The new world

Thomas

Paths interchangeably gave way to open spaces the size of small fields and chasms so narrow both Tom and Anjan had to squeeze to get through. They moved through the paths without stopping, trying to keep moving as they strived to find a source of food.

At one point they passed a patch of dry grass next to a dead tree. Giving the impression there had been much more life in the area until something transformed it into the Martian desert before them.

Thomas wiped the sweat from his brow. The beating sun was taking its toll.

“Well, I always wanted to check out something different. Go hiking in a desert, you know,” said Anjan.

“I bet. Can't be worse than home anyway” Thomas replied.

“Home.” Anjan stopped and turned to face him. “Home?..” he asked before a throbbing headache caught on.

Thomas scrunched up his nose. He realized he didn't know either. It was as though ‘home’ was just a concept, something that should exist for him and yet did not, he knew not to focus on it as even slight thoughts seemed to lead to a sickening 'wrongness'.

"I can't remember." He said as it resolved.

A brief silence descended as they moved furthermore determined to find some food and find out what was going on.

The paths had abruptly changed at each junction, and they soon became hopelessly lost. It was unclear whether they had just gone in circles. Further and further they proceeded through the dry, lifeless maze, trying to stick to one direction.

They arrived at a dead tree and patch of grass. The same dead tree they had passed just a small time ago.

"Well, this sucks,” Anjan stated. He looked around at the paths and saw another direction they had yet to take.

“We need some food and drink,” said Thomas. He seemed to be suffering the most. The blistering heat had given him dark patches under each arm, whilst Anjan appeared to have almost embraced the heat. No notable sweat patches — instead he had a sort of glow about him.

"Yeah, something is telling me to get some food soon," Anjan replied.

Thomas had noticed it too, an icon in the corner of his awareness, like a turkey leg that had a bite taken out of it.

“I’m so thirsty,” said Thomas, staring up at the sky. He had also gotten the interface but, along with the turkey leg, there now was a flashing flask of water.

Thomas looked down a path and into the distance. He noticed strange shapes moving. As he squinted he saw the shapes change — into figures short people.

“There are people over there, I think we might be saved,” Thomas announced.

They moved closer, and saw a rough group of small green creatures that Thomas somehow knew were…goblins?

The goblins quickly noticed their presence. Moving towards them the two of them, they raised their fists and jagged wood/bone tools into the air, shouting words of a strange animalistic language.

As the group drew closer, the noise from the goblins grew more ferocious. They started slamming their makeshift tools into the ground as if to frighten the two men. Anjan held back, but Thomas was strangely unafraid. It felt to him like the strange creatures were more scared of him than he was of them. He wanted to show he was not a threat. Somehow, with each passing moment, he felt he was gaining a better grasp of their language. Odd phrases were standing out. The meaning of the phrases developing from angry shouts into a more refined sense of "bad thing go away”.

“He-llo?” Ajan said, backing off slightly as the goblins began circling, getting enough distance to run.

“Hold up; these guys look like people. They can probably be reasoned with,” said Thomas holding out a hand up. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

He walked up to the group with his hands held high and empty. One of the goblins moved closer. Thomas began to mouth some odd sounds he thought could be understood.

"Mee, lost," He said making strange hand gestures trying to illustrate his point.

It seemed to confuse the goblin more than anything. The other goblins began to shake their makeshift weapons at them.

Thomas carried on talking, trying to say some strange phrases he thought could help. “Peace,” he garbled. “Friend”. The goblin closest to them flinched as if one of the phrases had caught his attention.

The two were now surrounded. Anjan looked towards one of the louder goblins, and as he did a gob of spit shot out of its mouth, just missing Anjan's feet.

“Oh, fuck off," He shouted, kicking a rock at them.

The goblin grunted and then threw his club. Anjan ducked and heard a crack, he whirled to see that Thomas had tumbled to the floor. Hit by the projectile.

“Thomas!”

Anjan charged towards him. As he approached Thomas's body, the goblin to whom Thomas had been speaking turned to face him holding the club high. Anjan went to tackle him — but before he could make it. In a swift turning motion, the goblin clubbed him across the side of his head. Anjan fell to the floor, losing consciousness. The goblin's gaunt features drew a smile stretching his scarred and distorted features.

...

When Thomas awoke, he saw that both he and Anjan had been tied to a raft, a few broken planks dragging across the rock floor. The goblins taking them looked different from the ones that had attacked them. They were now all dressed in armour; a shitty metal made darker by a mix of ash and dirt.

He had a throbbing headache. Within his awareness he noticed a symbol of a confused and disoriented head emoji, thirty minutes on the symbol counting down. Somehow the surreality of it all made him more able to dismiss his situation like he was in a bad dream.

