Chapter 2 - Hell

The great white beast let out a foul noise, somewhere between a growl and screech as it approached Clint. His hands groped desperately at the wet, dark stone beneath him, but he could not find purchase. Only the scrambling of his spurred feet drove him backwards.

As ever though, his eyes were alight, flickering like little flames as they hungrily took in every bit of information. Judging by the light, he was only in the mouth of the cave, he had a clear way out only a few feet in front of him. Unfortunately, it was blocked by the strange, snarling silhouette.

He had just enough light to comprehend the scale and shape of the beast, easily eight foot tall, hunched and broad. Beyond that, white fur, a strange trait for an animal of its kind to have. After all, were it a troglodyte, it wouldn’t need the fur, nor the claws, and if it were a surface-dweller, surely it’d have evolved to camouflage itself, either to hunt or, if this truly were hell, be hunted by creatures yet more horrible than itself. Ultimately, Clint concluded that if this thing simply flaunted around in the outside world with no sense of self-preservation. It was an apex predator.

Clint’s hands moved, following the lead of his eyes, squinting through the cave’s darkness, he checked his Remington. Sure enough, only six bullets. His eyes flicked up again, and still the beast approached, strangely silent. There were no warnings, no battle-cries, just a pair of bulging red eyes staring into his soul.

Each step backward was taken carefully Iif he were to run, it’d only chase, if he were to fall, he’d certainly die. He had to be slow and precise. Slow. Precise. Every movement from his knee to his ankle was focused on maintaining a calm, easy pace backward. He was only buying time, but there was little else to do.

Against any apex predator, the universal law of “kill or be killed” would be enacted by most. A lesser man would shoot the beast in front of him down without hesitation, giving into fear and doubt at their own capabilities beyond their weapon. Clint was no such man of course, he refused to bend to his emotions, dulled as they were by many prior life-or-death experiences.

After his eyes absorbed all the nuance they could, it came time to make a decision; Shoot or don’t shoot? Clint measured his options as he measured the weight of the revolver in his hand.

“Not many left…” he grumbled, thumb grazing the chamber of his pistol. Only six bullets remained in his revolver, if he were to fire any of them unnecessarily it could be disastrous. Priority #1 became clear: Don’t waste bullets.

He once again looked over the creature; Somehow he knew it wasn’t earthly. He’d heard stories of monsters: Sasquatches, chupacabra, all manners of impossible beasts. But they were just that, impossible. He had joked to himself earlier that he may have arrived in hell, but he couldn’t find a more convincing explanation for his current circumstance than that. And if this were hell, no way the biggest, baddest monster would be his welcoming party. Logically, there’d be worse out there; He would need to save his bullets for those. Priority #2 was now set: Escape the creature.

Clint’s mind raced a mile a minute, but the situation was surely hopeless. As if detecting this weakness, the beast’s pace quickened, quaking footsteps now vibrating through the cave floor toward Clint. “Shit” he grunted. Despite the increase in speed, it wasn’t charging, still just pacing curiously toward him.

The beast was hesitating, that was his only advantage. One that was rapidly disappearing the longer he gave the creature to observe him. He had to make a call now.

Despite its strangeness, the closest comparison he could make was to a bear. Big, hairy, cave-dwelling, it was the only thing he could possibly rationalise the impossible creature as. With that concluded, he decided to approach it like one.

Play possum. It seemed that’d be his only hope. On a better day perhaps he’d try his luck at running and dodging, but the cave was so narrow that a slight mistake would result in certain death. This was the best call he could make, so he made it.

Clint fell limp on the stony ground. He made a good corpse, he’d had a lot of practice. It was a cheap trick, but effective when someone wanted you dead. It was the path of least resistance, giving them what they wanted.

The creature was upon Clint now, those red eyes growing larger and somehow redder until they became pools of blood he was just about drowning in. He muted his breathing, slow and shallow. He kept a limp finger on his revolver, cold familiar steel cooling his scorching blood.

As it approached, he got a closer look at its ugly gnarled face. It had a broad mouth full of sharp, carnivorous teeth, topped with a hog-like snout that sniffed and snorted with each breath, crowned by a pair of tusks that had grown so far they gashed its own slobbering jowls. Below its ghastly head was a barreled torso that led into furry pillars of ape-like arms, each topped with immense paws, christened with claws reddened by long-dried blood. At the sight of it, Clint became certain this was indeed hell.

