I woke up to a splash of water.

  “Wake up.”

  My eyes opened to observe a dim cabin interior. Sitting directly across from me was Lilith. She had a bottle of booze in one hand.

  I tried to sit up, but my legs and arms were bound.

  “Don’t bother,” Lilith grumbled. She took a swig from her bottle. “It’s Ouro suppressing weave, torture grade.”

  I pulled against the ropes with gritted teeth.

  “Don’t you think this is a little overkill?”

  Lilith reclined in her chair. The wood creaked under her Weight. “Nah, cause I don’t feel like chasing you.”

  “I wouldn’t run if you weren’t nuts,” I hissed.

  Lilith frowned. “What the fuck happened to you? I want my Lafayette back, I want… I want the polite little boy who made me feel loved.”

  “You wanna know what happened? You kidnapped me in front of my friend after choking her out!”

  Lilith set her bottle aside and stood up. “She tried to take you from me, I don’t appreciate that.”

  I looked up. “She didn’t do anything, I gave her that ring. I promised her I’d always be there, I plan on keeping that promise!”

  Lilith stepped forward and kicked me in the stomach. I coughed hard, a vein bulged on my neck.

  “Why?!” She shouted at me, “Why do you love her and not me? I deserve it! I saved you!”

  “You don’t deserve anything…” I replied with a strained voice. “…you kept me, because I was strong. Had I been weak, you’d have tossed me aside.”

  Lilith pulled at her scalp and snarled. “Gah, you need strength to survive in this world! It’s the bare minimum! I thought I taught you that much before I left!”

  I leaned my head back on the cabin wall and spat out a glob of blood. “Strength isn’t everything, it doesn’t bring happiness. Phillip taught me that.”

  Lilith laughed darkly as she stared me down with her one good eye. It had a crazed look to it. “Phillip doesn’t know shit and neither do you! You’re just a kid.”

  She walked over and pulled me up by my collar. “You think strength doesn’t matter? Well, answer me this. If I threw you into a pit of wolves, how would ya get out of that?!”

  She leaned close.

  I pulled my head back. “That has nothing to do with this! It’s like if I asked you how to grow a tree!”

  Lilith dragged me towards the door of the cabin. “Oh that’s where you’re wrong, it has everything to do with this.” She threw her shoulder against the door.

  It swung open and revealed a foreign landscape. The trees were tall with strange glowing fruits on their branches. The grass was thick and black.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  And the air was thick with the smell of rain.

  “Take a wild guess where we are, Lafayette.”

  Lilith forced me to look all around the strange landscape.

  “I don’t know.” I finally replied.

  Lilith laughed. “Then allow me to inform you, we’re on the demon continent. A place where everything wants to kill you, even the god damn plants.”

  She forced me to look at her with her hand on the back of my head. “So let me ask you again, if I threw you into a pit of wolves, how would you survive?”

  This bitch was insane, that wasn’t even a question anymore. “What are you saying?! You… you didn’t seriously consider leaving me here, did you?!”

  “That depends on you,” Lilith answered. “Either you admit I’m right and go back to being my sweet little boy. Or I let you find out the hard way how important strength can be.”

  I struggled against her hand. “You’re bluffing, you wouldn’t leave me out here! Not after you worked so hard to get back to me, think about this logically!”

  Lilith tilted her head. “I have thought about it. I’d rather you die, before I ever let you look at another woman like you used to look at me.”

  This had to be some kind of cruel joke. The world just couldn’t let me move on, it had to drag me back to this shit!

  Why?

  Why couldn’t I just live a normal life?!

  I clenched my jaw so tight my molars nearly cracked. This was so unfair, wait, no. That’s what I’m supposed to think, aren’t I?

  I’m supposed to get scared and crawl back to her. That’s what she wants, she wants Kenji back. And I almost gave him to her.

  Well, not anymore.

  I breathed a heavy sigh. “Fine, if I have to survive here, then I will.”

  Lilith’s good eye went wide.

  “What did you just say?”

