Well shit, John thought to himself. If he was being honest, he wasn’t really sure how wrong TIm might have been. The first two, Jacob and Eric, sounded pretty dead. He didn’t have much to go by, but vaporization seemed like something that could happen when the two great energies of the multiverse first inundate something living.

AFter all, Tim had said before that some people “weren’t so lucky”. He didn’t ask what that meant at the time but at this point he knew better than to expect anything. It may have been a heartless assumption to make, but it was a realistic one. He was just glad it wasn’t something more horrific or gorey like implosion or something.

That left her other three friends. Lily, Kyle, and Emilia. Their survival was more dubious. If this were a normal forest, running around without food or water for a couple days wouldn’t spell certain doom even if it would leave a person pretty messed up. In their new world, however, with monster squirrels and deer with a regal authority over space and life, John wasn’t so sure.

It would make sense for Tim to profess them dead, all things considered. In all likelihood, they probably were. The problem was that it was only a probability, and there was certainly a chance they were still alive somewhere, holed up in some hiding place or defendable location. Unlikely, but…

It was possible.

John drummed his fingers silently as he reflexively considered a number of different rescue scenarios. Unfortunately, nothing he could think of on the stop sounded safe, let alone feasible. He furrowed his brows as he thought harder about their circumstances, his condition, and the condition of the others. It was the last part that woke him from his considerations.

He wasn’t alone.

Sure, if he were by himself in the forest with nothing to lose, he could afford to entertain the idea. Hell, he could even go through with a plan if it seemed doable enough. If not for her sake then for his own conscience. It wasn’t like he could sleep soundly at night if he knew he probably let a bunch of kids die out in the woods when he could have helped.

Unfortunately, he reminded himself, he really wasn’t alone. John had his daughter to worry about. Weighing her life against the lives of a few strangers was a painful decision, but it was one he would make all the same ten times out of ten. He didn’t like it, but John had to admit that saving her friends was a bad idea. As much as he hated to admit it, Tim had a point.

That didn’t mean he was happy about it, though. Maybe there was something more they could do from here? Or some way they could get insurance against the beasts that roamed beyond the wall of leaves? John shook his head. He realized how hypocritical he sounded, trying to rationalize some way to help Maria without actually helping her, but he didn’t care.

He couldn’t care, not if he wanted to put his family first.

Which he did, sleepless nights ahead or no.

“Dad?” Luna’s voice called to him from the treeline, which only reaffirmed his resolve. He’d do what he had to do. His conversation partner reattached herself to her makeshift spear at the sudden intrusion.

“My daughter,” he said reassuringly. “We can discuss this later. For now, we all need to rest and recover.” His words seemed to deflate something in her, and he winced as he watched some of the hope she had built wither away.

“Fine,” she demurely replied. John nodded to her, and then turned to his daughter with open arms.

Luna stared at him warily for a moment, as if in disbelief. He could see her eyes were red and her clothes had been newly muddied, testament to whatever ‘illusions’ she experienced that John was thankfully free from. Her reluctance was evident, however, perhaps a result of whatever she saw back there.

“Don’t worry, it’s just your old man,” he said with a half smile as he lowered his arms. “Come have some water, if you like.”

“Is it really you?” She asked again, and this time John could hear the tremble in her voice. He began to frown. How awful were the illusions that they rattled his daughter so badly?

“The one and only,” he said wiping the frown from his face as quickly as it appeared. The last thing he wanted was her to misinterpret his frown as something antagonistic. With a cough and a smile, he asked, “What did you see in-”

“Oh thank fucking god,” she murmured as she cut off his question with a monstrously tight hug that pinned one of his arms to his side.

“Oi oi, language,” John barely managed to eek out as he felt his bones begin to creak. He couldn’t even push his way out of her grasp. Since when had he grown so weak, he wondered ruefully.

“Thank fuck?” She asked with a teasing, inquisitive tone.

“You know that’s not the language I meant you little squirt,” he said as he ruffled her hair aggressively with his free hand. It was then he realized that it was probably her that had grown stronger, not him that had grown weaker. He almost stopped, expecting her to start fighting back, when her reaction surprised him.

Instead of her normal frustration, she actually began laughing. John was elated until her laughs suddenly turned to sobs, and he felt a newfound wave of frustration for Tim. He had said the experience would be good for her, but John couldn’t imagine there was anything good in making Luna cry.

For now, he just hugged her and stroked her back. It was times like these that he remembered she was still a child, despite how much she had seemed to mature lately.

