Mat kept staring at the Ashman.

Jak threw another piece of coal at it. The rock thumped off of its shoulder, but it never even flinched.

“Sky’s getting brighter,” Jak said.

“Finally.”

But Mat kept his eyes wide open, looking into the mob’s blank face.

Eventually he had to give up.

“Well, you can’t win a staring contest with them,” he said.

“Too bad. You thought maybe we could awkward them to death?”

Mat reached into his robe, grabbed a piece of coal, and threw it.

It bounced off the Ashman’s chest and plopped into the water.

“I don’t know. Nothing else seems to work.”

His legs were starting to hurt. They had been standing on the block pillars since the sun went down.

Finding them was lucky. They had almost been mob chow last night.

When they came to the edge of the cliff Mat thought it was all over. Three mobs - one of them a sleek and vicious Prowler - were almost on top of them, and there was nowhere left to run.

But it was only a short jump down onto two pillars of green mossy rock that stood in a small pond below. So Jak had jumped. It wasn’t like there was a choice. Mat followed.

The Ashmen had stared down at them for a while, and then two of them had wandered away.

Standing and waiting, Mat watched the stars for most of the night. It was still strange to actually see the night sky up above, them instead of through a window.

Inside, where it was safe.

But there was no more inside. Not for now, anyway. Not until they could find a village. They had been lucky last night. And the night before.

They had even been lucky when their village was suddenly invaded by a huge swarm of mobs, and fires had broken out everywhere, and everyone had run away into the night. Mat had a feeling that if they kept hoping for good luck, then eventually it was going to run out.

“There!” Jak said, pointing.

It was the sun. Just a bright little sliver of it peeking through the trees. The last Ashman began to swirl and dissolve in the breeze right away.

“Three,” Mat said.

“What?”

“Three nights. That’s three more nights than I thought we’d make it through.”

Jak was big and tough, but he wasn’t much of a thinker. He just shook his head.

“We’ll be fine. We’ll find a village today.”

Mat wasn’t feeling so sure. They had been walking through the forest for two solid days. The trees were taller than anything he’d ever imagined, and the ground was thick with mushrooms and bushes and mossy rocks. But they’d never even seen a hint of a village. They hadn’t heard a single voice apart from each other.

And the chickens. The stupid chickens clucking and flapping everywhere.

What worried Mat was how thick the forest was. There could be a village just a few dozen blocks away and they might walk past without ever knowing it. You couldn’t see anything. They needed to get up somewhere high, so they could see what direction to go.

After the Ashman was finally blown away, Jak didn’t even look at Mat before he jumped down off of the pillar and splashed into the pond below.

“Come on, time’s wasting!”

Mat walked along behind him, wiping bits of pond scum off of his robe.

“What if there’s nobody else left?” he said.

Jak frowned.

“That’s stupid. Nobody except us?”

“Nobody. Anywhere. We just lucked out and every village is empty and burned now.”

Jak waved it away with one hand.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Then what happened to our village? Why wouldn’t it be happening to everyone else?”

It wasn’t a happy thought. Mat imagined looking down on the world, and seeing little dots of fire everywhere that the villages had been. Plus two lost villagers hiking through the empty land.

“There’s just no way. You’ll see. We’ll find a village soon.”

“What if we don’t? Where do we go?”

Jak sighed.

If Mat could have picked anyone from the village to get lost in the forest with, he would probably have put Jak near the bottom of the list. He’d never once seen Jak in the library. He was always talking to the blacksmiths and the farmers and herders. Never to the librarians or the clerics.

Mat and Jak had managed to live in the same village for nearly their whole lives, almost never being in the same place at the same time. Jak was as near a stranger as was possible for a villager, and it was hard finding things to talk about that they both cared about.

So of course it had been Jak he’d run into, deep in the woods. It was Jak who had grabbed him, and pulled him down next to a bush. Together they had waited until sunrise to go back and see the ruins of the village. Mat had to give him that much. He seemed to have the right ideas about how to stay alive when they were stuck outside all the time.

“I don’t know,” Jak said. “I guess we find somewhere else to live? Maybe up high in the mountains?”

Which sounded awful.

“I guess,” Mat said. “We could...”

But Jak held up his hand to interrupt.

Mat looked all around them, expecting to see a Prowler creeping towards them, or a spider waiting to jump.

“That smell,” Jak said.

Mat sniffed. He couldn’t smell anything, and shook his head at Jak.

Jak rolled his eyes and pointed.

“That way, I think. It’s smoke.”

