Back in the Saddle

Skott packed only a simple duffel bag for his grand return journey to Aeirun. Traveling light, admittedly, but it was more than he carried with him on his first journey.

Early in the morning, before dawn, Skott cracked open the seldom-used hatch up to his attic. He peeked inside, reached past some insulation, and pulled out the trusty weapon of his youth: a wooden baseball bat, heavily modified with Aeirun metals and some gnarly-looking spikes. This was his war bat. He’d found it in a dump outside a dwarven city, evidence of greater interconnectivity between worlds. It had served him well through adventure and rebellion. Would its integrity hold throughout this new journey?

Before returning from the charred ruins of Crossroads Ford, he’d instructed Lucy-Kignora to return and use her portal-summoning ring to open another portal, aimed at his back yard.

Once more, space began to warp and fold. This time, though, the positioning was just a bit off.

Three white wooden picket fence planks wobbled, then flew off their posts and through this new hole in space.

“Egads!” came Lucy-Kignora’s cheerful but alarmed voice. “Some kind of wooden artillery!”

“It… it ate my neighbor’s fence,” Skott said once the portal opened enough to talk.

“You want me to throw it back through the portal?” Lucy asked.

Skott exhaled, exasperated. “Eh, leave ‘em. They’ll mark our location for when it comes time to return.”

Logistics sorted out, Skott chucked his duffel bag through the portal, then dived in himself.

+++

Aeirun’s jungles were still quite humid when the sun was low. Skott noticed early in his marooned teenage gap year that the hottest tropical forests of Earth were the baseline for this other world. It only grew hotter from there.

“Mother said your fragile alien constitution requires additional adaptation to survive in these lands,” Lucy-Kignora said. “Allow me.”

The half-orc held her hand aloft. A soft glow formed as she muttered out some indecipherable elvan. This was nature magic, something orc priestesses and shamans were well-acquainted with.

“What, that some kind of air conditioner spell?” he asked. “Ah, should have brought a portable AC.”

At first, it felt like nothing was happening. When Skott looked up, however, he noticed a small cloud forming maybe a half meter above his head.

“It’s portable shade!” Lucy said cheerfully. “Mother said you may need it.”

He’d been nocturnal by necessity during his first visit to Aeirun. It was the only way to avoid heat stroke. Even then, the nights were so humid as to be a constant pressure upon him. This portable cloud wafting cool air down upon him would be most helpful.

“Thank you kindly,” he told the young adventurer.

“This has your effects, Skott of Omaha?” Lucy peered at his duffel bag.

“Everything I need.” He nodded.

Two weeks’ supply of teriyaki jerky. A canteen and basic filtration kit, as Aeirun water was compatible with Earth biology. A compass, to test something he’d long suspected. Paper and a pen, should he need to practice his Aeirun script. And…

“How could I forget?”

While still walking, Skott reached around to open the pack. He pulled out his gift: a can of soda.

“You wanted these?”

Lucy leaped up to grab it right out of his hands.

“Sow-Dah!” she declared.

Skott chuckled. His hands kept fishing in the bag and pulled out the compass.

“What do we have here?”

The compass whirred, as if it didn’t know where to point. Having been thrown into Aeirun with just his wallet and graduation robes as a teen, he always wondered what a compass did in this land. After an initial bout of whirring confusion, though, the north arrow pointed behind the pair, down the path they came.

“Aha!” Skott said. “Now that’s interesting.”

“What is it, brave hero?” Lucy asked.

“The compass points back towards the nearest, last location of a portal,” Skott explained. “No other reason for it to freak out like that. Must be some vestigial pull from good old Earth.”

This could be incredibly useful information if he were ever marooned here again. This world’s physics was… curious. Apparently, there was no magnetic north in this world. But that just made the compass serve as a ‘get home quick’ marker. Useful.

“Say, brave hero…” Lucy gasped. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that the legendary bat of Skott of Omaha?”

Skott swung the bat around. “Yep. Brought it with me through three moves and five apartments.”

As to its original purpose of baseball, the legendary bat was no longer regulation-compliant. Gnarled spikes poked out of the business end, while bits of metal lined the shaft.

“I cannot wait to see you use it upon elvan faces!” proclaimed Lucy.

Skott wagged his finger. “It’s better that we don’t, if it can be avoided.”

“Wow.” Lucy clapped her hands. “Such wisdom. Truly you are an accomplished warrior, to know when to fight and when not to.”

+++

Crossroads Ford still smoldered when the pair returned to the ruined town.

“Where did you stay overnight?” Skott asked the young half-orc.

“Have a camp three leagues north,” Lucy-Kignora said.

‘North’ on Aeirun pointed to a range of nigh-impassable mountains. A shallow sea lay to the east, while a far older, almost Appalachian-style squat range of foothills and dwarf mountains to the west. Things grew swampier as the further ‘south’ things got, with no end in sight. All these directions were determined in provincial dialects of the realm with no ‘objective’ standard, as Skott’s compass would attest.

Skott stood in the middle of the burnt-over inn. Immediately, memories sorted themselves out in the Earther’s mind. He could recall the exact placement of the bar, the table where he and Lamora sat and drank sweet-mead. The stairs leading up to the quiet back-loft suite.

“You stayed here your last night in our realm, yes?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.”

All these nostalgic inn staples were gone, now. Burned with the rest of the town. Dully, Skott noticed they hadn’t encountered any survivors of the doomed hamlet…

“Yesterday, you said this isn’t… typical… of the world I left?”

Lucy shook her head. “The Redeeming Ghosts of Auron dare not do battle with the coalition army! They attack from the shadows, burning defenseless townships and escaping before justice can be done. In a way, this is worse than the time of the rebellion, some say. It’s causing great schism in the Coalition Senat—”

“I think I understand.” Skott coughed up a bit of ash that fell into his throat. “We need to get to Lamora. Take me to the provisional capital!”

It would be a few days’ journey to the capital. A new city, founded upon the spot of the liberation rebellion’s final victory and built upon many burnt-over elvan tree-mansions.

“If you’ll need to return to the land of Earth for anything, perhaps we should best do so now…” Lucy began. “Portals still require an ‘anchoring point’ of sorts, and there’s no telling when we’ll be back here.”

Skott shook his head. “I’ve got everything I need in my pack and two weeks’ vacation to burn. Let’s do this.”

+++

Lucy-Kignora led the old hero (and very dear friend of her mother), Skott of Omaha, along the trade route north towards the provisional capital.

“Roads have gotten better,” Skott mused.

“Indeed. It was the pet project of a certain dwarf,” Lucy said. “One of the first acts of the coalition government was to pave the trade routes between major client settlements.”

Before, only a few lightly-treaded footpaths existed between the main elvan towns. Done entirely to facilitate the transport of elvan lords to go eat and treat amongst themselves. Now, the road was fully paved with thousands of individual, pentagon-shaped bricks.

“A dwarf, huh?” Skott chuckled. “Think I knew the guy.”

“Mmphm.” Lucy nodded. “None other than your old party member…”

The sentence hung in the air. Lucy stopped abruptly, then held a hand over the path to ensure Skott went no further.

“Someone comes…” she said.

Skott peered, but did not see anyone. Lucy brandished her simple iron swod.

The thunderfall of six-dozen fleet-footed pedestrians approached rapidly. From out of the jungle came running a gaggle of assailants. They wore hoods and masks with only the narrowest of eye holes to give them the appearance of a faceless morass. The only identifying features were their ears – sharp and knifelike, poking out of the hoods.

“The Redeeming Ghost of Auron,” Skott said with a scowl.

That’s a name Skott would have preferred never to hear again.