Volume 1, Chapter 5: A Balanced Breakfast Is a Matter of Perspective (Patreon)

My stomach growled so loudly that I instinctively pressed a hand against it, as though that might somehow muffle the sound. Brigid raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes before drifting a little closer.

“I don’t like… um… cheating, but I’ll try to help. Are you all right? Your body is making funny noises.” She drifted toward my stomach and rotated until her face was almost horizontal, apparently trying to listen to it despite possessing no visible ears. Fortunately, she remained far enough away not to burn me.

“It’s nothing. I just realized that the last time I ate was around noon yesterday, and I’m starving. Naturally, the only things nearby are a talking fireball, sand, and trees that don’t look particularly edible.” I tossed the lighter into the bag and pulled out the crowbar. Slinging the bag over my shoulder, I started walking toward the trees with the tool in hand.

“Where are we going?” my companion asked, and the simplicity of the question stopped me in my tracks.

“Somewhere. Honestly, I have no idea. I was heading toward those animal noises. I need to find something to eat.”

“Goodness, um, gracious. You eat other creatures?” she asked in horror.

“What are you, vegan? Your flames can’t digest meat? Somehow, I doubt that.”

“I don’t know what… um… you’re saying to me.”

“Listen. Can you fly above the treetops and see which way we should go?” I asked, realizing I might be able to use her as a guide.

“Hmm.” She pursed her lips, causing a puff of black smoke to burst from them. “I can’t. I can only fly as high as a human head could reach if I had… um… a body, you know?”

In response, I rested the crowbar against my leg and rubbed my face with both hands, once again unable to believe just how deeply screwed I was. I rubbed my eyes several times as well, trying to make absolutely sure this was not a dream after all. But when I opened them and still saw the dark trunks of strange trees ahead of me, illuminated only by the firelight floating behind me, I decided I was not that lucky.

At least Earth was just as thoroughly bloody fucked as I was.

“We’re all in the same boat,” I said to every human who had remained on the planet, and at the same time to Brigid as I turned toward her. “Listen, Bri. Can I call you Bri?”

“Of course!” Her face lit up, both literally and figuratively.

“If we’re going to work together—and it seems you’re… stuck with me—then there are a few things you need to know about me.”

“All right.” She nodded, and I could not shake the intrusive thought demanding that I figure out how someone without a neck managed to do that.

“Alexander?” Bri eventually pulled me from my thoughts. “Are you still there?” She blinked.

“Yes. I got distracted. So, first of all, it may not be obvious at first glance, but I’m a thief and a con man. I have no problem pretending to be someone else if it helps me get what I want. If that’s too much of a problem for you, then we’ll have to part ways and become competitors.”

“I can handle it!” For once, Bri hadn't hesitated over a single word. That caught me off guard. Once I recovered, I chuckled to myself and continued.

“Second, even though I don’t like where we are or what we’re being forced to do, I have no intention of lying down and waiting for something to eat me or step on me.” I wagged a finger through the air. “I’m going to complete this task as well as I fucking can, with a smile on my face if that helps win anyone over. I like challenges, even if I usually set them for myself, so I’m not backing down from this one either.”

“Neither am I! Hey… um… psst.” Bri pursed her lips strangely and drifted even closer. “Is that why you want to cheat? Is that the challenge you’re setting for yourself?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I haven’t thought about the reason, but I don’t like it when someone has me in their grasp. Let that be point three. Yes. Third, I will never belong in anyone’s grasp. I decided to take part in this—whatever the Event actually is. I didn’t have to do it, okay?”

“Of course!” she replied. “Wait. We didn’t have to? Can I see Earth!?”

“Bri, Bri, Bri, please try to keep up.” I raised my index finger, and once she focused on it, I moved it back and forth to hold her attention. “If we’re going to win, we need a plan. We can’t run around like our bare asses are on fire, hoping we’ll accidentally stumble across the murderer we’re supposed to find.”

“A plan. Right, a plan. What does that mean?”

“It means we need to decide what we’re going to do. First, we find me something to eat and some kind of shelter in case we can’t get out of this forest. Second, we look for a way out anyway, because we need to find the city. It’s supposed to be large, so that shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“You like counting and listing things. Is that important in conversations?”

“No,” I sighed. “But it definitely makes setting priorities easier. In the meantime, as soon as we find suitable circumstances, we need to test our abilities. We’re at a disadvantage here, Bri. Considering I was brought here with exactly what I had on me, some people might have equipment that could tip the scales in their favor even without magic. And judging by you and how badly your Path screwed you over, the magic we’ve been given might also be more or less useful depending on the person.”

“That's true.” Bri's glow dimmed, and she drifted a little farther away from me.

