The Bounty Hunter

The first time I had traveled to the other world was when I was 6 years old.  My family was still living in Texas at the time, and I had been playing alone in my room while my parents were entertaining some guests for lunch.  I was pretending I was a character from an anime I had been hooked on watching and spun around while imitating his transformation scene.  

I felt a weird sensation surge through me as I spun and what greeted me after I had completed my spin was a magnificent panorama of an endless clear blue sky and a sea of green trees beneath it.  I was standing on a large ledge on the side of a mountain which had a small meadow and a few copses of trees situated on it.  There were no animals apart from some birds chirping in the branches. 

Needless to say, this situation was so fantastical that my six-year old self was not actually afraid.  I believed that this was all a part of my imagination so I took a pose and yelled “Fireball!”  At my words I felt a surge of energy within myself and a ball of fire rocketed from my palm, exploding in the air about 30 feet away.  “Awesome! That’s just like on TV!” I exclaimed and I spent the entire afternoon playing with magic until I got hungry.  “Ah, mom’s gonna be mad if I don’t come back for dinner.” I thought, so I hurriedly spun around to get home. 

It didn’t work the first couple of times and I started to get worried.  “How did I do it the first time?” I wondered as I focused on that weird sensation I had felt before.  Suddenly I felt it again and I spun, arriving back in my bedroom just in time as my mother opened the door to get me for dinner.  “What have you been doing for so long up here?”  She asked.  I simply giggled and said “It’s a secret!” 

That mountain meadow became my secret place and I started spending a lot of time playing there.  I would cast all kinds of magic I saw in the anime I watched, and I would run around the meadow while looking at the forest below.  After 3 years, my curiosity finally made me decide to go and explore the forest below.  My constant practice and playing with magic made it easy for me to scale down the mountain. 

Once I reached the bottom I started walking for a little while until I encountered my first monster: a goblin.  It was short, standing about 3 feet tall with dark green skin and a hideous visage.  He had a wooden club in his hand and a filthy loincloth around his waist.  The goblin saw me at the same moment I saw him and immediately rushed me while raising a guttural yell.  I was scared by the killing intent the goblin was emitting and a gout of flame spouted up beneath the goblin, killing it instantly.  The forward momentum led the corpse to sprawl to my feet, where I could see and smell the charred flesh in its entirety. 

I stood in shock for a moment before my senses overloaded and I vomited.  Before I could collect myself, a crude arrow flew from the bushes and whizzed by my shoulder.  I felt pain and saw a decent sized scratch on my shoulder leaking blood.  A group of 12 goblins appeared around me, wielding a collection of rusted metal weapons and primitive bows. 

I quickly turned and reappeared in my room, where a smell of ammonia reached my nose.  I knew that I had wet myself, but I didn’t care as I was too busy crying due to the pain in my shoulder.  Without thinking, I tried to use a healing spell and was surprised when I felt the pain in my shoulder disappear.  I hadn’t ever tried to use magic in my world before, in fact I had subconsciously treated the other world like it was a dream until now.  But reality finally set in and I continued to cry due to the realization that I could have died had the arrow been more accurate. 

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and I quickly tidied myself up with a cleaning charm before my mother burst into the room.  “Sweetie, what’s wrong?!  Are you hurt anywhere?!” my mother asked.  She was an attractive woman, with a tall, elegant figure and silky dark brown hair reaching her shoulders.  Her brown eyes frantically scanned over me, searching for any injuries.  I shook my head and said while I was still sniveling “I had a scary dream.”  My mother quickly pulled me into a hug and started to gently stroke my head while whispering “It’s all okay now, dear.  No matter what happens in a dream, it stays there.  When you are here, it cannot follow you.” 

Those words were exactly what I needed to hear and it managed to get me to stop crying as I looked up at my mother and asked “Really?”  She smiled at me “Of course, the scary things from your dream aren’t here now are they?  So the next time you have a scary dream, be brave because you will always be in a safe place when you wake up.  And I’ll be here besides you too.”  I knew my mother had no clue about my true situation and what I had actually been through, but her words were so spot on and reassuring that the fresh trauma in my heart was already fading. 

What should have been a longstanding scar on my psyche ended up becoming a memory of my mother’s love.  I stopped going to the other world for a few weeks, but soon I returned.  I was determined to be brave like mother told me to and get my triumph over the goblins.  Part of my recovery was also due to my like of hero summoning novels, I had convinced myself that I was like one of those main characters and that I would eventually have to save that world.  Thus, I couldn’t just let some goblins stop me. 

Traveling between worlds has always felt to me like turning a corner.  As you turn, the view before your eyes changes as you walk by whatever was blocking your line of sight.  When I return, it’s like I am going back around that same corner.  So I always reappear in the location I had departed from.  I am also able to sense my immediate surroundings before actually turning the corner, so I instinctually know if there is something blocking me or waiting nearby.  Basically, I can observe the surroundings of the point where I will appear.  That’s why I was able to tell that the goblins were nearby as I appeared in the forest where I had previously run away. 

I snapped my fingers, and a gunshot like crack sounded off in the forest.  I heard leaves and branches cracking as the goblins approached.  They surrounded me, shouting in a guttural language.  I was scared but this time I was ready as several arrows flew towards me.  A wall of wind encircled me, brushing aside the arrows.  I then condensed the wind into a thin line and shot it outwards.  After the whoosh sound of the wind, there was complete silence.  Then the goblins all split in half, along with the trees behind them.  Blood soaked the ground around me and the smell of their entrails reached my nose.  Once again I threw up and then I sat down trembling for a while.  Afterwards, I returned home and ran to my parents for comfort. 

This was the start of a pattern for the next year as I traversed the forest and fought monsters.  I would fight with magic while sometimes getting injured and being scared.  But I would then return home, where the comfort and security along with my parents’ love would heal me.  The defined boundaries I had between the two worlds allowed me to overcome any potentially traumatic events without too many emotional scars. 

Home was safe without a doubt and it was my strength.  Eventually, I became a veteran at fighting monsters and was no longer afraid.  Finally, after a year of travelling I reached the edge of the forest where I came across a small village.  It was here where I would start to learn more about this world, and it was here where the birth of my hatred for it would occur.