On the dirt road, Davin walked at a steady pace.
The village receded behind him, carrying with it the shouts of merchants, the smells of warm bread, sweat, and greasy smoke. Ahead, the road stretched between thin fields, crooked fences, and a few dark leafed trees that barely stirred in the wind.
The rare passersby, warriors, peasants, or merchants pulling carts, turned their eyes away as he approached, unable to hide their disgust.
Davin did not blame them.
The feeling was mutual.
Trying to start a conversation with strangers in his current state, with nothing to offer and the smell of a damp corpse clinging to him, would have been a pure waste of time.
I'm too poor to negotiate, too filthy to inspire trust, and too weak to threaten anyone. Remarkable social position.
He kept walking.
As he drew closer to the north, the landscape began to change. The earth grew darker, almost black in places. Veins of pale stone surfaced along the road, polished smooth by water and the passage of travelers. Moisture thickened the air, and a subtle chill rose from the ground.
Then he heard it.
A distant rumble.
Faint at first, like breathing behind the trees, then clearer. Water. A lot of water. Waterfalls, somewhere deep within the forest, pouring their unseen mass into a basin or gorge.
The sound was constant, deep, almost soothing, provided one forgot that this forest could probably swallow him without leaving a trace.
Cascade Forest finally appeared before him.
Davin slowed despite himself.
The forest was beautiful.
Not beautiful in any reassuring sense. Not the beauty of a postcard or a pleasant Sunday walk. It was foreign, damp, dense, almost too alive. The tree trunks were black, wide as pillars, threaded with silver striations that caught the light of the two suns. Their branches twisted high above the ground, forming a dark canopy through which pale and golden rays filtered down.
Beneath his feet, the grass was not green.
It was violet, dark and thick, gentle to the eye but sharp in places, like tiny blades of vegetation. Azure flowers grew between the roots, their petals faintly luminous, like fragments of sky fallen into the mud. Drops of water hung from the leaves, motionless and too round, as if the forest refused to let them fall.
Davin remained silent for a second.
So this is what nature looks like when it never signed a contract with Earth.
It was magnificent, and probably capable of killing him in twelve different ways before lunch.
Before stepping beneath the trees, he noticed a group of young warriors coming out of the woods.
There were four of them. None looked older than sixteen or seventeen. They wore leather armor that was too large or poorly fitted, boots covered in mud, and short blades at their belts. One had a split cheek and held his arm against his stomach. A black haired girl laughed too loudly, like someone trying to prove she had not been afraid. The last dragged a spear whose tip was stained with dark blood, moving with the exhaustion of a body that had spent too much simply to return standing.
They were just children, with weapons far too real, blood on their clothes, and that habit of laughing too loudly when one refuses to admit how close death had come.
Of course. Here, adolescence apparently means getting clawed by monsters for a few coins. Very healthy.
The idea that children could freely go hunting dangerous creatures still struck some old instinct from Earth. Then Davin remembered the beggars, the guards, the guild, and the weapons on every street corner.
Earth's rules no longer applied here.
They had died with him on the floor of his living room.
He had seen the drawings of goblins on the guild's board. Predators like those did not exist in his old biology textbooks.
Please let goblins not throw fireballs. I refuse to die roasted by a purple child.
He inhaled slowly.
A.I., record the route. I want to be able to find my way back even if I'm running, bleeding, or making a monumental mistake. Probably all three.
[BEEP. System Message / Mapping Mode activated.]
Davin stepped beneath the trees.
The temperature dropped at once.
The noise of the village vanished behind him, swallowed by the foliage. In its place, there was only the discreet crack of branches, the whisper of violet grass against his legs, and the distant rumble of the waterfalls. At times, an unseen stream trickled somewhere above, dripping from branch to branch before disappearing into the black earth.
The forest seemed to breathe slowly around him.
Davin advanced with caution, choosing each step. Black roots twisted beneath the grass like sleeping limbs. Some stones were covered in pale blue moss that glowed faintly in the shadows. Tiny silver insects fled at his approach, so fast they looked like shards of living metal.
It was an alien biome.
The term would have been enough to fascinate him in another life.
But Davin was not here for sightseeing. He was here to earn money without dying, and the order of priorities mattered.
After several minutes, the rumble of the waterfalls grew stronger. The air carried the smell of cold water, wet moss, and black wood. Then another sound mixed with it.
Cries.
Metallic impacts.
A scream of pain.
Davin stopped at once.
He instinctively lowered himself and moved more slowly, circling a massive trunk whose wet bark almost stuck to his fingers. He pushed aside a few violet leaves and crouched behind a thicket.
About thirty meters away, three humans were fighting eight small lavender creatures with pointed ears.
Goblins.
They were thinner than he had imagined, but not weak. Their wiry limbs stretched like springs. Their hunched backs twitched with every movement. Yellow fangs protruded from mouths that were too wide, and their black claws looked made for opening skin rather than gripping.
Their smell reached him.
Raw meat, mud, wet fur.
Davin felt his stomach tighten.
At the center of the melee, a young man in brown leather armor fought with almost stupid rage. He had chestnut hair plastered to his forehead by sweat, a face still too adolescent, and a short sword he handled with more anger than technique.
"You bastards! I'll gut every last one of you!"
He planted his foot on the chest of a goblin fallen to the ground and cut its throat open with a brutal stroke of his sword.
A dark flow spilled over the violet grass.
Beside him, a giant nearly two meters tall held a heavy blade in both hands. Older, calmer, with broad shoulders beneath reinforced leather armor. A cut crossed his brow, but his eyes stayed fixed on the battlefield.
"Calm down, idiot!" he growled. "We can hold them as long as their leader isn't here. If you lose your head, we all die!"
The third fighter, thinner than the others, stayed farther back. A pale boy with a broken spear in his hand and blood covering his left leg. He tried to keep the goblins at bay, but every step betrayed the pain.
"Sylvia!" the young swordsman shouted. "I'm coming! If they drag her to their nest, it's over!"
Davin followed his gaze.
Behind the line of monsters, two goblins were dragging a young woman deeper into the forest. She struggled, sobbed, kicked at the ground with her heels. Her short red hair clung to her face with sweat and blood. A tawny brown traveling cloak hung crookedly from her shoulders.
The other goblins were not simply screaming and clawing at random. They were holding the humans back just long enough for the two abductors to gain distance.
The young man in leather armor tried to break through their ranks, but two goblins blocked his path each time. The giant kept him from being surrounded. The injured boy would not last long.
The two abductors were already moving away.
Davin understood the situation within seconds.
If he intervened at the front, he would die. If he did nothing, the girl would disappear. But if he followed the abductors, he might have two isolated goblins, a hostage, and a group of warriors who would owe him a favor if he survived long enough to claim anything.
Money, information, perhaps a roof, and with a little luck, a useful contact at the guild. Provided, of course, that he did not die before presenting the bill.
This isn't a rescue. It's a risky investment with a very concrete possibility of immediate death. Magnificent.
He slipped out of the thicket and followed the abductors into the violet depths of the forest.