Chosen One Protective Services

Rusty would never know just how close he came to death.

There were a dozen Grach in the patrol he was fleeing from, and when the Whooper started its bellowing, flapping display, he was well within range of their bows. And while they couldn't get a clear bead of visibility on him, they saw the rustling of the reeds well enough that they could have easily shot him as he scrambled up the adjacent hillock. And at this distance, their arrows would have had enough punch to maim or kill him with one good hit.

But the fact was that the Grach were spooked.

They thought they had found the campsite of an elf.

The pot was very much their work. They were also the only ones out here that bothered building fires, in the middle of the warmest part of the year.

And the Grach knew elves. They had come to fear elves.

So when the Whooper started up, they dove for cover, each one expecting arrows from above, knowing in their single-chambered hearts that the campfire had been a lure, and they'd been fools for coming this close to investigate it.

Only when it was clear that there would be no arrows, and the Whooper's noise died down enough for them to hear Rusty's blundering, panicked flight through the reeds and weeds and muck, did they realize what was out here.

And one by one, they rose, stowed their bows and blades, looked grimly to each other, and set off in pursuit.

*****

Much later, after Rusty would have a chance to sit down and remember everything in excruciating detail, he would find himself thinking that that particular part of the swamp was beautiful. Grassy hillocks loomed out of the water like bubbles of air in flatbread, full of flowers of all hues. Tall, thick trees draped with splatterings of moss had colonies of tiny, birdlike insects that flittered out as he passed, and swirled in wide clouds before retreating back to their high hives that hung like giant pinecones dozens of feet above the ground. The water was clear and pure, and flowed into increasingly wide streams as he went, carving deeper and deeper between the hills until the light around him was restricted to what little filtered through the canopy directly above; the high walls to either side provided shelter and shade, to the burbling streams that he followed, trying to stay to as southern a route as possible.

And if he'd been fresh, he would have made it.

But Rusty was running on a few handfuls of porridge, less than a canteen full of water, way too little sleep, and a heck of a lot of stress. He kept slipping and falling on the slick mud that was an inch or two beneath the streambed, and hearing the sounds of pursuit behind him.

They didn't seem to be as fast as he was, but he knew he couldn't manage this pace forever. And gasping, and spitting out muck from a particularly nasty fall, he knew that if he kept it up, he'd break a bone or pull a muscle, and then that'd be it for him.

If this kept up, they would catch him.

“We have to hide,” he whispered to Roz.

“Uh, okay. We might need magic to get out of this one.”

“We've got memory, what can memory do here?” Rusty whispered, as he loped down the stream. “You said we might have trouble wiping a person's mind, and there's a whole bunch of them back there!”

“Yeah, I dunno. You made that other thing forget ALL about us. Maybe you don't have to go as far?”

“I'll have to stop to put something together. We need to find a good spot if that's how I need to go,” Rusty whispered.

“Okay, Rusty. You've got until we find a good spot to figure out the plan. Um... no pressure.”

“You're a bad liar!” Rusty shot back, and focused on the way ahead. There were occasional furrows where the stream cut multiple passages in the cliffs, maybe he could duck down one and divert the Grach to—

Rusty lost his train of thought, as he looked down a cross-cut rivulet.

There was a canteen hanging from a fallen log.

Not a thing like the pot, this was a green-cloth covered, obviously aluminum canteen with the words US ARMY emblazoned on it in black paint.

Rust skidded to a stop, sending little fish tadpole things hopping out of the water and to cover, and changed course to run down the new passage, snagging the canteen as he went.

Someone from my world is here! He thought, feeling hope surge up inside of him. Maybe they could help! Maybe they had a gun or something! Maybe...

Rusty shrieked, as his feet slid out from under him, and he half slid, half fell down a drop.

Fortunately the mud at the bottom was soft, and he lay there, stunned and spluttering, in a shallow pool. He got his head above water, gasped...

...and looked over across the pool, to see the corpse.

They were young, about his age. It was hard to tell specifics. Something had been eating it, and a bloody skull gazed at him with eyeless sockets. It was curled into a fetal position, hugging its belly. Its clothing was muddy and torn, but he recognized blue jeans, a puffy vest with white lining trailing at the edge of the water, and a button up shirt.

But as familiar as all that was, as horrific as the body's injuries were, all that paled to the strangeness of the glowing mass of twisting material that extruded from its shoulder. It glowed a dark gray, and formed a symbol that he knew was a rune.

