Chapter 4: Taking The Plunge
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The oddly synchronized swarm of goblins gawk at the smoldering corpses just long enough to give me a moment to breathe.

I take my chance in the opening left by that massive attention grab to dig in my bag and grab two more of those bombs, just in time too it seems; the swarm reorganizes and begins a more serious approach on my position, brandishing blades and firing wayward shots.

For a moment I shudder but... its not enough to stop me.

My hands move lightning quick to throw more, each time one is freed I reach into my bag to replace it until I have it down to a rhythm.

Glass shatters, balls of fire blossom like deadly red roses before burning out turning the greenery and the goblins black as coal.

Someone is laughing again, but this time I’m pretty sure its me.

The mob shifts into a strange formation, their eyes glow brighter for a moment and collectively they all scream with such volume that I’m afraid my ears might start bleeding.

[Your Title [Irrepressible] negates the [Fear] status]

That bit makes me laugh even harder as I rain fire down on the screaming horde.

“Ahahahah-HAHAHAHAH!”

I count the dead; ten, twenty, thirty and more still.

“BURN YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! BUUUURRRRRN! AHAHAHAHAH!

Everything in my sight is smoke and fire; charred bodies fall in heaps as I laugh and scream like a maniac, casting those bottles of flaming death at the tightly packed clusters of panicking goblins.

Only... the goblins don’t seem to be paying much attention to me; that is to say they’ve… stopped attacking me?

Some of them are running over to attempt to stomp out the residual flames while others seem to be running for cover...

A few moments later I notice the leaping embers have caught the needles of the evergreens ablaze, they fizz and sizzle like… fuses?

“Oh…  FUCK.”

You might think dropping f-bombs gets a bit old, but in circumstances like this, each one is as fresh as a spring daisy.

I run and duck behind a bolder just in time.

The ground quakes and my ears ring as the tree goes up like a stick of dynamite, flaming arboreal shrapnel scattering in a wide arc ends a few goblins on its own as the tree sprays a shower of burning resin.

Glancing around, I realize… there are a lot of trees that look like that and several are on fire already. More threateningly, the brush below seems to be burning with startling speed, the resin coating the ground must be some sort of… natural accelerant.

“Okay, time to leave…”

I start booking it towards what looks like an opening in the trees as smoke fills the air, the brush around me goes up like dry kindling.

I would have felt a pang of sadness for the forest burning, some guilt for being the cause of this whole blaze; maybe even some guilt over killing the five goblins, at least if the grubby little monsters weren't trying to murder me… 

But at the moment something more pressing takes over.

Fear.

I thought I was out of fear a while ago, but burning to death doesn’t sound great.

Thankfully I’ve figured out something about myself, when I’m afraid I don’t freeze.

I make and execute plans.

After all panic doesn’t solve anything, does it? Freezing is a waste of precious time and I especially don’t have a lot of that now.

Explosions continue to rock the world around me and the fire seems to be keeping pace with me somehow.

The menu chimes and the distraction almost kills me; with only a second to spare I duck and roll out of the way of a falling tree, roots blown out of the ground by a thunderous blast and practically aimed at me.

“What the fuck kind of trees explode and why the fuck is all of this burning so fast!? Green wood isn’t supposed to go up this quick!”

Yelling was a mistake for sure though, now I’m coughing my lungs out while trying to keep ahead of the flaming wall of shrapnel and death, stack the sound of more menu noises on top of that and I’m just barely able to focus on my goal, a clear strip of blue sky another sixty paces up hill.

As athletic as I’ve been here, I’m not exactly a track star and I have no idea how I’m still standing when I reach my goal… but that is possibly the least of my worries as I grind to a halt at my destination and vertigo nearly takes my feet out from under me.

A few pebbles crumble away from the edge of the cliff as I look down on a massive lake with a massive but comparatively small island square in its center.

“Oh… kay…”

“Options… options are good... I can burn, drown, or just fucking break my body against some rocks if I misjudge my jump.”

This is enough to give me pause, snapping my head behind me I confirm that the wall of flames is still approaching, looking side to side I can see the hellish inferno creeping around the rim of the lake.

Judging distances from this height is hard… but that island is my best and only option.

“Fuck it...”

I take a few paces back to get a runup on the jump before taking a flying leap just as the closest trees explode in a shower of shrapnel and flaming resin.

As I drop like a stone towards the water, eyes wide and nostrils full of the smell of my own burning hair, I have a troubling thought.

“Do I know how to swim?”

I land with the sizzle of extinguishing flames, splashing into the dark and icy waters; barely righting myself before I begin floundering towards the distant island.

Behind me, hunks of cliff side and goblins start to rain down into the water, and just in case that wasn’t enough motivation, I catch a glimpse of massive shadowy shapes shifting in the depths below as I kick off with as much speed as is humanly possible.

Doing my best not to think too hard about that, I fall into a rhythm and keep pushing forward through the painful mix of burning lungs, at least half a dozen broken ribs, and a number of other assorted injuries.

The menu alerts return once again flooding in all at once so much so that they overlap in a wall of chiming sound that makes my teeth ache.

What follows is a long struggle through the water, my muscles burn and scream in protest at the continued abuse and it feels like my lungs are about to give up, every now and then my vision floods with black and I dip beneath the water only to surface and choke down a gasp of air while coughing my lungs clear.

