The Other Side

Chapter-Two

The Other Side

I searched around, shoving vines out of the way, feeling along the rock for the opening I knew had been there. Confusion turned sharp in my chest, and desperation started gnawing at my stomach.

This couldn’t be happening.

I’d circled the rock face three times, shoving every vine aside, pressing my palms against stone. Finally, I slumped to the ground.

Where did the cave entrance go? Where was I now? How were my friends supposed to find me?

I made a fist and pressed it against my forehead, hard enough that my scraped knuckles complained. It gave me something solid to focus on, even if it didn’t slow the thoughts down.

Had Jennifer made it to camp yet? Was she worried about me?

A roar broke through the woods and instantly snapped me out of my spiral. It wasn’t from any throat I’d ever heard. It was deep and long, almost like thunder, and I was glad it didn’t sound close. The way it echoed suggested it was far away, but it was enough. I scrambled to my feet and started looking around.

Stepping back to the ledge, I looked through the trees again and took a deep breath.

Okay, Adam. What do we have?

A snow-capped mountain ridge stretched across the horizon, low on my left before rising higher toward the center. The largest mountain stood almost directly ahead, trees covering its lower slope before thinning into gray stone and white snow near the peak.

Near the base, tucked among the trees, I saw what looked like smoke.

My eyes widened.

Smoke usually meant people, and people meant warmth, shelter, maybe safety. Or trouble.

I tapped a finger against my canteen. The smoke was too far away to reach in a day, maybe even two. I needed shelter now, and I still had no idea what the hell had made that sound.

Something burst from the trees below.

The sky was bright blue, thin clouds stretched and overlapping above the ridge, but the black shape cutting through them wasn’t a bird. It had a tail, bat-like wings, and a long neck. It climbed over the treetops, banked once, then disappeared behind the slope.

I stepped back from the ledge before I realized I’d moved.

Holy shit. Was that some kind of dragon? Or a drake?

Shaking my head, I stepped forward again.

I couldn’t explain where I was, but Earth was starting to look less and less likely.

I forced myself to keep looking. A tower peeked above the trees not far from the ledge, slightly crumpled and overgrown, but still standing. Close enough to reach. Maybe solid enough to shelter in.

Of course, that didn’t mean something else hadn’t already had the same idea.

I took a breath and tried to orient myself. The sun bothered me the moment I looked at it. It was too orange, too large, and I had no idea whether it was rising or setting. I had been assuming it was close to lunch, but that meant nothing here.

I lined the sun up between two trees and waited, watching carefully until I could tell which way it was moving.

Toward me. Not down behind the ridge.

I let out a slow breath.

Good. More daylight meant more time to move — enough to reach the tower and judge for myself if it could keep me safe.

Looking over my immediate surroundings, I found a safe path down. It wasn’t much of one, just a break in the rocks where roots had cracked through the stone and given me something to brace against.

I paused for a moment and listened for anything out of place, but all I heard were strange insect sounds and bird calls drifting through the trees.

I wasn’t afraid of walking through woods. Woods felt familiar. They had been a refuge when I was younger, a place I could disappear into and explore, a place that often felt safer than home.

This forest was strange, sure, but trees were still trees. Roots were still roots. Dirt and leaves still shifted underfoot the way I expected them to.

I made my way down carefully, testing each step before putting my weight on it, then started toward the tower.

My canteen was half empty at this point, so I took a small sip and reached into my pack for a protein bar.

As I made my way through the forest, I kept my eyes on the ground, careful not to twist an ankle on the roots hidden under the leaves.

My thoughts kept drifting back to the roar.

If something that sounded like that was out during the day, what came out at night?

Heavy steps moved through the leaves, and I slipped behind a tree. I didn’t see anything at first, so I eased around the trunk, peeking through the brush.

At first, I thought it was a deer.

Except it was huge.

Green, spiraling antlers rose from its head, and its coat was almost blue. It dipped down and ripped grass from beside a tree before lifting its head again.

More heavy steps moved through the woods, and I spotted others between the trunks. A small herd grazed quietly through the forest. One stretched its neck toward a bush and stripped purple, spiky berries from the branches.

Then the herd froze.

A moment later, they bolted, blue bodies flashing between the trees as branches snapped behind them.

I stayed behind the tree and listened. Nothing followed.

Either I had spooked them, or something else had. I didn’t like either answer, but nothing was coming, so I moved.

I made my way over to the bush with the berries and picked one.

I turned it between my fingers, studying it.

