“Lewis, wake up!”

Lewis jolted awake, the side of his head aching. He’d just been buried by a Scale, where was the Scale? His hand already had magic gathering in it, as his eyes darted around the inside of the darkened tunnel, he still-

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Jake grabbed Lewis’ hand and forced it to the side, the sunlight fading from it as Lewis canceled the mana feed to the Sunbeam Lance.

His vision returned, what he thought were tunnel walls turning into the canvas of a tent. Rebecca and Jake were right above him, Rebecca looking down in concern while Jake was staring furiously at Lewis’ hand.

“Are you out of your mind? You could have blown someone’s head off!” Jake released Lewis’ hand, pushing it aside.

“You were screaming loud enough that most of the camp could hear,” Rebecca added in a worried tone.

“I’m getting a mage in here to look at your head. Make sure some Scale caster didn’t pop something in there during the battle,” Jake turned back towards the entrance to the tents.

“I…you don’t need to do that! It was just a nightmare!” Lewis called after Jake. The other Traveler either hadn’t heard him or ignored him, continuing out of the tent.

“It sounded pretty intense for a nightmare,” Rebecca said. “And you just weren’t waking up. At all. Jake straight-up slapped you, and it did nothing.”

Well, that explained why the side of his head ached. “He can have a mage look at my head, but it was just a nightmare. I was dreaming about the first time I went into the dungeons with you and Trevor. It morphed into the Scale tunnels from around here.”

Not just the tunnels but his worst experience in them as well. He still felt he could taste dirt on the inside of his mouth. Still feel it pressing in on him. “I need some fresh air.”

“Yeah, I’d imagine so. Don’t worry. We’re about to get plenty of it.”

He got out of bed, and headed towards the tent entrance. “You made that sound way too foreboding. What happened? The Scales tried pushing back across?”

“Nothing like that. We got the orders recently. High command wants everyone on rest and refit for now. A couple of Travelers will stay here with a few regiments to hold our side of the river. Tomorrow, we officially get sent on leave for the next few weeks. Five passes, back to Halice.”

***

Under a pair of shining suns, a single train chugged along, steam billowing from the smokestack as it traveled down a solitary railway line.

Not much to look at, Lewis thought as he peered out a window. Rolling plains of grass on either side, the occasional stand of trees. By the standards of this new world, he found himself in, not very memorable.

Still, not without its uniqueness, he thought wistfully, looking up at the pair of suns floating above. He’d been to both, and from one, had gained much, including being able to stare at both without eyes watering.

And despite its solitude, this was much better than where he had been. He’d been to quite a few places on this new world he’d traveled to upon his death, and of them, all Scaveria could easily rank as the worst.

Red skies that were only broken by occasional bursts of lightning. A choked river filled with metal and blood streaming past. Dark forests filled with remnants of beasts that had once plagued Aetheria, the few survivors still bearing grudges. Most of the time spent there had been trying to fight for a crossing over that river, over towering fortresses of black steel guarding the crossings.

Fighting across cleared plains of ash filled with earthworks, trying to anticipate when the earth would burst open and disgorge squads, platoons, or even sometimes entire companies of Scales. The smell of artificial fire from their chemical weapons joined by the stench of gunpowder and gasoline as half-tracks and tanks surged out of the earth. Observing the sky for the arrival of firedrakes or planes on strafing runs.

There was no anticipating the artillery. It had been constant. The roar of distant guns stopping seemed to only happen a couple of times a day to him.

The earth had split open under his feet once, a chasm opening beneath them all as the earth shook. Most others had dodged. Those who’d fallen with him had died, all non-Travelers of low levels, the fall damage killing them as necks broken and limbs shattered. He’d survived, but it had taken a day of fighting his way through dark, poorly lit tunnels-

“Lewis, you awake over there?”

The interruption jolted him out of his recollection as one of the train car’s other occupants spoke up.

Rebecca had been sitting next to him since they’d boarded. They’d chatted briefly before she had fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion. She must have woken up without him noticing.

“Hello? Earth to Lewis? Anyone home in there?” Smiling, she leaned forward and rapped her middle knuckle on his forehead, eliciting a weak chuckle from him.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry. I was thinking. The tunnel. A few other places,” He responded quickly, stumbling a little over his words.

“Thinking about what?”

“Where we were just a few weeks ago.”

Rebecca’s smile faded. “That’s still stuck in your head? Maybe we should have another mage look in there?”

“Please don’t,” Lewis replied. “He spent two hours poking around my head, didn’t find any evidence of tampering.”

“A therapist, maybe? You keep going back to that tunnel.”

Lewis hesitated. “Maybe. Let’s see if a few weeks on leave can help first. Maybe I’ll have stopped by then. And the tunnel is just…”

“A very traumatizing experience,” Rebecca finished for him. “I still remember finding you down there, finding that collapsed tunnel.”

“Providence that we found each other,” Lewis muttered, touching the holy symbol worn around his neck.

