I climbed back up the tree and spent the next twenty minutes trying to figure out the stupid crystals. I tried rubbing them. Staring at them. Shaking them. I stopped just short of eating the darn things and was beginning to think I really had been swindled when I decided to hold onto one of them while mentally bringing up my stats.

Focusing on my Mana indicator, I suddenly felt a warmth in my hand as the crystal popped.

You gained +50 mana!

Sweet! I didn’t get ripped off after all.

I repeated the process with a second crystal.

You gain +57 mana!

Nothing else seemed to happen though. No level. No increase in stats. But I did feel slightly different. More energized and refreshed. But how do I exactly use this stuff? I focused on my insight level and world spun.

Holy..!

In a flash I found myself in a completely dark space. The stat screen was still hovering in front of me, but it was slightly different now. Beneath my insight level was a line that read.

Next: 100 Mana

I then found I could manipulate my stats, increasing the points by 1 at the expense of my mana pool. Ah so this is how you level, I thought. But which stat should I increase? There were no exact descriptions, but I’d played enough RPG’s to have a good guess about what they did. For right now, Agility would probably serve me best. Whatever huge monsters are out in this jungle, I’m probably way better off running from them than trying to fight them.

I raised my Agility by 1 and mentally confirmed my choice.

You exercise 100 mana.

Your Agility has increased by +1!

You have gained 1 insight!

You are now level 2!

The world suddenly returned in a flash of light, colors and sounds.

Only it wasn’t midday anymore. One of the suns, the larger one was now an orange globe low in a red hued sky and the smaller one was not far behind it. It was a beautiful sunset and if not for the fact that it meant I’d soon be spending the night in this freaking jungle, I probably would have enjoyed it. But right now I was just trying to figure out what the hell just happened!

“Did I lose time?”

I glanced about me, and suddenly became aware that my skin was itching. When I looked down at myself, I let out a scream.

“Gah!”

Thousands of inch long ants were crawling all over me! I began swatting them and to my chagrin, the things began reacting by biting into my skin. What was simply skin crawling before, suddenly became unbearable pain as the ants realized what they were crawling upon was alive. I cried out as the ants bit me again and again, it felt like match heads were being extinguished on my skin.

I nearly fell out of the tree as I tried to rid myself of the things, bouncing from tree limb to tree limb as I made my way down. By the time I hit the jungle floor I had gotten rid of most of them, but my arms and the back of my neck were throbbing with welts.

“Damn things,” I cursed as I continued to slap them from my skin. “That was not cool.”

I made my way back into the clearing and up looked up at the setting suns. I’m not sure exactly how much time had passed, but at least now I know that leveling in this world puts in you in some king of meditative state. I was darn lucky I had decided to do it up in the tree and not while still on the ground. Getting eaten by ants was a heck of a lot better than by a dinosaur sized bird or whatever the hell else was in this jungle.

“I need to get out of here,” I said, thinking of the town of New Haven which, according to Shareef, was supposedly close by.

West…I needed to head west, but which direction was that exactly? Did the sun set in the west on every planet? I tried to think back to my high school science classes and don’t think the subject ever came up. Man what I wouldn’t give to be able to do a Google search right now. Hopefully it was one of those universal laws of physics that made it the same everywhere.

I lined myself up with the sunset and began walking out of the clearing and into the jungle. I got about a hundred feet into the thick trees when my heartbeat suddenly sped. A gnawing feeling entered my gut, like I was making a huge mistake.

It was half a day’s journey to New Haven and it was nearly nightfall. The prospect of trying to make that journey in the dead of night filled me unease. Maybe I should try waiting it out in that tree till morning.

I suddenly felt trapped as a panic set in, making my throat dry.

I then realized just how thirsty I was. I’d been sweating like a pig and the ant bites had me itching to jump into a nice crystal cool lake somewhere. My stomach was growling too. I hadn’t eaten anything since before my appointment with Susan.

“Susan…”

My heart sank as I thought about her again. What would she think could have happened to me, I wondered? Hit by a car? Arrested? Commandeered by my MILF of a boss to be her boy-toy for the evening?

