“Sounds like the bead worked,” Oksar called from outside the lean-to. “You feeling better?”

“All better. Like ... all better.”

“Ha. Then get yourself dressed, Alex.”

I looked around and saw a pile of clothes on the ground beside the bedroll. Tough leather leggings that reminded me of alligator-skin, a thigh-length tunic, and a weirdly-heavy coat in gray and burgundy that fit okay. There was a baggy, brimless hat, with plenty of room for horns. And finally, a pair of clunky leather sandals with a rough ankle strap.

When I finished dressing, I stepped from the lean-to and found Oksar frying meat in a skillet over the fire. The shade of the forest canopy had deepened, and sunlight slanted diagonally through the leaves. Looked like early evening.

“Your feet are too wide,” Oksar told me. “Five toes. So I carved my old boots into sandals. I hemmed the rest, though.”

“They fit perfectly.”

“I’m no human, but I sew pretty well. I measured you while you slept.”

“Damn. I was really out.”

“Healing will do that. You actually recovered really fast. How do you feel?”

“Almost as good as you look.”

He shot me a toothy smile and stood to show his full ensemble. A button-down shirt over a Milbert Moose T. Cargo pants and sneakers and even--I presumed--boxer briefs. At least he’d washed everything. The blood and mud was completely gone, though most of the holes remained.

“These shoes,” he said, looking in awe at my sneakers on his feet.

“High performance middy kicks with a retro edge.”

“I don’t know those words--yet I still agree. They are heavenly. So soft. Is this leather or fabric?”

“Probably some plastic derivative,” I told him.

“More words!” he said, and tapped his chest. “And the monster?”

“That’s Milbert Moose. Screechy voice. Creepy levels of optimism.”

“You’re teasing me?”

“A little,” I said. “How come you’re wearing all that? I thought it was priceless goods.”

“It is, but I’m rewarding myself for getting it at such a steal. And I haven’t had much entertainment, the past few years. After dinner I’ll pack it all away. Come, sit, eat.”

I sat on the log beside him--there was only one log, so we were shoulder-to-shoulder--facing the fire, which crackled merrily. The smell of roasting meat made me suddenly famished. Oksar dished the meat onto disks of frybread and we ate in silence for a time. Well, though the silence was a broken by bird calls and occasional howls and me making satisfied noises.

After I ate my third serving, he tossed me a skin of watered-down wine.

“So,” he said. “You woke up in a temple, with quests and thornspiders?”

“Yeah. I was crossing the street in--at home.”

“One of the Mericas?”

“Uh, yeah. America. And an SUV--a metal carriage--hit me and ... now I’ve got quests in my head.”

“What kind of quests?”

“Telling me to leave the temple, kill the spiders. I got expoi and reached level one, but ... “ I thought for a second, then figured I’d check if Intuit was accurate. “What level are you?”

“What’s a level?” he asked.

“You don’t know what a level is?”

“Of course I know what a level is. It’s a straight line.” He demonstrated with his hand. “Level. But that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“How about attributes? Like, strength, dexterity, spirit, design?”

He lay his calloused palm against my forehead. “You don’t feel feverish, but I can’t tell with humans. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

“Okay. After I got hit by the carriage, I woke up tied to an altar with chains of smoke. This quest popped into my head, telling me to leave the altar before a rock crushed my head. Then a rock started lowering from the ceiling, but--oh, the quest said I needed to pull out a linchpin to stop the rock. So I yoinked the linchpin into my domain and--“

“Whoa, whoa. Wait. The quest spoke to you?”

“No, it just appeared in my head.”

“Oh! So you’re ... a crazy person?”

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“I’m starting to feel that way, but look.” I raised the wineskin. “You known what a domain is?”

“Of course. It’s territory.”

The wineskin vanished as I pulled it into my domain.

Oksar jerked backward and almost fell off the log. “What the fuck?”

“Now it’s in my domain.”

“What? What?”

I withdrew it and showed him. “And now it’s back.”

“By the hungry tide, Alex!” he said, gaping at me. “Are you gemmed?”

“Uh, well ... “ I didn’t know how much to admit. “What’s gemmed?”

“People with gems. Inside them. Bonded to them. Each gem gives a single magic and they--the gemmed are deadly powerful. That’s with a single gem. A rare few have two. Plagues, some have three. And you, you ... you bonded to something like a ‘domain gem?’”

“No, I--this isn’t deadly powerful, Oksar. This is a small storage space.”

“Not powerful?” he said, after I explained a little. “You can smuggle anything anywhere. Through any checkpoint. You can pop a weapon into your hand while reaching to shake a duke’s hand. Or a pour a drop of poison in a cup. You don’t think that’s powerful?”

“Oh. Damn. You’ve got an imagination. Well, I don’t have any weapons and I don’t know any dukes.”

He scratched one of his horns thoughtfully. “If you withdraw an item in close quarters, will it appear inside nearby objects? Like a spear already piercing a target?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you withdraw a weapon while your hand is in motion, will the weapon already be in motion?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“You need to master this skill, Alex. Say we’re fighting, yes? Both of us with short swords. You thrust at me, but whoosh, suddenly you’re holding a longsword. Right in the throat. Or I see an opening, I swing, but suddenly you’ve got a shield. You see? This ‘domain’ is tremendously versatile, if you use it wisely. Tremendously powerful.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

“I’m not convinced it’s not a gem. That might explain why you healed so fast. Although ... when people unlock the use of a gem they get stronger and faster immediately.”