He’d worshipped another god before this. But they had no power in this world. He’d found a new deity, one much more direct.

“Don’t know if it was providence as much as luck. Either way, at least you weren’t hurt.”

Physically, she was correct. In other ways, he did not know. He could still feel the cold, dank air of the caves when he closed his eyes. The sound of boot on stone. The rasp of breathing and clatter of machines. Sometimes, he heard them when he was awake as well. The dirt on his body smothering him.

Okay, he probably should find a therapist after leave in Halice.

“Lewis? Hello? I swear I’ll get them to turn the train around to have that mage look into your head again. Make them dig whatever brain parasite the Scales gave you out even if they have to physically scrub your brain this time.”

He chuckled nervously. “No, no, nothing like that. Just thinking of everything that happened. What we just went through. It’s still so real. Sometimes, I feel like I will keep on backsliding into memories. That time they tried to drown us underground, the tunnels, the complex.”

“No disagreement there. Try to think of something more pleasant. Like the time you arrived in Halice? Or before, your life on earth, what was that like?”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“It was fine,” Lewis said. He didn’t want to talk about the earth. Or how little he remembered of his time there. Everything felt like a blur whenever he thought back to it.

They got interrupted when their third group member turned her head around to join the conversation.

“I don’t think we have ever discussed our time on earth before?” Lisa asked. The sorceress had been just starting a novel she’d grabbed on the train station last Lewis could remember. Now, she was halfway through another book that was not the same one.

“Have we never?” He answered, frowning. “I remember talking with you about where I came from.”

“You did, but it was never anything in-depth. I think you mentioned your family’s names once, twice, maybe? I don’t think I ever brought up mine with you?”

“Guess we just never had the time. I arrived in Halice around the same time as you and Rebecca. We were there a few weeks having everything explained to us until the Travor picked us up, and we got whisked away to start running the dungeons.”

“I always thought it was a bit weird that all three of us just appeared in Halice so soon after each other. You’d think for such a small town to have so many Travelers, there’d be something important or unpleasant about it,” Lisa mused aloud. “But no, just an ordinary little village.”

“Three ain’t too many for the same time. Hell, even with Trevor having arrived there years before, four total ain’t that many Travelers Lisa.”

The fourth member of their train car had spoken up. With how large Jake was, it was a wonder his being there had been forgotten by Lewis. He towered over them all, even without the armor they hadn’t convinced him to take off before leaving. His severe expression had at least softened a tad, but he still looked like he had a stick rammed up his ass.

Or maybe that was just stiffness from sitting in the same ramrod straight position the last five hours.

“Eh, maybe for one of the cities, or even one of the larger towns, but for a small tiny village? Four has got to be a large number, hasn’t it?” Lisa responded.

“Intelligence is supposed to be your primary stat,” Jake said, tone not exactly what Lewis would call teasing. “Lisa, there are not many settlements in Aetheria in general, and as more of us keep coming over, it’s a given more of us will arrive in smaller settlements. And we only appear in their heartlands as well. It’s…smaller than Pennsylvania in terms of landmass.”

“It feels larger,” Lewis replied. And it did. He couldn’t believe how long it had taken just to travel between villages, never mind to one of the Aetherian cities.

“It feels larger because until they started mass-producing trains and automobiles, it was either horses, foot, flying mounts, or teleportation circles. And most of the Territories don’t count. They aren’t the Heartland.”

“I walked Pennsylvania once. It wasn’t that big!” Rebecca protested.

“Which way did you walk it? The Heartlands is more like a cylinder. It’s very long and thin. Not like Pennsylvania, that’s a bit more central in location.”

“Does the underground count, or is it not big enough to contribute?”

Aetheria had an underground, but Lewis had never been there. Aetheria had tunnels, but mostly for communication and to ensure no one else was trying to travel down there. Those and the Dungeons, of course.

“Could we maybe get off this subject?” Lewis asked. There was a nervous edge to his voice the others picked up on, guessing from their expressions.

Unfortunately, Jake immediately picked another topic he did not want to consider.

“You got all gun-ho that last battle,” Jake commented. “I’ve never seen you like that before. It was a little impressive. You obliterated how many Scales calling on your Goddess’ sun?”

Lewis winced, awkwardly trying to think of a way to reply. “I...I was a little heated after that, yeah. Maybe a bit too much. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“It’s what is demanded of us,” Lisa said. “Don’t feel any shame for what you do for Aetheria. Or embarrassment.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too hard,” Jake added. “If you were more like that all the time, it would be better off for you in other battles. Just keep it in check, okay? More than you did this time.”

Jake saying it was a good thing was probably not the ringing endorsement the fellow Traveler thought it was. Lewis didn’t reply, hoping the quiet would get a hint across to either change the subject or be quiet. The other two seemed to notice.

Jake did not, although at least he had already moved on to another topic.

“The entire town looks as boring as this?” Jake asked, looking out the windows at the same rolling plains Lewis had just been contemplating.

