Chapter 37

Kyle

I woke to the rancid smell of burnt meat. All around, there was this intense heat. I felt like my skin would blister and peel away. A small, humanoid shape came towards me, its outline blurry in the dim light.

He (she, it, I didn’t know) said something in a language that sounded remarkably like Italian. It couldn’t have been, though, because I couldn’t understand a word he said. There were a few roots that I could pick out, but nothing that made sense.

The little…whatever it was took me firmly by the wrist, and helped me up. I didn’t resist as I was led outside; it’s never a good idea to show hostility and you don’t know the situation. Of course, the first thing I did was look around for my Team. I searched with my mind, but there were no recognizable presences. Just hundreds and hundreds of small, human-looking creatures. They were only about 4 feet tall. They didn’t look like aliens; just short humans.

I decided to try and communicate with my new hosts. First, of course, I tried English. That didn’t work. Neither did French, Spanish, or German. I just got a bunch of blank looks. Italian got me a collective murmur. The impressions I gathered from their minds showed that they thought of me as some sort of large, mentally retarded child, speaking in gibberish as I was. I even tried Hebrew and Tagalog. The people simply looked at me blankly, as if wondering just how bad my mind was.

Finally, I shrugged apologetically. One of the natives came forward and pointed to himself. “Iymhask,” he said. I repeated. “Iymhask?” The he shook his head. “Iymhask,” it repeated. I tried again. “Iymhask?”

The little man shook his head again, and then turned to his brethren and said something in the native language. It looked like they argued for a while. Then another person came forward. She was a really pretty girl. Really thin (but not sickly-looking), pale skin, slightly Anime-ish features.

“Ego sum Fortan. Quis est vestri nomen?”

Ahh, Latin!

“Meus nomen est Kyle,” I said immediately. All students at the School eventually learned to speak fluent Latin. There was a loud celebration among the natives. “Qua sum ego?” I asked.

“Vos es in Rast,” she said. I’d heard of Rastians. They were supposed to be bloodthirsty savages. I said as much to Fortan.

She laughed, as did her friends. According to Fortan, the Rastians used to be vile savages, but they had become civilized when people from a place called “Gay-ool” visited them thousands of years ago.

I guessed that “Gay-ool” was Gaul, or ancient France. But, “thousands” of years ago? A student had just come back from Rast, after barely escaping with her life. It must have been the Time difference; thousands of years here could very well be one year School time.

I asked my new friends what had happened to me. Their answer was pretty wild.

Yesterday, they said, I had fallen out of the sky, burning with fire and shooting out light (probably just the portal closing). I had gotten up and screamed at the sky, and then I had died.

Yeah. I had died. The way I figure it, I had a bad concussion. Because of my Power, my subconscious fixed my brain waves enough that I was able to wake up.

And now, I had come back to life. I felt so…epic. Usually in these cases, primitive people like the Rastians would let me do whatever I wanted. I wanted to go back to the School, figure out what had happened to the rest of my Team, and check in with the Board about the portals. They were obviously not working right, or else we would be at the Meeting, and not separated, likely in different worlds.

It was just my luck that the Rastians didn’t agree with my plan. Since I was obviously a god banished from the sky, they decided that I should be a slave.

Not cool.