“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The rest of the morning went about as one would expect. Bodies were cleared, food was made and consumed, the most adorable child ever made her way around camp softly singing tunes to anyone who would listen.

Once everyone had gone through and gotten their belongings stowed away in storage rings or a few of the large packs Ashling and Seths brought everyone together at the edge of the clearing.

“Prepare to move out!” the bear sounded out as Grey strode over to the group loosely holding Eli’s hand. Making a quick decision, Grey decided that he was going to set out today and let the rest of the group handle anything that popped up. With any luck he’d be able to figure out a bit of what constituted 'normal' for this world. That and if he guessed correctly, he’d be able to talk more with Ashling. Hopefully, she’d be at least a bit inclined to help fill in some of the holes in his local knowledge. Well, holes was a bit of an understatement he realized… He sighed a bit and ended up chuckling to himself a bit.

A twitch of the ear betrayed Ashling’s interest in the random sounds the strange human made. The sight made Grey smile a bit to himself. He still vaguely remembered some human interactions from the time before, but time is an unrelenting bitch that dulls the edges of even the sweetest memories. From what he could tell, most of the beastkin couldn’t fully control their reactions or physical queues which gave him at least some of the societal markers that he was missing from human interaction.

Philosophical musings aside, Grey made the mental choice to pull himself fully into the present. The rest of the honor guard formed up into a loose configuration around Ashling and subsequently Grey and Eli. A few more minutes seemingly finialed the group to a point that Seths was comfortable with.

“Move out!” the bear bellowed.

With the command, the band of travelers began their trek towards the human city. Step after step and tree after tree began to pass by.

Time passed and the walking continued. Grey refused to call it hiking, because in many ways that was just fancy walking that didn’t deserve its own word. With their first passage, Grey had been mostly focused on Eli and enjoying her wonder at the new world that they had found themselves in while mostly trying to make sure nothing would interfere. With the additional safety of the group, he finally had a chance to relax a bit more and start to internalize that he was actually in a brand spankin’ new world.

Around him grew thousands of giant reaching trees, bark rough and tinged with a myriad of colors that made them distinctly alien, or he more accurately realized, fantasy like. Spotted among the towering trees were all sorts of bushes of various sizes, some bearing what looked like fruits or berries of one kind or another. What really stood out to him however were the ferns. They ranged from a half a meter off of the ground to twice or even three times the size of a person. Leaves fanning out in all directions and all various hues of purple. In many ways it reminded him of some of the forests he had seen in north-western US, just a very alien variant of them.

It didn’t take long for Eli to begin to become a bit bored with just walking along with the group. With a bit of a soft shove, Grey pushed he to explore a bit as they walked along.

“Go on and look around, just make sure that you stay where I can see you.” With an all too serious expression Eli gave a sharp nod, then promptly ruined it by letting out a bit of a squeal as he she skipped off to look at one of the flowering vines wrapping itself up a medium sized tree.

“You seem to be very good with her.” Without looking Grey could almost feel the soft smile that Ashling was wearing.

“She does make it pretty easy so far.” Grey took another long scan around the area before closing his eyes momentarily. The quick check revealing that at least for the moment, the various animals and monsters of the region were far enough away that he could let Eli be carefree for at least a bit. With his check done he slowed to bring himself next to the interesting beastkin.

“You mentioned that you rescued her, but do would you mind if I inquired when that was?” Ashling’s tails gave a slightly nervous twitch. While she did not believe this would upset the stranger, so far the only truly overzealous reactions they had seen from Grey came when Eloise was involved.

With a bit of a shrug, Grey tossed a quick look over to the foxkin, “About 4, wait, make that 5 days ago.”

“Is that not how long you’ve been here?”

“Well, yeah. This led to that and I found a little girl crying alone is a strange office with not a single other person looking to help. So, I did what I could. Instead of letting her go off on her own, I followed her here when the summoning was taking place.”

“An office?”

“Ugh… don’t remind me. Instead of getting my Braveheart moment of freedom, I get sent to the damn DMV of worlds.” He scowled a bit just at remembering this.

“Braveheart?” The confusion of his comments began to induce further tail twitching.

“Oh, well, it was a big movie for awhile but is often quoted by people when they want to scream ‘FREEDOM!!!’,“ he whisper yelled the freedom line, including in a bit of pantomime raising his hand as if he was holding a sword. After a quick chuckle to himself he continued on. “Not really all that important, but yeah. That place was terrible.”

“I see, well not entirely, but I believe I understand your sentiments.” Ever the diplomat, Ashling decided it would probably be best to move along. “Still, I am a bit surprised that you’ve managed to form such a bond with the child in such a short period of time.”

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To that Grey merely shrugged a bit.

“Let’s just say the way we met and getting here was maybe, just ever so slightly more dramatic than I may have previously mentioned.” Grey dodged the question a bit. Not really wanting to go into everything that had happened.

It was Ashling’s turn to laugh. “For some reason, I do not find it all that hard to believe. While I’m going to get that story from you at some point, I shall let the matter rest for now.” The pair drifted off into a companionable silence as they marched along through the underbrush.

