So, I didn’t die.

  That would have been a really shitty story, right? A few pages about some dude, his friend named Doug, some butt jokes and BOOM… dead.

  Nah.

  But life as I knew it did. Died, I mean.

  God I guess I can’t help being melodramatic. My bad.

  When I hit the mirror, time slowed even further and as I made contact, I seemed to slip… into it. My feet first, kind of like quick sand, and then my waist, and pretty soon I was flailing as the mirror swallowed me up to my chest.

  I remember looking down and going, “HOLY FUCK, I AM IN THE MIRROR,” or something dumb like that. You’re never exactly the most eloquent or quippy when something otherworldly is going on.

  At least that’s what I’ve found about myself. I’m working on it, though.

  Anyway.

  Into the mirror I went, and a few seconds later, out I popped. I came out, upright, feet first and shockingly naked as the day I was born, onto a lush tuft of moss in the middle of a forest.

  I looked up, saw some towering trees bigger than the ones in Armstrong Redwoods, gave a contemplative nod to no one in particular, swallowed, and then bent over and started vomiting.

  First came the beer Doug had given me, then lunch, and then some things I could have sworn I ate a few days ago.

  When I was done making a pile the size of a small child, I wiped my mouth and stood all the way back up.

  My vision had been a little fuzzy on the periphery, but as I began to regain focus I realized it wasn’t fuzz… it was something else. Was that… text? And a circle with a little red dot. Or no, a red arrow.

  This image appeared down near the left peripherals of my vision.

  I rubbed my eyes waiting for the after image or whatever it was to clear. I blinked twice, and it didn’t disappear. I focused on the little circle and it got bigger in my field of view.

  A circle outlined in white, a little red arrow in the center, and then a little ways away from there a golden star. It looked like a mini map in one of the many, many games Naomi and I played with our friends.

  But it was in my vision.

  And no matter where I looked, it was still there. I brought my hands up to my face to feel for some VR goggles or something, but I just found my face.

  I leaned back over and vomited some more. The map disappeared after the second heave.

  When seemingly last week’s breakfast came up, I wiped my mouth again and staggered over to a nearby tree to steady myself.

  Now, cold as fuck and very aware of my nakedness due to the misty nature of the forest floor, I hugged myself to try to bring my core temperature up. It must have been 40 degrees and I couldn’t tell exactly what time of day it was.

  My first responder brain taking over, I knew I needed to take care of some basics before letting myself freak out more about how I even got here or where my clothes were.

  Then the map came back. But this time, on the right side of my peripherals I saw golden letters:

  New Quest! Find shelter!

  The letters had a little golden star next to the word shelter and I intuited that, that would correspond to the star on the mini map.

  Either I was dreaming, having a seizure, having some sort of end-of-life DMT hallucination, or had been implanted with some weird tech by some crazy rich SF CEO that wanted to hunt me… it didn’t matter.

  I needed shelter, so I followed the arrow.

  As I walked through the underbrush, doing my best to avoid pinecones and fauna, I took in my surroundings. Wherever I was, it was wild. Like, featured on Les Stroud’s Survivorman wild.

  Untouched and full of life.

  The sun played through the thick growth trees, occasionally lighting up a small thicket of bushes as birds chirped in the distance. I saw shapes in the trees, darting about. Must be squirrels or some other kind of tree climbers.

  The ground was covered in moss and occasional ferns. If I wasn’t cold, naked, and had just puked up my entire food roster for the last week… I might have enjoyed it.

  It was peaceful, beautiful, and real.

  None of that bullshit vlogging bushcraft camping dude experience. I was right here. And whatever or whoever had put me here was inconsequential, because for the first time in a long time I was present and in the moment.

  A few minutes passed and the golden star had gotten closer in the mini map. I focused on the map for a second, thinking that I’d really like to know how much further, and then a nearly translucent font appeared in the middle of my vision.

  Distance to target! 30 Meters.

  “Meters? Wait, am I even in the US anymore?” I mumbled under my breath.

  The imperial system is dumb as fuck and everyone knows it, but I grew up in California and wasn’t the greatest at metric.

  Distance to target! 98 feet.

  “Oh, well that’s neat.”

  Those last 100 or so feet I had a lot of questions burning in my head.

  How did I get here?

  Would Doug be looking for me?

  Who would tell Naomi?

  How do I get back?

  All that shit, but then I tamped it down and bottled it away for a time when I at least had pants. My feet, not really hobbit-like in toughness, were also getting a bit scraped up from some of the scraggily roots sticking up in between the tufts of moss.

