Crossing Over

IT WASN’T A SOFT LANDING. After I crossed, I fell right on my face, nearly breaking my nose on the stone floor. For a moment there, I thought I was a goner, because my hands were drenched in blood when I checked on them.

It was only a mini heart attack later that I realized the blood wasn’t my own… and boy oh boy, I was beginning to wish it was. Forget my hands for a moment; my shirt and even my pants were slick with the fluid, the strong smell of iron fresh in my nose.

Panic began to grip me.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins, my fight or flight response firmly affixed on doing the latter. Whatever the hell I’d gotten myself into, I was in danger right from the get-go.

I rose to my feet, holding onto a nearby rock for support as I kept low. Most of my strength had been spent wandering the jungle, so my legs were weak and trembling, even as my heart did its damnedest to pour the last of my energy into them.

My body was urging me to run, to find a hiding spot before I recovered my bearings, but I managed to stay calm enough to survey my surroundings before darting off like a startled rabbit.

While I’d definitely love to have a foxhole to dive into, I first needed to understand just where the hell I was in the first place. So, I took cover behind the large rock next to me, and I spied on the beyond.

By the looks of it, I landed inside some kind of temple.

I was in the middle of a huge chamber, its vast interior extended in all directions, with a pair of rows of columns across its length for support. The place was large enough to fit an entire football field inside, yet its size wasn’t its most impressive element.

That privilege was stolen by the glowing inscriptions etched onto the walls, the columns and the floor itself. It looked straight out of an anime or manga, with even an earthling like me being able to tell at a glance:

These runic circles and inscriptions I was looking at… they were magical.

Not in hyperbole or a figurative sense, but literal. The chamber I’d landed in was brimming with arcane energy, covered in intricate markings that glowed and shimmered in colors like a kaleidoscope.

But this magic, now that I took a closer look at it, I realized it wasn’t static.

No, it didn’t just shine in place.

It was flowing.

More specifically… it was flowing towards me.

The moment I noticed, I recoiled in surprise.

I ran. Or tried to.

Remember I was standing in a pool of blood? Turns out, blood is slippery. Poor ole me nearly broke a leg, and I stumbled and fell flat on the ground. A sharp pain shot from my knee, kindly telling me that running away would be a no go. So I did second best, and took cover behind the rock from earlier.

I quickly checked myself for injuries. Other than a sprained leg, I seemed alright. The magic energy was indeed flowing to my direction, but it didn’t seem to target me specifically. If anything, it was flowing into the rock I was hiding behind.

Gulping nervously, I turned my eyes to the rock in question.

I hadn’t noticed before, but it was covered in scales of some sort. And that huge thing poking out at the end, it looked like a giant claw. Heck, there were several of them, lined up a bit off to the side... just like a row of fingers.

For a moment, it felt like my heart would stop then and there. The signs were plentiful enough for me to realize, I wasn’t hiding behind a rock at all.

It was the hand of a giant creature.

My neck creaked as I turned around, my vertebrae practically grating against each other from the sheer tension in my muscles. My eyes followed the creature’s hand and up along its arm, all the way to its shoulder and finally its head.

There, I was met with the gaze of a monster. Dreadful and terrible, its crimson eyes stared at me like a hunter did its prey.

My legs gave up on me.

I fell flat on my ass, struggling to even crawl away in reverse. It sounds pathetic to recount, but it was a freaking dragon, okay? I was lucky not to have a heart attack from the sheer terror of the beast.

Yet, as I was racking my brain for a way to beg the thing for mercy, I noticed a deep gash on the dragon’s forehead. The wound was grievous and fresh, still oozing blood that was quietly dripping its way to the ground… and this wasn’t the creature’s only injury.

When I took a proper look, I saw the dragon had been brutally savaged. It was covered in wounds from head to toe, its scales had been battered in several places, and it was covered in burns and scorch marks everywhere.

Whomever had fought against the creature, they had thrown everything and the kitchen sink at it… and the dragon didn’t seem to move at all, even with me cowering before it.

“You son of a bitch,” I breathed out in relief. “You’re already dead…”

I felt like an idiot there, nearly passing out at the sight of a corpse. I don’t know what local deities are a thing in this place, so I thanked God for doing me a solid.

At the very least, I wouldn’t be eaten alive.