Just a thing I've been working on to try to get back into the swing of writing. Any criticism or advice is welcome.

Taylor was going to die alone.

Okay. Maybe that was overreacting just a tiny bit, but she was currently panicking, and rational thought didn't usually mix with panicking. Considering she's just woken up in the middle of a massive forest, she felt a bit of panic was justified. If she'd been on a camping trip of some kind that would be fine, but as far as she remembered she was supposed to be in her house.

The forest itself was entirely barren of all life. No bugs, or birds, nor even a gust of wind. The entire area was still, Only her, and the motionless trees. It was utterly silent, something a lot more frightening than most people realized. The body was constantly surrounded by minuscule, insignificant sounds that didn't register to the conscious mind, which served to repeatedly assure your mind that your sense of hearing was still working.

But all her body could hear was her own, panicked breathing, and slightly erratic heartbeat; so, it had amplified those as much as it could, trying to get sound working again.

Her own deafening heartbeat wasn't the most comforting of sounds.

Taylor looked around her a bit, to try to calm herself down. She was in a clearing in the forest. A clearing so perfectly circular, and surrounded by such uniform trees that there was no way it could ever occur naturally. On top of that, with no other forms of life, that theoretical forest would quickly die.

There was a fine mist hanging over the area, limiting her visibility to only a few metres in any given direction. Just enough to see that all the trees were perfectly spaced, and to know just how easily she would get lost should she wander into them. There were no landmarks, either.

Walking into those woods would be suicide.

That was the true reason of Taylor's panic.

She calmed down, just a bit, when she was salvation in the form of a perfectly straight dirt road behind her. Where it led to was a mystery, as a sheer wall of fog hung in front of it, but she lacked any better options.

She couldn't just wait around and hope for the best.

With a shuddering breath and a desperate hope, Taylor began to make her way down the path.

As she walked, a spark of hope began to kindle in her heart. She was moving at a good pace… and if there was a road, that meant there were other people. She could get out of her situation alive.

After the first ten minutes, she had begun to tire, and had lost some of her fervor. The path hadn't visibly changed; she felt if she turned around she would be faced with the same clearing from which she had come, despite how far she'd been walking.

After the first hour, she had begun to grow nervous, and her legs were beginning to get quite sore; the only silver lining being the mist kept her cool enough that she barely sweated.

By the end of the third hour, she was walking on autopilot, trying to avoid thinking about the dull ache in her bones, and how little she had achieved. Her throat was crying out in thirst, and she was starting to feel rather hungry.

Halfway through the fourth hour, she collapsed onto the path.

How she rose again was beyond her. The ache was everywhere in her body, an agony she hadn't thought possible, and even standing made her legs shake.

Another two hours and she had lost all track of both time and distance, though she felt certain the sun should've set by then. She had begun to sing songs to herself as she went.

By the end of the eleventh hour, her legs were on the brink of collapse, and it was only by sheer will that she was still going. Her songs had faded to an indecipherable, unrecognizable, and yet very distinctive amalgamation that she hummed to herself on loop. A simple tune, a repeat of a mere thirty-two beats, with no lyrics. It was a tune she herself wasn't aware she was humming. She wasn't aware of much at all, by that stage, and felt it wouldn't be long before her body gave out on her entirely. She was starving, her throat was aching with thirst, and she was barely lucid.

On the twelfth hour, her knee buckled, and she sat there for some time. She didn't even notice she had fallen, for a long while. The agony in her legs had fallen out of her awareness, as had her crippling thirst and hunger. Her vision was almost entirely gone. And yet, the path before her remained identical to the path she had traversed until that point.

She was dying, that she knew. If she stayed down, she would die...

But then she had a thought. That she might be close to… whatever it was she was moving towards. Whatever goal she held. And that if she were to fail right at the end, how embarrassing that would be.

It was a silly thought, but spite was a powerful motivator. Just powerful enough for her to keep edging forwards, barely putting one foot in front of the other.

Then her pace began to quicken, despite her legs' agonised cries at the abuse they had been put through. Her hobble turned into a walk.

Her humming began louder, and she began to appreciate the simple tune, even though she was no longer aware of its source.

Her walk turned into a stride.