Tim’s stomach dropped.

“You sure?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Jak jumped down another mossy cliff face and headed off into the woods, while Mat scrambled to catch up.

It’s almost as if he likes being stuck outside, Mat thought. It was a weird idea. A villager’s place was in the village. It didn’t even make sense to think of a villager apart from a village. They were part of the same thing.

But Jak didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. The only thing Mat wanted was a nice solid door between him and the mobs. But Jak almost looked like he was having fun when it was time to find somewhere to hide away for the night.

I guess you never know. Some people have talents they never get a chance to use.

But what did that make Jak? An outside-of-the-village villager? There wasn’t even a word for it.

The forest stopped very suddenly. One moment they were in the trees and bushes, then they walked out onto a wide green plain.

There were mountains not too far away on the other side of the plain. They were tall and grey, with snow at the peaks. It would be the perfect spot to scan the horizon for villages.

Except that they had found one.

Or what was left of one.

“Burned,” Mat said.

The nearest house would have only been a few dozen blocks away, when the village was there.

But now it was just cobblestone foundations, and a few scattered bit of glass. Two small fires still flamed and smoked.

Jak frowned. It looked like he was seriously thinking about what Mat had said for the first time. What if it was all gone, all of it? What do two wandering villagers do when there’s no village to go to?

“Should we...” Mat staid. He was going to suggest heading for the mountains to get a better look around across the plains.

“Food,” Jak said, interrupting him. He started walking.

Their footsteps crunched loudly on the silent paths between where the houses used to be. They looked in every ruined building, and found a few carrots. The farms were just dirt – everything was gone.

Hooray, more carrots, Mat thought. He already had a bunch in his inventory. But he took another handful from Jak.

The place was creepy. Everything was too quiet. It seemed like even the chickens were avoiding it.

They both kept looking around, like they were expecting something to be sneaking up on them.

When he was sure they had looked everywhere, Mat said, “We should probably keep going.”

Jak nodded quickly. It wasn’t like him to be scared, but Mat got the idea that he wanted to get out of there as fast as possible too.

He pointed at the mountains.

“We should be able to see all over from up there.”

“Let’s go,” Mat said.

He couldn’t wait to get far, far away from the dead village.

But as they passed the last house, Jak grabbed his arm.

“What...” he started to say, but Jak hissed at him to be quiet and pointed.

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Something was in the trees. It looked like something wearing clothes.

“Is it a Bonewalker?” Mat whispered.

Sometimes they could last through the day, if they were in the shade.

“I don’t know,” Jak said. “You want to find out?”

Mat shook his head and pointed over to the other edge of the village.

“That way?”

They started walking away as quietly as they could.

“What if it’s one of the villagers?” Mat said.

Maybe someone ran into the woods. They could be hiding, too scared to come out, he thought.

Jak sighed and stopped.

“What?” Mat said.

“You’re right. We need to look.”

Mat wished he hadn’t said anything at all. He had a weird feeling about this.

But he couldn’t just stand there while Jak went back.

They stopped at the far edge of the village again, staring into the woods. Whatever it had been, they couldn’t see it any more.

“Hello!” Jak yelled, and Mat jumped at the sudden noise.

They waited, listening.

“Anyone there?” Jak yelled. “We’re villagers too!”

There was a sound, like someone stepping on a branch. Then nothing.

“We’re not dangerous,” Mat said loudly. He felt like he had to say something. “We have food.”

But nobody answered.

“I don’t like this,” Jak said. “Doesn’t feel right.”

Mat couldn’t have agreed more.

“We should go,” he said.

They both turned and walked away, heading towards the other edge of the village and the mountains in the distance again. Mat kept looking back at the ruined houses, but nothing moved. Nothing was following them.

But they both walked quickly, all the same. They didn't talk about it, but once they went out onto the grassy plain they put the village far behind them before they slowed down again.

They reached the mountains before noon.

“It looks a lot higher than it did before,” Mat said.

The rocky grey cliffs were so tall that they disappeared into the clouds.

“That's what we want,” said Jak. “Get us way up there so we can look for another village.”

“Okay, sure. I've never climbed up anything like that before, is all.”

Jak grinned.

“Me neither. Should be fun.”

Mat wasn't sure about that. It was too easy to imagine slipping and falling from way up there. It was a long, steep climb. But Jak was already scrambling up the rocks, looking for the best path.

