Nathaniel:

What had happened to me?

My body ached all over, pain filled my lungs each time I breathed. I had never felt pain like this. My legs were bruised and scarred, there was something black on my arms.

"Eh!" I grunted, holding my side. Warm blood filled my hands.

What do I do? I had never had anything more then a paper scratch in my life. Everything was instantly healed in less than a second back on Malison.

Now mortality and pain was catching up to me, reminding me that I was not on Malison, and that I was dying. How may years did I have left? A hundred? Ten? I hate not knowing things.

My vision blurred in and out, focusing and blurring at the same time. I needed some magic or some sort of miracle to save me now. If only Vestry didn't get sent to Earth and he was here to help me with his ridiculous power of healing. Healing, that he gave to me. I placed my hands over my wound at my side. Pressuring the spot caused it to hurt more.

"Heal." I commanded. Light came from my hands, stitching the skin together. "Seal and maintain." I went through the full range of movement, completing the process then repeating it with each injury on my body.

My stomach however would not stop hurting. I tried three times to heal it but it kept making a growling noise at me. Was there some sort of beast inside of me? Did it climbed down my windpipe while I was passed out on the stone forest floor? Now it was inside me, eating my insides. It let out another growl.

"What did you want, beast?" I yelled my tummy.

It couldn't eat me, right? I had to put food in myself so it would eat that and not me. Yeah, that sounded right. I grabbed my bow. Thankfully Dad was so busy trying to get rid of me that he forgot to take my weapons.

I had fifteen arrows, only seven weren't broken. I had my bow, which had by some miracle survived the fall. Thank goodness! I also had the short sword I grabbed from the boat. Man, that felt like days ago.

My greasy brown hair fell onto my face as I attached an arrow into the string and walked out of wherever the freak I was, probably an entry to a cave.

There had to be something I could feed the beast inside of me, it was getting quite angry with having no food and continued to growl.

"Shh!" I told it. "I'm getting you some food. Keep growling and you will scare it all away!"

I don't think it could hear me, because it just kept growling.

I gazed across the forest to the trees. There had to be something, maybe wild pasta, maybe a sandwich or two wandering in packs? All I could see was a flipping deer and a raccoon!

Where was all the stinking food in this place?

On Malison I have never had to hunt for anything. It was all brought out by servants. I knew most of our food supply came from trade and our small wheat farms.

I mean, here, pasta could look like anything, it could be shell kind or the curly kind, maybe even the spaghetti kind. I had no clue as to what type of pasta lived in these woods. Maybe I could find some Alfredo sauce coming out of a plant or something to eat with the pasta I catch.

Who was I joking? Pasta was expensive, which meant it must be super hard to find and catch. I'd have better luck at finding a sandwich. Now where does a sandwich live?

I wish they taught me this crap in high school instead of quadratics. The cubic root of 125 isn't helping me out in this situation.

An arrow sailed over my head, barely missing me. I let go of my arrow in the same direction. The arrow above me had strange markings, like it was made of wood and feathers instead of metal and foil. What was this strange land I stumbled into?

"Drop your weapon!" I heard a women yell, she had a hint of an accent that I couldn't quite pick up.

"Who's there?" I yelled.

"Drop it." Her voice was behind me.

"Alrighty." I dropped by bow, it clattered to the ground, folding itself back into a smaller stick, easy for holding.

"What in Odin's beard?" The girl gasped. "I can not believe my eyes!"

"Umm." I stammered. "Haha, was that a joke, Miss? Because I'm not one for sarcasm and I don't really know."

"You play tricks." She drew a sword from her belt. "I, Skadi, stand to fight you, descendant of the snow goddess, Skadi."

"You two have the same name." I pointed out. "Also I am not here to fight, just show me where sandwiches live and I shall be on my merry way."

"Liar!" She lunged at me. "My name is not my own."

"Isn't that the definition of your name?"

"Silent trickster." She swung her blade over my head, barely missing. "My name is borrowed from my ancestor, I must return it unstained."

