"I really do appreciate your help there, choom." Gareth Elson said.

  Ivor finished tying the gag around Noah and his companions' fugly faces. They were all bundled together using Ivor's rope.

  "Though, I struggle to see why we should let them live? They were willing to drag me back to that hellhole. They know what I went through, and would willingly subject someone to that."

  Hatred clouded Gareth's eyes, turning them dark and stormy.

  “You are fully prepared to kill these men in cold blood? To murder someone: to play judge, jury and executioner… would not be just. Especially since this one is significantly more powerful than them. What separates us from them, young one?” His judging eyes pierced through Gareth, shredding the righteous anger Gareth had been building up for the last few minutes.

  "It is not our place to make this decision for the gods, Gareth Elson. If the fates wish these men to die, then they shall die. But this one shall not destroy all the potential good that they could do, if they perhaps changed their ways. We, cultivators, live long lives. It is not our place to deny these men the chance to change."

  "That sounds like an easy way to avoid accountability, to me. Sure, they could potentially do good, but these chrome vultures are likely going to go right back to what they were doing! What about all the innocent people they are going to kill and torment?!" Gareth swung his hands and spittle flew from his mouth.

  Ivor Hansen chuffed lightly, and shook his head, “The ignorance of youth…”

  He jokingly slapped the muffled Noah on the back of his head.

  "That is why we are tying them up before we leave." He winked, "Without the god's interference, these men are most assuredly going to die from beasts within the oasis. Leaving them as they are is not a mercy, it is waiting for Coranell to claim her dues. Hahaha!"

  With that he stood and got his bag ready for travel.

  -

  Gareth stripped one man of his shoes, another of his pants and filthy dust-covered shirt, and pulled them over the clean bandages.

  "Hey Ivor, what are these?" He pointed at the rings he’d seen glow before Tim’s sword suddenly appeared in his hand. Ivor was likewise going through their things. So, feeling somewhat justified to loot, Gareth asked him as Ivor was removing one from Tim’s corpse.

  He looked over and raised his bushy brows in surprise, “Those are storage rings, tier 3 and upward can use them to store equipment and such. Here."

  He tossed a small pouch that appeared out of nowhere, the ring glowed slightly, “This one did not see any money on your person, and is willing to part with some of the winnings.”

  Gareth fumbled the catch and heard tinkling sounds, like glass clinking against glass. Scared that he had accidentally broken something, he hurriedly peeked inside to see glowing crystalline leaves, shining with reds and blues. Gareth grew up in a mega-city, so couldn’t even begin to place the type of tree this leaf came from.

  “What are these?” Gareth looked at Ivor, and Ivor Hansen looked at Gareth…

  “You do not know this currency?”

  Fear of discovery surged through Gareth and he quickly back stepped, "No, I know the currency, I-uh, just...uhm...wasn't sure what...sort of currency they were.”

  Ivor Hansen’s deadpan expression showed that he totally believed his words.

  Ivor indicated to throw it over, and Gareth tossed him the pouch with the weird crystalline money, Ivor caught it with his dexterous brown tail. It had the bulkiness of a howler monkey, but the flexibility of a macaque, mixed with the orange fur of an orangutan.

  “It looks like they were pretty poor. Only six tier 1 leaves and one tier 2.”

  Ivor rolled his sparkling eyes at the looks of affront on one of the goon’s faces.

  “Come, let us be off. We can converse once this one is sure we are safe.”

  Ivor Hansen quickly set about collapsing the camp, while Gareth stood by and watched him awkwardly, unsure what came next. He also nibbled on the horned hare that hadn't been dropped in the dirt and trampled.

  When Ivor walked over to Gareth with his arms outstretched, he took a step back.

  An instinctual, PTSD-driven wave of panic rose within Gareth at this stranger approaching him, as if to grab him. He scrambled back, grabbing the nearest stick on the floor to try and protect himself from this evident threat.

  Ivor immediately stopped and held his hands up in a placating gesture.

  "This one does not mean you harm. I simply wish to carry you. For ease of travel."

  His tone was gentle, as if approaching the spooked animal Gareth very-much resembled.

  As if showing him a vulnerable opening, Ivor turned his back to Gareth, then crouched down. "You can hop on instead, if you want."

