Polymath Redux

Chapter 2: Three easy steps on how to kill a Red Dragon

"God dammit! It hurts so much!"

Having slowly regained consciousness, those were the first words that Mordred shouted out at the top of his lungs. His voice came out a little weaker than he expected, which was not surprising since he had originally passed out from extreme pain. In any case his current vision was blurred from just regaining consciousness but strangely there was something abnormal going on.

Bright daylight was shining in his face. Had morning come already? Had he passed out for the entire night on the cold ground of his room? However Mordred quickly dismissed the thought as he usually kept his blinds down to make his room dimly lit. So then what exactly was going on for all this light to be pouring in, but without having regained his vision properly he wasn't able to confirm is current situation.

As his vision had slowly adjusted to his surroundings, Mordred broke into a cold sweat at what he saw. In such a situation this was the most appropriate reaction that anyone would give. His mind had wanted to go into a panic but his body was far too stiff and stunned that he was unable to execute the 'panic' command.

A great distance of land, not just land, a vast forest beset his sight. However that was what was below him, meaning that he was higher up than the trees of the forest. A great wind brushed past his body, cooling him down. Right, he was currently on top of a large mountain, or to be more precise a plateau area of a mountain. With an estimated altitude of around 4000 meters above sea level, even he couldn't really believe what was going on.

With such a bizarre situation having been taken in front of him there really was just one thing he could do. That was to speak the three words that anyone would in his shoes.

"What the fuck...?"

He spent the next 20 minutes letting out pent up frustration, at first it was at this absurd scene and situation but along the line at some point it wasn't even about that anymore, he was complaining about everything that ever went wrong in his life. To be honest, he thought it felt slightly good to scream out like this and wondered why he never tried doing this anytime sooner.

Soon he regained his calm demeanor and tried to analyze the situation... is what he should've done but he couldn't calm himself down. No one would be able to do so if they were 4000 meters above sea level. All he could see as he peered down was a large steep cliff for kilometers.

Not to mention the fact that there was nothing from which he could gather significant information from. However a single thought had hit him, as though someone had literally hit his head a light bulb appeared metaphorically in his head.

What if... he was dead? He did suffer a powerful migraine after all, was it so strange that he could've been killed by it?

"No... I don't feel dead. It doesn't really feel like the afterlife, but that was assuming I knew what being dead felt like. Which I don't."

So was he dead? He tried pinching himself and it hurt, but those were the properties of testing a dream, not being dead. To be fair, waking up in a strange exotic locale would have anyone second guessing their mortality, and really what did the 'afterlife' feel like? This could be it.

Mordred quickly discarded that train of thought, whether he was dead or not wasn't exactly conducive to helping his situation. It would be better to assume that he wasn't actually dead, that way he could have some semblance of sanity.

Then the next likely explanation may be that someone had broken into his house while he was unconscious and brought him out here, but that was also fairly far from the realm of practicality. No matter how much he tried to wrack up his brain, an answer never came to him, this situation was simply that absurd.