The day had started so well.

Just a normal afternoon of clearing out monsters, he thought.

Fresh out of his salt vacation, he hoped to return to some normalcy with a good ‘ol monster murder spree.

That was until he picked up that weird signal again. It was closer than last time. He could also sense something else nearby, but not nearly as muted. The signals he was picking up were strange; they almost felt like normal animals more than anything but had more of a presence in the magical spectrum. They didn’t seem aggressive but he wasn’t about to lower his guard.

This was weird.

The very far reaches of his mind tingled with something akin to familiarity when he studied these new contacts, but they seemed strange and cautious. As he continued to hunt down monsters and clear them out he kept his senses on the new anomalies. He noticed when they began cautiously following him at a distance.

He had been able to pick up three more clear individual marks, but one more was intermittent and he would lose it on occasion as he walked.

After about an hour of monster slaying he noticed the marks meet up and then the three more obvious ones broke away together as the ‘sneaky’ one moved closer.

That was very strange.

ALL monsters are aggressive. For hundreds of years he had seen the same patterns over and over. What he observed now didn’t make sense. Not only were they obviously able to track him and didn’t attack, they bunched together, then separated, and seemed to be coordinating. It was reminiscent of some of the monster packs, but clearly different.

He decided to continue working north but keep a portion of his focus on them to see what happened.

The anomaly followed him, but didn’t get very close at first as he swept back and forth moving north. A few times it was almost close enough that he might have been able to see it, but he couldn’t ever get eyes on target.

That was new, and frankly a little impressive.

He had been hunting in this forest for so long that not being able to notice something strange was really pulling him off his game.

He had already had his fill of new things this cycle, and was feeling off kilter. The strange lessening of the Arcstone restrictions, actually getting to the salt, hell - even almost getting scraped by that hound inside the wards, he felt like something was tilted the wrong way.

He slowed his advance, and focused on the anomaly. It… didn’t seem to be a normal monster.

Monsters were always somewhat demented about attacking, so this cautious and intelligent stalking made him nervous. The essence of the signal was strange and he had that annoying tingle in his mind that felt like he could almost remember something from the past, but it eluded him like so many other times.

The sneaky anomaly moved ahead of his current sweep and Richard decided enough was enough. He was already off kilter, and was tired of pussyfooting around and being stalked.

He cast the mage armor spell just in case as he moved into a meadow. it wasn’t a perfect defense, but would protect him from a hit or two unless it was something large or magical. He kept moving in the general direction before turning towards where he could now sense the anomaly clearly. He stared into the shadows under the trees trying to make out what was there.

Deep inside he was beginning to shiver a little. There were very few explanations for what this thing could be. Some of them made a certain amount of sense like it being some funky new stealth monster or a normal creature with magic, but those were super rare around the rift and that didn’t feel right.

He decided, or maybe his insecurities and fears decided, to directly approach the almost hidden thing. It seemed to be up in a tree inside the treeline at the edge of the meadow.

As he got closer, he could almost sense a fluctuation along the field of mana that seemed to broadcast… fear?

Richard, or something inside him, decided to slow and come to rest while looking at the tree. He wasn’t sure what he felt. Deep inside he was quivering with an emotion he couldn’t quite place, and that was on top of his already frayed nerves from the rest of the cycle breaking his schedule so often.

He decided to wait.

As he stood there, somewhat frozen, the anomaly’s sense began to bloom to his vision. It definitely had a taste to it. Some washed out emotions of caution and fear were coloring his sense of the thing, and that was something he hadn’t felt before. Or maybe he had? Why did this seem familiar?

Was this some stealth mutant that was about to strike? Had he opened himself up for some monster to get close? Should he just err on the side of caution and light the tree up?

But no, he realized. He was still far enough out of melee range. It would take a bolt mere moments to fry anything that came at him from that distance. It also didn’t feel aggressive so his highly wound reflexes stayed silent for now.

That’s when he saw her drop out of the tree.

The subtle swirl of the mana eddies that he had noticed had put him on high alert, and he expected it to be some sort of sneaky bird or cat or something. When it suddenly dropped out of a tree he almost instinctively lashed out. Once he noticed the two legs, two arms and an obvious face standing up and facing him with a look of fear and suspicion, his legs went weak and it became hard to breathe.

