The Mountains of Mourning

Book 1 - Chapter 2 - Patrick

Darkness surrounded him, a rich, layered dark. Not just the absence of light, but more than that. This was darkness with a texture, a posh lineage, a confident, almost arrogant, attitude that told him it had had excellent practice in being what it was.

With the dark came a smell from long ago in his past. Wet leaves and rot. Mulch and must, mildew and other rich things that might start with an 'm', but whose names slipped his mind as he floated back into consciousness.

Alive. His environment smelled alive. And even better, so was he, apparently. A memory flashed through his mind. His pod tumbling through a enormous cavern, plummeting towards a vast lake of molten rock, right before he blacked out. Yet here he was, unscathed. Or... was he?

Mud and crushed leaves - ah, mud, that was the word he had been looking for - coated his chin and mouth. He could taste the earthy wetness of it, even though he couldn't see it. How could this be? He should be in his pod, not outside in some kind of jungle.

The ground below him felt solid enough when he pressed his hands against it, feeling around with gentle care, just in case he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. He had seen movies where the hero came to, hanging in his seatbelt in his car, half over the edge, where the slightest motion might send them to their doom. But he hadn't been driving a car, and he was no hero.

The pod. The last thing he remembered he had been in the pod. They were wonderful things, a very recent invention. When you were inside, they would, in theory, protect you from anything. At the same time, the gel that supported your body had sustaining and healing qualities that bordered on the miraculous, though the working was slow. Once the pod was sealed, it would keep him in a stasis, nurturing and nursing him back to health, for as long as it was programmed to do. Or until it broke.

So why wasn't he in it?

When his questing fingers had found no obvious instabilities in the surface around him, he rolled to his side, tucked his legs beneath him and sat up.
Something wet slapped him in the face, and he immediately went down again, his heart almost jumping from his chest. What was that? Getting back up, but this time, tried to be more careful. A branch with wide, wet leaves sprang back to hit him again, but he caught it. A plant. A nervous giggle escaped him. He just got slapped down by a plant!

From this more upright viewpoint, he had a little more light to see by. There were dense bushes around him, explaining the shadows and the darkness. Above his head, trees covered the sky, blocking all the light.

He was... outside. Not just outside of a building, but really far outside. Another world, since there were no trees left in his. Not growing wild and untamed like this, with unruly shrubbery and dirt, real dirt.

So it had worked. The mad plan had actually worked. They had prepared a long time in advance, Val, Hyram and him, trying to make plans for all kinds of eventualities. Most were nothing but vapid fancies, but they managed to get the plans for a portal route to another world, a very faraway world, that had some settlements on it. More importantly, it was deemed a Rebellious Realm, horrible as that alliteration was, which meant that it was still free.

Or.... They thought it had been. Memories trickled back in now, showing him those last moments in that lab. What had Hyram said?

World was compromised. We're taking another one.

Another one. There had to have been another world, free of the yoke.

All their planning had been for the other one. They'd mapped out the fortifications, the best regions to settle in, had even sent people and supplies there. When had they made the switch?