Scent was the first thing that came to me, the musky scent of damp vegetation filling my nostrils as I gritted my teeth against the blinding pain behind my eyes.

Taste followed shortly after, with the coppery tang of blood filling my mouth.

Next, I gradually became aware of the grass tickling my face and the palms of my hands, and the bone-deep ache in my limbs.

The splitting headache was making it a little difficult to form any thought more complex than "damn this hurts", but I was beginning to get the sense that something was very off. I was pretty sure that I'd woken up this morning in a city that was under about two feet of snow, the predominant scents being diesel exhaust and the hot metallic smell of an electrical heater.

I rolled over onto my side, the better to get a look around, my limbs protesting against even that simple an action.

"Well, I'm sure as hell not in Canada anymore," I muttered as I surveyed the scene.

I lay atop one of many grassy hills which rolled on for miles until finally rising up to meet a jagged mountain range. The mountains themselves were covered in yet more greenery, broken up by swaths of bare cliff face. The blanket of evergreen trees clinging to the mountainside covered the nearby hills as well, though it was threadbare and frayed at the edges until only a few trees were dotted here and there on the nearest hills.

The scene reminded me of trips taken to Banff, and looked every bit like the foothills I'd drive through on the way in, just without any of the scars that humans left on the landscape. Or at least, without most of the scars. My gaze was drawn to the one section that seemed out of place, the one piece of artificiality in all this untouched landscape.

Amongst the craggy ridge of stone tracing its way across the sky was a section that was level. Or rather, it was a section that had been levelled. It was hard to make out the details, covered as it was with the blue fog that comes with such great distances, but it looked like someone had gone to the trouble of building a city up there.

There wasn't any steel and glass to be seen, and most of the buildings looked to be on the short side, but I could see one hell of a clocktower reaching skyward from what appeared to be the centre of the city.

I rolled onto my back and let out a long sigh, squinting against the pain and the brightness, and dreading the thought of dragging my aching body all the way up there. I blinked, holding a hand up before my face in an attempt to let my eyes adjust to the bright summer day, it being a far cry from the sombre winter morning I'd just left.

Through my spread fingers, I caught a glimpse of a dark blue. It took me a moment, still laying there blinking up at the sky, before I finally understood what I was looking at.

There it was, hanging in the sky, proof positive that I was a very long way from home, was a sapphire moon that seemed to fill the whole sky. It was banded like Jupiter, but done all in shades of dark blue rather than orange and brown. It was only about two thirds full, but even so, it was uncomfortable to look directly at it. Not like the sun, more like a very bright lamp that someone had taken the shade off of.

I reached skyward, arm extended, fingers splayed, and tried to judge the size of the thing. From stargazing I knew that with an outstretched arm, anyone's outstretched arm, such were human proportions, the tip of the little finger was about twice the width of the moon. The moon might seem to dominate the night sky, especially when close to the horizon, but the truth was it was only about half a degree wide. By comparison, whatever the hell this thing was called was wider across than I could span with little finger and thumb.

I wasn't looking at a moon. I was on the moon, and I was staring up at a gas giant on the scale of Jupiter. I could only imagine what the nights were like, bathed with blue light and lit up like near-day. As messed up as my current situation seemed to be, the mere sight of the planet in the sky above gave me some hope. It still felt entirely unreal, like a videogame or a dream, but at least it wasn't a nightmare.

Still laying on my back, I turned my head to the other side to get a look down the opposite slope of the hill and saw the dump truck that had hit me.

Oh right, I got hit by a truck.

Its wheels had dug two muddy ruts in the damp sod as it had carried on down the hill, only coming to a stop after it had struck a boulder and rolled, throwing grit, road salt, and fragments of safety glass in all directions. It now sat on its roof, the wheels still slowly spinning away.

I threw myself to my feet and ran down the hill to the truck. Well, ran is a strong word. It was more of a controlled fall while I struggled to keep myself upright and my feet underneath me while gravity did all the work.

I came to a graceful halt by slamming into the side of the truck at high speed, and in my haste to get the door open, I tore off the door handle.

I growled with frustration and let it fall to the dirt. But the window had already been broken when the truck rolled, so I pulled on my winter gloves and yanked hard on the bottom of the window. There was a clang and a clatter as something inside the door broke and fell inside, and the door swung open.

The truck was empty.

The keys were still in the ignition, though the engine had stalled out and after taking off my gloves I found that the seat was still warm, but the driver was gone. The damn seatbelt was even still buckled.

I leaned my head against the side of the truck and sighed, "What the hell?"

What I wanted to do was lay down until I stopped feeling so sore, but I was pretty sure that if I did that I wouldn't want to get up again.

