Ember sat in the cart, map in his lap, as they rumbled down the road. The pilgrim had met them the next morning and given them their route: straight through what was once Tennessee, with the sub-city settling just before the border with Arkansas. If they were lucky, it would be a two-week journey. Their cart was laden with all kinds of gear—tents, cooking items, a washtub, bows and arrows, and a plethora of other wilderness survival things. Chris sat beside him, humming a merry tune, guiding the two large horses they had been given.

  Ember’s eyes lingered on his partner's strange royal blue hair. He hadn’t talked to him the last two days, as he was trying to figure his own thoughts and feelings out, but making no progress, he’d given up, shoving all that had happened so far into the back of his mind. He figured it was better not to dwell on what had happened. Not now. And that resulted in him getting bored. He looked back at the map. The topography is the same as my old world, but what’s in it isn’t. He glanced at the massive sequoia trees that they had been in for the past day. These are supposed to only be in California. I wonder what else will be different? Not that I’ve traveled much in my old world. His stomach grumbled. Unsurprisingly, he had found it hard to eat. Every time he looked at his food, the images of the dead, brutalized bodies of the people he killed manifested.

  To turn his attention elsewhere, he looked back at Chris’s hair and sighed heavily. “What’s with the hair?”

  Chris stopped humming and looked to Ember with a smirk. “Someone finally decides to talk, and that’s the first thing you ask?”

  Ember shrugged. “There’s no way it’s natural. Who has blue hair?”

  Chris laughed, his voice similar to singing. “I’ll have you know there are plenty of people with blue hair. But you’re right, this isn’t natural.” He leaned back on the bench. “It was a prank pulled by some friends when I was a kid. The color never came out. I even shaved myself bald in the hopes it would go away. Now I just live with it.”

  What kind of prank makes a guy’s hair blue forever? “Is everything blue?”

  “Nope. Just anything on my head. My natural color is honey blond.” Ember stared at him and tried to envision it. His supposed hair color definitely fits his violet eyes better. “How about you? Any crazy colors from your world?”

  “Mine?” The question surprised Ember.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about the crazy worlds other traversers come from. What about yours?” He stared at Ember intensely.

  He shrank under the man’s gaze and rubbed his neck. “I mean, compared to this world, mine was pretty boring. We didn’t have magical swords or monsters. It was just normal humans that dominated everything. And wars. Lots of wars. If one thing is common here, it’s that death is a constant.” Chris nodded, waiting for him to elaborate. Ember sighed and pointed to the trees. “These are on the other side of the frontier in my world and are some of the rarest trees.” Ember crawled into the back of the cart and rummaged through his pack until he found his phone. It was long dead by now, but it would get the point across.

  He plopped down beside Chris and held it up. “This is a Samsung twenty-four. It’s a phone.” Chris dropped the reins and held it delicately. “It’s dead now, but when it had power, you’d touch the glass here, and it would give you access to all of humanity’s collective information ever created.”

  “Wow,” he said, tapping the glass and sliding his finger across it a few times. “All of humanity’s information. You must have used that a lot, right?”

  Ember froze. “What do you mean?”

  Chris waved the device in front of him. “Well, if you have all of humanity’s information, then you could utilize that and become basically a god, no? So what’d you do with it?”

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  He sat there, kind of taken aback. “I didn’t really do anything with it. I mean, well, it’s true that, yeah, there’s a lot of information there. But it’s hard to apply it to real life because no one’s superpowered over there, and most of the world is run by the rich and wealthy. A lot of people in my world were just trying to survive.”

  Chris frowned slightly. “That’s a waste.”

  Ember shrugged. “I mean, my life was a waste back there, so I don’t know what to tell you. It’s kind of hard to explain if you didn’t grow up there, but we basically didn’t have any control over our lives as a whole. It was very predictable.” He looked out at the massive sequoia trees. But I guess now my life is anything but predictable.

