The entire clearing was silent upon hearing the deafening roar. After a moment’s hesitation, the other woman who abstained from voting ran over to the fire and kicked it over. Motivated by her sudden action, a few people in the ground joined her in stomping out the remaining embers lingering on the ground.

Quentin spoke up for the first time in a while, “Are you capable of protecting us from whatever that is?” He sounded a little fearful but maintained his composure well.

“I won’t know until I see it, but chances are, yes.” Scalisth was smug as his mocking grin turned pompous within a second.

“Can he, though? He seems strong, sure, but that thing sounded enormous!” I remembered seeing the powerful energies surging around him when I first gained my ability to see the weird energies on this planet, but how strong did that make him?

I had a crazy idea, but decided the information I gained would be worth it. I closed my eyes and searched deep inside myself to find my newly discovered will. Finding it even quicker than before, I then focused it towards my eyes again. Within a few more seconds, I was able to see the sea of energies floating directly in front of me.

With some effort, I pushed my senses toward Scalisth, who was approximately eight meters away from me. It was hard, but I felt the extension of my innate willpower push from the veil of my body and into the air in front of me.

Scalisth’s eyes once again turned my way as his frown fell. Instead of a scowl, though, his expression looked more intrigued than anything. His eyes looked from me, then to the energy I was slowly pushing aside to move towards him.

“So, he can see it too. That means I’m probably messing with the same stuff he uses for world speech. Does that mean I can do magic?” I continued pushing it forward, acting as if I hadn’t noticed his attention on me.

Just before the spark of willpower reached him, I saw Scalisth smirk slightly and send out a spark of his own. The only difference was, if mine was a spark, his was an inferno. His energy plowed through mine, dispersing it into a million wisps of ethereal smoke.

Surprisingly, I felt as though I had just punched in the stomach by a professional boxer. I keeled over onto the ground and retched from the impact. My vision became hazy as the dusky sky became a red blur in my eyes.

“You’re certainly interesting, much more so than the others here, that’s for sure,” Scalisth said with a grin. “A word of advice: don’t do that again. That’s my first lesson to you.” I couldn’t hear what he was saying as I vomited stomach acid on the mossy grass in front of me.

“Well, that was fun, but I suppose I need to get back to business, don’t I?” The Altum man’s attitude did a total 180 from before, seeming much more amused than before.

He continued, “The only thing you need to know is that you’re generally safe during the day, so that’s the only time I’ll be with you to travel. I’ll spend a majority of the night away dealing with other things, so you’ll need to manage while I’m gone.”

The alien turned to walk away, but Quentin spoke up at the last second, saying, “Wait! That woman, what did you do to her?” Scalisth paused for a second but didn’t turn around.

“I just taught her that her actions have consequences. She can tell you more about it if she wants.” With that, the man walked into the dark forest, his white skin somehow disappearing in the rows of dark trees.

///

I was lying down on the ground, resting after the longest first day of all time. The two boy scouts finally managed to get some meat cut off, which wasn’t cooking because we knocked the fire over. People had gone back to the somewhat sullen atmosphere from before, sitting in groups around the remnants of the fire that was supposed to be our saving grace.

I had been sitting alone for a while, as Nora had left to talk with Quentin and his entourage, leaving me with my thoughts and the pounding pain in my body.

Whatever that alien bastard did to me had really screwed me up. Even then, I think there was more to it than simply punishing me for overstepping. No, there was something he wanted me to learn from that encounter, I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

I tried to summon the power from before, but moving the energies within my body caused the pain to intensify, so I stopped for tonight. Hopefully it wasn’t permanent, and I would feel better in the morning.

It wasn’t long before the camp began to shift into nighttime mode. The sun had officially gone down, so we couldn’t do much more productive work without a fire for light. Still, it wasn’t long after the sun went down that Quentin gathered us again to speak.

Luckily enough, he gathered everyone around the smoldering pile of ash that remained of the fire, so I didn’t have to get up.

“Alright everyone, since it’s the first night, we’ll take volunteers to take night watch. If we don’t get at least four, I’ll pick the remaining out by hand.”

Quentin waited for a bit, and only two people raised their hands, both of them part of the group that had been following Quentin around all evening.

