At long last, here is Chapter 6. Hopefully, with 2020 down the drain, 2021 will be better.
I really hope all of you are safe and well.
***
The sound of rocks being erratically disturbed broke the afternoon silence. An occasional grumbled oath could also be heard by anyone sitting peacefully on the edge of the stony plain. That same observer would also be able to see a lone, tall biped stumbling his way along through the field of medium sized stones.
Although the nuggets of the irregularly shaped granite weren't large enough to make for stable purchase, they also weren't small enough to simply step on easily. To make matters worse, their natural spacing made it impossible to find easy footing between them; making each step for the ill-tempered traveler a conscious effort of coordination.
He muttered and groused as he made his way across the boundary of the steppe and onto more hospitable ground. Moving twenty or so paces along, he stopped and sat tiredly. He heaved a large and long sigh before leaning back and sinking the rest of the way down.
"Damn. Damn. Damn." The large man repeated his epithet several more times to the sky before sitting back up and removing his shoes. Although they were in good shape and had not been noticeably damaged by his trek across the angular rocks, the feet within them were still very sore. He rubbed them for a few moments and realized that it had indeed been some time since he had trod anything more uneven than fine sand and grass.
Replacing his shoes, he stood and started to wander further away from the rocky field that had given him so much grief and into an area of short dry grasses and weeds. He could see lumpy bent trees of some sort in the distance and hoped that there would be some way to get water nearby.
After a few hours of walking, he reached the sparse woodlands. At the edge, the weary traveler looked in all directions as well as up into the trees themselves. This was not his world and he had no idea what surprises were waiting. Finally, he turned to look once more at the harsh area where he had arrived in this strange place.
"Where the hell am I, Mera?" he asked the empty air. There was no response and he had mostly not expected one, however there was a small part of his mind that missed the other presence that had been sharing his thoughts for the last few months. He hadn't realized how much he had become accustomed to their mental conversations and, now that they were gone, he was going to have to readjust to being the only one in his head.
Giving his lonely head one last rueful shake, he took the first steps forward into the woods.
For nearly an hour, Ashur trekked into the oddly familiar woodland. During his short time traveling with his blue companion, he had seen worlds that were vastly different from the one he had grown up in. Places with differently colored skies, alternate plant and animal life, and even some where the very air was abnormal to him. This place, however, was so close to the planet of his birth that he felt that, if he walked far enough in the right direction, he might find his way back to the kingdom of Oudromore.
The Guardian chuckled a bit. He wasn't surprised that he hadn't thought of Oudromore as "home" even though it was where he had been born and, for the most part, raised. With the death of the last of his comrades, he had been basically set adrift in the universe. Granted, he certainly could have rejoined the army and, in the course of time, become reintegrated, but the fantastic existence he had found with his partner and lover made the idea ludicrous.
Thoughts of the azure Caretaker made him stop for a moment. He wondered if Mera was okay. He knew that she had been physically unharmed at the time he became trapped here, but her mental state might have been shaken by his disappearance. She would find him, eventually. With her ability to traverse among the various universes and realities via her traveling platform, he knew it was just a matter of time before she came upon the right place...and time was something they both had plenty of.
His worry stemmed more from the shock she would have had at his abrupt severance from her own thoughts. As Caretaker, her domain was the mind and she had reveled in their mental intimacy once he had been able to connect to her that way. How much more was she missing the psychic bond? Would she be fighting her depression and breakdown again? He hoped not.
His musings of their mental relationship brought his own powers to mind. Mera had once told him that their abilities stemmed from the Library and would be diminished in other worlds but had not elaborated more. Ashur had no idea if his own power to change his physical body was still available to him and decided that discovering his limitations now was much preferable to coming up short in a hazardous situation later on.
Finding a convenient log to rest on, he held up one of his hands and concentrated on letting the power inside of him flow down his arm. It felt sluggish and slow; as though he was trying to shove cold honey through the tissues of his body. After a full five minutes, the middle three fingers of his hand began to elongate and stretch. Not bothering with any other major alterations, he focused on the one simple task. Another five minutes ticked by before the changing digits stopped.
Ashur blew out an explosive breath and used his other hand to wipe the sweat dripping into his eyes. Although pushing the energy hadn't really taken much effort, the mental control he had needed had far surpassed the exercises Mera had been drilling him in. If he found it necessary to make any changes or heal himself here, he would need to be prepared both in time and strength. The rapid modifications he had been able to effect in the Library would not be the case here. With a resigned sigh, the Guardian wiped his face again and set about the task of restoring his hand before moving on.
