Inside his cabin, Alice finally let her voice out. “How did you do that with the fire?” she asked, surprised and excited.

El sighed and answered slowly, warming his back now against the fire. “You will learn… I know you’re eager to know everything this very second. But it will take time. And patience.”

“But how?? It’s not possible.”

“I’ve done it. So, obviously, it is possible. And if I’ve done it, so can another person.”

“How?”

El did not feel like answering any questions and had rubbed his head to try and figure out what was the right thing to do.

What if I was in her place? Remember when it happened to you and there was nobody to guide you around? How difficult was that? He thought and then nodded his head as his voice spoke slow and low. “First, you will need to see the energy particles, to see their flow. Then you’ll need to train to connect with them, to feel them, to unite with them, master them. Then, if you have enough power, you will exert your will and they will obey.”

Alice took a moment to process it all and then asked, “How long did it take you?”

“To work on this Level? Ten years. But every person is different, I hear. And, I’m not anywhere near being what I need to be. I still need to learn, need to become better. And so should you. So, fewer questions, more thinking. If you get all the answers from me, you don’t even need to use your head to figure things out on your own, you know that?”

“No. I do not agree with that. I do not need to learn what you already know. I can learn from you, and use my time to expand what I learned from you further. At least that’s how teaching and schools should work.”

“Schools… we started to set those up, you know, in my hometown. To teach people and their children how to read and write. So we can educate them faster, so they can follow instructions, and do more difficult jobs. To be able to understand things better… It proved a very hard thing to do.”

“I can only guess.”

A dark shadow rested on his face as visions of the past returned. “People like to stay ignorant. Believe whatever they want to, whatever lie is told to them, as long as it pleases them. They hate to think for themselves. They rather believe sweet tongues of lies.”

“I agree. It seems our worlds have a lot in common. But, I can tell you this, just because people learn to read and write, it does not make them... educated and smart. They still find it easy to believe any nonsense as long as it brings them an instant pleasure and a false sense of security.”

“Maybe,” El agreed and stared at Alice, finally seeing some sense and value in her.

Since they arrived a day ago, it was a rough start for them. He found her ignorant, close-minded, and spoiled as if she was a princess who never had a hard-day work in her life. She constantly complained, and every other sentence out of her mouth was how she could not believe it. And then, she was saying how she was freezing and how she was dying, made him use his energy to emit the heat around himself just to warm her up a bit. So silly. So spoiled.

And he could see she didn’t like him either, thought of him even worse, thought of him as being mean, short-tempered, and cold.

How could he explain to her that his heart was still trembling, his ears were still hearing cries of his dying family? He knew he could not. So, he tried to compose himself. And offer some support. Try to understand her. It proved very difficult.

“You said, you will give me some answers when we find shelter. You told me, before we got into that stinking tavern, to keep my mouth shut. I did. But now, here we are. So...”

He sighed and did not say anything, closing his eyes, concentrating on the warmth that started to seep into his neck, down his back. It was comfortable to feel the fire, hear its crackling, remember cold nights in his home when his whole family would gather…

It was time to give her some answers. He would want the same if he was in her place. Besides, he was not ready to go back to that ‘Who are you’ and ‘Where am I?’ and ‘What am I doing here’ being asked for a millionth of time.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I understand that you’ve been offered to become an apprentice for a warden recently?”

“Yes, yes I have. I was in the hospital, on my dying breath, and…”

“Was it the wind that came and offered it to you?” El asked.

“No… not the wind… It was like a figure, like an elf, like Legolas himself… that spoke to me.”

“Do not know Legolas, but I know elves. I can imagine.”

Alice suddenly moved to stand right in front of him, staring him straight into his eyes and waited until he looked into hers. “Am I dead?” she asked. “Just tell me. I’ll take it.”

El's face frowned in disbelief. “How can you be dead?”

“I… all of this… seems unreal. I think maybe I have died, you know.”

“No. You’re very much alive. And so am I.”

His words did not take, he could see it, so he added. “Look into your statistics. What is your Life Force?”

“I don’t have my Life Force.”

“Not true. Go to Standings, then select Health, and then the first line there will say,

{Life Force: 10/10}

Alice took a moment, her eyes blinking, then she moved to a side and set next to El, turning her back to the fireplace. “You can see my numbers?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s because you’re on Level 0. Once you get to Level 3, you will have an option like I do, to keep those numbers private and reveal them only to people you want to see them.”

