Heldor hiked the old growth forest, on weary alert for the creature that crashed the party at Morlock's Inn the night before. Even down one heart, it might have survived, considering how well it had recovered from having both its carotid arteries severed. Or, it might have died and dematerialized to whence it came, much as the overgrown werewolf had. The area had become unstable. Once upon a time, the only way in or out of this region was the portal at Morlock's. Once upon a time. 

His grip tightened around his crossbow at every cracking twig. The snorting of predatory animals, he noticed, never emanated from the same place twice. When the heavy breathing followed the bounding steps a little too quickly he let loose with the crossbow. The stray arrow landed in a tree, just missing the deer. There were no words with which to chastise himself adequate to the task. Surprised to find something that harmless still resided in Thresdar, he just shook his head and pulled out the arrow. Once it was back in its sheath, he rubbed his eyes. Even with the sun up, there wasn't a hell of a lot of light making it past the canopy. You need to get some sleep. 

He'd hoped the creature's tracks would lead him through the old growth redwood forests of Humboldt. Those giant trees were about the only things of a gigantic nature he fancied. Not that constantly craning his neck up was what the doctor called for, this early into his recovery from the last battle with the brute. Still, the air was fresher there, probably fresher than anywhere on the planet. If not that region, he'd have settled for the section that looked like a Hawaiian beach, or the rather large swaths that reminded him of rustic Switzerland. He might have eagerly gone for the rather large sections that resembled an elk-thronged Montana prairie or even the part that was much like the Icelandic coastal flats. As it was, the tracks were leading him in the direction of Lost Man Creek, where the moss growing off the trees tended to give him the creeps. And the ground cover was largely ferns. He was allergic to ferns. Lovely.  

He was nearly at the water's edge when he saw Cleo laying down tracks-the creature's tracks-with a mold she'd made, the other three footprints dangling off her shoulders. "Damn it, Cleo. I'm trying to track the beast." 

"Leave it to you to be the only one. Everyone else couldn't get far enough away. Figured it would add to my sense of privacy." 

He grabbed the clay foot out of her arm and shattered it, along with the stick to which it was attached, against a tree. "Don't you have spells for this kind of thing?" 

"Ye of short memory might care to recall I'm kind of saving those up so as not to run myself ragged for when the shit really hits the fan." 

"For what it's worth, I'm glad you survived the night." 

He turned his back on her, all too happy to retreat from the region. 

She grunted behind him. "Some tracker you are. I thought you could track stuff no one else could." 

"If you want to flatter yourself for capturing the wandering path of a wounded animal that couldn't be expected to walk straight from one step to the next, or put the same amount of pressure on one foot as another, go right ahead." 

He figured she was smiling behind his back. His sarcasm had always been such the aphrodisiac. Women liked their men jaded and full of piss and vinegar. Nothing says "I need a woman's touch" more than a man a grizzly would be afraid to crawl into bed with. "Besides," he shouted, "what makes you think I wasn't just checking up on you?" 

"Heldor pretend he gives a damn? That'll be the day." 

"Your hunter's instincts are getting better, even if your witchcraft isn't." 

She had to be smiling at that one. Just had to.  

Actually, he hadn't been tracking the creature at all, just hoping to get lucky. Wouldn't have made much sense, not with all the hell beasts about, no less deadly, which of late had been materializing out of nowhere. This was just the shortest way to Damian's castle. 

About an hour later, he caught up with the actual creature, all the same. But so it appeared, had some others. He could hear their shouting and carrying on long before he could smell the blood of the beast. They'd managed to surround it in a clearing sheltered partially by the large interlocking branches of some rather large trees, high enough off the ground to accommodate the hunters on horseback. Japanese Samurai, from the looks of them, from some bygone feudal era. Those were some damn impressive overalls, in any case. Must have taken them as long to get dressed as a geisha. The horned helmets were a nice touch-went nicely with the arrow and sword proof armoring. They were as ornate as everything else on their person from that period. 

Only one of the samurai had even bothered to dismount his horse. He was the one currently wiping his blade of blood from the kill. The men must have been on their mounts a long while; they were showing signs of stiffness with stretching motions carried out in the saddle. The leader gestured to the others who then got off their horses so they could get in some exercise themselves, and restore some fluidity to now frozen joints. They attacked one another with their samurai swords, used the plates of their armoring to catch the blows, and stopped short of taking off one another's heads and arms with a grunt that seemed to signal one or another had won that round. In short order Heldor could see why the others hadn't bothered to dismount their horses and join in the slaying of the beast. It would have been overkill. Clearly they had a strong sense of honor and code of conduct they adhered to even at the risk of their own lives.  