I laughed. “Sorry, Gladys…”

Man, why the hell am I even thinking of this stupid shit right now? Perhaps I was getting delirious. I slapped my face with both hands. I needed to get myself together. I was stuck in a jungle and night was soon coming and I had no survival skills to speak of. I was an only child and while I had spent plenty of family time with my parents, going camping was something we’d never done. I guess that comes from growing up in the inner city of Chicago. I had skills better suited for a concrete jungle than a real one.

I decided to head back to the clearing and then climbed up the tree again to see if I could spot a river or lake or something. Maybe I could try and start a fire too. Yeah right, I thought. I was no boy scout. I had no idea how to do that either. But water was a must.

From the top of the tree I began scanning the jungle canopy. Three moons were on the rise on the opposite horizon and the jungle was alive was howls and screams of things I didn’t even want to imagine.

The more I looked the more uncertain I was of anything. The light was fading and I couldn’t rightly tell if the dark spaces I saw between the trees were the signs of a river, more worm holes waiting to be discovered or simply shadows.

My hopes faded with the sunlight and my options dwindled.

Fuck it…I thought. I’m going to have to sleep here I guess.

Ignoring my thirst I paid one more trip to the bottom of the forest to find something to defend myself with. Eventually I found a decent sized sapling that had fallen and spend a few minutes stripping it of leaves to create a makeshift Bo staff.

I twirled it in my hands and felt a bit of confidence return. Although I wasn’t exactly sure how much good it would do against jungle creatures. Thoughts of wild animals chased me back up the tree and I secured myself in some vines to ensure I wouldn’t fall out. It was uncomfortable at best, but got even worse as the light began to fade completely.

I felt for the crystal in my pocket and cursed myself for being so stupid. I should have taken that escort. What good were these stupid things to me now? And what kind of ass that guy was to just leave me out here like this. He didn’t even offer me a drink of water.

I had fooled myself into thinking this was all some kind of game, but there was nothing fun about this now. I tried to ignore the crawl of ants and other insects I couldn’t see as the moons rose high. I clutched my makeshift staff with fright at every roar and howl that echoed through the trees. Every second was torture, but eventually my body ran out of adrenaline and fatigue began to set in.

I semi-slept, waking to nightmare sounds in the darkness every few minutes. Below me I could hear the heavy footfalls of something very large moving around and I thanked the stars for the security of the tree and its vines. I thought about my mortality at that point. I had proclaimed to Susan that I wanted to die, but now death was coming in a completely unexpected form.

And I wasn’t ready.

Tears streaked my face as my despair turned to self-pity and the terrible hand I’d be dealt in life. Losing my parents suddenly to a car crash while still in college. Diagnosed with brain cancer a year later. Three years of fighting to only have it come back…and now this.

Maybe it was just better to die…

The morbid thought remained in my mind as the night of terror wore on. Eventually I did fall asleep at one point, because I dreamt of Susan. I was back in her office again and she was questioning me as to why I had stood her up. When I tried to explain, I realized that I was dreaming and that I was asleep in some tree on an alien world.

“Ah!”

I awoke with a start, my heart pounding in my chest. But relief filled me as I saw the morning sun cresting the horizon.

“Thank God,” I said.

I’d survived the night.

Something tugged at my leg and my breath froze. I looked down, preparing to see some giant insect about to gnaw my foot off. But instead I saw a small furry creature sitting atop my shoe, tugging at my pant leg. I thought it was some kind of squirrel at first, but it more resembled a cat, with a feline face and the body and long tail of a lemur. The thing startled me nonetheless as it suddenly ran up my leg.

“Hey!” I shouted.

It bounced across my chest and then landed atop my head like a spider monkey. It weighed maybe a pound or so, and I could feel its weight on my head as I tried to shake it off. Its inverted head then appeared in front of my face as it peered at me upside down.

“Meep!” it said with a sound somewhere between a meow and a peep.

“Whoa. What the hell are you?”

“Meep! Meep!”

Seemed friendly enough whatever it was. And kind of cute too. I’d always been more of a cat guy and this thing certainly resembled one. “Hey, little fella.”

I cautiously raised my hand towards it and to my surprise it sniffed my fingers before bushing its head against my hand just like a housecat. The little act of unconditional love lifted my spirits immensely and I let out a laugh. “Man, you are friendly, aren’t you?”