Her delirious mind cast aside all distractions, all sensations, and focused solely on moving forwards.

Her stride turned into a jog.

As she neared the brink of death, the pathway before her finally changed. To what, she couldn't tell. Her eyes were barely open, the mist was still there, and the haze of her mind could only register that she had almost made it.

Her jog turned into a sprint.

At the start of the twenty fourth hour, she finally broke free of the forest, and the pathway she had been traversing.

All she could see was a faint spark of green light in front of her.

Her sprint turned into a fall.

She must have experienced an impact, but she didn't feel it in the slightest. She didn't even feel her body begin to burn as the green light began to cover her.

Her fall turned into faint, and she lost consciousness entirely.

Waking up was unexpected. Especially waking up lucid enough to know that she should've died.

Taylor forced those memories aside, and tried to focus on the sense of warmth rolling around her body. Whatever it was, it was comforting… she felt she could lay in it for hours on end, and just rest. But something inside of her was also telling her that doing so was dangerous; that if she fell asleep again she might not wake up. That there was something behind her, something dangerous, and that she needed to MOVE!

A hand touched her shoulder, and Taylor's eyes shot open. She spun around, and wildly flailed at whatever thing was making contact.

There was a sharp jolt of pain as a few of her fingers hit solid metal. A loud crunch, too. Had… she just broken her hand?

Her attention was completely stolen by the figure in front of her

Or… rather, the lack of a figure – it was just a floating gauntlet, attached to an arm's worth of full plate armour and her shoulder. And absolutely nothing else.

Taylor screamed.

The hand jolted back, reeling as if caught off guard, and waving frantically in the air as if to say it meant no harm. As it did so, whatever was causing it to float had apparently decided to stop doing that, because the gauntlet fell to the ground with a clatter, and Taylor crawled back a step. She felt something burn her back, and flinched forwards, shooting a glance behind her.

Apparently, the source of both her current burn and the easy, safe feeling was a green torch imbedded in the ground.

Between the moment her eyes had flickered towards the torch and flickered back, the gauntlet had risen back up and lunged at her face. It had stopped about a centimetre in front of her eyes, and was hanging there as if by some invisible force. Taylor didn't dare to even blink.

After an agonising moment, it fell back to the ground. Another moment later, it collapsed into a black dust, which quickly dissipated across the ground.

Taylor's breathing became laboured, her heart hammering in her chest as she tried to calm down.

Where the gauntlet had fallen was a piece of paper. Whether it had originated from the gauntlet's dissolving or had been there the whole time, she didn't know. She decided to distract herself from the shock by reading what it said, even as the comforting warmth emanating from the torch began to force her body calm.

She tried to reach for it, but her left arm wasn't working. When she looked to try to see what was wrong, she found that it had been removed entirely. Painlessly, and without her being aware. The only thing left of it was a hand shaped indent on her shoulder, where the gauntlet had been touching, and it was radiating pain throughout her body.

No guesses as to what had caused that, then.

Taylor took a shuddering breath and tore her eyes away from where her arm had once been, instead reaching down with her right to pick up the piece of paper.

Another, similar burn of pain radiated from her hand, from where she had touched it. Three of her fingers were missing. Taylor stoutly ignored that, doing her best to read whatever the paper held.

"The king sends out his summons, and his call shall be enforced by Lady Irene, Chief Magistrate of Blackridge. Answer the summons, or face a horrible fate. The nightmare must be driven back, and any knights too cowardly to stand in combat shall find their days dwindling."

Taylor felt a chill run up her spine as she finished reading. A sudden weight began pulling at one of her pockets – pockets that she didn't have. The last thing she remembered wearing had been a t-shirt and jeans. As she looked down at her current attire she knew instantly that she didn't own a jacket as fancy as the one she was wearing.

She was certain she wouldn't even have been able to afford it; whatever the material the jacket was made of, it was one she'd never even felt before, and one that was certainly expensive given how amazing it looked, how comfortable it felt, and how perfectly it accentuated her figure…

Seriously, the jacket had to be blessed with some miraculous power, because it made her look distinctly feminine despite her non-existent figure, authoritative despite her slouch and the fact she was sitting down, and slightly intimidating despite her lack of any real muscle or weapons, scrawny, frog like body, and missing arm.