They settled down some and actually sheathed their weapons upon seeing him, not sure what to make of him. But his look certainly didn't contrast all that markedly with their feudal era garb. Still, they probably weren't banking on his fair skin. 

He knelt down by the animal. Dead, all right. He took off his hat to get some more light to his eyes with which to examine the riders. Between being down on one knee and taking off his hat, they must have thought he was paying them his respects for besting the creature. He supposed they deserved the honor, in any case. He went up to the most impressive mount of the bunch, patting its neck. "Now that's what I call a horse." There was a reprise of laughter, probably for no better reason than they found it fitting he should continue to be impressed by them. The ring leader led them past Heldor, brushing rudely against him with the horse as if he should have known to step aside for them.  

Poor bastards. He resumed his hike up the mountain. It wasn't long before he heard their screams in the background. Protracted and agonizing, and then falling off sharply. Maybe one of the horses had survived. It was high time he got one. But seasoned war horses were hard to come by. Lucky him.  

He doubled back on himself. What he found was nothing bound to this world any longer.  

All the horses lay dead, most in pieces, right alongside the shattered and eviscerated remains of their dead riders.  

An arm lay severed at the shoulder, nice and clean. So, whoever faced off with them was wielding a sword himself. But that wasn't all he was wielding. Judging by the cauterized hole through the center of another samurai's chest. A pulse rifle of some kind. Whoever this was, he was not from the past, or the present. The sword in the severed arm looked badly nicked. It wasn't the only one. Looks like they all got a chance to get at least a few swings at whatever it was; it just didn't matter. High tech armoring, maybe, far superior to anything they were wearing.  

There. The first good sign. Whoever it was, they got a piece of him. Heldor bent down to sample the glowing baby-blue blood. It didn't just sit on his fingers; it heated and phosphoresced as if attempting to heal and cauterize the wound that had extruded it, and then it disappeared. Both good coping strategies for a hunter with smart blood that didn't want to telecast any injuries that weren't instantly self-healing. It was possible that without the jolt of energy from his body heat and body chemistry the blood was too exhausted anymore to retain its invisibility.  

The fact that the horses were slain suggested they weren't spooked and hadn't run but instead stood their ground and put up a fight right alongside the feudal era soldiers. He could imagine them rearing up on their hind legs just to stomp their attacker. No cowardice here. No lack of ample skill, either, all around. Which made what he was looking at all the more terrifying.  

He was turning to leave again, when he heard the neighing. One of the horses came out of hiding. His horse-the one he'd chosen out of the lot-had survived. "Figures you'd have more sense than the others," he said, stroking the animal. Seasoned or not, it was still a little worked up. "You're right, kiddo. Sometimes it's better to know when to cut and run than to stand and fight. Just don't try and throw me like you did your last rider." 

He climbed upon his new mount.  

Considering the ascent up that mountain ahead of him, his new horse's arrival couldn't be more timely, or the deaths of the samurai who would have been ill-inclined to give him up. Damn charitable of them to die so readily.  

As he rose out of the foothills some, and the mountain began to slope away from him, he realized it wouldn't be long before he could get a better look at what was ahead of him. He was right.  

There it was; the formidable Dragon Mountain. It rose into the clouds, dwarfing all the other peaks. It wasn't just the scale that was intimidating; it was the energy emanating from it. Perhaps it was a power spot not unlike the one at Morlock's tavern, which couldn't be seen from this far away even if it weren't hidden under a thicket of trees. Only, the mountain was just that much more powerful and eerier still. It, like Damian's castle which rested upon it, was hardly a feature natural to the terrain of Humboldt country. It was part of the region which constituted Thresdar proper. Like those pyramids no one could find in the jungles of Mexico, there were places in Humboldt county you couldn't find either, unless you were made of the right stuff. Maybe you had to have some magic about you to step onto the Promised Land, or it just remained forever beyond your reach, like another dimension folded into the Earth plane, always there and not there. In all likelihood the very magic which had drawn the earliest settlers was drawing the latest hell beasts, but a sign the magic of the region had become unstable. And why, exactly, was what he was here to find out.  

