The sound of something tearing filled the air while a crack opened in front of them.
“Finally” Mike murmured.
“There it is” Zak commented while opening his eyes, seeing the crack.
“I’m not sure where it leads, but I hope this time it’s your dimension.” “Calm down, now we go” Anna ordered while entering the crack first, then Zak and finally the guys.
The sound of the flapping of dragonflies was the first thing that was heard.
Anna opened her eyes better and saw the new dimension where they had ended up falling.
“Great” Anna murmured in a sarcastic way.
Then Zak also opened his eyes, observing the new environment.
It was a world of giant mushrooms and cliffs, while giant dragonflies flew through the skies.
“Wow, this really looks crazy” Mike opined, who had already arrived and was observing the environment.
“I don’t like this at all” Dave murmured, clearly discouraged.
Mike noticed it and approached him while giving him some pats on the back.
“Calm down, friend!
Everything’s going to be fine, just stay close to me, okay?” he asked.
“Okay” Dave answered.
While everyone observed their environment, Zak began to cough and leaned with his right arm on a mushroom.
Drops of blood fell to the floor while he observed them.
Anna turned and saw Zak looking at the ground.
There she noticed it: he was spitting blood, surely from the effort.
“Shit” Anna commented approaching him while handing him a handkerchief that she always carried with her, but almost never used.
“Wipe yourself and get ready, we’re going to look for a safe place because here it isn’t” she mentioned while observing how in the distance two dragonflies flew toward different sides with a kind of orc in the middle, for this one to then end up being split in two.
“Let’s go” she ordered.
The young people turned and followed their way while Mike guided a stunned Dave.
On the way they saw one or another caterpillar the size of a dog, but that luckily didn’t seem aggressive.
“You think giant centipedes exist?” Mike asked approaching Anna slightly.
Anna, without turning around, answered with a serious voice: “I don’t know, but it’s better not to know.” Mike sighed while looking everywhere, alert in case something happened.
Zak observed his surroundings, because everything seemed very confusing and curious at the same time, without overthinking it, like Anna had taught him.
While they kept advancing, out of nowhere Dave’s stomach growled.
Mike kept walking, but turning his head slightly to look at Dave and then at Anna.
“Hey, Dave seems to be hungry.
“Me too, but there’s nothing to eat, unfortunately” Anna answered.
Mike sighed resigned while he approached Dave and whispered in his ear: “Hey, wait a day or a few more hours, maybe we’ll find something to eat.” Dave sighed.
“Alright.” Mike, while advancing, thought that the situation really was bad.
If they kept like this, they would end up dying from lack of energy.
“Hey, by the way, you turn nineteen next month, right?” Mike asked.
“Yes… What’s it like being nineteen?” Dave asked.
“Well, it feels cool, but it’s not that good to have them when you’re lost in the middle of dimensions” Mike answered.
“Haha, I get it…” Mike turned his gaze toward Zak and Anna, who were walking ahead.
“Hey, guys!
How old are you?” he asked.
Zak turned his head slightly and answered: “Twenty years old.” “And you, Anna?” Zak asked curiously.
“Twenty-four years old.
Happy?
Now keep advancing and avoid talking much, or yes you’ll draw the attention of something in this zone” she ordered.
Mike accepted and walked in silence, thinking that with Zak they were only one year apart, but with Anna by five.
It was understandable that her character was more controlled, unlike Zak, who was still struggling with that.
His stomach growled with hunger, but he couldn’t stop there.
Dave was hungry too.
Soon everyone would get hungry.
After all, nobody was some kind of Superman.
“Stop!” Anna ordered while stopping dead in her tracks.
“Eh?
What’s happening?” Mike asked stopping.
The sound of something slimy moving at great speed began to intensify.
Anna immediately looked everywhere and managed to find an underground entrance that seemed abandoned.
“Quick, everyone get in there!” Anna ordered.
Everyone ran and got inside the underground entrance as best they could.
Right when they entered, a large red caterpillar with sharp teeth passed by where they had been standing before.
“Shit, that was close… Seriously, those antennae really help them a lot.
I need those,” Zak thought briefly to calm himself.
“What was that…?” Dave asked while once again going into shock.
Mike noticed Dave in shock and shook him.
“Calm down, friend.
I understand you’re like this, but it’s not time for that” he replied.
Anna approached Dave and with a low tone spoke to him: “I understand you’re like this, but you must keep your composure at these moments, is that okay?” “Alright… ” Dave murmured.
Zak noticed the situation and thought he would like Dave to be treated with more patience by Anna, but before he kept thinking, she turned and looked at him.
“And I treat you like that because you’re already twenty years old, you’re an adult and you must act like it.
Dave and Mike are still just entering the subject of adulthood” she commented.
“Puff, it was true.
After all he would soon turn twenty-one.
But all the same he would have liked that way of talking.
Enough of going around thinking, don’t complain.” “Well, we should get out and… ” before Anna kept talking, a screech was heard behind them.
From the darkness of the underground cave five red ants the size of an adult wolf came out.
Three more also entered through the entrance, blocking the exit.
“Shit… ” Anna thought while gripping her sword.
Mike put himself between the ants and Dave, who was clearly scared despite having his axe.
The ants, without waiting, rushed toward them, the five at once.
