"I'm Est," I said.

The woman didn't reply, just staring at me in utter surprise, as if telling someone your name was the most ridiculous thing in the world. I wondered again about the oddity of Grablons and names.

"Laurel," she finally said, staring right at me.

I nodded, getting the feeling from her raised eyebrows that she had offered me something more than just her name. I didn't have any idea what, though, so I just shrugged it off.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Laurel. Tell me, do you have any idea what direction Orlion is?"

Laurel looked at me in disbelief. I raised an eyebrow, and she shook her head and snorted. "Come again?"

I repeated my question.

"Of course... didn't you bring a map when you came?" she said, frowning..

Fuck...I really need to get to a normal library, I thought.

"No, I didn't get any time when I was sent here on a mission. Which reminds me, I need to get to the Harrowing Hills as fast as I can."

"Impossible, Est, that would take forever!" Laurel said, shaking her head.

My mood dropped, and I barely realized she had used my name, an odd thing to do mid-conversation. I frowned at her across Redtooth's back. "Humor me. How long?"

Laurel laughed and shook her head. She didn't look like someone who had just lost her brother at all, and I wondered if they were really siblings.

"We can't go to Orlion in a straight line, so we need to swim to the closest shore, which is probably a week or three away. From there, it will take us another week to get back to Melsio. Then, it depends on if there is any ship able to bring us to Orlion before the winter storms begin. If we don't find one, you will have to wait till spring…"

As she spoke, Laurel was shaking her head with a large grin. "Anywhere between two and five months to get to Orlion. Then a week or two to travel to the northern part of the Harrowing Hills, and this all only works if we somehow do not get eaten by demons and fix your bleeding before you die."

That won't do, I thought, gazing through the water below, as I recalled the little time I had left. I needed to get those bloody seeds from Ulderion and preferably with enough time, so Rathica could grow them. That left me with only one choice. I'd have to go and beg my deity for some help again. Great.

Rathica, I pray to you, can you lend me a hand?

I waited for a while, but there wasn't any response, so I tried a few more times. Slowly my mood soured even more. Rathica had never left my pleas unanswered, especially not when I was in need. Either something was going on with her, or she couldn't hear me. Looking around, I wondered if it was the water.

"What can you tell me of these waters?" I asked, turning to Laurel, who had been scanning the waters below with keen eyes.

"Not a lot more than everybody else knows. They are infested with demons, and demon-blood taints its waters, making it impossible for anyone to survive without demon poison resistance. Which reminds me, we need to get above water before tomorrow."

Laurel turned her gaze up, staring at the receding light above us with a pained expression.

"Why?" I asked, biting my tongue afterward. I had more important things to ask first, like why I couldn't contact Rathica.

"What do you mean why? How can you not know these things?" she asked, and this time she looked at me with a sharp gaze that showed she wasn't going to be distracted with a half answer again.

My mind spun rapidly, cooking up a dozen answers that would get her to tell me, but after a second, I shoved them all down. No. It was time to lay more groundwork for the future, and that meant starting to prepare the world for the arrival of more earthlings. I suppressed the worry building up that I'd have to get more bodies for them first.

After a moment, I made up my mind. I would use Laurel to test some things before getting as much information as I could. She wouldn't be able to do anything stupid right now, and if she showed signs of wanting to kill me because I wasn't a real Grablon, I could just leave her here. Still, looking into her eyes, I didn't think she would be my main problem.

"What do you know of other worlds?"

She raised an eyebrow while scratching a small gash on her chin. "That is one odd question to toss out all of a sudden. What did I learn in the academy? There are many worlds besides our own, but most have no life or only demonic and undead life. The inhabited ones trade with the mage towers, as they are the only ones who can make portals to them. And the war, of course..."

I stared at her, barely believing what I heard. They had portals to other worlds?

"I've never heard about this before…" I muttered, wondering why Agga hadn't told me. The memory of the old woman in Sart triggered a host of images of my arrival on Kernstalion, and I realized I'd never properly thanked her for all she had done. I had just left…

Laurel's words snapped me out of it, and I looked up. "Say that again?"

She blinked. "You never went to the academy, right? No noble family?"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"None," I replied immediately.

"So, that's why. It's useless information, really, but for some reason, the noble's hold it close to their chest as if it's worth something."

Wait, did this mean she was a noble? I inspected her for a moment until I realized you could probably not see if someone was related to royalty...

"Should you actually be telling me then?" I asked as my mind began imagining what a Grablon academy would look like. I imagined combat classes, etiquette, and all types of ways to work around not using one's names.

"Most Grablons know, although many think it just a story. But you asked…"

Laurel looked at me, her brown eyes almost red in the water. "Anyway, what does any of this have to do with how little common knowledge you have? Are you trying to circumvent telling me what is going on?"

"No," I said, looking down and seeing no end to our descent into the slowly darkening waters. Redtooth was swimming at a slow pace for a shark, probably because of his meal and our weight dragging him down. My mind wandered for a moment, and I felt myself growing sleepy. Between staying focused and the dull throbbing pain from my wounds, my energy was being sapped quickly. I took a deep breath, odd with the metal contraption in my mouth, and tried to keep myself alert.

