“SO, WHAT NOW?” Robin asked. He stood directly in front of the entrance to Tarthos, craning his neck up at the massive gate barring their entry. He risked a glance at Medea, and found her glaring daggers at the gate as if it’d personally offended her. “He’s just doing his job, Medea.”

“The gate is not a he, Robin, the gate is an it. And it currently stands between us and a slow death by starvation.”

Robin shrugged, looking around again to see if he could spot a side entrance or something. No such luck. “I think we’ll dehydrate first,” he remarked, casually. Judging from his brief interactions with Medea, such a level of pedantry would surely earn him an amusing reaction.

Right on cue, he turned back to find her giving him a look, a mix between utter disgust and mild disbelief, which of course brought a smile to his face. It was the little things in life.

“To answer your question,” she began slowly, clearly trying to pretend she wasn’t trapped under a mountain with an idiot. “I don’t know. To my knowledge, the gates to the kingdom were only ever intended to be opened from the inside.”

Robin gave a contemplative hmm. “By the way, you keep calling Tarthos a kingdom. Isn’t it more of, I don’t know…” His hand waffled in the air. “A city? Maybe anywhere ruled by a king could technically be a kingdom… but there’s a certain sense of grandeur associated with the word that one admittedly impressive city doesn’t really capture, right?”

There was an audible groan from somewhere to his side.

“And this wall,” Robin said, taking a step closer to tap the stone with his knuckles. “It extends all the way—”

The moment his knuckles touched it, a bright light enveloped them, forcing Robin to squint as his eyes adjusted. Slowly, he came to the realization the bright light was, in fact, the sun.

“…Around?” he finished, lamely.

They stood next to a sloping hill in a forest clearing, the afternoon sun beaming proudly down on their heads. Medea’s eyes adjusted slower than his, which allowed Robin to see the exact moment she realized where they were. Or rather, where they weren’t. For some reason, her first instinct was to look at him with accusation written plain on her face.

“I knew that would happen.” He gave a sage nod. “All a part of the plan.”

There was that look again. “And if we’d been melted instead of safely transported away?” Medea asked.

Wait, was that an option?

Instead of voicing his doubts, Robin barreled ahead. “Well, how can you be sure we were safely transported?” he asked, perhaps beginning the only line of questioning that might somehow make things worse. “What if we’re missing our kidneys? Maybe this whole thing was just an elaborate scheme to harvest our organs and sell them on the black market.”

Medea closed her eyes, tilting her head back slightly and taking a deep breath. “I… truly do not know how to speak with you.”

Robin snapped his fingers. “You know, you’re not the first person to—”

A scream sounded through the woods, shattering the strangely comfortable atmosphere they’d managed to foster in spite of the situation. They shared a quick look, in which Medea nodded and Robin shrugged.

Apparently, that was some kind of non-verbal agreement to run towards the potential danger, because Medea bolted into the trees. Robin had only a few brief moments to ponder what they might find, and what exactly Medea expected them to do about it. He was still mostly naked and completely unarmed, and she wasn’t much better off—that is, unless she happened to be packing underneath that robe-skirt—before they burst onto the scene.

A man sat petrified with his back against a tree, cradling a bloody arm. Across from him was one of the most horrifying things Robin had ever seen.

It was tall—very tall—at least eight feet. It stood on two beefy legs clad in the still-bloody hide of a beast. Its torso and arms were thick with wiry muscle except in the spots where great chunks of the flesh was carved or rotted away to expose the bone beneath. Its head was nothing more than an exposed skull with large horns, one protruding from each side, curling into a half-loop before spearing outward.

Medea gasped, and Robin immediately pushed her back, forcing himself between her and it. Let no one say chivalry was dead.

The monster noticed their approach, glancing in their direction. Its powerful chest rose and fell as it tracked them with hollow eyes, lungs visibly deflating and inflating beneath its exposed ribcage.

