Eternal Beasts

Chapter 3: The Cael Nerath

Light shimmered wildly all around him as it seemed to flow passed the stretched out young man, a cocoon of luminescence that caressed him with feather-light touch. But not for long; with a snarl of discharge, the light shattered into a thousand fragments and Jared found himself flying through true air, chill with the first breath of autumn, before dropping hard into the unyielding ground. He rolled roughly a handful of times then came to an aching halt. Eyes swimming from the impact, he looked back in the direction he had come from, half expecting to see a door swinging shut in the air, only to see nothing.

The portal was gone. So was Jared's bag with the book in it. All he had were the clothes on his back, a throbbing headache,

"And no idea where the hell I've landed," he groaned, flopping back to the ground to stare up at a clear, blue sky.

For a long moment he lay there, mind spinning in a desperate attempt to understand what had happened back in his dorm room and why he wasn't more disturbed by it. Most of the things he had witnessed were so far outside of normal human experience, it belonged in the realm of fantasy. Yet he accepted it almost matter of fact, as though his dreams of the burning city over the length of his young life had prepared him for this very day.

Somehow, with his decision to accept his fate, a key of sorts had been turned, a door opened, a lock undone, however one wanted to put it. One way or the other, he had embraced his destiny and the world the book claimed to have come from, the one the creature at his door named 'Ethaeron'. Now all he had to do was find out what that destiny was and why the creature called him 'Lord of Griffins'. And he could only begin here, where the book had dumped in, and find out exactly what was going on.

Carefully rolling over, Jared levered himself onto his hands and knees to take a quick look around from just above the tall grass he found himself in. From the admittedly poor vantage point, it appeared he had landed on a plain of some sort, rolling easily in nearly every direction away from him, the tall knee-high grass everywhere, just starting to turn golden with autumn's chill. There, to his left, there looked to be the beginning of a knot of trees, perhaps the tip of a forest intruding out onto the prairie.

It could've been any prairie back on Earth, if he didn't espy three moons hanging close to the horizon, barely visible in the late afternoon light of twin miniature suns. Oddly enough he could remember several drawings in the book that both outlined the cycles of the three moons and the rising and setting of the twin suns. Aye, he was definitely on Ethaeron.

Easing back onto his haunches, Jared felt a slight smile touch his lips as he nodded in satisfaction. Well, it didn't take long to deduce where he had landed. Hopefully he'd find out what he was supposed to do here as quickly, and how he was to be about it. Without food or supplies, or even a change of clothing, it would be a challenge to last a week out in the open, no shelter apparent in any direction. A dedicated city man, he doubted he'd last even that long, not knowing how to find food or water in the wilds. The smile that sprouted on his face after he figured out his location swiftly evaporated and he let a long sigh whistle out his nostrils.

"Damn," he quietly muttered in a horrendous understatement. He truly was in trouble here.

Unfortunately he didn't have long to think of a way out. Feeling the ground tremble beneath his feet at the approach of galloping horses, Jared eased himself to his feet. Just in time to take a sharp blow to the side of his head that sent the lanky young man spinning about, his vision swimming as he dropped clumsily to the ground. Still groggy when the hoof beats stopped to let a number of booted feet hit the ground nearby, he didn't even look up at their approach and thereby missed the leather-wrapped cudgel that swung in a short arc to smash into the back of his head. There was a bright flare of nauseating pain then the world went black.