#temerian

Jazz understood now, why her favorite character hated portals so. The feeling of being pulled but at the same time not, was similar to that of being in a car. Unnatural, unmoving yet moving at the same time. Already quite sensitive to car sickness, Jazz found that using a portal took the nauseating feeling and increased it tenfold. Which is why Jazz spent a few minutes puking and another few minutes dry heaving into the hay covered floor before the sickening feeling subsided.

“I’m in a barn…” Jazz muttered to herself, scrambling away from the pool of vomit on the floor. Knowing herself, she’d end up accidentally rolling into it if she didn’t put some distance between her and it. “Portals are real… and I’m magically in a barn…” But dear reader, you must be wondering, why isn’t Jazz panicking? Oh… she is… on the inside… deep, deep, down and locked behind a door pounded the unmistakable monster known as anxiety, and it threatened to beat it’s cage down.

Taking deep and slow breaths, Jazz sat up and buried her head into her knees, closing her eyes in order to keep calm. “Think, Jazz. If you panic, it’s all over. It’ll be like Dorney Park all over again if you don’t get your head together.” The incident at Dorney Park was an event where Jazz got lost in the amusement park and promptly broke down in tears when she realized that she was lost. She had been 14 years old at the time, and therefore old enough to ask people for help. Instead, she’d allowed herself to give into the anxiety… that day was not her proudest moment.

After calming the flurry of emotions which toiled under her skin, Jazz let out a breath and started laying out the facts. “Ok. You’re 21 years old. You’re a female. You’re dressed only in your swimming trunks, underclothes, and a loose fitting short sleeve T-shirt with Noctis’s shirt design on it. For all intents and purposes, you are practically naked except for your wool coat.” Jazz wiggled her toes and scrunched her face up, “You don’t even have shoes, Jazz. Great start. At least you forgot to take your glasses off before going to bed or you’d be blind right now.” the small woman shook her head and stood up, pacing a good eight feet away from the pool of vomit. “I got pulled into a weird portal thing… and now I’m in a barn. It’s shelter, that’s for sure, but you don’t know if someone owns the barn.” Jazz swept her gaze over the interior of her destination. There were messy stacks of hay, but no animals and no tools. “Could hide if someone comes here… I know I’m in a barn, but where is the barn?”

Brown eyes narrowed as they fell on the splintered wooden door. It was firmly shut, but there wasn’t a latch to secure the door should an invader enter the barn. And from the looks of the wood and hinges, both weathered, decaying and rusted, Jazz doubted the integrity of the barn in general. As a starting shelter, the barn was decent, but Jazz didn’t want to risk the entire structure collapsing on top of her. Which meant that despite not really wanting to know the answer to her question, Jazz was forced to try and find out where she was. But did she really want to touch the rusted door? Did she really want to leave the barn and risk heading somewhere without shelter?

Chancing it, Jazz slowly made her way to the door of the barn and cracked it open with a shove of her shoulder, barely getting the door open with how small she was. Outside the barn, to Jazz’s immense disappointment… was a field of tall grass… excluding the road that bisected the field off in the distance, there were only trees in the distance and grass all around…

At any other point in her life, Jazz might have been happy to be surrounded by such a large amount of untouched nature. But being in an open plain of grass meant that there wouldn’t be people for a long while. “Not too keen on walking out there without shoes on…” Jazz mumbled to herself as she slowly made her way out of the barn. The sun was rather high in the sky, a good sign despite the situation, that Jazz would have time to explore the area surrounding her little barn before night came and made exploration treacherous.

With a tired sigh, Jazz took one step forward, then two, testing out the feel of dirt underneath her bare feet. She scrunched her face at the strange feeling, her almond shaped eyes growing smaller as her face wrinkled in discomfort. Jazz tried to tell herself to relax, that walking barefoot in dirt wasn’t the worst thing in the world, that she’s walked barefoot in grass before. Yet, she couldn’t find a way to make the disgust go away, the feeling only subsiding as she slowly treaded into the tall grass, her unremarkable brown eyes remaining vigilant for any creature that might bite at her exposed legs.

Despite her immense discomfort, Jazz eventually made her way through the field of grass, narrowly dodging the occasional pile of mushy brown poop. It didn’t take long to cross the field, and the sun was still rather high in the sky when Jazz made it to the dirt road, yet as she shifted her gaze from left to right, Jazz found nothing by barren road stretched as far as her eyes could see. “South Dakota?” Jazz took a wild guess at her location before looking up at the sky and walking along the road towards the southwest. “I’m in the middle of nowhere… fucking great.” the small woman cursed, mostly keeping silent as she trudged down the dirt road, careful to tread near the grass. As much as she wanted to get out of such a situation… Jazz was weary of strangers. If a man were to come across her in the middle of nowhere, Jazz couldn’t guarantee her own safety given that she was scantily clad with no weapons. If she heard anyone or anything approaching, she was small enough to hide in the wild brush.

Need to get some shoes. Jazz thought to herself, head bowed as she walked on, let her feet carry her down the stretch of road. Don’t know where I am, but I know that I can’t keep going on like this. The abandoned barn had seemed like it was on its last legs, about to collapse at any moment, but it had been a shelter for Jazz. But still, it was better to risk moving on than to stay in one place without food or water.

It wasn’t until a few hours of walking later, that Jazz started to see some proof of civilization. Jazz halted in her steps abruptly and stared at the scene ahead of her. And suddenly, she wished that she had stayed in her run down barn.

The road Jazz had started on had long since evolved into light forest, tall trees surrounding her, but before her eyes was a patch of blood stained dirt. It was a large stain, one that should have accompanied a body, whether it be animal or human, and yet, there was none. And then, in the distance, Jazz heard the clatter of metal on metal. The young woman didn’t give a second thought in diving behind a bush and crouching. Jazz waited, silent and counting, one minute passed, then five before a peculiar sight marched past Jazz’s bush.

