Locus

It was different on the other side.

It was almost like walking in the early morning before everybody started heading to work, although it wasn’t exactly like that.  He felt more… alive.  He felt refreshed, and generally better, simply breathing the air.  However, the effect was somewhat muffled, but not completely suffocated, by the sheer amount of hatred in the air. It seemed to seep out of the bleak stones like an open wound.  Gerald felt better than he had before, just standing here, but he knew he would feel better still the more miles he put between him and this god forsaken temple.

Slowly, his fellow “scientists” edged through the portal after him, apprehension weighing down their steps more effectively than concrete overshoes.  Gerald knew they weren’t all scientists now—Richard, in fact, was a science fiction writer.  He ran small runs of his books off of his own press, and offered to give Gerald a free sample if he ever dropped by.

However, that wasn’t his main concern right now.  His main concern was that outside of this abandoned temple was a forest on all sides, so thick as to be almost malevolent in its rampant growth.  Gerald was beginning to wonder if they really were where they thought they were.

As Gerald came back into the stone temple, he was greeted with a scene of organized chaos, and one of the supposed “scientists” trying to get a GPS to work.  He sighed and walked over to her.

“That won’t work here, Ms-“  He paused a moment, trying to remember her nametag.

“Hess, Carlyn Hess, I’m a botanist.”  She was moderately attractive, and her tan suggested that she got out a lot more than Gerald did.

“Ah.  Thank you.  No, Carlyn, that won’t work here because there aren’t any satellites for it to get its position from.”  He wasn’t trying to be condescending, but he was worried that had slipped into his tone of voice of its own accord.

“So how are we going to find our way back here?  I mean if GPS doesn’t work, what good would a compass do if we-“  She was cut off mid-sentence by Rodger, who was carrying some sort of folding pole arrangement that looked like it was for the avid television-watcher on the go.

“With THIS!”  He said and began to unfold the antenna. It looked moderately complicated, and finally unfolded out to about 10-12 feet tall and looked more like something you would place people on as a terrible warning.  “It looks a bit odd... but it’s the most efficient antenna we have ever devised.”

“So how is this supposed to help us find our way back here?”  The device looked even odder fully assembled, but Gerald was prepared to accept Rodger’s word.  Anything that looked that strange had to be the best at something, even if that something was frightening children.

“That’s going to help us with these.” Rodger tossed both of them a device that only had one button and a circle of LEDs.  Several minutes later, after the devices were confirmed to be working and shouldering a pack filled with somewhat strange contents, Gerald and the other civilians set out into the forbidding forest.

It was fairly uneventful in the forest; Carlyn was finding a mix of common and completely new plants.  The plants were not at all interesting to Gerald, but he was polite enough to listen patiently as she talked about them.  It was better than the alternative, which was to think about the empty forest around him. Gerald felt like this place should be teeming or at least creeping with life.  The kind of life you might see scuttling away from the light as you open the door into a cellar.

They were heading to the only landmark visible through the thick undergrowth of the forest a column of smoke in the distance.  They were being led through the forest by a man named Sanat a state park ranger who dressed like an Indiana Jones cosplayer and didn't seem to fit his name too well.  If Gerald would have put a name to him he would have picked Harry.

Apparently this was the first time he had used his machete.  It didn’t look to well-made, Gerald suspected he bought it out of the knife store equivalent of the Wal-Mart bargain bin.  He seemed a little preoccupied with using his knife, so Gerald tried making conversation with one of his comrades.

After a few non-committal grunts he finally caught the name [atuhor name].  He was the kind of man Gerald wouldn’t exactly call short, but would instead describe as a dark haired man who always carried around an expression of mild, narrow eyed disapproval coupled with a suspicion of nearly everything. He also had a beard like he was starring as the evil twin of himself.

“So why are you here?” Gerald asked.

“Lore expert.”

“What kind of lore?”

“This world we are on here.”  He gestured at the area around him and moved back into the stare straight ahead and frown of disapproval that seemed to be the ground state of his existence.

“SO.” Gerald said after a few seconds  “what do you do for a living?”

There was no reply only an unfriendly glance and a noncommittal grunt.

“Do you live around here?”

The look he shot Gerald would have cut glass, and his tone of voice was so icy it almost crystallized out of the air.

“I don’t plan to tell you that.”

Gerald decided to see if anybody else was more talkative and awkwardly looked at the other people in the group.  Rodger seemed busy, Carlyn was preoccupied with the plant life around them.  The only ones in the group that didn’t seem preoccupied was Richard, the rather forward “scientist” from earlier and a man who looked like the most stereotypical accountant Gerald thought he would ever see.

As much as he was curious as to why the accountant was here.  Gerald decided that he wouldn’t make good conversation and opted to talk to Richard instead.

“So why did they bring you along?”

He seemed to think about that for a moment.

“I don’t quite know why they brought me.  I’m a science fiction writer, I run my own press in Black Diamond.”  He shot a questioning look at Gerald who returned it with a blank one.

“Never heard of it.”

“Well if you ever pass by make sure to drop in I’ll give you a free book or two.”

So, in the group were a botanist, a science fiction writer, somebody who presumably worked in a state park, a mysterious accountant, the unfriendly man dressed in black, and Gerald.  Gerald wasn’t sure where he fit into the group, and for that matter, where anybody else fit into the group.

About an hour and a half’s worth of mildly interesting walking later, they came up on an ominous-looking tree that somebody had decided to build a house into.  Gerald couldn’t see why anybody would pick this tree to build a house into; it didn’t look friendly at all.  In fact it looked downright evil.

The tree itself was squat and seemed to be entrenched into the soil around it, as if it thought there was something out to steal it.  Placed around it and hanging from a number of branches were various masks and bottles which didn’t do much to make it look less like somewhere you would find a grade-A Disney villainous crone.

After a minute or two knocking at the door and eventually looking in at the similarly villainous interior, it was apparent the owner was out and about offering poisoned apples to passersby or some other small evil.  This was a problem because so far this cottage was their only landmark, and there weren’t any obvious paths leading away from it in any direction.

Gerald had gone off with Carlyn for some basic botany.  It was remarkable how many plants were immediately recognizable from earth, but it wasn’t very interesting.  Gerald was beginning to space out when he heard wing beats.  And overhead above the treetops flew a Pegasus; there wasn’t any other word for it.  Against the sun, all Gerald could make out was that it was flying with a large box of some sort.

When it moved out of the sun and landed at the house it was apparent from the saddlebags that it was a member of the local post.  It had a grey coat, and for some reason—Gerald couldn’t think why —it had seven bubbles on its flank. It looked exactly like the wall-eyed one he had seen in the background in that video Rodger had shown them when they arrived.

Nobody in the group spoke.  The only movement among them was people craning their necks to watch as the little Pegasus delivered a package to the villainous hut.

Carlyn was the first to speak some silent seconds later.

“Is that...?”  Gerald didn’t like the way she looked when she was perplexed; nobody with an advanced education like Carlyn’s should be able to make an expression like that. “Is that one of those ‘My Little Ponies?’”