Zoe,

  Emma and I are both well. She just hit her seventh loop on this trip and I should probably do mine soon too. We'll be back home in a few months, with or without our seventh classes. Fingers crossed we get there this time. I'll send another message when we're home, make sure you come back. I think Emma wants to leave soon.

  "Everything alright?" Jeff's head tilted to the side, a touch of curiosity wafting off his body beneath the waves of concern.

  The two men had been talking about something while she zoned out to read Joe's message. Asking questions about the rings or the sleeping arrangements, maybe.

  "Oh, sorry." Zoe answered. "Just got a message from a friend."

  "They good?" Tom asked.

  "Yup." Zoe nodded.

  "Okay, well like I was saying. Do we need to sleep every night? With you, couldn't we move during the night? We got some sleep last night so we don't really need to sleep tonight anyway." Jeff asked.

  *Ding* You have received a message from Emma Lont.

  Zoe giggled. Joe must have left something she wanted out of the message he'd sent. "We could travel through the night, but what's the rush? You two are new here, get used to the darkness. You can leave the tent, but don't make any light if you do. And if you see a wanderer, get back in the tent. It's strong enough to fend off a couple hits from one."

  "How do we see if we don't have light?" Jeff asked.

  Zoe shrugged. "Beats me, I've got a skill for it. I've got another message to read though so I will be back in a bit."

  Magic surged from Zoe's form, carving out a hole beneath the tent large enough for her to stand with comfort. A wooden chair formed beneath her as she teleported inside and sat down, with a simple earthen desk appearing in front of her as the surprisingly hot earth melted away at her command.

  "She's just below us." Jeff said to Tom.

  "Think she can still see us?" Tom asked.

  "She could see us in the tavern." Jeff shrugged. "Probably can see us here too."

  Zoe tuned the two men out as she opened Emma's message.

  SHOW ME YOUR DRAGON FRIEND WHEN YOU GET BACK.

  A flash of mana summoned forth a page and writing utensils that Zoe used to write another letter to Emma and the night flew by as page after page vanished, sent to one of her friends somewhere else in the universe. It almost reminded her of texting from her younger days, though she never had to deal with connection problems.

  Most of the time, their schedules didn't line up such that they could take a few hours to send messages back and forth. Zoe would send them a message and then a few hours later, they'd reply. Then Zoe would have to finish up whatever project she was working on and wait for another reply.

  Sometimes it would be days between messages — in particular when Zoe was engrossed in some random thing that caught her attention. But every so often, the stars would align and it almost felt as though her friends were right there with her. It was strange, in a way.

  Back in her previous world, when she was younger, she'd talked with friends all the time. Computers and programs that would baffle the people of this world. She'd wake up, hop on a game and talk with some of the people in her guild. Jump on some forums to talk about the latest boss that released with people she'd never met and would never see with her own eyes.

  Even from her youngest days, as a child going to school she could remember having quick access to anybody she wanted. Phones were a standard and the internet even blew up early in her life.

  She'd never experienced being without access to somebody for very long, as a child. Nobody was more than a phone call away, nobody's face was more than a video call away. She'd taken it for granted, and it took her a while to realize how impactful that was, even after coming to Abyllan. Growing up with communication being so available had twisted her perspective so much that she couldn't even recognize the problem of not having it for what it truly was.

  When the sun rose and light just began to creep in through the windows, Zoe teleported back up to the tent, closing up her small space behind her. The cool air that filled the tent gave her goosebumps after the blistering heat from below. She wondered for a moment why the earth was so warm but she was never much of a geologist. Maybe there was an active volcano nearby that they'd stumble into at some point.

  "Alright," Zoe smiled at the two men staring out the window at the forest just beginning to be lit. The tendrils of demons and whatever else lurked in the shadows shrinking back to wherever they came from as the sunlight forced them back. "Lets tear down the tent and get moving. Unless you two want to explore around here for a few days?"