  An internal war waged within Gareth.

  His entire life, he had fought and struggled for survival.

  Modern day Terra was a dystopian, corpo-owned hellscape. Its only redeeming qualities had been the high technological level, neurolinks, the net, BDs, a gonk culture of punks and gangs.

  Megacities covered the land, towering skyscrapers serving as reminders of an impossible standard of living that no normal person could ever hope to reach.

  You were either born into wealth, or died in poverty.

  No chances of rising within the social ranking. No chance of making more of yourself, other than as some celebrity that sold their soul for branding deals.

  When Gareth had accepted the deal to fetch a piece of illegal information in a shady part of the city, he had thought it was just another Tuesday. That is, until a pale skinned horned devil shoved him through a portal into another world.

  He had no idea why, he had no idea how, he had no control over it, just like everything else in his fucking life.

  "I'd prefer to walk by myself if that's fine?" Gareth asked respectfully.

  He had seen how quickly Ivor handled those men. He was more powerful than them by far, and could likely just kidnap Gareth if he wanted, but he didn't think Ivor was the type to force something like this.

  Ivor winced, briefly exposing large canines, "This one can sense your poor cultivation level. It would take months for a mortal such as yourself to reach Volun. What’s more: great tribulations await those who cannot move quickly within the Forsaken Plains. If we are to travel together, then we must do so quickly."

  "And why would we be traveling together?" Gareth was suspicious that a powerful helper arrives to ‘save the day’, only to take him some place even worse and fuck him over.

  It wouldn't be the first time that Ian let Gareth escape, only to drag him back, kicking and screaming.

  This could be another ploy to break my mind. – Gareth thought.

  Ivor Hansen frowned in confusion.

  “This one has obviously helped this strange man. So I, evidently, do not mean junior brother harm. You are hunted, yes?"

  "...Yes."

  Gareth mistrusted many people, but he was not so far gone as to assume that all people were evil sons’a bitches.

  His sister, maybe even his mother - but he doubted that - had been good people, taken advantage of by a system meant to crush the kind.

  Ivor glanced at the tied up men again, "Let us discuss this elsewhere. Come, this one hears others approach."

  Gareth glanced between the captured men, and Ivor Hansen: the man who would supposedly ‘help him’.

  He saw the earnestness of Ivor's eyes, and the petty hatred in Noah's.

  "Only until we are far enough away to escape properly."

  He climbed onto Ivor's back, legs locking around his waist and arms around his neck.

  He reasoned he might be able to choke Ivor out if things went wrong, but what happened next shattered those delusions of heroics, and all he could focus on was hanging on for dear life.

  Ivor took one step, hopped the next, and leaped the last.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He was in the jungle canopy within seconds, effortlessly jumping from branch to branch.

  Leaves, twigs, and other obstructions seemed to bend out of his way as he just kept accelerating!

  Non-corpo people in Terra didn't have cars - none but the corporation employees and CEOs could afford them - but gravtrains and buses were still very much in active use. The speed that Ivor was going could eclipse the fastest bullet train.

  Within seconds they had reached the edge of the Jungle Oasis, the terrain speeding past in a green blur.

  Without missing a beat Ivor launched from the last tree and kept speeding across the hard-packed desert sands. Cracks and canyons broke up the dry red landscape. The shining sun blinding, high in the blue sky.

  The stunning, clear sapphire blue sky.

  He didn't care that the sun was blinding him, because he hadn’t seen its splendour in what felt like lifetimes.

  That beautiful golden orb that brought life, warmth, and comfort as it chased away the dark.

  He let it bathe his face with warm light as the weirdly gentle, cool wind caressed his filthy, sweaty face.

  Tears of joy soon speckled the red desert sand, shed…by a broken man.

  -

  "How can this one address you?" Ivor asked as they ran over cracks and crevices, dodging the occasional dust devil.

  "Uhm, you can just, like, call me Gareth, man."

  "What brings a mortal to the Forsaken Plains?" He repeated his earlier question.

  "I'm not entirely sure. One moment I was on the operating table, the Doctor cutting me apart, the next I was on the desert floor two days' walk back from where we came from. I guess they sent out gonks to look for me, which I luckily spotted since I was on an open plain. I ghosted for three days before they started getting close to where I was hiding…” he sighed tiredly, Ivor’s gait remarkably smooth, “Once I tried to make a run for it, they gunned for me. I only escaped because I accidentally ran into a dust monster nest or something. Those things went for them first, and in the chaos I got away again. Been running ever since."

