Wesley Toddle was not a quitter, and he was also not afraid of the dark. But night dropped so fast, and so deeply, he was shocked to his bones. "That's right, another world," he muttered to himself.

  He made good time, heading for the hills, listening for any pursuit but hearing none. And after night fell completely, he brought out his small, but powerful LED flashlight, put it on a low setting, and kept going.

  The beam of Wes's flashlight cut a narrow path through the oppressive darkness, illuminating tufts of dry grass and jagged stones.

  The air wasn’t quite shiver-worthy, but it wasn’t too far away, either. Within minutes, the temperature had plummeted, far faster than any Texas night he'd experienced. It was more like being in a desert...which tracked. He trudged onward, the flashlight beam catching occasional glints from insects scattering at his approach.

  His light illuminated the uneven terrain ahead, casting long shadows behind scattered boulders. The dry grass crunched underfoot, louder in the silence that pressed in from all sides. No owls, no rustling of small creatures, just the whisper of wind over barren earth.

  Even without all the warnings of imminent death from the villagers, it would have been a little creepy. But Wes kept his mind and his thoughts focused.

  He crested a low rise and paused, scanning the darkness beyond his light's reach. Nothing moved. Nothing freaky, no lurking shapes. Just empty plains stretching into blackness.

  Wes was still hyped up, though, ready for anything, and the adrenaline was making his eyeballs buzz. Doing the best he could to contain his nerves, he just kept heading for the hills, watching around him. He figured that there must be some sort of herding or grazing animals in this world if predators existed, so he watched for them, too.

  Wes's boots crunched over loose shale as he ascended the first slope, his flashlight beam sweeping methodically across the terrain. Every shadow made his pulse jump—the adrenaline turning ordinary boulders into potential crouching beasts at this point. He didn’t bring his pistol out, didn’t want it interfering with his stability over the unstable ground, but he was ready to draw at a moment’s notice.

  He was very carefully avoiding thinking about his overall situation, or where he was, or anything about this new world. Now was not the time to fixate on problems he had no hope of imminent understanding or solving.

  Halfway up the hillside, something glinted at the edge of his light. Wes froze, pivoting the beam toward the anomaly. Metal. A rusted iron buckle lay half-buried in the dirt, its edges eaten away by time. Wes crouched to examine it, his breath slightly fogging in the chill air. The metal was cold against his fingertips, its surface pitted with corrosion. Nearby, a scrap of faded cloth fluttered from a thorny bush, remnants of some long-forgotten traveler. He figured it could also be a marker, though. Maybe shepherders came through this area. It was hard for him to tell.

  The wind picked up, howling through the rocks with an almost mournful sound.

  Wes examined the buckle again and nodded slowly. Signs of people meant he was walking through areas people went. This was basic and simple, but better than the alternative. He figured that whether to watch herds of animals, or for hunting, humans would have created shelter somewhere. Maybe more wells too. Although it was dark, he was willing to keep traveling to find somewhere decent for shelter. Making his own shelter wasn't really an option in the middle of nowhere, in the plains, without even a shovel. Wes straightened, leaving the rusted buckle behind. The wind still carried an unsettling quiet; no insects still, just the dry rasp of grass bending under invisible fingers. His flashlight beam carved a path forward as he climbed higher, each step sending small stones skittering down the slope.

  The hillside leveled out into a shallow depression where the remains of a crude fire ring lay scattered between two boulders. He narrowed his eyes trying to reason out why this could be. The only reason to start a fire out here would be for light or food. If the night was so dangerous that didn't make a hell of a lot of sense...unless the light provided safety. If so, that would help explain why, with a flashlight, nothing had tried to mangle him yet. Maybe.

  He studied the fire pit a bit longer. The stones around it were fairly large, over a foot tall.

  Wes was drawing a blank at first for what he could actually burn out here--grass burned too fast--then he remembered learning about the Native Americans on the plains in school, and how they’d burned buffalo scat.

  He nodded to himself, heading up further into the foothills, looking for shelter, and also animal droppings that weren’t too fresh or gross that he could maybe burn. The flashlight beam caught the irregular shapes of dried dung scattered across the slope—some cracked with age, others still holding their rounded form. Wes knelt beside a particularly large, sun-baked patty, poking it with a stick. It crumbled slightly at the edges but held firm. Good enough.

  He figured out a way to spear the dung on a stick, so he wouldn't have to touch it directly or carry it with his arms. He had collected a decent amount of it by the time he finally spotted what might be decent shelter.

  The moment he’d seen the building at the edge of his light, he’d almost cheered. It looked like it'd been used as some sort of feed or storage shed for years, and was constructed much the same as the buildings in the village he'd seen before. Now it was empty. Just three walls and a slate roof, but in pretty good repair.

  Wes approached the structure cautiously, his flashlight beam sweeping across the weathered wooden beams. The shed leaned slightly to one side, its slate roof missing a few tiles near the back, but it was dry inside and offered solid shelter from the wind. A thick layer of dust coated the packed-earth floor, disturbed only by the tracks of small animals.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  He stepped inside, kicking aside a brittle pile of old straw before setting his makeshift dung bundle down.

  Using a little tin of lint he’d had in his pocket gave him his fire starter material, and he busied himself with creating a fire at the entrance of the shed, digging out a hole with a stick, and using the dung as fuel. His crappy little ferro rod on his keychain wasn’t ideal, but he could get sparks from it. It took a while to get the fire going, but he eventually made it work, and threw the dung stick on for good measure.