“Good, thank you for volunteering. Anyone else?” Unfortunately, no one else raised their hands, so he looked around the group to decide on the last two to stay up. I looked up and saw that he was looking at me.

“You there, what was your name again?” he said in a somewhat polite tone.

I sighed but said, “Olivia North.”

“Olivia then, would you mind staying up tonight? I don’t mean to be rude, but you did spend half of the day asleep while the rest of us worked.”

“I wouldn’t really call being knocked unconscious restful sleep, but I guess I know why he’s doing it. He’s making sure that the rest of the group sees that he is fair and values hard work whenever possible. I guess he doesn’t know that I’m the only reason we’ll have food in the morning.”

I shrugged, “Doesn’t matter to me.” I saw no point in making an enemy of everyone here by rejecting the role.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Right after I accepted the role, a voice called out from the group. In the low light, it was hard to make out the form, but I could see it was the other woman who abstained from voting.

Quentin hummed lightly in his throat while he thought it over. “Sure, Amaya, was it? You were pretty busy today. Are you sure you want to stay up?”

“Yes, I didn’t do much besides walk around, and I could use the time to gather my thoughts.”

Another thoughtful humming from Quentin before he spoke again. “Alright then, it’s settled. You four, stay up until midnight, at that point you can choose to continue watching or choose a replacement from the group I’ll select now.”

Quentin selected four more people to rotate out, and then everyone went to lie in the middle of the clearing, huddling for warmth. No one wanted to go out to the tree line and sleep alone, so everyone was compressed into a small area.

I sat up and chose to face outward towards the dark woods. It was frustrating to have no campfire for light, but the fear of having one lit to attract predators persuaded me to ignore my frustration.

I sat alone for probably thirty minutes, staring out into the darkness, alone with my thoughts. The moon wasn’t even visible above the tree line when I heard movement to my right. I quickly turned towards the noise, picking up a sharpened rock used to process the dead bird.

“Who’s there?” I announced to the darkness.

“Hey, hey, it’s just me, Amaya, don’t hurt me!” She halfway shouted the phrase in fright, and I heard a few people behind me shuffle in their sleep.

“Damn girl,” I said quietly, “Not the place to be sneaking up on people.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to wake everyone else up.” She sounded small and worried, her voice carrying fearful emotion throughout the dark night.

I waited for a second before saying, “Well don’t just stand there, sit down or go away, your call.” As much as I didn’t like people, I’d prefer the company over staring into the darkness alone with my thoughts and the pain in my chest.

I heard Amaya sit down a meter or so away from me. Her breathing was slow as she shuffled her feet on the soft grass.

“It’s a lot softer than I would’ve thought, the ground, I mean. It’s like sitting on velvet.”

“Yeah, it’s not bad for grass,” I replied nonchalantly.

Another few seconds of silence interrupted by the sounds of breathing passed before anyone spoke up again. I thought about talking but decided against being first to respond. Thankfully, Amaya seemed to be the type that couldn’t stand a quiet room, or clearing, for that matter.

“Isn’t it kind of weird how there’re trees and stuff here? There’s also only one sun that sits in a sky that’s the same color blue as back home. Do you think it’s just a coincidence?”

“Yes, it’s just a coincidence,” I replied again.

Amaya continued, “I read somewhere that for life to exist on another planet, it must exist in a certain distance from a star while being just the right size. Have you heard that before?”

“Yeah, it’s called the Goldilocks Zone, right?”

“Yeah, or the habitable zone if you’re a nerd,” Amaya responded with a chuckle.

I let out a puff of air from my nose at her joke. “Did you know Goldilocks was a real person before the Union?”

“Really? I thought she was just a character in a children’s story?” It seemed my deception had caught the young woman’s attention.

“Yup,” I said with full confidence. “She was a soldier in a special operation unit during the last world war. She had like forty confirmed kills and even took out a terrorist leader operating outside of Old China.”

“No way, I don’t believe you, I would’ve totally heard about that in class if it were true,” Amaya responded with doubt plain in her voice.

