The dragon-man did not, in fact, put on pants.
Instead, he continued standing there in all his naked glory, looking entirely too comfortable with the situation while Michelle determinedly kept her eyes fixed on a spot approximately six inches above his left shoulder. She was a professional. A scientist. She had given presentations to rooms full of skeptical petroleum executives without flinching. She could handle one nude interdimensional lizard-man.
Probably.
"Pants are not necessary," he said, with the confidence of someone who'd never experienced chafing. "I have scales when needed."
"That's—" Michelle pinched the bridge of her nose, immediately regretted it when pain flared from her probable nose fracture, and tried again. "That's not how basic decency works."
"This is the Feral Lands. Decency is a generous term for what exists here." He tilted his head, studying her with those unsettling gold eyes. "You truly do not know where you are, do you?"
"I know I'm having the worst day of my life, which is saying something because last Tuesday I had to explain thermodynamics to a senator who thought windmills killed birds via 'freedom interference.'" Michelle shifted her weight off her bad knee and immediately regretted that too. Everything hurt. "So why don't you enlighten me? Where exactly am I, and more importantly, how do I get home?"
The dragon-man's expression shifted—something that might have been pity crossing his sharp features. "You cannot."
"Cannot what?"
"Go home. Rifts do not work that way. They open randomly, pull through whatever is near, and close. The chances of finding the same rift back to your world..." He shrugged, a gesture that was far too human coming from someone who'd been a dragon sixty seconds ago. "It has happened perhaps twice in recorded history."
Michelle felt the words hit her like physical blows. Cannot go home. Cannot finish her thesis. Cannot see her apartment again, or her friends, or that judgmental marmot. Cannot do anything except stand in this nightmare forest with a naked dragon-man while her knee throbbed and her entire life collapsed into the past tense.
Don't panic. Panicking is inefficient. Assess the situation. Find solutions.
"Okay," she said, proud that her voice only shook a little. "Okay. So I'm... stuck here. In the Feral Lands. Which are called that because...?"
"Because everything here wants to kill you and eat you, usually in that order." He said it matter-of-factly, the way someone might comment on weather patterns. "This is the wildest territory in all of Drakemoor—no cities, no dragon clans, no law. Just beasts, monsters, corrupted creatures, and the occasional fool who thinks they can survive alone."
"Drakemoor," Michelle repeated flatly. "You're telling me I've been isekai'd into a place called Drakemoor."
"I do not know this 'isekai.'"
"It's—never mind." She rubbed her temples, trying to think through the pain and shock and the growing realization that she was having a conversation with a magical naked man in a death forest. "So what do people usually do when they fall through rifts? Is there like... a protocol? A rift victim support group?"
"Most do not survive the first hour." He stated it with the same casual tone. "Those who do either find their way to civilization and become servants, slaves, or curiosities... or they die slightly later, usually screaming."
"You have a wonderful bedside manner. Has anyone ever told you that?"
This time his smile showed teeth. Very sharp teeth. "I am not known for my gentleness, Michelle-who-smells-like-Mountain-Fresh."
She was definitely going to die here.
A rustling in the undergrowth made them both freeze. The dragon-man's head snapped toward the sound, his entire posture shifting from vaguely amused to apex predator in half a heartbeat. Michelle's hand instinctively reached for her fallen hiking pole, which was still several feet away and still completely useless.
"More corrupted," he said quietly. "They hunt in packs here. The one I killed was a scout."
"Of course it was," Michelle muttered. "Why would anything be easy?"
"Can you run?"
She looked at her swollen knee, then at the bioluminescent nightmare forest, then back at him. "Define 'run.'"
"Move quickly while things try to eat you."
"Then no. Not well, anyway."
He studied her for a moment, those gold eyes calculating. Then he moved, faster than anything that size should be able to move, and Michelle found herself suddenly hoisted over a very broad, very naked shoulder.
"Hey! What are you—"
"Being quiet would increase your survival chances significantly," he said, already striding through the forest with Michelle dangling like a sack of extremely undignified potatoes. "Unless you wish to advertise our location to everything with ears."
Michelle clamped her mouth shut, mostly because he had a point, but also because this position gave her an unfortunate view of his...
