Memories came back in bits and pieces. Some of them left me staggering, and I had to stop and just breathe for a moment until I could fit them back into context. I could remember what a newcomer was, but not anything before this world; I could remember that I’d been to multiple sites, giving me multiple forms and sets of abilities, but my recollections of those forms and abilities and the sites in question were patchy. I knew there was a reason I badly wanted, needed, to get to the Axis, but what it was escaped me completely.

  And how I’d found myself waking up at the Grassnds site in this condition remained a mystery.

  I had failed to notice that my mana level was actually very low, and I was sure there was a reason not to use the Elixir I’d found in my bag. I definitely did not have enough to check direction at every intersection I reached, so there was some estimation involved, and orientation roughly by the sun as it began to lower enough to be useful for that. A couple of times, I cut directly cross-country since the red dot was diagonal between two of the avaible roads. Every time I checked, that dot was rger.

  I couldn’t sustain a gallop indefinitely and I had to slow to a trot or walk for stretches; I used the walking stretches to eat a travel bar. I emptied my water gourd and refilled it at a spring that formed a small pool surrounded by a fruit tree and three red berry bushes, scavenging some fresh food while I was at it.

  Especially when I was away from the road, I caught glimpses of wildlife. There were wandering herds of horses, of multiple cow-like or bison-like things, of multiple antelope-y things, of birds that reminded me of ostriches despite their colouring, of two-legged dinosaur-like lizardy things in at least two sizes. I might have seen kangaroos but they were going the opposite direction just as fast as I was and I didn’t want to stop to investigate.

  Now and then, I saw other people travelling, on foot or in wagons drawn by horses or, in one case, ornithians. I greeted them when I passed them on the road, always going the other way, but kept moving.

  There was only one group of travellers I had any interest in.

  I hadn’t reached them when it began to get dark, and I was fairly sure that even a centaur, meant for the Grassnds, could sustain a major injury by being outright stupid. Reluctantly, when I reached a shelter, I stopped.

  This one was built of cloudy gss bricks, white and dark and several shades of red, with a roof of red metal shingles that reminded me of something. Next to it was a simple fountain with multiple basins spiralling around a central axis, and around the base of that, pnts grew that I knew were edible.

  There was no wood around here for a fire and I didn’t have any on me, so I wasn’t going to be having a cooked meal or tea. Even though the pnts outside would be good for it, I wasn’t even going to be having quick-and-dirty travel-bar soup. I did have some fluffy fvoured ftbread, and some hard cheese, and my fresh fruit; travel bars came in multiple varieties, but they did get monotonous. It paled in comparison to Reese’s stew, though, and I made a mental note that I really needed to go to Starry Hill if I didn’t get home. Serru was sure to know where that was.

  I decided it was worth it to change out of centaur form for the night. For the sake of efficiency in the morning, I chose my dragon form, then pulled out the only regur tent I had on me and set it up.

  Tired as I was, I kept jolting awake just before I fell over the edge into full sleep. Memories collided with apprehension, past and future chaotic. I couldn’t seem to get comfortable, and working around my folded wings didn’t help.

  Finally, exhausted, I spent the mana on switching to felid and curled into a tight ball under my weighted bnket, hugging the plushie, with music on my sound pyer to drown out the noise in my head.

  That worked until the nightmare hit.

  Night and rain, red-blue-white lights sshing everything apart and casting bcker shadows and gring off the wet pavement in streaks, voices raised in screams and shouts and tears, something had gone very wrong but I didn’t have time to feel anything, I just had to save lives, the ones in pain and terror needed help and they needed to know they hadn’t been abandoned, the scene wasn’t entirely safe yet but we couldn’t wait when people were dying...

  I didn’t get back to sleep after that one.

  I abandoned the physical comfort of the tent for the emotional soce of music, sitting human-form outside next to the fountain with my guitar and the moonlight and the night sounds of the Grassnds.

  The sky was streaked with copper and gold by the time I realized that there were no longer gaps in my memory. I remembered everything right up to the attack in Whisperwillow.

  Had I died there? Logan had said that newcomers respawned at the nearest Quincunx site.

  Were my friends really okay? Reese said Logan had sent him a message and that it had included the fact that my friends were safe, but what had happened to them and to Whisperwillow once there was no more Purification Rain to protect from mosslings and moss infection?

  I had to find them.

  I had no appetite, but I made myself eat a travel bar anyway and drink some water, then refill my water gourd. My mana was recovering sluggishly but not as badly as after the music festival—it was at around a third, which should give me some leeway for changing and tracking.

  Dragon-form to orient, and back to centaur to cover ground.

  I hadn’t realized yesterday that my target was moving, making my course an arc rather than a straight line. I tried aiming farther ahead on that arc, and sure enough, on the next pause to check, I was actually going in the right direction. How much time had I wasted by not noticing that?

  On the other hand, in my defence, I had just died and come back.

  At a spring with a pair of fruit trees, I paused to refill my water, and got an idea.

  In felid form, I climbed the rger of the trees.

  In dragon form, I jumped out of it.

  It wasn’t smooth, and for a heartbeat I wondered if I had enough mana for enough Hardcures, but it did work. I beat my huge feathery wings to gain height, and then used Find Person.

  That red dot got a lot bigger a lot more rapidly this way.

  It led me to... a town?

  It was built on interesting terrain: a river crashed over a rocky ridge into a small ke and then away via two diverging rivers, and the town wrapped around most of the shore. They’d built a series of locks around one side of the small waterfall, and part of the town actually continued up at the top. Outwards from there in all directions I saw farms and orchards and pastures, and three major roads all met there. I caught a glimpse of a darker shadow at the base of the ridge that made me wonder whether there was a cave or a mine or something.

  I nded just outside the town and walked in, still following that red guide. Serru was here somewhere.

  The architecture here tended towards cob with wood framing and thatched roofs and painted walls, maybe about half the structures I saw, but the rest were a mixture. I saw wooden pnks with wooden shingles and gingerbread trim and windowboxes, stone foundations and wooden walls and colourful ceramic-tiled roofs that extended farther out, glittery stone with ste-like roofs and balconies and delicate metal across rge windows.

  The people were at least as much of a mixture. There was a higher percentage of humans and saurids and centaurs, but there were plenty of felids and cervids, aquians, jotuns and lmids, and a handful I didn’t even know. I didn’t see any dragons, but I wasn’t the tallest person in sight and while I attracted a few looks, none of them were hostile, just mildly curious and sometimes admiring.

  Hadn’t Logan said something about dragons only appearing a few decades ago?

  With them were dogs of every kind I’d seen in this world, right from the little beagles used to track pnts in the Forest to the massive shaggy breed the jotuns liked, long-legged sight-hound types who clearly weren’t going to be used for hunting here to stocky spitz types, energetic collies and spotted runners who were always trotting and poodles cut in creative and comfortable ways.

  And of course there were cats and chickens and geese everywhere in the spotlessly-clean streets, which were not entirely ft here but still in excellent condition.