  "Doesn't matter to me any," Jeff didn't take his eyes off the shrinking shadows outside.

  "Have you been here before?" Tom turned to Zoe.

  Zoe shook her head. "Nope. Picked somewhere new to me as far away from anywhere I'd ever even heard about, otherwise it'd be boring. I thought about going to where I saw the dragon the first time but honestly it's been so long I doubt it still lives around there."

  She paused for a moment. "If it even lived there in the first place. They're pretty quick, probably have quite a long roaming area."

  "You saw a dragon?" Jeff perked up.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "A while ago, yeah." Zoe answered.

  "Was it stronger than you?" Jeff asked.

  "At the time, yeah. This was, oh I don't even remember now. Nine hundred years ago?" Zoe shrugged. "I was a lot weaker then. No idea how strong they are, really. Could still be stronger than me now."

  "How's it compare to the elementals you killed?" Tom asked.

  Zoe scoffed. "I think a fire elemental would melt just being near the dragon."

  Tom clapped his hands, rubbing them together. "Well, we don't have much time right? So we can talk about whatever while we do something. Are we going to stay here or get moving?"

  "Jeff?" Zoe asked.

  "I'm fine either way, really. It's all new to me." Jeff said.

  "Right, well then it's time for lesson one of the valleys. Time is valuable. This is the second time this question has been asked, which means we've just wasted some of that valuable time." Zoe put on her best wise old professor voice as she paced around the tent.

  "It can be hard to get used to since you normally wouldn't mind just staying a couple minutes later after the sun began to set, you wouldn't mind travelling by torch light or stumbling your way through the dark. But here, it matters a lot." Zoe unzipped the front piece of fabric, opening up a space large enough for a person to walk through — if they ducked a little.

  "So, when we ask a question about what we want to do, 'I don't mind' isn't a valid answer. You make a decision, and you act on that decision. Throughout the day, we can discuss our plans for tomorrow so that we can make a decision that makes sense." She stepped through to outside and gestured for the men to follow her.

  "Today, we've already wasted enough time. Lets explore the area, see if there's anything interesting. I don't actually know if there are any cities around here so we'd just be wandering aimlessly anyway." Zoe shrugged. "Maybe we find some dragon tracks."

  "What if I don't know how I feel about it?" Jeff asked. "I really don't mind either way if we stay or leave today. It's all the same to me right now."

  "I don't intend this to be mean, but maybe that just means you need to take some time to think about how you feel. Today was rushed, I teleported you out here without much warning and you have a lot to adjust to. But try to get in the habit of thinking about things that will likely happen, and how you will feel about them." Zoe said. "You should have been thinking about what we would do today last night. But I imagine you two were more focussed on talking about everything that's happened, which is fine."

  "You couldn't see us?" Tom asked. "Jeff said you were right below us."

  "Couldn't and didn't are different things. I choose to respect people's privacy when I can." Zoe looked around at the forest around them. It was a pretty forest, towering trees with trunks wide enough to build a home in. Beautiful twisting marks of ash crawled along them, reaching out along the burnt branches and scorched roots. Mushrooms grew from the forest floor, with small, sparse green bushes scattered anywhere the light could reach through the canopy.

  Jeff nodded. "So then what will we do tomorrow?"

  "We'll leave." Tom responded. "Unless we find something. How long will the tent take to tear down?"

  "Fifteen minutes, maybe? It's pretty simple, for the most part." Zoe said.

  "Great. Jeff, you build us a shelter for tonight. What's considered a safe shelter here?" Tom looked to Zoe. "Just a hole in the ground that can be covered up?"

  "Pretty much, yeah." Zoe shrugged. "We just need something to separate us from the Wanderers. They don't look for us, but if they see us they will attack."

  Tom nodded then looked back to Jeff. "Make us a hole, Jeff. An actual hole, for once."

  Jeff waved his hand dismissively. "I always make holes, Tom. You just lack the ability to perceive them."