After what seemed like an hour they had made it up far enough that Mat didn’t want to look down any more. There was enough space to climb. But only just enough. He followed behind, letting Jak pick the best way up. It was weird. Jak was a Farmer, so he would have spent his life growing potatoes, or wheat, or something. Looking down at the dirt, taking care of the plants.

Now it wasn't an option. There was no farm to worry about. But Jak looked and moved like he'd escaped from the village, and not been forced to run away from it.

Mat sighed and kept climbing. All he'd ever wanted was to live comfortably in the library. Tend the books, talk with the other Librarians. He liked doing that. He'd been looking forward to it.

He'd read nearly every book in the library. He'd often wondered what other villages might have – books that he'd never seen, filled with things that nobody in the village knew. In fact he'd thought long and hard about that – what if it was possible to trade books with other villages?

It was a crazy idea, but he'd always had a notion that once he was in charge, he'd have to see if there was some way to do it. Now he was out here in the middle of nowhere without a single book to call his own. He wasn’t like Jak. That much was for sure.

He banged his knee against a rocky point and flinched.

“I guess we're living the kind of story that they write about,” Mat said.

Jak frowned down at him.

“What?”

“Doing this. Climbing mountains, running from Ashmen.”

He pulled himself up over a ledge and rubbed his knee.

“It's a lot less hungry and sharp, is all. When you're just reading it.”

“You hungry?”

Mat sighed. Jak's mind just didn't work the same way as his.

“Sure,” he said. “I could eat. When can we stop?”

Jak pointed up at a ledge above them.

“When he get there,” he said. “We should...”

Jak stopped talking, and stared back towards the plains below.

Mat didn't look. He didn't want to see how far down it was.

“What is it?”

“Someone's following us. Three someones.”

Mat forced himself to look over his shoulder, down to the ground below. Whoever they were, they had come out of the woods and were heading straight towards the mountains, and they were obviously going to end up right below Mat and Jak.

“Mobs?” Mat said. He knew Jak’s eyes were better than his.

“Nope. I’d say villagers.”

“Was that them in the woods? Why did they wait until now to follow us?”

“You tell me, I don’t know.”

Mat stared at the little group. It made him feel dizzy, looking way down there. He gripped the blocks tighter so that he wouldn’t slip.

They weren’t moving very fast, but one of them was walking ahead of the other two. That one looked like he or she was impatient, Mat thought. Like they wanted to catch up but they were being slowed down. The other two moved along much closer together.

“One of them needs help moving,” Mat said.

“You think they’re hurt?”

“I don’t know.” He stared harder, watching the two figures “I don’t think so. They’re just walking slowly. I can’t see why.”

Jak made a frustrated noise.

“If we go back down now, then we’re not getting to the top today.”

The sun was probably halfway down to the horizon now.

Mat looked across the grassland. There was no obvious place to spend the night. They would be exposed anywhere out there. Easy targets for any anything that might see them.

“We could just keep going,” Jak said.

“Leave them behind?”

“You want to spend the night out there?” Jak nodded down at the ground.

“No... but if we leave them out there... there's no safe place for them.”

“Fine,” Jak said.

“Do you think...”

“No, you're right. We should go down and see who they are at least.”

He dropped from the rock he was on and landed on Tim's ledge with a thud. Mat had to give Jak that much. He wasn't a thinker, but he did listen to people.

“You're a good climber,” Mat said.

“I always looked up at the mountains and wondered what they were like,” Jak said. “They were right by the village but we could never get to them.”

“So what do you think?”

Jak grinned and lowered himself down the rocks to the next level spot.

“Look at that!”

He pointed at the horizon. Past the plain was the forest they had spent nearly three days wandering in. The trees seemed to go on forever.

“Looks lonely,” Mat said. It was just empty wild land going on forever, as far as he could see.

Jak shook his head.

“It's amazing. Up here I feel like we're bigger than the whole world!”

Mat couldn't see it, but he wasn't going to argue. At least someone was enjoying this.

When they were about ten blocks from the bottom, Jak held up his hand to stop. The three villagers – they were definitely villagers – were nearly there too. The sun was getting low. Night wasn't far away.

“Hello!” Jak yelled.

The girl who was walking ahead of the other two was wearing a Librarian robe with Mapmaker colors. She was tall and thin, and looked annoyed.

“Why are you waiting up there?” she said loudly. “We're not mobs.”

Jak shrugged.

“I don't know you. I just wanted to talk first.”

“You mean there's a chance you're going to go back up and leave us here?”

The girl sounded like she was used to giving orders. Jak frowned.

