Another World

Another World

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Though when we first arrived in this strange world nearly a year ago now the night sky appeared to be similar to that of Earth, the only reason we knew it wasn’t was the fact that there were two moons. For the first few days, we had all stuck together and formed a base camp near where we had arrived. During that time I talked to nearly 200 people to find out where they all had come from, and to my surprise, there were no two people from the same country, and not everyone spoke English, which was surprising because I could understand them all perfectly despite only being able to speak English. After a few days, everyone had begun to settle into the new routine that we all lived by now, however, that all changed on the fifth night, at midnight the sky slowly lit up almost as if the sun was rising, and majestic purple clouds began to dance across the sky. Then we were attacked by a group of twenty goblins, each one was no stronger than your average teenager but they were still able to kill ten of us before we killed them. After this, the peace that we had established crumbled like a sand castle and divisions formed, those with a weak mentality chose to either flee in fear, and others formed a group and departed to set up a new camp believing that anywhere else would be safer. By the end of the fifth day of the 195 people that had made up this camp was reduced to 100. Once we buried our dead and burnt the goblin's corpses we took what little equipment they had and began to use the weapons and armour of the monsters as our own.

Over the first few months, it didn’t take us long to realise that once the purple clouds came monsters were going to attack, but that wasn’t the only change that happened to us, slowly some of us began to develop powers like those in comics and fairy tales. Once we got these it became easier to deal with the increasing number of goblins that attacked, however, soon after some of us got these powers and we stopped losing people the monsters changed and we were forced to deal with hobgoblins and the occasional orc. After six months though I was able to finally manifest my ability, healing magic, admittedly this was the power we needed the most, especially since we only had two to take care of over seventy others, all of whom had awakened either, body-strengthening, offensive/defensive magic or buff/debuff magic. But I couldn’t help but be disgruntled by this as I wanted to be on the frontlines to help the others who were risking their lives.

“Hey, you know they couldn’t fight like that without us here healing them.” Theo said next to me as we both crouched over wounded fighters healing them as fast as we could so that they could go back out and fight against the wave of orcs attacking our camp.

“I know that, it's just that I used always be out there with them even without having an ability, but now that I have one I have to stay safe and sound in the back unable to fight.”

“Hey quit your complaining, more are coming in, it's getting rough out there.” Achebe shouted over to us from the other side of the hut we were working out of.

“Hey what’s going on out there?” Theo called out.

“There are black orcs at the main gate, Ahmed, Mira and Mikhail are dealing with it, but without their support, the others are having a hard time dealing with the orcs.” Rin called back to us from the watchtower.

“Damn it, the waves are getting stronger again.” I sighed thinking about the last time this happened, we lost four people. I wasn’t going to just sit back here and let more people die when I could be out there helping them.

It was on that night that I came to realise the true potential of a healer in combat, something that no one else had thought of, what if I could heal myself while I fought against the monsters? I would be able to recover from fatigue and most light injuries almost instantly as long as I had mana. After I had left the healing hut and joined the battle I was unable to remember much after jumping into the wave of orcs, all I could remember was regaining my senses when Mira, Ahmed and Mikhail found me standing on a mound of orcs corpses with only a few minor scratches covering my body. After that I had begun training with the other healers to see if they could also fight and heal themselves simultaneously, however, they were unable to. From then on I began to train with Mira our main damage dealer, who was not only extremely lethal but also extremely beautiful, while she was only five four with a slim build her body strengthening made her strength second only to Mikhail our tank, her brownish blonde hair somehow always looked perfect even after fighting hordes of monsters, her green eyes seemed to peer into your very being. It was no wonder she was the one all the guys were after but even after six months here she had maintained a cold attitude toward everyone, only doing what would benefit the camp and maintain order.

“What are you doing, be more aggressive, with your healing ability you don't need to worry about minor wounds, so stop hesitating and attack me.” She waited for me in a relaxed stance, looking at me expectantly.

“Just because I can heal myself doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt when I get cut and stabbed.”

“Then we just need to get rid of that fear.” She launched herself at me. Her sword came at me at incredible speeds, and with zero hesitation she cut and stabbed me in a flurry of attacks until I was on my knees unable to move while I tried to heal myself quicker.

“That hurts more than you can imagine.” I said standing up after repairing my legs.

“Good, it was meant to. Let's end our training here for today, we will pick this up again tomorrow at the same time.” Turning she walked away towards the bathhouse.

“Hahaha, she really doesn’t go easy on you at all.” Theo walked up beside me placing a hand on my back and aiding my healing. Theo was barely a teenager when we had first arrived in this world but now after only six months, he had the maturity of someone twice his age.

“Well, what can you expect, they want me to learn to fight and heal at the same time. I mean if I can get my healing ability up to Achebe’s level then I will be virtually immortal and if I can fight like Mira with the sword then I would become the most fearsome warrior we have.”

“That is true but you need to survive this training first if you want any hope of getting to that level.” Patting me on the back twice Theo walked away towards our lodging.

For the next six months, I trained with Mira and Mikhail every day and fought on the front lines with everyone else against the hordes of monsters that were becoming more frequent and increasingly stronger. Though even with the increasing strength of the monsters, all of us who fought them were getting stronger at a much faster pace than the monsters were, and with the combined efforts of Mira, Mikhail and Ahmed acting as the vanguard the walls were never breached and with my healing ability I was sent out into the middle of the waves to slow them down.

“Hey, what’s that?” Everyone began murmuring and pointing to the sky.

“DRAGON!!!!!!!” Mikhail bellowed from the top of the watch tower.

“MONSTER HORDE!” Rin shouted out from next to Mikhail.

Everything fell apart in the following moments after that, only a few people were able to keep their cool and move to the walls to defend under Ahmed's direction, while everyone else collapsed to the ground, all hope drained from them as they watched the dragons form getting larger and larger.

“Danakhil! We need you to stop the horde as best you can while Ahmed, Mira and myself try and deal with that dragon.” Mikhail shouted to me before he leapt from the tower. Wordlessly I began running towards the walls but was stopped when a hand grabbed onto my shoulder.

“Please be careful, we … I can’t lose you.” It was Mira who spoke, her voice soft and quaking.

“Don’t worry, you should know better than anyone else how good my healing is, it’s you who should be careful facing a dragon.” I tried my best to hide the fear I was feeling from leaking into my voice as I spoke. “I’ll see you after all this.” I removed her hand from my shoulder before leaping over the wall and charging towards the horde of monsters.