  "Zoe and I will go explore. When you're done making our hole for the night Jeff, come find us. We shouldn't be too far." Tom nodded to Zoe then started walking off through the forest.

  Zoe followed along with him. "Didn't take long for you to become commanding, did it?"

  "If decisiveness is what we need, then decisiveness is what I will have. Is it alright with me taking the lead? Did you want to be leading us?" Tom asked, the nerves flooding Zoe's empathy.

  "It's fine." Zoe's head swivelled around, looking through the forest for any tracks, though nothing had managed to stand out to her enhanced senses. "I'll tell you if you're doing something wrong, and I'll always put my vote out for decisions we make. Do you have a tracking skill?"

  "I do, why?" Tom asked.

  "Have you seen any tracks?" Zoe asked. "I haven't seen anything yet. No rabbits, no mice. No humans, nothing. It's like we're the first creatures to ever be here. It's strange."

  "Huh," Tom stopped to look around. He bent down and pushed away some of the branches on a bush, poking at the small pink berries that hung from them. Several crumbled at the touch, falling to the ground in a pile of ash. "Now that you mention it, I can't notice a single sign of anything living here. Just vegetation, and even that seems to be struggling. Maybe something scared everything away?"

  Zoe shook her head. "No, not unless it scared them away a very long time ago." She pointed up to some of the lower hanging branches from the trees. "None of even the lowest branches are damaged. No teeth marks, no broken branches, just regular burnt wood. Nothing has been here for years, barring maybe a lightning strike."

  "Maybe something did scare them away a very long time ago, then? A settlement of Wanderers here?" Tom suggested.

  Zoe hummed in contemplation. "I don't think so. Wanderers do leave tracks, which means even they haven't been here in a while. Maybe they just haven't been to right exactly here, but not a single one of them, for decades? It doesn't make sense to me."

  "Are there just not as many animals down here?" Tom asked. "Killed off by the darkness?"

  "There aren't, but it's not like there are none. Birds thrive down here but not even any of the berries have been taken. And the animals that do live down here that might scare things away make a lot of noise." Zoe answered.

  Tom grimaced. "We should get back to Jeff."

  "Agreed," Zoe grabbed Tom's shoulder and pulled him through space back to where they'd set up camp.

  Smoke billowed out of a hole in front of Jeff, as magic poured out of him to dump more earth back into it. He looked over as the two appeared and shouted over to them. "The ground is on fire! Is this normal?!"

  "No," Zoe teleported closer to see what he was doing. He had dug quite a deep hole — a few dozen meters into the earth at least, and the bottom was red hot. Flames spewed out of the hole, with smoke and steam rushing out as the earth Jeff continued pouring in melted to join the pool of magma.

  "What the hell is this?" Tom ran over to the hole. "This isn't normal?"

  "No. No it's not normal at all. I've never seen this before." Zoe looked around for any signs that somebody or something was doing this, but even still, nothing stood out. To her skills, there may as well not have been a pit of lava in front of her. It was as normal as a leaf falling from a tree or a branch breaking from a powerful gust of wind.

  And then she felt her bones shiver as a deafening roar rocked across the forest. The flames died down, the roar of hot wind rising from the pit ceased and even the waving trees seemed to still as the very universe itself seemed to freeze in fear.

  A blazing gust of wind buffeted the three from behind, knocking Jeff over and making him stumble into the pit of lava. Magic wrapped around the three of them as Zoe teleported them far above into space, with a few more hops back to Foizo. She left the two behind as she teleported back out to the valley and floated far above their campsite.

  She watched with awe as a part of the cliffside melted away. Lava dripped down the side of the cliff, burning into the forests below, and a massive red dragon poked its scaly head through the dripping magma. The dragon stretched, its front paws reaching down the cliffside as its head reared up to yawn. When its eyes opened, Zoe felt its gaze settle on her like millions of burning needles sinking into her flesh.

  "Big stretch?" Zoe whispered.

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