When my attacker began to step backwards instead of pressing forwards with his wire-weapon, I had an inkling that something was about to happen. Half a second later, my expectation was rewarded: A magical halo of light began to shimmer about the man’s helmeted head. This magic is getting ridiculous. Honestly, what would come next? After a magically animated metal wire and magically accelerated shots, anything was on the table. I planted my feet, and pretensioned my muscles for a quick dodge. With the cleats that my skinsuit’s shoes currently had I was quite nimble. Then, the magical lightshow above the man’s head ended abruptly and he pointed a gauntleted finger towards me.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but what happened next was waaaay down on the provisional list of possibilities that I’d made; a list that included “magical laser beam” and “magical gravity manipulation” among others. Sure, most of the entries were complete shots in the dark—I had no clue what magic could and couldn’t do—but instead of needing to dodge some sort of exotic magical attack or weapon that defied conventional physics, my cyberwarfare suite kicked online. What. According to my radiometric sense, Haddral had suddenly started emitting wideband gigahertz-range signals, preformatted in a scheme that was unknown to me and aimed directly at my head.

Completely flummoxed, I began sifting through the Knight’s signal and picking it apart. Do these people have some sort of hidden comm-implant? Is this a completely magical effect? The first surprise was that it was a digital signal, and although I couldn’t decrypt or interpret whatever it was yet, the formatting clearly delineated into conventional bits and packets—this wasn’t just noise or a jamming attack. Once I had those, my signals intelligence subroutines went into overdrive, searching vast databases of recorded signals, patterns, and frequency hopping techniques. This didn’t take too long; after all, the subroutine was explicitly designed for and excelled at combat applications: decrypting enemy communications or picking up weapons targeting locks were what it was built for. When it eventually found a possible match, I was reaching the limit of how much surprise could be felt. It had gone through all sorts of databases until it narrowed the incoming signal down to something you’d find in a hospital, not a battlefield. Here I am, on this strange world with humans that shouldn’t exist receiving… raw neuroscanner output?

The signals intelligence subroutine had matched the signal, located the checksums and data integrity features, and figured it out: The data I was being streamed was approximately what someone would get if they put their head in a medical neuroscanner, live-captured their consciousness, and then formatted it to overwrite someone else’s brain. I, being completely bereft of a meat-based mind, was immune, so I simply started recording: the code would remain inert as long as I didn’t simulate it on purpose. Why would the Knight be transferring his or some other consciousness over the air like this? It sure is a strange strategy.

More interestingly, surface level examination of the consciousness data revealed some anomalies: The general structure and neural meshes transmitted appeared as if they’d been captured from an unaugmented human—like what I’d get if I put Dakla in a neuroscanner—but there were also some parts grafted on—parts that were clearly digital or programmatically created. Cautiously, I looked closer at one of these bits of software and mentally flinched when my antivirus suddenly kicked in with digital fury and burned the code away when it started to make a basic cyberattack. It seemed someone had incorporated some autonomous software defenses in their consciousness. How curious.

I’ll deal with this later, I thought as I redirected the completed consciousness file transfer into a sandbox environment and saved it for later. I still had two Paladins to handle.

Having completed his mysterious mid-combat file transfer, the knight started backing up, and his body language seemed expectant. Then, I realized what he’d done: transferring the consciousness with attack-ware attached to it must’ve been some sort of special attack. No clue where he got it though, what’s he expecting now? Obviously, if his file transfer had been an attack and I’d had a flesh-and-blood biological brain, the mind he’d transferred to me could now be assuming control: remote neural imprinting was a scary technology—a millennia ago. No modern human didn’t have sensor baffling around their skull to protect from others listening in, and it really only worked well on biological brains. As for the goal of the presumably malevolent mind, that was quite obvious: it probably was designed to kill me just like his metal whip and the sword were.

I stood still watching the two Paladins. They stood, watching me, Haddral’s whip sword now lazily repeating one of his earlier patterns in the air in front of him—almost an afterthought. Dakla, from my drone’s-eye-view was currently leaving her hut burdened with a heavy pack. She’d made it safely and was now fleeing into the night. Now, what should I do with the knights? I found it likely that these two, or at least “Haddral”, were quite uncommon specimens. Killing him would invite trouble later, and, well, I didn’t see a need to kill these two now that it was abundantly clear I outmatched them, and I’d bought enough time for Dakla to escape. All I had to do was secure my own escape and apologize to Dakla for my mistake.

I kept a close eye on the two waiting men with my drone, turned around, and started running. Through the drone, their body language reflected surprise, and the larger one even took two steps forwards before he presumably saw how fast I as moving and gave up the chase. I quickly and silently melted into the darkness of the night.

Finding and catching up to Dakla in the dark wasn’t difficult. Burdened with her heavy pack as she was, she hadn’t gone that far, and I’d only run a short loop in order to lose any potential pursuit—not that the knights were following me. My drone was still following them and as soon as I’d left, they’d begun to hightail it back to town where they saddled their horses and began to gallop out of the village. After that, I ordered my drone to return, reasonably confident that they wouldn’t be immediately pursuing us.

