Outside in the street, I walked in a daze. It isn’t as though I hadn’t considered the possibility, I thought, but to see proof of it like that is just… unexpected. Subtle details about the environment began to jump out at me. Things like the fact that the sky’s shade of blue was just slightly wrong, or that the speed of water droplets dripping from the still-wet roofs was maybe a bit different than it should have been. Even the green of the plants looked off when viewed from certain angles. Nothing like “magic” ever existed on Earth, I thought, it’s some kind of technology for certain, but now there are even more questions as to its origin.

The most confusing part was the human presence. Where did they come from, if this isn’t Earth? I wondered. To my knowledge, all creator humans on Earth had been killed by warbreed or AI centuries before I awoke on Awsriyah island. They were extinct, fully and verifiably. Even reconstructing a complete copy of their genome was near-impossible because their gene banks were torched during the Creator-Warbreed conflicts. The fact that there were not only living creator humans, but that they were living on another world entirely, was something I would have deemed impossible if not for the fact that I was looking at a crowd of them as I walked.

How long was I deactivated for? I wondered. I experienced no time between when I was deactivated and awoken by my current operator, but that didn’t mean the time I spent deactivated was brief. Travel between planets in the solar system took months or years for just small probes. The nearest remotely Earth-like extrasolar worlds were centuries away by conventional spaceflight, and to my knowledge, none of them were as Earth-like as the world I found myself on. Which means I could have been out for hundreds, thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of years or more, I concluded, but that would mean I was copied from device to device without ever being activated, or… My mind spun, then was silenced by my will. None of this is relevant to the mission, I told myself, I need to keep my focus on the task at hand.

“What’s with you?” Koyl asked, his mouth half full of food. “Ever since you came back to the inn you’ve been acting distracted. Is something going on?” The noise of the inn’s dining room rushed back in to fill the silence, and my mind wandered for a moment. Could this just be a virtual environment? There are a few ways I might be able to check, assuming it’s not- “Hey, you hear me?” Koyl interrupted.

“It’s nothing,” I replied quickly, turning back to my food. My tongue analyzed the exact sensations of the taste as I chewed, as if searching for something that would prove it was fake.

“It had better be nothing,” Koyl continued. “Are you sure that gambeson will be protective enough for you? I know your old armor was falling apart, but you should have upgraded, not downgraded.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. It’s not like I can’t just heal from any injury that isn’t immediately fatal anyway, I thought, but if this was a simulation why would they add a feature like that? Has a new type of infiltrator body been invented and this is a test run of its capabilities? My thoughts were broken again by Koyl slowly moving his fork towards my left hand, which was on the tabletop. “Don’t do that,” I said.

“You need to be paying attention when we leave tomorrow,” Koyl said, staring me right in the eyes. “Whatever is distracting you, and considering how you are it must be something pretty important, you need to either figure it out or forget about it. I’m not getting eaten by a bear because you zoned out for a minute.”

“I’ll be fine,” I repeated.

“What is it?” Koyl pressured. “Do you need some of my… you know... stuff? I don’t know what could be bothering you, but it’s going to get us both killed.”

“It’s nothing,” I repeated. Koyl frowned and poked at his plate.

“Look, I don’t know what happened with Dawp, but I suppose you had your reasons,” Koyl sighed. “I really would have preferred that you just told me so I could have prepared for the fallout, but I’m not going to get on your case about it. Just don’t expect me to cover for you if someone comes asking, okay? So tell me what’s going on so I can at least know why you’re going to screw up tomorrow.”

“I’m not going to screw up,” I growled, “I just have something new to think about.”

“Don’t tell me it’s a woman,” Koyl groaned.

“No,” I said quickly, “nothing like that.”

“Then what?” Koyl snapped. “Gods, you’re so open about the strangest of things, I have no idea what you could be trying to hide.” He makes one trip to a brothel and suddenly he won’t stop talking, I sighed.

“Have you ever heard of… Aliança da América do Sul?” I asked. Koyl looked at me strangely, then shrugged.

“No,” he replied.

“How about the North American Economic Union Trade Zone? Liánhé yìndù zhīnà nányà? Suidwes-Afrikaanse Konfederasie?” I rattled off the names of several former human political entities that fell, from my point of view, centuries ago. Still, warbreed often associated their tribes with such extinct nations, so their names were widely known.

“That’s a lot of words in a language I don’t understand,” Koyl answered. “Actually, was that more than one?”

“Forget about it,” I replied, “it’s not anything you need to be thinking about.”

The next morning, before sunrise, I dragged Koyl out of bed and walked him to the meetup point at the north gate. The city under torchlight in the early morning was so quiet as to be surreal, which didn’t help my wandering mind at all. Zoyvrao’er was waiting for us just outside his building and led us over to a covered wagon that was being hitched to two of the pack beast animals. None of the other guards had arrived yet, but he assured us that they would be present before the sun rose and the caravan departed.

True to his word, people began to show up to join us in guarding the caravan. Two women and four men, all of whom wore simple metal chest plates, helmets, and carried spears took positions around the caravan’s sides and back while Koyl and I stood up front. Two of the men and one of the women had backup swords on their hips as well, while the rest carried utility knives. I hadn’t bothered to learn any of their names when filtering through the applications. Instead, I only selected them by skill.

