There are no accolades, no grand entrance, no saint to tell of their quest. Not one courtesy is afforded Aleph as they abruptly find themselves standing in the middle of a dry and barren landscape. For a moment, all is still. Incomprehension makes it's way to his face, as he simply gawks at his surroundings.

Then his extremities began flapping in the wind.

"...where the hell are my clothes?" he questioned, testing his voice. It was immediately unfamiliar to him. All of it, really, but his voice of all things? Scratching his forehead, he stared around for any signs of life besides his own. There was none. The grey rocky landscape stretches to the horizon, and then some; the sky itself is nearly devoid of color, as if this place is so dreary even the heavens can't escape the sheer greyness of it all. Speaking of which, "...multiple moons? No, what the hell is that? Some massive space station?"

Visible in the sky were three objects, including the sun. A moon more than triple the diameter of Earth's in the sky, and to the right side of the horizon, what could only roughly be described as a moon, being more metal than mineral. Huge engines dotted it, the occasional flare being visible even from here. Somehow, however, the moon was more intimidating. It sat directly in the center of his view, almost directly above him. More importantly, there was very visible signs of life on it, the chief of it being a huge city that had to take up at least a hundredth of it's surface.

A city that was currently being scoured with an equally-massive laser.

The beams seemed to appear at random from various points in the sky, but the destruction it caused was clearly visible from here. Parts of buildings visibly chunked away, at such speeds that he could watch them fall to the ground. The ones that didn't were practically vaporized into mist, clouds of smoke that buffeted like a terrible, all encompassing fog. As he walked around, now suitably shocked at what he was watching unfold, he quite nearly tripped on a backpack he had somehow missed entirely, distracted by what was above him.

Removed from his stupor by necessity, he immediately searched the backpack. Inside were a few items he had no clue as to the use of, but it was competently-packed full of survival goods as well. Items like jerky, dry ice for compact travel water, and most important of all; clothes. Oh, he went, how nice "they" were, to give me something to wear, at least. Comfortably protecting his 'vitals', there was even a nice pair of leather shoes and wool socks. They may have only been a slight upgrade above homespun, but regardless, it was almost enough to distract him from the calamity unfolding above him.

Almost.

Aleph looked back up at the moon. At this distance, it was difficult to make out who was the one firing the laser, or even if it had a real source. What was indismissable was how methodical the laser was, focusing on splitting the largest buildings in half to maximize destruction, but occasionally switching targets to a 'random' target in the city. What stood out to him most was how it took the time to occasionally refresh that heat fog. Something told him there was more than just metal in that mist.

Soon after another blanket of fog, there was a lull in the fighting. Well, eradication. There was a laser every 5 seconds, on the dot. That he hadn't seen it ever stop wasn't a good sign. In this lull, he took the time to inspect his newfound supplies more thoroughly, particularly the things that eluded him on first glance.

There was a kind of credit card, made of much sturdier stuff than plastic but bearing all the similar marks of one, except if it was more of a ruler than a card. Seriously, it was barely short enough to fit in the bag. Alongside it was a blindingly-bright lantern, which on first inspection was just a cylinder, but when he pulled at one side of it, it turned on- right in his face, mind you. After blinking the spots out of his vision, he folded away the handle and carefully put it back in the bag.

Following that incident, he treated the remaining items with a healthy amount of caution. A book sealed with a binder he recognized to be made of tungsten refused to open. That was simple enough, in comparison Additionally, there was a "gun". Aleph was hesitant to even call it a gun, but that was the closest approximation he had to this, ridiculously overengineered thing. He spent an entire minute inspecting the barrel in an attempt to figure out how the slide worked, only to realize it was a piston. The entire top of the gun was one massive piston. This was the case with every single goddamn part of the gun. That's not even mentioning how each part interacted.

Yes. Every part interacted.

It wasn't half an hour before he even understood the fundamentals of what he was looking at. And when he did, he only became more hesitant about using it. If it was even infinitesimally as powerful as he thought it would, well, it would break his wrist instantaneously. So, back into the bag it went.

Besides the... "gun", however, everything was extremely utilitarian and compact. From the food to the tools he was granted- whatever they are. He didn't even understand the lantern, as, with the sheer size of the moon, the reflection alone would keep the night lit. At least until it dipped into the horizon. With how close it felt, it was entirely possible the moon would be gone long before nightfall. That... is far from a bad thing. It would mean he'd get some distance between him and whatever the hell is going on up there.

Aleph looked up again, and he only had a few seconds to identify the new target of interest- a space elevator at the center of it all- before that was finally felled. Suffice to say, it took a huge portion of the megacity with it within moments. Far from astonished, seeing what had to be millions get destroyed by that... "I think... I think it would be best to leave, now. As fast as possible." Aleph said to himself, trying to shake away the feeling of disgust he felt. He had no idea who or what lived up there. He didn't even fully understand who he is. He didn't have the spare mental energy to spend on such depressing math.

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After only a few more minutes of observing, he noted the moons' orbit- it was moving directly southeast of him, which he marked by using the ruler-card to form an arrow in the dry soil- and began walking northwest, in the exact opposite direction.

The landscape was devoid of movement as ever.

Looking around at a whole lot of nothing, he quickly realized his options for excitement were wholly limited to the objects in the sky. He sighed heavily, taking in the sandy air as he did so, "This is going to be a thing, isn't it?"

