Eli sailed well out of the green wall on the other side. His naked body did a nice arc through the air before landing on the barren ground, rolling until he hit up against something substantial. A loud crash resounded overhead, his ears aching from the abuse.

“Ow.” Pain pulsed throughout his body, especially from his back. With his heartbeat thumping, he flinched as the loud sound came again and again with brief flashes of light revealing the strange world around him.

Thunder?

He looked up into the sky, or what he thought might be the sky, but it was far too dark to see much up there. Carefully moving his head to look around him, he found that he hadn’t hit up against a wall but a big tree. Well, “big tree” might have been an understatement since the thing had to be a dozen meters wide and an arborist’s wet dream. He had seen oaks and other trees with wide trunks, but the height was what shocked him. Leaning back, he couldn’t begin to guess at the size of the wonder before him as the top disappeared in the darkness overhead. An oak tree the height of a giant sequoia made him question whether he was suddenly small or if this tree was far too big.

Looking past his new giant leafy friend, he tried to see what was nearby. Massive roots from the tree’s trunk plunged into the nearby ground, some parts standing taller than him. These dark growths in the night covered much of the space around him, partially blocking his view. He glanced around to find himself on the edge of a forest, though the giant tree he was leaning against was the only one of this size. The others looked like normal-sized pine trees but with an extra fat base. He wasn’t an expert on trees, so he didn’t worry about it.

He rested his head against the rough bark, the scent of damp earth, fresh wood, and ozone in the air. Considering the world around him, he was surprised at his continued lack of panic. He’d never considered himself particularly brave or good at handling surprises, but this was different. Sure, there was a lot of relief, but he also didn’t feel like everything was immediate. It was like a barrier had formed between his emotions and thoughts.

“Tes...test...test,” He said, attempting to talk again in a normal voice. His voice was coming back a bit, but it felt far too weak, almost thready. He rubbed the front of his neck, feeling a slight tiredness and ache from even his little experiment.

What’s next?

As if the heavens were waiting for his question, another enormous peal of thunder answered as the rain was suddenly everywhere. It might have been a spigot turned on by an angry god with how quickly the downpour started. Looking up towards the sky, he confirmed what he’d sensed earlier: a massive canopy of leaves connected to this gigantic trunk, sheltering him from the storm’s fury. Some errant drops inevitably found their way down to his huddled body. Still, it was nothing compared to the seeming waterfall beyond the tree’s protection. A small pool of water was already collecting around him even as he pushed himself away from the growing mud puddle.

A tiny bit of fear crawled up his spine when he realized that the sound of the rain was so loud that probably anything could sneak up on him. He felt even more vulnerable, staring around a dark forest at night without any clothing. Hanging around naked and alone in a forest at night wasn’t his idea of a good time.

A new discordant sound rose to join the drowning rain, slowly growing louder while he looked around to find the source. It might have been a giant animal or some machinery with how cyclical it was, and he finally guessed it was coming from the other side of his big tree. Standing on his bare feet, feeling the slight cool squish of mud between his toes, he leaned against the large root and peered towards the commotion.

The forest ended close to a group of large stones a bit further down a short grassy slope. A large fire, off to the side between him and the structure, partially illuminated the scene. There was some resemblance to Stonehenge, at least with the types of rocks. However, their placement was different, with only a single circle of large stones standing upright. Each looked like a dark fat finger pointed at the sky.

A person stood in front of these upright stones wearing dark clothes and head coverings that hid their features. Even in the light from the fire, they were still indistinct humanoid shapes in the dark. They all had their hands up in the air as if to plead with the sky as they sang. In the center of the structure was a single large flat rock about a meter off the ground. A person was tied down on the platform, their arms and legs in ropes. Based on the little that remained of their outfit, the victim was a woman who struggled against her tight bindings.

Shit.

“There must be about a dozen people…” he muttered quietly.

There are ten people within eyesight of the User

Eli jumped slightly at the sudden notification in the corner of his user interface. He’d somehow forgotten about Guide. Rubbing the back of his head with some embarrassment, he looked again at the scene. A small white outline highlighted each of the people within sight. A new person he hadn’t noticed was highlighted with a white outline around their form. They had both hands raised like the rest, their head thrown back, presumably singling along with the other crazy folks that enjoyed yelling at the thunderstorm. A red square materialized around the long, bladed weapon held in their right hand, the colored shape locked on and following the weapon as the person waved their hands at the sky.

