Lucas’ eye twitched as he attempted to bite into a section of the rock-solid bread which Leta had left on the counter the day before. He was certain that he had eyebags the size of asteroids.

He wasn’t even sure if he could define himself as awake, he was yawning more than he was breathing regularly. He was conscious, but he was not a person, just a walking corpse.

He stood at the kitchen counter stiffly as Leta placed some items into a bag. Documents, coins, keys, a canteen. This would be Lucas’ first time meeting the townspeople and he was uneasy. If they were anything like the people he had already met, this would be worse than hell.

He stifled yet another gaping yawn and rubbed his eyes. He just had to pray there would be an opportunity to sleep later because he was more than certain that he would not last the entire day.

Leta slung the bag over her shoulder and left through the front door. He hadn’t even finished his ‘breakfast’, when he had to sprint out after her, the door almost slamming in his face.

To Lucas’ dismay, he realised that the sun had just begun to peak over the horizon. He would have to be up the entire day? What were they supposed to be, farmers who had to get up at the crack of dawn? He wondered how Leta did not display a hint of fatigue. Rather, it was quite the opposite. She was energetically marching down a street, ignorant of his miserable condition. He groaned and dragged himself after her. If he got lost again, he would only have himself to blame.

This time, the path that they took was not filled with twists and turns. The houses stayed relatively similar all throughout, and the streets had a rectangular pattern to them. As they walked, Lucas realised how Leta was managing to navigate this place so accurately. There weren’t any visible street signs, or rather, nothing that he could see before he had the ring on. But now, he realised that the ground was imbued with different colours, each street having a unique one. It reminded him of the glowing path that he had followed out of the forest, the brilliant shades of red, green and blue still fresh in his memory.

After a short while, Leta stopped, signalling to Lucas that they had reached their destination. Surrounding them was a plethora of wheat, which imbued Lucas with a strong sense of irony. They stood at a waist-tall gate, which lead to a farmhouse. A little left of it stood a man, tending to a cow.

Leta lifted her hand up and from it, emitted her signature pink glow, waving at the farmer. He turned his head over to the source of light and waved back, a faint, mustard-yellow colour radiating from his palm. He rubbed the cow’s head and began to walk towards the pair.

He was a tanned, middle-aged man, his skin leathery and worn from countless days of working in the sun. He opened the gate and invited them in, nodding at Leta as she walked past. The farmer briefly glanced at Lucas but did not acknowledge him, instead moving behind them to lock the gate.

They walked up a cobbled path and followed the man onto the veranda of his house. He sat down on a wooden bench and massaged his temples.

“Thanks for coming, Leta.” His voice was weary and his posture was shrunken. It was a tiredness that was no longer mere sleeplessness, but rather deep-set exhaustion that had embedded itself onto this man’s soul. His body was healthy and energetic, but that was not the case for his mind.

“If you could help me out the back, with the wheat crops. There are a few stragglers and I just… yeah.” He trailed off.

Leta nodded silently and went around the back. The man made no further attempt to converse as he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth. There appeared to be no one else on the property, just him, his animals and his crops.

Lucas looked away, following close behind Leta. He was a foreign object in this place, and his only method of survival was to stay attached to her. What had happened to this man for him to end up in such a mournful state?

He wondered what the rest of the town would be like. The people probably wouldn’t be as melancholy as he was, but something within told him that he didn’t really want to find out.

As they walked through the fields, he noticed yellow ribbons of light flying over the wheat crops, which were still green and growing. The farmer’s magic. They flitted around, delicately caressing the plant.

“What are they for?” He asked Leta, gesturing to them.

She looked in their direction and contemplated for a moment before responding. “Plants grow better at certain levels of light. My guess is that they provide light at a level suited to wheat.”

“They don’t make things grow faster or anything?”

“That’s up to the plant. Even if you give them everything, water, time, light, nutrients, some will simply refuse to grow any faster.”

Lucas was confused. “So, are the plants alive?”

She scoffed. “Of course not.”

Eventually, they reached a small patch of withered, browning wheat plants. Lucas guessed this was what the farmer had meant when he was talking about the stragglers. Was it a disease? A pest perhaps?

Leta rummaged through her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. She placed it down in the middle of the patch and turned around, acting like her job was done.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Lucas yawned, mumbling, “Aren’t you gonna revive those crops with magic, or something? You’re supposed to be helping, right?”

Her eyes narrowed and he had a horrific realisation that he should not have questioned her. The pleasant atmosphere, with the sunrise, cool air and wheat field had made him forget about the situation he was in. He tensed up as she walked up to him, face to face.

