ARWIN

  "Sorry." Arwin hurried forward. After a few seconds of experimentally twisting the arm and hand, he extracted the limb from the pelvic bone.

  With a sigh of relief, the skeleton stood and stretched before pulling his red and white boxers up into place. "Ah, much better. That was giving me a kink in the shoulder." He turned and offered his bony hand, and Arwin shook it. The grip was firm, and the bones were smooth and dry. "Thanks for that. Sorry for being so short-tempered with you. It was a rather embarrassing and uncomfortable situation to be caught in."

  "Don't mention it." Arwin tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.

  The skeleton's eye sockets narrowed. "Are you always like this?"

  "Um, maybe? I could be out of sorts. I’ve never spoken to the undead before. Didn’t even know they were real. That only happens in books and movies where I come from.”

  Unless, of course, he was, in actuality, crashed in a ditch somewhere just off the highway on Earth, and everything he’d gone through up to this point had been happening entirely in his concussed head. He hoped not. That would be super disappointing, like those movies where someone goes through all this amazing stuff only to wake up at the end of the film and realize that it was all just a dream. The thought that this world might not be real for him really bummed him out. He frowned.

  It’s ok, the author assured him, momentarily breaking the fourth wall or something. That isn’t the case here.

  Arwin relaxed again, pleased.

  The skeleton looked puzzled. “Where do you come from? Undead like myself are not exactly commonplace, granted, but everyone knows that undead exist in real life. Er, undeath. I mean— Whatever.”

  “I guess it depends on the location of your reality.”

  The skeleton mused, “Ah, so you’re from farther away. You’re from the Knight’s Realm?”

  “Nope. No knights where I come from.”

  The skeleton studied him, then spoke doubtfully, “You’re from Pillé, City of Thieves?”

  Arwin shook his head. “No. Definitely not. Sounds dangerous.” He paused. “But also exciting. Is that wrong?”

  “The Indós Morass?”

  “I have no idea what that is. Sounds messy, though.”

  The skeleton tilted his head. “Hmm. You don’t look like an elf, and your skin isn’t red, so I doubt it’s the Blood Kingdom or the Red Region. Somewhere in the Heart Kingdom, then?”

  Arwin’s eyes widened. “There are elves here?”

  The skeleton looked taken aback. “Yes, of course. Several different kinds.”

  Arwin excitedly babbled, “Dwarves? Naga? Goblins? Gnomes? Fairies?”

  The skeleton only appeared more confused. “Obviously.”

  Arwin enthused, “Wow. That’s awesome! And no, I’m not from the Heart Kingdom. I’m really pumped to go there, though.” He chuckled. Wordplay was fun.

  The skeleton tapped his chin thoughtfully and appraised the human in front of him. "I'm not much on fashion nowadays, not needing it myself, but come to think of it, your clothes are nothing like what people wear anywhere I've been in Heartstone. You also have an odd accent. Uncouth and boorish, but I suppose the ladies will adore it anyway, simply because it’s foreign, and some think that anything foreign is exotic and attractive. Finely cut hair, perfect teeth, strange ignorance of all things Heartstone, and you enjoy puns, finding them amusing instead of bothersome. Perhaps you aren't from around here at all."

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  "That's what I'm saying! Wait.” Arwin looked down at himself: dark green sneakers, fitted gray jeans, and a plain white t-shirt he’d managed to wash the blood out of that showed off his somewhat muscular arms. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” He pointed. “Also, you do realize that you’re a skeleton but you’re wearing underwear, right?”

  “It helps people identify me so they don’t think I’m just another undead walking around. Then try to destroy me.”

  “Ah. Does that work?”

  “Sometimes.” The skeleton looked around for a moment, puzzled. Then his gaze caught the tall forest behind Arwin. His voice filled with awe. “No. It couldn't be. After all this time, has the Curtain finally opened again?"

  Arwin’s head tilted to the side. “The Curtain? And why did you capitalize it like that when you said it? Also, how do I know that you capitalized it?” He frowned, confused.

  "The Curtain,” the skeleton explained, “is a magical barrier separating Heartstone from the non-magical dimension of Drearia, what you call Earth, I think. You know, I find it strange that you named your planet after dirt. Anyway, Drearia is where very early primates and then, later, modern humans of Heartstone originated from.”