The whole scene had a horror film vibe, making him wonder again if this entire thing was just a bad dream. If so, he might need to get back into therapy. But could it be a dream? He was feeling an assortment of aches all over. With the hundreds of nightmares he’d suffered in his life, he was pretty sure that pain wasn’t a normal part of the equation. If not a dream, could something be wrong with Guide? After all, they were in the Beta for testing purposes. Could this be a side-effect of having a bit of tech whirling away in his head? The very idea made the hair on his scalp stand up.

Talay. Gotta deal with what we have. Worry about the rest later.

He slowly breathed in and out, focusing on the now since the future would be here soon enough. The longtime mantra helped clear his mind and brought some semblance of control until a muffled scream came from the stone structure nearby, where the person was tied down. Though it didn’t help them much, they struggled to get free.

He looked closer, but the big fat raindrops were coming down hard. It started to put a damper on the bonfire, but the people in the circle ignored it. Before, they’d sounded like they were singing some wordless song. Now, they’d started to match their sounds together. After a few moments, a distinct chant arose from the noise.

“Og ackkamlenta jaynaral, enkal vartakalak…” They were chanting what sounded like a bunch of nonsense to him. It was a very back-of-the-throat language that he didn’t even want to try and copy. There was definitely a lot of phlegm involved, and it was like nothing he’d ever heard before.

New Language detected

Analyzing...

High Speech of the Third Circle recognized

Installing language…

Installed

The words shifted in Eli’s head as he listened. The group kept chanting, their voices getting louder and louder. He could see them mouthing the sounds, but the translated gibberish sounded like roughly understandable words. Even as he listened, the accent melted away. Only the first few repetitions of the same chant appeared necessary for Guide’s software to adapt. At the same time, the words were typed out in the chatbox.

“...Hear our words and accept our sacrifice. Dread lord, the right hand of Torment, bestow your power on us as we give this offering of Gifted blood.”

Okay, definitely human sacrifice. What do I do? I’m a naked guy in the forest with nothing but a silver doodad.

The ground was barren nearby under the giant tree’s foliage. There was the big tree trunk, surrounded by lots of dirt, a vast root system, and a lot of not much else. His eyes searched, turning around to find anything useful, even if only to serve as a distraction. There was a stone near one of the big roots. He stepped over and picked it up, turning it around. It wasn’t too big, maybe the size of a baseball, but its weight made him think it might be hollow. One end had a bit of a point, giving the rock a lopsided look.

The chanting seemed to reach a crescendo, and the creepy leader near their victim slowly raised his blade as if intending to use it. He took a calming breath and tried to focus on his target while firmly grasping the rock. With his Tracking program, he knew the distance was just over fifty meters. In baseball terms, it would be like throwing a lopsided rock from home plate to where the outfield grass started growing – pretty far for a guy who hadn’t thrown a baseball in over twenty years.

Taking one more slow breath, Eli stood up from behind the tree. He felt his body balancing better than expected in the shifting mud underfoot and pulled his arm back with the rock firmly in hand. His arm shot forward like a machine. He threw his arm hard enough that he twisted himself all the way around and fell on his ass against the nearby giant tree root. There was a muted crunch like he’d hit a watermelon and then a lot of yelling. Then a lot more yelling and horrible screams picked up loud enough to overshadow the pouring rain. The yells cut off, the abruptness sending shivers up and down his spine.

Eli scooted backward until he felt the root mass safely against his back. He kept listening, trying to hear if anyone was on their way to confront him. He’d just thrown a rock right at their apparent leader, but outside some terrifying screams moments ago, the forest was largely quiet outside the continued rainfall – even the thunder had stopped.

Leaning back against the massive root, he took a slow deep breath to try and calm his racing heart. Taking on a dozen unknowns with a thrown rock was especially stupid, even for him. Looking down, he was once again reminded of his state of undress. Running up to help the woman while naked might not be the smartest thing.

He lifted his hand and studied the bracelet. Based on how Lugh had made stuff disappear inside, Eli thought it might be a bag of holding like in the stories and games he’d enjoyed growing up. The mystery of how such a thing was physically possible crossed his mind, but he shrugged the worry away for now – many things hadn’t made sense in the past couple of hours. Touching the metal with his other hand, nothing happened. Just a finger pressed against a piece of metal tight around his wrist.

“Open sesame?”

