Dan was in a forest, and the forest was beautiful. Massive coniferous trees towered above him, maybe one hundred eighty to two hundred feet at their crest. The air was crisp, impossibly fresh, and perfumed with the scent of pine. Smaller trees of different kinds were interspersed with the titans, as if children playing at their knees. The moment before, he had been speaking with a blue alien named Sam, who wore a business suit and sat at a glass desk in an endless white void as he offered Dan a cup of tea, then scrambled his guest's settled beliefs of how the world worked. And what the world was. Or if the world was. Screw Sam. Or thank him? Whatever. Realm shift, new world that's apparently Tolkien inspired, except that the whole fantasy genre is apparently a plant designed to prepare mankind for the weirdness to come. Probably thank Sam. The realm shift had a bit of a foreboding name, but the process had been completely instananeous. There was no feeling of motion, no sensation of the passage of time, no changes in his body such as vertigo or nausea. He was there, and now he was here.

For a new world, it didn't look that new. The sun shone brightly through the trees. Lovely little orange flowers shaped like violets bloomed in the shadows of thick trunks. White flowers with broad petals that spread out like arms waiting to hug somone clustered in well lit patches where the sunlight was less obstructed. Irridecent dragonflies, or creatures very similar to them, flit about purposefully. The only thing that hinted this could be somewhere other than Earth was that it was clearly spring. The day before it had been well into autumn. If he remembered right there weren't many pine trees in the southern hemisphere. Though Dan was not going to be overly surprised if the next person he ran into greeted him with a warm "G'Day!"

It was difficult to tell if the forest was truly much nicer than any other Dan had seen, or if his enhanced senses allowed him to appreciate this one in a way he never could have before. Even in an office building and its immediate surroundings, processing the constant, rushing flow of unfamiliar sensory data had been an intense experience. Now, out in the natural world (a natural world?), the wash of sight, sound, scent, thermal sense, sonar map and life was again almost overwhelming. Especially, the world exploded in his new ability to sense life. He could sense the plants, the moss, the trees, worm like creatures in the soil, small quick tree dwellers above. It was all just so achingly, indescribably, beautiful.

Dan didn't quite know how much time passed before he was able to pull the reigns on his wayward mind and redirect it to the the unusual task at hand. It was probably a few minutes. So then: He was in the woods in a world very similar to but that was probably not in fact Earth. Breathable air. Complex biome. No large animals in the immediate vicinity. Lush vegetation, probably quite a bit of water nearby, though he could not smell in what direction. It was cool, probably mid fifties, so hypothermia was not an immediate concern but could be an issue at night. The usual wilderness survival advice did not seem too helpful here. It was technically true that he was lost, but it would be equally true anywhere else on a planet that wasn't Earth, though perhaps somewhere with other people - and he had to assume there were people, if only to preserve his sanity - would be an exception. It was both too late and too completely impossible for him to prepare ahead of time. No map, no compass (was there even a magnetic field?), not even the certainty that the sun rose in the east and fell in the west. It probably did, but at the moment he couldn't remember the celestial mechanics that wrote that specific law of life of earth. So it wasn't something he could count on wherever he was. No way to let someone know where he was, what route he was taking, when he planned to be back. There wasn't going to be a rescue party sent to look for him. This was a much more primal, pure survival situation.

On the other hand, in some ways he was not badly off. With a mental command, he reviewed his Status.

