For several peaceful moments, Cali gazed up at the stars, her fingers tracing patterns between them. She’d fought free of her old life. Everything was fresh: new constellations, new possibilities... It was intoxicating. Despite her fascination, Cali wasn’t some hick who’d never left her home cluster. She’d visited dozens of universes, but a single minded focus on her missions had reduced any sights to mere background noise. It was a pernicious habit that Cali wished she could shut off to savour this moment. But already, she could feel her brain demanding she stop idling and start considering her circumstances.

She’d made a plan for her arrival on Llyr, a plan that now needed revision. Cali gave the jungle surrounding her a bemused look. Potentially significant revision. She needed to review the facts.

Fact 1. Her formulae ought to have deposited her at a teleportation waypoint on Llyr, a waypoint that should have been located in the midst of civilization.

Fact 2. She was located in the middle of a massive jungle, ie. not civilization.

Fact 3. Cali’s terminus had been hundreds of meters in the air, by any measure, a strange location for a waypoint.

There were two viable hypotheses: either her teleportation coordinates were wrong, or this was Llyr.

Cali chewed her bottom lip.

She didn’t really care if this planet was Llyr. She was outside of the United Multiverse Committee’s territory, and that’s what mattered. Distance, and political bounties, were the keys to avoiding pursuit from both Committee authorities and her former colleagues. She’d chosen Llyr by necessity. After years of searching, Llyr had been the only habitable planet that she’d discovered waypoint coordinates for.

Her books had described the principle benefit of utilizing waypoints in teleportation as ‘the assurance of conveyance to a safe destination.’ After all, if the waypoint coordinates were wrong, the magical threads would instead anchor themselves to the waypoint nearest to the erroneous coordinates. Or at least that was the theory; yet, Cali had found herself plummeting hundreds of meters. Midair would be a curious place for a waypoint.

Was a teleportation error possible? Her initial instinct was to reject that hypothesis. Cali had teleported countless times without issue, and furthermore, with waypoints the destination was supposed to be fixed. Unless...

What if her spell had interacted strangely with the waypoint? In anticipation of intense pursuit, Cali had modified her teleportation formulae. Her biggest change was the inclusion of a false teleportation trail. Small scale testing had revealed no issues. But she hadn’t had a waypoint to test it on, at least, not without Vale noticing. If her tampering had destabilized the formulae’s waypoint anchor... or... could waypoints drift?

Her legs dangled off the boulder. Cali swung her feet, toes catching on and scattering rubbery leaves. She’d have to shelve that line of inquiry for now; she needed to focus on revising her plan.

Her plan had been based on the notion she’d be in a city, or at least a settlement, not this endless expanse of jungle. The pedlar’s dusty diary she’d unearthed from her dad’s library had suggested the author had done prosperous business on Llyr. And, after months of decoding, it had yielded the waypoint coordinates the pedlar had used.

Cali felt like an absolute fool. That diary was ancient. She should have at least prepared for the possibility. What if Llyr was abandoned? The thought of being alone on an entire world was dizzying. For a second, she even missed the voices of her colleagues, people she’d spent years planning to escape. She hadn’t planned on missing any of them. So why did she want to see Gale’s ugly mug, or hear Aeyla’s sardonic laugh? A vision of Vale’s self satisfied sneer dispelled her feelings of nostalgia. Even if Llyr was abandoned, leaving had been the right choice. An eternity with a bunch of trees was preferable to Vale.

Another tangent. Damn. She needed to focus.

She was confident she’d left the UMC’s territory. The air was saturated with magic; she hadn’t felt anything like it since she was child. Ever since the magic ban, the air in the UMC had been lifeless and barren. The feeling was simultaneously comforting and terrifying. She’d internalized enough UMC propaganda that the idea of loose mana unsettled her. The UMC claimed that loose mana congregated to birth terrifying monsters. That its magic ban, and the subsequent magic depletion of universes, prevented monster formation. And now Cali was alone. Alone in an endless expanse of jungle, where the air was saturated with loose mana.