No, not them—it was watching him specifically. For the first time, Robin noticed the wicked black sword in its left hand, mostly obscured by its body from their position on the opposite side. Whatever the thing was, it was at least intelligent enough to use tools, which didn’t exactly bode well for their survival if it attacked. He also got the feeling its partially decayed state wouldn’t be much of a hindrance, considering it didn’t seem to notice it was supposed to be dead.

“Medea…?” Robin asked, refusing to take his eyes off the monster and miss the moment things went pear-shaped.

“I… I don’t know. I’ve never seen…” She trailed off.

Well, that wasn’t very helpful. Shockingly, Medea’s knowledge of what was going on might actually be worse than his. Fiction had at least somewhat prepared him for this kind of situation. Though, really… were fantasy monsters supposed to be so terrifying? He’d expected slimes or something—maybe a particularly menacing breed of bunny rabbit. Not whatever the fuck this thing was.

“Guy?” Robin tried, speaking loud enough for the wounded man to hear him. “What am I looking at here?”

When no response came, Robin risked a glance toward the fallen man. He was still sitting there, proverbially—or perhaps literally—shitting his pants. Understandable, but also not very helpful. Robin flicked his eyes back to the monster, expecting it to already be halfway to impaling him, but it hadn’t moved, simply continuing to stare.

Eventually, it turned back to its fallen prey. Robin was torn between relief and annoyance at being dismissed so easily. Sure, he was naked… but so was the monster.

Then the monster did something strange, dropping the black blade and letting it fall to the forest floor with a soft thud. The thing turned away from them and the wounded man and knelt to retrieve a small object from the ground nearby. It turned out to be a knife; reasonably sized for a person, but rather pathetic looking in the monster’s hands.

The decaying hulk glanced back at Robin one more time, inhaling and exhaling loudly like some great beast, its dead stare penetrating his flesh to see something further beneath. Without much fanfare, it turned and walked off into the forest. They watched it go, and soon it’d vanished from sight altogether.

Robin leaned on a nearby tree for support, groaning. “What the fuck,” he said, to no one in particular. Then he looked to Medea, who was also breathing a sigh of relief at not being brutally murdered by the hell creature, and asked again. “Medea… what the fuck?”

She just shook her head.

“Starcursed fiends.” It took Robin a moment to realize it was the wounded man speaking, tone laced with bitterness as he faced the direction the monster went. “Have you not taken enough?!” He leaned forward and slammed his good fist down, tears of impotent rage pooling in his eyes. “Damn you!”

Robin scowled, swallowing back a bitter retort. After all, the man had just sat there and waited to die like a coward, hadn’t he? So much for fight or flight. Still, that was probably unfair; people reacted differently in life or death situations. Being paralyzed by fear wasn’t that odd, he’d wager.

Robin approached the man slowly, holding up his hands non-threateningly. “How’s the arm?”

“I will live,” the man spat, not even bothering to look up. Much more quietly, he added, “If one can call this living.”

Robin wasn’t sure what he meant by that, though chances were he’d find out soon enough.

There was a tap on his arm.

“Robin…”

He turned and came face to face with Medea, her too-pale skin almost shining in the light of the sun. Back in the dimly lit cavern, her long hair had seemed closer to black than violet, but in the reflection of the the sun’s rays, it shone in vibrant hues ranging from sapphire to amethyst. Her eyes mirrored the colors of her hair, shifting as the light caught them in different ways, all the while the runes engraved beneath the surface shimmered with a mysterious energy.

He hadn’t been joking when he’d told Medea she’d stolen his breath away. Though he knew her now to be a clever young woman not too different from the people he’d known all his life, he’d thought at first maybe he’d stumbled upon a goddess in the flesh. Some part of him had expected her nature to be as ethereal as her appearance.

“What is it?” he asked, mind going blank as those eyes pierced straight through him.

Medea’s brow was furrowed, though she tilted her head curiously as she noticed the way he was looking at her. “Are you… alright?”

He swallowed, his dry throat cracking and making him distinctly aware of how thirsty he was. “Yeah… yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?”

She scrutinized his behavior a moment longer before her features softened. “What did you ask that man? What did he say?”

“Huh?”

“That man,” she motioned to the wounded fellow. “You spoke with him for a moment?”

