My next moves were paramount. If Jun had been making everything up and was another one of the embodiments’ chosen, then she had to know that I didn’t lose my memories. There was no reason to pretend to be from another world entirely unless she didn’t want me to know that she still had all of her memories, and that she was using those memories combined with knowing my name to know that I was dangerous for some reason.

I clenched my teeth and stared at her, mentally listing all the enemies I’d had, killed, or created in my old life. There was a non-zero chance that one of the people I’d killed was one of the embodiments’ chosen, and they would most definitely be out for revenge. But they would remember the Sebastian who bore the Obsidian Conundrum, not the Sebastian I was now. Had Jun’s embodiment told her what had happened to me? Maybe it had sent her here specifically to kill me so I couldn’t go and find Garrett and take back what was rightfully mine. I had to go on the assumption that the embodiments worked together, because the other option was the equivalent of putting my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes, and babbling incoherences to drown out the dangers of the situation.

In the end, I chose the direct route. She had the stat advantage, but if I’d killed her once before, I’d do it again. “Jun… do you know what the embodiments are?”

“Mmhm.” Jun said with a nod. “They’re the beings in the massive game of existence struggling to force their values on a chaotic and uncaring universe. Why do you ask?”

That was a little more than I’d expected, but it put a very large mark in the ‘lying to me’ column. “And how do you know about them?”

“The same way as everyone does, I guess.” She said with a shrug. “We learned about them in school, and about how they’re representing our world on a scale way beyond what we can imagine. Our gods don’t interact with them much, but embodiments come down every now and again when it’s time to send people into the fray.”

I blinked dumbly and paused. “Send people into the fray.” I eventually repeated.

Jun gestured widely around herself. “Sending people here. We have to make sure we don’t lose our footholds in the new world, but I didn’t know anything about hazards, or armor, or anything when I got sent here. The embodiments make everyone who comes back swear to secrecy for some reason.”

Everyone who comes back. I felt a lump catch in my throat, and tried very hard not to audibly swallow around it. Jun’s people weren’t gone. Their planet was very much still intact. And she had a home to eventually go back to.

“My home is gone.” I said thickly, my hands gripping my knees with emotions I thought had been long dead. “But you have somewhere to go back to. All I have are memories.”

Jun fell silent and stared at me for a few long moments. “...Gone?” She eventually whispered. “I thought you were… I didn’t… I thought you were being theatrical. But your planet… it’s gone?”

“Dead and gone, or soon to be.” I grimly confirmed. “Razed to the ground and then some.”

“I never thought I’d get to meet a real alien. I thought I’d be put to work doing…” Jun waved one hand frustratedly, “whatever it was people who left did, and that I’d never meet anyone from any of the other planets. The common world is astronomically huge, and unless you go into the contested zones, everyone’s separated into their own people’s cities. At least that’s what they told us in class.”

I raised an eyebrow and went to ask what any of this had to do with my dead planet, but Jun kept talking before I could get a word in.

“What’s going to happen to your people? Did they get assigned some random corner of the planet and they’re going to build up from there? Or were they placed in someone else’s territory, and now they’re at the whims of whoever that is?” She wondered, her words coming out quickly and panicky. She was somehow taking this worse than I was. “And what’s going to happen to you?”

“Me?” I asked.

“Yes, you! Are we going to go through the same exit and end up in the same place, or are you going to get sent away with all of your own people?” She asked, getting louder and more worked up with each word she spoke. “You might know a lot more than me, but there are people out there who’ve been doing this for decades! Maybe even centuries! You and your people could be in serious danger!”

I watched as Jun continued to worry herself sick over everyone who had made it out of Earth alive. She kept going for quite a few minutes, eventually working herself up so much that she began pacing back and forth on our shared branch. It was oddly comforting.

“Maybe we’ll get sent to your people.” I suggested. “If they’re all like you, I think we’d be in good hands.”

Jun snapped to me, then slowly shook her head. “I know my people. And I’d like to say that we’re all good, but having a brand new species show up at our doorstep would probably bring out the worst in us. And even if it doesn’t, we can be a little bit…” Jun rubbed her shoulder with one hand and looked away. “Overbearing.”

On a list of my worries, overbearing was somewhere near the middle. Not because of what Jun’s people would do to mine, but because of how humans could react. We weren’t exactly the smartest and most logical bunch when panicked.

“As long as ‘overbearing’ doesn’t lead to everyone dying, I think we’ll live with it.” I chuckled, leaning back against the tree and closing my eyes. “We’ll work with the swords tomorrow. Try to get a good night’s sleep and recharge.”

