Corvayne felt himself walking in the dark. He had to blink as there was a flash and then two eyes open. They were pools of black, shimmering with a thousand colors of stars and rimmed with gold. Hair spun from blue oceans and deep green forests swirled around them. In the dark, a girl knelt in a dress made of lights, glittering white with a thousand suns trailing off behind her into red and purple dying gasps of novas, all merging into the dark.

“Come find me. I'm waiting for you.”

Her voice wakes him.

Corvayne woke and had a blimp of a thought: [99.9%]. Whatever that meant. The next thing he felt was his foot landing on sandy soil, his eyes opened, and then he started stepping again and hesitated as confusion swept through him. He blinked and actually stumbled; it felt he had been sitting on his legs for three hours and then tried to run. Once he had recovered his posture he took stock of the situation: He was still in a dry hot place with sand near him. His vision adjusted for the harsh light and he saw hills forming a line in front of him. Even more heartening: He had found a road again. Not the same one, as instead of packed dirt it looked to be loose gravel. Disoriented and trying to remember the map, all he could be certain of was that he was far from home: soft rock like limestone came from distant quarries.

His shock at gravel, marvel of marvels, was quickly eclipsed by wispy strands of grass at the sides of the road. He turned to look back and saw a flat wasteland of thin sand and cracked earth, very different then the endless dunes outside his home. Former home. Even if he wanted to return, the road up into the hill he was on seemed to end in the desert behind him. Oddly enough, he could swear in front of the metal guard rail sticking out of the sandy soil there was a distortion. Maybe something to do with the weird effect that dragged him through the wastes just now.

“Now what?” He asked aloud, almost sure that the Magus had done something that caused him to be spit out somewhere else. He checked his backpack to make sure he had his supplies and frowned. Unless his memory was playing tricks on him, someone had swapped his backpack with a different old one. He had taken his trusty cloak-canvas bag. His current pack was the same size but well worn leather. His gear inside also looked different. The only things that hadn't been replaced with similar objects were his water purifier and condenser (though the purifier looked like it could use a cleaning, there was some dried dirt on the outside of it), his cloak, and his spear. His canteen had been made of the same chrome as some of the buildings in his village were. The current canteen he was holding looked like it was simple steel. It had water in it which put him a little more at ease: he guessed he had a few days to fill his condenser. The trading trinkets were in a different bag, but thankfully were mostly there too. Some of the less valuable ones such as the nice sapphires he had found after killing a ripper horror were missing however. How did he drop them?

It wasn't important: he had water, and he had his camping stuff. He figured he could get up into the hills he saw the road slithering up, take a look out at the top, then see if there was a landmark he could place on the map he had looked at. Looking at the white rocky bluffs dotted with dead grass then sweeping around him, he took a full minute to soak in the details. He was a little lost but had to smile at the sweet, sweet freedom!

No obvious monsters were lurking nearby so he started walking. It was warm: the air near the ground shimmered in the heat. It wasn't as hot as home, though he had never spent so long walking up any given dune compared to this single hill. He pulled a flat straw hat he had seen while rummaging around in the pack out and slapped it on his head, then put his cloak away. The hat probably made him look stupid, but it meant he could catch a little breeze as he walked.

Cresting where the road got over the hill, he could see there was another taller hill after a dry valley. Looking sideways at the crest of the hill, he saw the road actually crossed another road that followed the ridge. He decided to walk into the valley rather then follow the cross road, partially because there were scraggly little trees down there! It gave him a kick to see so much tall grass and so many plants next to the road without any water near it, even if it was all brown and bleached white. It all put him in a good mood. Sure; he was hopelessly lost, but with a road and a place to look out from, he could probably find water somewhere along the road. He didn't have any of the food he had packed but given that he could hear crickets in the dry brush he was pretty sure there was at least something to eat.

Cresting the top of the next hill took him another hour of steady walking. When he finally got near the top of the hill, of course there was an even taller one that the road he was following zig-zagged up the side of. Perhaps it counted as a mountain? He had seen pictures of them in books, but wasn't sure if this was of the right scale. He got a treat: walking downhill was easier and it was getting cooler.

The valley he was walking through had a dried out creek bed with the gravel road being interrupted with a bridge. As he reached the foot of the mountain the road transformed: someone had shaped stone so the road was now solid rock under his feet. It didn't look as well done as when someone used a stone melter to make art, for example, but the scale of smoothed stone running up the slope ahead was impressive. He recalled in books they called it blacktop.