As he wended his way up Dragon Mountain he began to see some of the caves. Story was, after the volcano erupted, it left all sorts of snaking interconnected caverns that once supported an armada of dragons. Good thing they were all gone. That was the last thing he needed right now. He never thought he'd live to say it; but he had his hands full with hell beasts. Just the right amount made for a stimulating life as a hunter. Too many, and it was more of an exhausting life with no rest for the wicked.  

Refusing to let the mountain intimidate him, he trudged on up, though the truth was, he was already feeling pretty winded. Just walking this countryside qualified as A-grade military training, between the endurance required and, well, the aptitudes for surviving the things that lurked within it. Taking the rest of the ascent on horseback, for now at least, just meant shifting the places on him that ached or outright screeched in pain. 

Something was tracking him.  

Something there when he wasn't looking, and gone when he was. The horse's restless neighs suggested it had picked up on it as well. Otherwise he might have thought his imagination was playing tricks on him, a consequence of being overly tired.  

He doubled back to investigate. There were never any tracks pertaining to the dark force that had gotten a lock on him. Not the first time he turned around. Not the second or third times either. Maybe this was what Cleo was talking about earlier. Maybe one of the creatures that had made it here from another dimension had acquired conscious control of how to bleep in and out of existence at will. If so, he'd be the first. The other beasts just seemed hapless creatures as defenseless at dealing with what was happening to them as the rest of the locals trying to survive the unwanted intrusions.  

It was time to play Cleo's Get-out-of-Jail-Free card. He chewed down on one of the leaves from the branch she'd given him. Getting off the horse, he wedged one of the leaves in between its teeth. The leaf had a pleasant minty taste, which meant the animal wouldn't exactly come to hate him for it. Then he climbed back on the horse, took out one of the sawed off shotguns. In it he placed two cartridges. Not traditional 8-gauge solid lead shots exactly. These were miniature napalm bombs, only nastier still. He wasn't much for going home, but when he did, he had hobbies that fit the rest of his lifestyle. The cocktail of chemicals in each shell would vaporize just about anything in the explosion, living or otherwise.  

In the other shotgun he shoved two more shells from his waist-belt. In these two were another favorite invention. A special form of magnet that didn't engage until the chemical reagent driving the shot blasted it into the solid object in question. For this one to work, the creature didn't need to be alive in the traditional sense, but it did need metal in its body. As most lifeforms used some form of hemoglobin with either iron or magnesium at the center, condensing all the metal parts into a tight ball around the magnetic cartridge, pretty much meant instant death to whatever it was that was stalking him. In theory.  

In reality he'd yet to use either of these explosives. The napalm for obvious reasons; he wasn't exactly a tree lover, but then again, one hike through the Humboldt forests was all it took to soften even his heart on the subject of protecting Mother Nature. As to the next-generation magnets, well... he couldn't even explain the math behind them. More of a tinkerer than a scholar, for all he knew, the effects which had proven magnificent in his lab, were a one-time deal. And he just didn't understand enough of what was behind the process to duplicate it a second time. He'd soon find out, providing the next generation napalm didn't do the trick.  

The shotguns loaded, he readied them at his side, napalm to the right, magnets to the left. He was slightly right-hand dominant despite his ambidextrousness, meaning that trigger would likely pull a little faster. So better he go with the more likely candidate for success in case this creature didn't give him the extra reaction time his brain needed to send the impulse coursing down the neurons to the left side of his body and the left trigger finger.  

Both he and the horse had gone invisible shortly after he turned them around and stopped dead center of the trail, refusing to budge. The horse, used to combat, seemed to sense what was up, and went deadly still. Even his breathing became less audible. He was starting to think the horse was higher functioning than he was.  

There it was. The thing that had been stalking him.  

He was surprised the creature didn't just manifest in front of his prey and rely on scaring it to death. Saved all kinds of risky predatory moves. Then again, even the best of predators seldom made a move on anything in the forest unless it was a sure kill. Because even a small wound could prove lethal to an animal. Not like they had doctors to administer antibiotic injections while things healed. For that reason alone, Heldor would have advised it to capitalize on assets beyond its fangs and talons. 

