Chapter Text
I don't know why I wandered off. I was ten years old, and apparently ten-year-olds are always wandering off. I'd gone to pee, which seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do on a camping trip. The forest was quiet, the air was warm, and everything felt calm. Birds chirped, the leaves rustled, and there was nothing about the world that seemed likely to explode at any second.
Which, of course, is when it all went sideways.
I was just finishing up when I heard it—something that didn't sound right. It wasn't the usual forest noises. This was louder, heavier, like... like something big was stomping through the woods. Not one something. Many somethings. The sound made my stomach twist into knots before my brain could even process why.
Then I saw them.
Orcs.
You know how sometimes your brain just refuses to understand what your eyes are seeing? Like it's trying to protect you from something too big, too impossible to handle? That's what happened. I stood there, frozen, as they stormed past my hiding spot. They were huge—so much bigger than any person I'd ever seen—with gray-green skin that looked like it had been left out in bad weather. Their armor was all wrong angles and sharp edges, like someone had taken scraps from a junkyard and hammered them into shape. And their voices—their voices made my bones feel like they were trying to crawl out of my skin.
I pressed myself against a tree trunk, trying to become part of the bark. "This can't be real," I thought, blinking hard. "It's just—just a weird... I don't know, hallucination or something." But the heavy thud of their boots against the ground was too real. The way their weapons caught the sunlight—cruel-looking things that seemed designed to cause as much pain as possible—that was real too. One of them was waving a large stone attached to a string in a circle in the air, as though he were going to try and lasso something.
For a moment, they seemed to pass by without noticing me. I held my breath, counting heartbeats, thinking maybe, just maybe, I'd get lucky.
Then everything exploded into chaos.
A shout rang out—a human voice this time—and suddenly the forest was alive with movement. Men burst through the trees, weapons drawn, and the air filled with the terrible song of metal striking metal. The orcs roared—and trust me, there's no way to describe an orc's roar that does it justice. It's like every nightmare you've ever had decided to make a noise at once.
I had two very clear thoughts in that moment: One, don't get killed. Two, don't get noticed.
My body had a third thought: freeze completely and try not to throw up.
From behind my tree, I watched the fight unfold like some horrible dance. The orcs fought like they were trying to break everything—including themselves. The men moved with more purpose, but they were outnumbered. I saw one man take an orc's blade across his arm. Another barely dodged a mace that would have crushed his skull. Every clash of weapons made me flinch.
And then, because the universe apparently wasn't done with me yet, I saw him.
He moved differently from the others—more graceful, more controlled. Dark hair, leather armor that had seen better days, and a face that looked so much older than my Dad’s, although I would have guessed they were the same age. When he turned and locked eyes with me, I felt my heart stop.
For a heartbeat, we just stared at each other. I saw the surprise in his eyes turn to determination, and before I could even think about running, he crossed the space between us in three long strides and grabbed my arm.
"Quiet," he said in a language I didn't understand, but some words don't need translation when they're accompanied by that particular look of 'make-a-sound-and-we-both-die.'
I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand explanations. I wanted to wake up from whatever bizarre dream this was. Instead, what came out was a strangled "Huh?" as he pulled me along behind him, weaving through the trees with a purpose that suggested he knew exactly where he was going.
We ran. And ran. And ran some more. The sounds of fighting faded behind us, but he didn't slow down. My lungs burned, my legs felt like they were made of rubber, and my brain had given up on making sense of anything. Up ahead, I could see lights—a town, maybe, or a village. But nothing looked familiar. The trees were wrong. The ground beneath my feet felt wrong. Even the air tasted different.
That's when the real fear hit me: I wasn't just lost. I was somewhere else entirely.