The monster was dead, San had gained a level, he had powers now, which was an oddity, but more than that; San finally had a good night’s sleep since he had arrived. He awoke as the sun was high in the air, the wolf ram lay panting beside the fire, a low groan coming from it.

San sat up to see the yellow eyes staring at him, the wolf ram was still in pain, but from what little San knew of veterinarian medicine, which was none, he looked well enough.The poison that would have killed San didn’t seem to be effecting the creature.

“You okay, buddy?” San asked as he pulled himself out of the sleeping bag.He wrinkled his nose at the smell that assaulted him.He had been exhausted the night before and the smell of smoke, dust, gross monster stink, and everything else he had been through still lingered upon himself and his clothes.He needed to fix that soon.

He found the iron pot that he had tossed aside the first night he arrived.It was a good three gallons in size with the interior very rusted.He checked the pot and decided that it was still usable, then he went outside and scooped up some clean white snow.

San looked around, he felt the clean air in his lungs.The keep was a smoldering mess on the hill; the great keep was now reduced to a pile of rubble that still sent up a white pillar of smoke.San wondered how long it would continue to burn.

Shivering from the cold, San re-entered the hut and placed the pot onto the coals of a fire and stripped off his jacket and clothing.The closest thing he had to a bath had been the dip he took in the river to cross it.That water had been freezing and full of floating crap.

He looked at his rainproof jacket and was relieved to see that it hadn’t suffered any damage.There was blood on it, his own, but the boney hands of the skeleton hadn’t torn the jacket.The exertion of moving the amphora and then setting all the fires had left him sweating buckets, he had unzipped his jacket under his cloak.The three t-shirts had been wearing on the other hand had a long tear in everyone of them.They were also covered in his dried and hardened blood.

San pulled off the shirts and looked at them.They were cheap swag he had obtained from various breweries and suppliers over the years.One thing Mary always complained about was his giant pile of shirts that he got for free. San smiled as he inspected the rip in the fabric.The boney hands of the skeleton had been blade sharp, the fabric was neatly sliced open, a simple enough chore to mend. He carried a mending kit in his pack, another sign he had overpacked for his journey.

His hiking pants were a mess, the fabric from mid calf downward was ripped, exposing a large chunk of his leg until his boots started.The nylon fabric was too shredded to try and fix.If he were out in the wild for too long, he feared frost bite or injury to the exposed skin.

The cloak he had found in the keep was a blood soaked mess also.The wolf ram’s blood had soaked into the cloth, dyeing it a deep black color.San picked it up and saw that although it was covered in blood, it was still serviceable.He would just have to clean it throughly.

There was no great need for San to leave the village.There was the old man’s quest, to find his grandson and give him the tome of magic, but there was no rush to find the kid.He would eventually have to leave, staying in the dead village just wasn’t going to cut it.There was a world out there and for the first time in a long time, San felt like he needed to see it.

The water was beginning to boil and San took out a travel size bar of soap from his pack.He dunked the shirts into the water, let it simmer for a bit and then pulled them back out and began scrubbing them on a flat piece of stone.The water was already a reddish color, from the rust and from his own blood.

He stopped as he looked at the water.Didn’t he have a power?

Sanitize.It was the fundamental part of brewing.Fermeting beer was basically a giant pot of sugar water, yeast turned that sugar into alcohol, but bacteria also loved that sugar water too.He had suffered through many contaminated batches of beer when he had first been honing his craft.There was nothing worse that spending four hours brewing a beer and then several weeks of waiting it to ferment out, only to discover that it had been contaminated.

His grandfather used to not care about sanitizing his equipment.He had used any old thing that he could find to boil his wort and then tossed it into a bucket to ferment.For the most part it came out okay, for the most part.

San placed his hands on his soapy wet t-shirt.The suds were red with his blood and he could still smell the smoke and stench from the Flesh Horror on it.From what he understood, a lot fo the foul odors that embedded themselves into clothing were due to bacteria.If he sanitized the shirt, would it become odor free?

