Dinner was a dry, flat bread, slathered with a substance that looked like honey but turned out to be closer to porkfat. With it came several cuts of bacon, fresh mushrooms, and an alcoholic drink that tasted like ass but was, more importantly, alcohol.

They clinked cups, and his host pointed to each ingredient in turn, naming them. He pointed back and reiterated, then to himself. “Pike.”

Somehow, it was that small, classically trite moment that made him suddenly feel the vastness of space between him and home. Like, goddamn. Magic. Elves. Goblins. Yesterday he had walked through the sterile corridors of a space station chewing a nutrient bar flavored - and somehow this tiny detail stuck in his head like a nail through a plank - YoHo Carribean Rum’n’Punch.

It had tasted god-awful and he missed it.

Today he was eating hobbit-food with a goblin.

It was hard to feel farther than home than that moment of dizzying contrast.

She pointed to herself. “Kadra.” She barked, and then set in on her food, tearing the chewy oil-soaked bread apart with sharp little teeth.

“Kadra.” Pike repeated. It was then that the message popped.

Learn Skill - ‘Aedian Language’ ?

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“Oh thank god. Yes!”

Unfortunately, it didn’t magically beam the knowledge of how to communicate into his brain. It was more like, when she explained a word to him it stayed in his head, as clear as crystal. No matter how many things he pointed to and she named, every word stayed stuck fast in his head. It was a nice little boost to push him along.

He lifted and dropped his empty cup until she caught on, giving him the word for ‘fall’ instead of ‘cup’.

“Pike fall.” He said, using finger to trace a long, long descent.

‘Kadra’ responded by miming bonking her head, and making a stupid face. He took offense at the bark of laughter. It wasn’t that funny.

Pointing to the armcom, he jabbed his finger up. “Armcom fall.”

That got her to perk up. Literally. Those broad, sail-shaped ears fluttered expressively, and she leaned forward, a greedy grin on her face. She pointed up and said, in the clear tones of a question, a word he didn’t recognize.

He squinted at her until his confusion became evident.

Holding up a finger, she said the local equivalent of ‘one’. Then two fingers, ‘two.’

One to two fingers, and that word again.

It was more.

He nodded. “More armcom fall.”

The goblin tried to hide it, but Pike saw the greed on her face plain as day. Suddenly it made sense why the elf-girl hadn’t taken him to the city directly. They saw a juicy opportunity in him and his strange artifacts, and were hoping to keep the haul for themselves. The less people knew the less people they had to share with.

And would they still be interested in keeping him alive, once they’d found their prize?

His stomach still ached vaguely from the sealed-over wound. Considering there was nobody here who’d understand his attempts to pantomime ‘my guts are full of glue and I need someone to take it out of me so I can go to the bathroom’ it was only going to get worse before it got better. He was going to need to rip the sealant out himself.

But that was going to have to be a tomorrow problem. Homesickness, exhaustion, the vertigo of being surrounded by the new and unusual, the trials of learning a new language - it all added up to an aching need to close his eyes.

He mimed laying a head against a pillow and sleeping. She laughed, indicating no pillow, and the floor.

About what Pike expected.

She touched the floating orb, and it slowly dimmed, until it was barely more than a night-light floating in the air. He groaned and stretched himself across the rust-knobbed roughness of the floor, curling one arm under his head, and quietly drawing his pistol. Less because he expected a midnight bash on the head, and more to make it harder to steal.

It was amazing how fast he went under. Almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

But it wasn’t dreams that found him.

Next Talent 000/100

Defeat Slime Lv. 1 - 10 Essence

Defeated Stalking Mantis Lv 16. - 10 Essence

Defeated Enemy Five Levels Above - 100 Essence

Defeated Enemy Ten Levels Above - 300 Essence

Learned New Skill x 2 - 200 Essence

Learned Signature Skill - 200 Essence

Discovered Aedian Language - 100 Essence

Child’s Ingenuity Bonus - all gains x2

Talent Earned!

Next Talent 000/300

Talent Earned!

Next Talent 000/500

Talent Earned!

Next Talent (Earth) 0000/1000

Talent Earned (Earth)!

Next Talent (Earth) 0000/3000

The words filled his head, and he felt that fuzzy, electric sensation between his brows, that jolting feeling like lightning was landing between his eyes and penetrating into his body.

He rolled over, sweating, and woke up.

This world was really too goddamn strange to let him even get a nap in. Not far away, Kadra snored. Moving quietly, although the metal hull underneath gave every step an echo, he went to the ladder up and began to climb, clambering out onto the top of the fallen giant. The night air was cool and full of dew.

For miles, it was all prairie fields and waving grass. The city behind him was a cluster of distant lights, like fireflies, and lonely torches burned at the top of other watchtowers.

Settling down, dangling his feet over the edge of the giant’s shoulders. Pike had been on dozens of worlds, but this one, this one was the strangest of them all. He really couldn’t pretend to understand half of what was going on around him. But in quiet moments like these, it wasn’t so different either. The wind blew. The grass waved. The night was solitary and calm.

He settled back, and blinked.

There was no ‘moon’. Hovering above them all, luminous white, was an enormous floating island with a golden palace built atop its back.

Pike just laughed, and closed his eyes.