By day four, I’d resorted to eating slipsaw bark that Intuit called ‘Edible for some humans.’ It tasted like cork but it was pretty filling. My makeshift bush-barricade was breached that night, a few hours before dawn, by a swarm of stinging super-sized fleas that chased me from bed. Killing one of them was easy. Killing ten of them was easy. But there were hundreds of those little pricks, so I surrendered my bedroom and headed off.

I needed a flamethrower-type weapon, to handle a crowd of low-powered attackers at once. Or a house, to keep them outside. Or even, y’know, some mosquito netting.

I thought to Princess.

she drowsily thought back at me.

she said, and faded away again.

I was still grumbling about spiders and fleas when I realized that the forest was thinner than it had been. More space between trees, more sunlight streaming through the sparser leaves. In retrospect, it probably been thinning since the previous evening, but as noon approached it was hardly even a forest anymore. More of a woodland.

Scattered trees rose between wide glades. The sky appeared overhead, instead of the thick canopy, and the endless song of birds and chitter of ... chittering things faded into the rustle of wind and the odd chirp of grasshoppers.

“Hey, Princess,” I said aloud. “We made it! We’re out of the woods.”

She responded with a sluggish feeling of approval.

“Out of the woods. Get it? That’s a play on words.”

She responded with an even more sluggish feeling of a approval.

“You know it!” I said, and tromped through the woodland.

I also hurled my hatchets around then turned them to smoke and reformed them in my hands. It had become like a habit by then, like skimming flat stone into a lake, except these ‘stones’ returned to me.

When I got far enough from the forest, I turned back to examine the endless expanse of trees. Except it wasn’t all that endless: a mountain rose in the far distance, beyond the forest. A mountain. Hm. Maybe Waldhill island was larger than I’d thought. Still, I figured my current plan was the best one. If I kept following the stream downhill, eventually I’d find a river. People usually lived near rivers. And if that didn’t work, I’d eventually reach the coast.

There had to be people living on the coast. At least the crachen, who apparently bred in the shallows, or something. I ... wasn’t too fond of crachen. Mostly because the only one I’d met was a murderer. But also, crab-people kind of freaked me out. With carapaces and mouthparts and stuff. Which you might say was some kind of crustacean-y racism, but still. I was more of a mammal guy.

However, Oksar had told me that the majority of every race was okay--with a small minority being wonderful and a larger minority being assholes. So if I found the crachen, they’d probably treat me okay. And damn, I could really use a bowl of clam chowder.

Uh, if they ate clams. Maybe that was cannibalism.

Anyway, I headed across the patchy woodland, enjoying the sunlight and the wide blue sky. Felt like a long time since I’d felt the sun on my face. Not since the temple courtyard. Which now struck me as odd. Why hadn’t the courtyard been shaded by the canopy? I’d seen the forest through the smoke fence, and massive trees had surrounded the entire complex. The sky should’ve been blocked by treetops, but somehow it wasn’t.

Well, look at me. I’d just figured out that the magical temple was made of magic. Go Alex!

The stream joined a wider one an hour later, the two of them drawn together by the gentle slope of the land. I tossed twigs into the current and watched them bob and race ahead. Glimmering bees and orange butterflies fluttered around flowering bushes, and birds almost like hawks rode the clouds that rolled off the mountains.

I needed a break from hiking, so I splashed in the water for a while, then dozed off while my clothes dried on a rock. Which was incredibly short-sighted. I was still in a dangerous fantasy land: taking a nap in the open was not a good strategy for survival.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Fortunately, I didn’t get what I deserved I woke after a while and yawned and stretched. I dressed and followed the river until I spotted a fat trout-looking fish swaying in the shadow of the bank. I threw a hatchet it and learned why ‘hatchet-fishing’ wasn’t a thing. Still, at least my hatchet turned to smoke and rose easily through the water to return to me. Huh. That had actually been a test worth doing. Checking I could recall my hatchets through water.

Another stream joined the river, and I started catching occasional glimpses of the ocean sparking in the far, far distance. Not long after that, I came across traces of a road. Ruts in the ground, at least, from wagons or carts. I knelt beside them like I knew how to track, but from up closer they still just looked like ruts. I did see the imprint of strange horse-shoes, though. Heading downhill, just like me.

