The world swirled and Cael felt like he was tumbling through space. A flash of heat shuddered through him and he was back. On his hands and knees in an otherwise empty alleyway, trying not to throw up. Just as the universe willed it.

He managed to keep everything down, but even so, he felt dirty by the end of it.

Cael dusted himself and got up. He should probably hurry. There were elementals around. Looking around, he had no clue where the shelters were supposed to be. He stepped out from the alley and looked up, trying to find the prison in order to orient himself. Teleportation was really off-putting.

Most of the cavern roof was hidden behind the tall buildings that surrounded Cael in every direction, and of what little remained visible, none of it seemed to be a metal box with a hole in one wall.

But seriously. Cael scratched his neck nervously. The place was a ghost town at a moment's notice. This appeared to be a marketplace but without the customers. Food was left on tables, wares unattended and not a single thing moved as far as he looked down the road.

Trista had probably teleported him someplace close to a shelter, but without anybody to follow, he may as well just be lost in an unfamiliar place. And knowing Cael’s [Luck], if any of the elementals got past the Constabulary, he was going to be hunted in this unfamiliar place.

He idly wondered to himself what would happen if he just took one of the drinks on the tables. After all, he was really thirsty.

Surely there would be no karmic justice waiting for him if he did this, right?

Cael lifted a glass of water off the table of a nearby restaurant and set it to his lips. He glanced side to side, and when nothing happened, he quickly downed the whole thing.

He swiveled slowly, wary of any movements. Then again, an air elemental didn’t necessarily have a visual cue accompanying it. Still, it was better to be cautious than stomped by an elemental, or whatever the saying was.

Moreover, Cael didn’t actually know what an elemental was supposed to look like, so all bets were off with identification. For all he knew, an air elemental could be anything from a gust of wind to a tornado.

Cael picked a direction and began walking. If this area was empty, then he figured it couldn’t have been all that close to a shelter, of which he believed there were multiple. The announcements in his head had implied as much.

Maybe he would stumble across someone on the way.

Yeah. That would be nice.

Which meant it probably wouldn’t happen.

:(:):(:):(:):

Unexpectedly, Cael did find someone during his journey. A spiky-looking mammal thing had been robbing a blanket store, which… look, they were kind of disheveled, and their clothes were a bit frazzled. He wasn’t going to judge them for taking something if they needed it.

And it wasn’t like he could get mad at that face. They looked like a hedgehog and were even smaller than he was. Honestly, the only thing he disliked about them was how hard they were jamming a knife into his ribs.

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“I promise I don’t have anything of value.” He really didn’t. Other than the clothes he was wearing— which wouldn’t fit the hedgehog anyway— he didn’t actually have anything at all.

“I don’t believe you!” They also sounded like a kid, which definitely made it even harder to be mad or even scared about this.

“Whether you believe me or not won’t change the fact that I don’t have anything. How old are you?” He was kind of worried about the lack of adult supervision. Which was funny coming from him considering the all-powerful System had him labeled as ‘1 day’ old when he had checked it earlier.

“I’m old enough.” which meant they definitely weren’t old enough.

“Okay, do you know where the nearest shelter is?”

They nodded. Probably. He wasn’t sure about that one because their whole upper body wiggled up and down. Again, adorable.

“Then why aren’t you there?”

“When else am I going to get a chance like this?”

Cael stared at the hedgehog. “To steal?”

Another body wiggle. Cael looked at them in utter disbelief. Staying still for so long was also making him antsy. He surveyed the area again. No longer was he in a narrow alley. The blanket store had been facing out into a large courtyard that would normally be bustling at this time of the day. Empty as it currently was, Cael just felt exposed.

“Okay, look. That may be how you feel now, but if you get caught by an elemental, you aren’t going to have any more chances to do anything.” He brushed the knife aside and shook them by their admittedly pokey shoulders. “So let's get out of here before we die.”

“Come on, it’s a whole city.” The hedgehog shrugged Cael off, having completely forgotten about the whole mugging. “What are the chances we run into an elemental?”

Cael recoiled as if he’d been slapped, fully aware that the hedgehog had doomed them both. One did not simply tempt fate.

The blanket shop exploded dramatically. It probably could have been much worse, but it was a blanket shop that advertised its wares a bit too readily. What did that mean? Well, how about an example?

The support pillars that flew toward the pair like the weights of a net, were strung together by a dozen very sturdy blankets. Fun fact about having a shop underground, you didn’t really need to worry about the weather. As such, there were no walls, only more blankets. The result was that the two were wrapped up in a hundred comfortable blankets, the speed of which had reduced sharply due to the parachuting effect caused by the disparity in the weight-to-surface area ratio.

In the end, it was like having an inflatable bouncy house fall on you. A bit painful, maybe, but it could be worse, and while you technically could die, that was only going to happen if you stuck around and suffocated.

Cael was not going to be doing that. That would be a lame way to go.

He dragged himself through the silken folds of a thousand thread count like a man drowning in molasses. Slowly but unsurely inching his way out from his satin cage.

As soon as he was clear of the blanket pile, Cael released a series of coughs. The fact that there was no weather underground didn’t mean those blankets weren’t still dusty as heck.

Cael turned to find the hedgehog mugger. It wasn’t hard. A slightly pointy ball rolled around in the cloth. Go figure. Being covered in spikes was generally unhelpful when stuck in a prison of fabric. Now where was he?

Right. The building had exploded. Cael wondered if it was some kind of security system. It seemed a bit counterproductive, but what did he know about running a blanket shop?

He looked up at the splintered remains of Blanket City, as the broken sign by his foot claimed it had been called. He was having difficulty focusing. The important part was probably the seething ball of malevolent shadow sitting in the center of the wreckage, but it was starting to feel like Cael may have hit his head a bit too hard.

After all, he should probably have been paying as much attention to the shadow elemental as it was to him.

But concussion or not, Cael would find it hard to miss when the elemental moved.

Anyone who hadn’t made it to a shelter would find it hard to miss too.

A tendril of darkness flashed toward him, slicing through the air and then his arm just as easily.

He screamed.

Loudly.