"Names can't get stained!" I argued. "It's a freaking name!"

"It is better to have a good name than gold." She swung again.

I grabbed the short sword from my belt, our blades collided, creating a spark where they hit. Now I'm really thankful my father didn't steal my weapons.

"I would disagree." I snapped. "Having a good name doesn't make you a good person. Take me for example, I have no name."

"Because you have many." Skadi flipped around, her moves were amazing, increasingly better then mine. So naturally, she disarmed me quickly and took my sword from me. The handle read her fingerprints, recognized her as not me or anyone else from Malison and the blade collapsed back into the handle.

"Serpent." She hissed. "You trickster!

"Interesting choice of words." I hesitated what to say next. "But I am going to have to get going."

I grabbed my bow off the ground. It had never occurred to me that I would be in a situation that the finger print weapon system would actually be useful to some degree. I was so used to living at Malison, where everyone's prints were in the planetarium system that the scanner had completely slipped my mind. I took off running with my bow. Whoever this girl thought she was, she was crazy and would probably kill me. Skadi, where have I heard that name before?

Then it hit me. Not the name but a tree. Stupid forest, with stupid trees and crazy people going around saying they are the Norse goddess of winter.

Wait a second, that tree actually did some good.

The Norsett planet in the secondary system of the galaxy was known for their war style and womanly rule. They worshipped gods and goddesses, they were our allies, so they never caused us any trouble. But they also send people to Earth, just more often. This must be one of their people, which also meant there could be more then one of them in these forests.

"There he is!" I heard her scream. I also heard others give off their battle cry.

Crap! I jumped to my feet, but I was too late, I was surrounded. The Norsett people were crazy good at surrounding things in seconds, man, if they were our enemy, I probably would not want to be from Malison right now.

"So I see you have escaped the coldest depths of the Underworld." Another women rode on her horse at me, jumping from the saddle.

The Skadi girl stayed on the horse. They were both incredibly different. Skadi had pale skin with freckles to compliment her long red hair, pulled a bit out of her face. She wore a corset dress, battle armor and a flannel cape. She kept her sword and my sword handle in her belt. She had on leather gloves and boots. Pretty good battle wear for a Norsett, I suppose.

The other girl had dark skin with golden black hair pulled up into a pony tail. She wore golden armor that exposed bare skin on her legs, arms and part of her side. She had black leather on under her gold armor, the same shiny gold armor covered her leather boots, in her hand was a golden dagger. Now that looked like Norsett armor.

But both are still better than my armor. Which contained a skin tight suit, belt, gloves and shoes. A Zodiac didn't need much protection, if we could heal with medication and technology faster than we could die. So there was never a point in having armor. Until you're on a planet all by yourself, surrounded by a bunch of war crazy alien allies, which might not be your allies here.

This was my lucky day.

"We got you now, trickster." A man laughed behind me. "Wait till Alvin hears about this!"

"Who the flip is Alvin?" I sassed. "Listen guys, I just want to calm this beast down in my stomach and then I will be out of your hairs."

"Grab him." The golden girl commanded.

The man behind me yanked my shoulder to the ground, knocking me off balance. The Skadi girl grabbed my legs, holding them down while the man tied my hands together.

"Glow, we got him." The man told the golden women.

"Excellent, put him on your horse and we shall bring the dark prince to Alvin to be executed."

"Guessing your name is Glow?" I raised my eyes up to the golden women.

"You're correct, trickster." Glow snapped at me. "Any funny business and I shall whip that grin straight off your face and hang it on my bedroom wall with my other kills."

"I see your point." I smiled. "So that's where you draw the line."

"Stay behind it." She snapped, banging me across the face with the back of her golden hand armor. "To Alvin's house we ride."

The man threw me up his horse, jumped on himself, then followed the rest of the company through the forest. These people must have had their memories wiped. They obviously didn't recognize me as a solider from Malison.

It was going to be a lot of trouble getting out of this mess.

Thanks a lot, Dad.