“She sounds pushy,” he muttered to Mat.

Mat had to agree. She was standing with her hands on her hips, like she was already figuring out how to make them do what she wanted.

“I'm sure you're fine,” Jak said. “But we don't know you. We just wanted to see who you were before we came down.”

“Well this is who we are,” she said. She spun around with her arms out. “There you go. Satisfied?”

The other two had joined her now. The slow villager was an old man in Cleric's robes, and he was being led along by a girl wearing Leatherworker colors.

“I'm Ell,” the tall girl said. She pointed to the other two. “That's Pru.”

The girl who was leading the old villager gave them a wave.

“This is Bren,” Pru said.

The old villager didn't even look up at them.

“Bren?” said Jak.

“That's what he called himself, I don't know.”

The old villager – Bren, which was easily the strangest villager name Mat had ever heard – didn't seem to notice any of what was going on. He just stared at the ground.

“You don't know him?”

“We...”

Ell looked like she wasn't sure how much to say.

“We found him. He's probably from another village or something.”

“Or something?”

“He's confused. But we wouldn't have made it out here without him. He... he taught me some things that have kept us alive.”

“Are you from that village?”

Jak pointed over towards the ruined houses.

Ell shook her head.

“No, we thought that was your village. It's not?”

“We didn't find anyone there. It's empty.”

Ell stared back at what was left of the village.

“How hard did you look?”

“We looked, okay? There's nobody.”

“Nobody in the woods? Sometimes people run there to get away.”

“No kidding,” Jak said. Now he was annoyed. “We know that. That's how we got away, but thanks for the advice.”

“We thought you might have been watching us from the woods,” Mat said. The he realized he hadn't introduced himself yet. “I'm Mat, by the way.”

“Watching you? We came out of the woods and saw you climbing the mountain. We never saw the village until then.”

“Oh. There was something in the woods. Maybe,” Mat said.

“It didn't feel right. It was probably just a mob,” Jak said.

Ell stared at them like they were idiots.

“Maybe,” she said.

Jak shook his head.

“We've run from enough mobs. You want to go poke it with a stick, be my guest.”

Ell looked like she was considering it.

“It’s going to be dark soon,” Pru said. She spoke more quietly than Ell, and as far as Mat could see in the evening light, she had a softer look.

“So have you decided to come down yet?” Ell said.

Jak snorted, but Mat had already decided.

He jumped down the rocks quickly, going from block to block without much hesitation.

I’m getting better at this, he thought.

He was a little bit proud of hitting the ground with both feet and a solid thump. Jak whumped down beside him, and they all stared at each other for a moment.

“So,” Jak said.

“You said you’ve been out for three nights,” Ell said. “How have you been staying away from the mobs?”

She wasn’t much older than either of them, that was obvious, but she looked like she had already assumed that she was in charge. She didn’t have an unkind face, exactly, but she looked like she was working on what kind of use they would be.

Jak snorted.

“Mainly we’ve found places the mobs couldn’t get to.”

“The other night we had a Ashman almost in arm’s reach the whole night long. It just stared at us until the sun came up,” Mat said.

Ell didn’t look impressed.

“Well you’re here, so I guess whatever you were doing must have worked,” she said.

“What about you? What was your amazing plan?” said Jak.

Ell smiled for the first time. It wasn’t exactly a friendly smile - it was more like she thought she’d just won even if Jak couldn’t see it yet.

“I learned a trick,” she said.

“A trick.”

“Ell, stop playing with them,” Pru said.

The sun was almost touching the horizon.

“Mobs will be out soon,” Jak said. “If you’ve got a trick you’d better get it started.”

Bren, the old villager, spoke for the first time. He had a creaky voice and he never looked up at them when he spoke.

“He’s right child. We’re not here to play games, just get on with it.”

Mat could see her roll her eyes in the dim red light.

“Fine, whatever. Over there.”

She pointed to a small indent in the cliff face. It wasn’t quite a cave, but it was a few blocks deep. But Jak wasn’t going anywhere just because she said so.

“Over there what?” he said. He backed up a few steps and gave Mat a look.

Mat realized he was getting ready to run, just in case. They didn’t seem dangerous. Pru seemed nice, at least. But on the other hand he’d learned to trust Jak’s instincts about staying alive. He took a step back.

Ell looked at them both and rolled her eyes again.

“Fine,” she said, and stalked over to the almost-cave on her own.

Then she did her trick.

Jak actually gasped out loud.

Mat just looked at her blankly for a moment, then said, “Wow.”