By the time the sun was starting to set, Ashur had found a stream and a tree that was old and large enough to hold him. Combined with his earlier mental efforts and his laborious escape from the field of stones, the rest of his hike had exhausted him.
He worried that he might have lost some of the situational awareness learned during his time in the army and wanted a resting place that might give him a measure of safety. He didn't delude himself that bunking down twenty feet up in the "S" curve of the tree would keep away any nocturnal predators so he used the cord that held the Staff to his belt to build a crude tripwire tied to his finger. It was the best he could do with the supplies he had and he resolved to spend part of the next day gathering materials as he traveled.
As for the Staff itself, he had no worry. During his preparations, he inadvertently dropped it. Less than halfway to the ground, the magical rod defied gravity and floated back up to him. Reassured that it would still behave as he expected, he haphazardly placed it on the five-foot thick trunk of the tree above him and, rolling onto his stomach, did his best to rest. As he expected, it did not come easily. Even with years of sleeping in forests, every little noise brought him to instant awareness and the night was nearly halfway over before he was able to drift off.
When his eyes opened again, the sun was up and had been for what he guessed was an hour or more. His legs and feet were still sore from his frustrating trek the previous day and he took a moment to massage them before climbing down from his tree. The nearby stream served to quench his immediate thirst but when his stomach growled loudly at him, he decided that finding some kind of food would need to be a priority today. He couldn't begin to guess how long it would take Mera to find him so gambling on his nutritional needs in this strange place was necessary and he hoped that if he consumed something harmful, his abilities would let him either adapt or clean it from his system quickly.
He was about to choose a random direction and start walking, but an almost ephemeral sensation drew his attention upstream. Even with his quasi-limited experience with foreign worlds, any kind of impingement on his awareness instantly put his guard up. However, since he had nothing else to guide him, Ashur decided that following the water was as sensible a choice as any other.
As he slogged along the soft banks of the stream, he half-expected the feeling to grow stronger but it remained fleeting for the rest of the day. His grumbling gut forced him to stop from time to time and experiment with various berries and the occasional unearthed tuber. Thankfully, none of them were instantly poisonous although a few did cause an intestinal burble or two. To his consternation, even as a conglomeration, the small handfuls he found were not exactly filling and he settled down for the evening in another tree with his hunger only slightly assuaged.
He trekked like that for several more days without seeing any other type of animal life forms although he became more adept at spotting the plants that he had deemed to be the safest. This discrepancy started to worry him. In just about every other forest, swamp, and even desert he had been in, there were animals, even small rodents and insects and they left behind tracks of some kind or another. This world seemed to have none and it bothered him more the longer he thought about it. Was there something in the air or the water that kept them from surviving? Was it just this area or was the entire world nothing but plant life? If the phenomenon was local, then there was a good chance that either a disease or overwhelming predator had decimated the area. Worse, it was probably a recent thing since it looked as though the ecosystem hadn't had a chance to repopulate in even the smallest way.
Squaring his shoulders, Ashur kept moving forward. If it was a disease, then he was most likely already infected and could only do his best to battle it internally. A predator that could do this kind of damage was something else entirely, especially since he hadn't seen any evidence of it. In his days of travel, there had been no sign of tracks, droppings, or any of the other tell-tales that a top-level hunter left behind and that concerned him greatly. If there was some sort of hunter out there, it was smart enough or developed enough not to give itself away and all the human could do was stay wary and react as fast as possible. It made the going nervous and slowed him down a little, but he wasn't in any real rush anyways.
Around the middle of his fifth day, he reached the edge of the forest and stared out at a line of foothills that reached the horizon in both directions. Beyond them was a range of mountains that had snow only on the very tips of their peaks. The air around him was warm and almost stifling. He turned to look back into the thick cool forest and checked his pockets for the foodstuffs he had stashed there. They would need to last him for a while if he was going to be climbing and he debated collecting more, but his pockets were already at capacity, so Ashur started forward once more.
The next week was spent climbing up through the valleys that fed the stream since there was little choice. From the tops of the foothills, he had confirmed that the mountains and forest bordered each other without break for what would probably be days and days of travel. He found various nuts and always had the stream, but his stash of berries and tubers was almost gone after the third day.
