A World With Magic

Riley opened his eyes. He looked around his surroundings and gathered as much information as possible. He was laid on his back, so the most he could do was look up at the bleak gray sky. Yet it didn't look as though there was a single cloud in the sky. He looked to his left, then right, both sides gave him the impression that he was in the middle of a marsh of sorts. The few bare trees that were visible glowed with a darker aura than even those army men that Riley believed he had met a few minutes, maybe an hour ago. The dark purple leaves that blanketed the trees swayed in a way that commanded the black trunk of the trees to twist. Each branch of every tree in sight, seemingly stretched out to choke him or help him up.

He felt as though everything around him was closing in, so he sat himself up. As he did, he heard water splash in the distance. He quickly turned his head in that direction. The trees in his view creaked as they rustled in the howling wind that Riley suddenly felt. He shivered, and hugged himself, that's when he noticed the outfit that he had on. "Ignore that Riley," he thought, "What was that noise? Where the hell am I?"

Riley rose to his feet, stumbling while he did so. His vision was blurry and busy attempting to adjust to the lack of light around him. As he looked around, he noticed a fog in the distance, it methodically crept towards him as he heard yet another splash of water in the distance. His heart began racing as he wondered if he could outrun whatever was making that sound. "Whoever you are-" Riley stopped himself from talking as the sounds he was making sounded like a garbled mess.

"I swear I was just speaking English," he thought, "What is this place? Think back to before... You saw the car crash, said goodbye to friends and family, the army guys took you-" He heard the splashing again, closer this time, which made him jump out of thought and begin moving the opposite direction. "Quickly, after begging to not go to the van. Those army guys teleported. I got injected with something. Then I appeared here. What- What happened between my injection and getting here."

As he ran he started confusing his splashing for the unknown thing splashing towards him. "God, it's getting closer," he thought as he heard a deep screech consisting of a garbled mess that somehow managed to translate in his head as, "Stop," close in on him.

He turned around and stopped. He saw nothing but the twisted purple leaved trees. He heard nothing but his own breathing. He felt nothing but a cold sensation. He tasted dry air that had a hint of blood in it. He smelled a putrid rotten egg like stench as a memory suddenly flooded back into his mind.

The memory consisted of just a voice, he could not tell if it was his or not, but it sounded as though it was accompanied by crying, "Maaaaaariiaaah!"

"Maria? Who the hell is Maria," Riley said out loud, his words morphing into a garbled mess.

*SKEEEREEEE*

"CHOMP! Bite, bite, bite, bite. Chew, chew, chew, chew."

Riley's train of thought stopped as he looked down at his leg. There he saw a leech the size of his leg- no, even bigger than his leg, wrapped around it and slowly ate his knee. He froze as he felt it's rotating sharp teeth gently tear through the military camouflage pants he was wearing. Then to his skin, once he felt his blood dripping he yelped.

"Hey," Riley heard a garbled mess that translated in his head again, this time he knew it was coming from this giant leech on his leg. "You don't taste Galdorerdian. Could you possibly be one of those humans blessed by the white flame? What type of magik do you have? Is it Ice? You're colder than most I've encountered. Maybe fire, your body seems to be heating up a lot." The leech looked up at Riley, it's mouth pulsed as it slowly opened to show Riley rows after rows of spinning sharp teeth.

Behind the teeth was a pale female face, with hair that seemed to go down the body of the leech. The face within the leech opened it's eyes, they were bloodshot and glowed a bright blue. The face grinned, which for some reason reminded Riley of his time on his high school track team. Like the sound of a gun blasting off signaling to go, or the changing of a traffic light from red to green.

Riley grabbed the outside of the leech's mouth and pulled it, the leech immediately unwrapped itself from his leg and squirmed around. Riley's heart skipped a beat, making him let go of the leech before he was even aware that it had let go of him. The leech feel deep into the shallow water, the expected splash of water was instead a drop of rain on a still pool.

Riley sprinted again, faster than he had ever in his life. He desperately looked around his surroundings as his mind juggled between everything, "Magic, government, Galdorerdian, type, blue eyed face? This was just supposed to be military training, what the fuck happened," Riley thought as he struggled to run on his slightly eaten knee.

*SPLASH*

Riley didn't look back, his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness of the world around him. He ran for what he thought was forever (it was approximately 10 minutes). In his mind all he could imagine was that monstrous leech tearing his leg apart, then after forcing him to hop on one leg to run away, the leech would then go for the other leg. It would mock him, he suspected, then give some unimportant lore about the world that he was in. "Maybe he'll tell me about some King," Riley laughed silently to himself and jokingly thought, "King leech is going to order my execution."

