Elijah crested a hill, only to see the city of Rubibi stretched out below him. It was still a couple of miles distant, and the fading light of dusk cast the white buildings in shades of orange. They matched the much more vibrant coastline, which featured similarly hued sands that were made to look even brighter by the close proximity of the teal water. Unlike the open sea, the protected bay was calm, featuring only a few placid swells.

In a lot of ways, it looked idyllic, though Elijah only had to glance to his left to put the lie to that notion. The mountains loomed only a hundred miles away, and they were made even more intimidating by the wall of fire stretching between their peaks and the ash clouds that pervaded the region.

The city’s footprint was similar to Ironshore’s, though it was far less densely packed. If even a quarter of Ironshore’s population called Rubibi home, Elijah would have been surprised. The stone docks were impressive, though, and they stretched across half the bay. Boats of all types made their berth in the maze of piers, but the majority of them were obviously fishing vessels meant to brave the wild and dangerous open ocean.

Elijah recognized many of the same sorts of facilities he’d seen in Ironshore’s docks, but the fisheries and warehouses were still quite different. Largely, this was due to Ironshore focusing on whaling as opposed to normal fishing, though Elijah wasn’t certain on that account. The differences might have been as simple as originating from different cultures.

After studying the city for a few minutes, Elijah descended the slope. The road had been carved through the jagged terrain, so he kept to the path. This close to the city, traffic was a little thicker, though it was composed mostly of local hunters and gatherers. A few people carried sacks full of large berries that came from a regional cactus, while others had the bodies of massive reptiles slung over the shoulders.

The creatures were clearly a local staple, and they resembled desert monitors, though quite a bit bigger than any of those lizards had been before Earth’s transformation. Some were even so large that two people were required to carry them.

Just inside the town, which was oddly easy to enter, Elijah was treated to a scene straight out of a horror movie. It seemed that he’d chosen to enter the city via the gate closest to the butchers, which did their business out in the open. The smell of blood and offal filled the air, so Elijah quickly moved through the area.

From a city planning standpoint, it didn’t make much sense to have put the butchers at the most accessible entrance for travelers coming from the Conclave Spires. However, Elijah soon realized that there was an easy explanation. The Spires were a new development, having been built after Seattle made contact with the city only a few months before.

Likely, they just hadn’t had a chance – or perhaps, the desire – to change the city’s layout.

Elijah wandered for a bit, taking in the city’s sights. There really wasn’t much to it. The place was arranged on three terraces, each covering about half a mile before rising to the next. The combination of the layout and white buildings reminded him of the Greek island of Santorini, though there were none of the famous blue domes in sight.

Instead, the whitewashed buildings were square-topped and without much in the way of decoration. The color had clearly been chosen for its ability to reflect sunlight and keep interiors cool in the region’s scalding climate. But it still served to give the city a distinct look that he could appreciate.

Clearly, they required regular repainting, though. The ash saw to that.

It was all comparatively new. He didn’t know the history of the city, but he suspected that much of it had been destroyed in the aftermath of the World Tree’s touch.

There was also a significant ore processing facility. From what he could gather after visiting one of the local taverns, while the nearby mountains were dangerous, they also featured high-quality ore. It only took Elijah buying the locals a few beers to get them talking about it.

“Now that we got that fancy teleportation thing, it’s only a matter of time before the riches start coming in,” one of the Miner’s said. “Give us a couple of years, and we’ll be a real metropolis. Did I tell you I used to live in Sydney? Terrible, what happened to it…”

Apparently, it was well known that much of Australia’s coast had ended up underwater. Almost everyone who lived in those cities had died, though there were enough survivors who’d made it ashore to spread the word of what had happened. Only a few small enclaves like Rubibi had survived, and even then, adjusting to the new paradigm had claimed many lives.

Of those, only Rubibi was still around, and it had become a safe haven for those who’d escaped the other cities’ eventual fall.

Elijah was just leaving that tavern – called the Pickled Fish – when he heard something he didn’t expect.

“Elijah? Is that you?” came a vaguely familiar voice. He turned to see a bearded man approaching. The guy looked like he’d missed quite a few meals, and his clothes were worn through in multiple places. To say he looked homeless would have been stating the obvious. “Elijah Hart?”

Elijah looked closer.

Then, it hit him.

“Shane?”

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The man broke into a wide grin, revealing a couple of missing teeth. “You recognize me? I thought you were dead! I mean, I thought everyone was dead, but you especially, with…you know…”

Shane Oslow looked very different than the last time Elijah had seen him. Back then, he’d been a graduate assistant working for one of Elijah’s colleagues. Young, fit, and handsome enough to attract the attention of quite a few of the undergrads – he was a nice guy with whom Elijah had socialized on multiple occasions. They weren’t friends. Not really. But they were friendly colleagues.

The man in front of him barely resembled the one he’d left behind in Hawaii. Malnutrition was part of it, but Shane had clearly fallen on hard times.

“Can I get you a meal?” Elijah asked, broaching the subject as awkwardly as possible. He wanted to help, and a full belly was probably the best way he could assist.

Shane frowned. “Oh. Right. I sometimes forget.”

“It’s no problem,” Elijah said. “I can –”

“No, no – I’m not too proud to accept a handout. It’s just that…well, I’m not alone.”

