Eli woke up coughing weakly in a pitch-black space and brought his hands up, unable to see them, to wipe some grime from his face. Coughing again, he lifted his hands and arms, but they thumped against a hard surface. Spreading his hands out, he couldn’t find the edge of the wall, but it felt like wood grain under his fingertips.

Where am I? Where’s Dara?

There was a faint sound just off to the side. Almost like a damn breaking, muffled sirens and car horns went off as if angry drivers had collectively lost their minds. There were vibrations in the world around him as flecks of something landed on his face, and he quickly wiped the bits of material away while his fear grew. A deep groan, almost like a giant slowly settling into sleep, came from everywhere around him, even as strange rumbles came from his left. A slight shift in the air off to his right grabbed his attention.

There was crying nearby, but he couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from. It was close, but his hands couldn’t find any purchase on the wood. He tried to move towards the crying, but he was stuck – his legs were under something, but at least they didn’t hurt. He turned to his left, the sound of his Melody Max playing the song he’d been composing seemingly only minutes ago. The deep bass and rhythm were unmistakable.

A splash of cold reality hit him.

No. Nooooo! This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. Please wake up. Wake up!

Eli had no control as his mind screamed, trapped again in his body. His thoughts grew confused, blending into the dream as his hands reached for the headphones, pulling them closer, hearing the beat. It felt safer hearing the rhythm of the sound he’d made. It was his, and he could listen to it for hours while thinking of ways to improve the song. His music would keep him safe from the dark.

The darkness never seems to end.

***

Eli woke up to darkness again, but there was a little light, at least. He was on his side with one arm under his head, facing the clearing. Laying there, he listened to his heartbeat, the sound of his breathing, and the world slowly waking up around him.

Fucking nightmares.

Dara sat nearby, poking at the campfire while tiny embers and sparks danced for a moment before the fire settled. She looked so young, probably no older than twenty, yet already strong. He hoped they could get her home safe.

She was wearing a new outfit today, a bit of a switch from the simple dress she’d had on for the past couple of days. Last night she’d spent some time going through their loot from the cultists and bandits to find something with more style. He had no idea what constituted style in her culture, but she said it was important to make the right impression if they reached town today. It was loose-fitting, but she’d added a broad leather belt that cinched it tighter over a pair of dark pants and wearing the same shoes he’d looted from the cultists only days ago.

He was in essentially the same outfit he’d been wearing throughout this adventure, feeling like a bum. Unfortunately, all the clothing they’d found was far too small for him, which didn’t leave him with many options. He’d at least put on a new light blue shirt and a fresh pair of pants while his original pair hung drying nearby. Still, his clothes had seen better days.

They planned on making it to Herria a bit later today, but Dara wasn’t sure of the exact distance. She said that the town was supposed to be close to yesterday's switchbacks, and he was looking forward to getting into some kind of civilization. So far, he’d had a tiny sample size of this world.

He yawned quietly and pulled his blanket tight. Dawn was still a couple of hours away, and he still felt exhausted. He tried to get comfortable as he closed his eyes and could only hope for better dreams.

***

There was no light, and Eli’s thoughts felt jumbled up like he’d been alone in the darkness for days, but he couldn’t be sure. His head was pounding, and his chest was on fire. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get a decent breath.

His music had stopped long ago. First, one headphone, then the other, had gone quiet, and he hadn’t even finished the song. When it stopped altogether, he imagined the music still playing – anything to keep back the silent darkness. It was even worse when there were sounds in the dark, but at least the crying had stopped ages ago. Only the slow beat of his heart and labored breaths kept him company in the dark.

A sudden shift more sensed than heard, and tiny bits of something fell onto his neck. Little pebbles followed, and he coughed as the dust irritated his dry throat. Sudden flashes of light stabbed at his eyes, making him try to turn away to escape. Then there was the caress from a slight shift in the air, the first he’d felt in forever, that tickled the side of his face, and the inferno in his chest subsided as tingles crawled all along his skin.

“…Alive? Oh my god, I have someone alive!”

New loud sounds were all around him as equipment hit debris and heavy objects crashed nearby. There were voices and yells interspersed with heart-wrenching cries. There was too much coming at him too fast for his oxygen-deprived mind to comprehend, and he couldn’t take in everything around him. The sounds grew muffled and indistinct as if underwater with the surface just out of reach, and he didn’t have the strength to open his eyes anymore. He was so cold. So dark and cold.

