ONE
There isn’t an explosion. No flash of light. No dramatic warning.
The ground simply vanishes.
Pain explodes through my shoulder.
The impact knocks the breath from my lungs as I tumble down a steep embankment. Branches lash my face. Rocks dig into my ribs. My ankle twists painfully before another collision sends me rolling again.
I finally come to a stop against a fallen log.
For several long seconds, I can’t breathe. I lie there staring upward, waiting for my lungs to remember how they work.
Eventually, air rushes back into my chest. It hurts. Everything hurts.
“Well,” I wheeze. “That seems medically concerning.”
The words vanish into silence.
Not hospital silence.
Not city silence.
Forest silence.
Which honestly freaks me the fuck out. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t hear a yell, a cry, or a siren wail.
Hospitals aren’t quiet places. Even at three in the morning, there’s always something happening.
Machines beep. Phones ring. Someone invariably decides now is the perfect time for a medical emergency.
This silence feels wrong.
Like the world is holding its breath and waiting for something to go horribly, spectacularly sideways.
Slowly, carefully, I sit up.
The first thing I notice is that my scrubs are ruined. The second is that the sky is green.
I blink.
Holy shitballs, the sky remains green.
I blink again.
Yep. Still mothertruckin’ green.
“Right.”
I stare at it for another few seconds before deciding that if the sky is green, I have bigger problems than understanding why the sky is green.
My doctor brain takes over: assessment first. Existential crisis later.
I flex my fingers.
Good.
Move my wrists.
One hurts, but it’s not broken. It’s likely just sprained.
I prod my ribs, and immediate regret follows. They’re definitely bruised and hurting like a bastard with a personal vendetta.
My shoulder aches fiercely, but I can move it.
Nothing feels broken. Nothing appears to be actively bleeding. I might have a mild concussion, but at this point, that feels like the least interesting thing happening.
Satisfied I’m unlikely to die in the next five minutes, I finally look around properly.
The forest is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Massive trees stretch towards the strange green sky. Thick vines drape from branches. Flowers glow faintly blue beneath enormous ferns. Tiny lights drift through the air like living stars.
Every instinct tells me this isn’t Australia. Every logical explanation my brain offers sounds increasingly ridiculous.
Drugged.
Hallucinating.
Coma.
Elaborate prank.
Alien abduction.
Honestly, by this point, alien abduction is gaining ground.
A distant cry echoes through the trees.
I freeze.
The sound is wrong. Not because it’s loud but because I’ve never heard anything remotely like it before.
Another cry follows. Closer.
Something crashes through the forest.
Something large.
Very large.
I slowly rise to my feet. My heart is pounding now, but panic still feels unproductive.
I need water, shelter… information. Ideally in that order.
I adjust my handbag, absurdly grateful it somehow survived whatever fresh hell I’ve been dropped into, and pick a direction.
The forest swallows me almost immediately.
I walk. Then I keep walking.
Time becomes difficult to judge beneath the glowing canopy. The air is warm and humid. Strange insects buzz overhead. Once, something moves high in the trees above me, large enough to send a shower of leaves drifting down.
I deliberately don’t look too closely. If I don’t know what wants to eat me, I can’t worry about it. That’s healthy. Probably.
A roar suddenly erupts somewhere ahead. The sound is so loud it vibrates through my chest, and I stop dead. Every muscle in my body locks, and the roar comes again. This time it’s followed by a crash that shakes the ground beneath my feet.
Then another.
Then a shriek so violent it raises every hair on my body.
I should leave. Immediately. Any reasonable person would.
Unfortunately, after twelve years in emergency medicine, my definition of reasonable has become deeply questionable. Because beneath the noise, beneath the chaos, one thought keeps circling my brain.
Something is hurt.
The next impact rattles the trees, and I close my eyes. “Goddammit.”
Then I start running.
Branches whip against my arms as I push through the undergrowth. The sounds grow louder with every step.
Closer.
Closer.
The ground suddenly drops away, and I stumble into a clearing and skid to a halt.
My breath leaves me, because standing fifty metres away is the largest creature I have ever seen, and it seems to be battling a being made out of shadow.
The thought lands with startling clarity, not because I have any clue what either creature is, but because the shadow creature is bleeding and the other is very enthusiastically trying to make that situation worse.