I pulled off my toque, and after a moment to think took off my coat as well. The thick wool wasn't ideal for a sunny summer morning, and heatstroke did not seem like a fun thing to add to my growing list of problems.

Of course, getting the coat off was another matter. I was so stiff that I had a hard time just getting the range of motion to pull my coat off. That hurdle conquered, and with my coat tucked under my arm, and I lifted my sleeve to get a better look at where I'd been struck by the truck.

When it had happened, I'd been caught almost entirely off guard. The walk signal had flipped and I'd just begun to cross the street when a bank of icy green fog had blown down the street. I'd been about halfway across when I heard the rumble of a large engine that was far too close. I had just about enough time to turn my head to see the truck come out of the mist before it slammed into me.

The bullbars on the front of the truck had at least kept me from ending up underneath the thing, but I was pretty sure that it still would have left any normal person as a mass of broken bones. As it was, a bruise so dark that it was almost black was now forming on my bicep on the side where I'd been hit, and judging from how badly it hurt I expected that I'd find a similar injury across my leg.

I felt as much as heard them coming, the pounding of hoofbeats and clanking of armour heralded their approach until finally, a dozen men on horses crested a nearby hill.

I thought them human at first glance, all decked out in segmented plate armour that looked like something the Romans may have favoured, but they weren't quite right. Something about the spacing of the eyes, the proportion of the jaw perhaps? But more than that, the colouration was off. For one, their leader, who wore only a breastplate, was purple. Not purple like an aubergine exactly, more purple in the way that I was pink, but purple all the same. The soldiers themselves didn't seem to have any colour to them at all, or maybe it would be better to say that they were all done in shades of grey. Their skin was pale grey to the point of being nearly translucent, and between the lot of them, what I could see of their hair ranged between white, grey, and black. The horses at least seemed to be conventionally horse-like, though slender as they were, they looked more like something you'd see on a racetrack instead of a battlefield.

The purple guy seemed surprised to see me, but his expression quickly hardened. An order was barked and the soldiers formed up. For a moment I thought they were going to charge me, but they hadn't formed up facing me, they'd formed up facing the far hill.

Bringing my gaze across to that far hill brought to my attention the second group of dubiously friendly horsemen.

There were only four of the newcomers, and these looked like proper knights on proper warhorses. Framed by the mountains and city behind, they struck a rather more imposing figure than the would-be Romans on their glorified ponies. Not only were the riders armoured head to foot in steel plate, but the horses were in full barding as well.

The knight at their fore had a plume on his helmet, or rather, her helmet, as I quickly discovered. She removed it, placing it in the crook of her arm while the other hand rested on the hilt of her sword. Blue skin marked her out as a member of yet another new species, and the solid build, strong jaw, sharp features, and a generally stern look gave me an idea about just what sort of species it was.

Her companions, at this point I wasn't sure if they were male or female, were no less imposing. One stood at each flank of their leader, and with the last knight hanging back a little, they formed a sort of lopsided diamond. With the armour covering up any individualizing details, the two on the flanks may as well have been twins. Both knights had several swords hanging off their saddles. I saw a broad-bladed falchion, what was either a short sword or a large dagger, and long sword. It was the long sword that both knights now favoured, each with a gauntleted hand resting lightly on the hilt.

The last of the knights was the odd man, or perhaps the odd woman, out. They had the same set of weapons hanging off the side of their saddle, but also wore several bandoliers at the waist and across their breastplate and had opted not to wear gauntlets. It was these pouches that the knight favoured, and while one hand held the reins, the other picked through an open pouch as if sorting through a filing cabinet.

The woman met my gaze and gave me a little wink, before fixing her eyes on the purple guy in the other group.

Words were exchanged between the two of them, shouted across the distance, and though the language was unlike anything I'd ever heard, from the tone it was clear that things weren't amicable. I was gestured at more than once, the lady knight tilting her head in my direction and the purple man jabbing his finger. Evidently, I was the topic of conversation.

Or who knows, maybe they wanted the truck.

But then something curious happened. The purple guy finally said something I recognized.

"Simon says."

It had the tone of something read off from phonetics, or a phrase memorized but not truly learned in another language, which I supposed is precisely what it was. But it was clearly meant to be English. The purple guy didn't notice it, too busy staring down the knights I suppose, but the knight caught my look of recognition.

She pulled on her helmet, apparently fed up with the whole affair, and flipped up the visor to shout something at the purple guy and his buddies.

He responded with another "Simon says," followed by a string of words in his own language. It seemed not to be what the knight wanted to hear, and she charged, dropping her visor and drawing her weapon. Her companions followed suit, and at a shout from the purple guy his people rushed to meet their charge while he held his position on the hill.

