The night air whistled wildly past Philip’s wooden clown mask as he soared high above the city roofs.
Behind him, the lower district was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Warning bells were blaring from high watchtowers, glowing red signal flares were shooting into the black clouds, and hundreds of imperial guards were blowing brass whistles as they flooded into the streets below.
"CONTAINMENT BREACH!" guards were screaming from the watchtowers. "THE CLOWN HAS BROKEN THE BARRIER! HE IS FLYING WEST!"
Philip landed on the steep slate roof of a three-story bakery with a heavy, sliding thud.
He tumbled three times across the cold tiles, grabbing a stone chimney with both hands to stop himself from sliding off the edge into the dark alley below.
"Ow, ow, ow," Philip groaned, clutching his ribs under his tunic. "Fuck... double dragon powder equals double recoil. My lower back feels like a crushed mana core."
He quickly scrambled up to the top ridge of the roof, ducking behind the shadow of the chimney.
Down in the street below, Captain Elias was riding a tall black warhorse, shouting furious orders to twenty mounted paladins who were galloping through the narrow streets.
"SEAL ALL CITY GATES!" Elias roared, his face illuminated by burning torches. "DO NOT LET HIM LEACH THE OUTER WALLS! USE DEADLY FORCE IF NECESSARY!"
Philip watched the mounted paladins sprint past the bakery, his eyes narrowing behind his wooden mask.
"Deadly force," Philip whispered to himself, a cold shiver running down his spine. "Yeah, I knew it. ’Golden palace’ my ass. They were coming to turn me into a lab rat."
In his past life back on Earth, Philip had seen plenty of dirty cops and corporate suits talk big about ’helping’ people, right up until the handcuffs clicked shut.
He knew how empires worked. They didn’t like wild cards. They didn’t like street kids who could blow up their magic barriers and heal people without paying taxes.
"Time to leave town," Philip decided instantly. "This city is officially burned."
He checked his leather travel bag. His powder supplies were sitting safely inside, though he only had enough dragon dust left for maybe two big jumps.
He tightened the straps of his bag across his shoulders, checked his boots, and looked out toward the massive western horizon.
Surrounding the entire capital city was the Grand Imperial Wall.
It was a colossal, stone barrier over one hundred feet tall, built out of smooth, solid granite blocks and reinforced with glowing anti-monster runes.
Beyond the high wall lay the forest, a massive, unmapped wilderness that civilized people avoided at all costs.
"The gate is definitely blocked," Philip thought, watching three dozen heavily armored crossbowmen stack sandbags in front of the main western archway down the road. "Which means the only way out is over the top."
Philip slid off the bakery roof, dropping soundlessly into a pitch black alleyway behind a row of wooden stables.
He moved through the dark side streets like a hunting cat, staying entirely in the shadows.
Whenever a guard patrol marched past holding torches, Philip would flatten his body against the damp stone walls, holding his breath until the heavy iron boots faded into the distance.
Ten minutes later, he was standing at the base of the massive western outer wall.
Looking up from the ground, the granite wall looked like a vertical mountain made of smooth dark stone.
Every fifty yards, high guard towers poked out from the top edge, equipped with giant iron ballistas that could shoot spears through a dragon’s skull.
"Alright," Philip muttered under his mask, patting his leather pouch. "One big jump to clear the stone, and one soft landing on the other side."
He dipped his fingers into his waist pouch, pulling out his very last pinch of the mixed dragon-jump powder. It was a dangerous, volatile mix of dragon scales, thunder cores, and green leaping herbs.
He unstrapped his wooden clown mask slightly, tilted his head back, and snorted the entire pile right up his left nostril.
SHOOOOOOOOOP!
Philip’s legs didn’t just glow; they turned into two blinding pillars of golden electrical energy.
The stone floor under his leather boots began cracking and crumbling into fine grey dust from the sheer compressed pressure gathering in his thigh muscles.
"HOLY SHIT!" Philip gasped, his voice vibrating violently. "TOO MUCH LEAP POWER! WAY TOO MUCH LEAP POWER!"
Before he could even attempt to vent the energy, two guards on top of the high wall looked over the stone edge, spotting the bright golden glow in the dark alley below.
