(Author Note: Wish fulfillment/nostalgia trip where characters are taken to my homebrew fantasy world. Don't take it too seriously.)
Fallout 4: Waldheim by Into the Bioverse
Chapter 1: Trees
When I first emerged from Vault 111, I was struck by how barren the world was. Even the pine trees had lost their needles. A full year afterward, I didn't see a bit of new growth. Those bare trees were a constant reminder that this world would never be the one I had with Nora and Shaun.
Preston said there was another settlement that needed my help: a little town called Mannheim. After a few hours of vertibird flight we passed over a river valley covered in a sick blue-purple fog that glowed with an eerie dark light. "I can keep us above that stuff," said Jake, the vertibird pilot. "You ever seen anything like that?"
Jake was short and fit with dark hair, light skin and a permanent five o'clock shadow. He was a dedicated minuteman and a good pilot. Something about him riled up my competitive nature. Maybe it was that fiery glare he had whenever he was fed up with something.
Or maybe I was compensating for something. The Commonwealth was getting safer every day, but I was always itching for conflict. Maybe it was trauma from killing my son and nuking his home. Maybe I was just a jerk.
"What the hell is that?" Jake shouted, as a column of that uncanny fog rose into the air. It took the shape of a hand and reached out to snatch us out of the sky. That was the last thing I could remember.
When I awoke, I saw shades of green I had forgotten. The fluffy, bright greens of beech leaves and the deep, rich green of spruce needles. Was this place beyond the reach of the bombs? Was it sheltered from the nuclear winter that followed the Great War?
I saw something moving beneath the canopy - something big. I whipped out my Colt Rangemaster hunting rifle and peered through the scope. The dark greens and browns of the creature blended with the greens and browns of the forest. As big as a deathclaw but many times longer, I would call it a snake if not for the brightly colored horn, beard, and claws. If this was anything, it was a dragon. It slithered its way between the trees, using its twelve legs to clutch branches.
A sound - someone whooping and shouting with joy. A figure crashed into the dragon, a shirtless man with a shaggy brown beard and the body of a greek god. He was swinging some kind of melee weapon.
Was that a battleaxe? His legs were covered by a tough-looking hide and leather armor with several different axes hanging from loops on his belt.
On the first swing of the axe he broke through the dragon's scales and cut deep into the flesh beneath. The dragon flailed like a snake and threw the man off; he caught a branch and launched himself back at the dragon without missing a beat. It dodged the man entirely and spun around to snatch him out of the air with its massive jaws. It shook him around like a ragdoll and tossed him to the forest floor. For good measure the dragon swung itself around and spit a toxic mist in all directions, as if it expected another man to come flying in for the attack.
He landed not far from me. His limp body bounced off the ground and found itself impaled on a branch. The dragon roared again, and I looked back. It was coming in fast, eyes on me.
I held my breath, took a split second to aim, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. A few more pulls of the trigger told me that my hunting rifle was dead. It wasn't jammed, and I didn't have time to inspect it further. I dropped the rifle and pulled out my Arroyo - a .223 pistol which to my dismay suffered the same malfunction.
A glob of dark ichor sailed past my face, missing me by inches. A sizzle came from the spot it landed, as if the ground was burning - was this thing spitting acid? If its aim was any better, my head would be half-dissolved by now.
It was coming in fast, digging into the trunks of the trees it passed to kick off and give itself more momentum. I switched to my AER9, allowing VATS to guide my aim. A pull of the trigger sent searing hot lasers into the dragon's gaping maw. The pain scared the beast; it veered off course and crashed into a tree, then fell to the ground.
It was barely stunned. The next few lasers did nothing - the first one was a lucky shot to the soft tissues inside the mouth, but the scales seemed to absorb the laser without damage. Running out of options, I switched to my Glock 86 and started blasting. The plasma bolts were hot enough to melt a man and dense enough to carry the force of a shotgun slug. The dragon's scales broke and melted with each impact.
I was doing damage, but this thing was tougher than a deathclaw and would be on its feet in seconds. I heard a voice behind me. "Klin himir?" it said. "Himir!" It was the man impaled on the branch. All his wounds were healed as if by miracle. He reached out a hand, begging for help. I rushed over and pulled him off the branch, then rolled to the side as the creature finally reached us.
The man's axe bit into the creature's skull. I didn't have a good shot, so I circled around. Blood dripped from my chin onto my Glock - one of the creature's fangs must have cut my cheek. I was a split second away from being eaten back there.
I saw the gaping wound in his torso stitch itself up as if by miracle. He chanted and whooped with every strike of his axe and every dodge of the creature's maw - "Tög! Jäg! Woop woop! Tög! Jäg! Woop woop!" He knew this dance well, but it was the creature's first time.
