Peter blinked, then blinked again. How in Hije's name had he ended up in the middle of the woods? His head ached, trying to grasp at any way he could have ended up here. Perhaps a prank by Hesin? Hit him over the head from behind and then hauled him out here. It would explain the headache. Some birds were chirping at him from a nearby tree. He didn't recognize the species, but he supposed that wasn't that surprising. They were pretty though, black with flares of red on their wings.

He checked himself, his purse still had the 10 copper pennies that were the sum of his wealth, and he still had his boots, worn as they were, so it hadn't been a robbery. He felt his scalp through his curly brown hair. No bumps or sore spots. That was unexpected, given how much his head hurt. Perhaps they had used ether or some other sort of chemical to knock him out. He had his dagger still too. Yes, the prank theory was definitely the best explanation.

He stood up and tried to examine his surroundings. The trees were tall and looked old. Could be somewhere in the Imperial Reserve perhaps. If so, the road wouldn't be far away. Hesin was notoriously lazy, so Peter couldn't imagine he would have carried him far enough outside the city to find woodlands this pristine and untouched. Weird that he couldn't hear the noise of the city, just those damn birds still chirping away. Peter started forward in a random direction. Nothing for it but to start looking for that road.

He made it about 100 feet before he found himself tumbling into a ditch, thankfully catching himself before he twisted an ankle. No way Hesin hauled him through a deep ditch like this to dump him on the other side, so he turned around and headed the opposite way. He made it maybe 200 feet in that direction before coming across a thick stand of some sort of spikey bush. As he tried to navigate a way through he heard a woman's voice coming from behind him.

"You'll have to go around." He whirled, seeing a slight young woman, probably close to him in age, with black hair, warm tan skin, and the biggest brown eyes he had ever seen. 

"What?" He responded, attempting to take stock of the situation. She was dressed strangely, a long green coat over a vest and shirt that spoke of a much colder place or season. A sword belt cut across the bottom of the vest, a pair of scabbards hanging on the left side of it appeared to hold a dagger and small arming sword, a hatchet and a stiff pouch balanced them on the other side of the belt.

 "I said you'll have to go around. The raspberries are too thick to walk through there, you'll get yourself all cut up trying to go that way. Here." She pulled the sword from it's scabbard, and Peter scrambled out of her way as she stepped forward swinging at the thorny bushes. "Now we can get through."

"Um, thanks. Who are you? Did Hesin put you up to this?" He followed behind her as she carefully walked through where the raspberry canes once were, her high boots crunching down on the remains of their once threatening thorns.

"No, I don't know anyone named Hesin, and I'm Linh. You?" They proceeded into a clearing where a pair of old trees had apparently recently fallen.

"Peter. Look, the last thing I remember is I was headed down an alley following a... nevermind, anyway, next thing I know I'm waking up in the woods. Wait, can you slow down? I'm not used to this sort of terrain." She had nimbly bounded her way over the fallen trees and was examining another nearby tree.

"Look, I don't know where we are either, but I've got to get a better look around, make sure there aren't any demons nearby. Can you give me a leg up so I can catch that branch?" She motioned for him to put his hands out in a cup that she could step in.

"Um, sure," He put out his hands like she asked, squatting down so she would be able to reach them, "wait, what did you say about demons? Why would there be demons out in the woods near Desadorel?"

She stepped into his cupped hands and heaved herself up, grabbing a low branch of the tree before making her way farther up. "Desadorel? If we are near Desadorel we should be drowning in demons, word was the city was one of the first places to fall." She stopped about halfway up the tree, staring down at him.

"I feel like I would know if my hometown was attacked by demons." Clearly this girl was crazy. Desadorel was the seat of the Dormanian Empire, home to the great Empress Dormana the First, founded by Dorman the First some 500 years before. Or at least that is what his parents had taught him. "Why are you wearing that ridiculous coat anyway, it's midsummer!"

"Because I don't want to lose it, and yesterday it was the middle of Amatherin, freezing cold, and I was hiding out with a group of fellow survivors in the woods of northern Kandor." She responded. "Clearly some sort of crazy magic has got us both jumbled. You coming up?" She climbed up a couple more branches.

He jumped, grabbing hold of the branch that she had started with and pulled himself up. After a couple more branches he started to get a groove for it. He hadn't ever climbed a tree before, but had climbed plenty of buildings and balconies, and the principles seemed to be the same. Eventually they reached the upper branches, and Peter could see why she had chosen this particular tree to climb, you could see for miles. No city. No nothing, just trees in every direction.

"We're in trouble aren't we." Peter said, looking out over the forest.

"Anything but, no demonic infestation to be seen anywhere," said Linh, "and look over there, see that break in the trees that looks like it cuts across, I'd bet my left pinky toe that there's a stream over there."