I didn't fancy being the only infantryman in a cavalry battle, the only unarmed infantryman no less, so I ducked into the cab to find something, anything, that could pass for a weapon. Safety glass crunched underfoot, each step bringing with it a metallic pop as the thin roof buckled and dented underfoot. I cast my gaze across the ceiling, but there was nothing but more glass fragments. I looked up and spied a toolbox jammed in behind the passenger seat, the catch dangling loosely in the upturned truck. It was cramped inside the cab for someone my size, but I managed to flip the catch, and the contents crashed out to the floor.

There honestly wasn't much, it looked more like what one would need to change a tire and not much more, but I could hear the clash of metal on metal and the screams of men and horse behind me, so I settled on a socket wrench. Not a small one either, the thing was a little over two feet long and had quite a bit of heft to it. I wasn't exactly looking forward to swatting someone with it, but was a damn sight better than nothing.

I emerged from the cab to find that the knights had already torn through half of the dozen albino Romans. Yet it hadn't broken their will to fight, and they continued to go after the knights with absolute abandon. Anyone could see that they were outmatched however, even, I expect, the purple guy still up on the hill astride his horse. They gave some good blows, a few of them were armed with maces so not completely helpless against the armour, but they were being picked off one by one.

I watched as one of the albinos got in close to one of the knights on the side away from the knight's sword arm, and swung for the knight's head. The knight twisted in the saddle, trying to get his sword between himself and the mace. Across the body like that and in all the armour, it was an awkward parry, but it was enough. Instead of connecting solidly with the knight's head, the mace struck the shoulder at a poor angle and glanced off.

Now, overextended and with his arm outstretched, the knight struck. The tip of his blade slipped between the segmented plates covering the albino's shoulder, drawing a roar from the wounded man. The albino kept his grip on the mace, but from the way he recoiled back and held his arm close to his body, it was clear that he'd taken a severe wound. The albino, to his credit, wasn't about to give up and took the mace into his other hand.

But it wasn't to be. The knight only needed a little flick of the sword to deflect the weak off-hand blow, but rather than finish off his foe, the knight and his armoured horse skipped back. The wounded soldier, finally seeing a moment of weakness, pressed the attack.

Only to be blindsided by the lady knight charging at his flank. The Roman-style armour already had no protection for the neck, and with his shoulder held low as he clutched his injured arm to his chest, the opening was only made wider.

A savage horizontal chop, amplified by the speed of the charging horse, caught the sorry man in the neck, and she connected with such jarring force that I was amazed she'd kept her grip on the weapon.

She didn't stop there however, one blow flowing into the other as she blindsided another of the soldiers. This one had similarly been teed up by her companion, who had danced back just as she'd rode in, a straight-armed thrust caught the man just above the hips. The sword slipped in a hairsbreadth under the armour, and the force of the blow took the man right off his horse. But as the body twisted and fell, the sword stuck fast and the lady knight lost her grip.

One of the few remaining men thought to capitalize on this chance, maybe the last chance any of them would have at victory, and spurred his horse onwards. But before the lady knight could draw another weapon or the soldier could close the distance, there was a searing light and a stroke of thunder.

A blurry afterimage persisted, drawing a fist-thick line between the knight with all the pouches, and the very brave, and very dead soldier.

The blast of lightning seemed not to care if the man wore armour or not. Either way, he was left on the ground as a smoking corpse.

Even standing on the sidelines, I could feel my heart hammering, harder than it ever had. I'd never been in a real fight before, not really. But I'd been in an awful lot of real pretend fights. Historical European Martial Arts, sort of like mixed martial arts, but you get to whale on the other guy with a sword. It wasn't a game, we weren't LARPing, it was the real deal. Or at least as close as anyone was going to get to a real swordfight in the twenty-first century. Hell, the only difference between my practice sword and the real thing was that I didn't have an edge on mine. I was even skilled enough that I'd won a couple of tournaments. So the rush of adrenaline that came with a fight was familiar to me.

But this, this was something else. I was so amped up that I could barely think. I'd already taken a step towards the melee without realizing it, and I wasn't even sure what side I was going to come down on. All I knew was that I wanted to hurt someone, it didn't matter who.

That blind fury, that familiar fury, seemed to trip something. I'd never had it happen in a fight before, but I could recognize when my control was slipping, and I knew how to manage it.