The goblins were pulling the planks by a rope securely wrapped around both their hands but not their feet.

Anjan opened his eyes,

“Fuck,” he said.

They were dragged further down the road as Thomas listened to the odd sounds that came from the goblins, trying to figure out what they were saying.

"I feel like shit,"

Anjan turned to him showing the signs of disorientation.

"Sorry,"

Thomas tried harder to figure out the language seeing a notification roll across the side of his vision.

Simulating....

Acquired: basic goblin speech.

Thomas motioned towards the goblin leader and attempted to speak their language: “Where…take..?”

In reply, one of the goblins dragging the planks spat into the dirt whilst the others ignored him. At this point, Anjan was trying to loosen his bonds. There was a nail sticking out of one of the planks, and he thought enough grating against it would either loosen it or fray it enough to break free. He took up this effort whenever the goblins looked away, feverishly squirming against the wood.

Another goblin came up to Thomas and got into his face. There was a scar visible over the goblin's right eye. The goblin said in a stilted version of the distorted French Thomas somehow knew, “Human… weak…will break you.” Then it spat to the side. It seemed to Thomas that they really liked spitting.

The one that spoke to him appeared to be a leader; he moved and was looked at in a way that suggested he had the respect of the other goblins. He seemed very slightly bigger than the others. Even his armour was different: bits of bone protruded out of the metal.

Thomas saw the raft come to a stop at an enclosed goblin outposst. The base was held together with little more than jagged pieces of wood and rope. Both Anjan and Thomas were yanked off the planks and pushed onto a raised stage.

Anjan had not yet broken free, but he was close — he tried to hide just how close as he was hoisted up. The goblins failed to notice, and hooked another rope over the bindings, tying them both to a large wooden pillar protruding from the stage.

Thomas looked around and saw ten or more of them gathered nearby and were now shaking makeshift weapons whilst shouting at them, the sound and bright sun aggravating his headache.

The goblin leader had begun to address the small crowd. Thomas raised his head, listening and focusing enough to gather meaning within the goblin language.

“Will…Revenge…War….Bathe…Destroy." The language was strangely becoming clear to him.

The goblin pulled out a jagged knife from his side and walked towards Thomas. Anjan realised this was as close as it would get. He ripped through his binds and broke out, charging at the creature.

The leader's face was so unsurprised he almost seemed to be expecting it. When he was close enough, the goblin punched him in the face and plunged a knife into his ragged chest.

Something clicked in Thomas then. This was real.

There were cheers from the crowd of Goblins as Anjan bled, and Thomas broke into a panic. Anjan was on the floor now. Thomas staring in horror as the last gasp left his mouth, and a slight shimmer seemed to leave his body.

Thomas tried one last time to talk, using a rudimentary understanding of their language. “Stop… Don’t…wh--”

The goblin’s blade was already in his throat. He choked on his own blood and slumped down the stake. collapsed forward with blood pouring out of his neck. Thomas felt cold. In the corner of his vision, an icon of a big red drip started growing transparent. The sound of the chanting Goblins became dimmer. He looked up one more time and saw the goblin, bloody knife in his hand, raised to the cheering crowd. Everything faded to black.

………………………..

Fiona

--flashback

Fiona and her team walked through the hall of a busy building, Hugo their coordinator was leading them as he chatted with a few other researchers. He was busy having a conversation with him about 'portal theory'. Their discussion was revolving around how the 'Page curve of entanglement entropy' has created a greater understanding of passage through the 'great void'. Like much of the technology here the portals are a collaboration of Earthern and Snowballian technology.

Fiona could easily tell who had come from Earth and who was native by the strange features they had. Though native researchers had focused on looking natural the Eartherners often had strange features such as metallic blue hair or enhanced mechanical eyes; captivated in the world's novelty. One such Earth scientist had turned his arm into a mass of tentacles, which appeared to please his wife to the disdain of everyone around them who had to painfully pretend not to notice the suction marks around her neck.

They arrived at a room, a large map laid out over a central table. Hugo dismissed himself from the other researchers before gathering the team.

“Right then,” Hugo stated as he pulled up his sleeves. He pointed to a mountain near the top east of the map.

“So this here is where the snow elves reside,”

“This whole mountain is the land of the snow elves, as you know they control a rare resource that affects the stability of mana only found in that area, and further it has affected the landscape disrupting all mana based technology preventing direct teleportation. As such, they mostly live as a tribal society."

"This elven offshoot race is one of the only groups left that still have an antagonistic relationship with the church, as they are currently at a stalemate. The High elves cannot handle the cold weather of their mountain and the snow elves cannot leave the mountain for fear of the high elves. So for the past hundred years, there has been no substantial interaction with the outside. Leaving them almost shut off from greater society. Currently, the snow elves won the last war through what you call gorilla warfare but still agreed as part of negotiations to donate a small amount of the crystals yearly to the church."