Walking up the switchbacks took him the rest of the day. He was high up enough now that the air was a little thinner then what he was used to and he was thinking of putting his cloak back on for warmth, but cresting the top he felt immensely satisfied at the view of the brilliant pink and purple clouds of sunset. Then he looked down and he couldn't help laugh and smile. There was green grass EVERYWHERE. He started running, feet pumping as he flew down the much more gentle back slope of the huge hill then waded into the field ahead. It was all alive and soft and cool and he could feel dew on them. The field he was wading through sloped down along with the road between mountain tops, snaking into wispy clouds that thickened into a whole sea of grey. Following the side of the road down, he found himself walking into a quiet and cold gray fog. He took his cloak out and slung it on, putting the hat away.

For the next few hours he pushed down into the mists. The road glided over bridged ravines full of swirling clouds, snaked along mountain rivers, and dove down more endless switchbacks. Most of the time everything was indistinct outside his fog little bubble. It was hours of walking down when night came. He had read books talking about heroes who had to brave mountains and many of them sparing no expense to describe the fate of some foolish vagabond or perusing enemy subordinate who took a wrong step off a cliff. It was all those accounts that guided his decision to stop rather then wander around in the mountains in the dark fog. He set himself up away from the road wary that bandits would prey on him: they always went for the weak. He strung a tarp against a tree with a flap letting him see most of the rocky field with a few sparse trees he was camping near without being obvious from the road. After what felt like spotty rest in a lean-to tent, Corvayne woke to the sound of heavy vehicles driving down the road into the valley. It was a long line of trucks passing every twenty seconds. They were much bigger then any of the hauler trucks he had seen at the village, probably 20 feet tall and painted bright orange with black lettering that seemed to swirl a little in front of his eyes. Corvayne rubbed his face to push away the sleepiness, folded his tarp up, packed it away, and with how dark it was simply crept up to the last truck in the line as it rolled past and hopped up onto it. After all, who would pass up a free ride?

The truck stopped about three hours of driving down into clouds, rain, and a staggering array of trees. It was morning now, gray and wet. Corvayne was trying to process a place where it rained for more then 5 minutes every few years. When the trucks stopped, Corvayne could see they were slowing down to pull into a fenced off area to the side of the road. Whatever was in the huge building it was clearly dangerous as it was surrounded by barbed wire on the fence and had a manned gate. It didn't look like a village so he hopped off to the side as the truck as it turned in and simply kept walking down the side of the road. He only stopped once to marvel at seeing a fern in the wild, and once to skewer a rabbit sitting out in the open. At least it looked like a rabbit: these ones didn't have the horns a proper rabbit should.

When another line of orange trucks came along going his way (or perhaps the same ones) he once again hopped on the back of the last one and let them carry him another few hours downhill. When they pulled into what he thought looked like a combustion engine refueling station he hopped off before the truck he was on stopped. He considered stealing one for a half beat but decided he'd enjoy the walk and not risk being branded a criminal. More and more buildings were popping up along the road throughout the day. He didn't see many people out and about but the few he did looked to be humans and didn't pay much attention to him, so that was a good thing.

It was well into night when the road Corvayne was following reached a huge bridge over what looked like a titanic amount of water. Even more stunning then this unimaginable stretch of water, going as far as he could see either way, was an amazing rainbow of colors above the water.

He saw lines of neon blues yellows and pinks arching into the sky, mixed in with orange lines of street lights and blaring white squares as huge screens plastered on buildings glittered with messages imploring him to buy or try things, mixed in with lined lights up to towering spires on top of buildings, everything blaring out over the water like a thousand fireworks all frozen in a moment. He felt intimidated but hopeful. A big city! He would find his path in life here. He was so exited to take his first step that he almost missed the sign next to the bridge that said 'Welcome to Cascadia'

Two days later Corvayne understood money in the same way he understood rain: it was a novelty from books a week ago, and now he was sick of it. Walking the vibrant streets of the city he found he needed it for everything aside from water. Of course water was free: it fell from the sky nonstop. The only bit of luck he had was that everyone spoke the same language as he did, even if it sounded a little weird in how they said everything. But after two days in Cascadia he was having doubts about his ability to handle the huge city. He reviewed, mentally, how he had gotten to where he was at the end of these two days: Walking in the rain on a long bridge arched over a bay, wind blowing cold water into his face as he looked at a gray sky and gray sea.

