CYOA Wednesday 2025 #22 [Beyond the Woods 22]

This fantasy CYOA story continues today. Synopsis below:

When Derek, Jade, and Clara go camping, they stumble upon a portal to another dimension filled with strange creatures and sexy seductresses.

The three friends return to Earth, but something is different. Clara can now create portals of her own. Now what? You decide.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/130131454

Read the twenty-second segment below:

22 – Back Home

Time became meaningless – a kaleidoscope of fractured moments and disorienting sensations. Derek felt his body stretching, compressing, twisting through impossible geometries. Fragments of reality brushed against his skin like phantom memories. Clara’s terrified whimper echoed somewhere nearby, while the residual energy of the portal crackled and hummed.

Then gravity reasserted itself.

They crashed onto solid ground with a bone-jarring impact. Grass. Familiar grass. Derek blinked, recognizing the exact spot where their journey had begun. The same trees stood sentinel nearby, their branches casting the same shadows. A bat flew over their heads, unaware of their interdimensional adventure.

Jade groaned, pushing herself up and looking bewildered. “Did we do it? We’re… home?”

Derek checked his watch. Almost no any time had passed since they’d first disappeared The world looked the same – same temperature, same ambient sounds, same mundane nocturnal stillness.

And yet for some reason he couldn’t quite grasp, something felt different. He looked around. The creepy portal that had brought them back was nowhere to be seen. Aethera and the Wanderbeast were also a no-show. Any evidence of what they had gone through was gone save for one thing – a shard of twisted metal lodged in Clara’s right hand.

“Clara, are you okay?” Derek asked.

Clara barely registered Derek’s question, her attention fixed on the metallic fragment embedded in her palm. A thin trickle of blood outlined its jagged edges. She brushed her fingers across the shard, attempting to downplay its significance. “Just a little scratch,” she muttered, her voice slightly distracted.

Soft light radiated from beneath her skin, pulsing with an ethereal blue-green luminescence. The metal shard vibrated, the energy emanating from it anything but normal. Derek and Jade stepped back, watching in stunned silence as Clara’s entire hand began to shimmer.

“What the…?” Clara started to say, but the words got stuck in her throat. Intricate crystalline patterns were now tracing themselves across her skin, like living circuitry spreading from the wound. The metal fragment wasn’t just stuck in her hand anymore – it was becoming part of her.

Jade’s voice couldn’t mask the terror in her eyes. “Clara, don’t move.”

But Clara couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. The transformation was happening whether she consented or not, tendrils of light and metal weaving themselves through her flesh with a terrifying, mesmerizing precision. Whatever fragment of the generator they’d brought back was rewriting her at a molecular level.

“Fuck!” Derek mumbled. “Clara, are you in pain?”

“No,” the young woman replied, surprisingly calm “I just have a crazy itch. I wish I knew what the fuck is going on, though.”

The luminescence cascaded up her arm, crystalline tendrils branching like electric veins. Derek and Jade watched, transfixed, as the metallic patterns transformed Clara’s skin.

Just when the glow seemed about to consume her entire body, it halted. Her arm and hand looked normal again – almost disappointingly so. She flexed her fingers, turning her hand back and forth, examining it with a mixture of confusion and relief.

But something was off.

Clara’s fingers twitched with an unnatural precision, muscles moving in ways they shouldn’t. Her eyes flickered with an electric blue undertone, barely perceptible but unmistakably alien.

Without speaking, without even seeming to consciously move, she raised her right hand. Space itself seemed to ripple around her fingertips. A miniature portal materialized – not the violent, chaotic gateway from before, but a precise, controlled aperture no larger than a dinner plate. Through its shimmering edge, they could glimpse a fractured landscape of impossible geometries.

“How…” Jade started to ask, but Clara silenced her with a subtle gesture.

The portal hummed with potential energy, waiting. Clara tilted her head, studying it with an expression that was both curious and detached. Whatever had happened to her in that generator was far from over.

“Clara, how did you do that?” Derek asked, peering into the fracture she had just conjured.

“I don’t know, I just did,” she said, waving her hand again and creating two more small portals behind her.

The portals flickered with contrasting energies. To Clara’s left, a hellscape trembled – obsidian ground cracked with rivers of molten crimson, sulfurous winds whipping toxic clouds that churned with demonic silhouettes. Jagged mountains of blackened bone erupted from smoldering plains, while grotesque shapes writhed in the burning distance.

To her right, a sterile cityscape gleamed – sleek metallic structures rising high, transparent walkways connecting gleaming platforms, autonomous vehicles humming between architectural spines that pierced a pale, silvery sky. Holographic displays flickered across surfaces, while robotic forms moved with precise, mechanical grace.

Derek and Jade stood frozen, mouths open. Clara’s transformed hand continued to move, her fingers making minute, almost imperceptible adjustments that seemed to stabilize the portal boundaries.

“I can control them,” she said, her voice carrying an undertone of something not quite human. “But I don’t understand how.”

“Can you please close them now?” Derek asked.

“Why? Are you afraid?”

“Aren’t you?”

A mischievous sparkle danced in Clara’s transformed eyes. Instead of fear, pure exhilaration radiated from her. Her laugh rang out – sharp and metallic – as she dismissed Derek’s concern with a flick of her luminescent hand. The portals remained open, their alien landscapes swirling with impossible energies, but her confidence was absolute.

“Afraid? Me?” she said, her tone somewhere between amusement and challenge. Each word carried a subtle vibration, as if her vocal cords now resonated with something more than human frequencies.

With a playful gesture, she collapsed all three portals. The dimensional rifts folded in on themselves like origami, vanishing without even a ripple of disturbance. Her movements were fluid and precise – more like computational commands than human actions.

“We’ve just discovered something incredible,” Clara announced, her gaze sweeping over Derek and Jade. “I can open windows between realities now. Do you understand what this means?”

“No, Clara… What does it mean?” Derek scratched his chin afraid of what her answer would be? Was she still their friend or had the generator’s energy changed something else in her? He reached for a small rock on the ground, something he could use as a weapon if need be, and waited for her to reveal what was on her mind.

To decide what happens next, head over to my Patreon (you can join for free), and vote on the poll there until next Sunday. 

If you’re new to these CYOA stories, here are the basic rules:

1) You can only choose one option;

2) If there’s a tie at the end of the poll, and the competing options can be combined somehow, I’ll do that. If not, I get the deciding vote to keep the tale going.

3) The process continues every Wednesday until the story runs its natural course.

Have fun.