He sat there and willed the shirt to be sanitized. He tried to feel some kind of power within him, tried grasping at the idea of the clothing being cleaned. It didn’t work. San sighed and looked down at the dirty, bloody shirt. He held his hands over it and relaxed. Perhaps if he didn’t try to push it, if he just let it flow…

A felt warmth in his hands, a slight tingle as if the limb were falling asleep.San opened his eyes to see that the shirt began to have a faint sheen around it, like there was an internal light shining from within it.He stared for a long moment, a stupid grin on his face, as the blood, soap, and other particulates began to rise off the fabric and disappear into the air in small flashes of light.

Afterward, he had a wet t-shirt, still ripped, but completely cleaned.San laughed, looking to the wolf ram and showing it the shirt.

“How fucking cool is that?” he asked. The wolf ram grunted and closed its eyes.

He spent the day boiling water, sanitizing his clothing, mending them, offering the wolf ram water and some jerky, then cleaning himself, and finally checking his gear.Before he knew it, night had fallen once more.

He was exhausted and had a slight headache forming.He hadn’t seen a mana bar or anything in the screen that had appeared, but he guessed that there was a limit to the amount of times he could cast the sanitize spell.He still grinned at the thought.

There was no more fear of the Flesh Horror so San exited the hut as the night settled onto the village.He chewed on a granola bar, his dinner, and watched as a strange moon rose into the clear sky. The air was bitterly cold, but the sight of the moon was breathtaking.It was far larger than Earth’s moon, its surface a pocked mess of craters and shadows.

He stared at it for a long time, until the cold forced him back into the hut once more. The wolf ram was gingerly sitting up, watching him from its place across the fire.

“Nice moon,” San said, settling back down before the fire.He fumbled in his pack and pulled out his smartphone.It powered up and he looked at the image on the homescreen.It was Mary, Julia, and baby Sanjay.He stared at the image for a long moment, the well of grief and pain was still there, but it wasn’t the festering sore it had been for the last six months.

He traced the curve of his wife’s face and then those of his children.Julia would have been three by now, little Sanjay would have been one.He felt tears on his cheeks, but there wasn’t the hard painful grief that had sent him on the hike to kill himself.There was pain, but it was manageable.

San turned off the phone and tucked it back into his pack.He sat staring at the fire for a long time before adding more wood and laying down on his sleeping pad.The wolf ram grunted in its sleep and whined.

He stared at the wooden beams of the roof for a long time, until sleep finally claimed him.

***

The iron skillet was hot to the touch and San carefully lay the roti down upon it.The somewhat round lumpy piece of dough stared up at San as he grinned.

He had gone back to the barracks and pulled out one of the amphora of grains he had seen.There was a heavy grinding stone in one of the houses, along with some brass and iron cookware.Whoever lived there had been a cook of some sort, the house had been a trove of much needed utensils.

Smoke began to rise from the flatbread and San flipped it over, nodding as he saw the small spots that showed the bread was beginning to burn.He held his chilled hands over the fire and looked at Wolfram as she watched him.

The wolf ram had been with San for the last three days.He discovered it was a she and had decided to just name it Wolfram.She was still recovering from her injuries and would occasionally leave the hut to do whatever wolf rams did.Yet every night she returned and lay down on the other side of the fire.

San had to keep telling himself that it wasn’t a domestic animal. The wolf ram had tried killing him only days before and had stalked him to the village itself.It was only the fear of the Flesh Horror and then its wounds that kept it from returning to its original nature.San had no fantasies that the wolf ram would become his stalwart companion as he traversed the world.

It was a predator and San was just a walking dinner that it had yet to get around to eating. But for now, Wolfram played the part of the stinking giant dog as it watched San try his hand at making roti flatbread.

His grandmother made it far better, using some magic to cause the tortilla to puff up like a miniature balloon of flour.Every people around the world made tortillas, if they had a grain that could be made into flour, they would add water and salt, then cook it up.

The grains weren’t wheat, from what San could tell.It was a type of barley or rye.Although it didn’t appear to be wholly the same as the malted barley he used when making beer.It was close enough that he called it barley.