  As the tiny, but growing little fire crackled away, he looked around with a little more curiosity for the building he’d found. Then he realized that this was a regular shepherding spot. It was obvious in retrospect.

  The light from the fire helped. He found lots more dung, mostly small stuff, but more than enough to keep the fire going. The fire crackled higher with an acrid tang, the dried dung burning slower and hotter than Wes had expected. He fed a few more patties into the flames, watching as they blackened and curled at the edges before catching fully.

  If he wasn't stranded on a different world, and hadn’t been warned about impending mortal danger, he would have been fascinated.

  With a sigh, Wes leaned back as he sat, his pistol close at hand. He wasn't particularly thirsty or hungry now, but he knew that tomorrow was likely going to be bad. Lack of water was going to be a problem, but he refused to regret not staying at the village.

  Despite efforts not to, he was starting to feel a little sorry for himself when he saw the eyes outside the firelight. There was just one set of eyes, but they were big. Really big. Wes's stomach dropped when suddenly, there were two sets of eyes gleaming in the dark. "Shit," he murmured.

  The creatures were vaguely lupine. They both remained right on the edge of the firelight, coming no closer for the moment, and flinched if light from the fire spiked. Wes watched warily and thought, Definitely sensitive to light. Suddenly, one creature breathed in deep, then blew hard. Wes's fire danced. He suddenly understood why the campfire he'd seen earlier had such large stones around the firepit. It was probably so Nasty McLubo couldn't blow the fire out.

  Both creatures breathed in, like they were about to try blowing out the fire at once. Wes decided not to let them try. With the light on his pistol ready to use, but not wanting to waste the batteries, Wes raised his rechargeable, usb flashlight again and hit the creatures with a high power beam. The sudden burst of white light struck the creatures like a physical blow. Both recoiled with snarls, their eyes flashing green as they twisted away from the light. Wes got his first good look at them then, too, nightmares, long-limbed shadows with matted fur stretched taut over whipcord muscle. One creature let out a guttural hiss, saliva dripping from elongated jaws filled with needle-like teeth.

  They were fast, circling around behind a bounder to avoid the flashlight. The moment Wes' light cut out, when he turned it off, they slunk back. Wes quietly cursed. The creatures moved with unsettling synchronicity—one darting left while the other feinted right, their matted fur blending into the darkness beyond the firelight. Wes chased them back, then kept the beam trained on the nearest beast as it crouched behind a boulder, its elongated muzzle barely visible and twitching. Saliva dripped from its exposed fangs, steaming faintly in the cold air.

  The second creature let out a rattling growl from the shadows.

  He experimented. When Wes turned off his light, the creatures always came right back, ready to try blowing the fire out. If they weren't the size of a pony, and obviously lethal it would have been annoying, but instead, it was terrifying. Death was waiting in the darkness. He understood the name of the game now; on the plains, at night, light was life.

  Wes had a long run time on his flashlight, but it wouldn't last all night, especially not at high intensity, and the wolf creatures seemed riled up. Feisty. Murderous. It was also obvious that the creatures would try blowing out his fire all night and might even succeed if he stopped being vigilant. He briefly thought about building another fire inside the shed, or nearer to himself, but he could think of several reasons why that wouldn't work. For one, he didn’t have nearly enough fuel, nor any way to get more without getting his head chomped off. The wolf monsters were the size of a freakin’ grizzly bear.

  Finally, with a sigh full of fear and resignation, Wes stood. "Hey, you slavering assholes. Could you please go somewhere else? I don't want to waste ammo," he said, voice firm. The creatures didn't respond—just kept circling just beyond the firelight, their fur bristling with each pass. Their breath came in ragged huffs s they timed their movements between flashes of Wes's light. The larger one suddenly lunged forward, snapping at the air before darting back—a testing strike, trying to push past the firelight, apparently.

  Wes thumbed the safety off his pistol. "So be it," he growled. Then he waited for a broad side shot at one wolf creature, flipped on the tactical light on his pistol, and lit the wolf-thing up. Then he sent four presents, four shots in quick succession, defensive ammo, 9mm hollow points. The gunshots cracked through the night like thunderclaps. Flashes of light accompanied the reports, also disorienting the creatures. All four shots hit the thing in the body, the first being a perfect heart shot, if the night wolf-thing had a heart.

  Immediately, Wes turned, aiming and gunning down the second dark wolf. His shots this time were not as clean.

  Wes's first shot just shattered the monster’s cheek, not a killing blow, and his second shot hit the wolf-thing's rump as it turned. He shot after it twice more, not completely sure if he hit either time, but fairly certain at least one connected. Wes hissed through his teeth. Eight rounds gone. Four more in this mag.

  Suddenly, he felt...strange. As he absently changed out to his second, spare mag, he slowly sat down again amidst the smell of cordite, wondering why he was feeling so odd.

  As he held his head, staring into the night, remaining vigilant despite his bizarre new sensation, like his senses were being...washed, he saw something new in his vision.

  A screen, hanging in the air like VR.

  [System Initiated.

  Subject: Wesley Toddle.

  World: Worshiss.

  Current position: Valtros, plains.

  Power granted:

  ...thinking

  ...noting circumstances

  ...cross referencing

  ...indexing

  ...checking

  Power granted: Cosmic Vending]

  Wes blinked in astonishment.

  "Uh, he said quietly. "There is a...system? Do I have a character sheet, or screen?"

  As soon as he said, "Screen," one popped up in his vision, glowing, but giving off no light on the ground. Wes rubbed his head. "Does this day ever stop being super super fucking weird!?"