The late morning sun stood high, almost white, filtering through the thick leaves.

  The lush flora brushed against them as they trudged forward.

  All three of them.

  Mark behind the other two.

  His mood dragged over him like mud: dark, heavy, formless.

  And ahead of him, inevitably, was Antea’s ass.

  Round.

  Perfectly round.

  Under that shirt of his—now worn-out and filthy—which hid absolutely nothing and left her long, slender legs exposed, precise like two lines drawn by a deranged architect.

  Mark kept falling into it with his eyes, every time.

  Always the same.

  Always worse.

  He was exactly like an insecure student who, instead of doing what he’s supposed to, ends up procrastinating while searching for something to jerk off to.

  "Just one."

  Which then becomes two.

  And then three.

  And then he can’t even remember what the hell he was supposed to be doing in the first place.

  He had woken up with his face comfortably resting on her legs, while she was still asleep.

  Opening his eyes, he had guiltily caught a glimpse of that small strip of white underwear the shirt — wrinkled and folded badly during the night — failed to cover.

  He jerked his gaze away, cheeks burning.

  But a moment later, he lifted his eyes to her full, generous chest.

  The “don’t look” challenge had never been his strong suit.

  The problem was that he simply couldn’t perceive her as a “him,” and he still wasn’t sure she really was Anton.

  How could he be?

  There hadn’t been time to think up any kind of test, and even if there had been, he doubted he would’ve managed to come up with one.

  And yet… as disoriented and moody as she had seemed, it was strange to imagine her lying.

  The real Anton would’ve come up with a dozen theories about their arrival in this world, the way someone watches an anime and rewinds to analyze every frame.

  And if she really was Anton, sooner or later she would start doing the same here.

  Because that was him: a reflective showman.

  One of those people who can’t actually do much of anything but can talk brilliantly about everything — even about nothing.

  He had the knack for making even the most trivial or bizarre thoughts sound captivating, and for mocking anything — whatever others thought, said, or did, and whatever he said or did himself — as if everything, fundamentally, were idiocy.

  And people fell for it.

  It worked — for anyone unlucky or lucky enough to fall within his sphere of interest.

  Even though, deep down, he probably didn’t really like anyone.

  Anton was selective.

  Excessively so.

  All those memories and micro-judgments about him tangled and collided in Mark’s mind, blurring together.

  Years spent brooding over the opaque, slippery, contradictory nature of that friend had left a knot that refused to loosen.

  And many other proto-thoughts wanted to surface now, climbing through the fog still clouding his mind.

  But the present reality, sudden and brutal, seemed to have laid itself over his past like a dull film that only let certain things about people through.

  He tried to think back to his mother.

  To his father.

  Nothing.

  No faces, no outlines.

  A kind of mnestic prosopagnosia — as if their features had been wiped away with a fingertip.

  It unsettled him, even if only a little, how unnaturally distant his past suddenly felt.

  Distant in that unnatural way stories consumed years earlier come back to you: when you try to remember them and almost nothing remains—only vague, smudged fragments that, even if they belong to the same scene, seem impossible to connect.

  And you convince yourself that one single anchor, one mnestic nucleation site, would be enough to make the events resurface the way a seasoned herdsman manages his beasts.

  Not that, before ending up here, he’d been living a particularly exciting life.

  But how could it possibly be worse than the life expectancy this place was force-printing into his limbic system?

  Seriously: were a couple of abs, a psychokinetic whip, and the renewed hope of finally losing his virginity to a girl perfectly aligned with his idea of a “dream girl” really enough to endure the sense that any aberration in this world could tear his life apart in an instant?

  He’d always been a coward.

  The boldness he’d shown up to now was nothing more than the reflection of the need to look strong, in control, in front of a girl with a dream body who—very likely—used to be his best friend.

  And who was now a fabulous engram in advanced decomposition.

  When his eyes had risen to her breasts and her beautiful sleeping face, his mind had produced something between a dream and a nightmare: an oneiric pharmakon.

  Him lying in bed, Antea on top of him, dressed in something that revealed far more than it covered.

  But those celestial features, those full lips, were immediately stained in a Rorschach-like way—as if his brain were desperately trying to superimpose Anton’s face onto Antea’s.

  Failing, miserably.

  In front of him, the two girls stopped, and the mysterious one—mysterious because the only person who could’ve actually asked her anything was Mark, and he hadn’t—bent down to point at a large reddish-violet mushroom with a strange cap shaped like a Smurf hat.

