Chapter 1: Waking up

Fel groaned and rolled over as the sun’s rays shone down upon him, blasting him square in the eyes. His head was killing him. Stretching outwards with his arms, Fel felt the tips of his knuckles brush against a round lump of wood. He winced, eyes shut tight. If he was here, and the table leg was there…well that was a large distance to fall from the base of his desk.

I need to stop reading through papers so late at night. One of these days I’ll brain myself falling off the chair, and then who’s going to grade them?

Arching his back, Fel planted his hands firmly against the ground to begin a stretch, then stopped. He wiggled his fingers. Slowly, he lifted his right palm. He brought it back down.

Pat.

…

Pat. Pat.

He continued to pat a disbelieving hand against the ground.

...Am I resting on a tree root? Fel’s head spun as he peeled open his eyes.

For a moment he was still. Then- he was not.

Fel shot to his feet, eyes wide and arms flailing backward. His sight flickered across the trees, head rearing as his mind worked to take in the horrifying scene.

Blood dripped from greenery’s leaves.

Snapped weapons, broken shafts, and scattered fletchings were strewn across rugged grass.

Dark spires of wood reached upwards, ripping at the sky.

Light reflected off a field of bleached and shattered bones at the pillars’ base.

His vision was darkening, his sight failing him.

A thumping beat roared in Fel’s ears.

...

Then he fell; the blood rushed from his head, knocking the man off balance.

“Ow.”

Fel waited for the heavens to stop pelting his vision with stars.

This time, he moved slowly. His pale arms pushed off the ground, torso rising from the earth. Careful not to shake his head around, Fel set himself into a seated position. With a grunt, he ran a hand down his face and blinked away the remaining spots in his vision.

He squinted, hunching closer to parse through the image.

The scene was fine. Live-oak trees dotted the forested landscape, their branches spilling across the ground. White monkey-flowers grew in the hallowed sunbeams that came together in the afternoon light.

Interspersed in the immediate area, several arrows lay embedded in the trunks of trees or snapped against the earth. Their red fletching flapped in the chill winds. The discarded weapons he’d seen, however, were nothing more than fallen branches and debris.

And as for the blood—

“No, that’s still blood.” Fel’s nose scrunched up. His hazy eyes followed a drip as it moved down the edge of one of the leaves. A kaleidoscope of colours swirled around the blood, the world spinning to meet it. A moment later, it splattered itself against the dirt on the ground.

He... didn't know where he was. Looking up, his vision wobbled. He tilted.

Fel fell.

From the ground, he inhaled. The smell of damp earth, old leaves, and oak pollen assailed his senses. He exhaled into the dirt.

The world continued to spin around his head, the darkness encroaching into his vision then fading away.

It was difficult to think— even more difficult to focus.

Around where he'd fallen, the forest had been silenced. The birds didn’t chirp, the squirrels didn’t chatter, and the meelers didn’t screech. For a tense moment, all seemed still.

And then…

Screeeee!

A new meeler, a minstrel of noise and insect of opportunity, grasped hold of the silent stage to let loose its unholy cacophony. The bubble of silence burst and the forest was awash sound once more.

Taking a much calmer breath and exhaling slowly, Fel lifted himself and stood. The world wobbled and split as his head rose, but pulled itself back together following a moment without moving. As pesky and shrill as it was, the regular noise did a great deal to calm his overflowing nerves.

With hobbling, careful strides, he moved towards the bushes with blood on them. Bending at the waist Fel peered at a leaf, then lifted it from the bottom with a finger from his left hand. He was careful to avoid the liquid as he moved.

Purple, to a degree at least. A deep burgundy? It’s not red.

He stepped away from the blood and shook the hand vigorously. “Monsters.” Fel shuddered. The deeper the purple shade, the more magical the Monster. Or that was the spoken rule at least.

He looked around again, searching for a place to sit or lean, for a moment to let things settle down. Instead, his eyes came to rest on the bright, bloody red fletching of the arrows.

Around him, the greenery whispered, the rustling sending involuntary shivers down his back. The movement lanced pain up his neck in turn. He brought the edges of his robe closer together.