Crowds were the first trial: him and people did not mix. Corvayne, as the village outcast, would never walk near groups if he could avoid them. There was no one else on foot during on his walk into the city but the streets filled with people quickly after he made his way into the twisting grids of buildings and streets. He had, as he walked, been steeling himself to speak with strangers to try to find water, food, shelter, and work. But there was a sort of impenetrable quality to the city and it's crowds. The city itself on street level was stores windows and doors all built into stone and steel and glass. He had expected perhaps a market with things arrayed out in the street, and people asking him to trade. Or a lucky encounter where he bumped into someone. It made sense: that sort of thing happened to heroes. He was not a hero. He had walked forward for a good two hours just lamenting that he didn't know how to greet people.

The second was just learning how to navigate the city. Everything was radiating light like a thousand suns that bounced off the streets. In a vista that was neat, but he had to adjust to the overwhelming amount of stimulus all around him. Even late at night or early morning, crowds of people were still out walking through blasting displays of light, further reflected in wet streets and sidewalks that doubled the number of lights. Worse: There was no avoiding having people near him or surrounding him as every road had a tempo that bunched him into a crowd a block into the city. Cascadia had a lot of small people and they packed him in to the point where he couldn't move without knocking a half dozen of them over. This happened everwhere and was part of the clockwork of the city broadcast through a very specific alternating light that dictated when cars went. No pedestrian nor car broke the commands of little signals and he was not willing to risk finding out why. Thankfully, as the night gave way to his first morning, he discovered nobody cared about him... aside from him having a spear.

Thus his third problem: as the first dawn in the city came he started getting weird looks. He had noticed no one else in the city was armed besides the occasional police officer wearing a holstered pistol. Perhaps people hadn't been looking at night, but during the day he had a fellow start stalking behind him. He turned and faced the man and saw a badge, which he knew meant some sort of inspector or constable. The officer then started a conversation with him.

“Hey buddy, what are you doing?”

“Greetings. I am walking and enjoying the rain.” Corvayne responded.

“Yeah I mean, what's with the spear?”

“It's a standard Watcher spear.”

“Okay... where are you from?” The man had folded his arms. Something about the pose and look rubbed Corvanye the wrong way. Still, this man might let him ask a few questions as well.

“The Village of the Watchers.” Corvayne stated matter-of-factly.

“Is that a neighborhood?” The officer asked, reaching for a pad of paper.

“It's... yes I suppose it would be.”

Corvayne finally put his thumb on why he didn't like talking to the officer: The fellow had a tone and demeanor like sword master One-Last-Note: He was overtly friendly word for word but it was cut with an undercurrent of complete contempt. Corvayne might have put up with it from the sword master himself, but that was because sword master was 8 feet of pure compressed death with the eyes of a roc and honed reflexes to match. Looking over, he could see the officer was in poor shape, distracted and in need of glasses. He'd risk bad reflexes given everything else. Corvayne just placidly answered the next question about his name and waited for the officer to squint down at the paper he was writing on. Once he was glanceing down and writing, Corvayne smoothly stepped back away from the officer, turned around, then took two steps forward to walk behind a crowd at a nearby crosswalk. A tug at his collar flipped his cloak's colors to match the colors and outlines of the crowd. He held his spear in front of him: only the dark tip would be seen by the officer if he was looking for it.

The cloak seemed to be able to sense what colors and shapes were around it and blurred his outline down to his boots. It supposedly also smudged any basic surveillance directed at him. In the reflection of a car stopping he could see the officer stumbling about around trying to find where he went and Corvayne calmly walked across the street with the group ahead of him as the light changed a moment later. Lesson learned, he wrapped a spare black shirt around the spear blade and pretended it was a walking stick. Somehow that was enough to totally avoid any further issues with the law. It was very clearly a concealed spear.

Corvayne then tried his hand at speaking to someone who wasn't an officer. “Hello!” he said to someone waiting at the light with him a few minutes later. The man, wearing a suit, completely ignored him. He tried again and the man looked at him side eyed but resumed staring forward.

He turned to a woman. “Hello?” he tried a third time.

She turned to him and glared. “Fuck off creep.”

Further conversations established that whatever his wants or needs, money was the only way to get it, and no he couldn't have any. When he took shelter from the rain and asked a few store keepers about buying or trading for one of his trinkets, a handful of thin white metal rods, he was told they were calling the cops. He was annoyed, as the traders usually would flip for anything out of the village. One helpful man told him to get a job, which made sense, and he thanked the gentleman who for some reason flipped him off. He then quickly discovered that a job wanted codes from him that proved he was himself, an address, his date of birth: He didn't know how they organized dates! And so at the end of the first day he found himself sitting at a molded plastic table across from a tired man wearing an apron with a cartoon chicken on it. The tired man pointed him in the direction of Old Town. There were places there that would take in someone with no money. Just follow the yellow train line. The man waved away any thanks and Corvayne steeled himself. If he could not find something, someone, anything in Old Town, he might be doomed to forever be a pariah.

