The strange party of three: a mage, a broad and armored woman, and a weird man with unknown magic emerged from the line of trees that indicated the edge of the forest. From there, a path was barely visible extending upwards towards the edge of the crater and into the plains above. It was riddled with overgrowth and weeds, opening up to a steep stony area that would be difficult to traverse, but it was a path nonetheless. Smoke was visible in the distance, rising up in the air from the fireplaces and artisan workshops of Farcall. It pooled in a cloud that hung above the city, with barely a wisp of grey being carried away by a wind current at the top, like a funny hairstyle of an eccentric glittered man.

“That’s it! That’s the city over that edge!” Toora cried out. “We’re through!”

Edmund nodded, giving a nod to Lisa as well but getting no reaction.

“Amazing. No more monsters, then? We’re safe?” he sounded exhausted, and indeed he was. This had not been an easy journey for him, or for the rest of the team.

Toora nodded enthusiastically. “No more monsters. The road is clear, and the magic concentration is down to normal levels!”

He could feel it too, even better than she could, considering their earlier conversation last night. Taking a breath back inside the forest was like trying to breathe thin, heavy and humid air that brought no restoration to his lungs. Every molecule of magic was trying to penetrate his body and deplete him of Hume energy molecules, and he felt his power stifled and suppressed. Here, he was walking straight again after a huge weight had been lifted off of his back.

Also, since they were safe, it was finally time to do something he had wanted to do for more than a day.

Time for my dose of gratification, delayed just like I hate it. Praetor?

“Yes, sir?”

Get ready for a transfer of Humes. I’m sending you 75% of my stock. Please tell me stats and numbers when you receive them, I need to add some gamification to this whole process or I don’t think I will stick to the plan.

“Yes, sir. I will try to stimulate your dopamine levels with tangible results delivered on a regular basis. I will draw inspiration from the formulas employed in 21st century mobile games like—”

Praetor?

“Hume energy received sir. I will put it to use and report back.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Production of reality-bending Hume Energy increased. Task: Axiom preliminary repairs: 15%. Task: external sensors optical suite repairs: 68%. Internal sensors repair complete. Note: unexplored areas need to be explored in order to gain sensor access. Internal energy generation at 23%. Note: manual repair of the Fusion reactor will require 41 days at current rate of Hume generation. Note: due to efficiency improvements, the total ratio of Hume power you will receive has increased by 28%.”

Edmund savored the sweet taste of all those numbers. The dopamine, the literal orgasmic brain experience made him blissfully numb until it eventually faded away leaving him thinking only one thing: it could be even better.

Not bad, Praetor. Not bad. But you can do better. I expect better next time.

He felt the AI nod, however strange it would be for an AI that chose to exist as a mass of luminous cubes to nod, and he severed the link.

***

“I’m going to need you to provide me with a disposable person, devoid of all magic.” Edmund said, after a long silence.

Toora didn’t look at him but nodded, then turned to Lisa. “Lisa, you’re on the job. When we get to Farcall, I’ll go to the guild while you search for a suitable person.”

“Got it, boss. Any special requirements?” she asked, and Edmund noticed that she had asked the mage, and not him. In fact, she wasn’t even acknowledging him.

The mage, in turn, looked at him. “None,” he said in response, “only that this person should know the local language.”

She nodded again, and kept walking. Edmund exhaled. What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with both of them?

He couldn’t keep the curiosity in check. “You’re not gonna ask what I need it for?”

She shook her head. “No need to. You asked for it so you must have a reason.”

He frowned. “But you have been asking about my stuff and motives before.”

There seemed to be no consistency to her behaviors that he could see, and he didn’t get why.

She looked down and at him, a complex expression on her face. “That was conversation. This is a request.”

“So you’re not curious?”

She placed her hands on her hips, but tried her best to hide her reaction to the question and to look unfazed. “Of course I am.” She said, “but these are things I will let you explain if you want, but will not ask you to.”

He nodded. The city was still a way ahead, the smoke now becoming denser and more visible but with most of the buildings still hidden by the stone formations.

“You do have an idea, don’t you?” he tested the waters.

She shrugged. “I think you need it to learn the language.” Then, she turned towards him without stopping and looked at him expectantly, walking backwards for a moment.

He smiled at the sight. “Exactly.”

She was visibly happy to have guessed correctly, and the trio resumed walking with the mage at the head with a skip in her step.

“I have been using the Hume field to translate for me so far, but I think that in a framework of scarce resources I better learn the actual language.”

She nodded. “Good idea, yeah.”

