The blue light grew brighter and brighter, forcing me to shade my eyes with one arm. I felt a strange stretching sensation as my body was pulled in every direction. Time became meaningless; moments felt like hours, and hours felt like moments. The light began to break, strange symbols and characters burning and shaping themselves. Some seemed familiar, others completely alien, but they slipped from my mind as I tried to recall them. After a few minutes, or maybe instantly, the light faded in a rush.

  I found myself standing in a large, grassy field, with muddy brown cliffs to the north and a large forest to the east. It wasn’t like anywhere I could recall; this lush environment with bright blue skies was rare. I must have been somewhere that had been terraformed, a promising sign. There was likely a city or town nearby, since most people wouldn’t spend the money to bring such greenery to somewhere they wouldn’t see often.

  The metallic remains of the portal system surrounded the place I had landed, many of the parts bent, warped, twisted, and partially melted. Something must have gone seriously wrong, although thankfully, my gear and I were undamaged.

  I quickly tried to pull up my GPS map, hoping to find out where I had landed. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed as the screen displayed an unhelpful blinking “No Signal; Out of Range.”

  That was strange. There were over 100,000 active satellites in orbit, at least one of which should be able to lock onto my location. I quickly pulled up my phone, firing off a call to the first contact that popped up. It immediately failed, also showing no signal. Either there was a jammer up, or I was somehow out of range of satellites. This was bad. Without a signal, my operating system was limited in what it could do, and many of the advanced options were unavailable.

  I breathed in the air. It was fresh and clean, lacking the stench of trash, electricity, and drugs that my home city, Dresidon, was infused with; even the nicest parks couldn’t escape it without heavy investment in air purifiers.

  I looked into the bag that Teltech had provided, laying out the items onto the bright green grass to take stock of my supplies. I had the mapping beacon they had provided, although without any way to communicate with it; the repair kit; several bandages; a bottle of painkillers; a wearable air purifier; an electric cooking stove; a flashlight; enough tubes of Nutripaste? (Now with 50% more vitamins!) to last me a week; and a water bottle with a large pack of water purification strips.

  This was much more, but also less than I expected. They likely had the tech to establish a practically self-sustaining habitat that would keep me safe from whatever dangers in this place, but they had decided to just give me basic survival supplies. Not that I could complain. These supplies would be my lifeline while I made my way back to civilization.

  I eyed one of the taller trees and decided quickly that information on the lay of the land would likely be important. I clambered up, some of the smaller branches groaning as they supported the weight of my metal limbs.

  I started to walk, casting my gaze upwards. The sun was slightly below halfway up in the sky, which meant it was either almost or just past noon. I tried to recall any of the wilderness knowledge that I had heard over the years. Something about the sun rising in the east? Or was it west? I normally had my tech, since I very rarely exited the city and entered the deserts that surrounded it, and even then, never into signal-disrupting sandstorms.

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  I repacked the supplies, slinging the air purifier on my back, the mask hanging next to my face, in case, for some reason, the air quality dipped from this wilderness level. I looked around at the forest and cliffs and decided my best course would likely be to follow the plain along the forest until I saw signs of civilization. I would have to be careful in my approach, for who knew what kind of people would create a terraformed location like this and take the effort to set up a jammer, especially if I were carrying mapping technology.

  I started to walk, following the edge of the forest. The terrain seemed to barely change as I walked, the only indication that I wasn’t walking in circles being the shrinking mudcliffs behind me.

  _______________________________________________

  After half an hour of walking, I caught a faint scent in the air. The earthy scent of woodsmoke had started to fill the air. Looking ahead, I saw wisps of smoke curling their way through the treetops, hinting at a campsite up ahead. Seems like this was some sort of executive's private campground.

  I entered the forest, quietly moving towards the location of the fire. Immediately, I noticed the lack of noise. No birds, insects, or even the evidence of larger animals was present. Everything felt like it was frozen in time, synthetically being maintained.

  I heard a wall of noise as I approached. It was a grating noise, sounding like something between a squealing pig and a young child, formed into a language used by a drug-addicted gang member who is on his last legs.

  I quickly snuck into a bush at the edge of the clearing, the noise indicating that my goal was right ahead of me. I peered out cautiously and recoiled at what I saw.

  Squat, green humanoid figures stood around a fire, barking at each other in their rasping tongue. They each wielded small wooden clubs, wore rough brown loincloths and were strangely identical to each other. Only one of them looked different, a slightly taller one with a brown robe and a larger, wooden staff with a strange blue gem inlaid on the top.

  I started to slowly back away, not wanting to get involved with some corporation's idea of a fantasy world, with these genetically modified abominations taking the role of “goblins”. Unfortunately, right before I could fully get out of the edge of the clearing, I heard a human voice ring out.

  “Goblin campsite up ahead! They have a shaman, so watch out for vines and branches!”

  The voice seemed to belong to a young man who was wielding a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. He was dressed in a set of what appeared to be leather armour that faintly glowed green.

  What was happening? Had I run into some sort of extreme LARP that was created by someone who had more money than brains?

  The goblin wielding the staff, who I was assuming was the shaman from the man’s earlier statement, started to chant. These words felt different from the usual language they used, seemingly deeper and filled with power.

  The entire forest came alive. Branches started to whip around, vines slithered off of trees towards the swordsman. Almost instantly, an arrow flew from behind him, nailing the shaman in the head, causing the forest to instantly go back to its previous state.

  Unfortunately, the bush I was in was affected by this strange, for lack of a better word to describe it, magic. It shifted forward, revealing me, before the magic died, and I sat there, frozen as the swordsman looked at me. He looked to be in his early twenties, with short blond hair and blue eyes. I quickly went backwards, hoping to hide in the woods and lose them in the underbrush.

  I heard a feminine voice from behind him, with a similar tone to when the goblin did his forest trick. This time, however, the command was different.

  “Bind!” the voice called out.

  Immediately, I felt my limbs latch themselves to my sides, as a glowing rope wrapped itself around my sides