I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth. It had been elementary school, kindergarten maybe, where the teacher had fed us some line about counting to ten when we were angry. As if that would do anything to calm me down. Eventually, I'd come up with my version, a drill that actually worked, that actually forced me to focus my mind away from the anger. Counting, yes, but by primes, actually forcing the clever bit of my mind to think. To drown out the animal that just wanted to hurt someone or break something.

One, two, three...

I'd felt my control about to slip before, but it had never been this bad-

Five, seven, eleven...

I relaxed my jaw, but kept counting.

Thirteen, seventeen... nineteen...

Loud, live music, sometimes that was a struggle, but even then-

Twenty-three... twenty-nine... thirty-one...

Focus and control started to come back to me, and I finally noticed an odd scent on the air, a sort of animal musk. I opened my eyes, and some intuition brought my gaze to the purple man, still astride his horse atop the hill. He viewed the scene below with obvious irritation, but little more beyond. He seemed to give little thought to the fact that his men were being cut down to a man.

And yes, the wind was absolutely blowing in from behind the purple horseman.

Killgrave, I decided, would be as good a name as any for the man.

Killgrave, just having watched a lightning bolt strike one of his men, finally bothered to call something out. Not, it seemed, a surrender, but an order.

One of the remaining horsemen wheeled away from the knights and charged me, mace in hand. As he did, the two remaining soldiers moved to screen their comrade, without so much as a thought to their own safety.

With the truck at my back I had little room to retreat, but on the other hand, the horse did not seem to have quite the same bloodlust as its rider and wasn't too keen with the idea of charging at full speed into what was effectively a steel wall. The rider leapt as the horse turned aside, and I let out a startled cry as he flew at me. I tried to dodge to the side, but he dropped his mace and flung his arms out wide, catching me around the neck. It almost took me off my feet, but I caught myself on the truck and grabbed for him as his momentum carried him around onto my back.

He growled something in his tongue, and I felt cold steel at my throat. My hand caught the wrist of his knife arm, and I brought my head forward and then snapped it back, driving the back of my head into his nose. He lost his grip on both myself and the knife and tumbled back against the truck.

I wheeled, thankful that I at least had kept a hand on my weapon, and saw him trying to rise. Clear blood was streaming from his broken nose, but he'd drawn yet another weapon, a short sword this time, and for one terrifying moment I thought he was about to drive it into my abdomen.

But he hesitated, his eyes flitting to one side, likely to Killgrave.

I didn't. I belted him in the side of the head with the socket wrench, and helmet or no helmet, he went down like a puppet with its strings cut.

And just like that, there was silence. Broken a moment after, by a single set of hoofbeats, and I turned to see Killgrave riding off, his men and horses dead on the ground.

The lady knight removed her plumed helmet and shook out her hair, the action having the air of something practised, and put her fingers to her lips to let out a piercing whistle.

It took only a moment for the carriage to crest the hill, drawn by four more horses, though not the same breed as the massive destriers that the knights rode. Draft horses, rather than the more refined warhorses.

The knight dismounted, her armoured feet sinking into the muddy ground torn up by the brief battle, and came to meet me by the upturned truck.

She looked like a blue Wonder Woman. Conventionally feminine, beautiful, but beautiful in the way that a thunderstorm is beautiful. At six and a half feet tall, covered in a sheet of steel, she struck a rather imposing figure. Granted, I did stand a full foot and a half taller than her, but even I couldn't help but feel a little intimidated.

She said something that, at least from her expression and tone of voice, seemed to be a friendly enough greeting. The language remained utterly incomprehensible, but I figured that it would be rude not to reply.

"Thank you?" I guessed, "I mean, honestly not totally certain you're the good guys since you did just kill a dozen people."

She arched an eyebrow. This time when she spoke, she tried, what I guessed was, a different language. It wasn't any easier to understand than the first, and was unlike anything I'd heard on earth.

"On the other hand, one of them did try to stab me in the neck, so maybe you knew what you were doing."

She tried a few more languages, and I made a few more pithy remarks to distract myself from the existential dread brought on by the thought I'd been stranded on another planet that didn't have the internet or indoor plumbing. Eventually she ran out of languages and I ran out of pithy remarks, and we settled for gestures.

She made a wide sweeping motion with her arms, I guessed to encompass the whole of her group, and then pointed at the city perched atop the mountain. Then she gestured towards me, herself again, then the city once again.

I nodded, then raised a single finger, hoping that the gestures conveyed the same meaning among her people as they did among humans. But she seemed to get the idea, and didn't seem offended when I turned my back on her to scavenge what I could out of the truck.