A somersault took him out of the creature's line of sight; as it turned to chase, he buried his axe in its eye. It roared again, and he shoved a hand in its mouth. "Dorenvung!" he shouted, and the creature's roar was cut short. It began to gag and flail, unable to bite down as something was blocking its throat and mouth.
The man made short work of the defenseless beast with his axe, removing the head entirely. I caught a glimpse of what was caught in the creature's maw: a thick bundle of thorny vines.
"Spridsch Waldsh?" the man asked me. "Do you speak Waldsh?"
"Just English," I said. "Where are we? Some strange fog creature attacked my vertibird."
"You are in Waldheim, I am Ulfer."
"Waldheim?" I asked. "I'm supposed to be in Mannheim. Is that nearby?"
"Mannheim is, eh..." Ulfer trailed off, not sure how to explain. "Everywhere that is not Waldheim is Mannheim. Waldheim is the forest, a sacred place that covers the mountains and valleys of our country. Mannheim is the world beyond the ocean."
"Mannheim is just one town," I said. I had the dumbest idea. "Do you know where Earth is?"
"Oh, are you from Earth?" he said as if this was a normal part of conversation. "You are a long way from home. Different dimension, the wizard says. Earth-folk call this realm Solana."
"Are you a wizard too?" I asked. "Where did those thorns come from?"
"Hunter's magic," Ulfer said, puffing out his chest with pride. "The wizard lives in a lighthouse on the other side of Waldheim. Sometimes he teaches us magic."
"Did he bring me here?" I asked. "I was attacked by some kind of fog."
"You should ask him about that," Ulfer said. "It's a long way there, and the journey may be dangerous. You should see Sister Melinda first and ask her blessing so you will heal like me. Help me bring this dragon meat back to my village and I will show you the way."
"Will there be any more of those dragons?" I asked.
"The roads are safe," Ulfer said. "Move quickly." He led us through the dense forest without incident. We emerged to a pristine road made of paved cobblestone painted in blues. "What powers those lamps?" I asked. The road was lined with stone lanterns hanging from poles, almost like the streetlights I remembered from home.
"Magic," Ulfer said. "They keep most of the monsters away."
The walk back to the village was short and quiet. It gave me time to appreciate the majestic old growth forest around me. The rich hues of green and brown had a calming effect on my soul, bringing me a peace I hadn't felt in hundreds of years. As we approached the village we encountered a stream. The babbling of the flowing water cleared the last traces of shame from my soul, if at least temporarily. We even passed a moose drinking from a stream; not a mutated freak moose like the radstags, but a majestic natural animal.
The buildings in Ulfer's busy little village were built around the trees, using the trunks as support for upper floors with additional platforms and balconies on the sturdier branches. Most of them were simple square homes made of wattle and daub, but the main longhouse and a few storehouses were built with stone and mortar.
The longhouse served as the central market and meeting place for the entire village. Outside the livestock sat in covered pens. One of them glared at me while chewing some hay. "That's the iroch," Ulfer said. "Very important animal. It gives us milk, from which we make butter, cheese, yoghurt, and whey protein." It was big and wide with a short neck like cattle, but it had the thick legs and gnarly horns of a goat on its lone head.
We entered the longhouse and people cheered. For a moment I was back in the Elks lodge in Natick, long before the war. The faces were friendly, clean, and healthy - none of the despair, grime, or sickness of the wasteland. I wondered if even a single person knew what radiation was.
A sturdy and plump girl in a modest dirndl approached me with a bowl full of mulberries, cherries, and pears. I had forgotten what real fruit looked like - all fresh, clean, and grown in the natural elements of Waldheim.
Ulfer laid his share of dragon meat on a table near a recessed fire pit used for smoking meat. He hopped onto the table and spoke to the crowd. "Our new friend Nate helped me slay this dragon," he said, and the crowd whooped and clapped with joy. "Tonight, we feast!"
A group of men gathered their tools and wagons to seek out the dragon corpse and harvest meat, scales, and other useful bits. Most of the meat would be smoked or salted for preservation, but the freshest cuts were already being seasoned and prepped for tonight.
I set my share of meat down and popped a mulberry in my mouth, thanking the girl who offered. It was sweet and tart with the snap of ripe natural fruit - none of the slimy bitterness of tarberries or the mealy texture of tatoes. I couldn't believe I got used to the rancid flavor of fruit grown in radioactive sludge.
The feast was every bit as good as the appetizer. The dragon steaks were served with a fruity, buttery, spiced sauce and endless pitchers of beer that could have passed for the finest Belgian ales with aromas of clove and anise. The bread on the side was a dense, hearty rye with a deep flavor that practically melted onto my tongue.
If this is what Solana is like, I might take my time getting back.
End of Chapter 1