Alex looked down at the girl he had just saved, her flowing auburn hair and sunkissed skin contrasting nicely with the vibrant green of the forest surrounding them. The dose of fast-heal stims had thankfully stabilized her, closing up her wounds in seconds.

Her large eyes stared up at him in some odd form of admiration, and her large pupils seemed to sparkle when gazing at his figure.

“Aren yourak ana angale...?” The woman whispered, the foreign words making Alex blink for a moment. His translator began working on overdrive to decipher the language, from just the four words, but it would take a while, and a lot more speech samples before it would ever be able to decipher it.

Though thankfully, the language seemed to have a lot of similarities to English, shortening down the load time considerably.

The woman, seeing his lack of reaction, began saying more unintelligible words, seemingly more aimed at herself than him.

While Alex was frustrated at his inability to communicate, he just decided to listen, letting his translator get more input. He knew for a fact, losing his cool would make him a disgrace of a REK - a special forces operative of New Britannia couldn't be seen breaking after all.

-------

Feyrith stared at the tall dark figure, waiting for a response that never came. As the seconds ticked on she began to mumble to herself, trying to figure out who this man could be.

From her saviour’s reaction, or more accurately lack thereof, he was either mute, didn't feel like talking, or just couldn't understand what she was saying. The most likely answer was the third - but how? She was speaking common, and it was called that for a reason.

As she kept mumbling, in the corner of her eye, she could see the man she was now just going to call “The Angel”, tilt its head ever so slightly. Turning to directly face him, she asked slowly, “Can you understand me?”

The dark-armoured man moved his right hand up, holding it there for a moment as if thinking of his next actions. Feyrith then watched as the angel mimed speaking, shaping his hand like a talking mouth before waving around.

Was he trying to say he couldn’t speak? Feyrith could only stare in confusion.

As if trying to explain, a strange yet oddly familiar language escaped his “helmet”, saying a few words before seemingly giving up. The accent sounded… odd, to say the least. Not one word sounded like it had come from a mortal… sounding more akin to an ancient or a… primordial. Well, that's a sobering thought. Feyrith thought, her lips pressing into a thin line.

Not really sure what to do next, she looked back to her saviour. In slight trepidation, she leaned forward in an attempt to make eye contact - ultimately failing to see anything past his helmet.

With a sigh, Feyrith thought of her next move, “So, what now?” She asked, looking up wearily at the strange man, hoping he could at least understand her meaning.

For a moment the giant warrior stood completely still. If she were to guess, he was attempting to decipher what she had said. Apparently getting the gist of what she meant, most likely from the tone of voice, he made a couple of gestures, seemingly implying he would do something along the lines of protecting her.

Normally, she would try to be a little snarky or just straight up refuse such a gesture, but… as of now, she was too worn out and grateful to this man to care. Turning on her heel, facing her desired direction, she looked over her shoulder to the kind being that now stood behind her.

“Right, this way then...” Feyrith said, slightly flustered. Taking one last sad look around at the carnage, she considered trying to bury the dead - but there were too many corpses, and besides, she didn't think they had enough time. Maybe she would come back when she could, at the very least clean up a bit.

As Feyrith walked towards her hometown, she noticed that to her shock, the angel didn't make any noticeable sound as it moved - its footsteps were completely silent.

Luckily, or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint, her caravan had been attacked not even an hour's walk from the town - and so there was plenty of time before sunset.

-------

Alex had been following the woman for a while now. If he had to be honest, he had expected to get jumped by random monsters every minute or so. But as it was going, they hadn't been attacked once.

When he was walking through the forest, he had been attacked constantly, but it seemed like this was a safe area.

Well, I guess there are a couple of boons, Alex thought as he looked at his beige and brown-clad companion. Just being around her, he was able to get tons of information. Firstly, when he had gotten up close to help her earlier, he had gotten a good glimpse at her ears - which were pointed. She was an elf. He had saved an elf. Fuckin’ hell yeah!

Ever since that point he had been internally cheering, his mind flipping in excitement. The sheer amount of possibilities that he had were astounding.

He had died. And now he was in some sort of fantasy world. Sure, there were other human sub-species back home that had ‘elven’ features, but they were highly advanced space-faring civilizations.

Here, they seemed to be in some kind of medieval time period. He began to theorize on what this could mean. So, if this meant all those cliche fantasy stories were all… real, that meant fantasy writers were...really, really ahead of their time - huh.

But still, he doubted the reality around him. After all, it was hard to believe he had died and was just...alive again.

Maybe he hadn’t died, and instead, he was in some sort of coma - some state between life and death, and everything he was experiencing was his brain trying to give him a happy ending before he really died.

Well then, even if that was the case, Alex was going to enjoy this new life of his. Fake or not, it was something to do and he wasn't going to complain.

His inner monologue was quickly cut off as he noticed what seemed like the stereotypical depiction of a medieval town. Wow...that architecture looks really similar to what I saw in history class back in school…neat.

Looking over to his travelling companion, he noticed she was very tired - hunched over and breathing heavily. Seeing that the town was still a ways away, he decided on a plan of attack.

---------

Feyrith watched as the angel used its larger strides to get ahead of her, before crouching down on one knee, facing away from her. Before she could show her confusion, the large figure tapped its back, before pointing at her.

… a piggyback ride? She thought. Over their walk, she had hoped she had convincingly hidden her exhaustion quite well, but apparently not.

She couldn't sense any ulterior motives from this man. In all honesty, Feyrith had to pay really close attention to sense even the faintest of emotions from the angel - but even using her magic, she could sense what could only be described as the purest of intentions. An odd sight to be sure.

Exhausted, Feyrith all but flopped onto the angel’s back, wrapping her arms around his neck. Before she knew it, she was off the ground.

Thinking back, the last time she had had a piggyback ride was during her childhood. To say it brought a blush to her face would have been an understatement. Even with her body being more tired than it ever had been before, her mind was still going a mile a minute.

Lost in her thoughts, she nearly lost her grip when the angel began moving. Once she was able to regain her bearings, she was finding herself involuntarily giggling as the wind rushed over her face.

Looking around, she could see trees zipping past them, along with small animals and the occasional low-ranked monster moving out of their way, seemingly terrified of the spectacle.

When she was younger her father had told her that mage knights could pull off a similar feat… running in their heavy armour - but actually experiencing it was something else altogether. The adrenaline rushing through her veins was a testament to that.

But like all good things, they always end a lot sooner than you want them to. Before she knew it, they had arrived at the town gates - evident by the fact that her new favourite person had slowed to a walk.

Before the bewildered guards could even mutter a word, Feyrith pulled her guild card off of her neck and chucked it to them, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Once checking the card, the guards gingerly gave her guild card back, very, very confused as to why the hell a silver rank was being carried.

“Um… miss, you can go through, but… I hope you don't mind me asking… who, or what is that?” The armoured gate guard asked - his red gambeson under his armour showing between the plates.

“Well, he saved my life when my guild party abandoned me. And although I'm not too sure what he is, I know that he's friendly.” Feyrith snapped as they moved through the gates.