If anything, she was more upset that the jacket had lost a sleeve when her arm had been taken than she was about the arm; the jacket felt like it belonged to someone important. Something she should never have been allowed to touch, even though it perfectly fit her.

How or why was another question altogether. Especially since there was no way Taylor would ever feel confident enough to willingly wear it around it public; it certainly wasn't something that would blend in.

In fact, it would be indistinguishable, considering it looked a lot less like a jacket and a lot more like something a distinguished military veteran might wear.

A distinguished military veteran from the middle ages, that was, because there was no way something like what she was wearing could ever be made in the modern day, it was too sharply different from everything she'd ever seen anyone wear. The thing it closest resembled were the costumes she'd seen for crappy cape action movies.

The reason she was so sure of the period was because the jacket pulled off something no piece of fabric so thin should ever be able to do; look like a realistic, practical and sturdy piece of ornate armour. She idly touched the seams to confirm to herself that no, the jacket wasn't made of metal. It was cloth.

And that was why she was so certain she'd never be confident enough to wear it; people would certainly confuse her for a cape. Even ignoring the possibility of being attacked or arrested, that would draw way too much attention for her tastes.

She turned her attention back to the weight in her pocket.

Taylor fished around in her right pocket until she came across the item she had felt residing there.

A single envelope, with a golden seal.

"General summons:

To all knights of the realm do I impose this task of utmost importance; purge our realm from this nightmare, lest everything we have be consumed by it. All of those who have taken their oaths in my name shall seek to end this nightmare, or their oaths will be considered broken, and the law shall treat thee as a traitor and deserter. Such a threat to the citizens of Blackridge cannot be allowed to exist.

All of you who are bound by oath shall receive a copy of this letter, by whatever devices our magicians have conjured up. Should you choose to ignore your task, they will have free range to test whatever else they have created upon you until you have achieved what you must all set out to do.

To the most competent or powerful, I shall leave other tasks, which should be placed above all else. Should you be assigned one of these missions, it shall be encompassed below with a personal address.

Caroline of Ascor, scribe of the king

King Arwin"

Taylor tried for a moment to comprehend what was written… or more specifically, who might have written it.

At that stage, she was almost certain she was in a different reality; there were no knights or kings in Earth Bet, and while a cape might be able to make some weird floating gauntlet monster that dissolved everything it touched, it would be entirely unprovoked and unreasonable for them to send it after her.

Then there was the seemingly infinite forest… either she was imprisoned in a world made by a shaker, she was insane, or she was in an alternate reality. Thinking she was insane wouldn't help, and once again, she was no reason for a cape to so… personally attack her.

Taylor quickly skimmed the letter once again, trying to catch anything she might've missed, before moving on the short paragraph attached below. A paragraph which was concerningly addressed to her.

"To Huntress, I entrust the task of finding and ending the source of this nightmare. Your skillset would be wasted merely cleaning up the symptoms rather than searching for the problem. However, if you encounter any of the beasts this nightmare has created, it is up to you as to if you step in; I trust your judgement, though I pray you shan't waste too much time.

As they shed blood, the beasts are growing stronger, more adaptable. So far, the royal guard has been able to deal with the strongest beasts that arose, but eventually they shall be overcome, even with the knights of the realm ready to aid them. Their numbers are endless, while the knights are a dwindling resource. The only option is to stall for time.

Enclosed is a formal pardon, which is already signed and needs only the royal stamp to be officiated; a stamp which shall be granted should you succeed in this task. I hope that you will see this generosity as exactly that, and remember why it is you fight.

I wish you the best of luck, Taylor Hebert.

King Arwin

P.S, there have been rumours the plague originated in Eusvoir, a small town to the east. The similarities between the monstrosities the plague created and those formed from the nightmare are enough to validate a search. Hopefully, that will serve as a starting point for your hunt."

Taylor read the letter again, from start to finish, just to be sure.

It was, indeed, addressed to her. And apparently, she was someone quite important.

That couldn't be right. She hadn't even graduated high-school, she had absolutely no friends, and the biggest accomplishment of her life up to that stage had been killing her mother by distracting her while she was driving.