The first night he slept for free by climbing over a gate blocking a ladder that lead up to a nice secluded ledge under a bridge. He slept poorly with the rumble of trucks on the concrete over his head, dreaming of his father dragging him through the crowds back to the desert. A nightmare that made him happy to wake up elsewhere, even if he was still without money and starting to get hungry.

Once he was down from the bridge he set off for Old town, following the yellow marked train tracks above him. Crossing bridges away from the brighter parts of town lead him through places where the neon lights were replaced with rows of apartments then to neighborhoods where the apartments looked worse to another neighborhood where people stared at him like hungry desert wolves until he pulled his shirt off his spear.

The yellow line led him to the bridge he was on as he pondered the last two days, across the gray expanse. He could see ahead the largest buildings he'd seen since entering, mismatched towers that loomed in the dark. He tightened his grip on his spear. A spearman moves forward. He pushed his chin up, and set off for Old Town.

It seemed Old Town was on the exact furthest point from where he had arrived. Looking down the street ahead of him he could see there were lots of factories, warehouses, and tall poorly maintained buildings that looked like they were cobbled together out of spaceship parts. They reached out to each other with pipes and had huge banks of fans lazily spinning in three story tall arrays. Rattling train cars came rolling in from across the water then jetting back off over the bay on steel girders stretching out like a thousand threads of a spiders web above him, cast in dark outlines by harsh lights at stations far above the dim streets.

Elsewhere in the city the water had given everything a new gleam, or ran across steel and glass like rivers. Here the never-ending rain made everything look slimy. The streets were poorly lit as where there weren't buildings boxing the roads in, they were shadowed by a tangle of the train lines and highways that all converged and split above the island. He could see and smell that the city was not taking care of trash as it spilled out of dumpsters and bags thrown or kicked out of the way. People were sleeping wherever they could to stay out of the rain. The footing was even worse then the mountains he had walked through: huge potholes full of water and uneven sidewalk and people sometimes laying in the sidewalk in makeshift tarp tents. People were so beaten down they didn't even repair their clothes properly. Never leave home without thread and a needle! Night was falling and he was feeling annoyed. Everyone was staring, glaring, or ignoring him. The exception were two large men who started following him as he had begun looked for an alleyway to pee in. He felt clever that he had used his nose to figure out that was where one peed in this part of town.

Corvayne had no idea what they wanted, but he didn't feel like having another conversation with someone who was going to end it once he admitted he didn't have something. Money seemed the fastest one: A girl who had asked him if he was looking for a good time probably gave herself whiplash with how fast she turned to ignore him when he told her he didn't have money. What did she want to do for fun, anyway? Whatever that was about, he had to pee. He jogged down the fairly well lit alley to a dark patch and started urinating on the wall while keeping his eye out for the two who had been trailing him for the better part of two blocks. They arrived at the entrance of the alleyway and he helpfully called out. “I'm peeing and I don't have money!”

The men looked at each other.

“You're full of shit!” One of them called out.

“No, I'm emptying my bladder.” Corvayne tried to stay polite.

They started walking up to him as he finished. He turned to face them and noticed they had knives.

“You're going to give us everything you have, or we're going to cut your cock off and stuff it in your mouth.”

Corvayne was stunned. Just like any given book he was face to face with humanity's oldest profession: the bandit.

They were checking over their shoulders as they came closer to him. He held up a hand.

“I have a question. But I can't pay you to answer it.”

They stopped for a second and glared at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Corvayne cleared his throat. “If I kill you while you are try to rob me, will I get in trouble here?”

One of them laughed. “Are you fucking for real?”

The other laughed too. “Look at this joker. Rough him up.” They put their knives away.

Corvayne was confused then got it: They'd get into trouble if they killed him. So he'd probably get into trouble killing them. So no spear.

He could run, or climb up a dumpster to a fire escape. No, leaving these guys here would mean someone else could get waylaid. When the first one came in swinging with a feint he first thought to just move back, but the man overextended so he grabbed the wrist coming in and pivoted to bring his elbow up to the man's jaw, then threw the man to the ground by spinning and lifting with his shoulder. With a solid thud one of the bandits landed in the grime under his boots.

