Birds. Why were there birds in Hell? A soft chorus of chirps and tweets slowly bled into his consciousness, waking him from a deep slumber. That seemed wrong for some reason, but he supposed he had no idea what Hell was supposed to sound like.

  Sam blinked, the ground beneath him coming into focus, blades of bright green grass reflecting the dappled light of the setting sun. There was something wrong with his eyes, strange, blurry patches that seemed to follow his vision. He tried squinting, and suddenly text appeared, hovering a few inches in front of his face.

  [Ring Purge Initiates in 49:16:31:29]

  He stared at the strange text, noting that it disappeared when he closed his eyes. It appeared to be some sort of augmented reality notification. Was he wearing glasses? He twisted his head but felt nothing. Contacts maybe?

  He wiggled his arms and legs, making sure everything was still attached, before pushing himself up, his frayed senses overwhelmed by the sudden input of sights and sounds. Gone was the smell of car exhaust and the rumble of thunder. Instead, it was replaced by the deep, living ambience of a lush, boreal forest. Had he been camping and wandered off and gotten lost? No, that wasn't it, he’d been at school, he’d been in a hurry, then he'd been falling…falling into a fiery void.

  He gasped, his heart pounding as the memories flooded in—the message, the contest, the strange man with the sapphire eyes. He’d fallen into what had to be Hell, right? How had he ended up here?

  His hands went up in front of his face, the numbers—another countdown, he realized—were still resolutely plastered in the center of his vision. He had no idea what a Ring Purge was, but it couldn't be good.

  He tried to focus past the numbers, and they very politely shifted out of his line of sight, their opacity reducing to almost nothing. With a slight turn of his head and shift of his gaze, he could focus on them again, but at least the constant motion wouldn't drive him insane.

  He leaned back on his haunches and noticed he was sitting at the base of a large pine tree, at least, he thought it was pine. The needles were wrong, the bunches of green shot through with vibrant colours. He looked down at his body and realized his clothing had changed. He was wearing a dark grey tunic and shirt, with sturdy black pants beneath, tucked into high leather boots. At his waist was a matching brown belt, though the material was familiar to the touch. It appeared to be made from the strap of his messenger bag, a gift from his mother after he’d been accepted into his Master's program. At his left side was a simple sheath containing a knife, and on the other was a small pouch filled with a chunk of black rock and a short length of twine.

  He took a steadying breath, some part of his brain noting the purity of the air. The fumes he’d been exposed to most of his life were noticeably absent. He struggled to put the incongruities together; how did he fall into a portal to Hell and somehow end up in some kind of idyllic forest?

  Unless you didn't fall anywhere, the rational part of his brain said. You could be in the back of an ambulance right now, drooling all over the gurney. Maybe you had an aneurysm. A coma could maybe explain the vivid hallucinations…the thoughts were valid, but he couldn’t reconcile them with how real his experience had been. He’s seen the god, spoken to him, felt the pounding of the bell, and seen the obelisk rise. They’d been real, he was sure of it. But there was only one way to know for sure,

  He sighed, and steeled himself for what he had to do next. The knife had a plain wooden handle that fit his hand as if it were made for him. Though, for all he knew, maybe it was. He examined the blade. At about eight inches in length, it reminded him of a Bowie knife, with a thick spine and a single cutting edge. The guard was integrated into the handle, giving his fingers a bit of protection. Hours spent watching knife-making competitions on YouTube had oddly paid off, as he gave the weapon a few cautious swings.

  The edge was sharp, and he gritted his teeth as he drew it across the top of his left forearm, just above the wrist. The small cut wasn't deep, but the pain was immediate. He hissed, watching a thin rivulet of blood drip onto the grass.

  The pain is real, anyway, he thought to himself. Regardless of how fantastical the environment was, if he could be hurt, he had to treat this place as if it were, in fact, reality. He had no reason to believe otherwise.

  The blood stopped almost immediately, the pain fading as his heart rate steadied. In movies and TV, people always seemed to cut their palms for some reason, but that just seemed like a great way to be exceedingly uncomfortable every time you needed to use your hand.