Just as the thought crossed him, the fog had cleared just slightly enough for Riley to see a star in the distance. Now that he's seen it, he realizes a fact and replaced his joke with, "I've never seen a sun or a moon at all since I've gotten here," his arms swayed through the air as he frantically tried to speed up toward the star, "There isn't any clouds, does this world not have a sun? But the closer I get to that star- Wait, it's not even a star."

The fog cleared a bit more, revealing a dilapidated lighthouse built with stone and the black wood of the trees that sparsely surrounded Riley. At the top of the lighthouse was a small flickering white flame.

*SPLASH*

"I've been thinking about it human," the monstrous leech whispered as it leaped onto Riley. The leech wrapped itself around his torso, and pressed it's mouth to Riley's face. Causing Riley to fall over. As he struggled to get loose of the leech's grip the leech continued it's garbled speech, "Leeches have 32 brains, did you know that? I'm a VERY intelligent being, you see I got scared earlier, but now I realize something. Insight is what you humans call it."

"I cannot die, I can not die. I can die. Shit, shit," Riley's memories poured into the forefront of his mind. His life flashed before his eyes, as he desperately looked for anything that could help him in the situation.

"Riley," a familiar masculine voice echoed in his head.

"No," he whispered.

"No," the leech responded, "It isn't insight? I believe it is! You're new here, you're a spark waiting to be- to be- Huh. What's the word for it?"

"Riley!" the masculine voice yelled as the sounds of glass breaking overwhelmed him.

Tears flowed down Riley's face, he did not know if it was due to the leech squeezing him or not. "I don't want to remember."

"You don't want to remember what word it was? At least do a good deed before you die human," the leech said as the face inside it laughed.

The spark that lit the flames that was Riley's remembrance, 'good deed', unleashed a memory of his mother from 6 years prior. When Riley was 12 years old, three years after the memory he did not want to remember occurred.

Riley had just gotten home from school, he was drenched from head to toe in sweat and rain. The air around him had a hint of sadness to it that everyone noticed. His mother, who was deep into one of her wine sessions, sat at one of the couches in their living room.

"Riley? You're home already," she asked him. "Dinner is on the table. Rachel said she was feeling lonely today so make sure you show her how to play that Mari Cart game."

Riley walked up to his mom with his head down. Water dripped from his clothing, "Don't get the rug wet, go upstairs and take a shower," his mom yelled as she turned her neck to face her son, "You know the rules mister."

"Mom-" he said interrupting her, "What if I die like dad?"

She was taken aback by his words, and he knew it, this was the first time in years that he managed to get some kind of reaction from her during her wine sessions. The rules he learned very early was to never interrupt mom during her wine session. His shoulders pulsed with pain as images of the day he learned that rule came to mind.

His mom got up, fell to her knees, and hugged Riley tight. "Riley, you won't die like your father. U-Uhm, Y-y-you know. It's like. Shit. Don't say shit; not until your old enough. Wh-Why would you think that you would die- pass away like your father?"

"I don't think I should have been the only one to live in the crash. I-" Riley choked up, "I learned what survivor's guilt meant today. I should have died that day."

"Listen to me Riley," his mom began as Riley felt his body be crushed under the pressure of being squeezed by the leech. Before his mom started her next sentence he heard a whistle in the distance, and therefore in the background while his mother talk. "No matter what you do, you cannot die. You have so much to do in your life. I want to see you graduate college, make lots of money, do a thousand good deeds, anything at all. Just don't die, stay safe, I love you. Now go play Mari Cart..."

"I can't die yet," Riley croaked as the whistling got closer. "I have to live!"

The whistling stopped, "You want to live kid," an unfamiliar deep ragged masculine voice said. Riley felt the leech's grip loosen as it slithered away into the shallow water. The man threw a dagger at the tail of the leech before it could slip into the water.

Riley looked at the feet of the man, he wore cowboy boots. As he looked up he saw the man wearing a samurai kimono. On his sides were a sheathed katana on the right, and on the left a revolver in its holster. Riley curled up into a ball, hyperventilating he laid on his back and looked at the man's face. He smelled dirty; he had drapey brown hair, a nasty shade of a beard, and a cigarette in his mouth. His face was dirtied with mud and some kind of war paint, a white lighting strike that originated from the right side of his forehead to the left corner of his mouth. On top of his head he wore a cowboy hat. On his back was a huge beige backpack bigger than the man himself, who stood at 183 centimeters.

"Yo. I asked you a question kid. Do you want to live or die looking like a bitch? 'Cause you're increasing carbon emission with your hyperventilation dawg, and this world already got a bit too much of it for my taste," the man took a puff of smoke and blew it into the air in front of him.

"Why-" Riley muttered, causing the man to kneel down and bring his ear to his lips, "What'd yah say kid?"

"Why do you look like a customized character?"