The deer-things had eaten them, so they couldn’t be poisonous, right?

I bit into the berry carefully and let only a little of the juice touch my tongue.

Sweet.

Then fizzy, almost like soda.

I waited, expecting bitterness, burning, numbness, anything that told me I had just made a very stupid mistake. Nothing came. The flavor settled into something strange, almost like raspberry crossed with banana, with a sharp kiwi aftertaste.

I stared at the berry.

Okay. That was weirdly good.

I pulled a cloth sack from my pack. It was meant to hold my hood, but berries seemed like a better use for it. I stuffed in as many as I could without crushing them, tied it off, and continued toward the tower.

I found a stream along the way, the water crystal clear and moving quickly from the direction of the mountains. Good sign, or at least better than standing water.

I dipped my canteen into it, filled it, and took a careful drink before sealing it again. Then I found a narrow spot where the rocks broke the current and jumped across.

I continued making my way through the forest, and after a while, I ate a handful of the berries. A few minutes later, my stomach tightened. Warmth spread through my body, and I leaned against a tree, one hand pressed to my stomach, before it turned to fire for a moment.

They’re poisonous. I’m a fucking idiot.

The thought had barely crossed my mind when a cool sensation swept through me, chasing the fire away, and suddenly I felt amazing.

Panic hit me all over again. Now I was sure I’d drugged myself, but the feeling didn’t go any further than being energized. No double vision. No numbness. No dizziness. Just better somehow.

The berries were starting to feel like caffeine on steroids. Boosted energy. No obvious side effects, at least none I could feel. I needed to hurry. Daylight wouldn’t last forever, and I had no idea how long I’d already been walking. Judging by the sun through the canopy, I had maybe two hours before sunset. Possibly three.

After a while, I started to think I had gone the wrong way. Then the trees thinned noticeably, and I came upon a wall.

It was cracked in places, but mostly intact. Vines climbed its surface, and trees had grown close enough that some branches brushed against the stone. They were smaller than the ones deeper in the forest, though, which made me think this area had been cleared once, before the woods started taking it back.

As I walked along the wall, I noticed strange engravings cut into the stone. Some of them shone faintly, as if they were giving off their own light.

I kept going, and after what felt like an hour, I found an archway.

A large gray wooden door lay collapsed beneath it. The metal bindings that had once held it together were eaten thin with rust, and the wood had gone pale and dry with age.

Looking through the opening, I saw the tower I had spotted from the ledge.

Inside the wall, old buildings sat in various states of collapse. One looked like a workshop, with an old kiln and forge tucked beneath part of a fallen roof. Another might have been some kind of bakery. Farther in, other buildings circled the tower, and those looked different. They matched the tower and the wall more closely, built from the same smooth stone and carrying the same clean lines.

The outlying buildings were stranger. They had a more practical, almost medieval feel to them, but they were still made of smoothed stone that looked stacked at first glance, then oddly fused together. Like someone had built around the tower and tried to make the new work match the old.

The tower rose from the center of the courtyard, taller and cleaner than everything around it. The stone was smooth and gray, marked with faint vertical lines and strange geometric patterns that caught the light in places. Vines climbed parts of the base, but the tower itself looked almost untouched compared to the ruined buildings around it.

Its door was larger than the others, nearly ten feet tall and made from dull, golden-hued metal. It sat flush with the stone, too clean for a place this old.

Stepping through the archway, I kept a wary eye on the shadows. This was exactly the kind of place something that prowled at night might call home, but daylight was fading, and the tower at the center looked like the best shelter I was going to find.

I moved straight for it, slow and careful, stepping over cracked stone and patches of moss.

The hair on my neck lifted. I froze and looked around.

Nothing moved.

The courtyard was quiet except for the distant insect calls and the sound of my own breathing.

I crept closer and reached for the door.

The moment my fingers touched it, the door slid sideways, sudden enough to make me jump back.

A deep, guttural growl rolled out behind me.

Every thought in my head vanished.

I didn’t even bother looking. I bolted through the doorway and only turned once I was inside.

Running toward me through the arch was a large sabertooth panther, except it had scales along its shoulders and back, and several tentacle-like appendages waved above it as it ran. Each one ended in a hooked barb.

I grabbed for the door and tried to pull it shut, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Come on,” I hissed, yanking harder.

Still nothing.

I backed up, searching the room for anywhere to hide, when one of the appendages snapped forward. A barb whistled through the air and slammed into my shoulder.