"Halt down there!" a guard screamed, pointing his crossbow. "Identify yourself!"
"NO TIME TO CHAT MOTHERFUCKERS!" Philip screamed back.
Philip squatted down low, clenched his teeth tight, and unleashed his leg muscles!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The ground under his feet exploded into a ten-foot wide crater!
Philip was launched straight up into the air like a space shuttle rocket.
The sheer acceleration was so violently fast that the two guards on top of the wall only saw a golden streak of light shoot past their faces at two hundred miles an hour.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!" a guard shrieked, dropping his crossbow in terror. "A METEOR IS FLYING BACKWARDS!"
Philip cleared the top of the one-hundred-foot outer wall by an extra eighty feet, soaring high through the freezing clouds above the capital.
For three glorious seconds, he hung upside down in the night sky, looking down at the entire illuminated empire spread out beneath him like a tiny toy village.
He could see the burning junkshop, the grand palace on the hill, and hundreds of tiny torchlights running through the streets like angry ants.
"BYE BYE IMPERIAL CAPITAL!" Philip yelled into the wind, giving the city a two-finger salute in mid air. "THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES AND THE DRAGON SCALES!"
The arc of his jump peaked, and gravity snatched him back down.
Philip began falling at extreme speed toward the pitch-black ocean of dark green trees stretching out beyond the outer walls.
"Okay! Landing control!" Philip shouted, pulling out a small sachet of green floating dust and taking a quick sniff mid-fall.
A gentle green breeze wrapped around his waist, slowing his falling speed from a fatal drop to a soft, floating descent.
He floated down through the thick canopy of old oak trees, his boots touching the soft, damp moss of the forest floor with a gentle, silent step.
Philip stood up straight, brushing dirt off his tunic and taking a long, deep breath of the cool, crisp forest air.
There were no warning bells out here.
There were no shouts of imperial guards, no anti-magic barriers, and no fat junk dealers trying to sell him out for ten thousand gold pieces.
Philip pulled off his wooden clown mask, wiping sweat off his forehead and letting out a long, satisfied laugh.
"I made it!" Philip laughed softly to himself, shoving his mask into his bag. "I actually made it out. Those imperial morons are probably still searching the taverns for me."
He looked around the surrounding woods.
The forest was completely pitch black. The thick canopy of ancient trees blocked out all moonlight, leaving him standing in absolute, suffocating darkness.
The air smelled strange out here, thick with the smell of wet earth, rotting wood, and a heavy, pungent musk that smelled distinctly like wet dog and dried blood.
"Man, these woods are pretty dark," Philip noted, reaching into his pocket for a torch. "I should probably find a nice cave to sleep in until morning."
What Philip did not know... because he was a street man from New York who had spent his entire fantasy kid life sleeping in a cellar in the lower district... was the official name of the woods he had just jumped into.
This was the Black Beast Forest.
It was a dangerous, unmapped death zone that the empire had fortified with a hundred-foot wall specifically to keep the nightmare monsters inside. It was a lawless hellscape home to bloodthirsty war packs, giant flesh-eating beasts, and violent monster tribes that ate humans for breakfast.
Right on cue, two tiny yellow eyes snapped open in the thick dark bushes ten feet in front of Philip.
Then two more eyes opened to his left.
Then four red eyes opened in the low branches above his head.
Deep, guttural growls began vibrating through the damp earth under Philip’s boots. The terrifying sound of heavy wooden clubs dragging across wet stones and sharp iron cleavers being scraped together echoed from all directions in the darkness.
Philip stopped searching his bag for a torch. He froze in place, slowly raising his head.
"Uh..." Philip said into the pitch black night. "Is that a very large dog?"
A massive, eight-foot-tall grey dire wolf with razor sharp teeth stepped out of the bushes, drool dripping from its black jaws, while behind it stepped three giant green-skinned Orcs holding heavy spiked maces.
Philip blinked, staring at the monster pack in complete silence for three long seconds.
"You know what?" Philip said softly, slowly reaching back into his leather travel bag for his dragon powder. "I am starting to think the imperial guards were the easy part."