After a laboured snort, it turned away, gracelessly throwing its weight into a sharp turn. Clint didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief, not until it was gone.

Step by thundering step, the creature drew back, it moved slowly, slower than it had before, it stepped but never seemed to move very far. At its slow pace, each second felt like hours were passing, all as Clint continued to force his breath to stagnate in his lungs.

His insides started to burn, his vision began to blur, his body couldn’t hold out for much longer. “Breathe quiet, slow, shallow.” he told himself, finally allowing a tiny wisp of an exhale to leave his nostrils.

It wasn’t even audible, but still the creature looked back at him. There was such malice in its taunting crimson eyes, it brought Clint to a realisation: “...You were playin’ with me.” he muttered, breath finally restored.

When Clint’s eyes widened at that revelation, the sadistic beast knew it was time to strike, it raised its towering forelegs, shaking the cave as it came barreling toward him. Clint’s breath hitched, with deft expertise he unholstered his revolver, carefully taking aim at the beast in a matter of milliseconds, iron sights nestled perfectly between its red eyes.

Unfortunately, he was just a moment too late. The creature was so fast it defied logic, it blazed with a speed Clint had never seen before, faster than a raging horse. It was a train unbound from its tracks, and it hit him like one. It smashed into him tusk-first, launching him like a ragdoll back against the cave wall. The impact was bad enough, winding Clint and painting his back with bruises and cuts, but the injury to his torso was even worse. Large, seeping gashes were carved into his side. He clutched the wounds desperately, mashing his clothes into them in a desperate attempt to limit the blood loss. His vision blurred, consciousness threatening to abandon him.

He willed his eyes to focus again. Even now, he would do what he always did, observe. The beast was dancing toward him, playfully and sinisterly making a show of each step, drunk on its own power.

Any attempt to move only aggravated his injuries, worsening the blood flow and aiding in a slow, painful death. Unable to move, it was only a matter of time before this creature gave the finishing blow. That is, if it was even merciful enough to do so.

Once again the ghastly spectre of death, the Grim Reaper had come. “Can’t give me a rest, can ya?” he chuckled. The Reaper always came for Clint, every gunfight, every ambush, every time dehydration or starvation endeavoured to claim him, Death was there, the lone wanderer’s only companion.

Aside from, of course, his revolver, which he gripped tight. “Gotta say, twice in one day is a new record.” He almost expected the Reaper to reply, but it never did, only observing, hands neatly behind its back, just waiting until Clint’s fate was certain enough that it could unsheath its scythe and end their torrid affair.

The cowboy’s vision was fading, but his eyes were nonetheless alive under his flickering eyelids. “No point dyin’ alone, I s’pose.” he muttered, finding the trigger of his Remington. He took aim at both grim spectres ahead of him, the beast and the death it carried upon its wide and bristled back. “Yeah, this is about right…” he mumbled, soon silencing himself with the thundering sound of his gunshot.

This was the first bullet fired in this world. It ripped through space, warping the air around it and bending the established laws of physics. It tore the once all-powerful beast from its throne. Against the all consuming power of a gun, this apex predator became nothing. A black hole in its centre mass eviscerated its heart in an instant, the aftershocks launching the beast back despite the small size of its assailant. All the way out of the cave, the projectile still travelled an incalculable distance in mere moments. With this first gunshot, the rules of this world, its hierarchy, its understanding of itself, all of it would crumble.

As he fired, he closed his eyes. He didn’t need to check, he knew the beast would die. Soon enough a fresh pool of warm blood tickled his ankles. Satisfied, Clint holstered his gun. It seemed his time was due… His mind knew it, maybe even accepted it too, but his body refused. His hands naturally clutched his wounds, stifling the bleeding as much as their meagre strength could. He was so used to surviving, his body simply didn’t understand how to let go. It persisted, clinging to the warmth of life desperately, even as his consciousness faded into nothingness.