"How does a stream help us? We're stranded in the middle of the woods. I don't recognize anything. Clearly this isn't some prank like I thought it was. More like some wizard popped off his whole book of spells at random and we got caught in the crossfire." He could feel the panic rising. Suddenly he realized they were very high up, and climbing down a tree suddenly seemed very much different from climbing up it.

"Woh, steady there hot shot, maybe you should start heading down. You look a little woozy." He dropped to a lower branch, trying to steady himself. His mind raced. He had never been out of sight of the city before. Never known anything else. He made it to the bottom branch, and looked up. Linh was climbing down as well. He caught sight of those brown eyes again, and fell.

Peter woke up. He hurt everywhere. The sun was shining brightly through his eyelids, and he smelled smoke. He tried to sit up but quickly fell back to earth. 

"Careful hotshot. Your lucky you didn't break any bones falling out the tree like that. You are going to be pretty bruised up for awhile."  Peter groaned. His back screamed at him where he assumed he must have landed, but he managed to roll towards the sound of Linh's voice to see her tending a small fire. "You're going to be more useful from now on right? I don't think we can afford for either of us to be dead weight right now."

"Yeah. yeah. As soon as I can manage to stand up. How long was I out?" He tried a second time and managed to pull himself to a sitting position with only a manageable amount of pain.

"Maybe an hour or so? Hard to tell. Feels like the sun moves slower than it used to." She poked at the fire again before putting a large chunk of wood onto it. He couldn't help but notice the way the fire danced in her brown eyes.

"Ok, so what do we need? I've never really done this woodsmen thing before." He pulled himself up to stand despite the protests from his bruised ribs.

"Food is going to be our biggest priority soon, followed by shelter. No immediate sign of rain, and the weather is warm, but you never know what the night will bring. We should probably move and camp ourselves closer to that stream as well so we have ready access to water. Wouldn't have built the fire here, but I didn't know how long it would take you to wake up." Linh responded, making no effort to get up herself.

"Ok, you said those bushes before were raspberry canes right? So there should be berries nearby. I can go gather those." He looked around, finding the stand of raspberry canes with the path Linh had cut through it, and started gathering berries, using the bottom of his shirt as a bowl. He noticed a brown stain covering a good chunk of the back of the shirt. Probably from the dirt where he had landed. He sighed, probably no laundry services out here in the woods.

"So, you're from Kandor?" He said, trying to make conversation.

"Yeah, Cur'Estan, not that there's much left." She walked out of sight briefly.

"Isn't that where those Black Wolf mercenaries operate out of? Must have been a strange place to grow up." He reached through the leaves trying to reach another berry and accidentally pricked himself. "Ow." He sucked on his thumb to stop the bleeding.

"Not to me. My mom was a wizard who took a job with them after my dad died. I apprenticed with the scouts there. Looks like we are eating well tonight at least." She walked back into view carrying what looked like a dead rabbit. Peter walked back to the fire with a few cups worth of berries. He piled them on top of a nearby log. "You said you are from Desadorel before. I still don't understand how that's possible. Almost no one from the big cities escaped the first attacks."

"You keep mentioning attacks and demons, and I feel like I missed something. I think we need to get our stories straightened out. I'll start." She gave him a look as she pulled out her dagger and started skinning the rabbit. Peter looked away, not able to watch as she butchered it. "I grew up broke in Desadorel. A street vendor took me in. Turned out he didn't obtain his goods legitimately. Had me picking pockets at the age of 8, got caught when I was 13 and spent a year in prison. Got out and tried to make it on my own. I've never left the city, never had anywhere else to go. I was walking down an alley, and then woke up here. I assumed one of my 'friends' had jumped me as a prank or something."

"So you don't remember any of it." Linh responded.

"Remember what?" He tried a berry. It was sweet and tart at the same time. He couldn't remember the last time he had had raspberries. They were always too expensive.

"What was the date, when you walked into that alley."

"13th of Alohiman. Why? I mean, I presume that's still the date." Linh was staring wide eyed.

"We received word in Cur'Estan via a magic message on the 14th of Alohiman that Desadorel had been destroyed, with almost no survivors. Attacked by an unlikely alliance of demons and devils who used incredibly powerful magic to bomb the center of the city the day before. All that was left of the palace district was a crater half-a-mile wide." She had tied the rabbit to a stick. She paused. Peter sat down.

"That's, no that's impossible." If the city was gone, how was he here?

"I think you died."

"Do you think this is... the heavens?" He responded, shaken. No, he was a thief, a devotee of Hije. He wouldn't have ended up in the heavens, but Etherium, by all accounts a hazy reflection of the real world, where you can wander eternally in the mists and never find anything or anyone. This place was much too real to be that. "No, it can't be." He muttered the last words to himself.