“Keep your head up.” I raised my chin toward her, hoping she'd take the hint. She not only lifted her face until our eyes met—the normal meaning of the expression—but also floated several inches higher, which made me chuckle again.

“I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

“Good. Then fly ahead, and try not to set any of these trees on fire. I’ll follow,” I said, pointing the way with my crowbar. “I’m assuming the investigation will take us at least a few weeks, and that the Greatest didn’t take crime shows too seriously and expect us to solve it all in a single day. That makes me think we may have several months to complete our task. Maybe less, maybe more. We’ll have to figure that out too.”

“Every Gauntlet lasts exactly one complete… um… orbit of the planet around its star. That’s what Molbob said when I asked him.” Bri’s answer surprised me as she floated several feet ahead. Being smaller, she had no trouble finding a path through the vegetation. I had to bend the leaves aside with my crowbar, climb over them where necessary, or duck beneath them. During one such crawl, I spotted several lizards fleeing from me beneath the foliage.

“A year? A full year?” I asked, more to myself than to her, as I pushed aside another leaf. “In that case, we need to determine how long a year lasts here. That’ll give us our deadline.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“The amount of time we absolutely cannot exceed while completing our main objective. Although we’ll definitely need to finish much sooner, because the task we got is complete shit. Not only is it vague, but if I understood the alien correctly, then if someone accidentally kills our murderer before we can identify and catch them, we’re screwed. We’ll never be able to complete it.”

“That’s bad,” she replied before flying onward.

I stopped and let her move far enough ahead that I remained only within the faint edge of her glow. One of the fern fronds to my left was trembling, even though there was no wind and I was not close enough to have disturbed it.

I watched for a moment. Beginning around its midpoint, the frond’s tip gradually bent lower toward the ground, suggesting that something beneath it was moving in my direction and dragging it down with its weight.

When the leaf reached its lowest point and stopped moving, I swung the crowbar with all my strength.

It struck something hard and bounced slightly back toward me. The frond sprang upward, while the animal stalking beneath it crashed into the sand, throwing up a cloud of dust.

“Bri!” I shouted.

Holding the crowbar in both hands, I waited for her to return. Fortunately, her reaction was quick, and her sense of direction was not terrible either, because she found me almost immediately.

“What happened!? Are you hurt?” Her eyes swept over me.

“No. I needed more light.”

Crowbar in hand, I approached a spiny lizard about the length of my forearm. Most of its body consisted of a thick tail, while its torso made up perhaps a third of its length and ended in a small head with a beak resembling a turtle’s.

Its body was covered in delicate, colorful feathers that made it appear somewhat bulkier, though sharp spines clearly protruded between them. I stepped closer and struck it again, this time aiming directly for the head.

“Alexander…” Bri whispered after an initial cry of outrage and disgust. “Goodness, um, gracious! That was horrible! Why did you do that?” She raised her voice again.

I crouched beside my prey. Its flattened skull had become a small mound of sand, clotted with blood, brain fluid, and some other sticky slime. I gently lifted the creature by the tip of its tail, letting those sticky parts part with the rest of the body.

“This is going to be my breakfast, Bri. I’m going to eat it and hope its meat isn’t poisonous. If it is, I’ll hope you somehow manage to remove the poison from me. And, with considerably less faith, I’ll also hope it doesn’t taste like wood shavings and sawdust.” I watched the red blood drip onto the ground below from the severed neck. Then I shifted my gaze from the lizard to Bri. “Although, in your case, that might actually be your favorite flavor. Bri, do you need to eat too?”

“I don’t know.” She widened her eyes and pursed her lips. “How do I find out?”

“I have no idea either. We’ll keep an eye on you. I suspect that if you start fading or shrinking, it means you need to feed on something. Normally, fire requires oxygen and something to burn, such as wood, paper, or dry grass.” I held up the dead lizard and shook it. “You’re in luck today, because I’m going to use you as a campfire for my shish kebab.”

“What?”

“I’m going to hold this animal over you until it’s cooked enough for me to eat.”

“Disgusting!”

“As I said, I have a modest hope that the opposite will be true.” I gave her a wicked smile.

The way we interacted reminded me of the teasing that used to pass between me and the other children at the orphanage where I ended up after my parents died. I spent two years there, suffering the same treatment from the older children and inflicting it in turn upon those younger than me, until Mr. Penrose “adopted” me and began my training.

I missed those simpler times a little.

When Brigid flared with anger or outrage, briefly increasing in size, I noticed movement in another fern frond, this time traveling in the opposite direction. The leaf began bouncing, its tip rising higher and higher from the ground.

Dropping my previous catch, I lunged toward it and swung at roughly the middle.

This time, the lizard was only partially struck. It squealed as it hit the sand, throwing up a cloud of dust. It twisted rapidly within it, rolling from its back onto its clawed feet, then scurried toward another tree as quickly as a mouse.