  They had seen plenty of them in those bleak couple of days spent in that world.

  She had never given any indication that they were edible.

  She didn’t seem to know much about this place either, and kept her distance from the mushrooms.

  Maybe not for the same reasons they did.

  Who knew what stories she’d been told, Mark might’ve thought — if he had given a damn.

  Questions like: “Is she really an enchantress or did those pathetic idiots trick us? And if she is, why did they capture her? Where does this lively girl even come from? How can she be so cheerful after being kidnapped? Is kidnapping normal around here? What’s her name?”

  Yes, they did pass through the antechamber of his mind.

  And were immediately discarded.

  And yet he might actually know her name, if only he remembered it: she had told it to Antea, with whom she had somehow bonded surprisingly fast, despite the language barrier.

  When she pointed at the mushroom, Antea said the name — in Valashian.

  She said: “Lirkha.”

  The girl lit up, gave her an excited nod, and told her she was amazing, that she was learning far too quickly.

  Antea didn’t truly understand the words themselves, but she caught the intent, and smiled back — a genuine, clean smile.

  They had been going on like that for a while:

  an improbable teacher, and a student who seemed to have completely forgotten the heavy gloom that had settled on her after the brute-beast attempted rape on the first day.

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  And strangely, it didn’t feel out of place.

  It even seemed possible that it was something Anton might have had in him — a quick recovery, an unpredictable emotional reactivity — but the fog hanging over the ocean of his memories, over that first past, kept him from confirming it.

  Everything concerning Anton was still there, in his memory.

  Only now it was unreliable.

  And the implications of this unreliability of his self-narratives felt so far beyond his reach that he instinctively deflected them, right after a brief, half-painful cognitive cramp.

  She pointed at other things: leaves, branches, bits and pieces scattered around them.

  Antea answered correctly every time.

  She had memorized all those words without the slightest effort.

  Mark wasn’t impressed.

  He wasn’t even really listening.

  He just stared at them with a dazed, half-dreaming look, waiting for them to start walking again.

  Inside that indifference toward Antea’s linguistic progress, a small irritation wedged itself in.

  An irritation that felt like the precursor of a very specific guilt: he felt like a bit of an impostor.

  Yesterday he had killed a man.

  At first, the sight of the half-smashed face of the man he’d killed had nearly torn him apart, hollowed him out, sunk him.

  But it had lasted very little.

  The ease with which he had brushed off — far too quickly — the blood staining his conscience forced him to ask himself what the hell that said about him.

  He remembered the Joker from The Dark Knight — a memory far clearer than anything related to actual people from his life.

  According to that character, morality is a stupid joke people abandon as soon as things get difficult.

  Maybe the same thing had happened to him.

  Maybe the Joker’s view wasn’t true in an absolute sense, but it was true for him.

  And then Antea had come close to console him.

  He had liked that contact.

  So he had faked it: made her think that the killing had torn his soul apart, just to get a bit of physical closeness.

  He wasn’t just a murderer.

  He was also a massive, slimy asshole.

  And now he didn’t know how to behave.

  This perpetual indecision — his defining trait — was the real cause of that gloom.

  If Antea ever discovered what he had really done… would she stay with him?

  And what would he do if she decided to leave him after the confession?

  He absolutely did not want those questions to ever find an answer.

  He just had to find the strength to keep going by forcing himself to look confident.

  Like he had done up until the day before.

  They walked a little farther.

  The supposed enchantress kept up her improvised teaching mission: this time she was trying to teach verbs — or something that, in their alien grammar, resembled verbs.

  Understanding each other, they really weren’t.

  But the scene had something oddly amusing about it.

  Mark followed them a few steps behind, detached, as always.

  Then, on the path, two figures appeared.

  Hunters, judging by their appearance.

  The first carried a short crossbow made of dark wood and worn metal; he had a belt full of light bolts shoved in at random, and a leather vest with more repaired seams than original ones.

  The second had no visible weapons, but was dressed just as much like a hunter: he wore a leather jacket reinforced with patches of green and brown cloth, thick trousers crusted with dirt and dried blood, and soft, sagging boots marked by miles of walking.

  He too carried a bag — a coarse canvas sack, swollen with something that wasn’t moving.

  They both had the same kind of face: gaunt, drawn, eyes forward, alert.

  Not alarmed.

  Just alert.

  They stopped a few meters away.

  The girls halted.

  Mark too.

  One of the hunters smiled — almost certainly the younger of the two.

  He scratched the back of his neck with a friendly, easy gesture.