  They jumped over a large gully, and in the brief second Gareth looked down he saw what appeared to be a herd of Rhino, creatures long extinct in South Africa…weird.

  All the superhuman fuckery he’d experienced for the last few years could easily be explained away by cybernetics. But an extinct species?

  A nagging thought, barely a suspicion, started forming in his head, but before the thought could germinate, Ivor asked another question.

  "'Operating table’, you said. You are a patient?" Ivor sounded slightly concerned but more so, confused.

  "Hmph, no. I was the torture/test subject of someone called the Doctor, and Ian. He…had a keen interest in my anatomy." It was clear that Gareth didn't want to say more so Ivor Hansen dropped that line of questioning.

  Ivor gradually slowed down, until he finally drew to a stop.

  -

  "You...were being tortured?"

  The great Ivor Hansen’s worry was growing.

  If what Gareth is saying was true, then my suspicions that he is actually an immortal are slowly solidifying.

  He had seen and noted that the cuts all across his evenly proportioned body had not been from any beast, but from sharp precision implements. He had assumed a rapier, but a scalpel seemed just as likely.

  The stolen clothes hung loosely on his form. He seemed like a child, having stolen clothes from his father’s wardrobe.

  "Tell me your story." He said gravely, I need to know the full truth.

  Gareth looked around them, endless wasteland and openness, whirling dust in the morning air, which blew into his face, forcing him to squint. Ivor Hansen, using his supreme intuition, sensed that Gareth Elson still did not trust him.

  "Look man, I appreciate the help, but I don't know you yet." He took a deep breath, "I can't tell you more than that I was captured, have somehow escaped, and now they are coming after me. But what I can tell you is that these people are evil with a capital E. Every night I would fall asleep to the horrific sounds of people screaming, because I sure as shit wasn't the only one they were tormenting. Every day they would come and cut me open, break me, shock me, drown me...starve me… Its fucked up and we need to tell people what they are doing so they can put a stop to it."

  Ivor Hansen saw Gareth's hands shake, his stomach tighten with nausea. The boy's body had degraded to such an extent that strong emotions impacted him heavily, and remembering that place was definitely making him emotional.

  Ivor Hansen searched with his senses, magical and mundane. He smelt fear, anger, hatred, and despair but no deception. He saw how emaciated and weak Gareth was, mostly just skin and bones. He felt how this man had less mana in him than a child. Most of all, he looked into his eyes.

  'Eyes are the windows to the soul' many Spiritual cultivators say, and while Ivor Hansen had not cultivated the Spirit dao, he had a rudimentary control of his aura. He could sense, and see, that this young man was honest, terrified, and needed a guiding hand.

  He needed a Guide.

  And that was ultimately the first purpose of a Ranger: To guide the lost in a world unknown.

  It boded ill that the first Sethnari he had encountered on top of the Looming Cliffs...was a captive.

  What evil has befallen the people of Lazfeld? With which Depravity has its lords bartered? I must gather more information, but I must also protect this young one. I cannot leave him, he is too vulnerable.

  Ivor Hansen had a choice to make.

  Believe this man and take him back to Volun...or leave him?

  It was cold, heartless, and cruel to even consider but consider it he must. Because if he brought a threat to Volun, he would be responsible for any deaths that would occur.

  This man had blatantly admitted that he was being hunted.

  There was the possibility that some great evil master would follow him to Volun, looking for Gareth, and destroy the city for harboring him. Ivor Hansen was brave enough to admit that while he was great, he was nowhere near the top.

  Any tier 8 would be able to wipe out the marquis city of Volun.

  Lord Margrave was only tier 6, he would be unable to battle some evil master. Yet, Gareth might have some knowledge of what had befallen Lazfeld.

  For all the great, many, wonderful things that Ivor Hansen was… cruel was not one of them.

  He saw in Gareth, beneath the suffering, the anguish; a need for protection, the need for a safe place, the need for a home. And Volun was a home. It took those who had been cast out and gave them a new start. It gave them a chance they would not have in other parts of the Avrrest empire.

