Jonathan sat upon his rocky perch, binoculars in hand. He followed his mark who made an uneventful trek through the forested valley below. It was autumn, and the stark orange hues of deciduous forest presaged the morning chill. Leaves still clung to trees, unwilling to give way to the brisk breeze just yet. A rivulet bravely wormed through undulating folds in the land. It would meet its larger flowing brother if only it could make it out of this humble ravine. Lazy meanders which almost doubled back evidenced its struggle. An idyllic postcard scene, and he was fucking sick of it.

His body had grown stiff over the past few hours of static observance. It was a forward position set up ahead of time knowing his quarry would inevitably move through. A camo-net lay draped over him for good measure. Its mottled colours perfectly matched the surrounding rock, too ideally in fact. He had it printed from stores the moment he chose the spot, print-screening the colours, so it matched just right. Retrieval of the item from his pack took only moments.

It was overkill. Even the sharp eyes of the ‘elf’, now accompanying the target, couldn’t have spotted Jon behind the rocks and the shaded recess in the mountainside. Casual conversations with strangers on the road indicated this world had magic. Magic to detect him perhaps. Jonathan Kelly was blissfully devoid of the outrageous sorcery of this realm, just as the day he was born. His body was maybe more mundane than the rocks around him; although that was inevitably changing much to his chagrin. The standard acclimation time for frontier worlds such as this was about one month to a year. It wasn’t an exact science, fuck, it wasn’t science at all, at least not the science of Alpha and its more local clusters.

He was eating lunch. An onigiri partially unwrapped from cling wrap, and half-eaten, hovered in his left hand. It was below his mouth and binoculars. The sour plum rice ball was his favourite. Finishing up his chomping, he stowed the dirty plastic wrapping in a side pocket on his pack.

Returning attention to the audio tap, he noted absently the sound visualisations moving in a corner on his AR HUD—Augmented Reality Heads Up Display. It was unobtrusive to his broader sight as well as transparent. The audio tap was planted on the target’s pack. Muffled sounds of the ill-placed microphone distorted its quality but sufficed for dialogue. The tracker also provided bearing and distance. It was a savvy gadget from the techies back home.

Given that this medieval world unsurprisingly had no satellites, and therefore no GPS, geolocation was very ghetto. He watched the pair moving to set up camp in a clearing. It was noon, or what passed for it with the slightly softer white light of the sun and one of three moons currently visible. This moon was very familiar, thank god for small mercies. The other two, seen on previous nights, were possibly captured asteroids.

The target spoke to his damsel while coming to offer a water sack filled from a nearby stream. Jon’s audio feed blared.“We should make it back to your village by sundown at this pace.”

The human he followed—the pending protagonist—was an unassuming man with blond hair and a well-toned physique but not overbearing frame. Finer details were difficult to make out at this range, but from memory and his garb, he was easy to pick out. The elf girl was a new, but expected addition. Her long pointed ears, the betraying feature. They were about double the length of a human ear from lobe to tip and articulated visibly as she focused on sounds, folding back on her skull or out for forward-facing sounds. They were hairless but far more functional than ornamental it seemed. She stood slightly smaller in stature compared to the human man, and she appeared to be in a bad state. Her possibly beach blond hair was dirtied and matted in a mangled mop on her head. Smears of mud and other dark marks lay across her bare legs and feet. She had a lithe frame and wore a similarly dirty short canvas robe tattered at the hems with an anachronistic black leather jacket providing scant warmth. It looked like an unadorned motorcycle jacket. Jon frowned in puzzlement, but he had his suspicions.

“Th-Thank you again, kind adventurer,” stammered the elf. Her voice had a few subtle inflexions of sophistication producing a vaguely precocious accent. “Had you not arrived sooner, the goblins might have done far worse.”

Jon gave a derisive snort “Fucking goblins! D’you hear that Lee?” There was no reply through his comms; Lee was apparently still a.f.k. for coffee. He continued to eavesdrop with a bemused grin.

“Looks like they probably did enough, and they won’t ever do anything more.” Replied the man in a nondescript but unmistakably American accent, because of course he was American. Jon’s cadence, by contrast, was the flat tone of a South African ex-pat although idiosyncrasies had wormed their way into his lexicon over the years ‘abroad’.

The two in the clearing sat and snacked in silence, soft chewing and gulping sounds could be heard through the audio pick up. It looked like a poignant moment for them.

“What is your name, noble sir?” asked the young woman after she’d consumed the proffered jerky, or something brown and flat anyway.

“I’m Steward, Gavin Steward.”

“Classic James Bond intro,” remarked Jon.