“Meep!”

I chuckled. “I guess that’s what I’ll call you. Meep.”

It actually began to purr as I petted it and then gentle I coaxed it off my head. I untied myself from the vines. “Okay let’s try and find our way out of here, little buddy.”

My new friend stayed glued to me as I surveyed the jungle canopy again under fresh light. I spotted a decent break in the trees that ran in a path. “That has to be a river.”

Using the sun as my compass I plotted which direction to head and then securing my staff, made my way down the tree with Meep following close behind me. It was still perplexing how this thing was so tame. Did I have some kind of magical animal affinity or something? One check of my stat sheet said I didn’t, but the little cat-lemur began following my like a puppy as I started my trek towards the river.

“Here, Meep!” I called and patted my shoulder, and to my delight the little guy scurried up my back and perched himself on my shoulder. “Man, you are cool as shit.”

The companionship ebbed my fears as I plowed through the dense underbrush. I used my staff as a machete to thrash away the leaves of huge palm fronds and elephant ear plants, or what looked like them anyway. After about an hour the second sun rose and the air became stifling with heat. My throat was so parched it felt like I’d eaten sand and my eyes stung with salty sweat. Eventually the sound of running water came whispering from ahead and I rushed towards it.

The jungle broke onto a muddy riverbank filled with what resembled mangrove trees. Meep jumped off my shoulder as I literally dove towards the water. To my chagrin it wasn’t the crystal-clear river I had in pictured in my mind. The water was the color of mud and was littered with leaves and dead branches as it sloshes up and down the riverbank.

Man, do I really want to drink that?

My body was panting yes, but my mind was listing all kinds of reasons why I shouldn’t: alien bacterial, parasites, general dirt and nastiness. I looked around to see if any fruit trees might be growing nearby. Mangoes usually grow in jungles don’t they?

Meep hopped up into a mangrove tree and watched me as I went through my mental contemplation. To drink or not to drink, that was the question. I bent down and scooped a bit of water into my hands, washing them clean. The cool of it was delightful and I splashed it on my arms and face to sooth my burning skin.

I scooped some of the water in my hands again and it at least looked pretty clear up close. No bugs swimming in it. That I could see anyway. If only I had a pot and a fire to sterilize it, I thought. I swallowed dryly. Surely just a few sips couldn’t make me sick. I looked to Meep for confirmation.

“You’d drink this wouldn’t you, Meep?”

“Meep,” he replied to me.

“Fuck it. I’m taking that as a yes.”

I pressed my palms to my mouth and swallowed deep. I honestly didn’t even care what it would taste like, but to me it tasted like the best water I’ve ever drank. I reached down again and again filling my palms with the water and drank as much as my stomach could hold.

As if to support my decision, Meep crept to the water’s edge and began lapping at the water himself. I smiled at the little critter. “That a boy.”

Suddenly his ears perked up and he lifted his head to peer as something in the river.

“What is it, Meep?”

The little cat-lemur flattered his ears against his head and let out a low growl. The water splashed and something the size of a suitcase came leaping out of the river at me. I yelled with fright and instinctively Aikido rolled away from whatever it was and got to my feet while grasping my Bo. Meep retreated swiftly up the mangrove tree, running away from whatever it was. The thing was the color of mud and stood on two legs about three feet tall. A shell covered its back and when it turned towards me I could see it had a froglike head and long spindly arms.

The thing repulsed me, and I yelled at it with disgust. “Man, you are one ugly looking little ninja turtle, dude!”

The thing burbled a reply and hopped towards me with a swiftness I didn’t expect. Its frog-like mouth opened twice as wide as its head with a double hinged jaw, revealing a maw of serrated teeth. I side stepped and whacked it on its head with a quick overhead strike. The blow stunned the ninja turtle and I followed up with several more hits to its head. It fell to the ground bleating with frog sounds, but still tried to bite at my legs and rake me with its clawed hands. It gave me the heebie-jeebies and I danced to keep away from its teeth as I beat it on the head over and over again.

“Die you nasty little mutant ninja turtle fuck!”

Eventually I landed a solid blow on its skull and I heard something go crack!

