3 – The Sweet Smell of Infinity

“What… What was that?!”

What on earth was a badger of all things doing in the woods? Why was it so freaking enormous?

“Ahhh!” he cried, clutching his bleeding side where the claws had sliced him. Moving his hand away revealed three deep gashes across his ribs. While not quite to the bone, the wounds would definitely need stitches. Like, so many stitches. Blood ran profusely down his side, seeping into his clothes. Ren pulled off the now torn and red-stained T-shirt, pressing it hard against the wound in a feeble effort to staunch the blood flow.

I gotta get out of here, he thought. Who knows if there are more of those things? Maybe giant weasels are pack hunters in this forest. I have to be in New Jersey or something. Maybe there are carnivorous horses too. He laughed, a half-crazed chuckle, before shivering involuntarily at the thought of a herd of panther-sized badgers stalking around him.

Lacking a better plan, other than the fact that he wanted to go in the opposite direction of where the monster had fled, he took several steps toward the other side of the glade, stumbling as the adrenaline of the fight drained out of him, replaced by blossoming pain. At the edge of the woods, he glanced back to ensure the badger’s momentary fear had not transformed into vengeance. His gaze settled on the delicate sake bottle nestled in the emerald grass; by some miracle, it had not been crushed in the fight.

Ren paused. One hand gripped the bokken while the other pressed his newly created Old Navy bandage to his side. This is stupid. I’m an idiot. Awkwardly, he slid the wooden sparring sword into the cheap, woven belt that held up his jeans as he backtracked to scoop up the discarded bottle before returning to the opposite side of the clearing.

He stumbled along for several minutes—any semblance of dignity forgotten—trying with mediocre success to create distance between himself from the massive creature. Eventually, pain overwhelmed fear, and he collapsed against the rough bark of one of the towering trees.

In the midst of panic threatening to boil over, he started muttering to himself—one of the several awkward habits picked up in the hours of late-night, mise en place monotony in Paris. “Okay, think, Ren. Come on, man. There has to be a road or something around here, right? You had to have gotten to that clearing somehow. It’s not like muggers carried you thirty miles into the woods of Jersey, so, think!”

He wracked his brain, trying to play back the itinerant pieces of the night before. “We were going to toast, so I went into the cooler. There was the weird light, and the voice. I was in the alley, then…” A strange sense of vertigo washed over him as he tried to piece together what had transpired. “The light… flared? And then I woke up in a ridiculous forest. With flora I’ve never seen. With my sword, a bottle, and the clothes on my back. And enormous badgers that can’t exist and that no one has ever heard of.”

A soft breeze blew through the trees, causing them to sway gently. Ren squeezed his eyes shut, working on steadying his ragged breaths. A fresh wave of pain rolled across his body.

“I’m going to die out here.”

Without warning, a faint tingling sensation ran up his left arm, causing the small hairs to rise up, like someone was holding an invisible latex balloon a few inches away. “Wha… what?” He looked to the side, trying to peer through the chaotic columns of wood. The feeling faded.

Unsteadily, his back pressed against the bark for balance, he rose once again and crept forward through the trees. Ten tremulous strides later, the static air returned in a wave surrounding him.

Goosebumps involuntarily broke out across his entire body, and the air around him had gone eerily silent along with the electrical sensation. Still, nothing appeared out of the ordinary among the trees. The wind had died, taking any nascent birdsong along with it. Ren paused, listening.

The barest whisper of a hum vibrated somewhere behind a dense collection of undergrowth. Sake bottle brandished like the world’s worst baton, he moved forward through the foliage. As he shouldered his way into the brush, small, thorny vines clawed at his exposed, muscular torso, leaving behind a plethora of shallow lacerations. After several feet, the plants cleared abruptly, revealing yet another hidden glade similar to the one he had awoken in save for several small details: The grass had been replaced with spongy rolling moss, the light was dim as if it had somehow transitioned to twilight, and there was no sound save for a monotone thrum. Plus, there was the eight-foot jagged piece of glowing obsidian jutting up in the center.

Ren’s mouth stupidly hung open as he muttered, “This is definitely Jersey.”

Another static pulse washed across his body, significantly stronger and timed perfectly with a glowing, dark-magenta light that seemed to fill the stone column. The strange twilight caught the polished, wicked-looking curves of the stone giving it such depth as to almost be a living thing. Ren felt his feet move forward one step, then another as he was pulled by some invisible force, like a lazy compass oscillating toward north.

Five steps away. Three. The thrumming seemed to be inside him, the interior of his chest and stomach vibrating. Involuntarily, he stretched his hand toward the dark stone, absently dropping the stained cotton shirt by the edge of the clearing.

One step. His palm pressed against the strange pillar.

The nebular light flared, not blinding, but filling the stone. The vibrations grew. Faster, eager. Senses flooded his mind, a boundless torrent of energy, as the lifeblood of the cosmos twisted around him. The light pulsed, his body now in rhythm with it. He stood at a threshold, the door cracked, simply needing to… push.

Roses, lavender, sweat, boiling broth, the clean smell of polished wooden floors.

The deep, sweet smell of infinity washed over him as the world faded to black.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

—-

For the second time in as many hours, Ren opened his eyes to an unfamiliar landscape; though, this time, all sense of the natural world had dissolved, replaced instead by deep twilight. Above him, a swirling nebula of stars—a mottled amalgamation of violets, maroons, and indigos—filled the endless sky.

He still stood shirtless, streaks of barely dried blood running down his side, sake bottle still in hand, and bokken haphazardly wedged between his belt. A smooth, polished plane of dark stone, the same as the pillar, stretched before him. A large glowing orb of light floated at eye level, its luminance growing and fading, like it was somehow breathing.

The pain was gone. A quick inspection showed that the wounds had been completely healed; not even a scar remained. Okay… Apparently this space has ridiculous healing properties. He glanced at his bare arms. And the ability to completely remove tattoos. I hope this is a dream.

Vague tendrils of understanding, innate and unbidden, filled his mind. The energy around him coalesced into a ball of light. A gentle, French, female voice emanated from the orb.

“[Compatible mana channel detected. Do you wish to refine your core?]” the light flashed in time with the words.

“Uhhh… what? Why do you sound like Juliette?”

“[Compatible mana channel detected. Do you wish to refine your core?]”

Inside him, a gentle force vibrated from his chest and stomach, the lingering smell of flowers filling his senses. Of their own volition, the words tumbled out, his voice sounding eager: “Ye… yes.” Wait, no! Why did I say that? Stop!

The light spread. “[Confirmation received. Refinement process commencing.]”

Fuchsia tendrils of light drifted from the floating orb like smoke, wafting toward the middle of this chest. Ren tried to backpedal, stumbling. The airy radiance accelerated, closing the gap.

“[Secondary core detected. Monitoring mana levels. Mana infusion sufficient. Refinement process commencing.]”