"There are more worlds out there than even the teachers in your academy know, and some of them are very, very far away. I'm not from this world," I said, turning back to Laurel, looking intently at how she would react.

Her eyes narrowed, and she scanned me up and down. "You look a lot like a Grablon, but you're saying you are not? Or are there more of us on other worlds?"

"There might be, I wouldn't know. But I wasn't born a Grablon. I was born with two arms and looked more like the humans you have in this world."

Laurel was quiet for a long time, the expression on her face changing from confusion to worry to anger. In the end, it stopped at wary interest, and she slowly nodded.

"I wouldn't have believed you if you had told me that yesterday, but yesterday we weren't going down to the bottom of the Demon Sea, wounded. Besides, you are slowly dying, and I can't imagine why you would lie about something like this." She sounded uncertain as if she was trying to convince herself more so than me.

Her eyes suddenly sharpened, and she hissed. "I told you my birth name!"

I shrugged and winced. The wound on my back hurt like hell.

"Yeah, about that. What does that even mean? Where I am from, we use each other's names. I know Grablon's don't. They use titles and stuff like Guro and Gurossa, right?"

Laurel opened her mouth as if to answer, then snapped it closed and shook her head sharply. "No! No more questions. Tell me why you are here!"

I nodded my head. It had to be odd hearing you were speaking to an alien masquerading as one of your own. "I was tricked into coming here," I began before telling her about the Guidar and how I had awoken in Sart. I also told her about my chat with the Gurossa but left out anything about seeds or more humans coming here.

This time the silence lasted for at least five minutes, and I was about to ask if she was alright when Laurel started talking.

"Alright. I can't believe anybody would spin these tales while they are bleeding to death. I want to ask you a million things about where you're from and all that, but let's get to the things that might matter right now. Why do you have to get to the Harrowing Hills so badly?

I pondered her question for a moment, noticing my mind was growing sluggish. I wasn't going to tell her about the seeds or the bodies. That knowledge in the wrong hands would be dangerous.

"More of my people will hopefully manage to reach Kernstalion, and Rathica is helping me prepare the way for them," I said slowly. "I have been given a mission at the Harrowing Hills, and I need to get there as fast as I can."

Laurel was quiet again, and I found it curious to see such a muscled warrior taking so much time to think about things. The idea of her in an academy, her nose in a book suddenly seemed less surreal.

"Why can't Rathica bring you to the Harrowing Hills?" she finally asked.

It was a question I had wondered about a few times, and I hadn't figured out a decent answer yet. I should probably have just asked Rathica while I still could. I blinked and decided to try right away.

Rathica, I beseech you, answer my prayer! I grimaced while I shouted internally, wondering if she would see the humor in it. I waited for a minute, two, but there was no reply. A point of flickering light began dancing across my vision, and I rubbed my eyes.

"I've been trying to ask her that, but I can't seem to reach her…" I said, then yawned as I suddenly felt drained. My mind grew blurry, and a whisper sounded that seemed to come from a million miles away. It was so soft and garbled that I couldn't make out what it said, but I recognized Rathica's voice. She repeated herself, becoming a bit louder, and finally, I could make out two words.

*)(*&^&(* ..carefull! &*)^%( danger!

Shit, now what, I thought, shaking my head in an attempt to clear the fog from it. As my head moved to the left, it felt as if it rolled off, and I had a major dizzy spell. My health bar suddenly jumped from yellow to red, barely twenty percent left, but I hardly noticed.

"Est?"

I tried to turn to Laurel, noting that the world was a hazy red as if I was looking through a foggy glass. I tried to speak, but there was something itchy in my throat, and I coughed. Blood spurted from my mouth, spreading like an oily red cloud through the water.

"Est!"

I was vaguely aware that Laurel moved, but now my hands were losing their sense of touch, and the sounds around me muted to a dull garble.

Am I dying? I thought and felt something grab me around the waist and shoulders. I heard a whisper in my ear, but I didn't understand the words.

The world turned into a confusing mass of swirling movement, dull sounds as I felt myself being dragged around. I don't know how long it lasted, and when it finally stopped, I realized I was lying still, and everything was dark. Someone was talking to me, but at the same time, I heard an odd incantation. I couldn't understand anything, and then something felt like it snapped.

Suddenly my mind was clear, and I was in a familiar tunnel of light, surrounded by darkness, moving so fast it felt my mind was torn to pieces. Oh shit, I barely managed, and then the darkness faded, and I saw myself, my own old face, in a mirror, grinning wickedly. Drawn around the edge of the mirror were arcane symbols, drawn in what looked like blood.

"There you are, little mortal. Did you really think you could trick me that easily?" My own old and familiar voice echoed through the dimly lit room, causing a mental shiver to run through me.

In a moment of astuteness that surprised even me, I feigned a loud mental sigh of relief. Desero! I thought I was doomed. Thank god you got me out of there in time! I was even quick enough to use god instead of Rathica, although that left an odd aftertaste.

The face in the mirror that had been mine for a few decades blinked with a look of utter surprise.

What game are you playing? Desero finally asked grimly, his voice now in the mindscape we shared.I didn't even know how to reply, my mind still reeling from the impromptu lie. Now what?