Rick wasn't entirely certain what had happened. He'd heard something bust his front door open, so he grabbed the shotgun his dad had given him when he bought his first home. He wasn't all that in-practice with it, but he'd been to the range a enough times to know how to load, aim, fire, and clean it. Honestly, he forgot about it most days and felt iffy a about having it at all until about ten minutes ago.

Next had come the weird part. He'd gone through his house, calling out that he was armed and hoping that would scare the intruder off. When he finally got to his front door, it was closed. He stepped up to check the doorknob when he realized, too late, that there was no such object. He yelped as his fingers touched not metal, not wood, but icy darkness. Recoiling from the slab of shadow blocking his doorway, Rick felt a tremendous pull jerk him back against it. He screamed and tried to shove free of the blackness, but every part of him that touched it adhered to it. Eventually, tired and freezing, he whimpered one last time as he fell unconscious.

Next he was aware, he awoke on a carpet of pine needles and twigs, with towering trees overhead. It was still dark, but the moon slipped through the alpine canopy. Something grabbed at his ankle and he cried out again, reaching for something, for anything. His fingers found that shotgun and for the briefest moment, his soul found hope. He snatched the weapon up and aimed it at the silhouette by his feet. "Get off of me!"

The creature, humanoid but not fully human, leaned in and tilted its rodent-like head, a menacing growl escaping its widening maw. Blam! Rick had pulled the trigger without even realizing, his fear taking over. The barrel had been lined up with the monster's face and should have pulped it, but... it was gone?

He sat up and tried to make sense of what was happening. The flash of the gun had illuminated it briefly. It had a head like a naked molerat, except for its mouth was full of needle like teeth. Its skin had been leathery and red as though stained with blood, and its arms had ended in twin claws that were much better suited for digging through flesh than dirt.

Then he felt something stab into his back. Rick howled in pain as he whirled on the rouge creature and pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened; he'd forgotten to cock it. Still, the beast reacted and was suddenly two feet to the right of his barrel.

"Get away!" He screamed.

Then there was a flash of brilliant gold light that washed over the monster. Out of nowhere, an enormous figure in gleaming armor charged into the light and slammed into the horror with its shoulder.

"To the ninth hell with ye, filthy rouge!" The interloper bellowed in a low, but discernably female voice. She brought her massive sword down upon the stunned creature and wrent its head from its shoulders.

The creature fell to the floor in a heap, leaving Rick and this knight person alone.

"Uhh... thanks," he said, still trembling. "What the hell was that?"

The woman took her helmet off, revealing a green face and tusks at each corner of her mouth, "Are ye daft? That was a rouge. Awful beasties, faster than an arrow and hungrier than a ghoul."

"And... red, I guess."

"Aye. Red as the blood in your veins."

Rick shuddered, "Well I don't know what the hell is going on here, but thanks for the rescue. Is there something I can do to pay you back?"

The woman grinned, "Aye, there's something you must do. The goddess Aiena has seen that I spare your life from that beast. Swear to worship her always, take the oaths of devotion, and I shall leave you be."

"Wait... what if I don't?"

"The goddess does not take kindly to those who repay her heroism with arrogance."

Rick wasn't the most religious person, but he still had his own beliefs - and they weren't ones he wanted to change. "B-but I am already, I mean, I already believe in a god. I can't just--"

"And did your god save you here?"

Rick looked from her to his shotgun and sighed. He might have, "That's not important."

"Which god is it? Toralin? Lyra?" She leaned in and gritted her teeth, "Say it's Yondun and I will slay you right here."

He backed away, "It's none of those! Please, just leave me alone!"

She raised her sword, "Aiena demands your conversion. If you will not accept her, you will die."

"Stay away!" He shouldered the shotgun. When she stepped forward, he fired. Brilliant light appeared where the buckshot should have pierced her armor and blown out her back. Sparks flew from the radiant barrier, but she did not stop. Rick stepped back, remembered to cock it this time, and fired again. The results were the same.

"In the name of Aiena, I judge ye wanting!"

And that was when the woman exploded. It wasn't a big ball of fire like the movies. It was mostly smoke, blood, and gore. Fragments of her breastplate slammed against... something in front if him. It was blue and translucent and it shimmered.

Rick was done touching weird non-solids for the night so he just backed away and swept the area for others, "Hello?"

"Greetings," said a voice from behind a tree. "Please take care where you point that thing. I'm neither as fast as that rouge, nor protected as that paladin was."

The bewildered man lowered his shotgun and fell to his knees, "What the hell is going on?"

The bespectacled figure stepped out from behind the trunk, little balls of light floating around him. He wore a classic wizard's hat and robes, "Ah, see, that is my fault. I'm having trouble getting a spell to work and I needed help from someone outside my context."

"You what?"

The man adjusted his hat, revealing long, pointed ears. "I'm sorry for the trouble I have caused you, but I needed a wizard from another world."

"A wizard...? I'm a computer scientist."

"Oh, blast! I could have sworn I told the spell to seek out someone good with using archaic language to design and properly write complex instructions for an automated entity to follow. What is someone who does that called in your world."

Rick cleared his throat and responded sheepishly, "Uh... a computer scientist, actually."