Splintered Dawn

Originally written on March 8, 2025


Panoramic 16:9 landscape establishing shot. Viewpoint is slightly elevated, looking across an untamed, alien wilderness. Feature dense forests composed of dark, gnarled, twisted trees suggesting a primeval or slightly unsettling nature. A shadowy, winding river cuts through the rugged terrain of rolling hills. In the distant background, nestled against the base of imposing, mist-shrouded mountains, sits a small, rustic walled settlement (town or large village) that looks isolated. The lighting is dim and atmospheric, perhaps weak early morning sun filtering through haze or mist, creating long, deep shadows and a brooding, moody atmosphere with a sense of underlying danger. Absolutely no humans or figures visible. Style: Gritty realistic fantasy art, painterly, cinematic, detailed environment design


Prologue
He picked up a rifle, and he observed several men in the distance. Hundred feet, he thought. The words that formed in his head floated in that watery abyss. He adjusted his gun, veering sideways. He aimed, and he shot.

The gun fell to the ground, as he unpocketed a knife, slashing and stabbing several goblins frightened and attempting to take him down. He kicked, and his muscles stirred. He bludgeoned them one by one, picking up their bodies. He dragged them, down to a small place, but just where he could sit to defecate, with enough space that he did not mind and enough distance that he felt safe. It‘s perfect.

I conduct my acts accordingly, mapping onto reality these “terms and regulations” of war.

His coughing voice echoed into the night.

He looked around him, observing the trees, essaying a study of them. If he could match them with the trees in the college textbooks he glimpsed when he was a teen at the family bookshelf, then he might know what to do and where he was.

But this was not Earth. That much was obvious.

He kept walking. Not a single hint of flight, exhaustion, or anger burst in his steps, only faint dream-like routine droning series of footsteps, like the ticking clock, or the flapping wings of the soaring birds.

It was silent, but that was ammo, or fuel, for danger and for his potential death.

He nocked his rifle onto something. His arm, anything, as long as he could the feeling he was prepared. But he wasn’t. He did not even know what he was doing here, or how to use a gun. All he knew was that he had been at boot camp, and now he wasn’t. He came here, in a familiar place that had things that were really not on Earth. I mean, what was that?

He saw a goblin. That was real... now.

For some reason, nothing made sense. He shot.

A goblin did not fall.

Because... there were too many of them, and the trees were harder to discriminate from these human-like forms, in the night. This was facing death.

Nietzsche was right. He would die, and we were all doomed.

The goblins came.

And they stabbed at him.

At this, he exploded in a joyous fluttering of colors—the bursting at the seams and the wonder of all the world combined to form his essence now splayed, shredded, and splatted onto the ground.

Beautiful, he thought for the last time.

The agony woke him up in a moment not so long ago.

He returned to when he first arrived in this strange place. He still had his gun, and his ammo, and everything else. He had...

“Martha! You’re still alive!” He leapt to hug her. “I’m sorry—”

“What are you doing?”

“I-I’m so, so sorry! I’m sorry, Martha!” He began crying.

Martha just did not know how to stop him, and she did not think he was doing this maliciously. But she still repeated to let her go.

Jayce was his name. He nodded and kept a distance, covering his face, now realizing the awkwardness in his gesture. “My... bad.” 

He was vulnerable. He was weak. Why? she thought. Who is this man? He wasn’t the Jay she knew. What happened to him?

Ten days. It only took ten days to get to this state.

But she did not know that. No one knew what it felt like to be him.

He was in a world no one knew. All alone.

He smiled. I have to keep going, he thought. 

“How are you?” she said.

“I’m fine. I was actually wondering how you’re doing. Are you good?”

“What do you mean? I am. I mean, where are we? Actually?”

“I-I don’t... I actually do know. But I don’t know about the broader...” He noticed something moving in the brushes. He widened his eyes and immediately told her to follow him.

She followed. “What’s going on?” she said.

“I think we need to go as fast we can. We have no way out of here.” Actually, she had no way out of here. She died last time. And now, he was back here somehow. He knew already what was going on here. He knew what this situation was.

Time had come back to when he first arrived. He understood that now. And Martha was still alive. So protecting her was natural. 