I got the toolbox out from where it was stuck behind the seat and replaced what had fallen out of it when I'd been scrambling for a weapon. I had to go around to the other side of the truck to do it, this time careful not to tear off the door handle, but I also checked the glove box. There weren't any gloves, or a gun, as I'd kind of been hoping. But the truck was from Canada, not Texas, so it was no great disappointment. What there was, was a lot of paper. Sheaves of the stuff. I had no idea trucking required so much paperwork, but that's what this all seemed to be.

The toolbox would need to be enough. If there weren't any tires to change on this new planet, at least I could try trading the tools for something useful.

The carriage had pulled up beside the truck while I'd been digging around inside. The lady knight now sat on the running board while her squire, also a woman, though about a decade younger, helped her out of the last of her armour.

With that done the knight now wore only a dark linen gambeson. She stood and motioned for me to join her in the carriage, and the driver, a man, opened the door for me. There were two padded benches, one against each of the front and back walls. I did my best to get comfortable on one while she took a seat across from me.

The carriage was on the large side, which is to say it was almost spacious enough for someone about a foot shorter than I was. It was reasonably wide however, and I settled for leaning over to the side, propping myself up on one elbow.

It wasn't perfect, but sore as I was, I wasn't going to be picky. I'd been hit by a truck, thrown who knows how far, and then attacked by some lunatic on horseback. As cramped as the carriage was, it was a struggle not to pass out then and there.

A struggle I must have lost at some point.

The carriage hit a bump, and I was roused from my slumber. My arm was numb from lack of circulation and I was still so stiff that even sitting up, as much as I could do so, was a challenge. It didn't help that I was also sleep-drunk from my aborted nap, but all that melted away as soon as the lady knight spoke.

"Sleep well?" She asked. In perfect English.

I jerked upright so quickly that I thumped my head on the roof.

"You speak English now?" I exclaimed.

She laughed, not a derisive laugh, but a strong, amused laugh.

"We made a stop while you slept," she explained, and tapped her chest just below the throat.

I looked down, and found that I was wearing a necklace I didn't remember putting on this morning.

I lifted it away from my chest to get a better look at it, and in the dim light of the carriage, I saw that it was a delicate silver chain with a single charm hanging from it. The charm was wrought in the shape of two parted lips, and so finely wrought that I could see the creases in the lips. Not the sort of thing I'd typically choose to wear.

"Magic?" I guessed.

On its face, an absurd question. But then, I had just seen someone killed with a lightning bolt, and there was the whole 'in another world' thing, so maybe it wasn't that absurd.

"Precisely," she said with some surprise, "Magic is not foreign to you then?"

"No. Well, maybe?" I replied haltingly, "What do you mean exactly?"

"Your world, it has magic?" she asked.

"Oh, no," I replied with a shake of my head, "We've got stories and tall tales, but that's it."

"Ah, too bad," she sighed.

"So, a question," I began, brows furrowed, "You said 'your world', as if this is all familiar. Happening across some giant isn't any big deal for you?'"

"Don't sell yourself short, you're certainly more impressive than the usual fare," she assured me, "But if you're surprised that I'm not surprised to see an otherworldly visitor, then don't be. Here at least, we're all from other worlds."

"Oh," I said flatly.

That certainly put a unique spin on things. Would the people here even have answers for my growing list of questions? And why had they built their city up a mountain? There were obviously better and easier places to build it.

"I'm Duchess Temerity, by-the-by," she said by way of introduction, offering her hand.

"Wallace," I replied simply, reaching out to take it.

But she didn't shake my hand like I was expecting her to, as a normal person would. She kissed it. Like I was a princess.

I blinked and felt my cheeks colouring. That was one thing I couldn't get under control, no matter what mental tricks I tried. Pale as I was, it wasn't the sort of thing that was easy to miss.

She pursed her lips, but I saw the smile in her eyes, which only made me turn a deeper shade of red.

"Just Wallace?" she asked, innocently enough, "No titles?"

"Wallace is fine," I insisted.

"That's very kind of you," she said with a smile, "You need only call me Temerity then."

"Well Temerity, thanks for the assist with the purple guy and his friends. Wouldn't have had a fun time if you guys hadn't shown up," I observed.

I searched for some new topic to distract myself from my embarrassment, finally seizing upon one, "Are we in that city I saw, the one up in the mountains with the clocktower?" I asked.

"You're quite welcome," she replied, "and yes. Parabuteo, city of the elves."

"An elf?" I asked, gazing out the latticed wood window of the carriage, "That's what you are?"

The scene beyond fit with the impression I'd gotten of the place from a distance. Cobblestone streets, buildings of old wood, and clothing that looked more like something out of a period piece. It could have been any city in Europe in the time before the industrial revolution. Except everyone was, you know, blue.

"That's correct," she agreed, "Your people are the giants?"

