In a relatively solid clearing within tall, swampy woods, a severed head lay pushed slightly into the mud by a rowing machine. The flesh unnaturally gray and pale, the open eyes flickered with ghostly green light. It looked generally human but for the color of the eyes and skin, as well as the two large curved horns sticking out from the forehead. The facial expression was a disturbingly gleeful smile, baring rows of sharp, pointy teeth. It lay there, cataloguing its experience in the portal. The head could not have been more pleased. The portal exploding had been something completely new. He could spend decades studying what he’d experienced there, trying to recreate the conditions that caused such a magnificent feat of magic. This was going to be so much better than a simple vacation from his wife, slaughtering and subjugating for that upstart of a Demon King.

The head’s name was Lome’Matar and he was no stranger to decapitation. In his duchy in the demon world, the Herald of Flames attempted to cut off his head frequently. Sometimes at the dinner table, sometimes in the bedroom. This time wasn’t so bad. It was fascinating, all things considered. The opportunity to experience a novel new form of interdimensional travel and said method of travel violently exploding was one he probably would have paid for. Best of all, the Demon King was dead and he had no prior engagements to distract him from study.

The Dread Necromancer Lome’Matar was much more difficult to kill than some young muscle-headed Demon King. The portal exploding didn’t hurt that much. Didn’t even threaten his soul, just tore and severed the flesh. His connection to his phylactery sang inside him, not disrupted in the slightest. The portal had been downright pleasant, really. Far better than what his wife frequently did to him. Dismemberment and decapitation alone was downright pleasant to what occured she was involved. Lome’Matar’s facial muscles contracted involuntarily as he mused about his marital duties. His wife was a sadist, and a quasi-immortal husband had brought out the worst in her. He loved her anyway. Most of the time.

He’d ignored the summons of the Demon Kings for millenia, and over time and quite a few dead or mutilated Demon Kings who were unwilling to accept his absence, they had started leaving him alone. Lome’Matar was very satisfied with the arrangement. Until he got married, that is. His wife was...Energetic. Wonderful. A breath of fresh air in a dull, tedious existence. However, he needed a break. The constant mutilation and dismemberment followed by events too terrible to recount were getting to him. Brutal ambushes within his own castle were a near daily occurrence; the sheer violence of his wife’s love had worn him out. He’d had to fully recreate his body from his phylactery more times in a mere century of marriage than during the thousands of years in which he rose to power through violence and intrigue, vying among equals and superiors for his position as Duke. So, when the newest Demon King announced the invasion of another world, Lome’Matar had broken his ages of silence and heeded the call. The end result had ended better than Lome’Matar could have dreamed.

A sinister laugh rang out from the rowing machine. Lome’Matar thought he’d have a few decades off, with the tiresome understanding he would help conquer the world, but now there could be as much time off as he wanted; the way home was shut, and the human tools who’d created the thing were almost certainly dead. He’d bide his time here. Gather servants to carry out his will, hide and study the method that connected to the demon world. Not that he really needed it. Lome’Matar was a master of magic related to the soul, and souls could peirce the barrier of the demon world easily. No, Lome’Matar simply wanted to know how the portal actually worked. After that he’d send servants out into the world to bring him reading material. He would sever the magic that kept his soul bound to his head and return to his phylactery in the demon world when he tired of the literature and knowledge he could pillage from this place.

The only problem was he was rather dead at the moment. The dead could not generate mana without very special measures taken, and he hadn't bothered with such measures for this trip. They were tedious. His mana capacity was effectively zero right now. He needed to be cunning. A servant is required. His senses were present, but there was mud in his ears and he couldn’t see much from his current position. Lome’Matar’s mana sense was crippled as a mere soul attached to a severed head but it could extend a good five hundred feet into his surroundings. The mages of this world who struggle to acquire a good twenty feet of mana sense would have collective strokes should they become aware someone considered a ‘mere’ five hundred feet to be crippled. It was fortunate they would never know.

Lome’Mater sensed around for a potential servant. There were humans here. Mediocre servants, humans, at best, but generally easy to sway to his side. Unfortunately they were dead. Their bodies lay, crushed by strange devices he had no way of knowing were called dumbbells and squat racks. Broken by impact with the ground and pulverized by all sorts of strange machines. Lome’Matar scowled underneath the rowing machine. This was troublesome. Generally he wasn’t dissuaded from acquiring servants by something as petty as death, but at the moment he wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Lome’Matar scanned the surroundings carefully, seeking anything he could use. Aha! There was a single living human within the clearing. She was crawling towards a container Lome’Matar did not know was called a backpack. This one would do. A handful of broken bones, a few cuts, major bruising, and a concussion. Perfectly salvageable specimen. Lome'Matar was confidant he could teach even a complete magical dunce to heal themselves within a few days. Lome’Matar let out a sigh of relief he didn't need to wait for someone to travel by. He hadn’t been looking forward to an indeterminately long period of waiting.

