The truth drawn in the stones

Fear.

I was in despair.

It was all I could think about. I have never flown by helicopter in my life, and I wasn’t expecting that to change today!

Flying through the skies, there I was. Since I was welcomed at the airport by an archaeologist and his assistant, I found it strange that we weren’t moving from it.

“Is everything okay, sir? You’re a little pale,” - asked Leandro, the archeologist.

Without confidence, I gulped and agreed.

“Y-Yes…”

By my side, it was Nikita, writing something on his computer as if nothing else mattered. At his side was his huge bag. Last night he got hit by a truck, and thank god, nothing happened. I wouldn’t want my best friend to be Isekai’d on our trip.

He looked entertained by something, and from time to time, he looked at me with a funny face. I couldn’t say if my reaction were what he thought to be so funny, or something he saw on his computer.

I was holding tight to the helicopter support with an unexplainable fear. It was enough fearing height and planes… now I had to deal with this lousy thing.

The trip would take some minutes, but for me, it felt like an eternity.

***

The helicopter sound was loud, but now we were not in the sky, only watching as it disappeared on the horizon.

I could swear that when we would travel to the middle of the Amazon forest, it would be by boat, but the archeological site was in the middle of the forest.

And what a look.

For someone who lived in the cities my entire life and travelled to the countryside from time to time, to locations where the woods weren’t this dense, this was something completely out of my ordinary.

The forest had a strange, claustrophobic, and scary feeling. How could someone enter it without a long knife to cut the bushes and low vegetation that cover the vision? Somehow, the scientists located this site.

“Man, now that’s a place! But damn, it’s so hot! I knew it would be warm, but now I’m feeling like I’m in the middle of the oven,” said Nikita.

“Now… Where’s the looking girl that got your attention? I can’t believe you were flirting with someone from so far away,” he continued, teasing.

“I told you already. I have nothing to do with this woman! She said she wanted to show me something important, and…” - I couldn’t explain it.

Realistically, there was no logical explanation for me to throw away my already complicated life and visit a forest in another country. Nikita found it strange what was happening, and he had reason.

“You always told us the forest has this intimidating feeling, now I get it. Being lost here would be sinister,” said Nikita, looking into the woods.

In our times playing RPG, I always considered myself a narrator who valued realism. Some friends questioned me when I said that no one would be able to see in the middle of the forest at night, but I never said it just to be boring. I went on night trails in the countryside, and it’s complicated. The big city lifestyle makes us think wrongly about the world around us.

“Mr. Erick and Mr. Nikita, that over there is Sandra, she is leading the excavation and research that is being made here,” he told us, turning to us.

He stops for an instant.

“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you two. Try to stay close to us since we are the only ones here that can speak English…”

For a moment, we looked around and it felt like we were the gossip around.

“Oh right, and Richard, he is the one reading your story” - he points to a tall young man, dressed in trail clothes and walking at us almost as if he were running.

Ah… My stories. It was good to know that my story, which I spent so much effort on, was being seen by people all around the globe, but at that time, I didn’t want to know anything related to that.

“Mr Erick, Mr Erick! It’s a pleasure meeting you, I’m Richard, I l-love your story, I love the stories of the Celestial Peaks. You made the arc of the battle against Igridz something incredible, I’d never imagined that what happened in the past of the main story was so intense!” - the young man started talking.

I flipped my eyes sideways. I wanted to hide that I was bothered, but also wanted to hide the fact that I loved the flattery.

“Y-Yes! O-Of course! The arc was imagined to be the epic of the continent, the era where Zophia, after everything that happened, would save the Celestial Peaks! HA HA” - putting my hand on my glasses, I hid my image over the reflection, trying to make a confident posture.

“I keep theorizing what happened to Igridz and the other heroes after the story. If you could write pieces of the past between Kopak's Island and the Serel Invasion, it would be incredible,” he continued.

“I also like the ideas and stories that Martelinni and Yamaguchi invented, they created interesting arcs that connected with the Grand Games arc.”

I bit my lips. Although I recognized they were great co-authors of my story, I couldn't stop thinking about the changes they made in my work. For an instant, I opened my mouth to respond, saying bad words about my coworkers, when a feminine voice interrupted me.

“Looks like you met Richard already. He is one of my most dedicated students, and one of your biggest fans, Mr Erick.”

Turning around, it was Sandra. A woman around 32 years old, a tired face, but a smile that speaks of internal peace. She used gloves and clothing, adapting to the forest environment.

She extends her hand to compliment, and so do we.

“You must be Nikita, Erick mentioned he would travel here with his friend. I wouldn’t imagine you being this… big.” - She commented, analysing Nikita's physique.

He opens a sly smile, looks at me, and puts his arm around my neck.

“That’s it, where this little dude goes, I go after. You got lucky for calling him the same day he asked for vacation, it was already time for him to get out of his office,” he said.

“I’m happy that you accepted the invitation. I hope the trip wasn’t that expensive… as I said before, we do not have that much budget…” - she said, putting her hands together in a humility gesture.

This trip was expensive. Not only did I pay for mine, but also Nikita’s. My luck is that he works with IT, so he can work remotely, and his superiors allowed him to travel. I don’t want to picture my card bills, nor the fight I will have with my coworkers when I come back.

I gave a forced, crooked smile.

“Yes, yes. As we spoke before, I also had a dream the same night before you called me. I’m not gonna lie that for a moment, I thought this was a big scam, but if it is, you guys prepared a whole bunch for us.”

She grinned - “Well, this would be the most expensive scam in the world. It wouldn’t be worth it, don’t you think?”

The group gives a laugh as we all break the ice.

“Come with me, let me show you what I was talking about. I believe that once you see it with your own eyes, you will understand why I called you here,” she said, asking us to follow her.

“Erick, we wanted to understand where your inspiration comes from! Maybe we could correlate the drawings with something else you saw before, and we could write a scientific article worth a Nobel prize.” - Richard spoke anxiously.

I looked at him with a smile and half-closed eyes. What the hell did these people want from me?

“How many of you are around here?” - Nikita asked.

“Right now, we are 17, we take turns every week, but there are always more than 10 people around here. It may look like a simple job to collect these artefacts, but I can assure you it is not,” she says, smiling, her dark circles couldn’t let her lie.

“Here it is,” she stops, pointing forward.

Curious, I took a look. Initially, it was just a polished stone. However, it didn’t take me long to understand.

It was a circular stone, some hieroglyphics from two people cut by a giant barrier that connected heaven to earth. Inside it, two people were getting out of the same barrier. In the inferior part of the stone, a pristine jewel colored in blue, probably a sapphire.

My breath caught in my throat.

That stone wasn’t supposed to be there.

It was the hero's stone of a fictional story.

My story.