He was going to survive this. He was going to escape this. Martha had to be there. She was his only sign of life. She was an idea, but something that would keep him insane. And maybe, he had to be there for her too. But not until they got out of here.

They were going to survive. He had to do that now.

He hurried down a hillside and shot back at the goblins to disrupt their movements and find out how they were moving around. Because there were many of them, he knew that shooting helped him tell from the way that each moved where they were circling and re-grouping around next.

It was a battle of distance and pattern recognition.

He shot and turned a corner. Martha followed right behind.

“Come on, come on, come on.” He aimed. He took a deep breath. He was voicing himself out instinctively because Martha was here now. She had to know what he was doing. It was only human.

He shot, disrupting them again. Good, he thought.

They started running again, this time entering the final stretch.

The goblins, however, were fierce and already gathering where they were headed—a large river that they could not just swim across that easily without the goblins piling up on them and blocking them at all sides. This was perfect.

And Jayce saw it, preparing in his mind, recalling those textbooks and memories and everything just to find one thing that makes sense for this moment.

“Martha, help me. How do we cross the bridge?”

Martha stared at him. “I...”

“Come on!”

“Let’s just keeping running by the side.”

They were still running.

“We can’t. That’s an open field!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. What then!”

“We have to force a swim across. Can you swim?”

She couldn’t respond. She just nodded vaguely, and they kept sprinting forward, glimpsing the goblins now.

They were only 500 meters away.

They kept silent, preserving their energy.

As soon as they arrived, they dipped in, submerged, and swam.

The night was wonderful. It was always wondeful. Jayce was recalling a memory somehow, as if his mind was ready for death.

You know how they always start bickering about the same shit they’ve said so many times. It was a meaningless memory, but it was the only thing that mattered to him right now.

Anything else...

was gone...

He disappeared.

Then...

They exited the other side.

They kept running. Martha fell. But he fell too.

They both picked themselves up and kept going.

Going. Going. Going. Going.

“What’s this?”

A village was right in front of them.

It was not goblins.

“Martha?” he said as he turned around.

She smiled.

“We made it.”

She frowned.

His face paled.

The goblins had finally stopped.

They abruptly shook with relief and shouted, throwing their hands in the air.

But at the same time, they immediately stopped, finding it hard to breath.

Chapter 1
They kept walking.

“Goblins?” Martha said, nodding her head in an exasperated, sarcastic, and shaken way.

“Men,” Jayce corrected her, matter-of-factly.

“W-what do you mean?” The tone in her voice was already slightly defensive, frustrated, and confrontational.

“I see them as men, human beings, like us.”

“Real? Really?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m just surprised—actually, what the hell, man? Why are you so calm? Why are you like this? Did you know to do this? Or did you...”

“What?”

“Did you kill someone?”

“What? No! Yes...“

“A person? Or a goblin? What?”

“I did. But I didn’t. Well, you weren’t there.”

“What do you mean I wasn’t there?” She was already escalating.

“Well, you weren’t... in that time.” He was starting to become infected by her tension.

“Time, whataryou, whataryou, what are you talking about?”

“Time as in time the thing that passes.”

“Y-y-yeah, but what time? Time time? What, what time?”
``
“Time loop.” This was the hardest thing to say for him.

“Loop?” she chuckled as she spoke. “W-what do you mean ‘loop’? as in a loopy? Is this loopington? Is this eh... is this eh... is this... what?” She was already breaking down.

“Loop as in I go to time past, and now here me. You know? You know! I’m in a time loop, you fucking piece of... shit.” He could not contain himself here.

“Whataryou... okay... I get it. No I do. You’re crazy, and if you’re not, you’re still crazy. You think this is normal. You think I’m supposed to just say okay. Okay, assuming and believing that you’re in a looping time thing thing thing, what the hell am I supposed to do with that information? Am I supposed to cry? Am I supposed to dance? Tell me. I have... frickie-frickieya... clue as to what... um... this and the places and the things and the imaginations and... Where are we?” She still maintained poise, but she was already existentially disturbed, and this was coming out as this mocking, sarcastic, frustrated, confused, and confrontational flame.

“We are somewhere. I don’t know.” He reverted to that same calm manner of speech.