  He once again focused his vision on the countdown, trying to glean any additional insight from the numbers. Clearly, he was on the clock for something, though what that something was, he had no idea. He gently touched his eye but found no contact lens. Whatever this was, it was being projected directly into his brain. The thought should have disturbed him, but it was a drop in the bucket at this point.

  “Alright, let's see. Menu. Options.” The words came out hoarse, his voice little more than a rasp.

  [ERROR CODE 93867 - System Unavailable]

  He winced, the text searing into his retinas. Something about it made him physically uncomfortable, as though the error code wasn't something he was meant to see. He tried a few different configurations without success. He then tried thinking the words as loudly as he could, even trying to visualize them in writing. Nothing worked. Eventually, the text faded. Whatever was wrong with the system that controlled the messages—it was well and truly broken.

  Sam let out a frustrated sigh and looked up to try to get some sense of his location. The thick stand of not-pines extended in every direction with patches of dense underbrush popping up in the few gaps created by fallen trees.

  His stomach rumbled, and he was hit with a wave of hunger as violent as any he’d felt. He doubled over, teeth clenched against the gut-splitting cramp. A pitiful noise escaped his cracked lips, eyes scrunched against the pain.

  The cramp eventually dissipated, leaving behind a deep ache. His throat was raw as he got to his feet and began walking in search of water, wondering how long it had been since he'd had anything to drink. The grass and pockets of moss were soft beneath his boots, and he marvelled at how well they fit. Like his clothing and the knife, everything seemed to be tailor-made for him. Something about that struck him as odd as he made his way towards a thick stand of trees, revealing a small pool.

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  The water of the pond was crystal clear, and he could see tiny fish darting around near the bottom, their bright scales reflecting what little light made it through the trees. He rested on the bank, sitting on a rock as he assessed the situation.

  Sam knew the risk of drinking untreated water, but given his current circumstances, he didn't see much of a choice. If he had really been brought into some kind of fight to the death, they likely wouldn't kill him with dysentery…unless, of course, it was all a test to see if he could resist drinking it.

  His hand lingered by the surface, but eventually, thirst won out, and he started awkwardly scooping the water into his mouth. It appeared to be fed by an underground spring and would hopefully be safe to drink.

  If they’d wanted me to boil it, they would have given me a pot, he reasoned, the pain in this throat and stomach retreating. Thirst slaked, he took a moment to take stock of his surroundings, trying to identify any kind of meaningful landmark. Large rocks protruded from beneath the moss, with patches of grass and brush shooting up to compete for the scant light that made its way through the thick canopy. Given the dense nature of the forest, he couldn't see more than a hundred feet in any given direction. He did notice he seemed to be on an incline, the ground gently sloping down and away from him.

  He considered that for a while. He could proceed uphill and try to find a vantage point to orient himself, or he could head downhill, where the trees seemed to thin somewhat. The light was also beginning to fade. What he had first taken for sunset seemed to stretch out longer than it should have. The light appeared more yellow than he remembered, or maybe his eyes weren't properly adjusted.

  Either way, the darkness continued to creep in around him, and thoughts of charging off into the woods quickly changed to those of shelter and a fire. He had a suspicion about the rock in his pouch he wanted to test, but he needed someplace secure and protected from the elements.

  He stood beside the pond and made his way around the bank towards a fallen tree. The dead branches could be broken off, and he figured he’d try to make some kind of lean-to, with green boughs as cover. He had no idea how cold the nights would get, but camping trips with his parents had taught him the importance of over-preparing.

  As he approached the tree, he picked out a low rustling, scraggy bushes shaking slightly as something moved within. Sam stopped, hand awkwardly going to the knife at his belt, pulse quickening as the sounds drew nearer. Whatever it was, it was making a surprising amount of noise, the loudest thing he’d heard since the initial flurry of birdsong. Birds which—he now noticed—had gone suspiciously silent.

  He drew the knife and pointed the tip towards the noise, which was now punctuated by high-pitched animal squeaks. Something was moving towards him, picking up speed, dead branches cracking with its passing. He braced himself, wondering if he should run, maybe jump on top of a rock, or try to climb a tree.

  The creature didn't give him a chance.

