The bus exited the outskirts of the city. Darius estimated that it would take more than half an hour before it arrived at his destination.

Darius was sitting in the front left block of seat, next to the window. Next to him was his army backpack a bag. Since the bus had many unoccupied seats, he didn’t find rude taking two of them for himself.

The weather outside was unwelcoming. It looked like it could start raining any second, with thick clouds hiding the sky. Darius concentrated on observing the upcoming storm, trying to tune out the voices of other passengers. Specifically…

“..and I though what would my neighbor say if she learned I obtained Body! You know, she ..”

It was not like Darius needed to think about important decisions. It was too late or too soon for that. But…

“...st be quite envious, yesterday I saw her looking at me and she had such a ..”

...was simply irritating. It was not only because the old woman behind him was talking too much. Or too loud. But her assumptions were so illogical, Darius was tempted to start a conversation with her and explain that there exist other points of view. That she is not all knowing and it would be really nice if she stopped acting like an oracle.

‘It’s like when my grandma sees me not finishing my lunch. Then she assumes I am sad and angry and asks what bad happened to me at school. How…’

Finally, the bus arrived at Darius’s destination. He took his things and while waiting for the bus to stop, he kept his eyes on the doors, resisting the temptation to have a quick look at the good looking young lady sitting nearby. The door opened and he exited the bus.

It was his first time coming to the Raberry village, which was north east from his city. It wasn’t very populated, about five hundred citizens. Darius quickly found a small general shop and bought a map of the local area and pack of melon bubble-gums, his favorite flavor. After that he asked the clerk for directions, who gladly helped him. Probably because he was a customer and the clerk had nothing else to do..

Darius’s destination was a hunting cottage east of the village, occupied by a former-hunter, now freshly recruited into the the Hunter unit. It was the one Darius transferred into. While PA was supposed to act in city and settlements, helping with administrative tasks and interactions with civilians, the Hunter unit was responsible for monitoring the situation in the forests and hills around the cities and villages. In comparison with PA, Hunters had less members and acted in small teams.

While walking through one of the Raberry streets, Darius threw a melon gum into his mouth. It tasted good. He kept looking around but saw only a few people. They looked ordinary, like the baptism never happened. The only exception was a mark on a neck on some of them. The most enthusiastic were the kids. A bunch of them ran around the street, making extravagant gestures as if the magic could shoot from their hands at any moment.

‘Well, it really could,’ smiled Darius for himself. When the kids were passing next to him, they slowed their mad run. A soldier was soldier. For the kids, he was an adult man in a soldier-looking uniform. Well, for six to nine years old kids is everyone older that 15 an adult.

Darius saw as the kids nudged each other. After passing him, one of them called at him in a shaking voice.

“Um, s-sir?”

Darius stopped and turned. The little caller was a girl with blond hair.

‘Huh and here I thought that a boy would be braver to call me. Am I biased? Yeah, probably.

“Could you, ummm show us some uhh magic? Please?”

Darius chuckled and came closer.

“Sorry, I can’t show you anything yet.”

“Oh, oh. Okey, well, goodbye sir!” she said a bit disappointed and quickly went away with her group. Darius thought about sharing his gum but then shook his head, the kids would be just scared if he went after them.

After a fifteen minutes Darius exited the village at its east end. The round changed into a footpath made of dirt. He passed by farm fields, still unploughed. The path lead uphill. Trees started to appear and when the uphill finally ended, Darius was already in a forest. It wasn’t very dense and te trees weren’t higher than eight meters.

Darius stopped and looked on his left side. About five meters from him, a man was silently leaning against a tree trunk. His eyes and hair were both brown, as was his beard. He was a bit older than fifty years and wore camouflaged jacked and pants. Darius felt that with his piercing eyes, he spotted Darius long ago.

With an energetic movement, he pushed himself away from the trunk and walked to Darius.

“Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon. I guess you are the newbie?”

“Yes, that would be me. You can call me Darius, sir.”