  Chris rubbed his chin as he stared at the device. “So how can we turn it back on? Is there a device we can use?”

  He shook his head. “I would need a charging port or somewhere we could put electricity inside the device, but obviously, we don’t have that technology here, so I’m not entirely sure if it’s even possible.”

  “Electricity goes inside the device? Huh.” Chris didn’t seem too surprised at that statement, which perplexed Ember. He would have thought someone who’d lived in a medieval world their entire life would be fascinated, but maybe there was a similar kind of technology somewhere he wasn’t aware of.

  Ember shrugged. “I mean, that’s all I can tell you about it. It’s kind of hard to explain if you don’t actually use it. I was never a techno genius or anything. I don’t actually know how phones work. I spent most of my time learning biology, and, well, that was going nowhere, so…”

  “What do you mean?” Chris asked.

  Ember sighed. “So, in my world, in order to have a career, you have to go through school. I mean, obviously, you don’t have to go through schooling, but it’s recommended, and I failed. I just couldn’t focus on what I was doing, and I just didn’t have any interests. I mean, I was pretty young, so I never really knew what I wanted to do.”

  Chris handed the phone back, a knowing gaze on his face. “I know what that’s like—not knowing what you want to do in life.” He looked wistfully out at the woods. Then his face grew serious. “Okay,” he said. “I guess this is as good a place as any to set up camp.” He pointed at a flat spot just off the beaten path.

  “Isn’t it kind of early?” Ember asked. The abrupt change in topic threw him off.

  Chris nodded. “It is a little early. Sun won’t be down for a couple more hours. But we’ve put some good distance between us and the city, so no one should be following us. And I also need to start teaching you how to survive out here. I can tell just by looking at you that you’re not exactly the greatest survivor in history.”

  Ember clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Do I really look that useless?”

  “You want the truth, or do you want me to say no?”

  “Wow,” Ember said, fake disbelief in his voice. Despite his gloomy thoughts, Chris’s humor and casualness made Ember want to do anything but stay depressed.

  Chris chuckled, and he pulled the cart off the main road onto the small flat ground. It was nestled between two massive trees, but there was enough ground for them to park the cart to the side, as well as enough grass and moss for the horses to eat, and enough room for them to set up camp. While Chris started bringing the tents and food utensils out of the cart, Ember grabbed the water trough and put it to one side of the camp and unhitched the horses—something Chris had taught him on their first night on the road. He let the horses go without anything to hold them. They wouldn’t stray far. They weren’t that stupid.

  Ember then helped Chris set up camp. They each had their own separate tents, mostly just made of cloth and some metal poles. Then they made a small fireplace for cooking. After that, Chris handed Ember a bow and pointed to a tree not far away.

  “Shoot.”

  Ember did as he was told: he knocked an arrow, pulled it back, and fired. The arrow managed to hit the tree—hardly impressive, considering the tree was the size of a small building—but he managed to at least be somewhat centered on the shot.

  Chris nodded. “I want you to practice this every day when we’re at camp. That way, you can go hunt for your own food if you ever need to.”

  Ember nodded. Makes sense.

  Chris walked over to the cart and pulled out two wooden practice swords, tossing one to Ember. “And most importantly,” he said, “it’s time for you to learn to fight.”

  Ember caught the sword clumsily but held it up. “Fight?”

  “Obviously.” Chris rolled his eyes. “Did you really think that I would go on a journey with someone who can’t hold their own weight in a battle? You’ve seen what’s underneath that artificial dungeon in the cathedral? Or the people we had to kill? That’s a regular occurrence if you’re an adventurer or a traveler. So you’re gonna need to learn to fight. And thankfully, I know how to fight pretty well. So I’m gonna teach you. We’re gonna do this every day after we set up camp so that you can learn.”

  He then pulled out a shield. It was square and made of what looked to be metal and wood—the center was wood and the outside metal—and embossed on the front was a red phoenix. He walked up and got into a ready stance. “All right, show me what you got.”