I didn't say anything else that night. I probably should've, but I had too many questions, and getting more answers would in turn create more questions. As it always tended to do, really. Even if giving those questions words could be hard. Sometimes, it was best to just accept the uncertainty.

Or so I would have said back on Earth. It was a bit more difficult to justify waxing poetic about fulfillment when you were confused, afraid, alone, and coming face to face with your own mortality in at least 3 different ways at once.

I fell asleep far more easily than I should have, considering how sore I was and everything else. It seemed that unconsciousness was no substitute for actual rest. I didn't think about it much as I fell asleep since I was so deep in my own head, but I drifted away sore, tired, sick, and bruised in ways I hadn't ever been before. I felt like a pile of sludge masquerading as a human. I was in constant pain and unable to move or interact with the world. All the while I remained deep inside of myself, deep enough to not notice the outward suffering.

I suppose the worlds in the sky were some respite. Stars were much like ancient corpses whose legacy we only just now see. They were echoes. But the planets here were bursting with arrays of vitality amidst the void of the night. Evidence of things being built or destroyed or changed or moved was evident in this impossible stellar mosaic. They weren't echoes, they were a gaze into the potential and beauty of life, a moving picture of people wading through the same existence I was.

My final thought before I slept was 'I think I could get used to this'. I still don't know how much of that was honest.

Beauty had a way of dulling pain. At least for someone like me, who kept their eyes ahead of their hands.

-

Still, as the sun rose and that beauty could only offer respite in my memories, however strangely vivid they appeared to be, the pain was... Far less dull. It wasn't exactly sharp or blunt, either. The best way I could describe it was weighty, a symphony of tiny sores and fatigues and discomfort. Every part of my body blaring their emergency alarms all at once. Still, with the morning, my growing need for water could overshadow those a bit. Oddly, it was almost relieving, to have an elephant in the room to focus on, something less uncertain.

Until a voice that I hoped I wouldn't hear anytime soon pulled me from my musings.

"Human, it's time to get going, I know you're awake."

I groaned. Even the stiff floor of stone felt better than getting up sounded.

"I'll leave you behind."

That got me going.

I shot to my feet, wincing a bit at the motion. But I knew that doing things slowly would be harder in the long run. After catching my breath for a second, which Rilu thankfully didn't comment on, I handed my blanket over to Rilu. Speaking of which, he was wearing light robes. He must have been cold. Or, well, fantasy bullshit powers.

But paying attention to that made me realize that he didn't have anything else I had seen him use on him.

I began to get excited. That could mean that he had an inventory, or, rather, that satchel was a bag of holding. For a nerd like me? That was more fascinating and alluring than anything I had seen so far... bar the Web of Worlds itself.

I figured I'd give it a test, but there was one problem- Should I act nonchalant, or excited? I didn't know how rare or expensive these were, but having any knowledge at all may seem suspicious with the situation I claimed to be in. Even knowing about dragons was probably only believable through the mechanisms of the translation approximating concepts and the subtle differences between what we knew. The minor incongruencies combined with his apparent pride probably strengthened that story.

So, I decided to just be direct and go with whatever seemed right. I didn't exactly have a choice.

"Where'd you put the water?" I asked, my words a bit stiff. I was a really bad liar, but I think this could just be seen as being tired and confused. My voice wasn't exactly buttery smooth in the first place.

"Already? We've not even stepped back onto the flats, we've been walking for eight minutes and forty-two seconds."

I assumed that the specific time I interpreted was a result of a different unit of measurement, rather than Rilu counting precisely.

"You forget I'm just a puny human who, might I remind you, has never needed to walk more than twenty or so miles in one sitting."

"We can rest once we reach the Outpost. I told you we need to be out soon, so stop complaining," he responded tiredly. It appeared he wasn't much of a morning person either, he seemed a lot more energetic yesterday. I wondered why he ended up saving me and going to these lengths. Before I could think too deeply into that, the canteen I drank out of yesterday was in Rilu's hands and I realized how thirsty I was.

Effortlessly, he tossed it over with a tiny motion that should not have carried it to my position a few meters to the left and slightly behind him. It seems he really was holding back.

I had kept the blanket, mind you. I didn't want a sunburn, and I could deal with an assumption that humans got weirdly attached to their blankets before I could deal with someone calling me weak for being afraid of the sun.

I reminded myself I really needed to ask about the sun. But I had other things to worry about.

"I'm pretty sure you've been trying to get me to ask, but I really do need to know. Why do we need to get out in two days?" I asked, breaking the silence between a sip of water.

"Well, it's best for someone as weak as you to not be trapped in Ash Season," he responded with only a hint of cockiness in his voice, he truly believed he was stating a fact. Which, assuming what he had said so far was true, it probably was. Someone holding my water supply and who had saved me wouldn't really have a reason to lie about that. Still, I felt a bit of frustration at him trying to toot his own horn. Er... Antlers? I'm sure there's a pun about Dragon anatomy in there somewhere.

Reorienting a bit, I reminded myself that sort of personality tends to come from a place of deep insecurity for other aspects of oneself, which gave me no small amount of satisfaction to know. Even if that were just the standard for Dragons. I always saw them presented as prideful creatures, after all. Actually, that seems racist, and-

Wait, did I miss the point? What did he say?

"...Ash Season?" I pulled through my throat, remembering to focus on my own survival, and now how much I may or may not have liked this Dragon.