She, and judging by her clothes it was obviously a she, had weapons. A dagger at her waist, a bow across her shoulders, with a quiver behind her back. He remembered his old bow that had lasted for a long while before he ran out of replacement strings and had eventually dried and cracked, and hers was similar. Her gear and clothing was crude, but just seeing something that was obviously made by intelligent people was a situation he had trouble getting his mind around.

She was.. well not a human, but close and obviously sentient. The emotions floating across her face and echoing in the magical field couldn’t be denied.

“No. No, you’re a dream. I’m dreaming. You can’t be real.” he mumbled softly, fully entranced by the creature in front of him.

There were obvious differences from himself. The dark silky hair on her head had fuzzy ears coming out of the side tapering to points with a few longer hairs at the tips. Her eyes were large and golden; not any color he could remember having seen before. Her skin was a little darker than his, but clearly skin. She had hair, yes, but it fell onto her face in areas that looked like fur. He thought he noticed a tail flicking behind her.

Regardless, this was a person.

Which meant the other three from before probably were too.

A person.

Here.

Right in front of him.

How…

How long had he waited for this moment?

Was it real?

Could he trust himself? Was he dreaming? Was this some new kind of monster?

Richard realized tears were leaking down his face, as his hand reached out towards her. She hadn’t moved much, but her reaction to his reaction was one of confusion and suspicion. She was shivering slightly, her ears were twitching randomly, and her posture was tense.

She opened her mouth and he heard her speak… SHE SPOKE… but he couldn’t understand her.

He was too stunned to try to communicate. He just stared at her and wept. His brain was frozen. He didn’t know what to do.

It had been so long. Maybe.. Just maybe.. His long vigil hadn’t been in vain? Maybe the war had saved someone out there?

He couldn't believe it.

He couldn’t afford to.

It was too impossible to be true but at the same time Richard’s soul pleaded that it was.

His body was afire, fighting itself. He felt like the world was tilting, and his body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. He was breathing hard and the light breeze across his skin felt like what he imagined music would taste. Everything was strange, and there was a ringing in his ears.

Yet.

Here was proof.

Was she human as he remembered?

No.

Did that matter?

Not one bit.

His mind snapped away from the edge of madness. “Please” Richard whispered with a shaky, husky voice, “please be real.”

The woman took a few hesitant steps forward into the light. She had her hand near a long dagger, but didn’t draw it and stopped a few body lengths away. Her dark hair was in a braid behind her head; a dark brown which turned to a kind of fuzz on her ears. The tips of her ears were black with some hairs poking out like a bobcat. She wore simple leather pants, and a dark tunic of some form of linen or something similar.

She was the most beautiful thing he could remember ever seeing.

She said some more nonsense words. She sounded hesitant and confused. His mind was full of fluff, just staring at her.

She slowly walked closer, and Richard heard the grass moving beneath her feet, saw the wind blowing in her hair, and it was almost too much for him to bear. It seemed so real! If this was an illusion it would be the most cruel thing that had happened in a century. He couldn’t bear to believe her to be real, but at the same time he couldn’t bear to believe she wasn’t, either.

He backed up a few steps, and she stopped approaching. They just stood there for a few minutes studying each other.

It had been so long that he had been sure that none had made it back alive, or that there wasn’t anywhere left to get back to. After the first few hundred years, he had given up, somewhere deep inside. It was breaking his heart to see someone walking towards him, but it would break his heart if she didn’t. He realized he was scared, but his breathing was beginning to ease up.

She had stopped just a few body lengths away from Richard. Her suspicious and frightened expression had turned to confusion and… something. He couldn’t tell. He knew sadness, surprise, suspicion, pain… but he had forgotten what faces could look like with other emotions.

Richard’s brain began to work again in spurts. He realized he had one hand on his sword and the other was almost reaching towards her. At the corners of his awareness he felt that two other anomalies were beginning to move swiftly in his direction, but it would take quite some time for them to get close.

He looked into her eyes and said “Where in the world did you come from?”

Her head tilted slightly to the side and her eyes squinted slightly. She opened her mouth and said some words in a strange lilting language.

