*Lucas Jaeger*

Fuck, fuck, fuck… Lucas’s heart was beating out of his chest and he was trying to breath deeply and calm himself but it was hard when it felt like fucking bugs under his skin and the fucking world is flowing! Lucas was trying to relax his muscles, but as soon as he focused on one group another would tense. This was clearly a chemical like meth though, because Lucas’s thoughts were not completely screwed- so long as he kept his focus.

If he let go for a second- the stimulant euphoria would overwhelm him, and he would be more likely to lose control have a heart attack. If he was not from the modern era, and someone who had taken concerta for most of his life on top of that, he would undoubtedly died already. Lucas was just lucky, but the problem was that the rocks on the plain were alive- no! That is object activation, fuck he must be starting to exhibit psychosis. Which explains why the shadows they had escaped from were following them and as people.

Fuck. Psychosis includes delusions and hallucinations, Lucas at this point realized he had no way to tell what was real and what was not. Well if this was like other stimulants he could probably trust his logic to a degree, though how far logic will get him in a world of magic- and fuck, he was losing focus again!

Blade- well, Lucas was fairly sure it was Blade- was moving him and talking to someone. He would be able to hear them clearly if the shadows were not so loud, but the shadows did not exist so he could not tell them to be quiet! Where the hell was he even? It had only been a few minutes, the sun should not have changed position- unless that was a hallucination, or his sense of time was distorted. Lucas so thirsty and his pants felt wet- oh for fucks sake, this was embarrassing. At least most of the people around him did not actually exist. Blade- or probably Blade- was giving him water, had he asked for it? But his hands were shaking to bad to grasp it and he had to scratch the fucking bugs that would just not leave his skin alone what the fuck!

Why were his thoughts disorganized? Was more than a stimulant maybe, possibly a hallucinogen in there as well? No- this could all just be stimulant induced psychosis, maybe. Lucas felt like there were multiple types of psychosis or was that visual distortion? Both?

Lucas was unsure how long he had been in that state- but as he regained control of his thoughts and, to some extent, his body he realized that was only the start.

“Fucking hell…” Lucas breathed out, feeling all of his muscles aching. Why had he been brought to this world? Was it just to torment him, he might as well just kill himself- no, he’d just end up stuck in that orb with those other assholes. Fuck this shit- he must have moved into the offset. Depression and irritability, check. With a little bit of suicidal ideation on the side, fucking wonderful.

And the fucking shadow people were still there! Maybe they would kill Lucas… He would not mind so much, but he wished they would get on with it. Wait, was psychosis also an offset affect? Thinking was so hard now Lucas just could not be bothered to do it when nothing really mattered.

Again, time was hard for him to discern, but Lucas eventually fell asleep and woke up with an absolutely pounding headache. As he groaned and sat up, he heard shouting around him- he was back at camp?

“Well, at least I am not dead.” Lucas muttered to himself as he heard people rushing towards his room. He was surprised when Terrasin just about tackled him and was bawling at the top of her lungs- how did he end up comforting a girl after he had been kidnapped and drugged and almost died?

“We thought you were dead!” She said- probably, drugs or no drugs, Terrasin was hard to understand in this state.

“How did you survive that?” One of the generals asked Lucas anxiously, “High Spider venom kills at half the amount you were given?

“I am glad you are alive,” Versi spoke up from the group. “I guess I have to be grateful to Blade after all.”

“I mean, I got pissed on for this.” Blade grumbled, much to Lucas’s dismay.

“All of you, please shut up.” Lucas raised a hand to his head, even though he knew the action was useless against the headache. “And if someone could get me some water, actually, make that a lot of water. My head feels like its about to split…”

Lucas groaned, trying to figure out how long he would be feeling the after effects but giving up before long. He knew more on these subjects than most laymen- or rather, laymen that were not recreational drug users- but he was not a pharmacologist, and for that matter one of the after effects of stimulants involved a mental slowdown…

“You should be more grateful Lucas,” Terrasin admonished, but she did not really put much heat into it.

“I am grateful,” Lucas replied. “But this is not over yet, probably. I will have to go through the after effects for some time before my system clears. For that matter, why are you even here Blade? Ack- sorry, that sounded rude especially since you rescued me. So long as it is in my system, it will hard for me even to be my normal self. I bet none of you would have ever thought you would be calling my usual self the polite version of me, huh?”

After a drink of water, Lucas did answer the generals question, however. He would wait to get an accounting of just what the hell had been going on after the drugs had run their course.

“I survived because compounds similar to what was injected into me can be used for medicines in my world.” Lucas simplified his explanation a lot, cross tolerance was an oddly hard subject for some people to grasp even in his own world. “Like my vaccines, because I was exposed to the substance before I was more resistant to it now.”

Technically true, but realistically a complete lie. Tolerance was very little like vaccination, but better to give vaccination some publicity now and have to deal with less shit later, Lucas thought.

“I used that medicine for decades, and combined with my height and weight, the dose they put in me was just barely below what was needed to kill me.”

And Lucas did mean ‘just barely below,’ a little more and he would not have been able to keep himself focused on relaxing his heart and breathing- and Lucas felt he would have died.