  I grinned. “I said, I’d rather stay here than spend another minute with you!”

  The ball is in your court, Lilith.

  Lilith growled. “Fine.” She reached for the knife on her hip and pulled it out.

  I tensed, she wouldn’t.

  She reached behind me and cut my hands free, then my legs. “Wha—“

  Lilith pushed me aside. “I’ll give you a year, if you survive we’ll revisit this conversation. And if you’re dead…”

  She let her words hang unfinished.

  She stepped into the clearing and summoned a dragon. She turned to me. “You’ll wanna find a city before nightfall, I doubt you can fight off creatures in your sleep.”

  She paused for a moment.

  “Oh yeah, join a mercenary guild, you’ll need the money.”

  And with that final piece of advice, she climbed onto her dragon and took off.

  I looked up to the sky while nursing my wrists.

  She left me, she actually left me.

  “It’s not surprising,” The dragon noted. “Still, her advice is sound. While I’ve never been to the demon continent it doesn’t take a genius to know there’s safety in numbers.”

  I looked down at my hands and tightened them into fists. “Yeah, alright.”

  I stepped back into the cabin and looked around. The space was empty aside from the chair.

  “Tch~”

  Back outside I took another look at my surroundings. I could hear the sound of running water nearby and decided to head over.

  After all, where there’s water, there’s civilization.

  Hopefully.

  Upon reaching the river, I turned my head from where it was flowing to where it originated.

  I could see mountains in the distance, they stretched high above the trees. Fog hung low rolling up against the trees.

  Okay… so I’m definitely not going that way.

  I turned and started walking downstream.

  As I walked through the black grass, the thick blades crunched underneath my boots.

  I couldn’t help but think back on Meridian.

  To think, this whole time she was a girl. A soft chuckle escaped me. All that hate I gave to dense protagonists in my old life, just for me to join the list.

  I touched my finger where my ring had been, its absence left a deep hole in my heart.

  “I’ll come back to you, I promise.”

  — — —

  I couldn’t have been walking for longer than an hour when I noticed a figure sitting on the riverbank.

  It was a small, black thing with long pointed ears and a poorly crafted spear. It snarled and hissed as it thrust its spear into the water repeatedly.

  What the hell was that?

  The dragon hummed. “It appears to be a goblin, though it’s darker than the ones on the main continent.”

  Goblin huh? Well you know what they say about goblins, where there’s one, there’s another.

  I crouched low and took cover behind a tree.

  The goblin pulled its spear out of the river. At the end of it was a frantically wiggling fish. The goblin let out a dirty laugh.

  It brought the fish to his mouth and chomped down on it. Bones and all. I frowned deeply.

  There’s no way that thing can be conversed with. I raised a finger gun and spun a water bullet at the tip of my fingers.

  I fired.

  The bullet shot forward, and the goblin leaned back without even looking at me. The bullet shot past his face and smashed into a tree, leaving a massive crater in the bark.

  The goblin’s eyes spun on me. He screeched before sprinting in my direction.

  I scrambled back. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  The goblin leapt into the air and threw his spear at me. I rolled to the left. The spear hit the dirt with a thud.

  I scrambled to my feet and took off.

  The goblin landed beside the spear and it picked it back up, before chasing after me.

  “What kind of goblin moves like this?!”

  The goblin laughed as his tongue hung from his mouth, long, slimy, and green.

  He was gaining on me. I wasn’t gonna outrun him at this pace, so I had to shake him off. I banked hard to the right, and the goblin pivoted with the help of his hand.

  I ran past a tree and did a hard stop, before running in the opposite direction. The goblin tried to copy me, but tripped on something.

  I looked over my shoulder to see that some kind of root or tentacle had snatched it up by the ankle. I paused and watched as the goblin was smashed against the bark of a tree.

  His head popped like a bad melon, green blood splattered across the black grass.

  “O-oh my god!”

  My eyes went wide as the now limp corpse was dragged up the tree and dropped into a colorful pod of acid.

  Never to be seen again.

  What. The. Fuck.