“It’s the truth,” I lied through my teeth. “I would know, I have a master’s degree in Pre-Union History. I wrote a fifty-page paper for my advisor on the Pre-Union movements of world powers during the last war.”

“No way, did you go to Urona too!” Her voice got loud with excitement, but she quickly quieted down after realizing how loud she had been.

I smiled to myself. It was easy to talk to someone you couldn’t see. There was a certain amount of authenticity to it that you couldn’t replicate when speaking face to face. It was easier to be honest and to focus on what the other person was saying rather than trying to look cool the entire time.

I responded quietly, “Yes, I graduated last spring, and I worked as a teacher’s assistant until all of this business went down.”

“Oh,” was all she said for a while. She waited for a minute in silence before she broke it to ask another question.

“Which professor did you work for? Was it Schultz?”

“No, it was Attick.”

“That sucks, I heard he’s a total dick from a friend who took him.”

That took me by surprise. I responded with, “That’s not true, he’s just very traditional. He’s a thoughtful guy once you get to know him.”

“Oh, sorry. Were you friends?” she added after an awkward pause.

That caused me to think for a second. “Were we friends? We certainly talked a lot, and I’m sure he’d say we were if he was asked.”

Out loud I said, “Well, maybe not friends per se, more like close colleagues. It’s hard to be friends with your boss, you know?” I chuckled lightly at my attempt at a joke, but Amaya didn’t laugh back.

“I worked in a restaurant with my mom and sister,” Amaya began. “It was nice to have flexible hours during the school year, and I knew my boss wouldn’t screw me on shifts if she were my mom.” Her voice was much more melancholy than before, like she was thinking about something sad.

I wanted to stop the conversation before it got sad, but the mood got too weird, and I couldn’t let things end on that note.

“What’s your favorite thing on the menu at your mom’s restaurant?” I asked her plainly.

“Uhm, probably the cheesesteak hashbrown bowl. It’s kind of greasy, but it’s really good for warming during a cold night shift.”

“Hmm,” I hummed quietly aloud, “I’ll have to try it someday. Make me a bowl when we get back to Earth.”

I heard a slight sniffle as Amaya began to lose her composure. “When we get back, huh? You think it’s possible?”

I thought for a moment, before answering, “I guess so. If we were sent here, then there would be a way to go back. Hell, I’m sure that bastard Scalisth could send us back right now if he really wanted to. Too bad he’s too much of an asshole for that.”

I heard the young woman beside me laugh between sniffles. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” She waited for a moment before she added, “Sure, I’ll make you that bowl when we get back, though my mom would make it better.”

I thought for a moment before asking, “Hey, why are you here?”

“What?” she asked, confused. “I think you know how we got here, Olivia.”

“No,” I started, “I mean why are you here, sitting next to me? I heard from some people that you were the one that was there when they found… you know.”

“The body?” she added easily, “I probably didn’t even know the girl, considering I didn’t notice she was gone until then. How could I feel sad for someone dying I barely knew?”

“I don’t know if I feel the same, though I guess I understand your logic. We spend a lot of time hearing about people dying on the news, but it doesn’t really matter to us whether they were alive or not, no?”

She sighed, “It’s sort of the same thing, I guess, though not exactly.”

I paused for her to continue before I added, “Even then, why would you want the night shift, even if the body didn’t bother you much?” I thought it was a fair question, as this was supposed to be six hours of silence and tense anticipation.

She seemed to hesitate for a moment before answering, “Well, I wanted a chance to talk with you, I guess?”

That took me by surprise. Why would she want to talk to me? There was no way it was…

“Sorry Amaya, I’m sure you’re lovely but I don’t swing that way.”

She puffed air from her nose before taking in a huge breath of air. “What?! No! No, that’s not what I meant! I was just saying that…. Hey, wait a minute, that’s not funny!”

Amaya then hid her head in her arms while I chuckled lightly to myself. I got the giggles out before I started talking again.

“Ha ha, jeez you’re easy, didn’t you go to high school? All jokes aside, what’s the actual reason you took the shift?”

“I told you, I wanted to talk with you,” she said, more confidently this time.

“And why is that?” I asked with a smirk on my face.

“Because I think you can see it too, the blue stuff, I mean.”

///