***

Soon after breakfast, Eli and Dara quickly packed up their things. Most of the packing consisted of him going around and touching his hand to everything. Pop! And the items went into his DS.

That is still so cool! Real actual magic.

It helped distract him a bit since he hadn’t slept well. It was really starting to alarm him, but his dreams had only gotten worse since he ended up in this world. They felt far too real now, and he had no idea why they’d suddenly returned with such a vengeance. He had struggled with his anger, fear, and guilt for years, translating into serious sleeping issues. He’d seen a long list of professionals going back to his teens, and if he counted some of his grandma’s doctor friends, it went back to his childhood after the Fall. After weaning himself off the heavy prescriptions, combined with the techniques he’d either borrowed or developed himself, he’d been in better control for the last couple of years.

Then this whole fiasco started. Eli’s emotions had felt distant when he woke up in Lugh’s weird cloud room, like parts of his feelings were somehow held apart. They weren’t gone or locked away but remote, like what he experienced with the anti-anxiety stuff the doctors gave him back in college. Heck, Eli had even suspected that Lugh had slipped him something, yet he felt some strong emotions again this morning. In fact, he felt a whole lot of intense emotions, with anxiety and frustration at the top of the list.

He’d looked through his rations earlier, hoping to find anything that gave buffs to mental fortitude or something similar. No luck, unfortunately. The Mana Candy could help his fatigue, but he’d decided against it. The food made him feel like he’d had three espressos, and he didn’t need to feel twitchy when he already had a short temper. Instead, he’d settled for a breakfast of jerky and water again.

With their gear squared away, they began their walk down the trail, and it soon widened as the environment subtly changed. The trees surrounding them for days finally thinned out as cleared land began to dot the area nearby. As they came to each of the different plots, Dara described the plants that sprouted along the way, such as the neat rows of the strange blue-topped trundi plants. They resembled a sunflower, but their yellow petals were a deep azure color and were a necessary ingredient in some popular low-level potions. A bit further along, they passed vast fields that took up all the land on both sides of the trail. Small red round plants grew in bunches along the ground in a tangle of vines she called a garist. It was in many local sauces and even made its way into a few cheap potions.

Hours and kilometers passed while Dara continued his education on the local plants. In addition to the trundi and garist, she pointed out the estalist, bluerock, moonrose, and many more. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d likely forget most of the details within minutes. They also saw people working in various fields. They were too far away for him to see the details, but he could have been back on Earth watching the seasonal pickers working the land with how similar they looked.

Coming around a small hill, they finally saw Herria. The place looked like a giant wilderness fort, with a dark brown wooden wall maybe a few meters high surrounding the town. The rough logs were built and stood up vertically, with large wooden cross beams at the top and bottom. The wood still had bark showing in a few places. There was a roughness to the whole construction, even from a distance.

Above the wall, they could see the mostly log buildings inside with some stone construction in the distance. A few distant roofs had tiles, while the closest had thatch or wooden planks. “Hmmm…how bad is it going to smell in there?” He couldn’t help a slight grimace and hoped that this place didn’t have any open sewage issues. Many of the time traveler stories he knew had romantic notions of the past that didn’t consider smell or biowaste. Big cities without modern sanitation sounded a bit yuck in his book.

Dara stopped on the trail and threw him a look. “What? No! This is just…a town, though it might be rough. I’ve only been here a few times, and my father always did the talking. Just try not to-.” She paused. “You know what, just let me do the talking. You are the more powerful Gifted between the two of us, so I will take on the junior role. Oh, and I’ll need some coins. The guards will want them for entry,” she finished, holding out her hand.

“Well, fine, let me be the bank then,” he said with a grin. He looked through his bracelet storage, as there was no reason to keep the coins on him. He’d collected a decent amount from the cultists and bandits.

A small handful of coins materialized in his cupped hands. They reminded him of the old US state quarters – how each had Washington on the front with different images on the back. These were just as uniform in shape, yet there were all sorts of different designs on their sides. The coppers looked simplest in presentation with various rough animal motifs. One of the golds could have been right out of a museum, with the shiny metal showing a detailed image of a man in profile and a tower or lighthouse on the other side. Beyond the different images, the most significant difference was their size. There were two sizes of coppers and two of silver, but only one gold. He’d expected a mishmash of different denominations, metal alloys, shapes, images, and stuff. If he’d landed in Greece or Egypt thousands of years ago, they’d have had a bunch of different coins from all the neighboring countries and city-states. Their enemies had their own currency, too, after all. Here though, there were just the three metals of slightly different sizes.

