You ultimately decide that you cannot just let him plunge into the water. The boy's life would be in too much danger, and you just can't stomach watching him suffer a watery grave. You are not strong enough, or weak enough, to allow that to happen yet. So you will save him, even if it costs you your own life. Though you pray that it doesn't. You want your assignment, your observation, your adventure with him to continue.
But to also send him to another world so blindly would be just as foolish, so you do your best to garner more information about each. You don't have much time left, so you're only able to divine a bit more on each world, focusing on the inhabitants and potential enhancements.
The first, fantastical world definitely has humans, but also so many more that would consider themselves dominant species. And unlike others your mind had immediately ruled out, most of them seem to get along and live in harmony. There are still a few isolationist species that are aggressive to humans and the other species, but they appear few and far between. And there are also monstrous creatures that attack anything they see regardless of tribe.
And what each lifeform possesses, what many of the plants and the world itself harbors can only be called magic. They all seem capable of it in some form or another, so hopefully the boy would be as well. And you just may be able to influence which type he would get.
The second, savage world does have humans as well, but far fewer than you can detect than in the first world. They seem to be scattered around, living in isolated settlements. You certainly wouldn't call them the dominant species either, that title clearly goes to monsters. Various, terrifying species, more than you could hope to count. But even they have something above them. And that, surprisingly, is humans again, though you find it hard to even call them that any more. They are something greater, something evolved beyond a regular human.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
It's hard to figure out exactly how they gain such power in the moment, but you can at least deduce that they garner it some way by defeating monsters. You can tell their strength just by a passing glance, though there is something off about these humans as well. They seem to have a certain hunger, one that may be forever unsated once they begin on that path of evolution.
In the third world, the only monsters there are other humans, though there are unnatural creations that could be labelled as such. The humans control everything, every inch of the planet and maybe even a bit beyond. As for power, that comes from science rather than any sort of natural or biological ability, and though there are highly advanced weapons, the humans mostly achieve it by enhancing their own bodies with technology.
You are confident that if sent there, the boy’s leg could not only be healed, but possibly enhanced or replaced entirely. There are almost certainly methods for healing in the others as well, through either magic or evolution, but gaining access to them may not be as simple.
So now with more insight of the possibilities, it is time to choose. You can not delay any longer, or it will be too late to save him. Where do you send him?
So I didn’t expect to be writing this mini chapter, but it turned out to be necessary. Because when the poll initially ended, it was a tie. So then I let it go on a bit longer, until the next morning, and guess what, not only was it still a tie, but it went from a 2-way to a 3-way tie ??. Thus we need a tiebreaker. In the event of the tie, the tied choices will be repolled with the losing choices removed and a new mini-chapter explaining the options a bit more.
In this case, only the ‘send him nowhere’ option is removed, which, if it had 1 more vote, then it actually would have been a 4-way tie. All the options were extremely close. This poll will run for about another day. In the event of another tie, hopefully not, I will put the tied options into a randomizer and we’ll get what we get. I didn’t want to do this as a tie-breaker initially, especially for this poll, since it’s such a crucial choice for the direction of the story.
What world do you send him to? {Poll Closed]