  “Quite the unlikely hunting party. Rough day, huh?”

  Mark tensed up, in that timid, awkward way that was almost a trademark for him.

  This is a hunting ground? So maybe those two idiots from earlier were hunters too… Great. Perfect. What a pain.

  A flicker of irritation showed up on his face — clear enough that the older hunter caught it immediately.

  The man frowned, with that sharp-edged caution that seems to grow only with age and accumulated screwups.

  Is it too much to hope for a pair of old ladies looking for mushrooms, instead of armed, potentially dangerous people? Christ.

  Mark thought.

  But the enchantress wasn’t suspicious at all.

  If anything, she looked genuinely calm.

  She said, politely,

  “We are not hunters.”

  Antea stayed still for a moment, silent.

  Then she moved closer to Mark — without saying anything, without touching him — but just looking at her, it was obvious she was on guard.

  Maybe even a little worried.

  Or maybe not. Hard to tell with her.

  “So what are you doing out here?” asked the younger hunter. “Don’t you know this is a dangerous hunting area? Though maybe you’ve figured that out already, judging by the state you’re in.”

  Then he smiled, open and almost gentle.

  “Need a hand? Want us to escort you out of here?”

  The older hunter shot him a dark glare.

  Grunted something that didn’t quite become a word.

  But said nothing more.

  “You’re really kind, sir. Yes, a guide would be helpful. We don’t actually know where we’re going.”

  Idiot.

  Why the hell would you reveal our weaknesses to complete strangers? Mark thought, dragging a hand down his face, visibly irritated.

  Then his expression tightened.

  What if she used her enchantress powers to turn them into her puppets?

  No.

  No, she really did seem like just an ingenuous girl.

  Ingenuous in a borderline pathological way.

  Unrealistically optimistic.

  And maybe these two were genuinely decent people.

  Or maybe she just had a good eye for these things.

  The mysterious girl and the young hunter kept talking for a while, both while they were still standing at their meeting point and later, once they all resumed walking along the same path Mark and the others had been following.

  Sometimes they laughed — she with her thin, bright voice, he with an open, harmless sort of laugh — while the older hunter walked a few steps ahead, posture rigid, occasionally turning around with that wary, veteran glance.

  At a fork in the path, they turned left.

  Mark wasn’t listening to a single thing they were saying.

  Antea had stayed close to him, silent, without drifting away.

  Until she spoke.

  “What do you think?”

  “Not much. They don’t seem to have bad intentions.”

  “Yeah… they just look like a weird pair: a talkative good-natured guy and a grumpy silent one. But we should stay alert.”

  “Umpf. Obviously, fuck.”

  They walked a few more minutes in silence.

  Each absorbed in whatever circus was unfolding inside their skull.

  “Mark.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. Shit. If you killed that man, it was to protect me. I hate seeing you this down.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “And I didn’t stay close to you this morning. I got… carried away with learning the language. You know, I don’t want to be a burden for you.”

  Mark looked at her, surprised.

  She, meanwhile, was staring ahead — like she was talking more to some internal version of herself than to the real world.

  “You’re not a burden. Why would you think that?”

  “Forget it.”

  Mark wanted to dig deeper.

  Ask the questions he actually wanted to ask.

  But nothing came to his tongue.

  No words that didn’t sound wrong or pathetic.

  The conversation fell silent again.

  And the quiet settled back between them, thick as mud.

  The end of the forest wasn’t a line.

  It was a fade-out.

  First the trees grew sparser.

  Then shorter.

  Then a different kind of light appeared — wider, harsher — the kind that doesn’t filter through things but drops onto them like a thrown bucket.

  The ground changed color.

  From damp brown to a dry yellowish dust that rose with every step and clung to ankles, to fingers, to the air itself.

  The smell of moss and resin got shoved aside by something new: iron, sweat, hay, stale goods.

  A smell of humans.

  Of “civilization.”

  Or something trying very hard to pretend.

  Then they saw it.

  Not all at once — first just a sliver of dark roof, then a wall of heavy timber, then the unmistakable silhouette: some kind of proto–service station, the depressed fantasy edition.

  A huge clearing on the side of a broad dirt road, wide as a dried riverbed, compacted by the weight of countless wheels that must’ve passed over it for years.

  It was full.

  Actually full.

  Carts everywhere, parked like absolute shit, each one more battered than the last: crooked planks, ropes tied by hand, wheels repaired with whatever nails someone found lying around. Some covered by sagging tarps, others left open, overflowing with messy goods.