  It burst out of the bush in a flash of blurred limbs and feral cries. It was a large, deformed rat, covered in a thick coat of oily black fur. It stood low to the ground but was still well over a foot long, the size of a small dog. Its beady eyes were fixed on him, nose twitching as it dashed towards him in a burst of speed.

  Instinct took over, and he lashed out with his foot, boot connecting with a wet thud as the rat went sprawling, momentarily stunned from the impact. Sam backed away, looking for anything other than the knife that he could use as a weapon. His mind was fixed on the sight of the creature's jagged teeth—long enough to puncture flesh all the way down to the bone.

  His foot scraped against a piece of loose rock, and he bent down and grabbed it, haphazardly throwing it at the rat and missing by a good two feet. It recovered quickly, posturing aggressively as it let out a low growl, very different from the previous squeaks. Sam could hear its bones grinding as it lowered itself into a crouch, back legs reminding him of an oversized rabbit. Within moments, an eerie blue glow began to form around it, and Sam sensed the air pressure shift.

  He felt the impact before his brain had a chance to register it, as the rat-thing leaped at him with supernatural speed. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and he collapsed backwards in a heap, arms instinctively moving to cover his face and neck.

  He waited for the lightning bolts of pain as those massive fangs bit into him, but, surprisingly, none came. He opened his eyes to find the face of the creature mere inches from his own, frozen in death.

  Sam rolled over, and the rat fell away, knife embedded in its chest where it had impaled itself, blood still pouring furiously from the jagged wound. He lay there, heart pounding, as he assessed himself for injury. Aside from what he assumed would be a few nasty bruises, he was basically unharmed. His arms hurt from where they'd taken the bulk of the impact, but it hadn't hit nearly as hard as it should have given the speed it had flown at him.

  The front of his tunic was covered in gore, and it was likely only his empty stomach that stopped him from vomiting at the sight of the blood and viscera. He did his best to wipe off the worst with some moss, not wanting to wash in the pond and contaminate his water source.

  He stared down at his bloody hands, feeling tears welling behind his eyes. Not even twenty minutes into this bizarre dream, and he'd already killed something. For some reason, that felt like a loss, a failure. Whatever had put him here had seemingly wanted him to do it, and it irked him to have given it the satisfaction.

  He pulled the knife out of the corpse and marvelled at how easily it slid free. If it hadn't been for the guard, the knife might have gone all the way through the creature; the point was sharper than he’d realized.

  He wiped off the blood as best he could and returned it to its sheath, staring down at the corpse. The two sides of his brain both offered up unwanted opinions on the current situation. His emotional center said to leave it, and let whatever else lived here have it. He’d seen small insects on the trees; there was an active ecosystem in the forest.

  His rational side told him not to waste the meat, even though the thought of eating rat nearly made him gag. It had been who knows how long since he’d last eaten, and the creature would provide much-needed calories. His stomach ended up getting the deciding vote, the sharp pains returning, hurting more than the rat had. He knelt next to it, pulling out the knife he’d just cleaned, shaking his head as he tried to find the best angle to skin it. He put the point just under the creature’s throat, thinking he could go down the center and cut it in half.

  He’d seen his father prepare a turkey on Thanksgiving, but his own experience with butchery was exactly zero. His whole life, meat had come in disposable plastic containers, blessedly drained of fluids.

  The real thing was so, so much worse.

  He did end up vomiting as his shaking hands punctured the creature’s abdomen, its intestines spilling out onto the grass. He only spat up bile as his body wracked, back tensing as his stomach betrayed him. He lay in the grass, breathing haggardly, realizing he just couldn't do it.

  As hungry as he was, as much as he knew he should eat, he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He thought the rock in his pouch was very likely flint. With the knife, he could make a fire, he could cook it, should do it. He just couldn't.

  He lay on his back, watching the sky slip into a deep blue-black. The god had called him a Warrior and thrust him into another world where he’d immediately killed something. Now, faced with the immediate needs of survival, he couldn't even do the bare minimum.

  What does that say about me? He wondered, trying and failing to push down the shame. A killer and a coward? That's a bad combination.

  He glanced at the sky again; he was out of time. This world had immediately shown him its hand: fight or die. Even though he couldn't stomach the rat, he needed to do everything he could to increase his odds. He needed to make a shelter. Make fire. And more than that—he needed a weapon.