“What the hell happened here? To me? I was teaching a class— no, I was proctoring the Ritualist Exams. And then I...”

Fel pinched his nose as his headache rose, and gave a mirthless chuckle.

“... I feel like I was hit by a wagon.”

He moved to rub his palms against his forehead, then paused. Fel patted at his face then moved to the top of his head.

Fel dropped his hands in surprise. All other thoughts flew from his mind as he realized there was nothing there.

Looking down at his feet before moving, Fel scanned the ground around him as he rotated slowly. He held his arms wide to his sides as he turned. There were browning emerald grasses, patches of dirt littered with wrinkled and cracked leaves, fallen twigs and branches, growing sprouts, tassels from the oaks, and… ah!

A pair of glasses lay speckled with dirt behind the root he’d woken on. With an ungodly pirouette, Fel reached down and plucked them from the ground. The action caused his vision to dim again, and he took a second to pause.

Recovering, he shook off the apparel with a flick. The pitiable things were always getting lost, misplaced, and dirtied. He needed a better way to keep aware of the item.

Raising the glasses to his face, Fel nearly put them on. The motion was stopped halfway- His eyes were drawn to a scattered shine coming off the left lens.

He focused his attention on it.

Fel groaned, pulling his head back to point at the dimming sky. He teetered, the tossing of his head causing him to lose his balance once more. Here he was, waking up in what appeared to be the middle of a forest, and the first thing he’d done was broken his glasses.

There goes my food budget for the month.

The lense was thoroughly destroyed, the glass pushed in towards the wearer’s face with a gaping hole just off its center.

Fel scowled at the loose glass in the frame; besides being utterly unhelpful, the shards would take his eye out if he tried to wear the glasses as they were now.

“I can... probably fix that.” His voice stumbled through the words.

Reaching down, Fel fumbled against the ground for a stick. When he’d grabbed one, he angled the sharper of the ends against the busted lens. The other side went into the ground. Bringing it down over his head, Fel chipped away at the broken lens. It took a few tries, the initial actions failing to break off the glass around the edges of the frame, but he succeeded.

Having efficiently removed the excess material in a completely safe and in no way frustrated manner, Fel put on the glasses.

“Nope.”

Fel took the glasses back off. Just one lens was giving him a nasty case of vertigo; one half of the distant forest was in high definition, the other was made of fuzz. He wasn’t sure he could walk down a straight road while wearing them, much less travel through the dense greenery that surrounded him.

Fel pulled the glasses upwards so they rested on the top of his head. He could still use them if he closed an eye or felt the need to peer off into the distance, but for now, he’d leave them off.

“What a mess.”

Releasing a small huff, Fel leaned back into one of the trees and let his legs slide outwards. Its bark rubbed painfully against his robe, chips breaking off as he dragged his way down. He winced.

Sliding down tree bark. Bad idea.

With a controlled flop, Fel pressed his head against a patch of moss on the trunk. He was still a bit fuzzy, and the world was deciding to make waves against his feet.

“I’ll just… sit here for a moment,” Fel attempted to recenter his thoughts.

He closed his eyes.

Fel groaned lightly as he opened his eyes. His surroundings were dark in a way that indicated a sun moved past the horizon. Chirps, croaks, and whistles echoed through the woods. Beetles flew, insects buzzed, and blurry creatures swooped down to the earth.

A barely risen moon shone down on the forest below, keeping the forest just on the right side of visible. Not that the creatures living in it shared the same limitations as Fel.

In front of him, lightning bugs drifted past, their forms humming with static. Occasionally, helped along by the humid night air, a bolt of energy would zap between a pair of the insects, scenting the wind with ozone. He watched one group, three who flew too close together, release a collective shock that blew themselves out of the sky. Their bulbous forms dropped, smoking lightly before they recovered to move in opposite directions.

Fel chuckled, a real one this time. He felt… not rested exactly, but more aware than before. His headache was gone and it was as if a haze had lifted itself from his mind.

Still here then, not a dream.

