“This status thing really is useful” Madeline spoke as she looked at her own personalised compass. The thin blue screen floated at the top of her vision, with the direction of the Point of Power stylized by a gold dot. Jacob and herself were walking through the relatively quiet forest, though forest may not be the correct term, with how neat everything is, even the protruding roots that are so ubiquitous of the Carpinus are almost rerouted out of the path, she thought glancing at her rapidly darkening surroundings.

Birds were peacefully chirping, and the rustling of small critters were gentle, though Madeline was too preoccupied with further personalising here status to properly categorise the various aspects of this new natural world that she has awoken in, hopefully not so natural. This hope was supported by the floating Fairy Duster’s, the purple and white flowers in this new world did seem much closer to their colloquial name than they did back on Earth.

After seeing another group of people from Earth, though Madeline began to refer to them and even herself as Outworlders, walk past jabbering away in a variety of exotic languages.

Jacob broke their companionable silence, “It is quite weird how our compass uses these red dots to show danger, especially since we don’t know about this mysterious danger, it’s like a video game or something.” He spoke looking towards one such red dot, that the boisterous group of Outworlders were currently walking towards.

“Do you think they know what they’re walking towards?” She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes as she turned back towards Jacob.

“Probably,” shrugging, “or they might be trying to get some early powerleveling in.” He finished bringing up his own status sheet.

“I agree. Honestly there’s no point to trying to level up now, no one can access their status yet, much less use any abilities,” Madeline turned forwards and flailed her arms around as if trying to summon fire, “and more importantly how are they going to deal with what they find, we’re still regular humans.”

“I’m not human…” He trailed off as Madeline glanced over her shoulder.

“There’s a time and a place for jokes, and now when those people could be walking to their deaths, is definitely not the time.”

Jacob’s eyes widened and his hands went up. “Okay, okay. I’ll go grab those three and bring them back here, but you,” he pointed back already entering the tree line, “will be the one that’ll be explaining everything to them.”

Within a few moments his silhouette had already blended in with the now dusky forest, rolling her eyes Madeline felt the pale grey bark of the Hornbeam dig into her legs as she sat upon the short, twisted trunk. Since waking up she had not been alone, now she was.

She pursed her lips as she listened to the soundscape that is so familiar with the countryside, comfortable that there were no predators around, since silence often predated their arrival, she nestled into the crook of the twisted pale trunks. Her mother, or was it father, always said she was never the most introspective person.

Nonetheless she began to think about her circumstances in this new world, she had already spent most of the evening attempting to unlock her status and realised that the best thing she could do in that department, is lead them to the ‘Point of Power’ that was about 4 hours away now. That group that Jacob went to grab had no clue what they were walking into, she did. Yes, we all needed levels, but there was a right way and a wrong way to gain them and getting themselves killed was obviously the wrong way. On the topic of right and wrong Jacob was definitely something, One moment they had an intellectual conversation about the intricacies of this system and how best to exploit it, and the next he would be crassly making immature ‘my mom’ jokes; before she was able to categorise people quite cleanly, into good and bad or light and dark, yet now there was more to it, though the stakes are much higher than when I was just a girl in secondary. I am a woman now and I must act like it. Madeline dozed off with thoughts of magic, swords, and magic swords.

The last vestiges of the sun’s memory drained away; the pitch-black cover of the night was pierced by the pale, haunting moon beams slipping through the forest canopy, the dark was so deep that the light seemed blinding. Yet life still moved, in the dark glistening colours reflected out of the eyes of small nocturnal creatures, compared to the omnipotent dark a veritable lightshow framed the figure, now sprawled in the trees, positioned as if she was a haughty warlord out of the dark ages peering down from their brutal throne.

As if lost travellers entering a great warlord’s hearth, the group of 4 young students, led by a red-faced Jacob, stumbled into the clearing.

Even if Madeline did speak the language of the girl with long wavy brown hair, she would not have understood, with the dregs of sleep being lifted from her brain.

“For the last time, I do not speak Hindi.” Jacob hissed out of the dark, looking towards a short girl wearing a white collared blouse and navy pleated skirt, who then promptly turned towards a smirking boy in a bright red tracksuit with the flag of China upon it, the short girl spoke haltingly and was visibly struggling, the boy in the red tracksuit however spoke confidently at a taller sure-footed boy wearing a thick fur hat adorned with tassels, who then finally turned back to the dark-skinned girl with long wavy brown hair. This process of what seemed like a multi-lingual version of Chinese whispers started back up when she shouted while pointing to her brain.

When the sentence finally reached the short girl, she blanched and rubbed the back of her neck, while the two other boys were clearly holding in laughter.

“What did Pooja say now.” Jacob spoke while glaring at the girl with long wavy brown hair who was staring back with an equal if not greater amount of malice.

“I’m not comfortable repeating what was said… but it involved odours.” The short girl spoke clearly, albeit with a soft accent.

Jacob huffed and crossed his arms, “Junko, tell Pooja that first of all her mo-“

“Jacob.” Madeline was growing annoyed for a number of reasons, she opened her mouth to let the others know her reasons but paused, fire can never put out fire she remembered her mother often saying, so instead she took in a deep breath, shimmied out of her napping spot, and tried her best to smile.

The two boys stopped laughing, as the whole group turned wide eyed to where Madeline was standing, with the moonlight spilling around her figure.

Thinking back to her lessons on decorum, “I am Madeline Sutton, and it is good to meet you all.” She nodded while locking eyes with each of the 5. “I assume some of you do not speak English.” Hearing the word English, the two boys who were previously laughing, and the girl who spoke Hindi shook their heads.

