Pushing the last bit of rubble out of the way, I inhaled my first fresh lungful in what felt like years.

As the air rushed in, giving me new life and strength, I winced at the burning sting that followed. Like usual my lungs and body were happy for the air, yet conditioned to surviving without it. So it at first did more harm than good.

Half buried in the rubble, I glanced around at the hazy world. The sun was high in the sky, but there was a strange mix of mist and dust everywhere… which told me that I hadn’t been digging myself free for as long as I had thought. If the dust still hadn’t truly settled from the collapse of the mountain then it had likely not even been an hour or two ago.

Coughing as my lungs adjusted, I pulled myself out of the debris and rubble. I was tired of being buried. I was not a mole.

As I fully climbed out, I realized I was naked. Not too surprising, since digging myself out of the collapsed mountain had been a struggle. It had been mostly sharp jagged rocks, not smooth dirt. Odds are my clothes were in pieces all throughout the landslide and…

Glancing around again, I squinted through the bright mist and dust and tried to tell how much of the mountain I had just destroyed.

I was standing on what looked like a typical landslide. Rubble. Rocks. Dirt. Trees poking out in weird ways, giant boulders bigger than buildings, grass and mud splattering over it all.

Although I couldn’t see very far thanks to the thick mist and dust in the air… I was still able to see far enough to tell me I had done some damage. There had to be at least a mile of rubble all around me… so…

Surely not the whole mountain… right…? This place had been two large peaks. The kind that nearly always had white snow upon their upper halves.

Yet I felt nor saw any of such snow. Which meant this landslide I was standing upon was either just a small section, or… well…

Taking another deep breath, I noted the chill of the air.

Yes. Snow and ice. The dirt was one thing, but this mist wasn’t actual mist. It wasn’t because of natural reasons.

It was all the snow that had been upon the mountain. Now scattered all over.

Coughing again, I groaned.

“Hopefully Yangli survived and got out before I did this,” I mumbled.

Stepping away from the hole I had just emerged from, I headed towards the direction the landslide sloped. In theory it should lead me down the mountain.

Thanks to how rocky and how large those rocks were, the landslide was easy to traverse. If a little painful sometimes, when stepping on something sharp.

As I descended… it became quickly apparent I had indeed brought down the whole mountain. The surrounding area had been a dense green forest, and now most of it within sight was now a dull and dark brown. Trees that had been tall and proud were now crushed and uprooted from all the movement of earth.

Feeling a little bad for once again changing entire landscapes, I wondered how I was going to explain this to Celine. She was going to…

“Ah…” I hesitated and reached up to rub my head.

I must still be healing from the lack of breathable air. I had actually completely forgotten that Celine was dead.

“Idiot,” I chastised myself as I finally reached a more even landscape. It was still rocky, but it was now becoming muddy. Large blotches of grass and even more trees were starting to become common amongst all the rubble.

The edge and end of the landslide, I guess.

A heavy breeze blew past, clearing out some of the gunk in the air. It didn’t reveal much more, but I was also not really looking around anymore.

I had destroyed the mountain. I had failed. I had allowed myself to be blinded and fooled, by my own assumptions.

Maybe I was losing my touch. Forget my parents, if even my vassals had seen me make such a mistake…

“They’d have likely thought I was possessed,” I mumbled as I smiled at their memory.

Really. What was I doing. Forgetting of Celine’s death. Not paying attention to the enemies in front of me. Wallowing in the remembrances of old friends.

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Maybe I was getting old.

“By the gods!”

I went still. Turning, I frowned as I squinted at the figures in the distance.

Two men were standing right where some normal land became visible. Where loose dirt and rocks turned into solid earth once more. They both had the appearance of dirt laborers. One even had a dead fox hanging from a sturdy stick he was carrying, which rested on his shoulder. One had a bow, the other small knives and sacks.

Hunters. Likely from one of the man human villages nearby. Come here to probably investigate what had happened.

They were stunned. Not a surprise. Not only was I some weird man walking down the side of a collapsed mountain… I was also naked.

Still. This was a good sense of fortune. In a way.

Stepping towards the two, both of the men went completely still. Their eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets as I drew closer.