As the ninja turtle froze and burbled its last, a ghostly white aura exuded from its body like smoke and coalesced to form a small crystal upon its body. I recognized it immediately.

“A mana crystal.”

I guess that meant for sure that it was dead, so I ventured towards it and picked the small fingernail-sized sliver of crystal from off of its shell. I popped the crystal to see how much it was worth.

You gained 2 mana!

I looked for Meep who was still up in the tree. “Scary huh? Wasn’t worth much though.”

More splashes filled the air as three more suitcases jumped out of the river.

“Oh fuck!”

I wheeled in a defensive stance as the creepy little ninja turtles surrounded me, one of them wielding a rusty spear in his gangly arms. I immediately focused on that one, knocking the spear to the side and followed up with a blow to the side of its head. One of the others moved in at the same time and I narrowly avoided a bite from its jaws, but I wasn’t quick enough to avoid the third.

Red hot pain shot up my leg as the last ninja turtle latched onto me with its claws. It then fell backwards onto its, shell, purposely I realized to get me to fall to the ground. I went with the momentum, falling onto my shoulder and into a forward roll.

Flesh tore as the claws came loose from my pants leg, and I cried out in pain. I rolled to one knee and spun with my tree branch to catch the same one that had tripped me right across its throat. With a sickening crack, its life essence spewed from its body to form another crystal.

More splashes announced the arrival of two more turtle men, both of them with spears. I couldn’t fight them all at once. I needed to gain some distance. I struggled to my feet, backing away while limping. Blood streamed down my leg, burning with pain. It was excruciating. There was no way I could run on this leg right now. I didn’t even think it had clawed me that badly. The four remaining ninja turtles croaked and hissed at me. I spun my Bo aggressively to keep them at bay.

It was working for now, but my arms began to tire and my head was growing light. The burning in my leg was persistent and I vaguely wondered if perhaps I’d been poisoned.

Health, I though.

Health: Diseased – Touched by Death

Poisoned – Toxic wound

Shit…

Panic filled my blood with adrenaline. I needed to kill these things before I passed out and they devoured me alive. I screamed, charging at the closest one with a wild swing. I connected but just barely and my stick ended up hitting mostly its shell. The remaining turtle men rushed in with the opening, and I cried out as one of the spears pierced my upper thigh.

I fell to the ground still swinging and managed to clobber one of them on the way down, but not hard enough to kill it. Blood soaked my pants as the spear wound gushed with bright red crimson. I prayed that it hadn’t hit an artery or something.

Reduced to their height, the turtle men became more emboldened and hopped toward me with aggressive croaks. I cried out in desperation and fear as I swung at them from my prone position, but my strength was waning from both the toxin and blood loss.

This is it…this is how I die. Eaten by freaking ninja turtles!

“Stay away from me, you bastards!”

Just then, something big and blue came barreling out of the jungle behind me.

I flinched, startled to see a woman the size of an NBA star with blue skin, charging at the turtle men with a huge axe raised above her head. She let out a powerful yell as she brought the axe down on top of one of the ninja turtles.

The thing croaked both literally and figuratively, giving up his ghost and another crystal shard. The blue woman then spun with her massive weapon and took the head of one of the others clean off. The remaining ninja turtles burbled in a panic and hopped towards the river’s edge to flee, but not before the giant blue woman caught the closest one on the back of his shell with a massive downward chop.

The metal blade sliced right through the shell, dissecting him neatly in two.

The woman then stood there catching her breath, and despite my injuries, it was probably the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. She wasn’t just tall, but muscular as well, built like a crossfit-athlete with a well-defined six pack that now flexed in and out with her short breaths. Her skin had a definite blue hue to it, as did her wild dark hair that hung loosely about her shoulders in a shaggy mane. Her face wasn’t exactly what I’d call classic pretty, but she was still gorgeous in a sexy and powerful way. Strong jaw, high cheek bones with thick, sultry lips that were a deeper shade of blue than the rest of her skin. A simple loincloth made of leather covered her ass just barely in a thong and about her broad chest was another piece of leather that held her very large breasts in place. A bikini made of leathers.