Cali’s eyes darted to a shadow between the trees. For a moment she swore it took the form of some huge monster. “Just a trick of light,” Cali muttered to herself, though her heart was pounding against her chest.

When she looked down her hand was resting on the hilt of her blade. It was a foolish instinct; if it were a monster, escape was her only hope. Besides, she couldn’t afford to get worked up by tales of monsters. Letting anxiety control her actions would be a fatal mistake. Still, monsters or no, remaining alone in a clearing at night was not the the wisest idea.

Despite the unexpected arboreal nature of her destination, her top three priorities hadn’t changed. She needed shelter, sustenance and information, though the lack of people meant her means of acquisition would have to change.

For shelter, she had a chameleon thermal tarp. It had served her well on stakeouts and would be adequate temporary shelter. For food, she had two ration bars. While they had the consistency of rocks, they were dense and each provided enough nutrition of a whole day. She figured she could probably stretch the pair to last her a week at most.

The supplies bought her time to establish a permanent shelter and source of food, which meant her most pressing concerns were water and information. Staring out into the jungle, Cali observed thin rivulets of water running down the tree trunks. If she collected it, that should forestall the need to find a stream.

Information was the challenge; she had counted on the presence of sapients she could question. Without them, her effort developing a translation spell was wasted. Lacking a reliable source of information, she’d be forced to resort to experiments. That sounded messy. Every planet had its own unique hazards and she wasn’t keen on discovering them through trial and error.

Cali took a deep breath, and then expelled the air in a slow, forceful current. She repeated this several times, the routine quieted her jangling nerves. She needed information on her surroundings. Climbing a tree was an option, a good option. It promised an opportunity to gain information; plus, she wasn’t keen on sleeping in the clearing. Being off the ground offered a measure of safety.

Cali scrutinized the massive trees surrounding her. Peering upwards, she could make out the nearest mass of branches two hundred meters above. A smirk crept onto her face. Two hundred meters was nothing.

Cali approached the largest tree bordering the clearing, and placed a gloved hand upon its trunk. Several agonizing moments passed, but nothing happened. She snickered at her own caution. “Checking for monstrous trees, I am getting paranoid.”

Satisfied that the tree was safe, Cali began to whisper an incantation. Though she was alone, habit kept her voice low. In a Committee universe, her little magical incantation was punishable by death.

As her incantation concluded, faint golden webs appeared over her gloves and along the bottoms of her boots. Shit, now both her arms were prickling, and she was even more tired than before. She bumped ‘magical side effects’ another step up her priority list.

Magic in place, Cali ascended into the tree; her dark clad figure moved with such grace and fluidity she almost seemed to flow up the tree. Until she reached the first branch, and halted. It was almost as if she had run into an invisible wall.

In truth, Cali was just shocked into stillness. The branch was two meters across and a hundred meters long. She’d never before seen its equivalent.

The branch was so broad it was almost inviting her to set up camp. Satisfied with her find, Cali scampered onto the branch. She was stunned to discover that the top of the branch was soft and spongy, a perfect bed.

“Marvellous,” she felt the word inadvertently escape her lips.

But it was breathtaking, not only that, she’d found a safe and comfortable place to sleep. As she tried to step further onto the branch, she discovered her feet were stuck, as if the soft spongy flesh of the branch was flypaper. Her body toppled forward from the momentum. Her arms whirled in a frantic attempt to correct her balance. She failed; landing on her side in the sticky, spongy tissue .

Cali was surrounded by comfort like never before. Despite her panic, an intense sense of weariness overcame her. Did the branch have a soporific effect? Her eyelids began to droop. She fought to stay awake. She needed to escape. She needed to survive. She didn’t want to die here on some stupid sticky tree.

Cali fought in vain. Her consciousness soon dimmed and she sank into the spongy tissue of the branch. With the last dregs of her energy, she reached for the small black vial with its glittering top and its promised salvation. Yet her body felt heavy and her hands were unable to respond.

She was trapped.