At first I expected them to drop their tools and the fox and run… but they remained still as I drew close.

“Two of you wouldn’t happen to know what day it is, do you?” I asked.

“D-day…?” the one with the fox stuttered and the other stepped back, as if I’d slapped him.

“Or the month?” I asked. Some of the more simple humans didn’t really keep track of days, but instead just the months and seasons.

“Well… it was just the new year festival, but three days ago,” the one without the fox said.

Oh…?

Hopefully that meant I’d only been stuck underground for a few days, and not a whole year. I forgot about the two men for a moment as I dreaded the idea of me being trapped under there for years. Decades, even. I had no idea how long I had suffered from a lack of air. The brain got all weird, even mine, when under such conditions and…

One of the men coughed. I focused just enough to notice the two men glanced at each other, and then one coughed again and raised a hand. “Um… sir…” He drew my attention.

“Hm?” I nodded as I focused again.

“Are you the forest god?” he asked reverently.

Oh.

Right. This region had that, huh. Even though not far from the Nation of the Blind, there were still plenty who believed in the spirits of the forest. Plus even those that didn’t, knew of them at least. So it made sense for them to make such a connection.

“No. I’m regrettably just an idiot who got caught up in this mess,” I said with a wave to the landslide.

“Ah… uh… lost your clothes then, did you?” the one with the fox asked.

“My stuff too. Honestly I’m just glad that’s all I lost,” I said as I remembered I had actually had a few small bags on me. Nothing too important, just little notes and letters and some money… but…

“Hm… maybe this is why we were brought here, Calvin?” the man with the fox said.

Glancing at the two men who suddenly looked very serious, the man closest to me nodded dutifully. “It may well be. Come, sir, our camp isn’t far. We got clothes you can wear,” the man, Calvin, said to me.

I blinked at the sudden kindness of strangers. And gently nodded as the two smiled and turned, to lead me to their camp.

Following the two, I decided to make sure to remember their names. I’ll send the two a small thank-you once I return to Telmik. It wasn’t often humans… or well, anyone really, showed me such kindness.

“Still… I had not thought there was enough snow to cause such a quake. Maybe mother was right, she had been talking about the world opening wide and eating us all,” Calvin said with a worried tone.

“Please, brother. I’m scared enough as it is. Don’t go talking about stuff like that,” the man with the fox complained.

Smiling at the two, I glanced behind me at the landslide. The ground was returning to the normal forest I knew and expected… but there were still a few larger boulders and rocks scattered around. A few trees now listed, and branches and leaves were half broken and missing. As if a giant turbulent wind had just come through.

Technically I guess such a landslide would have created such a wind.

“What’s your name, sir? And you feelin’ alright? Don’t see no wounds on you, but can’t see how that’d be possible,” the man with the fox asked as he turned a little as to look at me.

“Honestly I’m just rattled. If I fall over and pass out, please just be patient with me,” I said lightly.

The two paused a moment and then went to laughing. “Patient he says!” Calvin shouted between his guffawing.

Although I had spoken lightly, I had been kind of serious. Sometimes I did just… pass out when healing from a terrible wounds. It didn’t happen often, but it’s happened enough to be a thing.

“Mighty strange though. Not a lick of a wound, yet no clothes. Maybe he was bathing in a stream when it happened?” the fox carrier wondered as he stopped laughing.

Oh. That was a good cover story. I’ll go with that.

“Tho’brother, this stuff does happen, doesn’t it? Maybe he’s a king of a foreign land! Whisked away here by magic, thus the shaking of the world! It was him landing,” Calvin said as the two tried to reason my existence.

The brother paused again, and glanced back at me with a quick look… and studied me fiercely.

“Hm… I don’t know, brother. Aren’t kings usually… you know? Handsome?”

“Are they?” Calvin wondered, now doubting his own idea.

“More than us I’d think at least, and I say we have this one beat,” he said.

Calvin glanced back, glared at me… and then smirked and laughed… seemingly agreeing with his brother.

His brother went to laughing too, and reached over to pat Calvin on the shoulder.

Two brothers. Simply enjoying life… at my expense, at the moment.

Still…

I couldn’t help it. I laughed too.