  It had taken him, a young sapling of twenty years, inexperienced with the world, and forged him into one of the empire's finest rangers.

  Volun could be a safe place for Gareth to grow.

  It could nurture him, mend his shattered trust, it could grow this young man into one beast of a cultivator.

  "You have a choice before you, Gareth Elson."

  Gareth squinted at him with the bright light of Sol shining on his dirt-stained face.

  "This one can take you to Volun city, the nearest city within ten thousand miles… Once there, this one will either leave you at the city gates - and leave your path to the fates - or you can join the Ranger Corps under this one’s sponsorship."

  -

  Gareth Elson wanted to refuse immediately, to get as far away from someone controlling him as possible. He started shaking his head but Ivor immediately interjected, "Think long and hard, young one, this opportunity will not be offered again."

  Gareth sighed and looked up to the sky, only to freeze solid. There was something in space. He looked closer and saw what appeared to be a planet-sized tree branch, uncountable miles away, barely visible past the Noon sun. He shakily pointed up to it, "Wh-whats that?"

  Frowning in confusion Ivor looked up, "Clouds?"

  "No, not the fucking clouds! What's wrong with the moon?!"

  "I know not this 'moon' you speak of; are you perhaps referring to Neró?"

  "If Neró is that massive blue thing, then fucken yeah!" Awe gradually filled Gareth and his lips parted to reveal perfectly even white teeth.

  A strange thing for a prisoner to have. – Ivor noted to himself.

  -

  I’m not on Terra! – Gareth thought.

  When he’d woken up in a dark prison cell, he’d thought that he had just been knocked out and that the people handling him were just chromed up soldiers. Now, he looked at a sky so alien he struggled to wrap his mind around it.

  -

  Ivor Hansen, for his part, was even more concerned.

  Was Gareth Elson raised in captivity? Has he never been outside?!

  What an horrendous thought.

  Ivor Hansen is a ranger, born to be free and explore the unknown. The idea of being captive was antithesis to his existence, but to have never seen the sky?!

  Feeling even more determined to help this poor lost soul, he held him by the shoulders and looked fiercely into his eyes.

  "Neró is the least of the wonders this world has to offer, Gareth Elson. Have you ever seen the Looming cliffs? The Volun city tree? Seen true fairies, beauties that are so perfect they make you weep with joy?" Gareth nearly laughed at the last one but Ivor forged on!

  "The world of Yggdrasil is full of magic, wonder, and excitement!" He threw his hands into the air, "Gods! It is so ripe for exploration that one of Shekaron’s main roles is hiding treasure within the wilds. If you join the ranger corps you will see all these, and more!"

  Ivor Hansen was shouting at the end he was so excited. He looked to the north, the unexplored wastes where an evil group was hiding.

  What else was there? Demons? Witches?...Treasure?

  He briefly contemplated leaving Gareth behind to explore, but had to reign himself back in.

  "I know you are hunted, Gareth Elson. Join the Volun rangers! We can keep you safe and equip you with the spells to protect yourself. It will not be easy but if you embrace your training, you will be one of the freest beings in the world."

  -

  It sounded good. It sounded too good.

  Gareth truly wanted to believe Ivor but he had been burned so many times in his life. His own father had shot him in the back, for crying out loud!

  "How can I trust you?" He finally asked, his voice cracked, his tone that of a broken man. Tears formed in his hollow, already red eyes.

  "Trust is one of the world's most valuable commodities. Hard to gain and easily lost. But you cannot gain trust from nothing. First you must give trust, and it will either be returned two fold, or lost.

  What few saplings realise is that everyone has a limitless supply of trust, it is just a matter of giving it that rankles. Give this one your trust, and I promise on my word as a Cultivator, as a Ranger, that Volun will become your home. Follow this one to the finest training ground in the Yun Cheng empire, follow this one…to Volun."

  -

  Gareth felt an internal war rage within his scattered psyche, reflected in his tearing eyes, shaking limbs, clenching stomach. He avoided Ivor's eyes, and looked back up to a sky that seemed ...impossible.

  There it was again, the massive tree branch that spread across the distant skyline. The more he looked the more he saw the feint outlines of other branches, some more visible than others. I really am on a another planet, if it even counts as a planet. What should I do?