  Distance to target! 20 feet.

  As I rounded the next towering trunk, I spotted a dancing light up ahead. It looked a bit like lantern light, like a hurricane lamp… contained fire. Which immediately invoked a cozy sort of calm feeling in me.

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  I got closer and saw the lantern hanging off a lower limb in one of the trees. I absently wondered who had hung it there.

  Why was a lantern even making me feel at ease? Shouldn’t I be worried about what it was doing there in the middle of the forest?

  Like seeing a staircase out in the middle of nowhere. My brain warred with the feeling. And then I just kept trudging along.

  Distance to target! 2 feet.

  Two feet? What the fuck? I stepped closer. The lantern was hanging there but I didn’t see anything else. And then new text appeared in my vision.

  Distance to target! Look up.

  So I did. My obedience earned me a smack in the face by a rope ladder hurdling towards the ground.

  “OW FUCK!” I yelled. And then immediately regretted it.

  Not the profanity, the noise.

  As soon as I raised my voice, I felt like the peace was gone in the forest and unseen eyes were now looking at me and my nakedness.

  That earlier feeling of calm and coziness that my brain fought against regarding the lantern seemed a whole lot more notable, now.

  I looked up, not seeing who or what threw the ladder, but increasingly feeling the hairs stick up on the back of my neck… and began to climb.

  The first few steps felt like being the last one in a group in a haunted house. Something… or someone was here. I just knew it. So I resolved to get the fuck out.

  I didn’t make it very far.

  As soon as I got both feet on the ladder and began to hoist myself up to the second step, rough hands pulled me backwards.

  I hit the ground with a thwack.

  My ears began ringing, as my jaw had knocked my teeth together and I was seeing stars. I moved to pick myself back up, but was quickly met with a boot on my chest.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” A voice above me, sneered.

  I didn’t have time to respond, and they didn’t say anything else. Instead, delivering a hard kick to my guts. The other foot had kept me rooted in place.

  OOF.

  The next kick came for my ribs, hitting them with a crack that had me spluttering. And then another, and another. Each kick more savage than the last.

  I could feel a broken rib or two, and blood was coming up in my mouth.

  An occasional fist made its way down to punish my lack of a guard. A few blows landed on my cheek and one on my right eye. I couldn’t see my attacker, as I had already been seeing stars and they were above me with the sun shining behind them.

  They just looked like a malevolent male silhouette, fists clenched and dripping with blood.

  I curled into a ball, trying to protect my head from further torment. I was still conscious, nowhere near passing out, but I was getting beaten pretty badly.

  I looked up again, seeing a bit more of my attacker and clocked a blood red leather looking jerkin, some black pants, and a cutlass dangling at his belt.

  A fucking sword?

  I could take some kicks. Bullied as a kid, I’d had my fair share of beatings. Usually they just walked away after getting their licks in. But this one… this one started laughing.

  That plus the fact that he had a sword, meant I didn’t have a lot of time left to act before this turned more dire. I didn’t know how I knew… I guess it was just instinct. There was a lot of that going around, recently. I set my jaw, and waited for an opening.

  “You little bitch. I’m going to make you squeal.” He taunted.

  At the attacker’s next pause between kicks, taking time to laugh at my misfortune, I prepared myself.

  The next kick to my chest, I caught with both hands and latched on. I rolled to the side, foot still clutched tightly, sending my attacker off-balance and tumbling onto the ground.

  And then I was on top of them.

  Legs straddling their waist, I delivered a right cross to what I hoped was their head and following it up with my elbow. I had seen my friend do the same trick at a bar a long time ago. And though my execution wasn’t perfect, I found purchase.

  My attacker yelped with pain and I felt the warm gush of sticky blood on my fist. The sun moved behind a cloud and I saw the face of a young, 20-something, man with sandy blond hair and a violent look in his eye.

  I didn’t let up.

  My right elbow, now on his throat, I pressed down… hard. I was easily 50 lbs heavier than this kid and by the looks of him, he didn’t lift. He was fumbling with his sword to try to draw, but I wouldn’t let him.

  My knee came crashing down on his balls, earning me another painful squelching yelp. His airway was block by my elbow, but he kept fighting.

  His left arm, completely free, hit me with a few jabs to the gut.

  I just pressed harder down on his throat.

  Then he did something with his right hand that sent me careening up and away from him— that shouldn’t have been possible. He didn’t have the leverage for that kind of blow. But I flew into the air and hit the tree behind me on the way down.