Pain exploded through me as the impact spun me around and threw me off my feet.

A heartbeat later, the door slid shut.

The beast crashed into it from the other side hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

I sat there stunned, clutching my shoulder. The barb burned under my skin, hot and vicious, and I couldn’t stop myself. I grabbed it and pulled.

It came free with a wet tearing sound.

I threw it across the room and pressed my hand over the wound, breathing hard as the creature growled beyond the door.

“Shit!” I yelled, and not just because of the pain. I was trapped, and all I had was some jerky, a protein bar, and a handful of berries. There was no way that thing wasn’t going to wait me out.

As if answering the thought, the creature slammed into the building again, the thud echoing through the room.

Looking around, I started taking in the room. The door I’d come through seemed to be holding the creature back. I had no idea if it could break through, but after the hit it had already taken, I wasn’t going to waste the time it bought me.

I needed to look around, find another way out, and get away from that door before it became a problem again.

Still holding my shoulder, I tried to stand.

It felt like the worst bee sting I’d ever had, only deeper, hotter, and getting worse. The pain felt purposeful. The kind meant to make prey stop moving.

I looked at the barb lying across the room.

A clear fluid still leaked from the tip. After a few seconds, it sprayed a little, then went back to dripping.

After a few more attempts, I stood with a groan. Light-headed, I started looking around in earnest.

The room was large and mostly cleared out. What remained had rotted into broken piles of wood, too far gone to tell if it had once been furniture, shelves, or storage crates. Dust coated the floor in uneven patches, except for the smeared trail I had left when I hit the ground and scrambled away from the door.

A couple of tall vases sat near the front entrance, both dull with age but somehow still whole. Beyond that, there wasn’t much.

To the left and right of the front door were two more doors. Ahead of me sat a circular platform, slightly raised from the floor and ringed in strange symbols etched into the same dull metal. The symbols didn’t glow, but the light didn’t sit on them right either.

I couldn’t figure out the purpose of it. Maybe it was this world’s version of a compass rose set into the floor, but if that was all it was, why raise it? An inscription, then? A memorial?

I decided to check the side rooms first. Maybe one of them led to stairs, or something useful.

As I made my way toward the room on the left, I slowed, then stopped.

Something had been bothering me, and I finally looked up.

The center of the ceiling rose into a dome, and set into it was a smooth, pale disk giving off enough light to make the room feel almost like daylight.

At first, I’d assumed it was some kind of light bulb.

Then I looked back at the front door.

It had slid into the wall without making a sound. No hinges. No grinding metal. No motor whine. Nothing.

The light above me couldn’t be electricity. Not unless this place had power after being abandoned long enough for wood to rot and metal bindings to corrode.

My eyes drifted to the strange markings around the platform.

They weren’t just symbols, were they?

I took a couple of steps back and put my palms on my head.

“No. No, no, no. This is not happening. I can’t be in some magical world. This can’t be real.”

A sudden screech of metal, followed by a heavy thud, snapped my attention back.

Right. Escape first. Existential crisis later.

I let out a short, humorless chuckle and looked back at the glowing disk in the ceiling.

“Maybe it’s just technology so advanced it looks like magic,” I muttered.

The creature hit the door again.

“Sure. Let’s go with that.”

Looking through the other rooms wasn’t useless, but it didn’t give me a way out either.

The room on the left looked like storage. Shelves lined the walls, most of them collapsed or sagging under their own rot. A few cracked containers sat in the dust, empty except for scraps that fell apart when I nudged them with my boot.

One shelf near the back had held books. Most of them were useless now, their covers split and their pages so brittle they collapsed into dust when I touched them. Six, though, were different. They sat together in surprisingly good shape, their covers dark and smooth, with faint markings pressed into the surface.

I picked one up and opened it.

Completely pointless.

The pages were filled with text and diagrams, or at least what looked like text and diagrams, but I couldn’t read any of it.

I stared at it for another second, then closed the book and set it with the others. Useful maybe. Later. Not while something with barbed tentacles was waiting outside the door.

Beyond that was a smaller room with a basin built into the wall, a dry drain beneath it, and a smooth stone toilet with a tank-like box behind it.

So, bathroom.

The fixtures were dead, but the setup was familiar enough. Running water, flushing toilet, or something close to both.

The room on the right was about the same. More storage, more collapsed shelves, another bathroom with the same dry fixtures.

None of it helped me get out.

Making my way to the center of the room, I was relieved to hear that the beast behind the door had finally gone quiet.