  And in front of the carts — the beasts.

  Not horses.

  Not mules.

  Something in between.

  Tall creatures with broad chests, short velvety fur like a young hare’s, and legs too long for anything meant to pull heavy loads.

  They had those wide, upright ears that twitched at every sound, and dark, alert eyes — a little too intelligent.

  Their hindquarters were powerful, made for explosive jumps, as if they could change their minds any second, say “fuck this,” and bolt off at ridiculous speed.

  Strong and fast — basically a mule with Olympic-athlete delusions.

  Around the structure, a constant churn of people: merchants, hunters, filthy barefoot children, women carrying baskets or sacks, men arguing too loudly about prices, space, priorities.

  Someone was drinking straight from a barrel like a dehydrated junkie.

  Someone else was dozing upright.

  Near the entrance, a wooden sign hung crooked.

  Impossible to tell what it depicted — maybe a jug?

  A mug?

  A flaming pitcher?

  Hard to say, and honestly, who cared?

  The place itself looked like a hybrid between a tavern, a cargo depot, and an animal shelter.

  Not pretty.

  Very practical.

  And for all its dust and noise and general shabbiness, to Mark it had an almost miraculous aura:

  a place that didn’t immediately want to kill them.

  At least for now.

  They parted ways with the hunters.

  The girl hugged the younger one — and he hugged her back, gladly. Maybe a little too gladly.

  I wonder if she’d bang him under different circumstances, Mark thought, his usual misplaced malice bubbling up on schedule.

  The older hunter, meanwhile, clearly couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.

  That was when Mark finally learned — or remembered — his name: Nahely.

  The younger hunter stepped toward Mark and Antea as well, greeting them with the same sincere friendliness he’d shown from the start.

  The guy radiated this natural, uncomplicated warmth that was almost disarming.

  Mark gave him a slightly awkward smile.

  Antea thanked him politely.

  She had learned the word thank you in Valashian — she mispronounced it, obviously, but somehow still made it sound graceful.

  The young hunter blushed instantly and looked away, unable to hold her gaze.

  Can’t blame him, Mark thought.

  They stepped inside the station.

  The smell hit them first: stale woodsmoke, grease, a syrupy kind of alcohol, and layers of human sweat stratified over decades.

  The floor was made of uneven planks, worn down and covered in that kind of dust that sticks to your soles and never leaves.

  Noise everywhere.

  Voices bouncing off the walls, laughter too loud, dishes clattering against wood, the muffled whinny of some restless beast outside.

  They drew attention immediately.

  Of course they did.

  Beaten-up, filthy, out of place.

  And then — two girls like that, here, in a hole like this.

  Who knew when these people had last seen anything simile.

  Antea especially: anyone with functioning eyes was using them on her.

  In his less respectable daydreams, Mark had always wanted to walk next to a knockout girl through a crowd of envious guys.

  And for a moment — just a moment — he grinned inwardly at the thought that these people might think Antea, or even Nahely (who, frankly, was a nice piece herself), were his girlfriends.

  Or both.

  Like in a shitty isekai harem.

  Then the whirlpool of stares dissolved.

  Faster than he’d expected.

  Probably would’ve lasted even less if they’d been dressed properly.

  Who knows what they thought, assuming they thought anything at all.

  Nahely leaned toward him, tugging him slightly aside.

  “Those bastards had money in their packs. Let’s buy something to eat.”

  Mark nodded.

  “Alright.”

  Then he turned to Antea.

  “The girl stole money from the guys we killed. Want to eat and drink something, or planning to starve out of principle?”

  “You really think I’d say no?”

  Fair point.

  All three had been wrestling with stomach growls the entire walk.

  They moved toward the counter.

  The counter was a slab of dark wood, scarred with cuts and old dried stains — not all of which were food, probably.

  Behind it, a row of iron pots steamed with greasy broth, salty and overcooked.

  There were heaps of hard bread thrown into a basket, rough mugs filled with some amber drink — sweet and alcoholic, judging by the faces of those drinking — and a kind of thick stew served in clay bowls, with unidentifiable chunks floating lazily inside.

  The bartender was a big, bald guy with an apron that might’ve been white in another lifetime.

  He raised an eyebrow as they approached, as if deciding whether he felt like serving them or telling them to fuck off.

  Mark ran a hand through his hair.

  “Great. Perfect. Cozy place.”

  They bought some stew.

  Disgusting.