Perhaps the letter was talking about this universe's version of her. Taylor had heard a few stories of that, from what little they'd been able to communicate with Earth Aleph. For example, the notorious mass murderer King, one of the founders of the Slaughterhouse Nine, had been an accountant who died in his sleep of an unexpected heart attack at age fifty-six. Likewise, all the politicians she'd heard of from Aleph were unfamiliar names. Even their presidents were completely different, barring the first few who had been elected after capes had been discovered.

But that still wouldn't explain why she was physically holding the letter addressed to a different, important version of her.

Maybe it was just someone with the same name.

Taylor had a sinking suspicious that whoever had sent the letter wouldn't be convinced of that, and that the 'free range tests' included whatever gauntlet monster had cut off her fucking arm. Clearly, these people were serious business about people not doing what they'd been told to do; and to them, it probably looked like she was skirting her duty.

Well… not her duty. There was no way anyone would ever entrust her to deal with the source of something that, from the sounds of it, was causing a minor apocalypse.

But something on the edge of her senses was telling her that she still wasn't safe, and that more things were after her. Hopefully, if she started trying… and failing to do what they wanted her to do, those things would leave her alone.

Taylor's eyes snapped open. She hadn't remembered closing them. They didn't open with resolve or determination, she was still entirely unsure of what was happening or what she was doing, and her only real goal was to find a way home.

No, her eyes opened because there had been another surge of comfort from the torch behind her, and she had felt her arm begin to twitch.

Her left arm. The one that had been removed.

But sure enough, when she looked down at it, there it was; good as new. The jacket had regenerated too.

Taylor gazed at the torch behind her. It didn't make sense, but she was internally certain that the torch was responsible for the return of her limb. And as the warm, comforting glow began to slowly fade, and her surroundings slipped more and more into view, Taylor was also certain that the torch had been healing her in more ways than just that.

She briefly remembered her day long, delirious walk through the woods that had somehow failed to kill her, and how not cripplingly tired her legs felt.

It seemed she had been very lucky indeed. Through whatever means she had gotten to where she was, whatever had decided to dump her into an alternate reality in the place of someone more competent, leaving her with nothing but two bits of paper and a kickass coat, it had given her a magical torch capable of healing all of her wounds.

Perhaps… just maybe, she would be able to get home. She didn't know what had gotten her there, but there had to be a way back.

Until then, all she had in terms of ideas was to try to safely fulfil the duty of the person who shared her name.

The moment she resolved to do so, she felt the agonising sense of danger that had hung on her periphery back off, just a bit, as if it were going to wait and watch.

As it did so, Taylor became frighteningly aware that the sense wasn't just a figment of her imagination when the mist hanging over the area cleared entirely, leaving her blinking in the sun, with the torch she had sat beside nowhere in sight.

When she'd heard that apparently, there was a king, and a lot of knights, she'd assumed the reality she'd appeared in would be a classic medieval world, with swords and duels and a lot less thatched rooves than people thought there were. Sure, the only bit of information she had about the world talked about both a horrific plague and a nightmare creating beasts, but she'd just assumed that was respectively the black death and parahumans.

She'd been wrong. Maybe there were still parahumans. But for now, she could say comfortably that whatever 'plague' they were suffering from wasn't a physical illness, or at least, not JUST physical.

Wherever she'd arrived had been destroyed. It was no longer liveable. She'd come to that conclusion within a few seconds of looking around; there was no way to salvage this place. Some of the buildings were missing entire walls, and had collapsed in on themselves. Others were on fire. She saw one in the distance where it looked like the inhabitants… the inhuman inhabitants, had clawed their way out.

They hadn't made it far though. They were close enough that she could safely identify what was responsible, laying with one leg still partway through the hole they had torn. She was also incredibly thankful that they… or it, was dead.

It looked like someone had taken a minotaur and a werewolf, and then wildly slashed the parts together… but left the face human. They hadn't bothered to ensure the parts were all on the same scale, either. Some of them dwarfed the others. It was horribly asymmetrical. It had also bled to death, judging by the pool surrounding it… coating its face.

When Taylor had seen it, she'd been sick. Violently. Just when she'd thought it was getting a bit better, the smell had hit her and she'd been sick again.