I looked down at the ring.

Maybe it was some kind of elevator, but if it was, I couldn’t figure out how to use it. There were no buttons, no levers, nothing that looked like controls. Just the raised circle and the symbols engraved around it.

I stepped onto it anyway.

Nothing happened.

I crouched and ran my finger over the symbols, hoping touch would do what standing there hadn’t. Still nothing.

For a while, I searched the room again, checking the walls for seams, hidden panels, stairs, anything I might have missed. All I found was smooth gray stone and more silence.

Eventually, I sat down in the center of the ring and dropped my head into my hands. Somewhere beyond the door, the beast panted and growled, patient enough to make my stomach twist.

This is officially my lowest point, I thought.

The entire room blurred.

I rolled off the circle as fast as I could, which turned out to be a mistake. The moment I hit the floor, vertigo slammed into me, followed by a wave of nausea. Rolling to my hands and knees, I gagged a couple of times but managed to keep what little I had in my stomach where it belonged.

I stayed there for a second, breathing through my nose while the room tilted around me. Whatever the ring had done, my body hadn’t liked it.

“What the fuck happened?” I spat out, breathing hard. “Did that just teleport me?”

Sitting up shakily, I realized the room I was in looked nothing like the gray building above. I couldn’t tell exactly where I was, but it felt like I was underground.

The walls were smooth and dark, almost like polished granite. The room was cylindrical, with no corners and no visible seams, as if the whole thing had been shaped from one continuous piece of stone. Even the air felt different here. Cooler. Drier. Still.

There was no light dome overhead. Instead, a thin strip of pale light ran across the ceiling and continued through the wall ahead of me. Beneath it stood a double door made from the same dull golden metal as the one above.

I pushed myself up, keeping one hand near my injured shoulder, and walked to it.

The moment my fingers brushed the metal, the door slid open without a sound.

Beyond it, the hall stretched straight ahead, smooth and dark like the room behind me. The light strip followed the ceiling, unbroken, guiding me forward. My footsteps sounded too loud in the empty passage, and every few yards, faint lines cut across the walls.

I followed the hall until it opened into a larger chamber.

Another massive door stood on the far side, wider than the one I had come through and made from the same dull metal.

In the center of the room stood a stone pillar, surrounded by semicircular platforms. Each one angled slightly downward toward the pillar, like stations arranged around a central point.

One of them held a thin, smooth slab of stone, too deliberate to be trash, but I had no idea what it was. I looked it over for a moment, but it didn’t give me anything useful.

The pillar itself was about chest-high and square-sided, made from the same dark, polished material as the walls. Each face bore the embossed impression of a right hand, palm out and fingers slightly spread.

I crossed to the large door first and touched it.

Nothing happened.

I turned back toward the pillar and examined it.

Looking at the door, I figured maybe it required four people to open, and out of curiosity, I placed my hand in one of the depressions. My hand sank into the stone, pulling me in before I had a chance to pull away.

It started tingling, then burning, and a moment later I heard a crunch as pain flared through my palm. I screamed and pulled as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get free. My vision started swimming, pinching in at the edges, and just before I blacked out, it let me go.

I fell straight backward.

A screen appeared in front of me as I woke up. Still confused and half out of it, I tried to push it away with my hands, but they passed through empty air.

I sat up, looking around, but the screen stayed fixed in my vision.

I couldn’t make sense of it, so I focused on the only thing I could: what it said.

Name: Adam Daniel Kessler [Change Name?]

Level: 0

Age: 22

Integration: 54%

Health Points: 55/102

Mana: 50/50

Class: Unassigned

Strength: 6

Endurance: 8

Constitution: 9

Agility: 7

Dexterity: 8

Wisdom: 8

Intelligence: 9

Willpower: 15

Spells: None

Skills:

Typical (112)

Dodge: 34

Abilities:

Pain Tolerance I

Languages:

English

Change Name? caught my attention immediately.

Why would I want to do that?

Maybe it displayed above my head like some video game. That would be stupid enough to fit the rest of my day.

Then my eyes dropped to the bottom of the screen, and I frowned.

Dodge: 34

Now, how do I get rid of this window?

The window vanished.

I blinked.

A second later, another one appeared in its place.

System Integration: 55%

Health diminished.

Spend 1 Ability Point to acquire:

Accelerated Recovery I

Effect:

When activated, mana will be converted into health at a rate of 5 Mana to 1 Health Point.Passive Effect:

While mana is full, natural healing speed increases by 1 Health Point every 10 minutes.