He had ground the flour and found a clay pot of salt in one of the homes.He was glad for the find, the rest of the containers had been broken over the years and their contents spilled out.Although insects hadn’t gotten to it, wind and rain had.

“I can see myself making some decent beer out of this,” San said as he picked up the tortilla and practically shoved it into his mouth.It was tasty; the few days with little food was taking its toll.

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Wolfram seemed to enjoy the hot tortillas also, taking half of every one he made.San was glad to see the creature wasn’t an obligate carnivore, that took some pressure off of when it would eventually try to eat him.He doubted there were much game in the land that was willing to stay within a short range of a hungry beast.

The roti bread was going to be the only food he had now. He had spent an entire day grinding the flour, wondering how people manage to do that every day.There should have been some kind of animal driven or wind driven flour mill, but he hadn’t seen any.The flour he had developed was coarse and gritty, but it was food.

He packed the flour he had made into several Ziplock bags he had carried.There was always need for the gallon sized bags and San managed to fill three with flour and wrapped them in a trash bag to prevent them from getting wet.The rest of the flour he turned into tortillas or hard travel biscuits.It wasn’t much, but it provided calories and energy he would need until he found another village or somehow found Azalobana.

For the first time in months, San sat there wondering what he would do now.So long he had been in a haze of grief and misery.Everyday had been a painful experience, everyday had been a struggle just to make it through.He had lost many of his friends from it, even his business was failing because of his inattention.He had felt a sense of relief, of freedom when he decided to go on the last hike.He had made up his mind and the cloud of depression had cleared for a moment.

Now he was in a new world, with magic, and healthier than he had ever been.Consuming the blue gem had healed his body of all the aches and injuries, even the scar on his leg had faded to a thin white line.

The world appeared to be some kind of medieval equivalent, with magic.From what he learned from the old man, he was in a sort of frontier region outside of an empire. The Kerrethan Empire, which seemed to have lost its emperor? San didn’t know the political situation.

He did know that the old man had been the Mage Chief that had pulled together some forest tribes, but he was dead for five years now and San knew enough history to know that power abhors a vacuum.He didn’t know if the forest tribes had broken apart once more or someone had pulled them all back under a singular rule, perhaps Azalobana had managed that. That would make the quest he was given a lot easier.

But after that? San didn’t know. He would find another village, make inquiries, and hopefully find a lead on the boy. After he finished that quest, the world was opened to him. Perhaps he would go South, as the Mage Chief claimed there were great cities there. Cities meant civilization, it meant there was enough food and population to support industry, enough to perhaps even support a foreign brewer…

San smiled at the thought.

***

On the fifth morning after the defeat of the Flesh Horror, San left the village.He kept the fire burning in the hut and carried flaming torches that he tossed into the remaining huts and buildings.The old, dried wood caught fire easily.Within in an hour the entire village was a burning pyre to the failure of a Mage Chief.

He hefted his pack.It was far heavier than it had been when he first arrived.Not only were there the food he had restocked, but also the new tools; the broadsword, the cloak, along with an axe that he turned into a hatchet, some brass cookware, and a lot of old cloth that he used to wrap his legs and body with to keep the cold out.

His water bladder was filled, his revolver had been reloaded, the sword hung at his hip for easy reach, even if he didn’t fully know how to use the weapon, and the bear mace hung off his belt.He was ready to travel and as the thick black smoke of the village rose against the morning sky, he finally left the village.

There was an overgrown road that lead south, into the woods and to lands beyond.The road paralleled the river, so he shouldn’t be out of reach of water if he emptied his bladder.

Wolfram shadowed him until evening, then she disappeared into the woods on wolf ram business.San was impressed at the healing ability of the wolf ram.She had been badly cut up from the skeleton, but after four days of rest, she had nearly healed completely.The cuts were still there, but there was no danger of them tearing open.

He still told himself constantly not to begin thinking the wolf ram was his friend.She was a dangerous animal and already he had given her a name.That was a slippery slope into thinking she was just a massive dog with horns.

