Marco quickly is jerked awake by the feeling of scratchy and dry grass on his face. “Where am I?” He thinks to himself and he slowly rubs the salt off of his forehead and slowly sits up and checks himself over for injuries.

  Stilling wearing his chef whites and kitchen shoes, he looks very out of place in this gray-green forest. He finds the cast iron pan and a couple of kitchen knives scattered around the strange little clearing with him.

  As he stands Marco looks around and tries to take in his surroundings. Small stunted trees sway in the breeze, branches and larger fallen trees litter the ground, rotting slowly into the dry ground covered in gray tinged grass. Marco takes a deep breath and is almost choked by the smell of rot and coughs out dry dust filled air.

  Marco stretches his six-foot-tall frame, grimacing as always at his lanky frame, good for kitchen work and squeezing between busy coworkers but maybe not as good in an unfamiliar forest.

  “Okay Marco, don’t freak out. You’re surrounded by a strange gray forest but that is alright! You haven’t been in weirder circumstances but you’ve woken up in unfamiliar places before.” He tries to hype himself up and not have a full-blown panic attack in the woods.

  “Hello?” Marco says at a normal speaking volume, not wanting to try his luck in an unknown place by shouting and making a fool of himself or attracting danger, if this is like one of Corey’s LitRPG books he was always going on about.

  “Status,” Marco says out loud, nothing happens. Trying to remember as many details of the books that he and Corey shared a love for.

  “Character Sheet”

  “Menu”

  “Help”

  “Hmmm, nothing seems to call up a system menu at least,” Marco chuckles to himself. Embarrassed at his jump to video games worlds and LitRPG novels.

  Not seeing or hearing anything rushing toward him, he starts to gather the cast iron pan and all the knives from around the clearing. He inspects the edge of his favorite Chef’s knife, a Gesshin Uraku 240mm, a Japanese style knife with a natural tan wood handle and a nearly nine and half inch blade. Seeing it still in good condition with no chips or breaks, Marco sighs in relief.

  He quickly removes his shin length apron, figuring it would do better as a carrying device for his assorted sharp objects rather than something to trip over in the snarly underbrush and rotten forest floor.

  Not seeing any danger in his little clearing, he starts to inspect the forests edge looking for anything recognizable in terms of trees, herbs or mushrooms. He starts at the top, inspecting the trees and seeing the strange star shaped leaves curling and crumbling at the edge. They have a strange purple hue, looking bleached out along with all the grass and bark that was grayed out.

  “Star shaped leaves?” Marco comments to himself, having never seen anything like that before. He reaches out slowly and grabs one of the leaves, finding it brittle and crumbly in his hand.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Strangely, as the leaf breaks apart Marco thinks he sees small sparks of purple against his skin. Quickly letting go of the light show producing leaf he wipes his hands off on his pants, leaving small gray splotches of dust behind before rubbing his eyes hoping to make it all go away.

  “Strange leaves and strange lights, what is next? Monsters?” Marco sighs to himself, cringing slightly at the jinx. “Ah the kitchen superstitions carry over huh?” He backs up from the strange gray purple tree and continues his look around.

  The grass is similarly jagged and there is no visible herbs or mushrooms. Marco deciding that there was nothing left of value in the clearing, he picks a direction at random and looks up for the first time at the gray foggy sky and cannot make out a sun just defuse light through the ever-present fog.

  A strange jolt passes through Marco’s head like a headache that instantly disappears. He shakes his head and rubs his eyes to try and clear the feeling. The feeling doesn’t linger at all but it feels strange when surrounded by the gray forest and under the gray sky.

  “What the hell is going on?” Marco shakes his head and continues to walk in his previously chosen direction. He walks for what seems like thirty minutes with the grass crunching beneath his Berkenstocks and dry gray wood snagging his chef whites, he cuts a strange figure in the gray world.

  After another fifteen minutes the gray begins to lose to the green grass and purple starry trees, Marco looks around not seeing much different in his surroundings except for a pair of green lights about a foot off the gray green forest floor.

  “What the heck?” Marco says, staring at the pair of green lights. He starts to turn around when the lights blink and start to stalk slowly toward him. Marco freezes like a deer in headlights, now under the gaze of an alien predator.

  Marco turns to run, not even considering the knives in his hand wrapped in apron. He makes it three or four steps before he feels a weight and a sharp pain on his back. The smell of rot returns a hundredfold stronger than before. Marco rolls over, finally snapping out of his startled freeze, seeing the creature that was on his back.

  The skeleton of a small wild animal like a fox or a medium cat with a lightly glowing green orb floating in the center of its exposed ribcage.

  Without thought, Marco brings the cast iron pan down on the head of the skeletal creature, the brittle exposed bones break and shatter under the heavy weight of the cast iron pan.

  Unfortunately for Marco the creature still comes at him again, swinging its thin skeletal claws at Marco’s exposed forearms, adding a set of thin lacerations to the burn scars littering his arms.

  “Ow, that hurts” Marco exclaims, scowling at the headless green glowing creature. The cast iron pan comes down again this time on the ribcage containing the green orb, as the ribcage turns to dust the orb winks out and puffs into nothingness with a small sprinkle of green adding to the pale gray dust that was previously the head and ribcage of the creature.

  Marco quickly gets to his feet, scanning the area around him for anymore lights or creatures. Finding nothing, he inspects his new wounds, he sighs in relief seeing three shallow cuts on the outside of his forearms.

  “Not much deeper than a graze, I’ve done worse to myself on a mandolin.” Marco thinks to himself, wiping away some of the blood with a corner of his chef whites, having long given up on keeping them clean.

  The bright red blood contrasts with the white fabric, gray bone dust, and greenish smears from the jagged grass. He takes a few more moments not finding the cuts particularly painful after a career in a busy kitchen environment full of hot oil, sharp knives, and harsh chemicals.

  Another strange jolt goes through Marco’s head, this time sticking around for a couple of seconds, conjuring a strange menu in his mind before that too winks out along with the feeling.

  “What is happening to me,” Marco asks the gray green world around him.