Men in medieval armor, black color plated and outlined in gold, rode past on horses, the clanging of their armor like a tolling bell, loud and annoying. At first Jazz simply thought that she’d walked into a mock medieval festival, like most European countries liked to celebrate. And then she realized, eyeing the hardened faces and weaponry that decorated the soldiers, that maybe it would be best if she stayed in her shrubbery after all. There had been a pool of blood, and how was she to know that these men weren’t responsible.

Then, Jazz saw the banner the men rode with. A black flag… decorated with the face of a yellowish gold sun.

I didn’t run into a bunch of cosplayers, did I?

She shook her head as the soldiers rode past, far enough to not see or hear her as she stood from her crouch in the bushes. “Get a hold of yourself, Jazz. You’re just imagining things.” the college senior narrowed her eyes in thought, black hair blown messily in the breeze as her gaze found the blood splatter again. “But still…”

It was a terrible idea, but Jazz couldn’t help her curiosity, slipping out of the overgrown green and slowly stalking after the envoy of heavily armed men. If I follow behind, then they’ll eventually lead me to some food or water or…

For the second time that day, Jazz halted in her tracks, not caring that the soldiers were still marching onward. As she rounded the corner of the trees, which gave away to a small field, Jazz wanted to turn and run.

Blood. She thought, staring at the scene in horror. So much blood and are those? Jazz went pale for a moment before moving closer, morbidly curious. Corpses… what the hell did I walk in on? Still barefooted, Jazz crept closer to the carnage, ignoring the flapping hole filled fabric as it waved in the breeze. It was a battlefield… or what remained of a battle. Dead bodies of soldiers dressed in all sorts of colors and armor.

Jazz crouched next to the closest body, which happened to be located behind a spiked wooden barricade. Blood decorated and stained the area around the man, body bent at an awkward angle, and a sword buried in the ground next to him. There was a stab wound in the middle of the man’s abdomen and he didn’t seem to be breathing. The student’s breathing became slightly labored as the situation was too real.

Looking around, Jazz found that there were dozens of wooden chests and over fifty bodies which littered the field. And with a gulp, she stood and made her way over to a chest and opened it, pulling out a bag made out of some sort of animal skin. Shaking it with a curious expression, Jazz’s face lit up when she heard some sort of liquid swish in the skin. Uncorking the nozzle, the small woman gave a hesitant sniff before taking a sip. When the liquid touched her tongue, Jazz hummed in appreciation before drinking the liquid with gusto, happy for the water.

After drinking half the skin, Jazz resumed her looting, morally compromised from taking from the dead, but justifying the means. Dead men have no need for water. Her calculating gaze locked onto a nearby soldier’s boots, which looked to be her size. Or clothes…

They were leather boots, protective, but not very comfortable. They reached just below her knees, but Jazz didn’t care, glad to have protection for her delicate feet. Resuming her search, Jazz took any waterskin she saw… and anything shiny, coming away with a pouch full of gold coins from each body. And it was during her looting that Jazz finally stopped to inspect the banners littering the battlefield…

The two distinctive banners that Jazz found were similar in that they shared a black background, but she would recognize the coat of arms anywhere. The yellows sun on one, and three silver fleurs-de-lys on the other.

“Nilfgaard and Temeria…” Jazz gaped and stood back, her head spinning. “What the hell is going on?”

In her confusion, Jazz didn’t notice the pale slouched and disfigured creatures lurking behind her until one stepped on a metal shield, alerting the girl from her thoughts.

Spinning around, Jazz blanched at the abominations heading her way, well, more like sprinting her way. With only time to yelp out a stained, “Nope!” Jazz quickly ran in the opposite direction, snatching up a steel sword in the process, though she had to drop her waterskins in order to drag the sword with her as she ran. In her mind, Jazz’s selective memory repeated something she’d read only once before.

“-they resemble humans… they are the utter negation of all that is human… though they have arms and legs like men, they walk on all furs like dogs or badgers… they are driven by one thing and one thing only: an insatiable craving for human flesh….”

Deciding that the sword was weighing her down, Jazz dropped the weapon and bolted up the hill and down the road, making sure the pouch of coins in her pocket was secure in her coat as she ran in a dead sprint, long black hair trailing after her. She didn’t look back, only continuing to pump her legs, glad that her father pushed her to run every morning. Jazz didn’t want to believe it, because it was absolutely impossible, but she had seen a ghoul. She had walked into the aftermath of a battle between Nilfgaard and Temeria, and she was running from ghouls. At the fork in the road, Jazz didn’t think before taking the right path, sprinting down the hill at an ungodly speed and crossing the stone bridge. And before long, as the sun began to disappear from the sky, Jazz, found herself standing at the edge of a village, overlooking the water. Catching her breath, Jazz only managed to curse as the cries of bandits sounded behind her and continued on her sprint, letting her feet carry her to the right, going over yet another bridge, but away from the clanking of weapons. At yet another fork in the road, Jazz ran to the right, cutting through the forest as the wolves howled around her.

I know where I’m going, I know where I’m going, I know where I’m going… Jazz chanted in her head, pushing her body to the limits as she ran through the forest and past a sign in a language she couldn’t read.

After passing an abandoned wooden cart in the middle of a sandy and watery area, Jazz couldn’t deny anything she’d experienced any more. I need to get to White Orchard.

Water splashed as she ran across the shallow waters, but when she saw the white trees ahead, Jazz slowed to a jog and heaved a sigh of relief, she’d made it.