He rubbed his fingers along the edge of the metal, looking for some hidden button. It was just smooth, silvery metal with no seam. He tried to pull it away from his skin, but it was almost tight against his flesh. If there was some hidden button or release on the inside band, he couldn’t find it.

“I’m stumped. Help?”

He didn’t like sitting alone naked in a strange world, hiding behind a massive tree while over a dozen people were trying to kill someone else behind him. He enjoyed good naked, but not so much bad naked.

Yeah, not my best day.

Do you wish to access the equipped Dimensional Storage?

The prompt came up to float in front of his vision. At least Guide’s augmented reality systems still worked, even if this was one he’d never seen.

“Yes?”

A ghostly image overlaid across Eli’s vision, there but not. Somehow, he had normal eyesight but was also aware of the device’s contents. It wasn’t like he suddenly had a list of everything. Instead, he sensed that there was just a LOT of stuff with ghostly images of different items scrolling past in a blur, far too quick to catch. He tried to focus on individual objects among that background of stuff, and various things came into focus. It was just so much random stuff like an extensive wardrobe, musical instruments, some shiny round stones, and much more.

Please just give me something to cover my fiddly bits!

His attention snagged on a familiar shape, pulling it back into focus before it could vanish.

Would you like to equip [Pants]?

“Yes?”

He immediately felt a weight down below. Looking down, he saw some off-white pants with a drawstring belt. He brushed his hands over the linen-like material like the pair Lugh wore under his bathrobe. Eli frowned at the lack of pockets, then smiled. It wasn’t like he needed pockets with his shiny bracelet.

He had seen other clothing that Lugh had stuffed into the bracelet. With this image in mind, Eli quickly tried to search through the DS again. Now that he had an idea of what he wanted, the items came quickly to hand. In moments he had a pair of black leather boots, a pale blue linen shirt, and something that appeared to be socks but were far longer. He’d also found some strange underwear that was more like bikini bottoms with ties on the sides, except made from an off-white cottony material. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever worn, but he didn’t plan on going commando either.

He figured out some limitations as he couldn’t just equip the underwear. When he tried, he got an error telling him to unequip the pants first. The same was true for the long socks and shoes. Feeling a bit silly, he unequipped the pants and was naked again. A moment later, the underwear appeared on his body with the ties already in place. His new pants immediately appeared. Lifting a foot off the ground, one of the long socks materialized with a boot following. With a big smile, he gave his other foot the same treatment.

His mind was awhirl with the possibilities. The ability to throw on clothes or armor with only a thought seemed huge. He’d have to experiment with the function later to see if there were other weird rules or restrictions and looked around the tree’s big root again. The bonfire was now a dark, wet mess under the rain. Where the robed cult folks had been, they were all lying still on the ground, though their intended victim was at least moving a bit while pulling at her bindings.

He cautiously walked towards the large stones, the wet earth underfoot slippery in his new boots. Eli idly wished for a walking stick as he carefully stepped down the short grassy slope, his eyes on the ground watching for any pitfalls. He almost signed in relief at not falling once he reached the flat ground again. The area outside the stone circle had a different kind of long grass poking up even under the continued rain. Still, it was sparse enough that he could detect anything liable to trip him on the way to helping the woman.

He looked up at the structure, but the floating lines had disappeared. “Guide, turn on tracking systems,” he said, unsure why Guide would turn it off without his command.

Thin lines appeared to point out various details such as projected size, dimensions, material, and more to Eli, much more than he could comprehend. The program was just making educated guesses based on the local database, which was limited. The results showed the stones as mostly unknowns except for the projected dimensions. It seemed to be the case for almost every object in his vision, which was quickly overwhelming. Even the individual leaves blowing in the wind had details with mostly a bunch of “Unknown” or “ERROR.”

Eli considered his next words carefully. Clear instructions were essential with Guide as it was a literal machine. There was some play in the instructions, but better to err on the side of caution here. The Beta engineers had repeatedly stressed Guide’s inability to interpret some commands.

“Guide, filter out projected non-biological or vegetation targets in my vision. Maintain the filter continuously until told otherwise. If anything dangerous is detected, whether biological or not, warn me immediately.”

Most of the notifications, lines, and notes disappeared. There were now highlights around the people on the ground and the woman tied on the center stone. It was eerie, though, as, without the other distractions in his vision, he could see just how still everyone other than their victim was. There was a stillness in death that he could never forget, especially as the bodies closest to him were very clearly dead.

