Richard followed the others to see where his home planet was in the darkening sky. The sun had set now, but around the farmlands, liquid globs of light flew into the air, and it was shining as bright as if the sun were still in the sky. It was so odd seeing a distinct line between where the blobs of liquid light could shine versus the clear darkness outside its reach. It almost made it more difficult to see outside the light. It was like the globs were actually powerful flashlight beams, making it more difficult to see in the darkness.

  Richard scrunched up his nose in confusion. What the hell was a flashlight? And why could he picture what a flashlight looked like in his mind’s eye without actually understanding the mechanics of it?

  Leylah caught up with Dmitri. “Why don’t we get the system now? Before we look at the sky?”

  “Excellent question. The simple reason is that integrating yourself into the system will tax you. Believe me, we’ve all experienced it.” Dmitri gestured toward the leaders, who nodded. “It’s best to get your first tree skill right before bed, because you’ll all have a very solid night’s sleep. Nothing will wake you up tonight, not even an apocalypse.”

  Richard frowned, realizing that Dmitri wasn’t joking.

  “If the system exhausts people so horribly, how did people survive when the apocalypse first happened? Before the base camp was built?” Richard asked.

  “Another excellent question.” Dmitri placed his hands behind his back. “We can only speculate, since everyone who experienced the first few years of the apocalypse is now dead. Our only guess is the creatures that hit weren’t coming nearly as fast as they do now. Perhaps they had one or two low-level creatures to kill a day. That is simply not an option now.”

  Fang snorted. “I can’t even imagine what it’d be like to teleport deep in the forest.”

  Richard’s brows furrowed. “Wait… you didn’t?”

  “I mean, I teleported in the forest, yes, but I could see base camp through the trees.”

  Leylah and Amber nodded as though they had experienced the same. Richard frowned, and Leylah caught it. “How deep in the forest did you appear?”

  “I… don’t remember.” Richard glanced toward the forest, but it was pitch black over there. “It felt like it was deep, but it couldn’t have been too far.”

  It was vague. Richard was hiding something again. Once again, for whatever reason, his experience was different from everyone else’s.

  “Deep enough that there’s a reason he was the last to get the welcome tour,” Dmitri said.

  The three newbies glanced at Richard as though he would explain more. If Dmitri left the possibility open, Richard assumed that meant he could talk about his experience.

  “I got attacked by a jaguar. Had to, um… get healed for it.”

  The other newbies were silent as they stared at Richard in awe that bordered on pity. Richard was left wondering why his experience had differed slightly from everyone else’s.

  They walked through the farmlands, and Richard was again awed that he could see everything so clearly within the light. It was harder to see past the light.

  Elwyndor lifted a hand toward everyone. “Please watch your step. We’ve just fertilized the fields.”

  “Is the fertilizer poisonous or dangerously magical?” Amber asked, easing closer to Jace. “Like, if humans touch it, will we sink into the ground or something?”

  Elwyndor blinked a few times at her. “No, it’s freshly planted, and I don’t want you damaging the food we need to eat to survive.”

  Richard smiled, though he tried to hide it. Amber shot him a dark look, and he wrestled the smile off his face. “It was… a good question.”

  Amber rolled her eyes and kept following. Honestly, Richard would have asked something similar, and he probably should have mentioned that to Amber instead of what he did. This world was strange. Liquid light was hanging above them, giving them a crisp look at the fields even as the sun had disappeared, and there were two moons now shining in the sky. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the fertilizer did something wild like what Amber asked.

  They passed through the wall of light, and Richard had to blink in order to adjust his eyes. Ahead, he noticed a circle of torches, their yellow flames somehow so much darker than the orbs of light. A centaur wiped the lens of his telescope with a regular handkerchief. It was the centaur Richard saw with the changeling, Otrin, when Dmitri was trying to figure out where he came from.

  Dmitri smiled as he turned toward the newbies. “This is Timick. Everyone in this camp is valuable, and Timick has secured his spot among them.”

  Timick glanced up and gave a wry smile at Dmitri’s attempt at high praise. Richard wondered if Dmitri would have introduced Elias in the same manner. With Timick, though, Dmitri’s words seemed genuine.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Hello.” Timick’s voice was soft. “Welcome to base camp two.”

  Fang didn’t seem at all surprised that this being was half man with shoulder-length, curly black hair and half black horse. Richard tried to remember if centaurs bothered with human clothes, but the fog of his memories only told him centaurs didn’t exist. Either way, the real, living, breathing centaur before him wore a vest with an incredible amount of pockets sewn onto it. Richard had to wonder why on earth a centaur would need so many pockets when everyone in the system got an inventory? Timick tucked the handkerchief into one of the pockets and smiled.

  “It’s incredible to have all four planets represented here. I know you’ve all forgotten your past lives, but we found it’s a lot easier to adjust once you know where you came from.” Timick glanced through the telescope, making some adjustments to it. “I’d like to start first with the Shrouded Domain, as it holds a personal place in my heart. Fang, is it?”

  Fang smiled, glancing around before taking a few steps forward. Timick finished maneuvering the telescope. “The Shrouded Domain is three galaxies away from here. Go ahead, Fang.”

