**Lucas Jaeger**

“Fucking shit!” Lucas was more or less howling, and swearing his head off. “Fuck this hurts! What the fucking hell was that?”

Lucas had woke up and barely even recognized where he was before he saw what looked like the unholy child of a praying mantis and a shark. The monster stood six meters tall and had a body similar in appearance to a mantis, complete with with the enlarged forelegs that ended in claws nearly a meter long by themselves. The less said about the head with a mouth filled with rows upon rows of shark-like teeth, the better.

And Lucas, from his angle, was the only passenger in the carriage that could see it- minus the driver, who did not seem able to avoid it- and that it was swinging its claws in an arc that would decapitate the girl sitting across from him. His instinct was to pull her out of the way and now he was pinned against the seat behind him by the claw. Lucas hardly noticed that the thing burst into flame a moment later, he was too busy swearing his head off and trying to focus on what to do.

I’m a biologist, for fucks sake, Lucas thought to himself. Not a Goddamn medical doctor, what kind of bullshit is this?

“We will have to remove it,” the armored man beside him said grimly, reaching towards the claw. “Grit your teeth an-”

“Now just fucking wait,” Lucas swore at the man, swatting his hands away. “Unless there is something to fucking bind it with you will just fucking kill me doing that!”

“You don’t understand, it could be poisoned. It has to come out as soon as possible.”

“Better to maybe die of poison later than to definitely die of blood loss now idiot!” Lucas shouted, his head reeling. He had never really had any major injury before, hell- he’d hardly ever had a minor one. Lucas was careful with anything that could be dangerous, the kind of person for whom highway speed limits were gospel and not suggestions. It was true he could think clearly enough to know what he should do, but he had nothing to spare for kindness towards anyone else.

“Grab the part where it goes into the seat behind me and help me pull it out from the wall,” Lucas gritted his teeth in anticipation. “We can tear up these shit clothes I’m wearing and bind it as we move.”

He had no idea where they were going, but the why was obvious. There was no way Lucas was going to stay in a place where giant shark mantises tried to kill him. In fact, he’d be happy if he was as far away from here as possible and wanted to get there as fast as he could.

The gauntlet wedged in between him and the seat, grabbing the claw, caused him to grunt in pain- and so did the other hand stabilizing the other side.

“On three,” the man said. “One. Two. Three!”

The man pulled and Lucas did his best to help, but the pain was horrendous- he thought, as much as he could think with pain exploding in his mind- that he must have broken a bone and that the claw might be caught on a part of it. Lucas had thought that a man shouldn’t scream. Men were supposed to be manly. They could shout, they could yell, but screaming was something he had never associated with himself or the stereotype of men in general.

Lucas had not even really thought that he could scream, until the agony of unsticking himself from the seat behind him proved that his vocal chords had a far further reach than he had initially thought.

The whole thing left him panting, swearing, shaking, and sweating as the carriage finally came to a stop and he tumbled out of it, barely keeping his balance and hardly aware of anything but the fact he had been run through. There was a small puddle of blood in the carriage and a trail of it leading from the seat to where he stood.

Thankfully, the young woman, Terrasin, and the idiot man who’d have bled him and killed him over a maybe, managed to help him stumble and sit down. In a long, canoe like boat that had outrigger floaters on both sides for stability, four in total and two on each side along its length. Lucas had no idea what was going on, his vision had shrunk to the point calling it tunnel vision did not even clearly explain the issue.

The girl and the man were telling him to control his breathing and relax his muscles- and Lucas did, or at least tried, and would for a few seconds but it was so hard to control. There were other people now, other hands and shouting, with something shoved into his mouth between his teeth, and then…

If he had thought the pain had been bad at first, it was nothing compared to the claw being pulled out. Lucas knew better than to struggle, but he couldn’t help himself and fought against the hands holding him down, screaming every last bit of air out of his lungs. He must of blacked out for a second or two during the worst of it, but unfortunately he did not fall unconscious.

He felt cloth against his shoulder and gritted his teeth as the wound was bound, the pain was bad but hardly as terrible as that short burst of torture before and he found himself able to try and force himself to relax. The pain was horrible, but if there were more of those monsters about he had to be aware. Lucas forced himself to focus, his vision returning slowly to see that he was flying.

No, he was on a boat! His back was on the bottom of the canoe like thing, he could feel the pull of gravity, so how the hell could Lucas see the ground!?