Nope. Not thinking about that. Think about literally anything else. Sustainable energy. Grid integration. The specific heat capacity of copper. That judgmental marmot.
Behind them, the rustling grew louder. Multiple somethings were crashing through the undergrowth now, and Michelle caught glimpses of glowing eyes between the trees. Red eyes. Lots of them.
"How many?" she whispered.
"Enough that even I would prefer not to fight them while protecting fragile cargo." He leaped over a fallen log with ease, not even breathing hard despite carrying her full weight plus pack. "There is a cave system nearby. Defensible. We will shelter there until they pass or until I can kill them in manageable numbers."
"I'm not fragile cargo," Michelle protested. "I'm a person. With feelings. And a doctorate in progress."
"You are a human who cannot run and smells like prey. In the Feral Lands, that is the definition of fragile cargo." He shifted her slightly, adjusting his grip. "Though most cargo does not argue this much."
"Most cargo probably didn't have to defend their thesis proposal three times to a committee that kept 'accidentally' scheduling during their office hours."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "You are very strange, little human."
"My name is Michelle."
"I am called Kael." He vaulted over a stream that glowed faintly purple—because of course the water here was probably radioactive or sentient or both. "And you may thank me later for saving your life. Twice now, if you are counting."
"I'm counting," Michelle grumbled into his back. "Believe me, I'm counting."
The howls behind them grew closer. Whatever was hunting them wasn't being subtle about it anymore. Michelle caught a proper look at one as it burst through a patch of bioluminescent fungi—something between a wolf and a hyena, but scaled like a reptile, with too many joints in its legs and a jaw that split vertically as well as horizontally.
"That's horrifying," she said. "That's genuinely the most horrifying thing I've ever seen, and I once had to watch a PowerPoint presentation about synergy."
"Hold on," Kael said.
"Hold on to wha—"
He jumped.
Michelle's stomach attempted to exit her body as they soared through the air in a arc that defied several laws of physics. They cleared a ravine she hadn't even seen, landed on the far side with barely a stumble, and kept running. The corrupted wolf-things skidded to a halt at the edge, snarling and snapping but apparently unwilling to make the jump.
"Show-off," Michelle muttered.
"Alive show-off," Kael corrected. "There. The caves."
Ahead, the forest gave way to a rocky outcropping, dark openings visible between the stones. Kael made for the largest entrance, ducking inside with Michelle still over his shoulder. The temperature dropped immediately, the air turning cool and damp. The bioluminescent glow from outside barely penetrated the darkness.
He set her down carefully against the cave wall, and Michelle bit back a groan as her knee protested the movement. Now that the immediate adrenaline was wearing off, the pain was coming back with interest.
"Stay here," Kael said. "I will ensure nothing followed us inside."
He disappeared into the darkness before Michelle could respond, moving with absolute silence despite his size. She leaned back against the cool stone and tried to take inventory of her situation.
Pros: Not currently being eaten.
Cons: Literally everything else.
She was stuck in another dimension called Drakemoor, in a region called the Feral Lands, where everything wanted to kill her. She had one possibly-fractured knee, definitely-bruised ribs, a concussion, and no way home. Her only ally was a naked dragon-man named Kael who seemed to find her amusing in the way someone might find a particularly stupid pet amusing.
Michelle pulled her phone from her pocket out of habit. Still dead. Still no signal. Still completely useless except as a very expensive paperweight.
She should be panicking. She should be crying or screaming or curled in a ball. Instead, her brain had apparently decided to cope by going into pure problem-solving mode.
Okay. Current situation: Trapped in death dimension. Goal: Don't die. Sub-goals: Find civilization, find food and water, find someone who knows how rifts work, find a way home despite the impossible odds.
Step one: Don't die in the next five minutes.
Kael emerged from the darkness like he'd been made from it. "The cave is clear. It goes deep, but there is only one entrance. We can defend this position."
"Great. Fantastic. Love that for us." Michelle shifted, trying to find a position that didn't make her knee scream. "So what now? We just... wait here?"
"We wait for the corrupted to disperse. Tomorrow, I will take you to the nearest settlement." He settled down across from her with enviable grace, crossing his legs in a way that Michelle really wished he wouldn't do while naked. "It is three days' travel, perhaps four with your injury."