“Really? You don’t know. Time? Loop? You don’t know? How does that... connect? You’re supposed to... you know... be the guy... You know, the guy? The guy who said that shit and somehow doesn’t know... Like, who... Like, what... Like huh? Do tell.”

“Well... I am in a time loop. But I don’t know where we are... Simple as that.”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I do. I really do get it. Is this... um... something? You’re wonderful and amazing, and you’ve got good gifts. But I don’t like good gifts. I don’t like what you bring. I don’t like stuff, flavoring, winding thing, or cars parked on some... f-ricking corner... I don’t want that. You know. I cannot... like this... This is fucking... This is incredibly actually. This is wonderful. I mean time is unbelievably existent. We can control it, and I don’t know—“

“Wait, wait, let me explain. I don’t know—”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know—”

“Yes?”

“I don’t...”

“Mm-hmm?”

“I do not...”

“Yes Sir?”

“I have no clue as to...”

“Y-e-s?”

“I have zero idea... if...”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.”

“Whether or whether or not or... I don’t know... if you’re going to be there...”

“Ah... You don’t know if I’m going to be there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know how these things work. You’re going to die.”

“W-w—die?”

“Yes. You’re going to die, and you’re going to come back. And I won’t be there—or if I’m going to be there, I won’t be there. That won’t be me. And I won’t be real...”

“Yeah—y... Ah, yeah.”

She exhaled with what sounded initially like relief, but now looked like a disturbed exasperation. “Okay, I see. So what are we going to do?” She was calm as he was a while ago.

He paused for too long.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Okay,” she whispered in response. It was a faint sound carrying the weight of an entire life of emotions. She was here and real, and whatever happened next was just as real. She could not help but feel so much yet be denied the satisfaction of an okay.

“This is funny,” he said.

She wrinkled her noise in frustration. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, my life. I mean, this. I mean... everything, I think.”

“What do you mean? You? W-w-what is it?”

“Yeah. It’s that. I am actually here and alive and okay and real and genuinely fucking... I think we’re going to die right. I said I was in a time loop, but that only happened once. And I don’t—“

“Really? Well... That’s great then.”

“W-what do you mean?” It was Jayce’s turn to be offended.

“Well, I won’t have to feel like I’m this thing that will just... you know... go gone? Like, are you going... areyou, areyou, areyou, are you about to tell me that I am not okay for feeling that way, because I just cannot, girl. I cannot. You cannot expect a human being, like myself, to genuinely participate in your freaky-ass disgusting piece of crap whatever. It’s... just not. No, I’m not, I’m not going to just... I‘m not...”

“Really?“ he felt forced to say. “...I... I’m sorry.”

“Heh...” She then exhaled, her eyes already downcast.

Jayce had to protect her, and he could not die in this time loop, if it even was one. He would never die again. This wasn’t just for her. He was dead afraid of dying and realizing that this was the only life he truly had.

Were the ten days even real? he thought. Before his thoughts spiraled out of control, his gaze landed on Martha unintentionally, and he was surprised to see her there, having grown accustomed to having to scan 360 degrees rather than only halfway. She was his eyes, and his were hers as well.

“Thank you, Martha,” he said vaguely. “Thanks for being here.” He was not that stubborn kid anymore. He was this close to death, and if her form and figure disappeared from his peripheral view, he would have a panic attack.

He would do it. He would use the gun. He would shut the light. 

Martha frowned and said, “What?” He had been staring at her face while thinking of killing himself if she were ever to die.

“I was lost in thought,” he said, politely smiling, no obvious happiness in his eyes. The joy he had was at risk of dying. His gun was tensely held.

Please don’t leave me, he thought as he lumbered up to the village, with Martha following behind.

The villagers revealed themselves, smiling.

Martha noticed Jayce’s gun was absent. Where did it go? she thought, glancing around before turning her head to face the villagers to do her business smile. “Hi,” she said.

Jayce nodded with strikingly cheerful eyes. “Hello,” he said.

The villagers repeated, “Welcome, welcome.”

It was tense, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. So they went on their way, sitting down somewhere one by one.

“Okay...” Martha said, as if she was not just losing her sense of self a while ago.

“What is it?” Jayce asked, still concerned about her well-being.