Around him were heavily armored men, both the man who had been with them before and others, as well as the redheaded girl. Though they were tense, they hardly even bothered to look up- down?- at the ground as the boat moved. Suddenly, his vision twisted and the canoe moved like it was a roller coaster in an amusement park- except that gravity was always pulling his back to the canoe’s floor and the water beneath it.

The river was twisting and twirling through the air, but he was feeling only a fraction of the force he would have been if gravity had not been so strange. Because of the way it was acting, these twists and turns may as well have been the same as if they were simply turning left or right on a normal river.

It had to be a hallucination, but the pain in his arm was real- too real. Lucas could not even begin to understand what he was looking at, or what was going on.

“Wh- what is…?” Lucas croaked, his voice sore and worn out from screaming. “How is th- that…?”

“Shhh, rest.” Terrasin spoke softly, well as softly as one could over the rush of water. “We are almost there and we will have a healer look at you, I am certain they have herbs that will help.”

Oh God, Lucas shuddered as he realised the level the people around him were at. He did not where he was or what was going on, but these people were relying on swords and arrows to fight creatures which warranted nuclear fire on the sheer principle of their ugliness- to say nothing of their actual danger.

There “healer” would be more likely to kill him than make anything better. It was not that there weren't herbs that could legitimately help with wounds and injuries, but that the vast majority of people knew jack shit about it and most herbs were absolutely useless. Could he even trust them to be clean? Hell, he doubted anyone here had washed their hands when they had pulled that claw out- but in an emergency situation he was not about to complain.

“Where,” Lucas tried to swallow and soothe his throat, it didn’t help. “Where am I?”

“You are in a different world, Lord Hero.” The girl responded, but Lucas could hardly process the response and what it meant. “Whatever world, whatever land you came from, we desperately called for your aid and you arrived here. Specifically, you arrived in the city of Uri and we are leaving it for the territory of Francea.”

Individually, he understood her words, but collectively she may as well have said gibberish. Lucas was hardly thinking clearly, he was disoriented and in pain and still suspecting that everything around him was just an extremely vivid hallucination caused by drugs or his fevered mind. However, he could have a sworn she had said he was in a different world.

“A different world?” Lucas repeated, wondering if he had heard clearly. “You called for my aid? But how, and why me? What do you want and who are you?”

“I will explain everything later, as much as I can.” Terrasin said with a sigh, “but we are almost at the landing and the camp, we have to have a healer look at you first- and maybe water some of the wine a little less for your pain.”

Watering wine? Like the ancient Romans? He had come to a different world and was not only attacked by monsters, but they didn’t even have decent alcohol? They were still moving wine as syrup and watering it down for consumption? It seemed like a petty gripe to consider when he had a hole in his shoulder, but it was very nearly the last straw of what Lucas could take.

Soon, ropes were tossed over the side of the boat, and while he didn’t see what they did precisely, Lucas could feel the boat slowing. Not long after, he was helped to his feet by two men- one on each side- and guided out of the boat by Terrasin into an orderly looking camp. Cloth tents were pitched and there men both in and out of armor moving busily about this way and that- though a good few had stopped to stare at him.

Terrasin called for a healer, and a robed man rushed out to meet her- but after a single look at the stains on that robe, Lucas wanted nothing to do with him. Sure, they were not food stains but the kind of stains caused by the residue of grinding plants and herbs, but that still was not clean, to say nothing of the man’s hands. The man approached, and Lucas very politely told him to fuck off and get the fuck away.

“I’m not going to die in some hell world because some uneducated shit doesn’t understand hygiene.” Lucas said and meant every word of it. He was still in pain, but fear of an idiot sticking dirty hands into an open wound did wonders for his ability to focus. Who fucking knew that was all it took?

The man looked shocked and offended, while the man who had been with Terrasin and him the whole time pointed out that he not only needed his bones set, but stitches too or Lucas would still be in danger of bleeding out right here. Just like the man’s worry about poison earlier, whatever Lucas was worrying about now was a future concern compared to an immediate threat.

This was, Lucas would admit later, a fair point. However, it turns out having a whole through your shoulder and broken bones did not leave people in a mood for fairness.

“I’m not about to take advice from you,” Lucas snapped instead and had an idea. A shitty idea, all things considered, but better than nothing. Probably. He’d at least get a placebo effect if he was wrong, so definitely better than nothing.

“You said you’ve got wine, right?” Lucas asked Terrasin who nodded, seemingly unsure of why he asked. “Get someone to bring it here- but don’t water it. I’m not planning on drinking shit if I don’t have to and it might actually be useful for disinfecting.”