As she held the axe, which looked the size and shape of a stop sign to me, her biceps bulged and I could tell the ninja turtles stood no chance of surviving even a single blow from her. The woman scanned about, stooping to check the turtle men to make sure they were dead or perhaps to ensure no more were coming back.

Satisfied, she then made eye contact with me and my heart nearly stopped. I expected her eyes to be blue, matching the rest of her paint scheme, but they were a deep violet and more closely matched the shade of her lips than the pale blue of her skin.

She was stunning.

“You’re injured!” she said rushing to me, sliding to her knees. “Did they bite or claw you?”

As she knelt over me I could see the look of concern on her face. Whoever this sexy goddess was, she’d just saved my life.

“One of them clawed me,” I said. “I think I’m poisoned.”

Actually I knew I was poisoned, but I just didn’t have the mental where-with-all to explain how I knew that right now. My head grew lighter as a chill ran down my spine. Her big violet eyes scanned me up and down studying me and then, seeming to make a decision, she tore at my pants leg, ripping it at the seam from cuff to crotch.

“Whoa!”

“Sorry,” she said. “I need to see the wound and stop the bleeding.”

She worked quickly and used what was left of my pant leg to tie a tourniquet around my upper thigh. It was slightly embarrassing to have my boxer briefs completely on displace and for her to be working her fingers so close to them. She didn’t seem to make an effort to look away however, in fact it almost seemed like she was studying my crotch with great interest.

She caught me looking at her looking, and she seemed to blush and diverted her eyes.

Meep came scampering out of the mangrove tree and ran up the big woman’s shoulder to peer down at me. She reached back casually and stroked his cheek. “Good job, TamTam. You led me to him just in time.”

The cat-lemur purred and rubbed himself against her cheek.

“Ah, he’s yours,” I said drunkenly. “That makes sense. No wonder he was so tame.”

But how did that thing find me out here?

It then bounded off her shoulder and landed next to my head. I turned to him weakly. “Well I guess your name isn’t Meep after all.”

“Meep!” he said and then tickled the side of my face with a lick from his course tongue.

I laughed involuntarily.

“Don’t laugh,” the woman said. “It will cause more bleeding.”

Then without warning she buried her head in my crotch.

I yelped in surprise as a pair of strong lips fastened themselves around my puncture wound. She came up for a second to spit out a wad of blood to the side and then did it again, causing another yelp of pain from my wound and a jolt of excitement from my loins. By the time she went for the fourth suck, I had an embarrassing half-mass bulge in my briefs. Where my body had managed to find that much blood to send to my dick I did not know.

The blue skinned woman then proceeded to the claw wounds that were further down my thigh. I rose to full mast as I watched the top of her head bobbing up and down in my lap. My heart was racing and I thought I might pass out from both the pain of her tight lips and the pleasure it was causing in my groin.

What made it even worse was that her eyes were staring at my bulge the entire time. Almost as if she were wishing she was sucking it and not the poison from my wounds. Or that’s what my dirty mind had me to thinking anyway.

This is totally fucked up, I told myself. This woman trying to save your life by sucking poison from your wounds and you’ve got a full blown hard on from some kinky fantasy?

“That should be enough,” she said, popping her head up to wipe her bloodstained lips with the back of her hand. “We need to get you somewhere to rest now. The rest of the poison will have to work its way through.”

“Okay,” I said.

I felt faint in more ways than one. Maybe my boner had come at the expense of blood going to my brain. My eyes got heavy as I began to fade. Through my blurring vision, I saw her hand reaching slowly for the waistband of my boxers, about to free my girth. I thought I must have been imagining it, but as we made eye contact she suddenly stopped, looking more embarrassed than I was. She snapped her hand back, as if caught trying to steal a cookie from the jar. The big blue woman then redirected her hand to rest upon my chest, playing it off as if that was her intention all along.

“You sleep now,” she said, leaning her face close to mine and I could smell a sweet hint of vanilla on her skin. “I’ll carry you.”

As she rose to her full height to tower over me, I figured I must have imagined it. No way was this sexy woman trying to grab my junk. Especially not in the state that I was in. My eyelids grew heavy once more and I felt close to passing out.

“Thank you for saving me,” I said groggily.

“You’re welcome.”

“What’s your…?”

Name, I wanted to say, but by then I was out like a light.