“What are we going to do again?” She had a weird smile on her face, as if they were about to do something funny and they just went through something funny.

“Uh...” he said, still unsure what to express or what face to do. “Well.” He opened with a strained smile. “I don’t know. I think we can try surveying the mountains.”

“Is that what we... should do?”

“‘We’? I don’t know. I don’t... know...”

The villagers showed them a small piece of paper. It had words they could comprehend: “Go to the town! It’s fresh there, all kinds of fruits!”

“Fresh? Fruits?” he said.

“Sounds good,” Martha said, placing her arms against a wooden wall and her chin down.

“Yeah...” Jayce’s tone was not sure.

They arrived next to a hillside, and it was vast. But they were told they could only go through this part. They weren’t supposed to leave just yet. But they knew that the village likely did not account for them, so they left quickly.

The town was not that far.

After several days, they arrived. And they were not hungry because they had food to eat along the way. It was the jungle, and they were informed what to eat.

But what was strange was that it was mostly safe around the path that the villagers told them to traverse.

“That’s not weird,” Martha said. “Going down a path that everyone knows? It’s likely because people travel here so much that the goblins... don’t go here.”

“Yeah... Probably, I don’t know.” He was giving quick answers today.

They were in a bustling market right in front of the town gates. They had entered inside. The crowds were filling in each and every part of the town.

“This feels like a city, a large one.”

“It is. Or it does.”

“Yeah... I don’t know... what we’re supposed to do here besides go to the inn and rest. Do you think we should work first? The money they gave us does not feel like it’ll be enough. Plus, how would they even have spare change? We should just focus on getting a job or something. You think house prices are up here or something? Haha.” He did not know if that laugh was genuine himself.

Martha was not listening anymore. She noticed a blacksmith, pointing with her lips. “Let’s go there.”

“Okay... What do you want?” said the [Blacksmith]. “What’s on your mind now, folks?” He sported a large variety of accessories across his person. But that was all Martha needed to see. 

“Excuse me, Sir,” she said, “might you please tell me about the history of this magnificent place?”

The blacksmith gazed for a good long while before turning to her and saying the following. 

“Okay, out.

“You guys are not here to buy. 

“Out.”

After finding herself pushed outside, she looked between Jayce and the door. “What?”

“I don’t know either. I think I might have made a mistake.”

“You mean, I made that mistake. I chose to come here...” Her face softened. “Sorry.”

“What, what do you mean? Why’re you all going soft on me now? You told me to come here. Man up. Or woman up, whatever you prefer. Let’s just go somewhere serious. Somewhere we don’t have to care about all of this. That’s what you want right.” He had time to think, and he realized that all he really had to do was just get this over with, whatever it was. He did not want life to feel so heavy, and he wanted to just say stuff and move on. If she wanted to do something, he would be there, as long as he was there, and as long as he was not... destroyed.

He needed to keep that same energy going, whatever she needed at this time.

“O-okay then,” Martha said. “Where are we going?”

“Try the training?” Jayce started marching, his gaze affixed.

“Do they even have them?” she said, hopping along.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He gave that statement a firm tuck of his throat, never relenting and never cowering. He would give it all he had. Just once. Just this once.

They looked all around and could not find anything. If they could enter the buildings, they would, but none of them seemed friendly.

“How about the barracks?” he said before walking off, not expecting an answer.

She came right along with him.

At the barracks, it was just a bunch of wounded soldiers, because it was not a barracks at all, but a hospital-like place or something.

“How about the adventurers’ guild?” Jayce said.

“They have those?” Martha’s head popped out behind a barrel.

“I don’t know! That’s why we’ll check!”

Upon realizing that the guild really was there and open, Martha said, “So?”

“Let’s go in.” He was the one who gave the call this time.

Upon entering inside, a large lobby awaited them, and it had lots and lots of people, individuals of all kinds, with [Artificers], [Warriors], [Scholars], [Mercenaries], [Rogues], [Mages], [Tinkerers], [Clerics], [Beastmasters], [Alchemists], [Druids], [Bards], [Monks], and a few [Warlocks]. This was the “city” as they all knew it. 