Corvayne stepped away from both men, the other swinging but missing him. He stepped around the man's arm and did a quick jab to the bandit's jaw, which broke it, and saw the man he had tossed grabbing his knife. He was on the ground so Corvayne was ready for the man to throw it but instead he started standing up. Corvayne walked up, kicked the knife out of the mans hand, then pulled him into a knee to the groin, which also broke it.

As both men were rolling on the ground sobbing, Corvayne knew his next step was waiting for the person trying to train these two rookie bandits to show themselves. Then of course the real fight would begin. Should he finish them off instead, before they could call for back up?

Corvayne had many shocks to his system and perspective during the last few days, but his biggest one was coming when a scratchy woman's voice cried out from behind him “That was awesome!”

He turned to regard the woman: Young, short, thin or scrawny (take your pick), with thick glasses and dark circles under her eyes. He had never seen a woman like her before. A sort of manic grin was plastered to her face. Corvayne turned the other direction to see what she thought was so impressive... and didn't see anything but empty alleyway.

Corvayne turned back and saw a looming form behind the girl. “There's another bandit behind you, careful.” but the third and largest man simply stopped next to her and held his hands up. Ok, maybe not a bandit?

“You dismantled the two with your bare hands! It was great!” The woman cheered, stepping forward.

Corvayne felt something tickle his brain as he turned back to look at the men laying on the grimy ground of the alley. He did something great? Wait. What?

“You... think that was impressive? Wait, you think... I'm impressive?” He blinked, mind totally blank.

She nodded. “Yeah! Are you some kinda martial artist? You were toying with them then took out the trash! It was like watching a Kung-Fu movie.”

The large man next to her did a few chops in the air.

She tapped his arm and indicated the two men who were now limping away behind Corvayne.

“Get em!” she said, perhaps needlessly, as the big gentlemen had already started jogging past Corvayne. Corvayne put him and the sounds of two men getting further dismantled out of his mind. The woman coming up to him commanded his full attention.

“I don't think I was that impressive in beating those two. I'm not fit to call myself a martial artist. Where I come from, I am the weakest and would be soundly thrashed if I implied I was even thinking of calling myself a warrior.” It felt good! He had gotten praised! He kept his face neutral.

She looked at him. “Oh. So you're nuts. But that's fine, you'll fit right in here.” She was smiling at him! She looked him in the eyes!

He sighed as his happiness fled. He didn't want to tell the truth, but it would come out sooner or later. It was better to be blunt, even if for some reason he didn't want to tell this woman something that might push her away. “I do not have any money...”

“We are not robbing you.” She laughed while looking up to him.

“I mean, I need money.”

“...are you going to rob us?” She tilted her head over and looked to her partner. Looking behind him Corvayne saw the big guy just rolling his eyes and grunting as he lifted two prone forms over his shoulders.

Corvayne looked back to her. “Miss, I think you fundamentally misunderstood me.” He adjusted his bag before continuing. “I'm not looking to steal. I was leading to a question about how you would make money here. I'd rather not partake in the oldest profession.” He would not turn into a outlaw, stealing from travelers.

She took a moment and looked him up and down. “I wasn't suggesting it but... Hmm. Maybe you could make a living like that.”

“As I said before: I do not wish to become a bandit.” Well, perhaps if he was a good bandit. One of those steal from the rich and give to the poor.

“That's not the oldest profession.” she looked annoyed and her cheeks got flushed.

“Farmer?” he asked. The big guy also looked at the girl questioningly, hands open, after Corvayne spoke. As if to say: Well, what's the answer?

“Eat a dick. I'm going.” She turned on her boot heel and started walking out of the alleyway.

Corvayne hurried to follow. “Wait! I am sorry if I offended you. If you could assist me in finding work, I will be in your debt.”

“Name!” She barked without turning around or stopping.

“What?” He could see her shoulders sag and her head droop. A sigh.

The woman spoke again. “I will help you. What's your name?”

“Corvayne.”

She stopped and turned around. “Really? Corvayne?”

“It's a stupid name.” He muttered, feeling deep shame. She laughed a little, but then she smiled at him, and the difference between her grinning crazily and her little natural, almost shy, pleased smile made something in his brain click. She wasn't the first woman he'd seen or met or talked to, but she was the first person to ever be happy to see him. He felt some strange pressure moving through him, the inevitable thrust of some internal spear that wanted to carry him closer to her.

“Your name's not THAT bad. My name's Wick. A pleasure to meet you Corvayne.