Wyatt continued onward approaching his 3rd month following the river, still unable to find any signs of a civilization. His life had become fairly routine. He would travel as far as he could during the day. Every third day or so he would get into a fight with either the jackalopes or hyenas. Then he would typically wash every 5th day. Every time he considered bathing more frequently he would see that horrifying murder fish, and abandon his plan. His clothes were nearly gone at this point. Between constant fighting, and infrequent washing all that really remained of his clothes were red strips of cloth. Well that, and his boots. He imagined that when he finally did find people he was going to have a difficult time getting them to understand he wasn’t a monster or some sort of psychotic hermit. Languages were not his strongpoint, and he didn’t look forward to trying to play charades. He was pretty sure if he was guessing for someone that looked like him hermit, crazy, and dangerous would be the only words that he kept putting out there.

His thoughts were more wandering than focused these days as months of constant travel had taken a toll on more than just his clothes. He just let his mind follow any tangents that happened to pop into his head. Often finding himself having weird chains of thoughts that went from fighting a jackalope, and somehow turned into how did lucky rabbit feet become a thing? In moments of clarity Wyatt realized he was starting to lose his grip on reality. The past kept fading away sometimes for days at a time. He would have moments where he truly wondered if he did anything else in his life before traveling the river.The fact that his life had become somewhat routine did offer an interesting benefit. Anything that was out of the norm would become instantly apparent. It was one of these out of the norm incidents that pulled him back from his spiraling thoughts about trying to breed jackalopes with hyenas. There was a noise that he hadn’t heard before that tugged at his awareness. He stopped to listen, and about a minute later he heard it again “Wustria!” He experienced a brief moment of confusion when the sound seemed to morph and he heard the next word in what sounded like English. “Faster!” He wasn’t exactly sure where he was hearing the sound from, but the fact that he understood what was being said made him question his sanity.

“I know I am a bit loopy sometimes, but I haven’t been hearing voices. Am I finally losing my grip on reality?” He whispered. Then he shook his head, and sat down for a moment. Listening for the voice again. After a minute he still hadn’t heard the voice again, and he started to panic. If it was real then he might be just barely missing a group of actual people. If it wasn’t well he didn’t want to worry about that quite yet. He listened for another minute, but still hadn’t heard anything. Although it wasn’t clear he believed it had come from further down the river. ‘Did the voices come from a boat?’ He wondered. Ultimately after another minute without hearing anything further he decided to start walking again. His boots had held up remarkably well considering the state of the rest of his clothing, but in the past few days the sole had started to come loose. He had used a few drops of superglue but that hadn’t held up as well as he hoped. Finding civilization right about now would be great, but he would be broke, mostly naked, and utterly clueless about interacting in society. Hopefully he didn’t get chased off, arrested, or killed because of his appearance.

Without realizing he was doing so Wyatt had sped up his pace significantly. He was walking much faster than typical. Three days went by, and he was starting to believe he must have imagined the voice. Strangely during those 3 days nothing had bothered him. He was due for a run in with the hyenas or jackalopes anytime now. Wyatt had just sat down to take a break drinking some water, and eating some of his jackalope jerky when it finally happened. He heard the voice again. This time he didn’t have that strange sense he had before he just heard the voice in English. “Hurry up! You idiots will make us waste the entire day! Hurry!” The voice shouted. The river had a big bend a ways up from where Wyatt was currently, and he was certain that’s where the voice was coming from. He wondered momentarily about how he could hear the person clearly from so far away.

Wyatt took the hurry advice to heart, and grabbed his stuff before sprinting toward the bend in the river. He wanted to see people, and caution was the last thing on his mind. The person yelling was calling people idiots, but he had bosses do the same on earth. Hell, even if they were bad people he still wanted to see them. Even at his top speed between his barely held together shoes, his ungainly pack, and his staff he was the opposite of fast. He got around the corner, and although he didn’t hear the shouting any longer he did see something floating on the water in the distance. It was already too far away to make out any details, but if he was a betting man Wyatt would assume it was a boat. He was torn between jumping up and down in joy that there are people in this world and falling to his knees in tears that he missed them. Who knew how far away they had come from? They could be exploring the unknown before heading home for all he knew. Maybe they live thousands of miles from here.