  A gelatinous thing, uncertain in color, with a smell oscillating between “wet dog” and “pot forgotten for three days.”

  But Nahely ate it like she was having a royal feast, with the kind of simple, almost animal joy of someone who clearly wasn’t picky about the definition of food.

  They drank some water.

  Not exactly clean, but at least it didn’t taste like mold.

  Then Nahely — who clearly had a strong sense of initiative, Mark noted — asked which nearby city was the closest.

  The bartender answered:

  “Anarchy.”

  Mark and Antea froze.

  Their eyes met for half a second: pure disbelief.

  An English word.

  Clear as daylight.

  How the hell?

  Coincidence?

  Maybe.

  But by the way he pronounced it — like a Pirah? tribesman trying to conjugate a recursive verb — it really seemed like someone from their world had named that city.

  Mark felt strangely… uplifted.

  He had no idea why.

  But the name alone triggered an uncontrollable outburst:

  “Then it’s settled! We’re going to Anarchy!”

  Voice loud, heroic, completely out of place.

  It immediately earned him a wave of confused stares, including those from the bartender and Nahely, who clearly wondered why a guy who’d looked like a depressed mop ten minutes earlier was suddenly speaking like the protagonist of a trailer.

  Antea nodded.

  “Yes, I agree. Maybe there are others from our world there. Imagine if even Mike was there.”

  “I don’t know who’s there,” Mark replied, “but someone has to be.”

  The news that a city called Anarchy existed had energized them both.

  For a moment, that world didn’t seem like a giant cesspool of immorality and living trauma.

  The bartender cut in.

  His face was darker now.

  Why?

  Because they were speaking a language he couldn’t understand?

  Because someone else had spoken it there before — and that someone hadn’t exactly been a saint?

  They didn’t know.

  And he didn’t bother clarifying.

  Nahely fell silent.

  Confused.

  Maybe a little intimidated.

  But only briefly.

  “If you want to go to Anarchy, you should ask for a ride,” she said. “It’s pretty far. And… I’m telling you this because you seem a bit lost — no offense — but you should spend all your money before getting there if you plan on staying.”

  Mark frowned.

  “Why?”

  “Because Anarchy doesn’t use money. There are no laws. It’s the strangest place you can live in, among all the ones I’ve seen or heard of. Anyway… if you want to get there before sunset, you should leave now.”

  “Got it. Do you know someone who could take us?”

  “Go outside and tell the departing wagons that Horhafs sent you. You’ll definitely find someone willing to help for free.”

  “Perfect. Thank you… H-Horhafs.”

  (Disastrous pronunciation, but he tried.)

  “Let’s buy some bread then,” Mark added, “since we won’t need money later.”

  They bought hard bread and a few water flasks.

  The flasks were made of some strange material: a kind of pressed leather mixed with dark fibers, shiny like badly-made plastic yet elastic and sturdy — almost like handcrafted rubber, if medieval fantasy had ever invented such a thing.

  Outside, they found a guy — only after several refusals, despite saying Horhafs had sent them — with a surprisingly well-kept cart, who agreed immediately to give them a ride.

  A man with a short beard, smooth features, the kind of look of someone who lives peacefully as long as nobody expects him to become interesting.

  They settled in the back, among a few sacks of what seemed to be grain: large, dark kernels with an earthy, slightly toasted smell.

  The cart was pulled by one of those beasts they had seen at the station.

  The only thing Mark noticed was that, instead of braying, it only let out deep snorts, as if it were permanently irritated by everything.

  When they set off, he realized right away that the animal could run.

  Really run.

  Every jolt felt like a personal insult to the laws of physics.

  Antea and Nahely resumed their micro-lessons: verbs, gestures, attempts, giggles.

  The same old dynamic.

  Mark didn’t follow them.

  He didn’t even try.

  He wanted to talk to Antea alone — that, yes.

  Convinced — because of those confused leftovers of his warped inner narration — that if she really was Anton, sooner or later she might help him shape the hypotheses swirling inside him.

  Help him make sense of the revelations, find a language to put them in order.

  Maybe even add some thoughts of her own.

  The intention was there.

  The moment wasn’t.

  And Nahely’s invasive presence made everything harder.

  She kept stealing Antea away with those lessons, and he didn’t have the stomach to interrupt.

  On top of that, he was tired.

  The kind of tired that sucks you in from the inside, fast, unavoidable.

  In the end, Mark rested his head on a sack.

  The grain crackled under his weight.

  He closed his eyes.

  And fell asleep almost immediately.