“I am Keya Ces. T’was truly an act of bravery that you came and slew those goblins. Few would risk their lives for one such as I. Our village is but a small hamlet with most able-bodied men drafted into the war. Even so, my kind is not looked upon so favourably here.”

Gavin’s face was probably frowning with injustice and pity. Fictive dramatisation was how Jon made his own fun.

“Evy, please make an inquiry on goblins and sapient rights considerations.”

“Inquiry with the relevant data has been compiled and sent.” Replied an even and calm female voice. AI had come a long way, but Jon could still identify the slightly stilted word transitions that betrayed their nature.

“Your grandfather asked me to do it, but I still would’ve come even if he hadn’t. This world is…” Gavin trailed off, shaking his head, and they rested in silence once more, finishing off the rations. It was making Jon hungry again.

“Evy, please bring up the relevant source material once more.” A single image of a mostly burnt fragment of paper appeared in his AR vision which read:

‘Gavin Steward hoisted his pack and exited the small village with Keya in tow. She still wore his black jacket though…’

There were other words and phrases scattered in unblemished or unburnt parts of a single typewriter printed page. “I cannot believe this is all we have for plot identification.” Jon sighed. Evy did not respond. “Evy, a probable major character identified, sidekick or support, possibly love interest.”

“Acknowledged, mission parameters updated, statistical projections extrapolated.”

On Jon’s visual feed was a list of arcane numbers and codes in varying hues, mostly in purples or blues; they updated regularly. The new information saw a noticeable shift in the colours towards lighter violets. Jon smiled thinly.

The couple down in the valley made to move again. Gavin dusted himself off, and Keya simply got to her feet. She had no belongings, and getting dirtier was a moot point at this stage. She did pull the jacket closed around her somewhat, its sentimental value evident.

No sooner had they stood and begun to leave when they heard rustling in the tree line. Gavin responded quickly, shouting, “Get back!” Keya jumped in terror and scampered to the single towering oak tree they’d used for shade earlier. It was near the stream bank. The rivulet was a little too deep to cross quickly and behind it rose a craggy outcropping; there was little escape that way. Jon could not see what was approaching from his vantage of the tree line, but he heard the growls. Deep guttural, angry sounds one might hear from a large dog, but the baritone was hefty.

Moments later, he saw the beasts emerge into view. They were wolves, that is if wolves were the size of ponies. And three of them stalked into the clearing facing the nervous-looking Gavin with Keya behind shifting closer to the tree.

Gavin simultaneously took a swig from a flask in his right hand and made a quick gesture with the left. A potent gust, out of place for the placid day, raced across the clearing and impacted the beasts throwing two head over heels. Drawing his short sword, he rushed the third one.

Jon only wished he had popcorn. Too late to order it now. It was shaping up to be an entertaining encounter.

“Plot point: MC is engaging with three mobs; assailants appear to be large wolves, pending identifiers as Direwolves,” said Jon. New flora and fauna got named by the first operative to identify them, and they mostly stuck if you weren’t a dick about it. One of the better perks of the job in Jon’s estimation. “Lee! You’re missing the good part!” He heard some muffled far off shouting on the other end of voice chat as if his handler was shouting from another room. Peter Lee had the worst timing for coffee breaks, almost prophetic in fact.

Back in the glade, Gavin slashed downward viciously with his sword, gashing the foremost wolf in the skull. It was severe but not fatal. All the same, the wolf squealed in pain and pranced back, while the other wolves were recovering. They’d been blown too far away to come to their lupine brother’s aid. Gavin positioned himself facing the gashed wolf, made another gesture and the wolf abruptly yipped before collapsing. He then turned to the remaining two. Sword sheathed again, and he gesticulated even more, this time with both hands as he almost casually walked toward the now somewhat apprehensive remaining beasts. The cast-time was much longer and seemed practically complete when he unexpectedly stumbled and seemed to trip over an obstacle.

There was a loud bang as the microphone instantly auto-levelled, capped, and then muted. Jon lost the target in the ensuing commotion; pulling back from the binoculars, he sighted the area again and resumed observation.

The elf had scaled up the tree, and the two remaining wolves were huddled together over something. The microphone clicked back on. Gavin wasn’t in sight, but he heard the panicked gasps of the elf, and the unmistakable sound of large wet chomps and breaking bones. Jon grew agitated. He took a nervous glance at the coloured numbers on his feed, the hues began to change rapidly as the values concurrently decreased. From violet purples to blues and then on down the colour spectrum turning orange and then red. ”Aw shit!” Jonathan threw off the camouflage and retrieved his rifle from the pack. Hoisting the bag with the gun slung in front, Jonathan scrambled to his feet and down the slope into the valley.