Chapter 21: 6.4 Wolf’s Troubles

  Wolf is sitting on his simple wooden bunk, which is accompanied by three other beds in the same room. The walls and ceiling are slats of wood, but the flooring is a cool stone. He’s looking down at it and scrunching his toes as his sword and harness lie across his thighs.

  A portal opens next to him, and Red steps out of it.

  “Why aren’t you with the others?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “Just doesn’t feel like where I belong.”

  “Really? I thought you would’ve felt more at home here than other places. What’s going on?”

  “Am I done here?”

  “Sure, if you want to be. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “Yeah, just not here.”

  “Alright,” Red says, turning to open another portal. “Let’s go track down Jack.”

  She steps through the opening with a stone wall beyond her. He stops before crossing, sword harness grasped in one hand. He looks at her curiously before stepping through. “Is he not with you?”

  Red beckons him to come on through as she takes a seat on a wooden trunk with iron bands. “He’s out hunting for supplies, but this is where he expects to meet us.” She pats the trunk next to her, and Wolf steps through, the portal closing as he takes a seat.

  Red’s feet don’t touch the ground as her legs dangle from the side of the chest. Her hands are clasping the ledge to each side of her as the castlewall forms a backdrop for the two of them. She looks across the tended fields, to people busing themselves with chores along the dirt thoroughfare that passes between the fields and the farmhouses. Her legs even begin to sway as she watches some of the children weaving between the busy adults.

  “Red, I—”

  “Sarah is fine. I think you’ve earned that at least.”

  Wolf becomes distant for a time. “Sarah…I don’t know what’s going on with me.” He lays his sword and harness across his lap, allowing the point to hang off the end of the chest. “And I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “You’re changing and getting stronger in unpredicted ways?” she asks.

  He turns to look at her with a lost look in his eyes, then nods. “I didn’t think much of it at first,” he begins, looking away and distant, “but I had some peers that asked me about it. They couldn’t believe how long I had been training. Apparently, it takes years to acquire what I had done in days. And that’s not all.”

  Wolf looks down at an exposed part of his blade and brushes his palm against it, causing blood to flow freely. He raises it to show her as the blood slows and the wound closes.

  Sarah nods, then draws her own blade. She brushes her thumb across it and then turns the beading crimson towards him. “You were exposed to some form of healing,” she says as he watches her wound close. “And now your body replicates that.”

  Wolf quickly stands and points to her hand. “You knew this would happen?”

  “Yes, it’s why we’re here, Wolf. We’re not just here to practice. Being exposed to these worlds—existing within them—it does something to us genetically. It changes us, allowing us to incorporate what we’re exposed to. You really didn’t think Jack’s and my strength were natural, did you?”

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  “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I? I have no idea what others are capable of, so how am I to know when someone’s been genetically modified?”

  “You can assume that anyone with my capabilities is able to grow in the same manner. It all depends on what worlds they go to, but it’s not really that simple. You have to possess knowledge of a world in order to go there.”

  “So your grandmother?”

  Sarah nods. “Yeah, but she won’t know of this world, so she won’t be able to come here. This place is a video game from my world, a place that I know but she will not. If anything, she’ll go to places that she knows of and will be changed according to the rules of that universe. But she has a disadvantage in that her portal console is stationary. She could go to any world that she knows about, but she would need someone to open the way back for her.”

  Wolf takes in his surroundings and lowers his butt back towards the chest. “This is a video game?” he asks himself.

  “I know it’s a lot, Wolf, and I’m sorry for getting you involved.”

  “Hmm?” He glances in Sarah’s direction. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Jack told me what you did and why.”

  Sarah’s katana slams back into her scabbard before she folds her arms over her chest. A girl’s giggle draws her attention away and she looks back to the thruway to find a little girl being chased by a young boy. An older man scoops up the girl and places her on his shoulders as the boy falls in to walk alongside them.

  “It’s not Jack’s place to tell my business,” Sarah says, looking towards the girl on the man’s shoulders. “It’s no one’s but mine. If I want you to know something, I’ll tell you myself.”

  Wolf looks back around to her, then the direction she’s facing. “Please, don’t take that out on Jack. He only brought it up to make me feel at ease, and I don’t think he told me anything you might disapprove of.”

  She turns back to him, narrowing her eyes. “What did he tell you then?”

  Wolf shrugs. “Basically, that you saved him…us. He told me that you brought us to this world so that your grandmother couldn’t find us. He was adamant about us owing you for that.”

  Sarah shakes her head and looks away. “Idiot,” she complains.

  “Will you please not mention that I said something about it?”

  “On one condition,” she says without looking back.

  “Name it,” Wolf replies eagerly.

  “You have to leave if you ever want to leave. I can’t accept someone wanting to leave and only staying because they feel they owe me for some stupid debt. I didn’t keep you away from the old hag for your sake; I did it for mine. And the next time Jack decides to tell you something private, you tell him to shut the hell up.”

  Wolf nods. “Yeah, you got it. Trust me, I’m here because I want to be. I may not know much, but I think I’m where I belong.” He looks down at the trunk that they are sitting on, noticing it for the first time. “What’s in the box?”

 

  Sarah looks back with a devious smile. “Only the head of a widower’s wife.”

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