Wilson woke up abruptly with a gasp. He could feel someone holding on to him tightly. He could feel a certain kind of involuntary movement. It felt like he was being moved at an insane speed even though there was no movement in his body. His insides felt like it was being squeezed and twisted by some invisible forces. It was a confusing and very uncomfortable feeling for him. He tried to open his eyes but then found out it was already opened. It was just so dark around him, it was as if his eyes were still closed. Slowly, his eyes somehow adjusted to the darkness around him and he was able to make out bits of existences zooming past him occasionally or perhaps, it was him that was crazily zooming past them. Wilson could not make the slightest sense of it. It was confusing to say the least. Wilson tried to move his hands but the hand was gripping him firmly, his hands were gripped along with his waist. He struggled a little more and the grip got firmer, hurting Wilson a little in the process. Wilson quickly relaxed his muscles. It seemed like he was not going to be able to even move his hands. Not to mention, the space around him was beginning to feel somewhat familiar. He concentrated hard and tried to think of what or where he might have felt like that before. Then, his memories slowly came back to him.
He looked around all over again, as much as his eyes could take in with minimal movement and optimum concentration. He was inside a portal, a space portal, he was quite sure of it. Nowhere else had he ever felt like this. The squeezing, twisting feeling in his upper body where it felt like all his organs were going through a rough time; the atmosphere that made it hard to breathe and the uncomfortable, weird feeling if moving and yet not moving.
'But why was this portal taking so long to pass through?' Wilson had the urge to ask out loud. This portal was unlike the others. The other portals he had been through…..oh wait, he had only been through one before. But then, that one was fast. It only felt ike seconds to move from one point to the other. This one, was taking too long. It must have been several minutes since he became conscious and they were still not out if it yet? It made Wilson wonder how long it had already been and how long it was going to take before exiting the portal.
What Wilson did not know, was that a standard portal would have teleported them to any place on the planet in less than a minute, but as Ruthless had impatiently used a talisman, it was going to take them a much longer time than usual, as the combination of space tech and space magic was imbued in the talisman was still amateur at best. It was still being researched and the researchers had only recently and barely been able to make it useable. The space talismans still had a long way to go to be efficient as well as effective. After all, it was an immense challenge mixing space technology and magic together as these two topics were vastly uncharted territories for humans. It was different for the space portals however, because humanity had a more advanced knowledge on abilities which was currently being used alongside the limited knowledge about space tech to create the current standard space portals. Hence, the disparity between the standard space portals and the talisman space portals.
Wilson believed it was Ruthless who was carrying him. He also knew it was a bad idea to make any unnecessary movements in a space wormhole, but he did not seem to have much of a choice. He knew by instinct that whatever Ruthless needed him for, was nothing good. Wilson had only met the noble named Ruthless a few times, including his dreams, which he still had too little understanding about, but it was already obvious that Ruthless was a ruthless person who did not care about anyone and only did what he believed was to his benefit. Whatever Ruthless was planning, Wilson believed it would most likely end up with him being dead, most like tortured to death one way or another. Who knew if the noble had an unknown fetish? And so, with all these in mind, Wilson made a decision to escape from Ruthless' grip in the wormhole before they exited it at the other side of the seemingly endless portal. He suddenly turned his body and forcefully pushed for the walls of the wormhole that seemed to be fleeting past at an insane speed and yet seemed not to be moving at all. If one looked at the wall and concentrated real hard, one could see that the wall was actually warping around itself with slight images of various places and environmental conditions.
Ruthless' swordsman, who was also the nobleman's right hand man, was quite some distance behind. He had taken some time before entering the space portal and therefore, was very far behind his master. Even then, he still noticed through the darkness of the endless space wormhole that Wilson made an unusual movement. He gasped a little at the suddenness and surprising swiftness of Wilson as he was held on his master, Ruthless' shoulder. The sudden force pushed Ruthless from his stationary position at the center of the fast self-moving wormhole floor (if it could be called that), towards its walls. He knew just how much strength it took to be capable of even nudging his master, and so he was surprised to see a supposedly weak teenager of neither ability nor magical powers, forcing Ruthless a few slight steps to the side and towards the wall. The swordsman gasped but did not dare to move. It was strictly advised against for one to move even the slightest inside an active space portal wormhole, especially since it was created by predominantly using the vastly un-understood power called magic.
Ruthless was surprised as well. He staggered some small steps to his right and.....
*************
*SWOOOOOOOOOOSH* *THUD*
He was gone. There was a slight delay after Ruthless stopped. A delay of only a second and some couple milliseconds, then, he was gone. He disappeared. At least that was how his right hand man saw it. In actuality, things were more complex than that. The slight movement had caused a lot of difference in positioning which further led to a change in coordinates. The swoosh sound was the premature ejection from the space wormhole. Ruthless fell from about three meters above ground and landed on a soft grass. He stood up and looked around. He was familiar with this place. It was a grassy plain he once hunted at. Then, he was barely an adult and he had decided to hunt for a living, starting slow by hunting small, less dangerous animals. He could never forget this place. It was here he had awakened his strength ability while running from a hungry tiger. After awakening his ability, life became better for him. He had worked his way up the social ladder and had made friends with all kinds of people including nobles until finally, he was ordained a noble himself. It was like mother luck had chosen to look kindly upon him after all his suffering as a child.
Either by that same luck or maybe something more complicated, Ruthless, instead of being torn apart by the space fragments which were exceedingly rampant in wormholes like that, had instead been dropped at a place not too far from Forest city. It seemed like mother luck was still looking favorably at him from up above. Ruthless noticed that Wilson did not seem to have passed through the fragments like he did.
"He must have been torn apart by the fragments. What a pity!" Ruthless said aloud, turned southwards from his standing position and began to walk, unperturbed by the rapid scurrying noises below his feet or the occasional roars and grunts of animals from the forest of trees he was slowly approaching. He knew from experience that those animals were not a threat to him. Not even their mutated counterparts, popularly known as 'beasts' were threatening enough. He soon entered the forest and stopped. Ruthless knew by the instincts he had gained from experience, that Forest city was roughly 20 kilometers away from where he stood.