The silhouette of the city slowly appeared in the distance. First, they saw the tips of the towers. There were few inside, proof of status of the wealthy or of power for the guild. Both were symbols of something that had long faded, and even from here it was evident to Edmund’s eyes that they were not coming back anytime soon. The towers lacked their… luster, or something else akin to that that was hard to put into words. Another set of towers appeared soon after: the seven towers that were set within the fortified wall that defended the city from attacks in ancestral times, now barely used. And it was as they slowly rose to view that Edmund got a very bad feeling about what he was looking at.

He tried to observe his party members’ expressions. Lisa was as cryptic as ever, while Toora’s face was hidden from view. Being powerless sucks, he thought to himself, but he wasn’t even sure he really felt that way. It had been long since he had connected with people, even in such a way that he couldn’t really understand them. It had always been the case, he realized, just that this time he was forced to make it work, with no easy shortcuts or escape routes his former immense power granted him in the past.

Back then, people just respected him out of fear, greed, personal interests. Here it was different. A sort of back to his own roots. Like Riddick in that movie…

Toora was slowing down, her gaze glued to the towers. Smoke was polluting the air above the town, and it was quite clear now for all to see that it was not normal city smoke, unless cities of this time were as industrially active as Victorian London. Edmund squinted. The towers closest to their position didn’t look right, and all it took was a small amount of Humes to his eyes to confirm his hunch. They were damaged, and smoke was coming out of them from many places, seeping through holes and gaps in the dislodged stone bricks.

Suddenly Toora’s steps quickened, and the three rushed to the destroyed city gates with great speed. There were bodies, armored and dressed in the garbs of the city militia, laying on the ground scattered among craters, smoking pits, mounds of crumbling earth and green growth that was quickly withering. There was blood. The smell, however, was the worst part. Edmund gagged, but didn’t use his power. His eyes stung together with his nostrils at the pungent mix of smoke, blood, and the stench of death. His brain just pictured it, without him having any power to stop it: a body just trying to stay alive and, in its final moments, releasing everything from its guts and bladder in an attempt to stave off death. Death came anyway.

He wanted to poke at one of the bodies. He bit his lip, and continued on.

Toora was expressionless, hastily walking towards the only guard left at the gate who in turn was approaching them with lazy, tired steps. Almost tumbling with every uncertain step. Edmund couldn’t read her. Not earlier, not now. Was she an emotionless puppet, like he had observed her to be when without external stimuli that weren’t him or Lisa? He remembered spying on her from afar when she was alone, and he felt like he was looking at an android.

No, it wasn’t that. She was not emotionless. She was just… distant. Unfazed and professional at all times. Stern and composed he would say if he had to describe her to someone, with the eyes of someone who had seen a lot, and been through hell and back. With Lisa, she was the leader. Barking orders and commandeering. With him…

“State your business.” The guard tried to make himself sound threatening, but he was beyond tired which was clearly visible by the way was slurring his words.

Toora motioned to follow her lead, and addressed the guard.

“Toora Miller, high D-rank adventurer.” Immediately, the guard’s behavior seemed to change. Toora’s too, as she assumed an air of command. “Who’s the highest ranking adventurer in town?”

Edmund took a mental note that she asked for an adventurer and not a city official.

“That would be you.” He looked at the three from behind his visor. “You’re the only ones left.”

Toora seemed to smirk, just for a moment. Edmund wasn’t sure he had seen it right, it couldn’t be, but by the time he looked again the glimpse of the expression was gone.

“What about the militia? Is the commander still alive?”

The guard nodded. “He is wounded, but alive. He is being tended to at the Guild by a healer.”

“Good. Take us there and brief me on the way there.”

The guard excused himself for a moment, then rejoined the trio and took them towards the inner city. Edmund noticed that another person, without armor, had taken his place. Probably not even a soldier, not like a single soldier standing guard would do anything.

It might have been obvious, as far as observations went, but Edmund needed to retrain all the instincts that being omnipotent for the majority of the time he was alive had dulled. And observation, without artificial or reality-bending aid, was a skill he had lost.

The inner city was not in good shape. The damage was greatest around the gate area, where the brunt of the attack crashed like a wave against unprepared defenses. The battle had raged inside the once thought safe walls of the city, in the very streets where people used to walk and that now were deserted, until finally whatever attacked was repelled.

There were no traces of blood or monsters. Yet, there’s still fires that haven’t been tamed.

The Guild was a large wooden building in the middle of a grassy field, comically out of place among the cramped building of the walled city. It had a single, tall tower that was visible from far away and even from inside the crater of Perpetual Dusk. From here though, it had none of the medieval luster and magnificence. It was run down, abandoned, falling apart.

Clearly, this place had seen better days.

“This way.”

The guard took them to a secluded room upstairs, where a young lady was tending to a rugged old man on a bed. He was still clad in armor, refusing to take it off even for a moment.