Lucas had been fascinated with the Greeks and Romans from the time he could read until well after he had become an adult. He had not had time to indulge his inner helenophile, but he knew more about that part of ancient history than might be healthy. One of the related tidbits to that history was that what the modern world calls wine and what the ancient world calls wine are worlds apart.

Modern wine does not really contain enough alcohol to actually disinfect anything, at least not quickly. It would work if you submerged in the stuff for a while, but you can’t use it like antiseptic spray or soap. Ancient wine, on the other hand, was more like a highly alcoholic syrup or sludge, you had to add water to make it bearable and before that it could charitably be described as toxic. One ancient roman traveler had even described a certain variety of wine of having such heavy fumes that it would burst into flames if a candle so much as went near it.

“Lord Hero,” the healer began. “I am trained as a surgeon and no matter what the rumors say about the profession, I assure you we can save lives. Even from here I can tell that the wound on your shoulder is dangerous, and that the binding isn’t tight, delay could kill you.”

“Did you sterilize your tools?” Lucas asked, only to have them blink back at him.

“Lord Hero,” the man replied cautiously. “That word did not translate, what does ‘stair-ah-lies’ mean?”

“Oh for fucks sake,” Lucas swore. “Are you telling me you don’t even have the concept? You should, maybe this thing you assholes stabbed into my ear isn’t working… Look, I’m not going to explain this now. We are going to wait for the fucking wine, pour it on my fucking wound, and you are going to wash your fucking tools in it. Are we clear?”

“Yes Lord Hero,” the man shrank back from Lucas’s tirade, clearly confused but unwilling to cross him.

The wine was brought quickly, and Lucas was laid down on a table so that the surgeon could work. Lucas gritted his teeth when accidentally bumped his shoulder on the table, and hissed at the sting of the wine being poured on the wound at his direction. Fortunately, despite his lack of understanding regarding hygiene, was a deft hand at setting bones and stitching flesh, as well as bandaging wounds.

By the time everything was finished, and the surgeon had excused himself from the “Lord Hero’s” side, Lucas was exhausted. But there was no time for rest, the camp was being broken down even as Lucas sat and tried to make sense of what had happened so far today. He had walked out of a bank, flush with excitement, and straight into a nightmare.

“Ah,” a voice called out from behind him suddenly. “I never did introduce myself, Lord Hero. I am Sir Carsin Forus, Lady Almistraus’s bodyguard and her family’s knight. It will be part of my duties to protect you.”

Lucas turned his head to see the man that had been accompanying him all day. The man had spoken in a rather apathetic way, with maybe a slight hint of annoyance or frustration. It did not take a genius to tell that he did not like Lucas, but right now Lucas could not give less of a shit.

“I’d say thank you, but now that I have a moment to think I am starting to agree with my earlier thoughts that I’ve been kidnapped by you people.” Lucas was blunt and to the point, his nerves worn too thin to bother with any kind of crap. “That girl said she would explain, and it had better be a damn good explanation.”

“She is Lady Almistraus and you will address her with respect,” the knight spoke suddenly and sharply. “That she, in her kindness, allows her lessers to address her without her title of ‘princess’ is more than gracious enough and you will not disrespect her, Lord Hero or not.”

“Firstly, I have no idea what you mean when you talk about Lord Hero or whatever bullshit that is. My name is Lucas Jaeger, and I am not your Lord Hero so don’t call me that.” Lucas had a strong dislike for titles and nonsense, especially the concept of nobility. That the modern world was very nearly free of them was one of the greatest accomplishments of the twentieth century. Well worth, in Lucas’s opinion, the two world wars that it had taken to eliminate most of them. “And secondly, considering my suspicions about kidnapping and the fact that I saved her life, I see no reason that I can’t call her whatever the hell I want. Though to be clear, I wouldn’t see a reason even without either of those. She is not my princess or my lady, so don’t expect me to be impressed or care about either title!”

Lucas had to admit to himself he was letting his anger run away with him. But on the other hand, it took his mind off both his rising panic about being in a different world- one where rivers flowed through the damn sky and giant monsters attacked people- and the pain in his shoulder. So he did not much care.

The conversation ended there, and Terrasin returned not long after with a young man and another young woman, both of which were dressed up in similar quality to her. Behind them, another carriage was being prepared- though how well it would work when Lucas could not see any visible paved roads would have to be seen.

The important thing was that she had promised him answers, and Lucas intended to get them before the day was out, no matter how exhausted and hurt he was.