“Let me see…I’m guessing the coinage value from least to greatest is copper, silver, and then gold?” he asked.

“Yes, exactly. The conversion is pretty standard in most areas, though there can be some differences in other lands. We in the Pantheon Alliance follow the standards that most regions have adopted. I’ve heard of some in the far south with a different way of paying for things, but I haven’t met anyone that saw it in person. I'd imagine a handful of the small coppers should get us in.”

“Woah, just a handful of the lowest value coins? That’s not too bad. Here ya go. Remind me to share some of the loot with you later?” He handed over a handful of copper and silver coins. After all, he had plenty to share, but better to keep most of the goods safe in his DS for now.

Almost musing, he said, “Seems like there’s a chance for counterfeit, right? I mean, if everyone is using them in all these places, it might be worth it to cheat the system? I guess clipping would be a challenge with standardized sizes.”

“No one in their right mind would pass off fake coins. Too many people can detect them in one form or another. Your life for some coins is a bad bargain when it is so easily undone.”

Oh right. Magic.

Dara put the coins in a small hideaway spot she’d made in her leather belt and then looked up to him, her face serious. “Let me talk to them, yes?”

“Yes,” he said, grinning.

“Hmph.”

The trail ran up to a gate with large wooden doors open for foot traffic. At the left of the entrance, two men in rough leather armor stood and talked with a guy wearing the largest backpack Eli had ever seen. Beyond them was the gatehouse, where a few more guards stood around and talked. Looking beyond the peddler and the gate, he could see that the ground was just hard earth inside the town. He couldn’t see any pavement or even stones. Even with the new town and sights, the guy with the giant backpack drew his attention again.

He had to be a traveling merchant, with all the pouches and bags stacked up. The peddler’s large backpack bulged almost half a meter to a side and towered a couple of meters above his head, swaying to and fro as he talked with the guards, yet stuck on as if welded to his frame. With the size of the thing, it didn’t look physically possible to carry everything unless he was only lugging around helium under all the leather and canvas material.

“Hey, Dara? What’s the story with that guy?” He quietly asked as he nodded toward the merchant.

“Hmmm? The peddler? What about him?” She looked back at Eli with raised eyebrows.

“How is he carrying all that weight? Shoot, why doesn’t he have a horse to carry everything?”

Dara chuckled. “I can’t say who he is, but I’d imagine he has some sort of strength ability. As to a horse, what is that? I get the impression of an animal, but it doesn’t translate well.”

“You don’t have horses?” He asked in surprise. “Well, dang, that’s a difference. Huh, and I guess the strength ability makes sense, but I’d guess some sort of bartering ability would be better for a merchant.”

“Eli, not everyone has your strange gift to pick and choose their abilities. He could be a decent fighter with his strength, but he might not have the temperament for it. That man is likely doing the best he can with the gifts provided.” She said with a slight frown.

“Good point,” he admitted, realizing he was being a bit of an ass.

Eli slowed to watch the peddler as the man passed a couple of coins to the guards. Bowing, his tall pack swung forward, barely missing the top of the gate as he walked into the town.

Dara strolled up to the two guards and gave a little nod. “Hail! Health to both of you,” she said in a firm voice.

Eli’s exploring eyes suddenly panned back to reality, looking toward the two guards. There was something about how they were eyeing Dara – as if hungry.

Both guards nodded back to Dara, though so small it could have been imagined. The guard on the left smiled, while the one on the right played it cooler, though the look in his eyes gave him away. Lefty opened his mouth. “Hail indeed, little sister. What are you doing all the way out here with some giant beggar? Don’t you know that it isn’t the height of a man that’s important? Kick away the vagrant, and Seb and I will show you the best sights of Herria.”

Dara backed up in surprise but Lefty moved forward with a grin. “Hey, lovely, we just want to chat. No need to make this ugly.”

Seb turned to Eli as if to take him out of the picture. His smile was starting to grow as he pulled a heavy truncheon from his belt but froze.

A scene from the war flashed in Eli’s mind of a corporal with a similar smile, which Eli had wiped away when his knife entered that bastard’s throat. He’d acted fast and almost without thought, but he’d still failed to save that poor woman.

Shoving the memory away, he nearly triggered Manasight but stopped, remembering his earlier conversation with Dara about his glowing eyes. Instead, he only turned on Tracking, and small lines and circles materialized around both guards as he moved to help.