The seconds stretch out into a subjective infinity and I teeter on the edge of unconsciousness, dancing at what I can only assume is death’s threshold until at last I make landfall.

I can’t tell how long I was swimming, but as I drag my waterlogged carcass onto the soft sand beach, I notice that the sun has set beyond the guttering orange glow of the dying inferno.

Before anything else, I heave up what feels like a gallon of lake water, choking and gagging as the emptiness of my stomach and the pain in my ribs combine to make the experience that much less pleasant.

Panting for breath, I unstrap my pack, roll over, and stare up into the twilight sky to watch the columns of smoke billow into the darkness above.

Not a lot of capability for thought… but one thing is worthy of note.

“Huh… I guess I can swim...”

After that...

Darkness.

Blissful darkness for an unknowable length of time.


My dip into the void is interrupted by a cold pattering sensation, I resist as much as possible, clinging to unconsciousness before maintaining it just becomes unfeasible.

Cold rain falls and thunder rolls in the distance, my eyes open just in time to see the twin moons devoured by a black and malignant cloud as the winds pick up and the rain begins coming down in sheets.

“Glad to see I’m still alive…”

I peel myself up off the beach and despite the protests of my aching muscles heft the bag back up onto my back and slip one or two of those glowing vials of liquid fire into my belt, both to have them ready at hand and as a light source in the near pitch of night.

With the rain coming down like this, shelter is a must. If I’m lucky I’ll find some under the thick canopy of the forested section of the island, keeping my goal in mind I start a slow trudge through the sodden brush.

I would try and check the menu, but my head feels like it'll split open if I have to deal with more of that nonsense right now... that and it's fucking cold out here and I don't have time to stand around and read that crap in the rain.

“If I do nothing else in this world, I’m gonna re-invent the fucking umbrella.”

Walking deep into the forest, knife ready and ears sharp against any threat, I have some time to think.

“I don’t really know where I’m going, but I suppose I’ll find out when I get there… just glad I’m not being chased.”

The quiet rain is a very welcome change of pace. Filtered through the tightly laced canopy of trees it’s barely a drizzle and while I feel very chilly, the armor is surprisingly insulated… if a bit smelly, so I should be fine.

Either that or hypothermia is setting in.

Digging in my bag produced the first spot of food I’ve had since arriving in this new world in the form of a stiff and salty jerky. To my hungry stomach it’s like a cut of the most prime fillet you can imagine even if I have to chew it for half an hour to get it down.

Not exactly a king's dinner, but it takes all the willpower I can muster to restrain myself from eating more than one portion of it.

This has been the longest day of my life and even now I’m just barely hobbling my way along. Only after maybe half an hour of trudging do I remember I have what I hope are HP potions.

At least the mysterious forces that dropped me here gave me those.

Whatever [Universal Administration] is… whoever it is, I’m gonna lodge some complaints, in fact I’m gonna lodge some fucking complaints in a few choice places.

“Did I just think brackets around [Universal Administration]?”

"..."

“Okay, how did I do that with my mouth?”

It’s not as if I just said the word ‘bracket’, there was a pair of unidentifiable syllables before and after… well before and after those two words that my brain understood instinctively were the auditory representation for the typographic symbols ‘[‘ and ']'.

“Too freaky… hope that’s not the dain bramage talking...”

I laugh at my joke for a moment before the fractured ribs put an end to that small moment of joy.

Note to self: Laughter is the best medicine for many maladies, but not for broken ribs. For those, a health potion might be a better option. By some miracle none of the potion or bomb bottles broke in the bag, I can only imagine what that would’ve been like.

Without any reservation, I wash down my jerky with a health potion. It tastes something like if… cough syrup were flavored with cranberry instead of cherry. Not entirely unpleasant, but definitely a medicinal taste.

As soon as I finish the last drop, I feel a change slowly overtake me… the pain grows worse for a split second before turning into a sort of… full body itch. 

I stop and lean against a tree until it clears up and get a chance to marvel at the sight of an ugly bruise on my arm healing; it goes from red to purple-black to yellow-green and then brown before at last fading away entirely in a matter of seconds like a time lapse video.

I take an experimental deep breath and feel at my sides, tender, but not ‘broken bone’ painful.

Just like that, I’m closer to ‘okay’. Still a ways off from it yet, everything still hurts and I feel like I’ve been put through a meat grinder, but at least I’m not wheezing every time I try and take a full breath.

“Okay, not perfect… but I can’t complain.”

"Actually... I tell a lie, I can complain at any time of the night or day about anything I please. Fuck this magic potion for not fixing everything wrong with my situation."

With that out of the way, I keep trudging, scanning around for a good candidate for my evening shelter… its the sort of thing you’re meant to do before nightfall and a heavy rain.

I know I’m a fair bit heartier than I remember, but even so I remember something about three hours of exposure being dangerous if not deadly.

I’m just hoping I come across something soon.

Here we go, chapter 4 is complete, and posted early, before Wednesday! (but actually late, I wanted to make Saturday my official posting day instead of Wednesday but it didn't work out.)

Hope you enjoyed reading it!

I'm getting a bit better with the whole writing speed thing, I'm also trying to pre-write chapters ahead of time. If all goes well I'll slowly build up to a 5-chapter lead and post extras when I go over that buffer!

Well, I'm just about out of my daily allotted amount of exclamation points and I've got some work to do around the house, so I'll go for now!

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