Attribute
Martha Standsfield
Jayce Matthew




Level
1
1


Race
Human
Human


HP
100
100


MP
100
100


Strength
10
10


Dexterity
10
10


Intelligence
10
10


Wisdom
10
10


Endurance
10
10


Agility
10
10


Skills
Basic Attack
Basic Attack


Equipment
Simple Clothes
Simple Clothes



A set of holographic displays popped up in Martha’s and Jayce’s vision.

“This is... familiar...” Martha was smirking.

Jayce stopped and stared at her, frowning, his brows furrowed.

Martha, noticing his gaze, asked why.

Jayce smiled and chuckled, but with those same furrowed brows, processing it and what was going on right now.

“I’ve never seen this before.” He sat down.

Sitting down as well, Martha left her mouth a little open, before she said, “How long?”

“How long what?”

“6 years?”

“No? What are you talking about?”

“Time loop.”

“I don’t know. 10 days is what I am sure about.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

He noticed someone walking up, so he stood up, excusing himself.

She compressed her lips as he watched him go in her peripheral vision.

“Yes,” Jayce said to the stranger.

The stranger said, “Why are you seated where I’m seated?”

“What do you... Oh, I apologize. Me and my friend were just leaving. She tapped her shoulder, accidentally brushing her hand on her neck. She felt tickled, but she stood up anyway. “What?” she mouthed.

“I need to get something, isn’t that right?” He gave her the just-play-along eyes.

”Okay—Yeah! We’re going then!”

They went to some other side of the guild, where the stranger could not see.

“Don’t mind him,” said a person at the guild there. “He’s a bully, you see.”

“Real? Really?” Martha said, noticing the longer ears on the guy’s head.

“Bully? There are bullies here?” Jayce was asking weird questions again.

Martha knew him to be like that. They knew each other back in boot camp.

But she only knew him for the equivalent of a few days, since they barely interacted in the one month they were together at boot camp. And he was a dumb boy, the same old stupid boy you would see anywhere. But he listened, even if he did not know what to say. The same kind that did not know how to respond to anything.

Ten days? she thought, still grappling with how different he was from what she had known him to be.

To be honest, even she was not the same since the start of boot camp. If it wasn‘t for it, she wouldn’t have remained calm enough to survive the swim.

She had that unfocused smile.

Jayce had been doing all the talking.

“A-are you done?” she whispered when they finally parted ways with the guy.

“What do you mean? You saw me, right? We got the adventurer cards. This is gonna be our first trip.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I was just...” She felt so tired. “Tired.”

It started raining while they were outside.

“Why only now? Dang it!”

If it was not for how cold and soaked they were, they would be reminiscing about the past inside. But the rain was in their ears, shouting at them.

They eventually reached a place they could stay, a little tree.

“So? What?”

“Yeah?”

“What now?”

This was not the satisfaction of shutting the door behind her that she had imagined.

“I do not know.”

“Seriously. This again?”

“Yeah... You want to say something?”

“Nah... no. I mean, do you want to say something?”

“No... I’m just...” He sat down. “This feels nice.”

“You’re joking. It’s horrible.”

“Yeah, it is. But it’s nice.”

“Better?”

“Yeah, better.”

“Dying is an easy comparison.”

“Yeah. Why not death, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, death is so easy, but here we are, alive.”

“No, death is not easy. I’m saying that death makes sitting here in the rain easy. I mean, the idea of death, or the threat or danger of it.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Are you feeling uncomfortable, Jay?”

“Of course, I am. No. Not really. But yes. We’re soaked. That sucks, but it’s not at, the, same, time.”

“Yeah... I get it. You feel shitty, but this is better than nothing.”

“‘Better than nothing.’ I like that.”

“Yeah, we all do.”

The rain poured, drowning everything else out.

Chapter 2
“I can’t believe we survived that.” They lay down in an inn. 

“Yeah.”

“I don’t trust you, you know. You’re still a man.” Her voice was right next to his.

“Yeah. You can get another inn room. Sorry. I should have asked.”

“Yeah, you should.”

“Sorry.” Jayce forgot that he was a man. He forgot the idea of gender. He forgot the idea of politics. All he knew was that he was going to die. If not now, then later. He laughed somehow. It was existentially relieving to be so accustomed to the idea of death that it felt freeing. It was like knowing that someone rejected you, but this is death accepting him and him accepting death. They were together now.

He woke up, getting up as fast as he could. Where is he, where is he? he thought. He anticipated goblins, his heart racing and his arms shaking and tensing.

She noticed him.

“Oh...” He calmed down. “I forgot, or remembered; whatever.”

“Yeah.” She then said hi in the most chirpy womanly way possible.

“Yeah, hi hi. It’s nice to meet you. But seriously, what’s up?”

“What do you mean? Nothing’s up. Get prepared though. We’re leaving, you said.”

“Yeah, I’m just... I’m so... I can’t get up.”

“You can’t. Sleep more then. But we have only 30 minutes left before we have to pay again.” She ended that last statement in a sassy tone.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right. Let me just...” He groaned like a Brachiosaurus. When he finally stood up, he took a moment to adjust his posture like he was an astronaut taking his first step on the lunar surface. 

They went out in a jiffy.

While walking, Jayce noticed a contradiction. “Wait, how were you in the room?”

“I slept there. I just waited for you to sleep. And once you were snoring, I took my sweet, lady-like rest.”

“Oh, that‘s smart actually. And I was just that tired, huh... Actually, you know what, you should have just went up and stabbed me in the throat.”

“What? Why would I do that?”

“I was kidding.”

They later arrived at the marketplace.

“What are we buying?” he asked her, still sleepy to do all the thinking.

“I don’t know. You didn’t say anything. But I think we should buy potions. How much are they?”

“I do not think they’re cheap. I’ve never seen a goblin with it.”

“You haven’t? In all your days?”

Jayce chuckled, finding that last statement funny for some reason. “Yeah. Never. Not a single one.”

Martha started walking off to inspect.

“Martha...” Jayce said.

“What?”

“Sorry. I’m a little tired. Just tell me where you’re going.”

“Yeah, yeah. You should be the one following me.”

“Oh, right. I just realized I could do that.”

“Stupid.”

This was a bustling crowd, and the marketplace was loud.

But he was stuck in his thoughts and a little dazed. He had to keep alert, so he filtered it all out.

If worst came to worst, death was sure to follow.

He still had a knife. He used it before, and he could use it again. While he threw his gun away, he did get it back. it was with him, just covered and treated like a weird stick. He hoped they did not treat it as a staff, but they had detectors, like metal ones, but for magic and mana and stuff.

He was so careful about death and using force.

Martha had to remain a human being, still talking about being a lady in a modern society, not this world with all of its disgusting apparitions—all familiar things mocked and spat on, distorted, twisted, and wicked.

This world was death and murder.

He watched her frame, that wicked body of hers that kept her weak and unable to withstand the pressure of a knife.

If an armed goblin went up, the sun would go down permanently. She would die in that encounter.

Martha... I love the feeling of being alive more than I could ever love the feeling of keeping you alive. If you die, I will keep going. He evolved from his earlier feelings of dependence. This time, she was an asset as much as he was a person. This was the only way to cope with her eventual death.

“What’s that?” he said, a soft smiling lingering above his pokable chin.

He was behind her, peeking from her left shoulder.

Martha showed him the blue potion! He bought it for her.

“This, I say, is a marvelous concoction,” she said, “don’t you think? Thy coffee is no longer necessary, when this drink satisfies all longings.” 

“Martha. I’m going to be serious.”

“Why? No. Don’t be serious. Let’s go, go. This way, this way.”

They headed to a field, and they poured the potion on the ground.

[Blue Slimes] popped out from the spilled liquid.

“Woohoo! That’s so cool!” Martha was jumping around.

“Are you seriously surprised?” It was Jayce who was detached from just how awesome slimes were. If they were real, they would be incredible. While he went on and on about practicalities, she went on and on about living life.

This felt immature to him. But perhaps he was overly serious. But it never convinced him.

“Aren’t slimes cool? I mean, levels, and all that? Don’t you think that’s out of this world? Literally!”

“Yeah, but you’re supposed to be... kind-of...” He expected her to bite onto his words and answer in frustration. “Well...”

But she continued her revelry.

What were slimes like? he thought. Was there something he didn’t see? Was he too invested in how he was perceived by others that he could not fully enjoy living? He had thought using terms like “immature.” What did that even mean? Now that he thought about it, why did he not feel what Martha felt?

He searched all the inner depths of his heart.

He found a hypervigilance, but he did not know a word for it.

”Jay... You look like shit. Seriously, check this out.” She boinged her arms and hands against the slimes’ bouncy surface. “Like, this is mad, right?”

Martha was the reason that he could even reflect. If she was not so different from him, he would not begin to tell himself apart.

“Thank you, Martha.”

“Brother, you gotta be hoking with me. Just touch it. Feel it. I need you to feel it now.”

Jay shook his head firmly and politely. He could explain himself, but he did not want to.

She kept egging him to do it.

She eventually relented, saying, “K. Fine.”

“We’re supposed to be ‘adventuring.’ you know.”

“Yeah, I know—this is adventuring though.”

“No, I mean, serious work.” He wanted to say more, but he kept himself from saying it.

She said: “Serious work? Killing goblins?” He said, “I didn’t say that.” She ignored him: “Seriously, how does that work for you? You seriously expect me to go and join you in killing goblins?” He reiterated, “That’s not what I said.” She did it again: ”Bro, you have a long way of reaching Nirvana. You’re so fucked up with this shit, and you think that that’s what life’s all about—speaking like the fucking Romans, and the next thing you know, you’re gone. You ain’t speaking like them. You act and think like them. You know what’s like. Assimilation. Complete eradication of identity. Oh, yeah, I studied that. You think I don’t know. Don’t get angsty with me. I hate these callous pricks, and if you think I’m about to join your side, fuck that, man. I kill, but I’m not a killer. I don’t just kill things just because. No one does. You think I kill just because? You seriously think that? You think people kill people just because. If so, you have a long way to go before understanding what it means to be a human being. Killing is a medium, often to communicate and to express, not just a matter of removing the physical body. So if I decide oh so nicely to tell you right now about killing, you have to recognize that yes and no, killing is killing, but to kill is not the same as to be a killer. I live and I die, but I don’t go around killing just because. You think people live just because. No, even if you look at people at the internet and think that they’re all shitty, the reality is that everyone has a reason. They all have a reason that they’re doing anything, even if they don’t know it or cannot put into words. So you get what I mean, when I say this, right?”

Jay expected her to just be quiet and just be that chirpy girl. But she really crashed out on him like that. At best, he expected her to be passive-aggressive. Were all the things holding her down just falling away? Was she becoming herself now that she was not as constrained as she was back on Earth? All of these thoughts were running through his mind.

He did not know what to make of this. It would be rude to downplay what she was saying and attempt to calm her down as if she were just a machine to be cooled down with electric fans. So he just listened and kept quiet.

Seeing that he was just standing there and staring at her, she realized she was not even angry at him at all. She was angry at herself and at this world for putting them here. She actually cared a lot about his safety, but this was just not going to work at all. This would ruin them both if they did not find a way to integrate. It could not just be the two of them. They needed someone from this world to guide them and protect them from the hells of this world. And she was aware of that. It just did not seem that way, because she kept to herself and was still processing everything. It took time. That much was self-evident.

“Thanks, Jay. I did not really consider your feelings, and I honestly should have been telling you what I’ve been feeling this whole time. I mean, I did tell you. I just feel like I did it in such a messy way. I’m sorry, and I want that moving forward, we can avoid doing this again. It’s tiring. I mean, the feeling of just still being clueless about the obvious. It feels like we’re just dodging each other, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I hear you. I also don’t know how to react to this. I have not had time to think about things either. To be ‘real’ with you, staying like this makes sense. If we can just stand around, just for a while, maybe we won’t go crazy. We really have to get a job though, you know that.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“But it’s okay. We can always just keep traveling. But I don’t think we can do that forever. It’s better to settle here and live as much as we can. This place is certainly not going to make life easy. There is no easy life, no easy gain. And we’re lucky enough as is. That’s all I can say.”

“What’s next?”

“We should live in a shared apartment.”

“Do you mean boarding houses? Or lodges and such?”

“Yeah, the inn is not sustainable, I think.”

“I think we can stay there, but we need the cash. We spent so much on the blue potion, and to be honest, I just decided to buy it because I knew it was going to make me happy.”