Lome’Matar carefully evaluated the human’s worth. Unusual. Unusally bad. In terrible physical condition and a bit on the skinny side. Lome’Matar doubted she’d ever had to run for her life or rely on her body. Probably a noble of some sort. That was a downside. Running speed, strength, and stamina were important for his servants. They tended to die without them. Hopefully she was intelligent, at least. Maybe not all hope was lost if she had potential as an acolyte. She’d still need to train up her body a bit to avoid death by whatever local fauna were around. Lome’Matar frowned as he tried to touch the surface thoughts of the woman. He didn’t recognize her language. Oh well, languages were easy. Lome’Matar knew hundreds. It would take him mere minutes to piece most of it together. He left the brain and probed deeper into the human’s body, looking for innate mana capacity. It could be trained and increased, of course, but without a strong foundation the multiplicative gains of training were just not very impressive. It was always tricky, measuring the capacity of a mortal. It took finesse to peer inside of them so without damaging something, even with crippled mana-sense it was a risk. Lome’Matar’s eyes widened and his mouth broke into a shark-like grin. This human would do, if she really was human. She’d do nicely in fact. With those injuries she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He just needed to probe a bit more, learn a new language, and wait for her to become desperate for help.

Heidie crawled towards her backpack in too much pain for sarcasm. She had fallen at the edge of a clearing where the majority of her orientation group seemed to have landed in. The canopy of the trees near the edge had slowed her when she plunged through it, but they had cut up her arms and face as she tried to grasp at the branches to slow her descent. It had helped a little to slow her down though. The canopy was thick. She’d landed on her side in the mud, flopping onto her back from the momentum. The mud had diffused some of the impact. Enough to survive, at least. The leg she landed on was broken and the sharp, constant pain in her side when she breathed in told her there was probably a rib or three in bad condition. She’d seen her backpack fall a few feet away, and agonizingly crawled to it, dragging herself through the mud. She’d always had a high pain tolerance, but this was pushing it. Tears in her eyes, Heidie wanted nothing more than to pass out. A cool rain was drizzling down through the clearing, and Heidie felt like the universe was conspiring against her. She had a very bad feeling about her chance of survival. After much struggle she finally reached her backpack. Fishing her phone out, Heidie confirmed what she had been trying not to think about: the portal that sucked everybody up. Though the phone was functional, there was no service whatsoever.

Heidie didn’t want to think about where she was. Just the trees she had plunged through gave her a bad feeling of unfamiliarity. They stretched far into the sky, with a canopy at least thirty feet thick, and this place didn’t look like any rainforest Heidie had ever watched a documentary about. In too much pain, Heidie decided to put off thinking about the ramifications of gigantic, unfamiliar trees to take a quick break and center herself.

Slowly and painfully flopping herself onto her back near her bag, Heidie cradled her phone on her chest and thought about what to do. Everything hurt. From the odd angle it was lying in, Heidie’s leg was definitely broken and with the rest of the injuries she was aware of, she was pretty sure she wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Heidie pushed back tears and would have sighed if exhaling didn’t hurt so much. To make matters worse she had a terrible itching feeling in her brain, like a fly buzzing around inside of her skull. She felt that a brain itch was a bit excessive, considering the broken limbs and all. Fucking universe, she thought.

She had no illusions about her survival skills. Until her parent’s ultimatum pushed her to college she had been a shut in. She’d been camping a few times when she was younger, but Heidie had never experienced or trained for a survival-in-the-wild situation, let alone one in which she was badly hurt in completely strange place. Then there was the portal thing that sucked everybody at orientation into it. Everything she knew about that sort of thing came from fiction she’d read, movies and anime, and manga. Frankly, that she’d read about similar things in fiction wasn’t comforting. While she’d read a great deal, Heidie had a feeling that it probably wasn’t going to translate to practical skills well.

Still, panicking would help nothing. Well Heidie thought, I’m dead then. She thought about that for a little bit. Screw that. I’m going to live. There has to be someone around here in better shape than me. There were loads of people in the orientation group. Just gotta get help to set the bones and find some shelter. Heidie decided to call out for help as loudly as she could for a while.

“Is anyone out there!” she cried out weakly, underestimating how difficult it was to yell with several broken ribs, “Hello?!”. Nothing. Heidie kept at it for a little while before she began to feel hopeless. Perhaps everyone else was dead or in worse condition. Then, suddenly, a sinister voice echoed through the clearing,

“Let’s make a deal, little one”.

Heidie paused. This too, was similar to many things she had read. She focused through the pain and thought for a moment. Yeah, a deal sounded good.

“What kind of deal?”, Heidie asked.