"I don't know. I think I might have died too." They both sat quietly for a few minutes. The silence only punctuated by the sound of distant birds and the crackling of the fire as the fat dripped off the roasting rabbit.

Finally, Peter spoke up again. "If we're dead, why are we so hungry? I didn't think dead people still needed to eat." He meant it as a joke, but no one laughed. 

Then, from seemingly everywhere at once, a trio of voices, speaking in concert, erupted all around them. "Welcome children of Elthelas, to your new home. We are the Three. Nera, Gaian, and Geocia." Peter jumped from his seat, looking around for the source of the voices. Linh did the same, drawing her sword at the same time. "In our grace, we have pulled you from your dying world to this new home. Here, all begins anew. Here, you may thrive and prosper. But beware, and do not consort with the Demonic Gods of this realm, for they seek your destruction." The booming voices stopped as suddenly as they had started.

"I think it's time you told me about these demons." As she talked, they finished their food, put out the fire and walked towards the presumed location of the stream.

It had started in early summer of the previous year. I suppose this year from Peter's perspective. Or really a few days ago. By Linh's timeline he must have been one of the first killed by these demons. First, there were rumors about strange portals opening up with fiends spilling out of them, destroying everything in their path. Then came the messages. The urgent calls for help from the big cities before no messages at all. Those sent to investigate either didn't came back, or reported utter devastation. Then the refugees started arriving, from every direction. 

It was two weeks later that the first portal to the hells opened in Cur'Estan. They had managed to beat back the invaders and destroy the portal. Mostly through sheer luck. Linh had lived through that first attack, and then managed to survive the second. Her mother didn't. Eventually the refugees stopped coming. The land around wherever portals opened slowly became corrupted. The plants and animals becoming twisted, angry, aggressive versions of themselves. The leaves of trees turning the color of blood, vines whipping at passersby, attempting to strangle the life out of them.

They beat back a third attack before food stores started to run low. Cur'Estan had never been a self-sufficient town. They exported lumber and mercenaries, didn't grow much food, and venturing far from town was becoming more and more dangerous with the way the wilds were changing. They had heard rumors of other towns that were holding out. Zelfin, the city of Mages, protected by its magical walls. Southguard, protected by the heroes of Cora. They all knew it was the end though. There were more fiends wandering the world at that point than there were living humans to resist them, and their numbers were growing.

They survived the winter, barely. Then starvation started to take hold the following spring. The last thing Linh remembered was huddling by a small fire, trying to split the few roots and berries they had managed to forage between far too many mouths.

As they approached the stream, they saw a dark skinned man, a turban around his head, dipping a skin into the stream. He had a well groomed beard of dark curly hair flecked with dashes of gray, around a long face that seemed to have a permanent frown. As he stood, his tall frame loomed over both of them. "We fared no better in Dera. All the lore of the dragons at our disposal, but they overwhelmed us."

Peter startled. Linh had her hand on her short sword. "I am not used to being taken by surprise." She said as the man raised his hands in a disarming gesture.

"Forgive me. You were not quiet as you approached, so I used an illusion to disguise myself until I was fairly certain you were not a threat." This seemed to appease Linh somewhat. "I am Aram, a wizard of Dera. I dealt in minor charms and enchantments in Vasha before the invasion. Now we are here, with strange voices in the sky, untouched woods, and unknown people from the other side of the world."

"I'm Peter. Do you have any ideas on where we are?"

"I am inclined to trust the Goddesses. Though perhaps their answer is insufficient. Though I would like to point out something perhaps you have not noticed. What language were you speaking as you told your tale, young woman?"

"I was speaking... well I assumed I was speaking Imperial, but as I think about it I can form the words in Imperial in my mind and they are different from what I was saying. I don't know." Linh looked confused, and a little scared. It was the first time Peter had really seen her be anything but sure of herself.

"Indeed, and if you had been I would not have understood you. I have never traveled to Elathia, and so never had need to learn your language. Yet I understood every word you said." Aram pulled out a small book from his bag. "I always keep my journal on me. Fortunate that I do, because it means that I can show it to you now. Tell me, can you read what is written here?"

Linh took the book from his hands, paging through it. Peter looked over her shoulder. It was filled with an unfamiliar script that looked like nothing but strange squiggles to him. "I haven't seen script like this before, I'm sorry." She said handing it back.

"It is Deran, the language of my homeland. The language I presumed I was speaking when I first called out to you, but like you, as I think about it, I notice the words are not the same." A beat passed as they looked at each other. "I think something truly remarkable has happened. I think our world ended, and we have been revived by the high Goddesses in a new one. Who knows what wonders it must hold."