"Uh, not exactly," I frowned, returning my gaze to her, "I'm a human, just an abnormally tall one. Most humans aren't even as big as you are."

"A human? Really," she marvelled, "I have heard of your kind before. It's just fortunate that you arrive on the same day as my guests from Pelignos."

"I don't follow," I frowned.

"Ah, yes," she began, and brought her hands together in front of her, "I suppose some explanation is in order. We're in Parabuteo, city of the elves. A city in which I am the ranking noble, though, for complicated and infuriating political reasons, not the ruler. That 'purple guy' you saw was one of the fey. They live in Pelignos with their slaves, the sprites. The soldiers, for example, those were sprites."

"And you invited some of the fey over?" I asked, suddenly not too keen on anyone that would have slavemasters over as houseguests.

She nodded in reply, and I raised what I thought was the obvious concern, "Do I need to worry about any of them taking another shot at me?"

"Oh, no," she assured me, "I imagine that the little party we ran into was sent to make trouble for my visitors, which is why I was out there in the first place. It is curious though, that their commander ordered one of his men to try to take you hostage."

"Is that what he was doing," I mused.

"You're human, his master is human, I suppose they saw some value in you. Simon may have left standing orders regarding what his subordinates should do, should they happen across another of his kind."

"Simon says," I remembered, "That's how you know what a human is."

She nodded, "Yes, though I've not met this Simon fellow, I've heard descriptions of the man."

I huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh if I'd had more energy, "I could see why you'd mistake me for something else, I don't exactly fit the pattern."

"You have six digits on each of your hands," she noted, "Were the reports I received incomplete, or is that another way you differ from the norm?"

I glanced down at my hand, to the semi-thumb between my thumb and forefinger.

"No, that's just me," I admitted.

"Well, Valentine and Vivian are the two fey noblewomen who I'll be hosting, in fact, I expect they might already have arrived. I imagine that they'll have a great many questions for you. Simon is the only other human I've ever heard about, and as I alluded to, he's not on good terms with my houseguests. You're the first chance they'll have to learn more about their adversary, and I'd appreciate it if you would indulge any questions they might have about yourself and other humans."

"Ah..." I hesitated.

Doing what she asked was a bad idea on so many levels, I just wasn't sure how to politely extricate myself from the situation.

At the very basic level, maybe Simon was an okay dude? Okay, granted, pretty sure he wasn't, what with the slave soldiers and all, but was it the best idea to provide intel and make trouble for him? No, probably not, not without knowing more. He was a reformist for all I knew.

And who was even to say that Simon was the only human running around? Simon might be cool with the fey and their slaves, but there might be someone else out there who wasn't quite as much of a dick. I was pretty sure that whatever Simon had pulled to get some of the fey to follow him had been tech-based. Alone on an alien world, he wouldn't have had many other options. Maybe Simon was really good at math, or perhaps he'd gone all Bruce Campbell on them, "This is my boomstick," that sort of thing. Either way, sharing what I knew wouldn't just screw things up for any other humans running around out there, it was sure to have unintended consequences for the people asking the questions in the first place if I started explaining firearms and the like.

And then there was the selfish reason to say no. I was a freak. I couldn't help but draw stares, just by walking down the street. Not to mention the people that would try to strike up a conversation and pester me about exactly how tall I was, and whether or not I ever played basketball or the piano. On and on until I was doing my prime number drill to stop from strangling them. Once I was sure that I was in control, I'd do what I always did. Smile, nod, and then try to make some excuse to get out of there as politely as possible. There was no way in hell I was going to-

"I'd take it as a personal favour," Temerity added, bringing my train of thought came to a screeching halt.

"A favour," I stated.

"Yes," she repeated slowly, giving me a bit of the side-eye.

"And if I did you this favour..." I began.

Over the years I'd become very good at keeping my emotions to myself. Just as I'd learned to manage my impulses, I'd also learned not to show too much of what was going on inside my head. People already saw a physical freak, and the last thing they needed was to peek behind the curtain and see a mental freak as well. So I kept in control and hoped that everyone saw a perfectly normal person who just happened to be eight feet tall.

And all that was why, instead of jumping up and down on my seat, I was the very image of tranquillity.

"You have something in mind, I take it?" she guessed.

"I want to learn magic," I replied, cautious not to stammer through the words.

Temerity smiled, "Inspired by the spectacle earlier, no doubt. I think I can manage that. I'll speak with my wizard, if he doesn't have the time to teach you, he'll at least be able to find me someone who can."

I think, at that moment, that if I could have found the energy that I'd be standing on the rooftop and screaming at the sky in exultation.