~

There was absolutely, positively nothing to note about the surroundings for a long, long time. He glanced up at the objects in the sky on occasion but they barely changed, themselves. The attacks on that moontroplis were still going on, but not once had the laser paused its' attacks in the intervening time. Aleph attempted to make some sort of plan for how he'd approach this whole transmigration thing, but the amount of information he had to go off of was practically nil. He understood this place was incredibly advanced if it had the technology to make this gun and that moonbase, yet not a single soul greeted him in, what, 50 miles? He was was beginning to see the end of his endurance when something worthwhile finally happened.

When he first began his march, he had estimated it to be some time between morning and noon. It was nearing night by the time that, due north, he spotted what looked like a building. That was it. He couldn't even make out what exactly it was from this distance, so he just began in that direction without overthinking it. The sky was darkening, and anything was better than nothing

~

He was only mildly disappointed. What he had seen was the remains of a farmhouse. Only visible due to the sheer size of it, it took an hour just to reach the damn thing. The reason for it's size was that, for some ungodly reason, it rolled up all the necessities of a farm into one building. It was surrounded by a good fifty yards of fields with the occasional bone sticking out of the soil. He couldn't figure out what animal or being any of them belonged to. Eerie.

The lowest floor gave host to stables and other living spaces for animals, and to answer where you had to go to get inside, he quickly found a staircase that led to the upper floors, outside and up against the front door. Unhelpfully so, of course, as it was completely toppled against the building. Luckily, there was a smaller staircase near the center of the stables. Skeletons of animals both recognizable and completely unlike that he'd ever seen were present in large numbers, here. The most glaring evidence as to why they were all dead was, when he reached the center, he came upon a huge hole in the side of the building. Scratch that, it was more like a good third of the farmhouse was completely gone, reduced to ashes. Interestingly, the ashes only stopped at specific points, each marked with some kind of strange script. Runes, daresay.

This place just gets weirder and weirder.

As he started towards the rubble, he was spooked by a sudden clicking. When the source was nonforthcoming, he was enlightened to the fact that it was coming from his own bag. Near the bottom, a small metal chip was located, one he had missed during his intiial search.

It didn't take connecting many dots to realize it's purpose; it was a Geiger counter.

"Fuck, okay, so that's not happening." He immediately withdrew, and, looking at his surroundings, formed an idea. He wanted to explore this place, but couldn't just wait for it to go off- he was already where he shouldn't be by that point. Maybe he should just leave and hope to find shelter somewhere else?

He looked back up at the moon. The city was now ringed by a lava lake. That answered the question for him.

Instead, he grabbed the Geiger counter, and, after a bit more searching, took a metal pole his height from a uncomfortably-large cage. The bar had long rusted off of it's original place due to a hole in the ceiling, optimistic evidence of rain. It left a gap in the bars and the floor, which was made of some type of sturdy wood that he had to bend at a ridiculous angle to remove from it's original position, using the bar itself for leverage. He then grabbed a long strand of frayed rope, and tied the Counter onto the side of the rusty pole. After some deliberation, he also gave his best attempt at sharpening the rusted-off end of the pole. Aleph doubted the Geiger Counter would survive any attempt at using the pole as a weapon, but the option would at least be there. Tetanus wouldn't help him here, but hopefully the years of weathering would.

Shouldering the heavy pole in front of him, he began methodically searching the rooms. As expected, the ones exposed to the hole were off-limits. But except for those, the rest of the farmhouse was safe. Safe enough, at least.

Aleph grabbed everything that might be useful- nails; knives; another gun, this time a boxy rifle he had no desire to analyze; a rusty short-spear that had fallen off of a mantlepiece, suitably replacing his unwieldy metal pole; and matches, probably the most important acquisition of this trip. He did find a map, but it was so old and faded it was completely worthless, as was the remains of a solar system model, The latter was unluckily placed just within the blast radius of whatever hit this house. Planets scattered, smashed, and presumably irradiated, only half of a guess as to where he was just wasn't worth the risk.

He quickly hit the bottom of the barrel in terms of practical items. He had grabbed a piece of jewelry here and there, but didn't bother with the heavier stuff, such as a marble bust of some orc-like humanoid in one of the bathrooms. He could always come back. And, even if he couldn't, he had no business carrying things around that weren't immediately useful to him, intriguing questions or no.

That is an Orc, right? Maybe a hobgoblin? It's definitely a lot more savage than a human's facial structure, those teeth don't look like they're made for eating greens. Hmm, wait, is that racist? I guess I'll add that to my list of things to figure out.

He did, however, locate the perfect spot to use as shelter. At the opposite end of the farmhouse from the blast area, in the top floor, was a master bedroom. It was the least damaged out of any of the rooms, with both of the doors that led into it remaining solid. The one that led into a master-bathroom would normally be a dead end, were it not for the hole in the floor that revealed a small library of indecipherable books on the floor below. Originally an escape hatch with a ladder, it now found a new home in the library, the ladder in question smashed by the sturdy exfil hatch. The hole that now occupied the hatch's space itself now served as an escape route, due to the bookcases that allowed a passable way down.

Most importantly, there was no holes in the ceiling, and there was an honest-to-goodness bed. He was honestly dearly needing somewhere healthy to sleep. Barricading the door with a large cabinet and a hefty dresser, he had just began to settle in for the night when a bone-chilling thought struck him. The entire time, there was one thing that there seemed to be an obtuse lack of, something present in anywhere that saw such a level of disuse and obvious destruction.

Where are all the human remains?

Somewhere below he could hear the sound of doors opening and closing, and he feared he had gotten his answer.