Leta’s iron gaze was locked on him, causing him to stiffen. “I don’t know where you’re from, or what you’ve been taught, but you,” She pressed a finger hard into his chest, “need to ditch the idea that magic is some miracle.” She shoved him aside and walked ahead.

There was a dangerous edge in her voice. “Keep treating it as one, and you’ll find out what happens.”

Lucas was as powerless as a rabbit cornered by a bloodthirsty fox, and he had let himself forget that. He could not let that happen again, not even if he was fatigued.

They passed by the farmer one last time before they left. He had a faint smile on his face as he saw them leave. He had gotten up and was headed to where the dead patch of wheat was. As the gate closed behind them, all Lucas could hope was that they had, at the very least, helped the man.

He did not speak another word as they continued their trek forwards along the quiet streets of the town.

~~~

Soon enough, the sun took its rightful place in the dazzling blue sky, amongst the white, fluffy clouds. A mouse, a bird, a wolf, the children would take turns spotting those sneaky animals that pretended to be clouds. Along the main road, people were trading, conversing, and performing their everyday tasks. To Lucas, it was a regular town, with regular people.

Which made it even worse when he noticed a hush fall over the area as he walked through. The people’s stares were drilling holes into him and they were scrutinising his every step. Perhaps these people weren’t used to foreigners. But this atmosphere was much to tense for it to be just that.

In his first encounter with Leta, she mentioned that he did not want to find out what would happen if he decided to stay around. He felt that nothing could be worse than being stuck with her, but it seemed that wasn’t the case anymore.

These were stares that went beyond ferocity, and he was certain they would tear him to shreds had Leta not been there. He glanced at her, curious as to how she would react to this situation.

She was smirking and somehow, Lucas wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

A few people approached Leta with grins, which she returned. They began to talk to her, Lucas picking up snippets of their conversation.

“You finally found yourself a companion, hey?” Said one woman.

“And to think you’re already at the subdual stage. Really, you truly are a genius!” Said another.

Most of their conversations were the exchanging of flattery and thanks, but a few words stuck in Lucas’ mind. ‘Companion’ was one that was passed around frequently, and he assumed it was referring to him.

He and Leta were far from companions, though. They were not even close to friends, just two people who needed each other to advance their own causes. He was pretty sure that she didn’t even see him as another human. Maybe Leta had told them that they were friends, but he didn’t see what benefit she could reap from that. To reduce suspicion, sure, but the townspeople seemed to be plenty suspicious of him already.

And ‘subdual’? Were they referring to Leta, where she had supposedly subdued him? He couldn’t understand what sort of sick joke was being played here.

He stood there for a long while, absent-mindedly playing with the ring on his index finger. Out of nowhere though, he felt a cold hand grab his wrist. He looked up, expecting it to be Leta, dragging him to wherever his next location was.

But it wasn’t pink hair that he saw, but rather a familiar, pine green. It was the man from yesterday, Rheto.

It was clear that Rheto recognised him. His appearance hadn’t been drastically altered after all, just a simple change in his hair colour. The man leaned in, whispering into his ear.

“Lucas, right?”

Lucas jumped back and stared at him baffled. He glanced back at Leta and saw that she was still chatting away, oblivious to everything that was happening.

The man smiled at his reaction and let him go.

“Good to see you’re still in there.” And with that, he turned around and left.

Lucas looked down and saw that in his hand was a small, square piece of aluminium foil. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Leta finishing her conversation, so he hastily put it in his trouser pocket. He scrambled back towards her side and followed her closely.

“This’ll be the last house for today.” She said.

He shrugged off the encounter since he wasn’t really sure what to think of it. At the very least, Leta now seemed to be in a much better mood than in the morning. He had been following her everywhere, to different people’s houses. Each time, she had either given the residents some money or a piece of paper from her bag after a short chat with them, before promptly leaving.

Usually, he would be utterly exhausted after so much walking, especially considering how little he had slept, but the sun had a reinvigorating effect on him. He had noticed it yesterday, as well. He guessed that the sun likely had some magical properties, as it was a healing property comparable to that of the showers’. The magic here really wasn’t like in the games. It was just another part of people’s lives, exactly like how phones and laptops were in his world.

Finally, they stopped and the house that was now in front of Lucas shook him to his core.

It was a decrepit building with poorly boarded-up windows. It looked just as dreadful as it did in the daytime than in the nighttime. He had barely gotten out of there, and now they were back again.

Leta walked up to the door and knocked three times. He heard loud thumping and the front door creaked open. It was a large, familiar, figure. The man, with a booming voice, answered.

“Hello again, Leta. What brings you here?”

She grinned. “I just heard rumours that someone snuck out of your house last night.”