“Yeah, that didn’t happen with me. And anyway ‘domain’ isn’t the gem I, um, incorporated.”

“So you are gemmed?”

“Well, yeah.”

He huffed a breath. “You’re kidding. No. Don’t tell me. Just ... don’t even tell me.”

“Why not?”

“Gems are valuable.” He looked at me intensely. “Seriously valuable. There’s only a small chance that a gem will emerge from the corpse if you kill one of the gemmed, but there is a chance, and you are absolutely defenseless, Alex. Never mention this again.”

“Okay, sorry. Shit. I won’t.”

“Uh. Except, what kind of gem is it?”

“You just told me not to--“

“I’m curious!”

“Smoke,” I told him.

“And?” he asked.

“Just smoke.”

“No, that doesn’t make sense. Gems are always for specific powers. Like, I don’t know, ‘cloud of poison smoke’. Or, considering that altar you described, ‘chains of smoke,’ or whatever. Not just ‘smoke.’”

“I don’t think mine is, like, bonded or activated? It doesn’t do anything. At least, I can’t do anything with it.”

Oksar eyed me for a few seconds too long, then shook his head. “I’m a father, Alex. I’m a family man, even if I haven’t seen my family in years. I pride myself on ... on being a good man, okay? And even I am tempted to chop your head off to get at this gem. So really, really don’t mention it again. Don’t mention any of this. Just tell me, uh, what happened next?”

So I described the temple and thornspiders. When I mentioned ‘Intuit’ he closed his eyes for a moment, then told me to continue. I explained about killing one of the adult thornspiders and eventually escaping through the gate

“You’re from another world,” he said.

“Yeah.”

We drank in silence, and listened to the forest.

“Can you tell me about this world?” I eventually asked.

“Sure. Of course.” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t know where to start.”

“You’re an infenti, right? We don’t have those back home.”

“Oh. Weird. Infenti are the most common race. We’re sort of ... I don’t want to say ‘default,’ so ... ‘generalists.’ About half of everyone is infenti. The rest are humans, ollies, and crachen, with a few traguld and striders.”

“Generalists? So what’re humans good at?”

“Craft, design. Art. Nobody’s better than you at aesthetics.”

I made a face. “Oh.”

“Infenti aren’t as strong as ollies, but we’re faster. We’re not nearly as tough as crachen, but we’re more graceful. Not as good crafters as humans but we’re stronger and tougher.”

“I should’ve stuck with that pottery-making class,” I muttered.

He frowned at the fire. “What else should you know? Um, you’re on Waldhill Island. This is a small island that nobody should care about, but there’s trouble right now.”

“Trouble?”

“Political stuff. Waldhill is bridged to another--“ He paused. “You don’t know what a bridge is.”

“I know what a bridge is!”

He drank some wine. “Do you know what an ocean is?”

“Sure.”

“Imagine an ocean with a few hundred islands. Some are so small it might only take you a day to walk across them. Some are so large it’d take two months to sail back all the way around them.”

“Okay.”

“So the islands float and--“

“The islands float?”

“Yes. In the ocean. And when they drift close enough, I’m simplifying here, but when they drift close enough, a bridge forms between them. For weeks or months or even years. People trade, immigrate, explore ... and battle. Sometimes massacre. Sometimes conquer, by merging the islands permanently. If you join enough islands together, you get a continent. Those are the real powers, the continents.”

“Floating islands.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Um, what kind of bridge appears? No, wait. What do bridges even matter? You can do all that with ships. You can trade, explore, conquer.”

“How do you get past the shallows?”

“With ships,” I repeated.

“You said you know what an ocean is.”

“Dude, I’m from California.”

Oksar sighed. “Every island and continent is surrounded by shallows. Relatively short lengths of shallow seas, where we fish and sail and where Crachen breed.”

“I know what shallows are.”

“And beyond them is the impassable ocean.”

“Impassable? You can’t sail across the ocean?”

“Not if you want to live. The ocean is saturated with mana. Enough mana to kill all but the strongest gemmed. And the Plagues. You can’t sail across it, you can’t fly over it even if you’re gemmed for flight. Not for long, at least. Probably. So no, you can’t do any of that without a bridge. And a bridge is just a causeway. A landbridge. The seabed rises to join the two islands. Sometimes ten feet wide, sometimes a mile. ”

“What’s mana?”

“Mana is mana. It’s magic.”

“So islands float on an ocean of mana.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Sure, that’s completely normal, but you’ve really never heard of attributes or boons or levels? Or tiers?”

“Not like you mean. Are you sure you’re even human anymore? You were summoned. Doesn’t that mean constructed or magicked? Does that list of yours, that sheet, call you a human anywhere?”

“No,” I said, and didn’t mention ‘Anomaly.’

“Something summoned you here, Alex. Maybe someone. Or maybe just the echo of a long-lost magic.”

“Why?”

“No clue. But whatever happened, you ended up in a ... “ He paused to grope for a word. “A unique position.”

“Sitting across a bonfire from an infenti wearing a Milbert Moose tee.”

“You’re weak as a baby right now. You’ve got nothing except potential.” Oksar shook his head. “But by the tide, you have more potential than anyone I’ve ever met. If you survive.”