Jade wakes with a groan, a splitting headache, and no idea why the sun is beating down on his head. Or why he’s out in the middle of a forest.

This… is not where he’s supposed to be.

(He remembers… a lab. An experiment. A fonic device, shrill and bright, overloading—)

(A glimpse of rippling darkness.)

He sits up and scans the area with a grimace, taking in the flattened trees and twisted branches. The vegetation is entirely wrong to be anywhere near the lab, and similar enough to be any number of forests he’s had to march through in his life.

He’ll just… wait until nightfall. The stars will tell him where he is.

Jade calls his spear to hand and pushes himself to his feet, using the shaft to steady himself against the dizziness and nausea that rises.

(He has a concussion, lovely.)

He takes a moment to just breathe, eyes closed against the light and ears straining to hear beyond the persistent ringing in his head. It’ll settle, he knows it will, but lost and alone and concussed is not his favorite manner of waking.

(How in the world had the experiment gone wrong?)

(No. It doesn’t matter.)

(Survival now, contemplation later.)

Staying in the blast zone isn’t a good idea; he’s surprised no monsters have begun poking around yet, but there’s certain to be some arriving soon. Scavengers looking for an easy meal at least, and fighting them off will only make his head worse.

(He hates fighting with a concussion.)

Jade straightens and forces his eyes open, searching for an easy path out of the devastation his arrival has caused. There isn’t one, not really, but that’s alright. He can handle it.

He picks his way over the broken ground, probing his footing with his spear before taking each step. There’s more debris than he expected, gigantic trunks and tangled branches hiding the ground below, but it’s consistent with dense forest being obliterated by a sudden blast. It also gives him an idea of how strong the blast was that brought him to this strange place; some of these trunks are large enough that three or four people could wrap their arms around it and still not touch fingers, and they’ve all been taken out with negligent ease.

Reaching the cover of trees is a relief, not just because the sunlight is no longer beating down on his aching head, but because it gets him out of the open. His back no longer feels like it has a target emblazoned upon it, but now he’s faced with a vast, endless expanse of trees that stretch on as far as he can see.

There’s nothing in the forest that looks familiar, no signs or markers laying around, no indications of human habitation, nothing. It’s hardly the first remote location that he’s been to, but there’s something… different about this one. Emptier maybe, filled with life but still somehow lacking.

(How far from civilization is he?)

Jade takes a few cautious steps deeper into the forest, leaning on his spear and trying to assess the area. He needs a place to rest and recover, somewhere where the monsters won’t be easily able to get at him, but all he sees is trees.

(He’d really rather not sleep in a tree.)

(He’d really rather not…)

The scenery doesn’t change as he advances deeper, and Jade resorts to leaving discrete trail-markers chipped into the trees to make sure he isn’t walking in circles. Not that it really prevents him from walking one wide circle, but at least he’ll know if he’s been somewhere before.

It’s strange though. No matter how far he walks he doesn’t come across a single monster; there are no axe beaks, no wolves, no linails… he doesn’t even spot a single chirpee or filifolia, and he is almost certain that filifolia variants are on every continent. It’s enough to leave him on edge, waiting to stumble across the great beast that calls this section of forest home.

But there’s nothing. Just trees as far as the eye can see and the sound of average wildlife all around. Even as the light begins to shade towards late afternoon and Jade steps up his search for some place to hole up, nothing changes.

(Where in the world is he?)

(He’s never heard of anywhere free of monsters before!)

The sound of water gives him a direction at last, and Jade turns towards it, wending through the underbrush until he finds the source of the sound. Human habitation is often centered around water, so if he follows the river far enough he’s sure to find something.

It’s not so much a river he finds, but a creek is good enough. It’s a steady flow of water, clean and clear and deep enough that he can see a few fish darting about.

He still has no place to rest and recover in safety.

(Maybe there will be a village not far from him.)

(If he’s lucky…)

Jade heaves a sigh and scrubs at his temple, trying to will away the building headache that threatens to blind him. It’s futile but… he can’t help it.

(He’s getting far too old for this.)

He turns. Surveys the area downstream. Begins to walk.

One foot in front of the other. Even breaths and steady pace. Set aside the pain and forge on-on-on past trees and rocks and tiny glades, past fish and tiny birds and little furry animals that take one look at him and flee—

None of them look anything like monsters. None of them make an aggressive move and—

The puzzle gnaws at him through the pain.

(What would it be like, to live in a world without monsters?)

Jade forces the thought aside; it’s neither helpful nor relevant. Shelter is. Safety is. The lack of monsters is a boon to appreciate, not question.

Brilliant sunlight strikes his face and he flinches back, arm rising to shield against the light. The forest ends abruptly, gigantic trees giving way to farmland. The creek wends its way through terraced fields, its path carefully maintained by someone, and here and there he spots deeper pools carved into the landscape.

It means there are people nearby, people he can hopefully bargain with, and that gives him the strength to scan the horizon, squinting against the setting sun, until—

There. Houses.

(Safety…)

Jade tips his head down and takes a deep breath. Pinches the bridge of his nose. Gathers his strength.

Just a little further.

He can make it.