"And then?"
"Then you are no longer my concern." He said it without malice, just stating facts. "I am not a nursemaid for wayward humans. I saved you because the corrupted beast annoyed me, and because you smelled interesting. But I have my own business in these lands."
"Right. Of course. Wouldn't want to inconvenience the dragon-man." Michelle closed her eyes, exhaustion and pain and the crushing weight of her situation finally catching up to her. "What kind of business does a dragon have in the Feral Lands, anyway?"
"The kind that is none of yours."
Fair enough.
They sat in silence for a moment, the distant howls of the corrupted pack echoing outside. Michelle's mind raced despite her exhaustion, cataloging questions, observations, the scientific impossibility of everything that had happened.
"Kael?" she said finally.
"What?"
"Thank you. For saving me. Both times."
He regarded her with those unsettling gold eyes. "You are welcome, Michelle-who-argues-with-dragons. Try not to die in your sleep. It would make my heroics pointless."
"I'll do my best," she muttered.
As she drifted toward unconsciousness, her last thought was that she really, really hoped this was all just a very elaborate concussion dream.
But the throbbing pain in her knee suggested otherwise.
Welcome to Drakemoor, she thought bitterly. Please enjoy your stay, because you're never leaving.
Michelle woke up to the sound of something crunching.
Her eyes snapped open in the darkness, every muscle tensing despite the protest from her bruised ribs. For a disorienting moment, she couldn't remember where she was—then it all came flooding back. Rift. Dragon. Feral Lands. Naked Kael who apparently moonlighted as a reluctant rescuer.
The crunching continued.
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light filtering in from the cave entrance. Kael sat near the opening, silhouetted against the faint bioluminescent glow from outside. He was eating something, though Michelle couldn't quite make out what in the darkness.
"You're awake," he said without turning around. "Your breathing changed."
"That's not creepy at all," Michelle muttered, sitting up with a wince. Every part of her body had opinions about yesterday's events, and all those opinions were negative. Her knee had swollen to approximately the size of a grapefruit. "What time is it?"
"Dawn. Or what passes for it here." He gestured toward the cave entrance, where the bioluminescent glow had shifted from deep purple to a lighter violet-blue. "The corrupted have dispersed. We can move soon."
Michelle's stomach growled loudly enough to echo off the cave walls. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten—the protein bar had been yesterday morning, back when she'd been in Colorado and the worst of her problems had been an existential crisis about her career trajectory.
Good times.
"I don't suppose you have any food?" she asked hopefully.
Kael tossed something at her. Michelle caught it reflexively, then immediately regretted looking at it in the growing light.
It was a leg. A scaled, clawed leg that had probably belonged to one of the corrupted wolf-things from last night. It was raw.
"I'm going to pass on that," Michelle said, setting it down very carefully. "But thank you. Really. Super thoughtful."
"You need to eat."
"I need to eat something that won't give me interdimensional salmonella." She dug through her jacket pockets, hoping against hope. Her fingers closed around something—the crushed protein bar from yesterday. It was definitely expired by Earth standards and looked like it had been through a war, but compared to raw monster meat, it was practically a five-star meal.
She tore open the wrapper and took a bite. It tasted like sawdust and sadness.
"Delicious," she lied.
Kael watched her with the kind of fascination usually reserved for exotic zoo animals. "That is food?"
"It's compressed nutrients. Protein, carbohydrates, some vitamins. It's designed for hikers who need portable energy." She took another bite, chewing slowly to make it last. "Very advanced technology."
"It looks like compressed dirt."
"Yeah, well, your breakfast looks like it's going to give me nightmares, so let's call it even."
He made that almost-laugh sound again, then returned his attention to his meal. Michelle determinedly did not watch, instead focusing on the cave around them. In the growing light, she could see it more clearly—rough stone walls with strange crystalline formations that glowed faintly, their own internal light pulsing like a slow heartbeat.
Everything in this dimension seemed to glow. It was like someone had decided that regular darkness wasn't atmospheric enough and added mood lighting to the entire ecosystem.
"Kael," she said, finishing her protein bar and wishing desperately for water. "What exactly are the corrupted? You keep calling them that."