At the actual gate, the city guard spent a frankly unreasonable amount of time going over the wagon and its contents, verifying that everything was in place as they had been told. I was aware that the caravan was most likely smuggling goods, but whatever was being smuggled was well hidden enough that the city’s guards didn’t find it. That, or they were paid off, I considered, it’s strange to think of how far bribes can get you in this place. Warbreed weren’t often tempted by physical objects for the simple reason that their societies gave them most of what they desired in that respect, but creator humans were evidently not the same.

Just as the sun broke the horizon to our right, the guard okayed the caravan to leave and opened the first of a double-door gate system to let us out. Another ten minutes later, the outer door opened to reveal a rocky plain of grass and small trees in front of us, with a dirt path curving gently off to the right. The guards yelled at us to go, and with a whip crack, Zoyvrao’er set the beasts in motion. Their walking speed was around the same as a human’s, so the guards had no issues keeping up. And not a wild animal in sight, I thought, maybe we'll get lucky. Looks like they were waiting for a break in the activity to let us out.

An hour passed, and the path we were following had turned southeast. Despite all the warnings of hostile wildlife, the surrounding environment had been almost ominously quiet. Unlike the island forests of Awsriyah, Klehkah’s trees were sparse and its ground was hard. I understood why the city had been importing most of its food, there likely weren’t any crops that could grow in such an environment, and with the limited possible diet of a creator human, importing was the only option. Well, that and fishing, I considered, but after what I saw on that boat I can imagine it’s more hazardous than it would be on Earth.

“You have a look on your face,” Koyl said, and I glanced over at him. “You worried about the animals too?”

“Just wondering why anyone would build a city in a place like this,” I replied.

“Oh that’s easy, foreigner,” Zoyvrao’er chimed in from the wagon. “Pehrihnk was purpose-made as the capital of Uwriy, in the middle of the hardest place to live in the whole country.” Pehrihnk was the capital? I thought.

“You didn’t realize it was the capital, did you?” Koyl remarked, sounding halfway between exhausted and amused.

“No,” I replied.

“Only you could somehow miss the baron’s residence and the noble assembly,” Koyl sighed. A strange sound to my left broke my interest in the discussion. Surveying the land, nothing appeared out of place. No wait, that rock wasn’t there before, I thought, looking at a distant boulder sitting in a field of other boulders around two hundred meters away. As if to confirm my suspicion, the boulder shifted, and I realized it probably wasn’t a boulder at all.

“Koyl, is there such thing as a grey-brown bear?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the moving boulder.

“What?” Koyl snapped, instantly nervous.

“Do you see something?” the guard behind me to my left asked. I pointed to the boulder, and checked to make sure she was following my direction correctly. “That’s just a-” she began, but then paused as the boulder moved again. “Doymteylm yeyhhayseytay,” she swore, “I think you’re right.”

“It looks like a bear sitting down, crouched over,” I said. “I’m not sure it’s spotted us, but if it does, we need to be ready.” I saw the guard nod, and she turned back to the guard to her left to begin passing around the information. Koyl took a whiff of his medication, then offered some to me. I gestured a rejection, then turned my attention back to the bear. It had stood up, and I could see its head craning around as if it was looking for something. Then, it stopped, and the two black pinpricks that were all I could see of its eyes locked in our direction.

“Should we be preparing?” Koyl asked. The bear began taking slow steps towards the caravan, and Koyl’s eyes snapped to it. “Am I seeing it wrong, or is it walking this way?”

“I think it is,” I replied.

“Full stop!” Zoyvrao’er yelled before yanking the reins attached to his pack beasts, quickly halting them in their tracks. All six of the other guards joined Koyl and me as we made a line between the bear and the caravan. As it got closer, the bear’s lumbering gait got faster, and at around a hundred meters from us, it started to run. Use the six as meat shields, I reminded myself, if you can grab it for a few uninterrupted seconds, you can probably cook its brain, so let it attack them and use that as a distraction.

“Get ready!” one of the male guards yelled, and spears came up to the bear’s head level while Koyl and I drew our swords. Just before it would smash into the line formation, the bear skidded to a stop on the ground, planting all four of its feet and eyeing up the humans who had foolishly obstructed it from its goal. They’re not very smart, I reminded myself, it might stand there for a while thinking about what it should do. The bear growled, sending a ripple through the line as every human flinched. Then, sensing weakness, the bear roared.

A pressure wave of sound hit the line with what looked like enough physical force to knock the humans down. In reality, the movement was caused by sixteen sets of eardrums bursting in an instant. My ears stung and screamed in pain as they knitted themselves back together, and I was the only one to withstand the roar without backing down. The bear’s head scanned side to side, then locked onto me. Both of us froze, the bear most likely due to confusion, and myself because I didn’t want to give it an opening to attack me. After a few agonizing seconds, I glanced to my side to check on the guards, then back to the bear just in time to brace myself as it tackled me and sent my weapon flying from my hand.

“Hold it there!” one of the guards yelled. “Everyone else, stab for the heart and lungs! Head if you can but don't get bit!” Teeth filled my vision, foul breath assaulted my nose, and with as much strength and magic as I could muster I punched the bear directly in the windpipe. My fist sunk into its hard flesh and the animal grunted, then coughed. Didn’t like that, did you? I taunted it in my mind. As if to respond, the bear put its paw on my chest and forced it into me, cracking my entire rib cage like a bundle of dry sticks.