“Mostly farmland, though it’s right next to a forest. Still, at least it’s not the hellscape that Scaveria is.” Lewis shook his head before he went down the rabbit hole of those memories again.

“You’re kidding, right? At least Scaveria looks different. Not every place there is the blighted hellscape you all saw. I went there once. They got their own sense of beauty.”

“Does it involve a lot of ash and fire everywhere?”

“Question, do they look worse or better after Descaleification?”

Jake seemed to take a second to contemplate the question. “Worse. You suck all the character out of it. It looks all the same.”

“Character is a way of describing those wastelands,” Lisa observed drily.

“It has its beautiful places. I saw some of it before the war. What’s been done with it now, I could step back on earth and not tell the difference. Not any exciting places either, some fields in Kansas.” Jake sounded genuinely wistful.

Lewis had no idea how accurate his observation was. Still, he did have to admit the magical efforts by Aetheria to turn the territory from Scaveria into a more hospitable land tended to have a pretty uniform result. Lots of farmlands, slow rolling hills, occasional stream…that was about it. Occasionally, parts would be reserved for forests to be grown in their place.

Lisa scowled. “Sure. Willing to say that while Lewis has True Sight on?”

“Depends, you want him to waste mana on thinking I’m lying?”

Both turned to look Lewis, who wanted to do nothing more than vanish from sight. Rebecca had gone invisible next to him, clearly not wanting to be part of another Jake-initiated squabble. “I would prefer not to. I'm still trying to recover a lot of mana. Sorry, Lisa.”

Silence reigned over the train again, and as it built, Lewis felt the urge to break it. Lisa was drawn back to her book sulkily, apparently upset over not having a last word over Jake.

“It will be nice spending a few weeks back in town. I wonder if Kaysley still has that little cafe open on the corner, the one with all the little pastries,” he remarked.

It took half a second to realize his mistake.

“I will never understand how she managed to keep that place going until the rail lines went through there. It's a small village, not a big populace. You would think the business wasn’t sustainable. And then a rail goes through the town just a few years after your arrival,” Rebecca gave him a little wink he did his best to ignore.

There were quite a few grins aimed Lewis’ way. “Yeah, it was quite lucky that. It certainly helped benefit the Town as a whole, didn’t it?”

“You have to wonder who got in the ear of the prince about routing a rail line out here, though. Must have been a tough sell,” Lisa noted. “And so quickly, too, can’t imagine it was easy to build one so quickly.”

“Improving infrastructure is certainly a passion of his,” Lewis responded carefully.

“So, you two had sex yet then?” Jake asked bluntly.

“Dude…why…” Lewis wanted to cover his face with his hands.

“Kaysley, or the Prince, because honestly, I’ve only seen the latter, and I think he would be down to having sex with Lewis,” Lisa added.

He wished he could just melt and vanish from everyone’s sight.

Rebecca spoke up, “You never visited the bakery? You really should have. The deserts were delicious. We’ll visit together this time.”

“I’m on a diet,” Lisa answered.

“Okay, we can just go to watch Lewis squirm. And maybe help him out.”

“Please don’t,” Lewis muttered.

The door on the far end of the train car opened up. “Oh, is it time to pick on Lewis again?”

Trevor finally making an appearance.

“Yes, time to pick on me,” Lewis answered, eager for the distraction. “So, that urgent phone call you had to take, what was it?”

“Nothing extremely urgent, just a routine check on us. They were trying to reach us earlier about possibly heading back. I was just talking with General Cole, and it looks like it’s a false alarm. The Scale maneuvers towards the crossing look like a feint.”

Cole. Their superior and their only direct one. He’d been chosen because, while not a Traveler himself, he was a high-level member of the adventurer guilds. Staying behind to help coordinate the clean-up of their last battle.

“And their forces on the other side of the river?” Jake asked pressingly.

Trevor seemed to hesitate before answering, “Currently still there. They don’t want to push them till they bring fresh troops up.”

Jake growled. “Don’t understand why the general thought they would try and cross. They just blew up their bridge.”

“Any news on the situation at Trost?” Rebecca asked.

The mood in the room dipped a bit at just the mention of the name.

“Still digging Scales out of the tunnels. Looks like more made it down there than expected. They can’t get across the Malden, so they are stuck underneath Trost for now. He assured me he’d only call on the Travelers if it looked like the fortress might fall. Which he also thinks will never happen. We broke the back of their Second Army when we took the fortress, the others are tied down elsewhere, the shattered remnants are gathering together, but he doesn’t think they're stupid enough to try the river crossing.”

Relieved chuckles all around at that. It had been a rough, rough last couple of months for them. No one was dead, but it had been close a few times. With the fortress taken the end was in sight. A lovely long couple of weeks to relax and celebrate that in the countryside, far away from it all. No soldier was taking their leave here. Just the five of them and all the friends they had made there. It was sure to be a good vacation.