Dakla was walking along a dirt path, leading away from the village. She held a shuttered lantern casting just enough light for her to see by and on her back was an enormous pack which looked completely overburdened with herbs and other dried plants. Unnoticed by her, I moved ahead of her and waited for her to come to me as not to scare her. Seeing me, her expression flashed from one of surprise to something more distant—something colder. I had to take the initiative:

“Dakla, I’m sorry for what I did.”

She was silent for a moment before breathing out, continuing to walk, and turning her eyes back on the ground in front of her. I fell into step beside her.

“I’m sure you just thought you were doing the right thing,” she said after a while of walking in silence, “but because of you, I’ve got to find a new village—a new life.”

What should I say? I’ve always followed the “don’t make excuses” school of thought: when I mess up, trying to shift blame or rationalize away the situation is often the wrong move. I’m sure she knows why I did what I did.

“Again, I’m sorry. What my instincts told me—what I thought was the right course of action clearly wasn’t.”

Silence resumed and we walked through the dark forest for a while, Dakla strangely unencumbered by the large pack. Was she using magic to lighten her load? Eventually she spoke up:

“Although it went wrong, and I’d have preferred another outcome, hindsight says you probably made the right move.”

What?

“I couldn’t have known that there were two Paladins lurking in the shadows. If I’d surrendered or gone with Larkin, they’d have doubtlessly interrogated me and then my secret—what I am—would’ve seen light.”

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“Well, for me it’s quite simple: I’ll need to find a new village to settle down and then spend ages building up a smidgen of trust again, so they don’t run me out at the first opportunity.”

“Why do you do it then?”

“…It’s who I am. Look, it’s somewhat evident that you don’t hold what I do in a very high esteem, but I am good at my craft and it genuinely brings me joy to help others with my skills. I don’t know what else I’d do—I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Become a farmer? A tailor? Pah; never!”

I felt a bit transparent at that moment. Her plant-and-poultice methods were obviously barbaric, but I’d thought that I’d been a bit more subtle with my distaste out of politeness. Despite that though, I found I respected her drive, and noticed with a sudden jolt that I didn’t have anything like she did: a drive, a passion at her very core. Yes, there were things I wanted to do, questions I wanted to answer, and places I wanted to go, but the way that Dakla described her profession was different. To her, being an Herbalist or a Witch wasn’t an occupation, it was an identity. I don’t—Dakla interrupted my train of thought by continuing:

“And besides, getting a fresh start might be interesting. There are things I know now that I wished that I’d known when I first settled down in South-Tenstone. Doing things right the first time could be just what I need.”

“I’m sorry, what’s ‘South-Tenstone’?” I asked

Incredulously, Dakla looked at me before laughing out loud, scaring the night insects into a brief period of silence. Once she had her laughter under control, she said, “It’s the name of the village we just left Elise, you never asked! Tell me, what were you referring to it as?”

I blushed, “I’ve just been calling it ‘the village’.”

“Ha! As if there were only one village.” Dakla drifted off, chuckling.

Sheepishly, I had to admit she was right. How had it never occurred to me to ask the name of the place I was at? Probably because ‘village’ was such an alien concept before I arrived here.

“But back to our discussion of the future,” Dakla said, “we’ll have to part ways eventually. I don’t think you want to settle down in a village and you’re not apprentice material anyways—no matter how good you are at finding things.”

I chuckled. I could respect Dakla’s drive to be an Herbalist, but she was right. I had no intention of settling down in a village somewhere and picking plants for the rest of eternity—or at least until some critical irreparable internal component failed.

“I think I’m going to heed your advice and search for someone to teach me magic, or a magic user powerful enough to send me home.”

Dakla nodded, “Very well. I can tell you now that you’ll definitely have trouble blending in, but since you’re still alive after holding off not one—but two—full paladins, I suspect you’ll be able to handle most of what could be thrown at you.”

“Paladins are that good?”

Dakla gave me another incredulous stare.

“What? He wasn’t even that fast. And besides, I didn’t have a proper weapon.”

Under her breath, I heard Dakla say, “wasn’t even that fast—ha” before she continued at a regular volume, “You should realize that a full Paladin is about the most powerful combatant that will just be wandering about? Anything more deadly is usually contained in noble courts or tenured in magical academies.”

“Huh.”

We walked in companionable silence, with only the occasional minor exchange of words, till deep into the night. Eventually, Dakla spoke, “I think it’s time to set up camp—you’re welcome to share my fire of course.”

I agreed and helped her set up a small campsite. She was tired, and after starting a small fire to make cooking easier in the morning and provide a slight buffer against the night’s chill, she rolled out a sleeping mat and bag before quickly falling asleep. I, strictly speaking, didn’t need sleep, but I’d been running without a rest cycle since my arrival on this strange planet. Now’s as good a time as any, I thought as I leaned back against a tree and set my drone to pursue a lazy perimeter. Closing my eyes, I ramped down my processing speed and fell into a calming meditation—letting time and the night slip by.