Eventually, her sobs turned into smaller sniffled and the occasional hiccup. It was then that Maria, whom John had honestly forgotten about entirely, made herself known with a light cough. His daughter immediately stiffened and poked her head around his torso to follow the noise. He turned to accommodate her.

“Hi, my name is Maria,” the woman said with a pleasant smile. She must have taken the time he inadvertently gave her to calm herself down. “You must be John’s daughter.”

“L-Luna Mermous,” she stuttered, suddenly embarrassed. She pushed herself out of John’s arms and began straightening her hair. Maria didn’t seem to mind, however, and pressed on with the impressive social tact that popular college kids typically had.

“Luna, what an adorable name,” she said as her eyes began to glitter. She glanced at John with a wry smirk before she continued, “Hey, you wouldn’t have happened to see my friends out there did you? We all go separated and I really want to see them again.”

“Oh, not again! I’ve had enough of this stupid story,” Tim yelled.

“Knock it off space fairy,” Luna said with a dismissive wave. It seemed to John that the grudge from earlier was still alive and well. “What did you say happened?”

Something in the way Maria gazed at his daughter with twinkling eyes made him decidedly uncomfortable.

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By the time she finished her story for the third time, Charlie and the others had made it through their illusions as well. They were fairly shaken up, so John didn’t pester them. He did, however, note that they all kept a distance between them. Including the couple.

Another person’s relationship issues were the least of his problems though, as the source of his discomfort reared its head. His daughter seemed to be emboldened by their newfound abilities and resolutely decided to help Maria find her friends.

This was in spite of the horrors they had faced earlier that very day. She was flipping through emotions rather quickly, but then again so was he. At this point, John wasn’t sure whether he should be proud of her for her courage and mental fortitude, or chide her for being unrealistic.

One look at the confident smile on his daughter’s face made the decision for him. He was a simple man after all. A family man, John told himself with a nod, doesn’t shoot down his family ideas, he supports them. With the decision made for him and framed in a way that didn’t make him feel like he lost to something, John gave the two girls a wry smile.

Luna didn’t know any better and merely smiled back, happy knowing that she was doing something good. Maria, however, flashed him a similarly wry conspiratorial glance before shifting her gaze away. He could almost hear her whistling, but he chose to ignore it.

“Well then,” he said, “present circumstances considered, I think we should at least wait until tomorrow to launch a rescue operation.”

“What? But what if something happens while—”

“And what if something happens to us because we’re unprepared?” John countered, “No offense, but then your friends would be doomed for sure. I don’t know about you Luna, but I’m exhausted. Physically and- magically or whatever. Not to mention that as you are now Maria, you’re basically dead weight. We’re going to need a lot more than a little water spell to go back out there.”

Luna took his words seriously and curbed her excitement. She may have been young, but she wasn’t stupid. He could trust that she’d listen. Maria on the other hand, didn’t seem like the type who liked to hear ‘no’. Though John admitted this was a situation where such refusal was probably more commendable than not.

“Right,” John said with a clap of his hands before Maria could refute. “We need time to recuperate and prepare. Maria, I guess you wouldn’t know this, but the forests beyond this relatively small space here are incredibly dangerous. You’re going to need all the strength you can muster.”

She did not respond immediately, instead looking herself over slowly before ultimately staring at her speartip. Surely even she could admit the weapon wasn’t going to be sufficient on its own, right? John could only hope and press forward.

“If your friends are alive, and that may be a pretty big if, they’ll be hidden away somewhere or tucked into a defendable location. Another night would be rough, but if they’re alive now they’ll probably survive it. Understood?”

“Okay, fine, I get it.” Maria sighed as she had deflated again. This time there was still the flicker of hope engendered by Luna’s promises. She was no longer terribly upset, thankfully. After all, she now had a feasible path forward even if the specifics were still unknown.

“Luna, you too,” John said as his mind began reigniting the beginnings of a plan he had discarded earlier. “With your augury, we might actually have a chance of finding the needle in the haystack. We’ll be counting on you, so rest up and refine those abilities of yours.”

She nodded seriously, with a look of conviction that was so cute John had a hard time not laughing. That would have been mean, however, so he just smiled and patted her shoulder. Seriousness wasn’t bad, especially not when they were potentially about to risk their lives. It just filled him with a bit of pride to see his daughter growing up, even if her strong will was going to be putting them in more danger than he would like.

“Good. I’m going to have a talk with Tim, so go ahead and explore. Just don’t go outside.”

“Yes, sir!” she said with an exaggerated and sloppy salute.