As soon as he saw the three enter the room, his eyes lit up. His gaze lingered on Edmund for a moment too long, as if the man was struggling to understand something.

“Adventurers!” he yelled. He clasped Toora’s hands tightly. “Were you sent by the Guild to aid us? Does this mean help is coming?”

She shook her head. “No. We just happened to pass by. What happened here?”

The commander of the guards deflated, gaining twenty years of age in one breath.

“Oh.” He looked down at the ground, muttering something that Edmund couldn’t quite make out. It sounded like “I will die here, one last fight. But what for?” but he wasn’t sure.

“Don’t worry.” Toora said, in an oddly cold way that reminded Edmund of the earlier thoughts he had. “We will stay here, and help in any way we can.”

The man’s eyes shone.

“We won’t die for this city. But we will fight.”

He nodded, and a streak of tear wetted his cheek.

“Thank you,” his voice was strained, “I will not ask for more.”

The mage nodded. “Now tell us what happened.”

“Two days ago one of the hunters went missing. He was hunting a pack, close to the edge of the Forest… he swore he wouldn’t step inside, but when he went missing we all thought he had gone in. You must understand, lady. This is but a small community, despite the many houses you see. They are mostly empty. Ever since the King all but abandoned us… well. We have strong bonds. So, when the hunter went missing, we quickly gathered volunteers and organized a search party.”

Edmund didn’t notice, but Toora saw that he was tapping his foot impatiently on the floor. Seeing this, she frowned, waving with her hand. “Please, get to the point.”

“Yes, sorry. We couldn’t find him. But we found something else. Monsters.” He stopped to catch his breath, “just one at first, but as time went on there were more and more. Eventually we had to give up, and return. We did our best… we were sure they weren’t following. But an hour after our return, just as the sun was setting, they attacked.

We managed to repel the attack. Out of fifteen soldiers of the town, many of which volunteers, we mourned the loss of three. But, at least, we were safe.

We kept watch, just in case. When they attacked again, five hours ago, we thought we were ready. But as they kept pouring out of the forest, one after one after one, I remember standing on the gate wall and my heart sank.”

He started crying. “They all died.” He sobbed, and heaved for air. The emotion hit him all at once, the realization of the past events. “Only one survived the attack. And me. Nobody else.”

The lady, who so far had been silent, slowly approached him and cupped his face. “Shhh… you have saved the town.” Edmund felt the slight vertigo of magic, “you saved me. You did good. You were a hero.”

He calmed down a bit, sniffling with quiet sobs.

The lady turned to Toora. “He was wounded in battle. He won’t be able to fight again for a long while. He is old, and his body is not strong enough to heal him quicker.”

The mage nodded. “I take that there are no adventurers?”

Another woman approached them. She was, Edmund remembered, behind a desk when he entered the building. She was pretending to be busy with stuff, organizing papers and things, but was also watching them intently.

“They all fled. Not that they could have done anything. They were two E and five F-ranks. We have sent a request for urgent help through the Guild network, as well as sent a messenger to the King. So far, no responses.”

This was a town of less than three hundred people, most of which old men, women or people who had come seeking refuge here for this and that reason. It was a husk of a city, a ghost town that had none of the glory its past once held. The crumbling buildings testified to that, to what was lost. Nobody would come and save it: not the King, unless he saw the real threat coming from the forest, not the Guild, unless it managed to lure in adventurers somehow. There were ways to do that latter thing however, and the clerk’s head was already cooking up ideas, in line with the deeper and hidden motives behind the guild’s operations.

“It’s going to take a while.” Toora said. “Quite a long time. Too long. Let’s hope we can keep the city from falling until then. Evacuation won’t be possible. I have seen hordes roam the plains outside the city. Your best hope,” she said sweeping the room with her gaze, “will be to help us defend and fortify this place. For a price, of course.”

The other woman didn’t skip a beat and, with her authority as a guild clerk, crossed her arms and puffed her chest out. “Of course. With the authority given to me by the Guild, I hereby declare Emergency procedures. Double rates for gold and guild exp. On top of that, I will take note of your contributions in the defense of this city, and relay them to the higher authorities for eventual promotions and rank skips.”

Toora smiled politely. To Edmund’s eyes, this had all played out like a script, with Toora and the clerk and even the Commander of the guards acting their roles with full knowledge of each other’s part to play. It was here that it first hit him: they all knew. And they knew because they were part of this place he still saw as an alien playground, as something that wasn’t as real as his former world but more akin to a video game. No. This was a real world, with a real society that had evolved for millennia. It was not going to be the easy, shallow and façade world of a game. This was real, as real as that other world he left behind, worthy of books and articles, dissertations and studies about society and human motives, just like his world was.

And he had the disadvantage of not knowing anything about it.