I was going to learn magic.

"He cannot be allowed to learn magic."

I'd been given a room on the manor's third floor. It was spacious, almost in an exaggerated way, as if someone had pushed all their bedroom furniture into their overlarge living room. There was everything you'd expect to be there, but somehow it didn't seem to be enough to fill the space. It was odd, odder even that it should be me remarking on it.

The carpets were purple, with a very deep pile. Between that and the rather luxurious state of the furniture, I updated my estimate of the timeframe I found myself in. I'd seen some knights and had jumped to the conclusion that I was in some medieval fantasy world, when I should have known better after seeing the head-to-toe armour. That sort of thing got popular on Earth about the time matchlocks started showing up, and while I hadn't seen any yet, the guards in front of the manor held halberds, I was likely to happen across some sort of firearm eventually.

On the topic of luxurious furniture, there was the bed. Now I'd gone to a great deal of trouble to get a bed big enough for me back home, not to mention the hassle of getting it into my condo. So the fact that Temerity just had one lying around that was more than big enough for me to stretch out on was a little suspect.

But I guessed that rather than being made for someone my size, it was meant for someone conventionally elf-sized. Just, perhaps, more than two of them. Between that and the room's position away from the rest of the bedrooms gave me a particular impression about where I now stood.

Or rather, where I laid.

Not on the bed, but on the floor of the balcony, which overhung the stables below.

I'd been poking about the room, a little put off by my realization about the place, but ultimately finding everything to be in order. Temerity's servants had done their work, and while it wasn't as if I'd gone over the place with a black light, I decided that it was clean enough, if a little stuffy.

So I'd opened the balcony doors to air out the room, and had heard Temerity speaking with one of her people in the stables below the balcony.

Which is how I came to be laying down, with my ear near the edge of the smooth stone, and my legs stretched back into the room.

"Why ever not?" Temerity asked.

Fortunately, they seemed not to be concerned with anyone overhearing and so spoke in a normal voice. With the air as still as it was and there being little activity in the stables, I could just make out what they were saying.

"I tried to take a look in his mind while we were riding back," he explained, and I had the sudden urge to leap off the balcony and crush the man to death.

"Oh, naughty boy," Temerity teased, "Find anything interesting?"

"That's the trouble," the wizard replied, his voice a little tight, "I had a hard time finding anything."

"Are you telling me that my new source of entertainment is some sort of simpleton?" Temerty asked.

"No," the wizard assured her, "That's not the issue. The man was unconscious, so without any training, his mental defences should have been at their lowest point. Instead- Remember those first years after we discovered magic even existed?" he asked, "When we knew that mind magic existed but not what it could do?"

He paused, perhaps for Temerity to nod, and went on, "Some of the noblewomen started wearing those silly lead half helms, for want of something better."

"I remember," Temerity replied.

"It was as if he were wearing a lead helmet two inches thick. It was all I could do to sense his emotions."

"Could that not simply be how his mind resists intrusion?" Temerity suggested.

"No, this was not the active resistance of a mind. I know the difference. This was more like the sensation of trying to read someone at a very great distance, or through a thick stone wall. It was as if something was in the way, rather than him resisting me. I had to push so hard just to sense his emotions that so much as a novice's training would have let him notice and block my attempt. I may as well have been beating a gong," he explained, "If he didn't hear, it's because he doesn't know how to listen."

"Is this not ideal for a spellcaster? Whatever about his being that kept you out of his mind must be an asset rather than a liability," Temerity insisted.

"Were things different, you would be right," the wizard acknowledged, "Perhaps Lord Simon has the same trait and that's what makes him so formidable as a wizard, despite his ineptitude with most magics, but mental defences are not at issue. He is possessed of some mental malady. I do not know how to properly put into words what I sensed. Only that he is not in full control of his actions. To teach magic to someone like that would be to invite disaster."

"Is he a danger to me?" Temerity asked.

"Perhaps," the wizard hedged, "I think he's very impulsive, and unlike you or I, he may not always be able to fight those impulses. Either because his will is weak, or because his malady makes those impulses seem overpowering."

"Impulsive you say?" Temerity asked, the amusement evident in her voice, "I can work with that. And as for magic, I'll just have to find some other way to keep him entertained."

Needless to say, I was a little unhappy with how quickly my hopes had raised, only to be dashed to pieces. I wanted to learn magic. I deserved to learn magic, and this blue jackass wasn't about to stop me.

Meditation. That was another of my tricks for keeping my mind ordered and thinking useful thoughts. So I pushed myself up from where I'd been eavesdropping on the balcony and sat against the cool stone of the wall.