The coming evening meant San would have to find a place to settle down for the night.He would have to make a fire, set up camp, and hopefully the other magical spell that the old man had given him, Fire in the Night, would keep menacing creatures at bay.

He continued walking down the road, keeping an eye out for a spot to set up camp.It wasn’t long before he smelled something in the air, woodsmoke.San looked around, he hadn’t imagined it, there was woodsmoke in the air.He carefully walked forward, keeping his eyes peeled on the bushes and edges of the road.

It wasn’t the burning village he smelled, it was a possible cook fire.That meant other people.Hopefully other people, this was a fantastical world, for all he knew it might be a goblin horde or some crazed ogres looking to chomp on his bones.

San had crafted a walking stick before he left the village, now he held it before him.He could have taken out the revolver or the sword, but if it was humans, he didn’t want to scare them into thinking he was a threat.He tried to loosen the nervousness from his body as he followed the wood smoke.

There was a screech, hair raising and high pitched.San snapped his eyes upward, realizing he had been passing under a large tree branch. From the branch dropped a figure wielding a curved club with a round head.

San saw the man’s face, a young man with dark eyes and a wild grin on his face.He dropped upon San like a stone, pulling him down and the club he held in his hands raised above his head and smashed down.

Everything went black.

***

“I told you he wasn’t a spirit or demon!” a voice said, the voice was male and it dripped with derision.

“We have no idea what he is,” a second voice said, more measured and reasonable.

“He’s just a man, flesh and blood, not some Mage or spirit.” The first voice said.

“He’s not of this place,” a third voice said.“A foreigner.”

“I say we kill him and return to the village.You know the stories about this place, only evil walks here,” a fourth voice added nervously.“I do not want to spend a night out in these woods.”

“Coward,” the first man mocked.

“We need to find out what he’s doing here. We need to know about the smoke we have seen for the last days. What does it mean? Is the monster leaving the cursed city,” the second man said. He seemed the reasonable one of the bunch. “Then we can kill him.” Or not.

“He doesn’t look like an Imperial,” the third man commented.“The gear he carries is like none I have ever seen.Not even Imperials have gear this fine.”

“I am the one who took him down,”the first voice said. “I claim all his gear as mine by right.”

“As long as you give your tithe to the headman and Elders,” the second man said.

“They don’t need to know about everything,” the first man said.“Especially this sword.”

“How are you going to hide that sword from them?” the fourth man asked. “That is an enchanted item, you can tell by the stamp in the metal. The Elders will take it from you and give it to the best warrior in the village.”

“It is mine!” the first argued.

“Someone better wake him up, we need to get this over with,” the fourth man said.

“He’s already awake,” the third man replied. “He’s been listening to us talk.”

San opened his eyes to see four men standing before him.He lay with his back against the tree he had been ambushed from.He was still on the road and he knew that not much time had passed.

The side of his head throbbed and he could smell the coppery odor of blood in the air.He winced as he touched the wound.At least they hadn’t tied him up.He felt that his pack was still strapped to him, but he had been relieved of the broadsword and his hatchet.The bear mace still hung from his belt loop, it had been clipped to his riggers belt with a carabiner, something that the men probably never encountered before.

“A hit like that should have killed him,” the first man said.He was a lanky young man, no more than a teenager, with reddish hair that was a mess of braids and bits of metal.He wore fur clothing and was dressed far better for the weather than San was.

The other three men wore similar clothing.The second voice belong to a big and older man.He wasn’t much older, but he had a chiseled face of a man who was used to being in charge. The third man was thin and wiry, his face leathery and creased.He looked intelligent and wore clothing that was of better quality than the others. The fourth man was another youngish man, bushy haired and pale, his eyes constantly darting around the trees.

They all carried long spears, a shield, and a short sword at their belts.The third man carried a bow across his back and a quiver at his hip.He also had a longer curved sword and carried no shield.