Robin nodded, dumbly.

“You understood what he said?”

He nodded again, synapses in his brain firing and connecting the dots before she had to say it. Medea huffed, likely assuming this was more of his humor.

“I did not,” she said, confirming his suspicion. “You were speaking a tongue I am unfamiliar with. Now, will you please translate?”

And there it was again. It was impossible to ignore now—the mysterious girl, the flying lizard, the door that teleported them, the nightmare monster… and now proof he possessed some kind of ability to comprehend languages. There was an otherworldly force at work on Gaia, one outside the realm of his previous understanding of reality. He hesitated to use the M word, but for lack of a better option, he’d just call it what it very obviously was.

Gaia had mother fuckin’ magic.

“Yeah, I can tell you what he said…” Robin laughed. “But there’s an important detail we need to discuss first, I think.” She crossed her arms and shifted on her feet, waiting for whatever it was he thought important enough to delay her request.

“I only speak one language,” he said. “One. English. Are we speaking English right now, Medea?”

“No.” She looked at him like she’d suddenly realized he was not only an idiot, but a mad idiot. “We’re speaking the common tongue, a language originating from the fallen Sargosach Empire. After conquering five of the seven greater realms, it’s obvious their roots would be entrenched in much of our culture, and their language is but one of their many legacies. It has transformed over the years as languages do, so it hardly resembles the tongue as it was spoken then. Of course, this is common knowledge… as I’m sure you’re aware.” Medea shot him a dirty look. “Well? Have I satisfied your curiosity, my king? Or shall I endeavor to elaborate further? Perhaps then you will you grace me with a simple translation.”

There was that same disbelief she’d been harboring since they met. Medea simply couldn’t seem to fathom someone as clueless as him existed. Oddly, his first thought was Tarthos must’ve been a pretty nice place to live if uneducated people were that rare. Maybe she was actually pretty sheltered? Still, this mistrust was not only unhelpful and frustrating, it was potentially dangerous. This was an alien world with at least one undead monstrosity walking around. (And where there was one undead monstrosity, there were bound to be more, right?)

Robin would be the first to admit he had a tendency to make light of situations that likely deserved more gravity. Part of that was just his personality, and part of it was probably a defense mechanism. But humor could only take one so far, and at some point, everyone had a reckoning with the things they didn’t want to face—life wouldn’t let it happen any other way. It was a bitch like that.

In Robin’s case, there were a great many things he was hiding from. At present, the largest were that he was lost and confused and possibly out of his fucking mind. Everything that’d happened since he woke up was insane, a whirlwind of nonsense and fiction he’d done his best to take in stride. But ignorance wasn’t acceptance, and he could only wander blindly for so long before he stumbled off a cliff.

“Medea.” Robin stared into her eyes, willing her to hear him. They hardly knew each other, and if she wanted to go her own way after this, that was her choice—but until she said otherwise, he was going to operate under the assumption they were in this together. Or at least until they figured out what this was. “I need you to hear me on this, alright? Take whatever preconceived notions you have about me and every assumption you’ve made up until this point… and toss them in the trash.”

Her eyes widened as she seemed to realize he wasn’t joking.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” he said. “Where I come from, there are no Titans or teleportation traps or monsters or magic. All this?” He waved a hand around. “This is new to me. Tarthos? Never heard of it. Sargo-whatevers? Never heard of them either. Hell, I don’t know where we are or how we got here. As far as I know, I’m speaking English right now, the only language I’ve ever learned.” Robin closed the distance between them, putting his hands on Medea’s shoulders. She shrank a little but didn’t pull away, and had to crane her neck to look him in the eyes.

“I know you just woke up and you’re scared and confused,” he continued. “I doubt this is much of a comfort coming from the weird naked guy, but I can work with you and translate whatever you want and try to help you get back on your feet. But for now… I’d like it if you’d stop busting my balls. Sound good?”

Medea’s mouth hung open in shock, but she managed to give a couple of slow, deliberate nods.

“Perfect,” he said, cheerily slapping her shoulders before stepping away. “Now, here’s what the guy said…”