He thought that since villagers including his aunt regularly go for foraging, it should be safe but damn, the atmosphere was oppressive, heavy with humidity and the unseen presence of things watching him.
It felt like the suspenseful buildup of a horror movie, that moment when the protagonist walks down a dark hallway and the audience screams at the screen, "Don’t go in there, you idiot!"
Rustle.
He froze, one foot hovering awkwardly in the air.
Thump. Thump.
The hair on his arms stood up. Something was moving to his left. He could swear that he felt the vibration in the ground...heavy, rhythmic thuds.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He held his breath, his eyes widening as the tall grass parted violently just ten feet away.
"Fuck," he thought, panic seizing his throat. "This is it. First day out and I’m lunch."
SCREEE!
A dark shape suddenly burst from the greenery, shrieking like a banshee.
He didn’t even had time to think and instantly went into panic mode, as he let out a very not manly strangled yelp—"Wha-!"— and scrambled backwards, tripping over his own feet and landing hard on his ass, scrambling away on his hands and feet like a crab, kicking dirt, waiting for the jaws.
But strangely nothing attacked him.
He blinked, staring at the "monster."
It was... a fucking rodent. A rat-like thing. But calling it a rat was an insult to the ones in the sewers of his old world. This thing was the size of a corgi, with matted gray fur, beady black eyes, and two front teeth that looked like yellow chisels, stained with green sap.
The giant rat stared at him, twitched its nose and chittered aggressively, and then, realizing Sol wasn’t food (or perhaps thinking he was too pathetic to eat), it turned and scampered away into the undergrowth with a speed that blurred the eyes.
Sol sat there in the dirt, clutching his chest, his heart trying to bruise his ribs.
"A rat," he wheezed, his face burning with humiliation. "I almost pissed myself over a rat. A giant, ugly, steroid-pumped rat... but still."
He stood up, brushing the dirt off his loincloth, trying to regain some dignity. "Damn. It seems I’m being too careful. Calm down Sol. It’s just a fucking rat. Don’t be a coward. Remember you are a predator, remember all the motivational speeches of those alpha males. Remember."
He somehow calmed his pounding heart and continued moving. As he pushed deeper into the plain, the tall grass began to thin out a bit, and for the first time, the claustrophobia vanished, replaced by something far more overwhelming, a sight that stole the air from his lungs.
Sol stopped dead in his tracks.
"Whoa."
It was cinematic. It was grand. It was terrifyingly epic.
He was standing on the edge of a ridge overlooking the true wild. To his right, a few meters away, a dragonfly the size of a man’s palm buzzed past, its iridescent wings shimmering like stained glass, the sound of its flight a low, mechanical hum. The flora was gargantuan... ferns as tall as houses, flowers with petals so vibrant they hurt the eyes, dripping nectar that smelled sickeningly sweet.
In the distance, herds of massive, lumbering beasts moved slowly across the horizon, their silhouettes hazy in the heat shimmer. The sky was a canvas of deep, unpolluted azure, scarred only by the flight paths of winged beasts that cast shadows large enough to swallow him whole.
This wasn’t just a forest. It was a cathedral of life, vibrant and violent.
"Okay," Sol whispered, humbled. "Fuck those, alpha nonsese. I am but a speck of dust."
He crept forward, careful not to touch the flowers (which looked like they might bite), until he spotted something about fifty yards away.
In a small clearing of short grass sat a small, furry creature. It looked like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel...round, fluffy, with big, innocent eyes. It was holding a large nut in its paws, munching away happily, its nose twitching.
"Aww," Sol thought, his guard lowering slightly. "Finally, something cute. Maybe this world isn’t all—"
WHOOSH.
There was no warning. No screech. Just the sudden displacement of air.
A shadow fell over the clearing. A massive, feathered shape plummeted from the sky like a meteor.
CRUNCH.
The sound was sickeningly wet...like stepping on a ripe melon.
A bird with a wingspan of twenty feet and a beak like a pickaxe slammed into the ground. In a split second, the cute furry creature was gone. Erased from the world.The bird threw its head back and swallowed the animal whole, screeched a sound that rattled Sol’s teeth, with blood dripping from its beak onto the vibrant green grass.
Sol froze. His brain short-circuited.
Instantly, without a conscious thought, he fell backward. He didn’t crouch; he didn’t kneel. He went rigid and toppled over like a felled tree, landing flat on his back in the tall grass, playing dead.
He lay there, staring up at the blue sky, holding his breath until his lungs burned. He became a rock. He became dirt. He prayed to every god he didn’t believe in that he looked like a log.
His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against the dirt—thump-thump, thump-thump.
He lay there for a long minute, staring at the indifferent blue sky, waiting for his pulse to drop below triple digits.
Flap... Flap... Flap...
The heavy sound of wings beating against the air grew louder, then slowly faded into the distance.
He let out a long, shaky exhale, tears of stress pricking his eyes. "Okay. Note to self: Cute equals bait. Sky equals death."
He lay there for a moment longer, waiting for his heart rate to drop below triple digits.
"I’m safe," he told himself. "It’s gone."
He turned his head to the side, preparing to get up.
And found himself staring directly into a pair of vertical slit eyes.
Hovering in the grass, not two feet from his face, was a snake. But not a normal snake. It looked like someone had dipped a cobra in neon paint. This thing was bright neon blue with electric yellow rings, and fangs that were already dripping a clear, viscous fluid.