Meditation didn't require you to repeat any mystic sounding words over and over, or sit in the lotus position. You just had to be comfortable, close your eyes, and not think about anything. It wasn't easy to keep stray thoughts out, but focusing on my breathing or a song would do the trick.

Done right, and you'd open your eyes afterwards to find everything a little, distant. For me at least, I found that everything was a little less bright when I opened my eyes. Not bright in the optimistic sense, but genuinely as if the lights had been turned down a notch. That feeling of distance would stay with me for a little while after. Things wouldn't bother me so much, and I could think more clearly.

So I sat there on the balcony until I was sure that when I opened my eyes, I'd achieve that state. Thoughts tried to bubble up, the injustice of it all, that I wished I'd had my phone so I could listen to a song to guide my meditation, wondering about if elven skin was blue because their blood was blue. All interesting thoughts, but all brushed aside until my mind was clear.

Finally, I opened my eyes to find, that I'd kind of been a whiny bitch.

I needed to stop bemoaning my differences, and start making use of my strengths. Temerity's pet Wizard or whatever he was refusing to teach me was, at most, a mild inconvenience. It wasn't something to throw a tantrum over.

I got to my feet with purpose, and hoped, as I walked to the adjoining bathroom that some of Killgrave's musk or pheromones or whatever they were, still had some residual effect. At least that might serve to excuse my childish behaviour.

Thoughts. Childish thoughts.

Lunch would be soon, and aside from needing to be cleaned up for that, a good warm soak would help soothe my aching body. It would also give my time to consider next steps.

Like the bed, the tub was suspiciously large, but I wasn't about to complain. Back home I might have had a bed that fit, but not a bath, always having to settle for showers. It was a pleasant change of pace to have a tub that would suit someone my size. Or about three elves.

Cleanliness, that was my first priority. One that was currently being seen to, as I turned the brass taps to begin filling the tub.

I think indoor plumbing bumps the minimum date up to about the seventeen hundreds, maybe sixteen hundreds?

Food, something I needed a great deal of. That was my next priority. Whatever plans I came up with, starting off with a full belly was important.

If these elves had arrived on this world as I had, perhaps even their entire city had arrived as I had, then this may very well be a post-apocalyptic society. Of course, the apocalypse means something different if the general level of technology is as low as I think it is. When the most complicated thing your society creates can still be knocked together by local craftsmen then you don't have quite so far to fall, neither have you got to do quite so much work to get things back on track afterwards.

I turned off the taps and slipped into the blissfully scalding water.

If my suspicion was correct, and I'd arrived sometime after an inter-dimensionally induced apocalypse, then staying in the manor was not a terrible idea as it fulfilled my third priority. Shelter, and in some luxury. I doubted that I'd be able to find another place with silk sheets. Of course, at some point I was going to need to get moving. If Temerity had taken her wizard's word that I shouldn't be taught then I expected that I would run into trouble from the two of them if I tried finding another teacher.

The soap was a little on the flowery side, but it and the brushes seemed just like the sort of thing I would have found back home if I'd gone into some hip Whole Foods type store. All-natural ingredients, etcetera etcetera. I was pretty sure that there weren't any microplastics involved, and for all I knew it was better for me than whatever was in the stuff I'd been using back home.

I'd need to leave at some point, but for the time being Temerity's manor was an excellent place to rest, recuperate, and keep my strength up. I was kind of high-maintenance after all, as the same genetic chaos that made me as strong as I was, also meant that I didn't store a whole lot of energy as fat.

Washing and scrubbing done, I lay back against the rim of the big copper tub and let the hot water draw the ache out of my muscles.

Finally, I was going to need to find a different teacher. I'd have to hope that mind reading was not a normal part of the acceptance process for new students, but judging from what the wizard had said to Temerity, I might be fine as long as I didn't let myself get caught sleeping. Tricky. Depending on how exactly magic apprenticeship worked, very tricky. But it was at least a problem I could work around. At the very least I'd need to leave the manor if I was going to get a solid start on my academic journey, possibly the city as well, if Temerity had the reach I suspected she did.

There was the other city she'd mentioned, Pelignos, where the fey hung out, but I wasn't too keen on that. Joining up with another human might be the shortcut to success, or it might just put me within reach of someone who wasn't too keen to have another human kicking around to compete with. And there was, of course, the whole slavery thing. I was pretty confident I could evade that fate, but pretty confident isn't confident enough when it's my freedom on the line. Not to mention that I just generally didn't like the idea of living in a society that was okay with slavery.

Now, I didn't happen to know of any other cities, but perhaps lunch would give me the chance to find out more about the world I'd found myself in.