Pine Needles and Blood(A Pikeman x Male Reader Fic)

Chapter 2: Our Reality

[name] shot upwards in a panicked state, the sun was blasting its rays upon his face.

"AHHGG!" He clenched his fists and looked around shakily.

"Calm down boy." The quartermaster turned away from the rabbit he was roasting above a campfire, and focused on the scared kid sitting on the forest floor.

"What the hell happened? Where are we? Holy shit. Are we dead? Is this hell?" Clearly distressed, [name] shuffled to his feet and took a closer look at his surroundings.

While they were in a forest, it was not the same forest as before, not the same forest that surrounded Camp Campbell. There were tall, aged trees that had thick, white branches and dark gray trunks, in place of the normal Pine trees. A bird song rang through the air, and although [name] was not by any means an expert on birds, this song was far different than the ones he was accustomed to. The song was bittersweet and fast, it reminded him of the ocean; full of life and prosperity but also deep and dangerous. He was overwhelmed by his new surroundings and struggled to take in all the changes.

Then he looked down. He still in his jeans and sweater, and his canvas messenger bag was sat on the ground near him. The only change from before was that the wounds on his arms and legs inflicted by the hellhound were soaked in an ointment and wrapped in cloth.

"Did you do this?" He once again caught the quartermaster's attention, as he gestured to his wounds.

"Yes. Now tell me something, did you drop something into the pit?"

"What- I- yeah I did why? Also where the fuck are we?" [name] was impatient and wanted answers.

"This is very important, what did you drop? I need you to tell me exactly what it was."

"I don't know why that's important because we're in some weird-ass forest, but I dropped one of my books in there. The Cruel Prince to be specific, it's a medieval fantasy thingy, not as good as people made it seem but whatever. Why is that important?"

"That explains things. That book is our reality now." Rising from his makeshift seat, a rock, the quartermaster placed his burnt rabbit down and pulled [name] to his feet.

"W- What the hell do you mean it's our reality now?" Now standing, he began to pace around the fire and contemplate those words.

"Whatever's in that book is now in our world, except for the people, because that's still us." The rabbit crumbled a bit as it was pulled off the stick by the quartermaster, who sat down once more, ready to dig in.

"B- But that means there'd be dragons and wizards and a shit ton of other things trying to kill us! We won't make it through the night if that's true." The pacing became faster and uneven in a way, to reflect [name]'s stress.

"Those were already in our past reality, but anyways. I don't know how to fix this but a wizard or an oracle might. It's your job to fix this kid, that or live in this reality forever. I don't mind either way." [name] was amazed that the quartermaster was so calm in such a situation but appalled that he didn't care about the state of their reality, then again the quartermaster always was a strange man, if he was a man at all.

[name] didn't say anything, he couldn't, he was speechless, so he grabbed water from his bag and sat down on a rock. Thoughts filled his mind, he did his best to push the negative ones away but they always got through.

What if you die here?

What if you can't fix this?

What happened to your friends?

Are they even alive?

"Wait... are the others dead then?" The silence had lasted for at least an hour, quartermaster was almost startled by the boy's sudden question, almost.

"I suspect they're out in this world somewhere, but they won't remember anything before this, this world is all they know." The boy stared at him with wide eyes, there was fear in them.

"You mean my friends won't remember me? Not Max, not Nikki, not even Pikeman?" He wasn't exactly friends with Pikeman but the two would never forget each other after all the fights they had, not friends but sworn enemies.

"Yup." In these past hours, the quartermaster has said more to [name] than he has to all the campers combined. [name] noticed that, he thought it was funny, he almost laughed, then he remembered that he would probably die here and never see his friends again, and even if he did see them, they wouldn't know who he was, so he didn't laugh.

"Rest up, we'll need to find a village or something tomorrow."

"Okay..." He sighed but with his bag for a pillow and his thick sweater as a blanket, he settled in for the night.

-End of Chapter 2-

A/N: Thank you all for reading this, it's about 810 words, so a little shorter than the first chapter(1000 words) but I wrote it in a short amount of time and it's unedited so I'm fairly proud of it. Again sorry for the slow updates and mediocre writing. Also I know the cruel prince doesn't have that stuff exactly but it's the only fantasy book I could think of off the top of my head.

-Laz :)