“Yeah, it’s quite a system we got going on.” Jacob pointed towards Junko, “she’s from Japan, but she knows- “

“Barley.” Interrupts Junko, while smiling towards Jacob. “It’s good to meet you Madeline, and yes I know a little Mandarin, so I translate to Syun here.” The boy in the red tracksuit hearing his name gives a wave and a bright smile. “Who then translates to Tenzin and because Tenzin is from Tibet, he speaks both Mandarin and Hindi. Then he speaks to Pooja,” Junko points to the girl who is still giving the side-eye to Jacob, “it is complicated, but what else can we do in such a situation.”

“As long as we all understand each other,” Madeline then turned to the group as a whole, “I have my own ideas, but does anyone have anything more than what the status tells us?” Confused Junko translates Madeline’s words to Syun, screwing up his face, “地位?”, he then shrugs and speaks to Tenzin, who reacts in a similar manner to both Syun and Junko.

However, when Pooja hears, she begins to nod and a quick conversation picks up between herself and Tenzin, as she speaks Tenzin laughs and shakes his head, Pooja begins to repeat herself while pointing around at the tiny hints in the forest that were just a tad too uncanny, Tenzin continuing to shake his head waves her off.

This is going to be incredibly frustrating Madeline thinks to herself as she looks at Jacob, who in his boredom has walked over to the tree that she slept in and taken a seat himself. While Syun and Junko quietly talk, looking around the dark punctured by twinkling eyes, reflections, and pale white beams.

Turning back, Madeline sees Pooja shouting as she grabs the scruff of Tenzin’s thick fur jacket, suddenly pausing his eyes glaze over, and begin to go up and down, then back up again. Tenzin blinks harshly, removes his hat and does a short apologetic bow towards Pooja, while she initially smiles smugly, she then nods back to Tenzin. They speak for a few moments, then Pooja gestures towards Syun, and a look of understanding is placed upon Tenzin’s face.

Madeline resisting the urge to sigh, sees Tenzin walk over to Syun and he asks him a question, Syun promptly nods, and Tenzin reaches out to touch his tracksuit covered shoulder. Shrugging the two boys turn towards Pooja, who then rolls her eyes, walks over and grabs Syun’s bare hand. The same phenomenon that happened to Tenzin seems to affect Syun as well, and after a few moments the three begin to talk animatedly, while Junko haltingly listens in.

In a few moments Syun reaches out to Junko, who then continues the chain of reactions however her eyes move from right to left, unlike Tenzin and Syun.

“Ah…” Junko speaks clearly in shock, “So you’ve known about the message this whole time.”

“The system. Yes, me and Mads woke up to this message.” Jacob saunters back over.

“Did you four only see the system now?”

“Pooja said she woke up to it as well, Madeline.” Junko speaks pointing to Pooja, who hearing her name peers at both Jacob and Madeline, “but us three,” she continues gesturing at herself, Syun, and Tenzin “only saw the ‘system’ when we touched someone who had it”.

Seeing Madeline getting ready to further question the four, Jacob interrupts “That’s something for sure, though we can sort it out when we unlock our systems tomorrow.”

Madeline looking into the dark, “We should keep moving through the night.”

“Why?” Junko asks innocently.

“It’s obvious, come on let’s walk.” She says already beginning to follow the dirt path.

Muttering for a few moments the group eventually follows Madeline. After a few minutes of walking in relative silence, Junko begins “You could at least ex- “A guttural scream is sent burning through the dark woods.

Silence reigns until the quiet is snapped by a second weaker yet no less heart-wrenching scream, followed by shouting, swearing and footsteps.

The dark seemed to deepen, in front of their very eyes, the glittering eyes blinked away, the floating Fairy Dusters winked out, the moon was forced to hide behind the rustling canopy.

A red blur followed by an even faster blue blur; then a group of wide-eyed people come stumbling out of the woods. She could not hear what they shouted, all she could see was the pale moonlit air that steamed with the burning breaths and cries of the first group It is weird what the mind focuses on when in fear, her heart was in her ears and her throat felt tight, the voices of the runners blurred, more came screaming out of the pitch-black woods, now covered in sweat, mud, and blood, no longer as groups, now almost like animals running for survival, trampling over the fallen, a tiny girl was curled into a ball as a black boot crushed her head into the wet mud. Yet nothing was as clear as the consistently ringing screams that came from deep in the woods. The growing number of people running past were mouthing her to run, pointing in all directions, falling as they run over and into each other.

Chaos. Terror. Panic. Madeline ran.

Towards the tiny girl, bending over her and picking her up, the tears from her blue eyes were mixing with the mud coating her face, and the blood pouring from her small button nose. Creating a deep, dirty red sludge that coated her face, Madeline reached for her handkerchief, and it was promptly lost as she was sent sprawling by another runner. So, she used her blazer to wipe the small girls face, and clutched the girl to her neck, using one hand to hold the girls’ legs, Madeline fought her way back to the group, expecting to see them running of in panic as well.

She wasn’t entirely wrong, Syun and Pooja were running, but running to grab enough sticks, while Tenzin easily started fires using a large lighter, using cloth that Junko was ripping off from her skirt. What are they using torches for she thought, as she struggled through the thinning crowd back to her group. Closest to the forest stood Jacob, peering into the forest, his feet wide, back straight, his thin arms dangling from his sides, yet his left hand was tense, a flash of silver metal, as he began to walk into the forest.

Arriving to the four, Madeline kept the small girl in her arms, “Which way?” she asked.

They looked around at each other, then looked into the pitch-black forest, Junko stood, held out the cloth covered stick, and let Tenzin light a blaze.

“There’s only one way.”

They stood as one and walked into to screaming dark.