“No sir for me. There are no sirs in the forests. Beru is the name. Follow,” ordered Beru and went further into the forest on the pathway’s left side, away from it.

Darius, feeling tense, followed. After ten minutes, the forest started to be a bit more dense. Darius noticed that even though his steps were not very loud and he hit a branch or moved leafs only from time to time, the old man’s steps very noiseless.

‘Must be experience. He should be also both more agile and stronger than me.’

Finally, it seemed like they arrived at their destination. Before them was a small meadow with a creek. Next to it was a wooden cottage. The man opened the doors and motioned for Darius to enter.

‘Should have asked him for the identification card when I met him. Now would be quite an awkward time for it. Ugh, whatever. I will remember this mistake and try to not make it with another person.’

Darius entered the cottage. The man followed and closed the wooden door.

On the left side of the entrance room was a wooden table and sideboard. It was probably both the kitchen and dinning room in one. There were three exits from the kitchen, not counting the door they entered by. The pointed on the leftmost one.

“There is a storage room and behind it the toilet. You are lucky we have drains sump here so you don’t have to go outside. It’s quite deep since there is the creek nearby.”

After receiving a nod from Darius, he continue with the bad news.

“Well, you won’t have much of an electricity here and by that I mean none. For light, we have lamps with batteries. The heat comes from fireplace. Careful with that one, we don’t want the cottage to be on fire,” explained Beru as he pointed at the fireplace right from the entrance doors.

“The door next to storage is to your room, you can drop your things there.”

The man opened the doors and both of them entered.

“As you can see, it’s not much but you have a bed and table with chair, one of the lamps and two shelves. Plus, the view from the window.”

“It’s enough, I didn’t expect to live in a palace,” commented Darius.

“The room on the right from this one is mine. Unpack your things, I will show the equipment we have after that.”

The “equipment” consisted mostly of some cups and plated, another two lamps and other ordinary things. In the storage room there were tons of batteries, food rations, some aid kits, bottles,..

And bullets with two double-barrel hunting guns. Beru offered to teach Darius how to handle them, but for the time being he was given only a dagger for his self defense. Well, dagger.. its length was something between knife and scimitar. Darius knew some basics about knifes but was still a beginner. Beru promised to teach him that too.

Darius started to feel that despite looking like a stern grizzly, Beru was a nice guy. He also let him borrow his spare camouflage jacket which was more suited for outdoors than the top of Darius’s uniform.

It appeared that there were many logistic problems. Beru explained that Darius was supposed to be given a new set of hunting clothes and bunch of other things. Luckily, Darius brought his personal warm underclothes. And Beru would lend him other items like creams against cold until a new supplies came, which was about in a half a month.

Beru showed him around the cottage, explained that the water for cooking and washing was from te creek and if he wanted to have warm water he needed to use a special pot, different from the one for cooking, to warm the water in fireplace.

Then they went for a small stroll into the forest and Beru explained the locations of important places. If we take the cottage as a center point, then the Raberry village was southwest, the path that Darius used was south, east of cottage was lake from which the creek went. It was also a place where animals often gathered.

Darius and Beru were supposed to keep an eye on the changes in the wildlife so they were supposed to visit the lake everyday and rotate patrolling between different parts of forest.

“Don’t worry, I will come with you for the first days. After that you will need to work on your own.”

After a simple dinner, goulash with bread, they went into their respective rooms.

Darius borrowed some reports from Beru to learn more about the everyday situation. He also studied the map for a long time and tried to remember the terrain.

The darkness came quickly, faster that in cities. Partly because of the trees around the cottage, partly because hills further in east.

At 21:30 Darius went to bathroom, washed his teeth with cold water from nearby bucket and went sleep. He was glad that the blanket was really thick because it was really cold in the cottage during winter day, not mentioning the night.

‘Tomorrow will be a busy day. Although there haven’t been any serious changes in the nature yet, it is only a matter of time. As one of the perceptive officers mentioned, the baptism was not only for humanity but for all the living beings on Earth.’