were nearly nose to nose.

Snapping out of his thoughts, Adam ran through every strange situation he had ever found himself in with a woman.

Unfortunately, none of them came close to this.

More Chapters