"Tch, you don't even know about Ash Season?" he responded sarcastically in a voice that poorly belied the fun he was having with this. He said nothing more, prompting me to speak myself. (It's also worth noting that he said 'set of 4 months' instead of 'season', though from now on I will be approximating measurements.)

I knew what he wanted me to do, but that didn't make me happier about it. If only he could've been a bit more like Leo. He enjoyed being the expert, but he was at least earnest in sharing his admittedly impressive knowledge. Insecurity and passion should go hand and hand. Even at, I begrudgingly admitted to myself, the most basic level.

"No, your highness," I replied, being as over the top in humility as possible, to the point of being sarcastic, "This inferior servant knows absolutely nothing of this world, and humbly seeks your vast knowledge of this world to guide him."

I embellished my speech with a curt bow and open my eyes.

Sadly, my act only seemed to encourage him.

"Of course, my lowly subject. It is the lord's responsibility to educate those below him, after all. You see, if your tiny brain is capable of understanding, the pressure of the ash building in the Forge's atmosphere," he vaguely gestured toward the planet above the distant peaks, hazy while suspended between the blue sky, "and it releases through the World-Bridge to cover the Daimoon Flats for a few months. High temperatures and a hostile environment down here, but a temporarily slightly more livable environment up in the Forge as the atmosphere reconstructs itself."

Despite myself, I smiled a bit. It seemed he was glad to have someone to talk to. And, thankfully, he didn't keep up the act through his infodump. On top of that, I had verified he is comfortable with a male identity. Which, to be perfectly honest, was the least of my worries.

Small victories.

"So, uh, 'milord', why are we going toward the giant volcanic death sphere?" I asked, and he seemed to deflate a bit at the question. As much as I did want to ask how the atmosphere around World-Bridges worked, too, that was a very small concern at that moment.

We stepped over onto the salt, something in me feeling like I was about to fall, an illusion that quickly passed. Some vibrations quickly began brewing below us. Apparently, these 'crawlers' were harmless, but it still sent a chill up my spine, making me walk a bit more carefully against my will. I didn't think this would much change Rilu's opinion of me after everything else, anyway.

"The outpost is that way, and in the direction we came from, there isn't much in the way of civilization without a far longer walk. I also don't want to need to walk around the Flats, since the embers can sometimes escape the area and cause fires."

What kind of fresh hell was this planet?

-

"This is the fourth time you've asked for a refill in the past five minutes," Rilu grumbled as I wiped my mouth. I didn't know how he hadn't needed water yet. At this point, I mostly just accepted the fact that he had some sort of supernatural physiology that made him need little water.

And, as it turned out, the canteen wasn't limitless. It needed... something, I assumed magic or something, to keep working. Not mana, apparently, as when I asked Rilu just said that the word that couldn't be translated needed to stimulate it. Apparently, the canteen was something known as a 'Catalyst'. (It wasn't translated, but that was my rough approximation of the intent.)

I'd need to learn what the word actually meant before I could get an explanation on those, though.

The weird connection I exerted upon the world around me. In line with my skill, I tried to visualize it, making it an aura or a fire or a force around me. But nothing felt... Right. The closest I got was the flame concept. Maybe it needed emotional significance, like the firelight that I used to define my ill-conceived meaning? Still, I couldn't think of a way to translate scenes like that into the form it took.

The most abstract thing I tried was some pseudo-philosophical musings on how memories connect us to the world around us, but that only seemed to take me further away. In fact, I felt my sense of this... Thing, whatever it was, getting more distant and nebulous as I tried. But working on it was the only thing that distracted me from my mounting fatigue. So, all I could really bring myself to hope it didn't fuck me over in the future. In the end, I went back to the fire idea, and tried to separate the aspects of it to see what made it 'work'. I felt myself getting closer and further all at once.

-

Soon, we managed to make it to another rock-island. We took a bit of a break, for me, mostly. I paused working for a bit and figured I should ask for help, but I didn't really know what to ask about. I had asked Rilu how he envisioned his [Still Unknown Word], which only served to net me a stare of confusion. I wondered if they took a more direct path to sensing it, too, but I was only told, again, that it's impossible to 'sense' whatever it was. Strange, because I could feel it a bit, although it was yet another feeling I couldn't quite describe in words. Maybe it had something to do with my skill.

Apparently, using a catalyst required you to attune to it.

"How do you attune to a Catalyst?" I asked, thinking I may be onto something for the fourth time that day.

"You feel the Catalyst, spend time with it, and focus on it. Eventually, you'll feel a connection grow," he responded, a bit less grumpy than this morning, apparently. Maybe he felt I could contribute something because of what he heard from records of my Skill?

"So you can sense your Ja-goh-roo-ah in certain circumstances?"

"That is nowhere even close to how you pronounce it. But, yes, it's a part of us. We can't consciously control it, but Catalysts are influenced by living beings' [Unintelligible]. The only time we can feel it is when it changes very suddenly."

I didn't think the thing I felt was wrong, though. I also doubted any society would be less advanced than what some kid could figure out in an afternoon.

But I figured I would pursue this hunch regardless. Maybe Dragons just didn't have the skills to advance in this area. They seemed pretty advanced, but maybe they didn't consider this topic much. This seemed like extremely basic knowledge to Rilu, after all.

I looked at the canteen in my hands and took one last sip before we got going again. Rilu seemed a bit worried as we left. He knew we wouldn't make it out on time, and he also knew I wasn't capable of going faster.

I don't know if it was placebo or not, but the Forge looked a tiny bit darker, and it felt as if there was just a bit more lava spewing down the World-Bridge.