“You hit like a child,” the third man said, crouching before San.He crouched out of arm and leg reach, not giving him any chances to attack him.He leaned against his spear, watching San. “Either that or he’s stronger than he looks.”

“He’s big and fat,” the fourth man said. “You hear those stories about the madmen in the woods that eat people to gain their powers.They say they come out in winter, when food is the scarcest, to eat their fill of those suffering from winter starvation.He could be one of them.”

“Child’s tales,” the second man said, dismissing the man’s fear. ‘He is flesh and blood, not a monster.”

“But a foreigner,” the third man said.

“Aye, a foreigner. But that’s beside the point,” the second man folded his arms.

“Say something, foreigner,” the third man said. “I can see you understand us. You speak our language? Imperial?” The last word was spoken in a different language, but San realized he still understood it. The Many Tongues was still active, perhaps it would never be undone. San set the thought aside for the time being.

“I can understand you,” San said. “Why did you attack me?”

“We ask the questions here, foreigner,” the third man looked to have experience in making people talk.San could almost feel the menace coming off of him.“What are you and why do you come from the cursed city?”

“City? You mean the village and keep?” San asked.

San saw the butt of the spear coming at him, but he was so shocked by the act that he didn’t move.Pain sprouted along the side of his head, he could feel the blood beginning to flow again from the wound.

“Speak up, creature!” the first man yelled. He pulled back his spear, ready to hit him with it again.

“Leave off, Savol,” the third man said.Annoyance laced his voice and the first man grumbled but set down his spear.“Tell us what we want to know, foreigner.”

“You’re just going to kill me anyway,” San said.

“We can kill you or we can slowly kill you,” the third man said in a matter of fact voice.“Your decision. Either way we will get our answers.”

The first man chuckled while the second man frowned, his arms still folded.The fourth man was looking into the trees.

“I was ready to die when I came here,” San said.His arms hung limply at his side, but he moved them slowly.“I’m ready to die.I’ve have seen horrors that no man should see and when faced with them, I did not flinch.”

The third man scoffed, he turned to look at the second man, his head turning for a moment.

San took the moment to jerk his hands to the can of bear mace at his belt.There was enough give in the carabiner to tilt the nozzle toward the men and his thumb depressed the trigger.This time he had kept the damn safety off of it.

His aim was at the three men who were clustered together, the first, second, and third men.The spray hit the third man on the side of the head, then got the first and second ones directly in the face.They all began screaming, clutching their heads.

San pushed himself to his feet and threw himself at the fourth man.He had been staring at his companions in shock and horror, the spear limp in his hands.San tackled him and he went down with a scream.He smashed down with his fist and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head.

He grabbed the man’s spear and instead of using the pointed end, he slammed the length of wood against the back of the third man’s head.He was still clutching at his eyes and didn’t see the haft of the spear as it shattered against the back of his padded headgear and flung him into the snow.He didn’t get back up.The first man had dropped the sword, so San barreled into him, throwing him off balance and forcing him to flop on his back with a terrified scream.San snatched up the sword and turned to face the second man.

Tears ran down the man’s face, but he wasn’t screaming or shouting. Instead he had drawn his short sword and faced San, his shield out and ready for a fight.Danger oozed off of him, not like the third man, this one knew how to fight and was ready.

The way the man held the sword and his slightly unfocused gaze showed he couldn’t properly see him.But San still paused.He didn’t have to fight them, but if he left now, they would track him.They knew this forest, they were from a nearby village, and if he tried to flee it wouldn’t be long before they found him again.

Was this the world? He wondered. Kill or be killed? He tightened his grip on the weapon.He didn’t want to die.

A high pitched chitter filled the air as the two stood across from one another.The second man tilted his head and listened. The chittering sounded again, this time closer and louder.San watched as the man visibly paled and fear crossed his features.

San followed the man’s gaze and among the trees he sawa bone white human face. It moved in a jerky manner among the branches, inhumanly fast and unnatural.Then San saw the body, a thick bulging mass of hair and legs.

“Food…” it hissed and the word was echoed by more voices in the trees.