Typical. Actually, that kind of makes sense, now that Richard considered it. It had been a long time, afterall. There had been lots of different languages spoken in the final army, even. Richard had known a translation spell at some point, but it had been so long that he forgot most of the incantation for it.

Richard frowned and shook his head slightly. He wasn’t sure what to do. He had dreamed of this sort of situation for longer than he could remember, but it had never gone quite like this in his mind.

She had taken a hesitant step backwards when he frowned, and her fear began to color her aura again. Was she afraid of him?

Well, now that he thought about it, he had been wandering around murdering things all day, and the first time he had noticed her signal was ‘opening day’ where he went a little nuts with the big explosions.

Huh.

He was armored and had mage armor still around himself, though it was mostly transparent. He decided to try to look less threatening. He took his hand off of his sword and straightened his posture a bit while also mentally dismissing the armor spell. He lifted his right arm and held his hand with palm facing her.

He slowly pointed at himself and said “Richard” and then pointed at her and raised an eyebrow and asked “you?”.

She had frozen, but was slowly relaxing, her brow furrowed.

She slowly nodded and pointed at herself and said “Saravren” with her soft voice.

Richard began to smile like an idiot. He knew he was smiling like an idiot and wanted to stop, but he couldn’t help himself. He figured his first impression was already kinda ruined with him being a screaming idiot and blowing things up, or at least stalking around all day… or crying and shaking like a… you know what? He decided didn’t mind that he was grinning like an idiot.

The other anomalies were getting close now, so he cleared his throat and took a step back.

He pointed at himself and then her and said “Richard, Saravren” and then pointed at the forest behind her, then raised two fingers. “Friends of yours?” he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand, but hoping she would pick it up from context.

She jumped slightly, looking over her shoulder. They weren’t here yet, but would be in a minute or two. She looked back towards him, her ears flattened a little with a twisted smile on her face as she wrung her hands slightly. She said some words, pointed at herself and then gestured behind her while nodding.

So they were probably friends. Okay, he could work with that. He nodded and took a few more steps back, left hand back on his sword as he put his hand up in a hopefully universal gesture for ‘hold’.

She nodded back at him and stayed still, hands away from her weapons.

As they stood there awkwardly waiting, Richard’s mind began to begin working properly again. There was a person standing in front of him. There were two more coming this way, and there had been a fourth that he felt earlier.

Four people even if they didn’t look just like him. It was proof that humanity, or some form of it, had survived. He wasn’t sure what to do next. He had obviously dreamed of this situation over and over, but the lack of a shared language and that there were so few of them was a bit off of what he had expected.

The idea had been for a large group of learned people to come and relieve him of his duty and his dreams had generally used that as a guideline. They would be able to study and hopefully seal the rift permanently. His duty would be done!

Though Archmage Holister had made it fairly clear to Richard that he probably wouldn’t be able to be unbound from the Arcstone, it could theoretically be moved once a proper seal was placed. He had dreamed of traveling back to civilization and being around people as the returning hero. Make new friends, help humanity recover, build a home and a family maybe.

He knew it was a complete fantasy, but now looking at this woman, all of his dreams were being derailed by reality.

As he did a quick sweep of the area checking for monsters, his mind kept returning to the idea of some sort of translation spell, but he knew he had forgotten how to cast it. Maybe there was something inside the Arcstone that he was forgetting? He knew they made heavy enough use of the spell towards the end of the war. There were a lot of functions inside the Arcstone, but he hadn’t looked at or studied them for a long time after he had figured out what he needed. There were so many different humans trying to work together from different regions and cultures, and many of them didn’t speak the same language so there was at least a possibility of something being integrated into the wards or the stone.

It was tickling the back of his mind, but he didn’t have enough time to focus on what it could mean as the others had finally arrived. Saravren made some sort of whistle noise towards the forest. It was clearly a signal, and Richard moved his feet a little further apart and let his body relax into a ready stance. He was too used to constant combat, and wasn’t sure what to do in this situation.

Two larger and clearly male people moved into view, bows in hand and arrows knocked. The larger and maybe older looking male spoke the same lilting language as Saravren quietly with an undercurrent of anger or something. Saravren turned to him, hands empty and they spoke quickly, almost too low for Richard to hear. Not that it mattered, but he guessed that the new guy didn’t know that Richard couldn’t understand him yet.