  “Wow. That’s cool. Small world. Er, universe? Multiverse?”

  “The Curtain is one of several portals to other dimensions found in our world. In the past, the portal was always open, allowing people to venture from Heartstone to Drearia and back again, though not that many took advantage of the opportunity to go to Drearia because there’s no magic, so why bother? There are far better travel destinations.

  Arwin nodded. “That’s why you call it Drearia, I assume. Yeah, I can understand that.”

  “But the Curtain has been closed for ages. I heard that the shutdown was supposed to be permanent in order to protect Heartstone.” He frowned, and he continued in a worried tone. “The Curtain is powered by the Heartstone. Has something weakened the power of the Heartstone so that the stone can no longer keep the portal closed? That’s a very troubling thought."

  “The Curtain was protecting Heartstone from Earth?”

  “Well, yes. No offence.”

  Arwin assured him, “None taken. You should see what we’ve done to the place over the last two hundred years. Killed off something like sixty percent of all living things — on the entire planet. We’re responsible for the world’s first manmade mass extinction event, losing so many entire species that we’ve lost count. Negatively affected the climate of the entire planet with our pollution and rampant consumerism. Seems like every month, we break more heat records. Polar ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising high enough for islands to disappear. Storms are getting worse. Wildfires are big enough that smoke travels across oceans to other continents. We all live on the edge of ecological disaster. Social and financial inequality has skyrocketed to the worst levels in history. Pandemics are killing millions, and nobody cares. All kinds of problems.”

  The skeleton stared at him with a slack jaw and hollow, unbelieving eyes.

  Arwin sighed. “Yeah. I’m guessing that’s why you closed the portal to my world, eh? Good call.”

  The skeleton allowed, “I had no idea that things were so bad. If I recall, the portal was shut because of rising pollution and rapidly advancing war technology.”

  “Ah, probably the Industrial Revolution and all that coal burning. Followed by dynamite and modern warfare. We had two world wars, back to back.”

  The skeleton staggered back a half step. “World? You mean the entire planet, all nations at war at the same time?”

  “Sadly, yes. Forty or fifty million died in the second one, I think? It only ended when we dropped two nuclear bombs, each strong enough to reduce an entire city to ash. Not our proudest achievements.” Arwin huffed and changed the subject. “So, Heartstone is a place and a thing?"

  The skeleton took a moment to regroup from the horrors Arwin had so casually rattled off, then nodded. “I can tell by your seemingly limitless ignorance that you really must be from Drearia after all. Yes, both place and thing. The place was named after the thing, you see. The Heartstone thing rests in the centre of the place, this continent. It's a very big stone that acts like a heart, pumping concentrated magicons, a type of tiny particle, into the realm. I’m told that magicons exist everywhere, perhaps even in your universe, but their density in Heartstone contributes to our rich diversity of magical things. The particles naturally affect both living creatures and the inanimate. Buildups of magicons in certain regions are responsible for most of the puns. And magic users can harness available magicons to power spells and so forth. Makes our world a much, much less dreary place than yours.“

  Arwin grinned. "Punny, I was just thinking the same thing." He guffawed and slapped his knee at his own joke.

  The skeleton would have rolled his eyes if he’d had any. He sighed instead. "You know, puns are more like an unfortunate side effect of the magic. It's considered bad taste in some circles to throw more than necessary into a conversation."

  Arwin sobered and replied with mock seriousness. "Well, I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me. Being handed such advice from a handsome skeleton like yourself is really handy. You seem like a dab hand, and I don't want to force your hand or make you get your hands dirty, but you are hands down the only person I know here. I think I'd be in safe hands if you could further give me a guiding hand." Arwin snickered, then couldn't help himself and doubled over in laughter at his humour.

  The skeleton remained silent for a long moment. His eye sockets bored into the human until the laughter dried up, and Arwin stood straight again. The skeleton shook his head. "You don't have many friends, do you?"

  Arwin opened his mouth to reply but had nothing to say to that. His shoulders slumped as he remembered his recent bad luck with friends back home. “Recently, not so much.”