Strings of Fate

You Weren't Supposed To Find Out This Way

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STRINGS OF FATE

Chapter VIII: You Weren't Supposed To Find Out This Way

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When you wake up after passing out, it's usually not a pleasant experience. Especially after being tossed through a vortex connecting different dimensions and landing face-first on a cold stone floor. The coming ache of laying there for hours, dirty, burned, dehydrated. He had been too careless as of late. He was the one at fault, no one else to blame. Maybe these interdimensional resource harvesting expeditions were too much for a single man.

Steven half expected a crook in the neck and a stiff back from his untimely acquaintance to the floor. Sleeping in full gear, or whatever he had on, was not adequate sleeping attire. Nor were the clinging rakes of the nether's influence over his battered body. Those always appeared worse than before he left the realm.

The terror of ailments and possibly permanent damage to one's body was no match for the air that radiated off this woman's body. Sickly green poison swirled in those eyes as her hand sat on a cocked hip. The pout on her lip was not of play, but a hidden snarl.

Steven stood in the doorway of the makeshift bedroom like a deer caught in the torchlight.

Moments earlier, the man had found himself tucked neatly into bed with his burns and bumps tended to and wiped clean of most dirt. He did not recall ever rising from the portal's base and supposed it was his exhaustion that buffered his mind. His mind was cloudy after he had thrown himself from the purple vortex. Had he even climbed to his bed? Too much uncertainty.

Wet towels covered his body as someone stripped him of all his clothing but his boxers. His hand had laid limp beside him with a taught red string and a lax turquoise dropping to the floor and weaving around till its end pointed towards the door and its end frayed into nothing.

A big wet nose pressed into his hanging arm, licking his outstretched hand. Big puppy-dog eyes stared at him as he wagged his tail at the man's awakening.

"Hmm-hmm..." The dog licked at his hand as he whined. Ears pulled to the back of his head as he waited patiently for the man to respond. The dog circled the room, then returned to the bedside and watched Steven survey his situation.

Nearly dry towels slopped off his body as bandaids and sticky patches covered his body. He had peeled the questionably clean layers of blankets off and followed the teal strand like a guide. Unsure of what awaited him on the other side of it. It wasn't well with the nervousness that radiated off the string's teal fibers.

His wandering eyes glanced around the bunker. The obsidian rim, a square with rounded edges as large clumps of the materials fused to form a cohesive ring, sat deactivated in the center of the main bunker chamber. Around were little alcoves and niches where collected furniture had been stored.

His true caretaker stood before him now, arm wrapped in a sling, and very much pissed.

Alex threw out her working arm as soon as he stood in the doorway, dumbfounded. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

"I don't think I was... ."

Alex stamped her foot as her hand went to grab at the roots of her hair. "Ngh! This is getting stupid! You better sit your ass down and tell me what the fuck is going on in that brain of yours cause you're going to get yourself killed at this rate!"

Her finger pointed behind her where a new room appeared behind toppled clutter, the bunker's kitchen. He had forgotten about it.

Steven gaped at her explosion, desperately trying to process and catch up with the situation. It hadn't even been a few minutes since he awoke. And, despite her best attempts to heal him, the long exposure to the nether had left him ragged.