“Oh no, you don’t!” I shouted, running after it and hammering the sand with my crowbar as I tried to land another blow. “Absolutely not.”

One of my swings finally connected, and the animal stopped fleeing, swaying unsteadily in place. In the interest of mercy, I struck it once more across the head.

With one lizard lying crushed on the ground beside me and the other abandoned where I had dropped it to begin the chase, I set my bag down and pulled out the oversized shirt. Then I collected my prey, wrapped both lizards in the fabric, and placed them inside the bag.

“Killing is horrible, you know?” Brigid said as she watched my preparations.

I kept stealing glances at her whenever I could, making sure she had not decided to burn me alive for my transgressions against her preferred moral order.

“In the civilized world, some people can afford to outsource their killing and violence in general. Executioners put murderers to death in prisons. Judges decide that they should. Criminals sometimes dispense justice on their own terms. Butchers prepare the meat everyone else eats. The truth is, the killing is still there, Bri. Where we are now, there’s no one to delegate it to. We have to dirty our own hands.”

“I’ll delegate it to you, then, if it’s absolutely necessary,” Bri replied after a moment of thought as I slung the bag over my shoulder again. “Do you enjoy it?”

“What, killing?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes and nodded.

“No, I don’t think so. But I have no problem with it if the price of my survival is someone else’s life.” I pointed at my chest with the tool held in my hand.

“Would you have a problem killing me?”

“Yes,” I lied with a smile. “We’re friends, you and me, Bri. The two of us are the only ones in this entire world stuck in the same mess together.” I added what she needed to hear. Deep down, I hoped that, as the alien had said, this would become one of those lies that turned into truth if believed strongly enough. In reality, though, if my survival came at her expense, I was certain I would not hesitate.

“You’re not so bad, Alexander.”

“Call me Lex. If you’re going to use my name, I prefer Lex.”

“All right, Lex!” Bri brightened and shot ahead of me.

I needed to find somewhere away from the trees, preferably somewhere separated from them by some kind of barrier, where I could put my back against something and not have to worry that the owners of those howling voices I heard from time to time might appear and decide to relieve me of my neck—or some other body part—while I was busy eating.

The trees were tall as well, at least twice my height if I was judging correctly through the dense fronds, which began about a foot above my head. Every so often, something moved and hooted among them.

I hoped they were only birds, but in my situation, hope would be the second-to-last thing to die, immediately before me, if I turned out to be wrong.

So, gripping the crowbar tightly, I followed Bri through the dark forest and allowed my hunger to fade into the background, overwhelmed by the sheer number of other problems I currently had to deal with.

“Whichever way you look at it,” I chuckled to myself, “you’re my own personal miniature sun, my dear. Thank you. You’ve confirmed my suspicions—you’re not entirely useless.” I continued teasing her. She needed it if we were going to survive in this hostile environment.

“A sun?” Her entire face flowed through the flames and re-formed on the opposite side of her body. Even the fiery hair reversed direction a heartbeat later. 

“It’s a star. The one closest to Earth. A huge ball of superheated gas.”

“Am I a star too?” she asked as I pushed another enormous frond away from my face.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed movement in the sand and stopped to examine it, but apart from a few shifting grains, nothing alarming held my attention for long.

“I have no idea what you are. More than that, until yesterday, I’m certain there was no one else like you on Earth. It’s entirely possible there still isn’t.” I looked back at her. “Despite what the old man claimed, magic practically didn’t exist on Earth before they took us.”

“Does that mean I’m, um… made of magic?”

“Yes. Like I said, I have absolutely no idea, Brigid.”

“Do you think there’ll be anyone else here besides us?”

“Definitely. Otherwise, this would be an astronomically—pun very much intended—boring show. Why do you ask?”

Once again, sand shifted somewhere at the edge of my vision, forcing me to turn my head.

“I’m afraid the person we have to stop might be from Earth too.”

“The thought crossed my mind, but it doesn’t really change our plan. Like I said, us before everyone else, Bri.”

I lowered my voice, watching the sliding sand and listening carefully. Aside from the distinctive crackling I had already learned accompanied the presence of my personal fireball, the sounds around us had somehow dwindled to the gentle rustling of plants. Both the birds’ hooting and the distant howling I had heard earlier were gone.

“Is something wrong, Lex?” Bri noticed my concern and stopped in front of me.

“I have a bad feeling,” I said.

The sand between the trees to my left suddenly heaved upward, forming two parallel slopes, and a dark shape burst from between them straight toward us.

“Run!” I shouted at Bri and sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me, vaulting over a fallen trunk blocking the way and ducking beneath another overgrown fern frond.