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Wyatt dug down deep and found the strength to start walking again. He wasn’t going to let this stop him. Besides maybe they were coming from somewhere super close, and he would find them in a few hours. He examined the edge of the river as he walked trying to figure out if they had docked somewhere. He saw a slight sandy area where a boat could possibly have come ashore, but it didn’t appear cleared out or that there was any kind of trail leading to it. It was also on the other side of the river, and he wanted nothing to do with trying to cross over. “Nothing about this world makes any sense!” He shouted. While he was busy shouting, a group of hyenas decided to try and take advantage and ambush him. They all rushed him like an unruly mob. Wyatt’s ability to sense threats had largely improved over the months spent with near constant fighting, and rather than feel fear a sinister smile formed on his face. “I needed some stress relief. Thank you for obliging me.” He said as he turned. The first Hyena reached him slightly ahead of the others, and rather than use any sort of skill he just punted it as hard as he could. He heard ribs crunching as the hyena was flung through the air only to hit the ground and roll over a few times before permanently coming to a stop. True to form the remaining 4 hyenas didn’t back down. They spread out, and then went on the offensive. Wyatt wanted to work out his anger, and fighting with anything other than his hands was just not going to work. He lunged forward and grabbed onto one of the hyenas forcing it into a choke hold where he promptly snapped its neck. Then because some part of him was just a bit unhinged at the moment he used the now limp hyena's body as a weapon.

The only thought in his head at that moment was that he wanted to make these hyenas hurt like he was hurting. Using their dead companion to bash them seemed to be doing the trick. He was slamming the body into one of the remaining 3 hyenas, and as it died it let out a mournful sound that broke through the bloodlust that had overtaken him. He came out of the bloodlust feeling a bit disoriented before becoming disgusted with himself as he realized what he had done. The body of the hyena he used as a weapon had bones that were breaking through the skin in places from his violent swings, he was coated in blood from all the damage to the carcass, and had apparently cut into his arm slightly when one of the bones snapped and stabbed him. He hadn’t even noticed. He wasn’t really sure what came over him, but all he could think about was inflicting as much pain as he could on anyone he could get his hands on. Just knowing that’s what he had been thinking disgusted him. The two remaining hyenas looked at him before letting out their own mournful howling sound. It wasn’t something he had heard from them before in the months he had been fighting them. With that sound made they retreated, something else he had never seen them do. He let himself collapse on to his back before being forced to turn to his side so he could vomit. His experience in this world was changing him, and not in a good way.

Staring at the crushed body of the hyena that first made the noise Wyatt felt an overwhelming sadness hit him. He wasn’t sure if it actually had anything to do with the hyena, but everything he had been trying to push to the side hit him at once. It was like a lifetime of anguish was flooding his body. He broke down right there beside the river, and cried. He had no idea how long he cried for, but it was tears for his dad, for his mom, for himself, and then it was tears for strange things like his clothes, his boots that didn’t quite survive this last fight, for the people in line behind him at the gate if they had to deal with anything remotely like what he was experiencing. It was like his body decided it was emptying out all of his pent up grief all at once, and it didn’t matter how ridiculous it was he was going to feel it all. He eventually passed out, and after a few hours of dreamless sleep he woke up to the feeling of his entire body shivering. The first thing to catch his attention was the fact that it was night, and less than a second behind that revelation came the realization that the disturbing purple orb was back. He immediately scrambled away from the river deeper into the trees, and hid. He knew it was likely irrational to hide from something that appeared to be this world’s version of a moon, but it felt alive, and more than that it felt dangerous. He felt exhausted, and although he had been passed out for an undetermined amount of time he quickly fell to sleep almost the moment he settled into the tree he had chosen as his bed for the night.