He peered at the earth around him, from where he’d woken the first time to the nearby regions that he’d wandered. He bumped his head firmly against the tree, the surface cushioned by a mossy growth.

Dear gods, I think I acted the fool. That Portaler’s ritual — whatever Angus hit me with — really did a number on me.

Fel touched the back of his head.

A head injury? But no, no tenderness. Maybe just a bit loopy from the displacement? Or something simple, like dehydration?

He blinked, realizing his thirst for the first time. He wasn’t parched exactly, but he certainly wouldn’t have said no to some water.

Fel rubbed his fingers through his hair. Just what in the hells is going on? Angus must’ve completed his ritual, and what? Then I woke up here? How does that help, and how did it happen?

He pondered the questions. Images and theories rolled themselves over in his newly-lucid mind. He’d follow his thoughts towards a conclusion, before finding that they’d returned to loop into a different unknown.

He had no answers. Whatever had occurred was beyond what he could hope to deal with at the moment. Instead, he turned his thoughts back to issues he could tackle, like…

“Uh.”

Fel stood still, shoulders slumping. Like procuring food, water, and shelter. He was not, to be honest, entirely sure how to do those things.

Adventurers do it all the time, how hard can it be?

He flicked himself. They were adventurers.

But as for the water… Fel grinned; he had a trick for this. One of the starter rituals he taught aspiring [Ritualists] would be perfect.

Plucking the glasses from the top of his head, he placed them on his nose and covered his left eye with a cupped palm. Jumping lightly to his feet — with no pain or dizziness, he noticed — Fel began scanning the distant ground around him.

He was looking for something hollow; a dish, or a shallow bowl. There was a split in one of the broadleaf trees, as well as an indented growth on an old oak root he could use. But no, nothing alive. They’d take in too much of the mana.

Fel continued walking.

A rock, another rock, a third rock. Fel cricked his back, making an effort to un-bunch his shoulders and ‘loosen up’. Amelia had started making a habit of telling him to do so — said it’d make him less stiff and ‘lower his stress levels below curmudgeon for once’. He was pretty sure that was an assignment grade talking; he’d given her a B+ a few days before.

Fel smirked, then frowned.

It wasn’t a big ritual, and even having been so close to it I’m fine. A bit lost, sure, but still fine.

He let out yet another sigh. “Damn though, I hope she’s okay.”

Angus too of course, though I wouldn’t mind if he had some common sense smacked into him after he—

Fel stumbled over the thought. What had Angus done? It was... It was something… The thought slipped away from him. Fel’s brow wrinkled and he shook his head. It didn’t matter. Angus's ritual had caused a slew of problems, and Fel would get to the bottom of the issue later— when he got back home.

Fel turned his head to peer down a gully. It’d be useful if it still contained flowing water, a chance to skip over his search for a bowl entirely! But no, the liquid within was still. Diseased or infested with parasites, almost certainly.

Then, a beacon of hope! At the bottom of a small dip in the landscape just ahead, lay a single deceased tree. Or rather- the bottom portion of one. The stump was about three feet in diameter, and more importantly, it had a foot wide divot gouged out from the middle of it. A perfectly usable bowl!

Fel stumbled forwards, tripping over himself as he moved a leg to descend a dip he hadn’t yet reached.

“Right, no depth perception.”

He uncupped the hand that still covered his left eye and pushed the glasses back onto the top of his head, out of his vision. Trudging his way up the slope, he rubbed his hands together with feverish intensity.

“A ritual to condensate clean water! Easy as could be!”

Fel patted at his robe, hands working their way around his empty waist.

“Ah, right.”

Walking back up the slope, Fel went in search of a stick. When he’d found one — a hand-length piece of finger-wide wood — he jogged his way back to the stump, short robe flapping as he bounced along. His hands pressing into his knees, he lowered himself to crouch against the ground.

With single-minded intensity, Fel began working his way around the tree stump, clearing the ground of leaves and debris in an additional four-foot radius around the wood. For the few stones that were dug too deeply into the earth to move, he added dirt to cover their tops in a more malleable layer.