What kind of rune, he couldn't say.

“Rusty?” Roz asked. “I don't think we have time to get out of this little hollow. So it's time for that plan, now.”

Rusty's breath sighed out of him.

He pushed himself up, slowly. He ached from the fall, but there was no time. Nothing seemed broken, so that was good. Wow, I'm glad that rune healed me up. It would have been bad to land with that shot arm the way it was before.

Rusty looked around. He was in a little rock-walled hollow, about ten below the ground above him. The water from above spilled into a small waterfall, that had formed a shallow pool here, that streamed out through small holes in the rock wall across the way. Too small to pass through, he thought. He could maybe squeeze, given time and enough mud, but the Grach sounded only minutes away, at best. Not enough time. Though there was plenty of mud, his fall had churned up a ton of it from the bottom of the pool.

And that gave him an idea. A gruesome one, maybe, but it might work.

Rusty slogged over to the corpse, whispered “sorry,” and dragged it into the center of the pond. He arranged it face down, floating in the water, waited until it sounded like the Grach were practically on top of him, then took a deep breath and dove.

It wasn't a deep pond.

And it was easy enough for him to grope around behind him, feel the limp and drifting limbs of the corpse, and pull himself under it.

The rune in the body's shoulder bumped him as he went, scraping against his skin, feeling hot and cold at the same time. Rusty clenched his teeth, tried to ignore the sensation. It tingled, and it got worse the longer he sat there, but he didn't dare move.

Voices above, muted by the water.

Something splashed near him. He shut his eyes.

The corpse jerked over him, floated a bit away. Rusty followed it as best he could, slowly, slowly, hoping the mud shielded him from enemy sight.

More voices. Rusty's lungs burned. He pressed his lips together, tightly, held his nose shut with two fingers.

The voices stopped. Rusty waited.

Spots swam behind his eyes, and his throat burned, his lungs felt like they were swelling in his chest. He NEEDED to breathe.

Rusty waited.

Finally, when he could wait no longer, he broke the water, and gasped. He tried to be quiet.

It was easier now that he wasn't touching the rune. Easier to get control of himself, as he panted and sucked air into his lungs, and dared a look upward. Nothing above. Once he'd stopped panting he strained, and heard sounds in the distance. Grach moving away?

He looked over to the corpse, half-expecting to see an arrow sticking out of it. But no, there was nothing. They might have thrown a rock at it, he thought. Just testing to see if they were faking.

Rusty stayed in the chill water for as long as he could, well after the voices were gone and the sun had moved a bit in the sky. Then he stood up, walking through the shallow water and dragging the corpse to the small, gravelly sliver of shore where he'd found it.

There he considered it for a long moment.

“I wonder who this guy was?” Roz asked. “Maybe there's other ways to get to this world.”

“Maybe,” Rusty agreed. “Maybe we can get back...” The idea was tempting. But that would mean leaving Terathon behind, and all those elves he'd talked about. They needed their chosen one.

But still, naked and muddy and battered and hungry as he was, the idea of home sounded mighty fine at the moment.

“Rusty?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you... I mean, could you search him? He's dead, he doesn't need his stuff any more. Especially that rune.”

Rusty swallowed. Now that he was out of the water, and this close to the corpse, it smelled pretty bad. If he'd had anything left in his stomach, it might have tried to escape, but for once his hunger saved him some indignity. “I can try,” he whispered, his voice breaking a little. “Um. Did the rune come out of him because he died? If I die, is mine going to... sprout? Like his did?”

“I think so,” Roz said. “The instructions get a bit fuzzy, here. I get the feeling it's something you're either expected to know already, or something they figured you wouldn't need an explanation for because you'd be dead.”

“Is it... safe to absorb it? Terathon had two runes,” Rusty looked at the symbol. It looked like one of those visual puzzles, what did they call them? Optical illusions, his now-perfect memory supplied. Every time he looked at it, it seemed to shift between two or three different shapes. He could vaguely keep up with it, and he expected that was only due to the spells he'd cast on himself.

“I don't know if it's safe to absorb it,” Roz said. “I get the feeling that runes are kind of not safe just by the whole 'you have to jab them into you to trigger them,' bit. But it's more magic, and more is good, right?”

“You're not wrong,” Rusty said, and before he could lose his nerve, he reached out, snapped off a long line from the pattern, and sunk it into his own right shoulder.