Name: Daniel Martin

Age: 29

Species: Human

Class: Esper

Level: 5

Health: 215/215

Aether Pool: 210/210

Health Regeneration: .082/minute

Aether Regeneration: .35/second

Attributes

Strength: 24

Constitution: 23

Agility: 32

Perception: 104

Aether Attunement: 22

Available: 0

Skills

Sling Marksmanship, Level 5

Perks

Brain Cage

Enhanced Evasion 1

Universal Translator

(3 available)

Aether Abilities

Unerring Aim [self] (R5, Esper): Level 1

Sensory Locus (R5, Esper): Level 1

Peer Through Past [recent, item focus] (R3, Esper): Level 1

Minor Restore Health (R2, Restoration): Level 1

Minor Aether Bolt (R1, Evocation): Level 1

Detect Monster (R3, Esper): Level 1

Sense Deceit (R6, Esper): Level 1

Eagle Eye (R3, Esper): Level 1

Universal Compass (R9, Esper): Level 1

Penetrating Sight (R4, Esper): Level 1

(4 available)

He was superhuman. On attributes alone, Dan was now more than twice as durable, twice as strong, and three times as agile as an average man without even considering his truly ludicrous senses. On top of that, he had an aether healing ability, superhuman regeneration, balance, reflexes, precognition, danger sense, an amulet that let him launch freaky but powerful fire balls, thermal sense, danger sense, life sense, power sense, system identify, echolocation, and now whatever sense weakness was. Throw an aether ability that gave him supernaturally perfect aim on the pile and minor aether bolt on that pile. Add all of it up, and he should be quite good at seeing danger's approach and running away from it very fast.

Dan paced languidly among wildflowers and underbrush and thought. Why was this place so incredibly similar to Earth? Could there possibly be a world where everything was so very much like his home? Plant life, animal life, climate, atmosphere, the sun in the sky, everything was just like the world Dan had known. But as Sam had said, it's a big multiverse. Something told him that his puny human brain probably couldn't begin to truly comprehend just how big a multiverse could be. So yes, absolutely, there could be a world like earth, but with wizards, dragons, elves, orcs, goblins, monsters, dungeons, and magic of old that was actually aether abilities all along, given a sufficiently large multiverse. There could be billions, trillions such worlds.

Was he actually on Earth, or had Sam lied about that? It still didn't make sense to him that a being of vast, incomprehensible power, which Sam held himself out to be, could possibly have trouble lying to Dan and getting away with it. It didn't ring true; it was absurd on its face. On the other hand, it was obviously absurd - why, if a super intelligent being who clearly had a more than passing familiarity with human norms, brain function and psychology wanted to lie about why they couldn't lie, would they make up a story that rang false to their audience? It didn't make any sense. But then again, Sam would know that, so it did make sense. The spiraling levels of this analysis made Dan's head hurt, reminded him of a scene from a movie. Clearly, he can not drink the tea in front of Sam. But he also can not drink the tea in front of him.

Or maybe, just maybe, Dan was the chosen one, just like his R10 on a presumably one to ten rarity scale blessing labled him - a Chosen Esper, before whom even well dressed, blue skinned multidimensional functional gods dare not lie. He was the Preordained Hero and Protagonist of an epic tale, to be sung by bards across worlds and universes. Or maybe he was so incomprehensibly small, insignificant before the power that was Sam, that it didn't matter whether he was lied to or not. But then why would Sam take the time to speak with him at all? Why was Sam messing with him, with Earth? Perhaps because he could be in a lot of places, doing a lot of things, at one time. As he sat and talked with Dan, Sam may have been taking care of a thousand other tasks in each of a million other universes. Dan still had no idea what Sam was, really, other than that he was definitively not a blue skinned humanoid. His best guess was some manner of obscenely advanced artificial intelligence, possibly even a subroutine or something of the System itself. Maybe Sam had simply told him what he needed to hear. A patient parent, managing a cranky, tired, toddler. I'm not sleepy yet, I don't want to go to bed. That's ok sweetheart, let's play a game instead. We'll both lay down, close our eyes, and hold very very still. Whoever makes a sound or moves first loses.

In the end, it probably didn't matter much. Focus on the basics of survival. Find water. Find food. Look for civilization. Keep alert for anyone or anything that might bring harm. If this was Earth, he'd make it to other people sooner or later. Dan was sure he could do that with the abilities he now had. But it was smarter to assume this really was a different world, a new realm, and he had to find his way. Keep his mental balance. Stay warm. Stay alive.