“I see.”

“And then, only Lords with Levels over 100 can look them over. There is no secret for them.”

“So, you’re not a lord then?”

“No.”

“What Level are you?”

“That’s… a private thing. But I’ll tell you anyway. I’m 20. And… 20 is not what I want to stay at. They said if I help you, it will help me grow. So, this is why I’m doing this. Do you understand?”

She nodded her head and said. “Yeah, I share that with you. I don’t plan to stay at 0 either. And… thanks for telling me this. It’s a lot to admit to.”

“It’s the truth. I think you deserve to know it.”

“But… are you sure this is not some kind of a game? Like an RPG game and this is a virtual world? It’s all so unreal.”

“I do not know what RPG games are and what virtual worlds are. But I know this to be real. Just as the death of my family was real, and just as Vermal, who I will find and kill, is real.”

For a second, El stared toward the darkness outside the window, then looked Alice straight in the eyes. “It’s only fair I tell you that. Since you’re with me, your life will be in danger. I thought you needed to know this.”

Alice did something that El did not remember anyone ever doing it to him. She threw an arm around his shoulder and squeezed him, “I thought getting cancer and suffering… that was painful. That I had it bad. Seeing you, I know, maybe I had it easy. Maybe my parents had it harder. Now, they probably think I’m dead. I wonder… why am I just lying in the hospital not responding to any stimulus. Thinking if they should disconnect me and let me die.”

“I do not know what you are talking about. But, you’re here. You’re not in any hospital.”

Alice kept staring at him with disbelief in her face, so he added. “You cannot exist in two different places at the same time. Did you not read the agreement?”

“But my body is on Earth?”

“Your body is not on Earth. Or anywhere else. It’s only here.”

“So… are you telling me…”

“You’re here and now. And there is nothing on your home planet of you. Sorry. I thought you understood that.”

“My parents will think that… someone took me. On top of everything.”

“But… you’re alive. Sickness free. They certainly must have offered you a chance to go back one day. They would do that. The High Lords, they must have enticed your deal somehow.”

“Yes. Said if I reached Level 10, I would be offered a permanent position as a warden. At Level 25, I would be able to heal, myself and others and at the time, I was so sick, and that sickness was costing my family so much, it sounded very appealing.”

"I know."

“Yeah, that got me wondering... about a lot of things.”

“Yeah, and don't forget, by Level 50, we are free to select what assignments we want to do. You would be able to choose.”

"That's nice."

“Yes. So, technically, you could select to do assignments and missions on Earth by then, and go back to your home planet.”

Alice thought about it, but then, only found one question worth asking. “How long do you think it will take me to get there?”

“Maybe more than a lifetime, I do not know. Maybe less than it will take me. I have no idea.”

“Shit… really?”

“Yes. But what I do know is... you will need to overcome your weaknesses, learn to control yourself, push yourself to become so much more.”

“Fine, I get that. So, what is the first thing we need to do?”

“Your body is very weak. You need to strengthen it.”

“Start tomorrow?”

“If you want to wait. If not, you can start right now. Work out with that axe, and split some of those logs to be thinner till your Energy gets completely depleted. Then, when it recovers, you will see it will become a notch higher. You see, when you first came here, your Max Energy was only 10. Now that you walked for a whole day, it expanded to 15.”

“Yes. I noticed that now. My energy units went from 10 to only 1, and are now, after resting only at 3. But, yeah, my max is now 15.”

“When you rest and replenish yourself with enough nutrients, your energy will go up then to 15.”

“I see. Well, then, I better knock out those 3 units that I still have in my system, huh?” she said and smiled, getting up, making El finally nod his head in approval.

“No better time than now.”

He showed her how to chop some logs, some that did not even need chopping. But he knew it was good for her, and with satisfaction, he set in a twigs-weaved chair next to the fireplace, closed his eyes, and listened to her swinging the axe and knocking it into the logs.

He almost drifted off when a sudden disturbance hit him. He opened his eyes, looked into the darkness through the window, and felt the presence that should not had been there.

“Stop!!!” he ordered Alice as he got up from the chair.

“What?” she asked.

He looked toward the window, then toward the door. “We’re being attacked,” he said.

“What?”

El took a deep breath, then said. “There are... some kind of creatures outside. And they came here to feast on this village.”