Deeming the first part of his work complete, Fel pointed the stick he carried at the loose dirt in front of him and pushed to activate one of his Class Skills.

[Perfect Circle]

He brought the stick down to the earth and let it begin its travels around the trunk, a thinly edged path of uniform size and shape. It was, in all aspects, a perfectly made—

Fel blinked, his wrist wobbling.

It was distinctly not the edge of a perfect circle.

By Fel’s hand, the stick had drawn a jagged, only loosely curved trench around a fifth of the circle’s planned circumference. Clumps of dirt had spewed out from the path of the instrument, pelting his boots and lower robe with damp clods.

“I— it didn’t work?” Fel's face was screwed in incomprehension.

He stepped back, towards the outer area of the exposed earth and away from the trunk. Crouching down on one knee, Fel focused his full attention on the bare patch of earth in front of him.

"[Perfect Circle]"

He repeated the Skill's name aloud, diligently pointing his stick into the ground.

Nothing.

There was no sensation of guidance, no tightening of muscle control, no activation.

Fel’s heart fluttered in his chest. He turned, his eyes roving across the forest green. There, a blur of red; berries or bulbs of some kind, lying within a bush. He sprinted to them.

[Analyze]

He pointed, willing for the information to appear. The skill was a staple of his profession, a trophy, and a testament to his skill and dedication. It would activate. It would work.

He waited. It did not.

There was nothing. No information appeared in his mind— not even a slight inkling of understanding. The red bulbs — for they were bulbs — hung on the bush in front of him, telling him nothing.

He panicked. In a desperate attempt, Fel swirled mana out from his pool. It moved sluggishly, a reluctant partner.

“[Firebolt]”

A statement made aloud. The magic pulled together, then dropped away. The mental image he was using wasn't focused enough to function independently of a cast spell.

He pulled harder; they had to work: his skills, his spells, his magic. Whatever was wrong, he’d break past it. It wasn't going to be an issue. It wouldn’t stop him.

Fel heaved more mana into his palm, spinning the pulsating orb of energy with single-minded intensity. He aimed his arm at the bush, palm up and facing outwards. Brow furrowed, feet set, he cut off the flow and Pushed.

The night sky lit up.

A wave of heat. Fel opened his eyes. He didn’t remember closing them, but he was lying on the ground again.

Shit.

Rat-tat. He blinked the grit out of his eyes. Rat-ta-ta. Falling dirt pelted his prone form. Thwack. A flash-fried bulb — missing the majority of its lower half — spilled yellow juices across his robe as it fell, flipping end over end.

“That was... stupid of me.”

Fel turned his head to the fried bulb, calling out hopefully.

“[Analyze]?”

Still nothing. He rolled his neck back into place, staring up into the bristled leaves. There were no stars above him, the sky blocked out by the trees’ canopy and a cloud of thick, black smoke. He wasn’t too worried about the fire; the plants appeared recently wetted and the ground was moist.

Fel sighed. It was a deep, resigned release of breath. He was tired — no, exhausted. His skills may not have worked — Fel winced again — but that fireball…

“Was an absolute load of shit, and I— I'm embarrassed to have cast it,” Fel spoke the words slowly, griping to himself as he checked his glasses again. His fingers made contact; they were still on his head.

He’d blown through at least half his mana in that little tantrum. And he felt it too; a hollow-headed emptiness that dulled his thoughts. The sensation was not unlike when he would pull an all-nighter to read through students’ reports.

“Gods, I dislike this feeling. And a damn waste of effort that was. What was I doing, swirling it? A minuscule application of control, a fraction of the mana, and I could’ve cast eight just like it.”

Fel rolled his eyes in time with his monologue, scoffing into the air.

“Just general mana control for now then— no Skill-based spells. I can do that; it's not an issue.”

Still, he couldn't help but notice that it was his third time waking up on the ground that day. It was the second time he'd done so from flat on his back. What that should tell him, whether it was that a Collegium Professor was not a wilderness expert, or that he was merely inept, Fel wasn’t sure.

But he did realize one thing—

He hadn’t made the ritual yet, and he was still sorely in need of a drink.