The thing currently winning looks like a nightmare assembled by someone with a grudge against common sense.
It has six legs, far too many teeth, and a body covered in jagged armour plates that glisten beneath the strange green light filtering through the canopy.
The other creature is significantly larger than me—at least eight feet tall, maybe more—but it’s difficult to judge because shadows cling to it, shifting and writhing independently of its body.
Black smoke curls from its shoulders and trails behind it like living mist, and every movement seems to distort the air around it.
Unfortunately, size isn’t helping.
The six-legged horror slams into the shadow beast that appears masculine the more I take in, and biped from what I spot between the curling shadows.
The huge insect-like monster hits him hard enough to crack one of the enormous trees bordering the clearing.
Wood explodes outward in a shower of splinters as the larger creature crashes backwards, the impact rattling the ground beneath my feet.
A startled curse escapes me before I can stop it, my gut clenching when I feel an unexpected pull of sympathy towards the shadow beast. Neither monster appears particularly interested in my presence—thank fuck.
The insect on roids lunges again, jaws snapping, and for one hopeful second, I think the fight is over when the biped catches it by the throat.
Then the beast twists with horrifying speed and sinks a mouthful of teeth into his arm.
The sound that follows isn’t a roar. It’s pain.
Raw, sharp, and unmistakable.
My stomach drops.
Because suddenly this isn’t a monster fight anymore.
It’s a trauma case. A very weird trauma case, admittedly, but I’ve spent too many years in emergency departments to ignore that distinction.
The shadow creature slams the six-legged monster into the ground once, twice, three times, each impact sending vibrations through the clearing, yet somehow the bastard refuses to die.
Which feels deeply unfair considering how much effort is being put into the attempt.
Shadows erupt around the beings biped form, lashing outward like living tendrils. Trees splinter. Rocks crack. For a moment, it looks as though he’s gaining the upper hand, but then a sharp clap echoes from somewhere above them. My gaze snaps upward just in time to see part of the cliff face shift.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
Several tonnes of rock begin to move.
Neither combatant notices.
The six-legged predator is directly beneath the slide.
Unfortunately, so is the shadow beast, who seems entirely focused on the important business of ripping his opponent’s head off rather than the imminent geological disaster about to flatten them both.
I don’t think. Thinking has never been my strongest skill during emergencies.
One second I’m standing there; the next I’m sprinting along the edge of the clearing, searching desperately for anything useful.
What I find is a tree.
A massive dead trunk leans precariously against the fractured cliff face, and the moment I spot the widening crack above it, a terrible idea forms. I hate the idea immediately.
Unfortunately, I also suspect it might work.
The cliff groans again, stone grinding against stone, and panic gives me the extra burst of strength common sense has failed to provide.
I throw my shoulder against the trunk. Pain shoots through my already abused body, but the tree doesn’t move.
“Come on.”
I shove harder.
Nothing.
Another crack splits the air. More rock breaks loose.
“Seriously?”
Planting both feet, I put everything I have into one final push. For a heartbeat, nothing happens, then the trunk shifts, and momentum takes over.
The entire tree tears free and crashes down the slope, striking the unstable cliff face with enough force to trigger a chain reaction.
Stone shears away. Dirt erupts into the air.
The world explodes into noise as half the hillside gives way.
The predator shrieks, a horrible sound that cuts off abruptly beneath an avalanche of debris.
Then silence crashes down over the clearing.
Dust drifts through the air as my chest heaves from exertion. My pulse pounds loudly enough to drown out everything else while I stare at the wreckage, waiting to see if anything survived. For several long seconds, nothing moves. Then, slowly, painfully, the larger creature rises from the rubble.
Black smoke coils around him.
One arm hangs strangely at his side. Dark blood—or something close enough to blood—runs down his chest. And then he looks directly at me.
The intelligence staring back from those red eyes steals my breath.
Not an animal.
Not a beast.
A male.
An injured, terrifyingly large male who understands exactly what’s happening around him.
Every muscle in my body locks.
Because up until this moment, I’ve been far too busy preventing a geological incident to fully appreciate how terrifying he actually is. Those glowing red eyes settle on mine. The shadows surrounding him still. The entire forest seems to hold its breath.
For the first time since arriving in whatever fresh hell dimension this is, one very clear thought enters my mind.
Oh, fuckety fuck, I may have made a mistake.