As the gates close behind us, I examine the environment outside the walls, eager to squeeze any information out of it as I can. There’s a short field of grassy plain before it gets overtaken by a span of hills.

Well, at first glance it looks like grass. In reality, it’s much shorter and denser, so it looks almost like overgrown moss. The ground inside the walls was mostly taken up by sand, roads, or buildings, so it was difficult to tell exactly what it was in there.

There are some weeds sprouting out of the ground as well. There are lots of small flowers that I don’t recognize, but I also see some intriguing plants among them.

One of them rests on the edge of the hills. It’s a gigantic flower - at least two feet in diameter - that sits on the ground with no stem or anything. It has bright pink petals and in the center is a mound of darker pink fruits.

I see a few plants with long, thin stalks. They’re no more than an inch in diameter, but are almost as tall as I stand. There are small strands that look like miniature vines that reach out from different points of the plant’s stalk and seem to be attaching themselves into the ground or on nearby plants. There’s nothing topping the plant like a flower or anything, it’s just a long green stalk. They seem to grow in bunches. When I see one, there are always five or six close by.

We follow a rough path that leads down through the valleys between the hills. I glance around, but the hills are surprisingly barren. I guess it isn’t really surprising, we’re only just outside the city so it makes sense it would be pretty plain.

There are a few small animals I glimpse going around the hill, though. They’re small and look similar to rabbits, but much skinnier and with no fur. Instead their skin looks strange and rubbery.

They have great flabs of skin hanging from their hind legs, flapping against their body as they make short hops forward. They have long tails hanging from their backsides, too. So long that even when they hop forward, a decent length of it stays on the ground even as their entire body leaps up. Their faces also look strange compared to a rabbit’s. Their mouth looks too large for their body and their eyes are enormous.

Like when I saw the skelds for the first time, the sight of the animal greatly unsettles me. It just looks so alien.

After a couple minutes, we arrive in a forest that seems to surround the city. Surprisingly, I don’t see any tree stumps or evidence of felled trees. I’d think this would be where they got all that wood they used for the buildings. I guess they have some other source.

A few hours pass with nothing of note happening. We travel through the seemingly endless forest at a relatively slow pace. Occasionally Itor and Magna will talk with one another, but for the most part the ride is silent.

Over the course of the trip so far, I find myself mentally swapping back and forth between whether or not I want to see any animals here in the forest.

On the one hand, it would be very helpful to learn more about the local wildlife. But on the other hand, I really don’t wanna die to the paws of some mutant bear or something. It’s the age-old dilemma of risk versus reward. In the end, I’ve just settled for the glimpses of movement I’ve caught at the edge of the treeline; far enough to keep safe, but close enough that it can at least partially satisfy my curiosity.

All of the plants and trees that we pass by I don’t recognize. There’s nothing that’s incredibly strange about them, but I don’t see anything that I remember from the past.

For a little while now - maybe the past couple hours or so - I’ve been mentally cataloguing all of the plants I see. I keep telling myself it’s so that if I ever need to escape through the forest, it’ll be easier to navigate, but in all honesty it’s pretty much just to keep my mind busy.

For example, “Bush LGFY” is a very stout plant, only around a foot tall, that seems to grow small blue fruits out of yellow flowers. And “Tree LNW” is a tall tree that seemed to reach up about thirty feet at its tallest. I haven’t been able to see what exactly it grows, but whenever I see one, I can always see these long, spike-shaped nuts that are embedded into the ground underneath it. So I assume they grew and dropped those.

I’ve built up a pretty strong memory of these plants, and have spent a lot of my time practicing my memory of them. I also tried to make a mental map of the forest, but with no significant landmarks to actually anchor myself with, that plan fell apart pretty quickly.

Honestly, it’s not super imperative that I do all this just to stave off boredom. I could probably just lie down and get some rest. To tell the truth, I need some sleep. But the main reason I’ve been keeping myself busy isn’t for entertainment. It’s because there are some pretty big questions that have been gnawing at my mind. I know I just said I’d ignore the question of “What exactly has happened?”, but it never really left my mind. I just can’t stop thinking about it.

I’m trying to focus on the more pragmatic things that will keep me alive, but that’s simply not how my brain functions. I thought about the most head-y, useless shit when I was wandering the streets as a homeless guy, and I honestly don’t think that’s about to change.

For now, all I can do is fight my nature and try my best to survive. I just need to remind myself that thinking about those things can come later, once my life is no longer in danger. Smaller things, like what I can do if my captors become hostile, are much more important to consider right now.

I don’t think I could beat even one of either Itor or Magna in a fair fight, much less both of them. If I had to face them in combat, I feel like the most reliable way to defeat them would be to acquire some sort of ranged weapon and attack them from a distance.

They absolutely have the advantage in close combat, considering the fact that they’re simply more muscular than I am, they’ve probably received some sort of combat training, and - whileI don’t see any sort of weapon on them right now - they probably have concealed blades or something similar.

As far as I can tell, I’m wearing the same robes as they are, so I actually have a bit of an advantage if they’re relying on concealed weapons against me. On the inside of the robe are a few pockets no larger than my outstretched hand, so I know for a fact they can’t have anything larger than that. Realistically, all that they could have would be something like a small dagger. Barring guns or anything like that, of course.

Daggers and knives have a really small attack range, so if I could get my hands on a bow - or even a longsword - then I’d be golden.

Actually, now that my mind’s on the subject, why exactly do they not have any real weapons? I can understand not flaunting a battleaxe around in the middle of a city, but we’re traveling through a largely untamed forest here with some precious cargo.

From what I can tell, I’m at least somewhat unique; why would they need to see the leader otherwise? So why wouldn’t I be protected on this journey? Is the forest actually not too dangerous? That’s almost certainly not it. There’s always the possibility of bandits no matter the danger level of the wildlife. I know they had available soldiers just sitting around because they used some to do something as mundane as loading cargo onto our carriage.

My only guess would be that Magna and Itor are all the security I need. I guess they’re really proficient with whatever weapons they have hidden in there. Hm, so in that case- oof! Fuck, the carriage just stopped suddenly. Did we hit a hole? I look up and see what’s going on.

Magna is speaking slowly to Itor, but instead of looking back at him like she has in the past, she’s looking intently ahead. Her hand is slowly reaching up to her neck, where the clasp of her cloak is located. Itor responds, doing the same, reaching to his neck. Both of them have looks of caution on their faces.

I look ahead to see what’s going on, and spot what’s been causing me both excitement and intense dread this whole trip. Five mid-sized animals stand directly in the carriage’s path.