Isekai-eh Chapter-42 (Patreon)

The storm had caught up to them, just as Jed had expected it to.

Thankfully, just a literal storm and not the group of marshals.

It had caught them on a stretch of dusty road that quickly turned to mud. Despite having plenty of experience riding a dirtbike through such conditions, they found shelter in an abandoned house a short ways up the hill.

The warp-stallion, as it turned out, handled very differently from a dirtbike. For one, it had a lot more torque, so it was less likely to get bogged down. More importantly, it had a tendency to have the front tire bob a bit too much for his comfort when only the back got mired in the mud.

“Made good time,” Gwen said from over his shoulder as he pulled up in front of the abandoned house. “No way they’ll catch up if we can keep her fed.”

“Yeah. If,” Jed said as he pushed down the kickstand, surprised at how similar it was to one back home. The controls were nothing like what he’d grown used to with his bike, with acceleration being handled by a sliding switch of all things. At least it didn’t move unless he pushed it.

“Don’t be like that,” Gwen said, shaking his shoulder. “They got this close…” she said, leaning over, her lips brushing against his. “And then… whoosh,” she said, stepping back and throwing her arms wide.

Jed chuckled, feeling the strange weight that’d been pressing down his shoulders since he’d seen that man ease a little.

They investigated the house, confirming it was as abandoned as it looked. With some old sheets they found in an upstairs closet they made a bit of a sheet fort near the fireplace on the ground floor, stringing them up to keep in the heat of the fireplace. Further investigation revealed that the wood supply had been left intact as well, if half-depleted. Jed didn’t even half to break anything down.

Soon they had a toasty little fire going and Jed slipped off to sleep, Gwen not long behind him.

The rain stopped halfway through the night. Due to their earlier than planned nap, they decided to set out. In the post rain darkness, everything felt surprisingly bright, the light reflecting off distant parts of the ring illuminating their path.

“What do you think made them abandon their home?” Gwen asked as they looked out over the rocky terrain. A short ways back, it had mostly been trees, but those had cut out like they’d rolled over a line on the map into a new zone in a video game.

“You mean the place we stayed? Didn’t seem like there was any damage. Maybe the farming was bad? Or the owners just got old,” Jed said, shrugging. Wasn’t like there’d been any photo albums or books to read through. Other than the sheets and firewood, the place had been empty. “Or maybe they’re like us, got a case of hot foot and had to hit the road.”

“Hot foot, huh?” Gwen asked, squeezing him tighter for a second.

“Sure, on account of us needing to keep moving forward, otherwise our feet’ll get too hot,” Jed said, doing his best to sound sage and wise, something the constant wind was doing its best to ruin.

Gwen laughed, then leant her head against his back, signaling the end of the conversation for the moment. He didn’t mind. It felt like they were getting more comfortable with each other’s silence. Something that had taken him and Mythlyn a few years.

The fact Mythlyn had been trying to get him killed at times during that first year probably played a role in that.

They rolled through a couple empty ghost towns, vaguely following the direction of the river, but mostly just making their way ringwards.

More than once, he took advantage of the empty fields to test the limits of the bike, going into power slides, break stands and popping the front wheel, Gwen whooping along behind him the whole time.

For science.

Afterwards, he’d simply line back up with the ring, then start forward again. Jed was discovering it was difficult to get truly lost with Tersue Reng always hanging in the sky.

Especially since each direction was notably different. While there was an abundance of climates in either direction, behind them, it was almost arranged in stripes, like the rungs on a ladder, with blue, brown and green all clumped together. Ahead, the terrain was more broken up, with what he was pretty sure were white capped mountains in the near distance, and at least one smoking volcano beyond.

The barrier peaks.

Looking at the ring from a distance, the dark triangles with glowing spots and edges of white were the most regular feature. The inhospitable homes of the maintenance drones, between which each hex narrowed to a point, the Infinite flowing between.

“Ever think we’ll climb one,” Gwen asked a while later, head on his shoulder.

“What? A barrier peak?”

“Yeah,” Gwen confirmed with an extra squeeze, as if to emphasize.

“If you want to, I’m sure we can figure it out,” Jed said, wondering what sort of equipment they’d need. Hunters were more durable than humans, but the deeper peaks were too high for the atmosphere of the ring, as he understood it. Which meant they’d need to bring their own air. Maybe it’d be easier to-

“Say it out loud.”

“What?” Jed asked, adjusting the warp-stallion to take them around a broken section of road.

“You were thinking about it, right? What we’d need to do to climb one,” Gwen said, flicking her hand roughly in the direction of the peaks. “Don’t keep it to yourself, tell me what you’re thinking, partner.”

“Sure,” Jed said, taking his hand off the bars just long enough to squeeze hers. Then he proceeded to break down the problem as he saw it, and they started discussing possible solutions, together.

Despite the effort to be heard over the wind, Jed found himself enjoying this too. It was something he and Mythlyn hadn’t really shared. Despite their years together, they’d rarely worked on anything collaboratively.

Even now, Mythlyn was keeping to herself, even though she’d have an easier time being heard than either of them.

They spent nearly a week traveling the slowly growing foothills as the got closer to the barrier peak.