“What? After all that, you just want to go to sleep?” Jun shook her head and sighed in exasperation. “You have to promise that this conversation isn’t over.”

“I promise.” I said with a massive yawn. “Tomorrow.”

From the next dawn to the next dusk, I told Jun everything I could remember about humanity. All the important parts of earth in general’s culture, how some groups of us would fight with other groups based on conflicts that had started generations ago, and how some of us were just plain bastards no matter what side they were on. And what surprised me the most was how similar we were to her own people.

She was especially intrigued at the idea of monotheistic religions, since her own people had a vast pantheon of gods. Some of those gods interacted with their followers on a regular basis, but most of them were content to lie back and dole out blessings and make half-gods once every few decades. The children of the gods, ‘godlings’ as Jun referred to them, weren’t actually any stronger than any normal person. They just took on the traits of the god that sired them and were completely immune to any sort of genetic defects or diseases. A godlike body, but none of the power that came with it.

Of course I had to ask if Jun was a godling, and the answer I got was the least straight-forward one I’d gotten out of her so far. Apparently only godlings or people who inherited the genetic immunity from a godling were sent here, but she never clarified if she was a godling or just descended from one. And as it turned out, when a society had hard evidence of gods, religion became a huge part of their lives. Prayers, donations, priesthood, and a unique version of worship for each and every god. She explained everything with a vigor and excitement I couldn’t muster for much of anything anymore, and I had to ask myself when she was going to try and convert me to her god’s church.

That question never did come. Hell, she never even told me which god it was she worshipped. Maybe it was a private matter for her people, or there was a societal norm I wasn’t aware of, but she never once said a god’s name during her entire explanation.

After hours of walking and exploration, we finally found something that showed promise. A mass of lichenthropes shambling around the lone truly dead tree we’d found; rotted through and stuck with so many patinated copper spikes that it looked like someone had a massive bone to pick with this particular tree. Jun tensed and gripped her sword, quietly counting out the lichenthropes’ numbers to herself.

“One hundred and eight. That’s way more than we’ve fought so far put together. And it’s all in one place” She whispered harshly. “We haven’t fought more than two at once. How are we supposed to deal with this?”

One of the lichenthropes shuddered, its bronze tendrils snaking out before freezing in place. The glowing spots on its moss blinking in and out frantically, as if looking for something, then dimmed to nothing when the tendrils wrapped tightly around it once more. The entire process took no more than thirty seconds, and the moment the lichenthrope closed up, another shrieked and opened itself to the world.

It seemed like only one of them could open up at a time, but I wasn’t about to throw my life away on an assumption. I held up a hand for Jun to wait, watching the massive gathering of lichenthropes as they opened one by one before falling back into the shambling trance that afflicted the rest of them.

“They’re trading off guard duty.” I said, confident in what I’d just witnessed. “Which means this place is important for some reason. See if you can find any kind of pattern in how they wake up; if there is one, we can abuse it to thin their numbers.”

Thirty minutes of watching and whispering later, we had a plan. I drew a circle in the dirt with my sword and separated it into eight equal sections, placing one finger in the section where the currently active lichenthrope was and waited for it to go inactive. Then I moved my finger into the section where the next lichenthrope became active, waited another thirty seconds, and moved my finger to where the next one was.

“It looks like our theory’s right.” I said, brushing off my knees and standing. “It’s not a set pattern, but there’s still rules to which lichenthrope wakes up.”

Our theory was that when a lichenthrope went inactive, the next lichenthrope wouldn’t be chosen in either of the two closest sections to it. And that once a section had been used, a lichenthrope wouldn’t wake up in that section for at least four more cycles. Which meant that if we watched and took notes, we could narrow the possible sections down to four. And on a particularly lucky cycle, we could pinpoint exactly which section the next lichenthrope would wake up in.

That cycle was when we’d strike. All it required was for the randomly assigned section to be sandwiched between two unused sections. Of course the entire plan was riding on the assumption that the inactive lichenthropes would stay inactive while we slaughtered them, and that the active lichenthrope wouldn’t see us from the other side of the tree, but it was the best we’d come up with.

Jun held her sword out in front of her, all her earlier worry replaced with confidence. “The second we see our opening I’m going to rush in. My stats are way higher than yours, so I’ll kill the ones closer to the tree while you get the ones further out.”

“Don’t kill everything in the slice.” I warned, watching the currently screeching lichenthrope like a hawk. “We don’t know if that’ll mess with the rotation, so leave at least one alive.”