Current Ability Points: 3

Yes / No?

“Wait,” I said, staring at the window. “I can gain abilities with this thing?”

I stared at it for a long moment.

Then I said, “Yes.”

Tingling moved through my body in slow waves, like the system was doing something under my skin. I clenched my jaw and waited until the feeling faded.

The window vanished, then another appeared in its place.

Ability Acquired:

Accelerated Recovery I

System Integration: 62%

Unused potential detected.

Evaluating…

I read it twice and still didn’t understand what it meant, so I just thought about closing it.

The window vanished.

Nothing replaced it this time.

I sat there for a moment, waiting for another impossible message to appear. When none did, I looked around the room.

The thin stone slab I had noticed earlier was glowing.

I pushed myself up and walked over to it. Light spilled from its surface in soft lines, and when I looked closer, my breath caught.

It was a tablet.

An honest-to-goodness touch screen tablet, except it was made from some kind of smooth stone.

I picked it up carefully.

Nothing on it made sense. Strange symbols moved across the surface, scrolling slowly from one side to the other.

Then pain bloomed behind my eyes.

My vision blurred, and I dropped the tablet, grabbing my head as another window appeared.

Eurathi Language Detected.

Retrieving language profile from archive…

Integrating…

I yelled as I dropped to one knee, clutching my head. It felt like my brain was being cooked from the inside.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped.

I stayed there for a moment, sweating and breathing hard, while the window updated.

Integrating…

Integrated.

Then it vanished.

Once I could think again, I decided to figure out how to use the ability I had just bought. That turned out to be disturbingly easy. Intent seemed to be enough.

The moment I focused on healing, something unfamiliar drained out of me.

A small bar appeared near the edge of my vision, then settled into my awareness without blocking what I could see. Health Points and Mana were suddenly just… there, like I knew where to look without needing the window.

My mana dropped.

My health ticked up by a single point.

“Well,” I muttered, still breathing hard, “that works.”

I picked the tablet back up to see if the integrated language worked as advertised.

Looking at it made my head ache in a different way. The nonsense I had seen before seemed to shift and crawl across the surface, the symbols bending slowly into English until the words finally steadied.

A new bar appeared in my awareness.

Integration: 76%

I ignored it and focused on the tablet.

Eurathi Research Facility Two

Log Entry: [2SP21/542]

Archmage Auranistashi D’irloctishta

Subject: 27M

Subject displays promise with this iteration of our adaptation of the Anima Progression Overlay. He remains conscious with little discomfort and displays normal cognitive function. Physical attributes show noticeable improvement.

I scrolled the tablet and another entry appeared beneath it.

Eurathi Research Facility Two

Log Entry: [2SP25/542]

Archmage Auranistashi D’irloctishta

Subject: 27M

I do not know what happened. Arelvic was fine, then he screamed and went catatonic.

I wonder if we are doing the right thing. The Ishani trust us, and yet we spend their lives without consequence to our own.

My stomach tightened.

I scrolled again.

Eurathi Research Facility Two

Log Entry: [3SP12/542] Archmage Auranistashi D’irloctishta

Subject: 21F

Subject is stable, coherent, and aware. She reports mild discomfort but remains lucid. I believe I have isolated the problem. This will be the final test of this iteration.

And again, another entry followed.

Eurathi Research Facility Two

Log Entry: [3SP16/542] Archmage Auranistashi D’irloctishta

Subject: 21F

She has confirmed my suspicions. She will survive the implant.

But survival is not enough.

The Ishani must thrive with it, and they must do so without us when we finally leave Tafserin. I have documented the changes and sent the data to Facility Four. Hopefully, they can design the limitations I have set forth.

My heart is breaking for these people.

The limitations may prove too inefficient for survival in this world. But they are a sturdy people. Maybe, with this and their own will to survive, they will endure.

Dropping the tablet to my side, I let what I had read sink in.

This was some kind of research facility, and judging by the state of the place, those logs could have been hundreds of years old. Maybe even a thousand.

I looked down at my hand, at the spot where the pillar had pulled me in and implanted whatever this thing was.

There wasn’t even a mark.

Somehow, that made it worse.

I flexed my fingers slowly, then looked back at the tablet.

One subject had survived. One had gone catatonic.

That wasn’t enough to call it a pattern, but it was more than enough to make my stomach turn.

I had just let an ancient machine do the same thing to me.