As it turned out, this was another hunter, not another beastie. He walked right out of the rocks on the side of the mountain to Heldor's right, apparently impervious to solid objects. He didn't like how this was stacking up as regards his "super-weapons." Both rather relied on a solid body for effectiveness. The alien hunter had his own cloaking, making him nearly invisible. It was possible the rainbow colors being given off along his periphery were signs of exasperation, betraying his chemical signature. Otherwise he might be fully invisible. The alien stalking him seemed equally dissatisfied by Heldor's sudden disappearance, and equally suspicious something was awry. He raised his weapons, in one hand a pulse-rifle of some kind, in the other, a knife. The figure didn't look entirely human. Was it a robot? Or was that body armoring? Either way, likely there would be some metallic content. Hopefully just enough for the magnet slug to do its work. If not, maybe the outer shell would burn just hot enough to cook what was on the inside, courtesy of the napalm shells. The additional good news was that his prior unsolidified state was a phase he could shift in and out of, and he was currently out of it. 

Something had startled him beyond his raised level of wariness. Heldor could feel the horse's muscles trembling beneath him from the cold air sweeping in. That's mountain weather for you, can turn on a dime. It must have been enough to alert his stalker. Maybe he had superior tremor detection, and the slightest waves propagating through the earth were enough to elicit the warrior in him. Maybe he had superior hearing, and it was Heldor's shifting in the saddle slightly that had given them away. Either way, his stalker was trying to play it cool. He hadn't turned to face him directly. He was planning on raising his weapons to the ready first. And he might just have a cyber-enhanced nervous system to do that with. Heldor would be ready for him in either case. 

The humanoid predator turned and fired with his ray gun, which sent out a corkscrew beam. By then, Heldor had ducked, leaning to the side. Though the blowback from the rocks which the ray had hit was enough to throw him off the horse. While he hadn't exactly gotten away scot-free, Heldor had shot sooner, with both cartridges from both rifles. 

The magnetic slug did the trick. His assailant was continuing to fold in on himself. And for a short while at least, continuing to cook alive in the heat. It was quite possible just one of those weapons would have worked; now he would never know. His would-be killer's outcries in the throes of death elicited empathy in Heldor he hardly felt for him in life.  

With the shields dropped, the shrunken man turned out to be a knight from another age, or so he looked. On earth, knights belonged to the past, but maybe on whatever world he came from, they belonged to the future. This one had too much fancy wiring and transistors interwoven in his suit to be from a past relative to this world.  

The invisibility cloak wearing off on Heldor and the horse, he nudged the animal closer. No fluids had leaked out of the knight's suit, which suggested that the napalm bullets achieved their effects even having just the split second advantage of his right trigger finger over his left trigger finger. Otherwise, the magnet would have squeezed his life juices out of him, even as it condensed the metal exoskeleton about him. The lack of any scarring on the suit suggested he hadn't bled out only to have the napalm flash burn the excretions to base carbon, blackening his exterior. So that meant the napalm actually burned much hotter than he imagined. The flash was also so quick and all-consuming that, while the neighboring forest had been scorched, the fire hadn't spread. It had consumed itself as rapidly as it had begun, which also limited the holocaust effect. Another bonus. Score two wins for his two projectiles. Now he just needed a more accurate name for the combustible than "napalm" which wasn't half as effective in real life. 

Halfway up the slope of Dragon Mountain, whatever else was dogging him abandoned the chase. He'd picked up two more stalkers, but they both fell away. There were no more incidental rock slides, however small. No more closing in, then dropping back as soon as the wind direction shifted for fear Heldor's own sniffer would betray them. No more unsettling sounds right up next to him, coming out of nowhere, hoping he'd waste his powder firing at innocuous and obscured targets. Whatever these predators were, they were of the more conventional variety; they knew better than to attack until they'd better assessed the man and what he was capable of, for fear of leaving with wounds they couldn't mend. Maybe they fell back because they just didn't have the stamina, figured they'd stick to easier prey in the lowlands. The air was thinner up here, and getting uncomfortably cold fast. Whatever the reason, the subtle indications he was being followed were now gone.  

Not too much further up, he bumped his head against an invisible energy field and was thrown to the ground. The horse passed through unfazed. "Knock it off, Damian." 

The field dematerialized, revealing Damian's castle, nestled in a plateau area, giving Damian forty plus acres of flatland behind his home, before the mountain resumed its ascent. Heldor snorted at the outrageous scale of the mansion. If not a small city, then certainly a large town could easily fit inside. For all you know, could be another illusion. Guy probably lives under a rock like every other low life.