Ghost shuffled uncomfortably.

"So do we need to get in contact with them and ask them to leave their home and fight in our war? Won't they just be using spears and some magic only good in the cold?"

"Their magic is an environmental hazard which would greatly benefit our cause. They are abnormally powerful due to their genetics and the specific focus of their power, but the main help they can give us is through access to this mineral on mass. It is a useful component to help breach the capitol defences as well as being necessary for more advanced artefacts."

"Ok, so will they help us?"

"More or less, they would support any movement against the church if they thought it could win, we can count on a few of the more enthusiastic at the start of the raid, but the rest will only come if a win is certain. Stability is something they hold dear, they don't wish to be wiped out like the dryad. Fiona will establish contact, Gareth will set up communication and then we can move from there."

"Sure."

Hugo pointed to another area closer to the middle of the map, a patch of land coated in jungle terrain.

"However, these people here are another tribe. They are the aboriginal settlers, the ones that came in the large jump before the descendants of the common man here. They follow a strange religion which they tie to their magic practices, a sort of voodoo amalgamation connected to a religious belief that heavily relies on the idea of luck. To get their help we need to appeal to their priest King and convince them we have good 'Joo Joo' on our side."

"So what, do we bring some kind of offering and walk into battle holding hands"

"No, unfortunately, to pass their tests we need to send someone there as our representative, and that person would have to pass a series of trials and solve some puzzles. If he were to pass, then they will come, but they would only come if the person to pass the trials was to lead them into battle."

"Great,"

"Their ritual technology is both complicated and takes a long time to master, it would be a great boon to have them on our side. We would need to take this seriously and plan accordingly."

Fiona motioned towards the jungle on the map.

"Though information we have on this group is scarce, they're similar to the old west African practice of Joo Joo, they too had a priest-king and their 'Joo Joo' was a form of spirituality that heavily relied on curses and the natural feeling of a place."

"I'm glad you're familiar with their history, but I would warn you that their last time on Earth was amost a thousand years ago. We will set up the portal to send you near the mountains first,"

Fiona nodded in understanding.

.........

Now facing the mountain Fiona wondered how the raging storm atop it could be described as just cold weather. The storm seemed to almost reach the size of the mountain itself, which was larger than any mountain she had seen on Earth and even miles away it spread its snow far enough to reach them. The field before her approaching the mountain was a strange mess of giant ice spikes and craters. Fiona approached one such spike of ice, like a blade of glass protruding from the ground the cold of the surroundings keeping it cold.

She saw her reflection inside of it.

"These battles must have been something." Ghost stated,

"It's hard to imagine how strong a mage of this world can get."

Gareth moved towards one of the ice planes rubbing his hand along the side.

"Quite, the battlefields with he druidic are astounding, as they control the mana in the area their constructs can last indefinitely. Rather peculiar and much more magnificent than an otherwise field of craters and destruction."

He handed out glowing red crystals he called thermals.

"These will keep you warm, and if they run low we can recharge them by switching it to absorb heat and leave it someplace you won't be touching it."

ghost was the first to take one.

"Where now Capin'?"

"The high elves built invasion tunnels leading through the mountains. They should take us where we need to go," Fiona stated. She focuses on the mana flowing through her body and channelled it towards her eyes. There she altered its flow, trying to match the wavelength she wanted. rotating through different setting she saw dazzling images and colours until eventually, it matched what she knew as heat signatures.

system simulating...calibrating results... adjusting pattern recognition

Thermal perception achieved.

As the system processed this new action it managed to acclimate to the conditions. Entering in and out of this as if it were an intuitive natural process when in fact it was difficult and took a lot of time the first time she had tried. Unfortunately without a phylactery, she could only have the rudimentary level of this process, whilst the more advanced version could enhance and simulate processes beyond normal understanding. Like how to smile properly to your girlfriend's father on the first date. Rather than the simple trial and error calculations needed to get the wavelength of infrared. This was the same with Ghost, but Gareth had already tampered with his phylactery and so was unable to add the system to his.

She looked back and saw a glow around Ghost's eyes, he had managed to set the thermal setting as well.

"Gareth, can you use thermal perception."

"Alas such difficult processes are lost on me," he rummaged through his bag and found an item that he thought could help.

"But, as your tactical aneineer I have come prepared and have an item that will prevent me from losing any of you within the blinding storm of this blizzard,"

he produced a rope, handing it out to his weary leader as he held on the other end.

"It'll be a a while before we reach the mountain. Try not to eat all your Kendal mint cake."