A few minutes later Ashling decided to broach another subject. “Tell me, aside from escorting us to Tenax, what plans are you making for the future?” Her eyes and tails dipped a bit down, outwardly showcasing some of her unease at asking. Not that she really had much of a choice she reasoned, being that Grey was uncommonly powerful and she was one of the representatives for her people…

“Eh, I don’t have any specific plans. Mostly, I was to explore a bit more of the world and see what I can find here. Now that I think about it, I’m going to need to start working on getting Eli an education and probably some training…” Grey drifted off starting to mutter to himself. Ashling for her part was both relieved her prying was not offensive to him and also finding herself pleasantly amused by the human’s reactions.

It was some minutes later when Grey came out of his musing and began to realize he had gone off on a tangent in the middle of the conversation.

Well, this is a bit awkward… seems I’ve picked up a few habits I’m going to have to break. I’m pretty sure its rude to drift off like that in the middle of a conversation. Quick Greyson! Think of something awesome that will make it seem like you are a true genius and didn’t make a mistake!

“Awkward turtle?” Greyson sheepishly said, bringing his hands together like a turtle on its back.

“…” Head tilted to the side and not even able to hide her disbelief and confusion, Ashling just stared at the increasingly odd human.

I said genius not socially inept! Well, now this world at least has the awkward turtle. May the grace of the turtle go forth with me.

Greyson sighed and after another small thumb/turtle leg twitch dropped his hands down.

“Yeah… You’re not going to forget that happened, are you?” Greyson stated.

“I do not rightly believe I know what happened. Perhaps you can enlighten me?”

“I’d rather not and just say I’m a awkward turtle and conversations are kind of a new thing again for me. I apologize for spacing out during our talk and I’ll try to do better.” He resigned himself to becoming that guy.

For a few moments Ashling looked about to say something, stopped herself, tried again before finally just shaking her head a bit.

“It is quite alright. In any case, this portion of the trip has been much smoother than our previous days of travel. Do you have something to do with this?” Her query was one that had been beginning to bother her more and more. Each of their previous days, they had encountered at least some kind of monster or animal that would attack their group seemingly every hour or so. Having not been attacked since leaving the camp, both she and her escort guards were becoming increasingly more unsettled for not seeing a single animal larger than standard prey.

“Huh, really? I can’t really remember seeing anything when Eli and I first passed through here. Actually, I thought it was a bit strange that the Captain needed me to check on you with how peaceful it was.”

“Truly?”

“Well, yeah. There were a few things I noticed every so often, but they were always heading away from us. Not a big deal really.” Slightly perplexed Grey responded.

For her part, Ashling’s mind began churning through his words.

“Then it must be something you are doing to keep them away. Every other day has seen almost hourly attacks.” She stated. From her tone and flat delivery of facts, Grey had to assume she wasn’t lying about it, but he really didn’t understand what it could be. He pondered the problem for a few moments before a passing comment from his arrival came to mind.

“Say, are there things as aura’s or killing intent or something like that here?” He asked.

“Of course, most sentients don’t perceive one’s aura but there have been skills know to allow one to develop an aura. Killing intent is another matter, most commonly associated with our kind, but has been known to other races as well.”

“Give me a few moments if you wouldn’t mind.” Grey stated before allowing his focus to drift inward. The relatively slow pace and repetitive walking motion allowing him to take a semi-meditate state as they moved.

First he studied his internal mana structure. The mana veins threaded through his body following the meridians he had often scoffed at in his original life. The untold time in limbo had allowed him to fairly accurately detail all of the changes that he had gone through so looking them over was a relatively quick process. Everything appeared to be as they had been, so he brought his attention further out towards his skin.

His first indication that something was different was he could not only feel the ambient mana around him, but that it was much…. Dirtier? No, that wasn’t right. Less pure? While not a description he was really happy with, it did feel fairly close. What he found surprising was that in addition to his body absorbing in the ambient mana, he found that he was also giving off traces of his own mana. It seems to be very similar to the body giving off heat. Heat was just a type of radiation in the infrared spectrum if he remembered his high-school physics’ lessons right. One point of note was that the mana he was emitting seemed to be of a much higher purity than the ambient around him. After a few moments of pondering the issue, he wondered if he could somehow keep himself from emitting the mana. A few more moments of working at pulling that mana back in and…

*Ding!*

New Skill Acquired!

Aura Control

“Hot diggity damn! I got a new skill out of that. Can’t believe I never really thought of that before.” Grey muttered.

Almost as one, the whole group stuttered to a quick halt as the unseen force that had been unconsciously pushing on them was removed as Grey pulled his Aura in. In some ways the beastkin all seemed to relax and go on high alert at the same time.

“Well, apparently I was doing something.” Grey mentioned over his should as he kept on walking up towards where Eli had taken interest in another one of the new blossoming flowers.

“Quick question, should I let my aura all hang out for everything to see or would you like me to cover up? Not too sure I have any towels, but I’m pretty certain I can think of something.” Grey faux shyly called out towards Ashling. An annoyed tail twitch and slight blush crept up Ashling’s face as the meaning of his words penetrated her slightly shocked state. She started stammering a bit attempting to form a reasonable sentence before the rumble-grumble of the bear came in.

“If letting it ‘hang out’ keeps these depths taken monsters away from us, then let it out.” Seths spoke, making sure that the length and breadth of his annoyance ladled his words. This of course sent Grey into a fit of laughter and he stumbled over to the bear in his merriment.

“You just might be alright” Grey said, slapping the bear on the shoulder as he walked by.

“I can only hope that you fall into a briar patch while its out.” The bear grumbled almost inaudibly.

With that Grey loosened his control on his aura and the group continued on their way to Tenax.