The suspicion was oozing off of the new guy, who seemed to be a leader of some kind. He had that air of authority that Richard recognised from his vague memories of army officers. After listening for a minute or so, he removed the arrow from his bow and motioned for the other one to do the same.

He didn’t put the arrow away though, Richard noticed.

Saravren stepped back a pace or two and the older one walked in front of her. He looked similar in coloring to her, with hair just a shade darker. There were some lines on his face, and his gear looked a little more worn, though clearly well cared for and fitted.

Richard looked in his eyes, and nodded a little, pointing to himself and saying ”Richard” then repeating the motion of pointing towards the new guy and putting a questioning expression on his face.

The new guy was tapping his arrow on his leg, face scrunched up a little like he was thinking hard about something. He nodded sharply before pointing the arrow at his chest and saying “Ethren” then pointing at the other guy and saying “Gloast.”

Richard knew that he still had a smile on his face, though it wasn’t at idiot levels currently. He nodded a few times and feeling like a bit of an idiot he asked “Do you have any translation spell?” While he asked, he pointed at his mouth and then to Ethren and back again while using his other hand to sprinkle harmless magic sparkles while he waved his fingers.

Ethren looked at him with a confused expression though he seemed a little startled as he saw the magic. He shook his head back and forth, saying something that Richard couldn’t understand.

Richard dropped his hands onto his hips with a huff. He looked at the ground and tried to think of a way to explain better or what to try next when Saravren stepped up to Ethren and said something to him.

She mimed pointing at her mouth then ears and then back and forth between them while wiggling her fingers (without sparkles) and that ‘asking’ look on her face.

Well at least I know who the smart one is, Richard thought to himself. He was beginning to have fun communicating with charades.

He pointed at himself and shook his head in the negative. He repeated his earlier motions, this time also pointing at his ear, then raised his hand and wiggled it back and forth in a maybe motion while tapping his head, pained expression on his face. He was trying to say I don’t know a translation spell, but I might, but I can’t remember it. He wasn’t sure how good his acting skills were coming across.

Richard’s brain was still recovering from his shock and he was beginning to suspect that there might, indeed, be something built into the Arcstone, but he would need to meditate and go through it’s functions to figure that out and now wasn’t the time.

The three cat people talked amongst themselves, assumedly trying to decipher what he was saying. It got a little heated for a few moments, and Richard felt a bit of worry. After a few minutes Richard was beginning to feel awkward again until Ethren looked back at Richard suspiciously for a moment. He must have decided something because he finally put his arrow away then mimed that they had to go by pointing at all of them and then pointing south.

It was pretty clear, but Richard was a little crushed by that. He knew his face must have fallen some, but he took a deep breath and nodded. He pointed at himself and then mimed walking with his fingers and then the ground and a circle. Ethren seemed to understand, nodded, and then they all began to slowly walk back into the forest. Saravren gave him some sort of look as she glanced back a few times, but Richard didn’t know what it meant.

Richard just stood there still in a bit of shock while following them with his senses as they walked away once he couldn’t see them anymore. Crushing loneliness was starting to creep up on him, and he just couldn’t dredge up the energy to move from where he was standing.

It took them about an hour or so to finally leave his range and the sun had gotten low in the sky by then. Richard finally managed to shake himself out of his funk a little by reminding himself that they might come back, and he would need to see if he could figure out the translation function or maybe jog his memory enough to remember the spell. It wasn’t likely he would remember, but he decided that hoping was better than giving up. He was terrible at learning new languages, and it wasn’t like he could get a whole group of people to start speaking his.

He began to walk back towards the fort, lost in thought. This was the best day he could remember. He should be jumping in joy and excited, but all he felt was apprehensive. The cat people seemed skittish and suspicious of him instead of happy. I mean, it made sense, but Richard had been dreaming of a friendly heroic welcome for so long that reality left him feeling unbalanced and worried. This dream being so different, along with all of the other strange things this cycle, had him off balance and feeling odd.

He hoped they would come back tomorrow, or soon at any rate. He would make sure to clear the area to the south for the foreseeable future keeping an eye out for their return and try to figure out the translation spell during the evenings.

With a clear plan, he picked up his pace. He had work to do.