Zak dodged an attack, but because he was weak, a fang from one of them reached his leg, tearing his pants and leaving him a wound.
“Shit!” he thought.
Anna, without waiting, rushed with all her strength against an ant that was approaching, managing to crush its head, from which a green liquid came out.
Dave, upon seeing such a scene, was left petrified, dropping his axe while curling into a ball.
“Be careful, Dave!” Mike shouted, powerless to help him because he was fighting against an ant.
An ant ran toward Dave, but before it hit, Zak killed it with a clean axe blow while his face got stained with its blood.
“Shit, how disgusting” Zak said while cleaning himself.
But because he lowered his guard, another ant rushed against him, sinking its fangs into his abdomen.
“Fuck!” he expelled blood.
“Zak!” Anna shouted while running to help him.
With a short sword strike she split the ant in two while its blood splashed everywhere.
Mike, sweating cold and with hands trembling, didn’t stop his attack against the ants.
It was kill or die.
Anna too, each time she launched cuts with her sword, felt like her body was going to faint from fear and danger, but she didn’t stop.
Zak got up with effort, not having his other arm to lean on properly, while spitting blood in large quantities and his abdomen bleeding.
The two remaining ants rushed against Mike, who had been distracted observing Zak wounded.
Immediately Anna ran and managed to cut one, while Mike also reacted and blocked the impact of another, but being thrown against the wall.
Anna quickly launched another cut, but this time missing while the ant prepared to attack Mike.
Zak, immediately, killed the ant with an axe blow while his hand trembled from the effort.
The last ant fell with a wet crack.
Silence returned, but it weighed more than the noise.
You could only hear the ragged breathing of the four and the dripping of the green blood that ran down the walls of the cave.
Mike slid down the wall, his legs barely responding.
He had a superficial cut on the forearm and his chest rose and fell as if it was going to come out of his body.
“We’re… alive” he let out between gasps.
It didn’t sound convinced.
Dave was still curled into a ball, trembling.
He hadn’t done anything the whole fight.
His eyes were fixed on Zak’s blood, as if he couldn’t process that it wasn’t his.
Zak let himself fall to his knees.
The pain in his abdomen burned him alive and the blood wouldn’t stop coming out.
He covered the wound with his right hand, the only one he had left.
“Shit… it wasn’t the moment” he murmured.
His voice came out broken.
Anna got to his side in two strides and knelt.
She tore a piece of cloth from her own shirt and pressed hard against the wound.
“Don’t die now, idiot.
Right when you’re already controlling your portals better” she said, but there was no scolding in her voice.
Just poorly disguised fear.
“I try…” Zak spat blood to the floor.
He felt his head light.
Too much effort, too little time to recover between jump and jump; all that made him dizzy.
Anna looked at the other two.
“Mike, bring the handkerchief I gave him before.
Dave, get up.
Now.
If you stay there you’re going to die of fear or they’re going to eat you.” Mike obeyed instantly.
Dave took two more seconds, but got up staggering.
He had a face pale like paper.
The cave wasn’t safe.
It showed by the smell of mold and by the remains of broken shells in the corners.
This was an abandoned nest, or worse, a nest in use, and they had just killed the guards.
“We can’t stay” Anna said, getting up.
“Zak, can you walk?” Zak gritted his teeth and leaned on the wall to stand up.
His vision blurred for a second, but he didn’t fall.
“Yes… yes I can still” he murmured.
Lie.
A part of him just wanted to stay lying down and let everything stop.
But if he stayed, Mike and Dave would also stay.
And he wasn’t going to drag them down with him.
Anna nodded and put her arm over his shoulder to hold him.
“Let’s go toward the back.
If there’s a nest, there has to be an emergency exit.
Bugs always do that.” They walked in silence, dragging their feet.
The passage got narrower, the air heavier.
Each step of Zak left a dark stain on the ground.
Mike went in front with the axe raised, even though it trembled.
Dave went behind, stuck to him, not letting go of his own weapon this time.
“It works” Mike murmured suddenly.
“Works what?” Anna asked without turning around.
“This.
Keeping walking.
Even though it’s scary… it works.” Anna didn’t answer.
But she tightened the grip on Zak a bit more.
At the back of the tunnel a faint, greenish light was seen, filtering through a crack in the ceiling.
And with it, the sound of wind.
It wasn’t an exit to the outside.
It was a natural crack in the rock that led to a cliff full of giant mushrooms.
Worse.
But it was open air.
Anna left Zak leaning against the wall and peeked out first.
“Clear.
For now.” They went down one by one.
Zak was the last.
When his boots touched the ground outside, his legs buckled and Anna didn’t manage to hold him completely.
He fell to the side, breathing with difficulty.
The world of mushrooms received them with its unnatural silence.
The dragonflies were still up there, patrolling like vultures.
Anna took out another improvised bandage and kept pressing the wound.
“Close your eyes.
Five minutes.
No more.
If you really fall asleep, I won’t wake you up.” Zak looked at her.
For the first time there was no sarcasm on his face.
Just pure exhaustion.
“Thanks…” She didn’t answer.
She just adjusted the bandage.
Up above, a dragonfly that was flying upon seeing them changed direction.
It didn’t see injured people… just one more prey.