  I managed to stay mostly on my feet.

  The blond fucker, picked himself up off the ground clutching at his broken nose and spat blood in my direction.

  He waved his hands and then I felt my right leg lanced with pain. It was an icy pain, like he had somehow hit a nerve and my leg was going numb. The other shot, of whatever it was went wide and only clipped my shoulder.

  I staggered, only held up by the tree but not left with a lot of options. I didn’t have time to look down at my injuries, but I knew enough about my body that I could keep going… at least for a little while longer.

  This dude meant to kill me, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  He tried to aim again at me, but I was now backlit by the sun. I used that to my advantage and rushed him— nuts out and all— crashing into him with the force of my old days as a back on my school Rugby team.

  I knocked him into the tree that held the rope ladder and his head smacked into the wood of the tree.

  My hands still clutching at his sides, to pin him to the tree, I had no other means of hitting him. So, I used my head. I bashed my skull into his.

  He took the hit pretty well, and brought up a weak guard to protect his broken face. I jerked my arms up in a sweeping motion and knocked his hands away. Instead of swinging with my fists, I reached behind him and grabbed the rope ladder and wrapped it around his neck.

  One of his hands was pawing at my face, trying to get to my eye. The other, I had caught in the rope ladder. I twisted it some more and then jerked down, breaking the arm. His other arm scratched violently at my face, digging his nails into my cheek.

  I bit his hand.

  Blood seeped out of my mouth as he pulled it away. His hand now free, he hit me with another one of those icy attacks. It’s like he was slinging icicles, but I couldn’t see what was going on.

  Everything was happening so fast.

  Blood poured from my right side as something sharp found purchase. I almost slumped to the ground, then and there. But then I saw him reach for his sword with his one good hand.

  So I charged again.

  I was just a few feet away but I drove into him, pushing him up against the thick tree trunk. His sword fell as he tried to push back, but my grip on his body was stronger. Now pinning him to the trunk, I had control and I slammed my forehead into his over, and over, and over again until he slumped to the ground.

  I wasn’t satisfied.

  Though my head was aching, this little fucking prick ambushed me, talked shit, shot me with icicles (is that even possible?) and almost clawed out my eye. I dragged the, still raggedly breathing, man away from the rope ladder and into a nearby clearing. I had him held up by his collar, just sort of dangling there in my bloody, dripping face.

  “What the fuck was that about, guy? Huh?”

  He didn’t answer, just spluttered blood and mewling something.

  I wasn’t looking much better, in all honesty. So, I let him drop to the forest floor. He wasn’t going to do anything, the state he was in.

  I checked my own body, working in quadrants like I was taught. The problem was, every time I brought my hand up to my face… it was covered in blood.

  But nothing deep red. So, no arteries.

  Good.

  I felt a deep hole in my right thigh, blood seeping out. The same with my shoulder. Both were through and throughs, though. Being completely naked, I didn’t have anything to stop the bleeding.

  I risked turning around to look and see if there was anything I could use. When I turned back, my assailant had gotten up, and was trying to teeter towards me.

  He had a look of rage mixed with confusion on his face. Like he was confused why that hadn’t gone his way. I was too, honestly. But bulk usually won out in close encounters like this.

  It looked like he was about to draw his sword, when he tripped on a rock and then fell backwards.

  He disappeared.

  At first I was confused, limping up to see where he had gone. And then I saw it— a camouflaged well with a rotted-out lid. I peered over the top of the small stone circle, and there he was… at the bottom with his sword sticking out of his right eye.

  Apparently, the well was dry, and he had absolutely no luck whatsoever.

  I slumped to the ground, taking a minute to breath. The copper taste of blood was all around me, and I had less than nothing left in the tank. I sent a silent prayer to the gods, old and new, that I hadn’t had to finish him off.

  Murder was gruesome business, self defense or not. Not that I’d murdered anyone. Just… you know… 911 calls in the city.

  I sat there for quite a while until the adrenaline wore off and I was just… cold. Remembering the rope ladder from earlier, I stumbled my way in that direction, hoping that whatever was at the top had some bandages, clothes, and something to eat.

  I was starving.

  Just as I reached the ladder, a semi translucent text appeared in my field of vision.

  Achievement unlocked! Resilient. You have proven you are hard to kill.

  Achievement?

  What?

  I barely registered the implications of the message, just needing to get to safety and shelter. I could think about all that, later.

  So, I climbed.