Blood Shaper

Pushing off the ground and wiping the dirt off his pants and back, Kay ignored the screen floating in front of his face as he desperately tried to calm down. Eyes closed, he took a few deep breaths before opening his eyes and looking at the screen.

“Alright, in moments like this, it’s best to ask, what would Raph do?” Kay asked himself. He stood there and thought for a moment. “I guess he’d differentiate between what is known and what is just a guess.” Kay closed his eyes again, blocking out the now slightly scary view of the landscape around him, as well as the mostly terrifying image of the floating screen. “So what do I actually know? I know that I’m not home, or anywhere near it, because of the landscape. I know that I’m probably in another world, because of the status thing.” He paused. “Well, hypothetically, I could be on Earth and there is some kind of technological explanation for seeing a screen in front of me, but if the tech is advanced enough that it can do that, it’d be a whole new world anyways, wouldn’t it?”

Off in the distance, around the edge of the silhouette that he was pretty sure was a mountain, a tiny speck lifted off and started flying away.

“…Never mind.”

Kay stared at the dot until it flew out of sight, then he stared down at his hands. “What the fuck do I do?” He groaned.

Minutes passed as he stared mindlessly in front of him.

The grass rippled as a breeze passed by, snapping him out of his trance. At some point while he stared, the screen had vanished. He smacked himself in the face, just enough for it to sting. “Alright. I do the only thing I can right now, which is do my best to stay alive.” He started walking away from the forest.

I just have to hope this is the right direction to go. He thought.

“Away from the dark forest is hopefully a better decision to find people. Because as scary as people in a different world could be, I will starve to death on my own.” He muttered to himself, pushing doubts out of his head.

The field, or meadow or whatever, was mostly enclosed by trees around the edges, and walking in the direction that had the least trees led him to a wide open plain of tall grass and low sloping hills.

As he crossed the top of one of those hills Kay saw what might have been a road. It was definitely a patch of dirt snaking between two of the hills, but he couldn’t see enough of it to tell for sure, thanks to those same hills.

Changing his direction, he kept walking. “At least I haven’t run into any predators. Or hell, any dangerous animals at all.” He glanced out into what looked like an endless sea of green-gold grass. “This feels like the perfect place for magical buffalo or something.”

Three more hills later he finally got a good enough view to definitively identify the patch of dirt as a road. He could also see the mounted party headed straight towards him.

“…” He stared silently at them for awhile. “I really hope this goes well.” He started walking down the hill towards the road, muttering to himself. “Please don’t be slavers. Or cultists. Or… There’s too many bad things they could be. Please just be nice people. Actually nice people.”

Stopping at the bottom of the hill he waited for the party to round the curve. In his head he kept going over different situations and possibilities. What to do if they got mad at him for stopping them, how to react if they wanted payment, all kinds of potential responses and conversations ranged through his mind, from the mundane to the inane.

As the first rider came into view Kay froze as a very important thought that he’d forgotten popped into his head. Why would people in another world speak English?

The fourth and final person rode into view, and catching sight of Kay, the group pulled to a stop. One of them pushed himself up in his stirrups and waved. “Hello!”

Kay gaped at him.

Seeing Kay’s response, or lack thereof, the man turned to one of his companions, who looked down into their lap, then nodded back.

Following the one man’s lead, the whole group rode up to a few feet from Kay. “Hello.” The leader greeted Kay again. “I’m fairly certain we have the right person, but just to be sure, you’re the Outworlder, yes?”

Kay continued gaping as he stared up at the man.

“Hello?” The man leaned forwards on his horse, “Are you deaf?”

The rider’s annoyed tone snapped Kay back into working order. “No, I’m not deaf, I just-”

“Great!” He sat back up. “So?”

“So… what?”

The man’s voice got testy again. “Are you the Outworlder or not?”

“Uh… Well, what’s an Outworlder?”

He glared at Kay and spoke as if to a small child. “A person from another world.”

“Oh.” Normally Kay would be annoyed at the guy’s attitude, but after the day he’d had so far, Kay didn’t have enough mental energy to bother. “Well then yeah, that’s me.”

“Then, let’s get going!”

“What?”

“We need to-”

The furious pounding of more galloping horses cut off whatever the man had been about to say as another group of riders came galloping around the bend.

“Coultron!” One of the new riders shouted as they stopped some distance away. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

The first group that had approached Kay had been fairly uniform. Four men on horseback, three of them wearing what looked like chain mail to Kay’s untrained eye, and the fourth, the man who’d been consulting something in his lap, wearing some kind of robe.

The five people that had just shown up were much more eclectic in look. The one who’d shouted was probably a man based off their voice, but the full plate mail covering them made actually figuring out what they looked like impossible. Next to the armored one, on Kay’s right was a shorter, lithe man decked in leather armor by the looks of it, with a large bow held in his hands. Next to him was a woman, and Kay couldn’t help staring at her in shock. That’s an elf!

A willowy woman with similar armor to the man on her left, her blond hair was slightly the wrong shade to Kay’s eyes, and her eyes were a touch too blue. And her ears were pointy! Not incredibly long and pointy like the elves of a certain MMO, but they had a distinct point where a human’s ears would curve.

Kay dragged his eyes to the next person. To the left of the center rider was another woman, and Kay jerked in even more shock as he saw her. She had animal ears on top of her head! Kay blinked furiously as he stared at her. She had on mail similar to three of the four men from the first group, and a shield hanging from her saddle, but Kay barely noticed as he stared at the round, furry animal ears sitting on top of her head.

The last person of the new group shifted in their saddle as they glared at Kay. Looking back at him, Kay saw this man had animal ears as well! What the fuck?

Kay started backing up the hill away from both groups. The weapons and armor had drawn his attention as he looked them over, but the sight of three very obviously not human people was starting to break Kay’s already fragile psyche. He didn’t have any experiences even remotely like this to draw on in order to cope, and he was getting very close to loosing himself in a panic.

The expression of the last group member, the one who’d glared at Kay’s staring, shifted into something more concerned as he said something to the rest of his party.

The initial four had spun their mounts to face the newcomers as they approached. Grasping at the sword at his side, the leader, Coultron, shouted back, “Performing the job I’ve been assigned!”

“Bullshit!” One of the new people, the man with the bow, shouted as he gesticulated with his weapon. “The BOA contracted the Adventurer’s Guild to locate the new Outworlder, not you Graceful Success pricks!”

Kay kept backing up.

“We were assigned to retrieve the Outworlder by our guildmaster!” Coultron proclaimed with a haughty air.

“He doesn’t have the authority for that!” The elf woman snapped.

The two groups kept yelling back and forth at each other, but Kay stopped paying attention as he kept backing up deeper and deeper into the tall grass. As he reached about halfway up the hill, Coultron’s patience snapped.

“I don’t answer to scum and race-traitors!” He yelled as he drew his sword.

That prompted every other person to draw some kind of weapon.

Kay froze for a moment, then dropped to the ground, praying that he would be hidden by the grass, and desperately tried not to panic.

Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om