  Timick moved out of the way so Fang could glance through the eyepiece. Richard rubbed his arms, hearing another bell in the distance. Another monster had arrived, and the guards needed backup. Jace was the only one who glanced at the wall, and everyone else carried on as though this was normal. Jace noticed Richard’s gaze and gave him what Richard assumed was a calming smile. Richard felt none of the calmness he was supposed to get.

  “It’s so… small,” Fang said.

  “It’s one of the smaller planets in the universe. But it is home,” Timick said as Fang stood up. “Now, Earth is only a galaxy away from the Shrouded Domain. Let’s see if we can find that next.”

  Richard perked up at the name of his planet and wondered if this was the connection the others talked about. He had no memories except for the short five-minute stay he saw at the end of his life. He remembered nothing about what it looked like, but he still felt an excitement bubbling inside him when Timick finished adjusting the knobs and stepped back, smiling. Richard walked forward, driven by curiosity. He looked through the eyepiece. Through the telescope, the world he saw looked like a marble. A strange blue marble with some land on it. Part of the world was dark, and he saw in almost breathtaking beauty that the dark land was covered in what looked like stars. Stars, yet on the land. No, that wasn’t it. Electricity. That was the word that had weeded itself out of his foggy brain.

  “Electricity.” Richard glanced at Timick, then over at Dmitri. For a moment he was terrified he’d let something slip that he shouldn’t, but Dmitri didn’t look scared. Instead, he nodded.

  “Yeah. I know that word too. It’s on my homeworld,” Dmitri said.

  Richard felt himself relax, happy that he hadn’t accidentally made another mistake.

  “Mmm.” Timick moved toward the telescope. “Speaking of your home world, let’s look up Shudesh, shall we? See if Amber understands electricity.”

  Richard wasn’t aware of whether his time had been cut short or if he still felt that connection to his home world. He wanted to keep looking through the telescope, but backed away so Timick could fiddle with it. Instead, he focused on a different question.

  “What… is electricity?”

  “No idea.” Dmitri’s gaze turned toward the black sky covered in stars. “But I believe this world had it, too. Before the apocalypse came. It’s the oddest thing when scavengers come back with strange objects, yet I can identify what they were used for after staring at them for a while. Broken light bulbs. Light switches. Electric lamps. It’s so odd.”

  The only thing Richard took away from this was that Earth was not the only place that had electricity. Some of the words Dmitri said about electricity flashed vague appliances Richard thought he remembered before they were pulled back into the fog of his memory. More importantly, he remembered the beeping machines in the last moments of his life. They must have been plugged into the wall. The wall that carried electricity somehow. He didn’t understand it, but it was strange how quickly he accepted it.

  Amber moved forward at Timick’s gesture. Richard moved further out of the way as Amber looked into the glass. She gave a soft gasp. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It is,” Timick said.

  Amber lingered, then pulled herself away and looked toward the sky where the telescope pointed. “Can we ever go back?”

  “No.” Dmitri glanced down. “We’ve died on our world. This is our second chance before we move on to whatever life is after this one. Traveling between galaxies is a power reserved for Order and her brother.”

  Timick made a few adjustments before Leylah looked at her own world. Four bells rang out, which made Richard turn around, looking toward the wall, his heart rate picking up. Jace noticed his panicked face.

  Jace held up four fingers. “Four bells means a camp-wide announcement. One bell means mealtime. Two means more than one creature has been spotted, and three means the guards need backup. Two and three bells are for guards to worry about. We’ll never need backup from people not in our class.”

  “So, everyone is meeting together?” Fang asked.

  “It’s part of the welcoming ceremony. Everyone will be present when you receive the system,” Jace said.

  Amber, who was focused on the telescope, turned her attention toward Jace. “Uh, to be clear, when we get the system, are we going to be… vomiting or something? Shaking? Anything… embarrassing?”

  Dmitri smiled. “No. The worst it does is make you exhausted. That’s why we always wait until night.”

  “Mmm.” Timick glanced into the telescope one last time. “You newbies enjoy that sleep. It was one of the deepest sleeps I have ever remembered. I’m still chasing the total exhaustion that gave me such a beautiful sleep. And that’s saying something, considering we’re in the middle of an apocalypse.”

  Dmitri raised an eyebrow. “Is that you offering to double your workload?”

  “No,” Timick said with little emotion in his voice.

  Richard glanced at the night sky, already forgetting which section of the sky Earth was in.

  “Whenever you’d like, I can set up my telescope.” Richard glanced over to see Timick watching him. He smiled at Richard. “Homesickness is real, even if we’ve forgotten it. It’s what drove me to create this.” Timick patted the telescope.

  “How did you find your home planet in all of this?” Leylah gestured toward the star-covered sky.

  Timick turned his face toward the sky. “Some things you just know. And I know my home planet. It’s much like finding Order among the Chaos.”

  Richard glanced at the sky again, frowning. He could almost feel it, the pull toward a section of the sky. Like a small tether that connected him to his home planet. The telescope seemed to strengthen it, and he had a feeling if he kept staring long enough, he could identify the small cluster of stars that made up his solar system.

  Dmitri smiled. “And that exactly is what we do here in the apocalypse. Always search for the Order among the Chaos.” Dmitri then ushered the newbies away from the telescope. “Speaking of which, follow me, newbies. It’s finally time for you to get the system.”