Thankfully, the rest of the place's… residents, had been hidden from her immediate view by the collapsed buildings, with the exception a charred corpse from one of the smouldering buildings. Thankfully, she hadn't thrown up when taking in the visage of the snake-human-charcoal amalgamation. Although that was probably because she had nothing left to get out of her stomach.

Taylor tried to distract herself by focusing on her surroundings – the parts that didn't include monstrosities.

The area around her looked like it could once have been a market of some kind. It was quite an open area, and none of the buildings looked like they'd been houses. The area was certainly wide enough – and she was very thankful for how wide it was, otherwise the collapsed buildings likely would've trapped her completely. As it was, there were only three pathways she could see which weren't completely blocked, and one of them appeared to be a dead end anyway.

It was also the pathway which contained the charred body she'd seen earlier. She mentally decided to not go down there, even though it looked like it might lead somewhere. There were two other perfectly good routes she could take, which were far wider and less littered with debris, neither of which had a corpse. Unless they were both somehow dead ends, they would be the ones she stuck to.

If they smelled as bad as they did from as far away as they were… she wasn't going to go anywhere near there.

There was, technically, a fourth route, but since it was the hole the other corpse had torn through, she was discounting that. Unless that particular building had the universe's sickest underground tunnel system, that wouldn't help her get out of… wherever she was, at all. Hopefully, if she wandered far enough she'd encounter either an area with breathable air, rather than the thick, horridly tasting air that was present, or someone to explain what in the hell had happened and where she was.

It's not like there were any sign posts, or anything. Perhaps there might have been – but everything that wasn't straight up destroyed was covering in what looked like a dark purple fungus. The fungus was throbbing, as if it had a heartbeat.

Thankfully, there wasn't much of the fungus because most of everything was either too heavily damaged for her to clearly tell either way, or straight up in ruins. She had no idea what it was, but she also had no desire to touch it, and that meant she would have to tread carefully. Just in case.

Considering the state everything around her was in, she thought that was a reasonable precaution.

Taylor hesitantly began making her way down the furthest left path, which had less of the fungus than the others, on top of being significantly wider.

It being comparatively wider, however, didn't stop it from being a narrow hallway, and multiple times she felt herself brush again something that felt very much alive. She forced that out of her mind, placing it in the same imaginary bin she'd placed all of the traumatic things that had happened to her in the last few days, steadfastly ignoring it and pressing on as best she could, hoping salvation lay around the corner.

And in a way, it did, because the corridor she'd been in… lead to another corridor, which in turn lead to a small plaza, that was in significantly better shape than anything she'd seen up until that point. There was even… she'd say… nine tenths of a water fountain. What happened to the other tenth was unclear.

Taylor took a moment to better examine the make of the fountain, hoping to get at least some idea of the equivalent period of time in her world. It wasn't helpful at all. Whether that was because of her lack of architectural knowledge, or because Earth Bet didn't have an equivalent period, she wasn't sure.

There was a faint scuff on the cobbled road behind her, and Taylor spun to face it frantically. When she couldn't tell what had made the noise, she calmed down just a touch. It had probably been just the wind. After all, the only thing that appeared to be organic in the direction of the noise were a few pieces of the fungus and… what looked like an immolated torso, arms, and head.

Taylor clutched her mouth and tried her hardest to ignore how the pink almost-skeleton with eye holes but distinctly no eyes also had no lower body.

After a few moments of trying to steady herself, Taylor gently removed her hand from over her mouth, and slowly began making her way towards the torso.

She wasn't fully sure why. Every step made her feel sicker and sicker.

Eventually, she was within half a metre of the corpse, and was barely containing her brain's visceral reaction to the body.

She gentle nudged the body with her foot, just to assure her that yes, it was really there, and yes, it was really dead.

With a screech that would give her nightmares and a sudden jolt of movement, the torso grabbed her foot and yanked her down with inhuman strength.

Less than a second later, as the hands began to claw viciously at her chest, Taylor began to scream and flail.

For a few moments, the claws hit nothing but her jacket; but whatever armour it held quickly crumpled, and she began to feel the claws digging into her.

As her chest was torn to shreds, and the monster brought its mouth… it's hollow, empty mouth to hover over her exposed organs. The creature took a bite… and Taylor felt her body die.

Right before she woke up in an unfamiliar place, kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs.