I thought night might be helpful a little bit.

  Maybe not to help monitor our speed: thanks to the darkness we barely were able to see the sea and the magical sight wasn’t really helping us track speed. Besides, thanks to being confined in that small “drone”, we didn’t have much of a range when it came to magical detection.

  I thought that actual lights might give us a clue, though.

  Surely, if we were close to anything, we’d see some light. A ship, a coastline, a small blip of a plane.

  But there was nothing.

  -Okay, now I am officially worried - said Mike.

  -You can say that again - I agreed. - Where the hell are we?

  -I knew flying can be disorientating, especially over the seas, but this…

  -You think we are lost? Ha, that would be the best case scenario, to be honest.

  -Don’t even start. I don’t want to even think what else had to go wrong for us to be in the dark like that…

  -Well…

  -Wait… Look!

  He was about to point towards somewhere, but he contained himself, remembering that he was not looking through his own eyes.

  -Below us. Darkness changed, right?

  -Changed…?

  I tried focusing on the sea below us, but… Wait.

  -Hold up. That’s not the sea.

  Below us, there was a line that most likely was the actual coastline.

  How the hell did we manage to fly so close and not notice that before?

  -Go down!

  I quickly realized why.

  As I tried lowering the mana output of the crystal that was propelling us, the jerky motion had resumed and slowed down, yet we didn’t seem to be going down.

  -Oh shit…

  -Yeah… cut it down.

  Right. We were high. Very high.

  I had to completely stop our “engine” for us to actually start noticing how high we were.

  It took more than half a minute of freefall for us to start perceiving mana with our enhanced senses.

  And below us was…

  -A forest…? - voiced our surprise Mike. - That doesn’t seem right…

  -That close to the sea? Maybe we really got lost here…

  -Hmm…

  Before we hit the canopy, I again started our wind magic and halted our fall.

  -That makes no sense… Where the hell are we?

  Mike was not hiding his anxiousness. Hell, one look was enough for me to realize that something was wrong.

  This place looked… normal to me. And that is saying something.

  For the past… I don’t know how long, I’ve been surrounded by vast stretches of one thing, be it forests, waters, or sand, and I got used to that a while ago. Seeing a similar sight in a place where I expected to see human architecture was… wrong.

  Any coast that was near a city… damn, near any human, would be always urbanized in some way. And here, we had nothing.

  Not only that. The coast itself didn’t look normal: a beach, or a cliff or something. Nope, it was a forest that was half-flooded. Just like I’ve seen on a certain island.

  It was too dark to perceive any details, but even mana was strange. The fact that it wasn’t even remotely disturbed was making me uneasy.

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  -Hey, don’t you think we… - I started, but Mike interrupted me immediately.

  -We are not on that island. I am sure. I mean, we flew for so long…

  -If we crossed a barrier, then maybe…

  -Yes, but we didn’t! We’ve been through this!

  I didn’t say anything, but I had a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right.

  -Just move us. We need to check what’s further in.

  -Right…

  I nudged our hovering craft to change direction with a small burst of wind and the pulsing movement changed, again propelling us forward, deeper into the land.

  -So dark…

  We’ve been flying for about ten minutes and the coast was well behind us, yet the forest was still unending. Same with the lack of light: there was nothing on the horizon that would scream “humans”.

  -Well, at least we know we’re not anywhere near our “prison”.

  -True.

  Yeah. The stretch of land being a lot less flat and in the distance I could see a mountain range. At first I thought that it might just be the “bowl”, as I was calling it, but one look was enough to tell that it wasn’t it, it was too wide and too irregular.

  -I don’t know if we are lucky or unlucky with it being the night… - I mumbled to myself.

  -Where are all the people? What’s going on?

  Mike was a lot more worried than I thought it would be necessary.

  Or maybe it was just me being too numb.

  -I am sure we’re going to find someone soon.

  -Soon? We should’ve found something immediately! If we were right after the reawakening of magic, then I could understand, but this?!

  -I guess yeah, that did blow up the majority of tech… But now it’s not the case, right? Those apparently now can coexist?

  -That makes it even worse? Why is everything in the dark then?!

  -You got me, I have no idea.

  -And we’re stuck in this weird limbo! I need to find out where everything has gone!

  -Want me to fly faster? - I asked.

  -Pff. It’s not going to help much. Why can’t you just point us in the right direction? Your mana sensing was supposed to be infinitely better than me.

  -Thanks for the compliment, but I am sort of limited by NOT BEING THERE - I pointed out. - And didn’t you “implant” some of the people that are still out there with your pieces? Where are they?

  -I have no clue! It’s not like I can track them if they are too far! And they never came back into my range.

  -Bleh.

  He went quiet for a good couple of minutes.

  -You probably should find a place to land soon - he said, a lot calmer now.

  -Land? What for? - I asked, confused.

  -I already told you. It's going slow. If we are there personally we can at least find a correct direction. Hopefully.

  -You want to teleport there? Wouldn’t that be a bit too early?

  -Early? It’s not like we are doing anything, and being there…

  -I am not wasting my creation just because you’re itching to do something. We’re going to do that AFTER we find something, not before.

  -”Waste”, pff. Investment. It’s not like you can’t make another one.

  -I told you already, give me your fingers then.

  -...

  He went silent, apparently convinced.

  Sure, we had a way to teleport.

  After all, that was the whole idea of this scout: it was made out of the same piece of wood that was still next to us: a ready and prepared anchor for us to go.

  But, if we were to use it, both it and the wooden part of our “drone” would be destroyed in the process, so if we were to be dropped in the middle of some random forest again, what was even the point?

  No. I was going to wait until we actually needed to move. Be it because we were chased or that we found something.

  But, it didn’t seem like either of that was going to happen.

  We were flying above that forest for the whole night and haven’t found anything significant. No buildings, no roads, no nothing. Just greenery. It reminded me of the first time I awakened in this changed world, or rather in my new prison.

  Was this the case once more? Honestly, it started to feel like that.

  That fact wasn’t lost on Mike.

  The longer we were like that, the more restless he started to be. Urging me to fly lower, check more pointless things.

  -I told you a thousand times already - I said once more. - Even if we are missing some buildings hidden inside the trees, there’s no point in checking them. If there were any people there, we would notice. We are close enough.

  -Still! We could at least maybe learn where we are! Or what happened here! It’s clearly no place either of us are familiar with.

  -I doubt that. What, you think you’re going to find a map of the place?

  -Maybe! Who knows!

  I didn’t reply. I wasn’t in the mood.

  -Maybe during the daylight we’ll find something…

  -Mhm.

  For the first time in a while, that might be correct.

  Usually, my magical senses would be infinitely more long-range. But, thanks to the current predicament, it was different.

  -I thought the light from a city would guide us during the night, but since everything is so deserted…

  I knew that already. That was also my train of thought before.

  If there were no people, there had to be some ruins then, right?

  -Maybe that part? The trees look…

  -Oh, shut up, it’s not like…

  But I stopped mid-sentence.

  What I thought was yet another pointless complaint, but for once he was actually onto something.