Not all their time was spent on the warp-stallion. Neither of them wanted their skills to get rusty, nor to spend all day on the machine.

Plus, there was a lot to see.

So they took breaks whenever anything interesting came along.

Bunch of trees that had fallen along the canyon? Break to practice her pistol work while he played with warp-fire.

Clump of boulders that looked like they’d been thrown into the air, then grown together and decided to impersonate a tree? Perfect spot for a picnic and testing how well Jed could use his portals to play hopscotch.

The ominous cave with blood leaking out the entrance? Yeah, they went inside and cleansed the demons. And after, they’d spent the afternoon relieving tensions. Which included more massages than usual, though Jed had hardly been complaining.

Eventually their adventures over the open plains came to an end as they were practically forced to travel on the road that ran along the river by the most interesting and terrifying thing they’d come across yet.

A massive gap in Tersue Reng.

“I didn’t realize it was this bad,” Jed said, slowing the bike to a stop as they reached a rise. “That’s got to be hundreds of kilometers deep.”

“Still got lots of ring left,” Gwen said, gesturing in the other direction, where, sure enough, there were likely a couple thousand kilometers of ring.

“Yeah. But it was never supposed to get this bad. There are…”

“There are what?”

“There are measures in place. It’ll get better, eventually,” Jed said, gaze shifting upwards along the ring in front of them. How many of those dark patches were sections that were just missing, instead of forest or deep lake? He supposed he could pull out his rifle and count.

“Right. You fixing the Eye. Honestly, that part of your story is a little hard to believe, even with a literal archangel backing you up,” Gwen said, hand moving down to where Mythlyn sat on his waist. “You lived in heaven, then came to Tersue Reng after fixing Tersue’s Eye.”

“Fell out of the air and landed on a repair Roach, don’t forget that part,” Jed said, chuckling as he pulled Mythlyn’s revolver free and sighted down it along the empty trail. “Used Lyn here to hold off them good-for-nothin’ marshals.”

“A most exciting return to Tersue Reng,” Mythlyn sent. “My dear Jed’s aim was so unsteady he missed them by such large margins they could simply turn aside.”

“Did I never mention that was intentional? Figured I didn’t want to kill anyone,” Jed said, lowering the revolver, looking towards the end of the road and the empty void beyond it.

“A likely excuse,” Gwen said, bumping his shoulder. “I saw how bad you were when we practiced.”

“Ha. Fair point,” Jed said, holstering Mythlyn’s revolver once more. “My aim was bad. But I really wasn’t trying to hit them.”

“Unfortunately, I fear he is likely being truthful. Even during your scuffle with the marshals, he hesitated to take their lives.”

“Didn’t slow me down, did it?” Jed said, suddenly feeling a little defensive.

“I suspect you could have dealt with them in roughly half the time, had you resorted immediately to lethal force.”

“Damn. Seriously?” Gwen asked, leaning against Jed’s back, the next words felt as much as heard. “I already felt pretty useless in that fight.”

“He gained access to a fully operational weapon earlier than you, and he had several opportunities to hit them in the face. I suppose it is possible he would’ve failed to land those hits, given his poor aim, so perhaps my estimate was too generous. It was entirely possible, he was trying to shoot them in the face.”

Jed chuckled. It felt like it’d been a while sine Mythlyn had razzed him properly.

“Love you too, Lyn,” Jed said, patting the revolver.

They sat there silently for several seconds before, to his surprise, Mythlyn responded.

“As I do you. Very much.”

“Aw, I love both of you,” Gwen said, pulling Jed into a hug from behind him. Which wasn’t much different than how she usually held him, just with a bit more groping of his chest. “Wish I could hug you too, girl.”

“Yeah, you’re alright,” Jed said, earning himself a rough elbow from his partner.

“What do you two say we hit the road?” Gwen asked, head bopping against his as if to redirect his attention. “See where it takes us.”

“More of a trail than a road,” Jed said even as he brought the bike up to speed, the warm rumble of the RDR engine rising as they pulled away from the gap. Then he spotted smoke rising. “Speaking of, is that a town?”

“Looks like. What do you say we stop and get ourselves something decent to eat, partner?”

“I say… it sounds like you’re insulting my cooking,” Jed said, smiling as he took them down from the high road, moving towards the small town situated just off the river.

A few minutes later, they rolled into town. The locals were staring at them with all the warmth of a man thrown out into the snow in his underwear on his birthday. Which was to say, not a lot.

Just on the edge, the town had a dock, and even a waterway flowing past that led to the Infinite, which lay no more than a kilometer downstream.

It seemed weird to Jed that they’d chosen to set up so close to the Infinite without being on it, but he wasn’t going to judge. In fact, if anything, he wanted to learn why.

What was the point of exploring if they didn’t investigate the weird and mysterious along the way.

That line of thinking is what led them to the house on the edge of town, one that the locals claimed had been haunted for the last few years.

Even as they stood there, the shutters slammed open, the door creaking ominously to the side, and candles that should have burnt out years ago flared to life.

“Oh hell yes,” Gwen said as she pulled her revolver, spinning the cylinder before locking it into place. “One haunted house. Just what the Hunters ordered.”