John smiled as he recognized the casual flip from seriousness to sarcasm. She was reminding him more and more of her mother the last couple days. John didn’t know if Neah was in a similarly precarious position, but he found himself filled with greater conviction the more he thought about it. He would survive this mess and return to help her, wherever she was.

Even if they were the ones who probably needed the most help.

For now though, John left his daughter to her own devices and tracked down their guide. From his earlier words, it sounded to John like he was just as surprised about the threat level they found themselves in as he was. That didn’t stop him from being more than a little frustrated, however. Tim had made it sound like their planet was nothing special compared to multiverse standards.

John was now certain their guide had been mistaken. He didn’t know exactly what the standard was supposed to be, but the difficulty scaling seemed to be far from what the Progenitors had assumed. It was like a bunch of level one sorcerers had been thrown in the middle of a campaign meant for level ten multiclassed heroes. Either the entirety of the new multiverse was off, or Earth was uniquely dangerous.

John wasn’t sure which was better, not that it would matter until he left the planet. And that was something which remained unfathomable to him, regardless of Tim’s promises. He wondered what other planets in other universes might be like before he shook his head ruefully. His mind was wandering far afield, and he needed it here with him now.

One step at a time.

He took a breath as his searching for Tim inevitably brought him to stand beside the massive trunk of the Tree of Warding. The little fairy was methodically searching the outer layer of tree bark for something, but John didn’t really care what. He clapped his hands to get Tim’s attention.

“Okay, you little bastard. It’s time for answers, quests or no quests. You owe me that at least with how off the mark your calculations have been.”

“Excuse me? Why don’t you try estimating the overall power level of an entire planet by sitting in a forest in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no assistance, John. Tell me how it goes for you.” Tim said, suddenly losing interest in whatever secrets the tree trunk held as he buzzed angrily around John’s head.

“I,” John began pointedly, “am not calling myself a guide to the multiverse while simultaneously sending my people out to get slaughtered by a singular herbivore that thinks it’s suddenly become a king.”.

“How could I have known about that?” Tim asked as if he had been wrongfully accused.

“Didn’t you say it was literally programmed to be your purpose? Or were you lying about that?”

“I don’t lie, human. Never.”

“Well, you still almost got all of us killed,” he said as he glared balefully at the space fairy. Tim did not respond immediately, but he did cease flying around excitedly. John had learned over time that silence meant the little guy was thinking or processing or whatever it was an artificial elemental intelligence did.

“... Name your price,” Tim finally said.

John smiled.

“I’m glad we could reach an understanding. Answer three of my questions in depth, and don’t you dare leave anything out because you don’t think it’s important ‘yet’.”

“That’s outrageous! If it really makes you feel better, I’ll answer one such question.”

“Two, and I want you to come up with a plan to keep the royal pain in the ass off our backs. Maybe put some of that processing power of yours to work making some combat ready techniques the others can use so I’m not the only one with firepower.” John began to relax slightly as Tim’s coloration shifted from reddish to blueish. He made a mental note that the aim high hit low strategy maintained its reliability even against the otherworldly guide.

“One question,” Tim repeated decisively, then sighed. “And I suppose I’ll get around to the other two things after that. Ask away, human. Go ahead and ruin your foundation all you want.”

“What do you mean by—” John barely stopped himself before he fell into the trap. He glared as he realized Tim had almost tricked him out of a real question, and decided to push even harder. “You know what, nevermind that. I want you to tell me exactly how much danger we are in. That includes a full explanation of whatever the hell that monster deer was, if there will be others like it, and why you didn’t tell us about it sooner.”

“That’s not really a question,” Tim grumbled with a click of his tongue.

“And that’s not really my problem,” John said without emotion. “Answer.”

“Alright, I get it. Yeesh. This is a lot of information, John. Prepare your fleshy neurons. Normally I would have explained this to you over time, as it became relevant—”

“I think it’s plenty relevant now.”

“Yes, well, so you say. To begin, I suppose you need to understand why the previous multiverse ultimately collapsed. It’s a long, tragic story, but for the sake of both of our time, it can be summarized as something similar to what you humans called the “heat-death of the universe”. Except it was based on divine energy, was hurried along by certain unorthodox groups, and ultimately occurred on a scale that your poor three dimensional brain could never begin to fathom. The important information is that the old multiverse was already on its way out when my original data on energy levels for ‘new’ planets was collated.”