“I get you. So you want to help adventurers. We can carry their stuff?”

“That’s a job?”

“Yeah, did I not tell you the reason that I got the adventurer card was for this one job I saw on the board?”

“Yeah, you did.” She had forgotten it, but she remembered just now when he said.

They soon stopped by an inn, waiting for the adventurers to come out and invite them inside.

“Go upstairs. Please help us carry these.”

Martha and Jayce created a two-person line. Jayce stayed on the staircase and Martha went up and off the stairs to put the items down on the first floor.

This took a while, but once they were down, they began carrying some of the things. Most of the adventurers’ items were precious, so they kept them on the wagon. The ones they carried were just broken tools, basic supplies, and such. It was a hodgepodge of things that were not immediately valuable or assets.

Upon entering a cafe, it looked quiet, but a group of figures at one of the tables were “noisy”, stirring up in response to their presence. 

They were about to start the meeting.

They didn’t do it earlier because they needed help bringing it to the meeting. This was the last stop before the dungeon. It was early in the morning, the best time for them since no one else was going to bother. By standard, schedules were distributed, but they wanted to get the early bird, even if it meant losing some sleep.

“Okay, what’s about to happen is you guys are going to group up...”

Jayce and Martha could not follow at this point, still tired from waking up so early, since they barely got rest or sleep in the last two days. 

After the meeting finished an hour later, they forced themselves awake again, the physical strain doing enough to keep their bodies in action. Their fatigue was immense, even more so than the bags themselves. But if it got them a good night’s rest at an inn, then it was enough.

“Later, after the notch...”

The adventurers’ voices barely registered.

All of a sudden, they were asleep, waiting for the adventurers to move.

They woke up and moved again. It was like this for the entire dungeon run.

After leaving, they dragged themselves to the wagon the adventurers prepared.

They did not have to carry them all the way home. This was already mentioned before they took the offer.

After they came home to rest, the inn was happily waiting for them.

They lay down, unbothered by their physical closeness.

The only thing that mattered was that they slept.

They both slept on the floor on different sides of the room.

They slept and woke up and paid to stay for the day and then slept again.

Time went on, unhindered, unbothered. Forever, it felt.

Chapter 3
“Wait, that was the actual guy from the guild, you know,” she said as she woke up. She knew it, but she never said anything about it. She was just so tired. “So, like, that’s who, like that’s who you were talking to. That’s how we got the feel—that’s, that’s, that’s how we got the carrying stuff.”

“Yeah,“ Jayce said in a casual “obviously” tone. “...Oh, so you weren’t listening. Well, I’m not surprised.” She said, “What do you mean.” He resumed: “Well, we’re all tired.”

They first went over to a small plot of land just to see what it was like.

”This is for farming?” Jayce said. “Is this what you’re trying to do?” He was being genuinely curious.

Martha gave that brow-raised smile where she wasn’t looking at him directly, just with her head turned to his direction, saying: “I don’t know. I just wanted to look at this one in particular. I saw it while we were passing by... you know... the grounds and such, the barracks, and when we went to the guild... Actually, I was supposed to ask. What was that blacksmith gonna say again? Like literal lore, but not in the same time. I mean, I get that he’s not into it, but isn’t it crazy? That we can just ask?”

“Yeah. I guess he wasn’t that accommodating... Honestly... that person was not that great. I can see why you felt—”

“No, I mean, like the lore you know. The world has lore and stuff.”

He said: “Oh, is that you were asking? Oh, you wanna know?” She said yeah. He continued: “Well, we can actually... Well, I don’t know. But if there’s a place, just, just tell me. I was actually wondering if maybe... I don’t actually know for sure, but... If there’s a library or a place to read, that would fix our problems quickly—”

She had waited out his entire statement, but interrupted when he finally mentioned the library. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. But-I, But-I, But I was wondering if someone would, you know, give the information to us, like, you know, person to person.” She even did a downward forward series of thrusts with her hand curled to form a snake as a hand gesture to hammer the point home.

He said, “Face to face?” She said yeah. He continued, “Yeah, people do that. But you know, like, I don’t know if it’s going to be, you know, for free.”

“Why wouldn’t it be? People like to yap.”

“Yeah, I-I-I-I-I... you’re right.”