Light. Sound. Feeling. All things returned to the world. Clint Morgans had evaded death once again, as he inevitably always did. His eyes flew open, but for once they did not scan, instead locking in to focus on a single impossible thing in front of him.

A woman with a dog’s head. Another strange creature. For the first time, he could not believe his ever-reliable eyes. Perked triangular ears poked out from flowing, caramel-coloured human hair. Strange enough, but where he’d expect human features, he found a pointed snout ending with a wet black nose. Her body, albeit furry, was clearly human, fully formed hands and arms, two legs (though those did end in paws) with a tail between them. Her garb was equally unusual, bright mediaeval robes, silken and woven from purple and white fabrics. In her hands, she clutched a large wooden staff adorned with a great green gem. If Clint didn’t know better, he’d take her for some kind of witch.

“A-are you okay?” She spoke English, no less. “We heard the explosion and….”

“What?” Clint muttered, eyes finally activating and absorbing the cacophony of information around him. His hand instantly reached for his pistol, ready to fire if the strange beast before him took an aggressive turn.

He was in an emerald forest, impossibly green, the grass beneath him soft and soothing, the environment warm in all the right ways, sun beaming down hot but not too hot. This fantastical place was a far cry from the hell he was anticipating.

The crowd that had formed around him was similarly fantastical. There were people of all shapes, sizes and colours that he had never before seen. Muscular, tusked green people, ethereal people with flowing hair and pointed ears, and blends of human and animal like the one before him, all dressed in strange, historical garb.

“Don’t crowd him too much! I only just healed him!” The dog-headed girl complained. “Just ignore them for now, I’m Renee. What’s your name?”

Before registering it Clint was already on his feet. “Wait a minute, my body…” his hand clasped his side, only to find the gashes there totally absent.

“Sorry, you may be a little disorientated, I’m still only a novice…” Renee confessed, bewildering Clint with an alien smile intended to comfort him.

“Is that really him? The guy who killed the hellhound?” a voice from the crowd mumbled.

“I don’t know, looks a little skittish to me.” another commented, shuffling forward in the crowd to get a closer look.

“His clothes are strange too. Is this some strange Northern fashion?” a short, bearded man posited, making no bones about poking at his garments.

Clint hopped back, immediately attempting to make space against his potential assailant, only to find himself hitting the chest of a concerned looking green gentleman.

“Hey, calm down! We’re not gonna hurt you! You’re a hero!” He insisted.

“That ain’t me.” Clint contested, backing away from the green man and slowly turning. He attempted to paint a full picture of his surroundings but fell short. He could see everything so clearly, but couldn’t comprehend it. He brute-forced constant new stimuli into his brain, but it failed to keep up and process them.

“You saying you didn’t kill the hellhound? Then what the hell did?” another dissenting voice crowed.

“Told you he looked kinda weak…” Another of the crowd commented.

Clint was overwhelmed, despite the seeming kindness of the “woman” (He hesitated to call her such) in front of him, he was wary of the countless strange new people that crowded him. He didn’t know who, or what they even were, or for any count, where he was. It certainly wasn’t Arizona at the very least. He scanned for a way out, but it seemed every which way he had yet more strange, unknown entities. Even if he escaped, where to? He had no idea where he even was, and he still couldn't be certain that this place wasn’t hell.

Thankfully, a friendly voice came booming over the crowd, Brann, the local bartender. “Alright, alright! Get outta the way! Stop crowding the poor guy!” He was a tall, bearded man around Clint’s own age. He shoved his way through the mob, centring himself and positioning Clint behind him. He had a naturally warm presence, Clint couldn’t help but feel a little less antsy with him around.

The crowd still chattered and complained, louder now at the presence of this intruder. He remained unperturbed. “Shut it! Anyone who keeps harassing this guy gets no drinks for a week, got it?” The crowd muttered and grumbled, but was mostly silenced by his threat.

The man turned to Clint with a broad, reassuring smile. “Adventurers; Only thing they love more than a big fight is the booze afterwards.” Clint didn’t smile back, but for the first time since he had arrived in this strange world, his hand left his pistol. “Speaking of, you look like you could use a drink yourself...” The man said.

“First sane thing I heard all day.” Clint replied.

Current Party: Clint Morgans
Bullets Remaining: 5