“You’ll have to forgive me when it wasn’t exactly hyper-accurate,” he continued. “Regardless, back then it was determined that Seeded planets, which naturally would gather much more energy than others, would exist on a scale of one to ten. One being barely stronger than your average space rock, and ten being many many more times that. It was similar to an exponential equation, but their math was different from your own. Regardless, as Seeded planets, what do you think they hypothesized the average number to be?”

John thought for a moment, and the answer seemed rather simple to him. On a scale of one to ten, the average should probably lie somewhere between five and six.

“You might think the answer to be five, but you’re wrong,” Tim said with a hint of a smile before John even had a chance to respond. “The most common level was supposed to be three. About ten times more energized than the average planet. You might be wondering why, but it’s simple. In all of the multiverse, there were bound to be some extremely extremely lucky planets out there that might even reach a seven or an eight. Nine was determined to be probabilistically impossible, and ten was just a number they added to make it sound better.”

To make it sound better? The image in John’s head of lofty space-conquering scholars diminished slightly as he shook his head. That wasn’t the important part, he told himself.

“So what level is Earth?” He asked.

“And that, John, is where the current predicament lies. Based on energy levels alone, I originally assessed the planet as a seven. Unreasonably high, mind you, but not beyond any hope of understanding. The last two days have proven me wrong again and again, and with the introduction of this new Maria human, I’ve come to a final conclusion.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know,” Tim said with a subtle shudder that looked like someone shaking their head. “Earth could very well exist beyond the ten point scale. As far as I can tell based on the talents of its inhabitants, it is at least a nine. Its energy levels rating a seven is likely due to some unknown interference, but I cannot say any more about that either.”

“That… doesn’t sound very good.” Neither of those things sound good, but John knew he was already pushing his luck. Most of it went over his head anyway. What was outside interference supposed to mean, aliens? Was the history channel correct?

“It is in some ways terrible beyond comprehension, and in other ways an opportunity that defies existence. If other planets like it exist out in the multiverse, our Progenitors must be weeping tears of envious joy. If not, your planet is an exception among exceptional exceptions.”

“But you were just going to keep quiet about it. Why?” John asked slowly.

“Why pile greater existential dread upon your fragile meat suits, John? Do you feel better now knowing? Does this change anything in those overly inquisitive neurons of yours?”

John did not respond, as he found that Tim had a point. It wasn’t like he had a way to contextualize the danger either, it just felt... bad, though that was a terrible way to put it.

“That’s what I thought. So, as far as what is relevant to you...” Tim paused for a moment to collect his thoughts, “There will likely be many more Kings like the deer you encountered earlier. They will begin vying for supremacy in this forest, and likely within all ecosystems across the planet. I’d be wary of Australia if I were you,” Tim added dryly.

“To be honest, that’s not surprising,” he said with similar seriousness. Of course, everyone had heard of the Australian outback with its ten foot shredded kangaroos and infamous drop bears. The thought made John oddly glad to be trapped with the deer that could bend space.

“Indeed. The creatures around you will certainly grow stronger, but there is a soft limit to their growth speed. Bottlenecks, if you will. Animals tend to achieve most of their growth all at once, and are then relatively stagnant for a time until their body reaches the right conditions to improve again. The deer is an example of an animal that has already passed the first bottleneck, and is likely ahead of the curve relative to other nearby creatures. Yourself included.”

“I see. Then we will have some time to do some exploration before things get too hectic out there,” John said thoughtfully. That meant they had a rough time limit on any hopes of a rescue mission, before the inhabitants of the forest eliminated any possibility of Maria’s friends’ survival.

“Precisely. The deer will likely not grow much stronger for some time now. Until it does, and therefore others likely do too, you have a window of time with which you can venture beyond the Tree of Warding in relative safety. Most first stage beasts aren’t unassailable just yet.”

“And what happens if your estimation is off again?” John asked.

He had a feeling that Tim was staring at him with invisible eyes, calmly gazing into his own. It made him feel horribly exposed, as if the guide were capable of seeing through his secrets. He probably could, too, he thought ruefully.

“Pray that it isn’t,” Tim finally said.

Right.

“Now if it’s all the same with you, I’m going to go have a chat with the tree spirit that controls this space. Go play around with some magic or something,” Tim said dismissively as he floated away.

It wasn’t such a bad idea, John thought sourly. Even if the way Tim said it annoyed him, he found himself without the energy to complain. A serious case of information overload, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, and magical exhaustion overcame any desire to do so.

Play with magic, find something to eat, devise a plan to rescue three college students from eldritch abominations, and finally look for a place to sleep beneath the canopy of a tree the size of a city block.

Normal stuff for a normal guy, he mused.

At least now he finally had a chance to take a break.