I announced in my mind.

she murmured.

Amusement glimmered across the link between us.

I said.

she said.

I said.

She didn’t answer, sleeping again.

I followed the ruts through the afternoon and they joined a real road. Well, a real dirt road, but it looked fairly well-travelled. And I started feeling a little nervous. Like, what would happen once I reached a town? I didn’t know anything about this world. And I’d been alone for so long. And there was some kind of war or invasion happening, and level 19 gemmed assholes committing murder.

Still, after a short freak-out I kept the whole ‘warm bath and peeled grapes’ plan close to my heart, and kept forging forward.

The sun was getting lower in the sky when I spotted a tree that looked almost exactly like a guava tree. Then Intuit told me it was a guava tree and I whooped as I barreled closer. I loved a guava. Apparently the season was only starting, but there were still a good number of not-too-unripe fruits.

I ate them, then started on the just-barely-too-unripe fruits ... and I heard a faint knocking.

I froze.

Tilted my head.

Listened.

For a moment I also laughed at myself, for getting freaked out by a woodpecker.

Then the knocking turned into a rhythmic squeak--and I saw two wagons rolling around a thicket of trees maybe a quarter mile below me on the hillside. A dozen horsemen trotted in a loose phalanx around the front wagon, which looked pretty fancy to my non-wagon-knowing eyes. The second wagon lagged behind, and looked plainer and bigger and more crowded. A bunch of people sat on the roof of that one, in addition to the ones sitting in front beside the driver.

And some of them were even human. Not that I cared! I wasn’t some kind of ‘humans first’ racist or anything. Except I did. I did care. The humans looked ... familiar. Comforting.

Unlike the riders, who mostly looked armed and armored and intimidating. And infenti, almost all of them. I didn’t know what to do, so I simply watched, hidden in the embrace of the guava tree. The wagons rattled and creaked along the road ... then they passed from sight.

Hm. I watched until the last riders vanished completely. I wasn’t all that scared of them--they didn’t look overtly threatening--but there was no reason to push my luck. I was an outsider here, a literal alien, and those two ‘gifted’ psychos had made a real impression on me. So I waited another ten minutes before following the wagons from a distance. I wasn’t sure what I expected to discover, but better safe than sorry. At least tracking them was easy, given the new wheel ruts and the fresh horse manure.

I caught up with them around sunset. The fancier wagon stood in the middle of a field, surrounded by an uneven circle of pitched tents, most of them tall enough to stand in. Three people were busily pitching a final tent with easy efficiency. A fire blazed merrily in a circle of stones, and the scent of roasting meat made my mouth water. Two of the humans handled the cooking, along with one infenti who seemed to be filling bowls.

I couldn’t see the other humans, but I did see a bunch of the soldier-looking riders stretching and chatting among the tents. The horses were tied or--or hitched?--near the bigger, plainer wagon. They were chomping on grass and drinking from buckets and getting their hooves checked by a crachen. A bunch of bedrolls lay on the ground beneath that wagon. As I watched, two people stepped from the rear wagon door, carrying what looked like a platter. Two more humans. They headed toward the fancy wagon and I decided to sneak closer to eavesdrop before announcing myself.

I blipped most of my gear into my domain, to stay quick and light, then crept through the underbrush. I wasn’t great at creeping silently; it took me like ten minutes to move ten feet. Nothing crept quieter than smoke, so I almost shifted into vaporousness before I decided that using unnecessary magic was probably stupid.

Instead, I crawled forward. Twigs snagged my hair and caught in my scruffy beard. As I approached, the final tent got fully pitched, the meat got fully cooked. The soldiers laughed and talked, keeping their backs to the fire to protect their night vision.

I passed a fragrant bush, then rose into a crouch behind another one that was just as fragrant. My webtouch senses warned me of proximity, but I ignored the sensation: I was staring at a bunch of soldiers, of course there was danger nearby.

Then a voice spoke behind me and a strong hand clamped my shoulder.