The whole scene painted a gruesome tale. Eli looked around the edge of the stone on his left, where one of the bodies lay crumpled. He wasn’t sure whether it was a man or woman with their thick, long robes, but the hood had fallen off. The face looked horrible, all the moisture sucked out and leaving a husk behind. Even the eyeballs were like dark dried fruits that had cried black tears or applied thin face paint with the tiny dark lines running down their cheeks. The mouth was pulled back as if trapped in a shout, the teeth almost protruding from dried gums.

How could a thrown rock cause this?

No other hoods were off. Deciding to scratch that curious itch, Eli went to the closest other body. The corpse might be a woman based on the long dress peeking out from the bottom of the robe. Dried shriveled legs ending in fancy slippers, and the indistinct shape hidden inside didn’t help. The person lay sprawled on their side, the fingers of their right hand still clawed into the ground to escape whatever happened. He saw the same desiccation after pulling the hood back off their head. Unless men wore makeup in this culture, which was a distinct possibility, it was a woman.

Eli heard a muffled sound behind him, back towards the center of the stones. A warmth flushed his face, and he wanted to smack himself for his inability to focus. Reminded of the victim and her predicament, he moved toward the bound woman. He glanced up at the clouds, the feeling and sound of the rain suddenly slackening off. Above him, an almost imperceptible change in colors made him think that the eye of a storm was overhead, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d try to get the woman under some cover before the rain returned.

Reaching the platform, Eli found water still dripping off the stone’s edges to further soak the already slippery ground. Careful of his footing, he noticed that the platform wasn’t flat like he’d first thought. Instead, the woman was in a rounded cavity with water streaming past her shivering body.

Her long dark nightgown was in rough shape. It might have been brown at some point, but he couldn’t be sure with the poor lighting. Someone or something had torn the clothing near the hem, but not completely. The garment had seen better days, and those days were well in the past. At least it kept her covered, though the soaked fabric hugged her frame.

Trying not to stare at the poor woman’s body too closely, Eli saw that she had a strange gag that wrapped around the lower half of her face. It wasn’t makeshift, as it looked specially made with leather. Her eyes were open as she looked around, locking onto him as he came close. She tried to move away from him, jerking on the ropes, but she didn’t move very far. They’d tied not only her arms and legs but also around her waist. The bindings there were pretty substantial and attached to the stone. The woman tried to flinch away again as he reached around, carefully shifting her long dark hair out of the way so he could see the gag better. He found a clasp and release under her right ear. Flipping the clip up, the straps loosened on the gag, and he pulled it off. As he did this, she spat out some cloth or something she’d had stuffed in her mouth.

“Foosh, chan ale barashed! Athare foosh, coodick mi!”

New Language Detected

Processing…

Language not recognized. Please increase sample size

She continued to talk to Eli, or more like plead. He stood there for a few moments but finally noticed Guide’s message. Trying to make calming gestures, he lifted both empty hands up to show he wasn’t a threat while she continued to plead with him.

“Foosh, chan ale barashed! An detugean tu mi?”

Language origin detected

Lurran derivative recognized

Installing projected updates to the existing language set

Please note that certain irregularities are possible

Continued exposure to this language will improve data and extrapolation

“No barhust. Please!” said the woman, the sounds forming into recognizable words. There was a strong, strange accent as the software tried to lock down the drift in sounds, but it was understandable. Of course, it helped that Guide also typed out the translation in his chatbox so Eli could just read along.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. Heck, I could use your help too. Let me try to get you free.”

Eli started working on the bindings, quickly discovering that someone had apparently designed these ropes and the central platform for this purpose. The sacrificial altar, which this clearly was, had seen a lot of use – loops for the attached bindings were chiseled directly into the stone. Like the gag, a simple pin held the ropes at the fastener points. Soon, he had released the pins and loosened the loop around her waist that held her down.

“There you go. Are you okay? Hurt anywhere? What’s your name?” Obviously, she wasn’t okay, but everyone reacted differently to tragedy and trauma. He just wanted to be sure she was tracking, didn’t have hidden injuries, and that kind of thing.

As soon as she was loose, she rolled right off the stone to the other side, apparently trying to get away from him. Unfortunately, she must have been tied up for a while and lost circulation in her limbs. She rolled right off the stone, and there was a wet thump as she landed on the soaked ground on the other side.

He winced. The drop was only about a meter, but it still had to hurt.