After that, Shane explained that he had a wife and child to look after. Elijah didn’t ask how that had happened, but it really shouldn’t have been surprising. It had been nearly ten years since the world had changed. Of course people’s lives would progress, even amidst so much tragedy. Maybe because of it.

Soon enough, Elijah had promised to feed Shane’s entire family. The man accepted that offer without complaint and led him through Rubibi to what was obviously the poorer part of town. The buildings were still sturdy enough, and they bore the same whitewashed walls as the rest of the city. But they were much smaller, packed more closely together, and with less airflow. And some were stained with enough ash that, up close, they looked almost gray.

Shane didn’t complain, though.

After a few minutes, Elijah followed his former colleague into a particularly small dwelling, where he met the man’s wife and toddler. That was when he broke out a few of his prepared meals, sharing them around without even thinking twice.

They ate with the sort of gusto only starving people could manage, and they didn’t stop until every last crumb was gone.

“So, what happened?” Elijah asked, sitting at a table built only a foot off the ground. There were no chairs, so they sat on the floor. “How did you get here from Honolulu?”

“Oh.”

“He doesn’t know,” said Shane’s wife, Isabella.

“What don’t I know?”

“Elijah, I know you’re…I guess you’re one of the strongest people around, right? I saw your name on the power rankings,” Shane said. “But you have to understand what it was like for the rest of us…”

Then, he went on to explain that Hawaii had ended up much like Seattle – in the middle of a vast desert. The way Shane described it, the place was like Death Valley, with temperatures regularly reaching highs untenable by normal humans.

“Most of us took it pretty well, at first,” Shane said with a shake of his head. “But then the water started running out.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Imagine that. No water in Hawaii. We were not prepared for that. People were dying within a couple of weeks. Not from monsters. Not from anything like those damn storms. Just because we didn’t have water.

“We gathered what we could. A few people at the university managed to engineer some water collection devices, too,” Shane continued. “But it wasn’t enough. We knew we weren’t going to make it.”

Elijah could easily imagine the chaos. He wanted to believe that everyone banded together for the greater good, but when people started dying from dehydration, things would have gone very bad, very quickly. Desperation had a way of killing morality, after all.

He looked up. “So, we decided to leave. At first, we were only looking for an oasis or something,” he said. “But there was nothing in that fucking desert. I watched as, one after another, half the expedition died. We couldn’t go back. Why would we? There was nothing left in Honolulu. We didn’t have a choice but to keep going.

“We fought, too. There were creatures out there. Ironically, that’s probably the only reason any of us survived. We kept shoving points into constitution. That’ll stave off dehydration, you know. It doesn’t make it pleasant, but it keeps you alive – for a while, at least.

“I don’t know how long it took. By the time we reached the mountains, I was delirious. Seeing things, you know? I was wounded, dehydrated, and I’d been eating raw insect meat for weeks at least,” he explained. “I’m not even sure how we found our way to that spring. But we did.”

He gave another bitter laugh. “Of course it wasn’t unguarded,” he said. “If we wanted that water, we needed to fight for it. And we did. Hundreds of these feral kangaroos. Lost almost half of what was left, but we managed to fight them off. After that, we stayed there for weeks. We hunted the mountains. We drank our fill. We recovered.

“But then the sky burned, and we knew we needed to escape.”

“The Ring of Fire,” Elijah guessed.

Shane nodded. “Back then, it wasn’t like it is now. It was almost like a normal forest fire, but we could tell that…we could read the writing on the wall. And some of us thought that crossing the mountains would bring salvation. Maybe we’d find civilization. Long story short, we did, but life hasn’t gotten any easier because of it. I’ve been hiring on with the local fishermen when they need an extra hand, but I’m a Warrior. They need skilled workers. The same with the mines. I hunt when I can, but…well, let’s just say I should’ve been a Ranger.”

He spread his scrawny arms. “So, here I am, scraping by however I can.”

Elijah didn’t hesitate to say, “I can help.”

“You’ve already done enough. Truly. A single meal can –”

“Come to Ironshore.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Shane said. “They don’t just let anyone settle there. They have standards. I’m pretty sure they don’t want a level forty Warrior and a level twenty Artist.”

“Their standards don’t matter. I’ll sponsor you. Here,” he said, reaching into his Arcane Loop and grabbing a handful of coins. He threw them onto the table. Isabella gasped at the show of wealth, but Shane just stared at it. “That should get you to Ironshore. I’ll send a message to Ramik, so he should be expecting you. They’ll set you up and give you an opportunity to find your way. But whatever else happens, I can guarantee you won’t go hungry.”

“I…”

“Thank you,” Isabella said, already gathering the coins. The toddler, whose name Elijah hadn’t bothered to remember, made a few happy noises when she found a copper ethereum that had rolled to the floor. “Truly.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Shane. “We were never really friends.”

Elijah shrugged. “Because I can.”

That was enough, but it wasn’t the entire reason. Instead, Elijah had chosen to help Shane because he was one of the few remaining connections with his old life. And if what he’d said was true, there was a good chance that Elijah wouldn’t find any more.

Unfortunately, when he asked about other people with whom he was close, Shane’s information ran dry. He’d never really known Nina, so her fate was still unknown. The same was true of a few of Elijah’s colleagues who’d worked in other parts of Hawaii.

In the end, Shane and his family accepted Elijah’s offer, pledging to set off as soon as possible. But Elijah didn’t intend to escort them. They could make that walk alone. Elijah needed to go inland now more than ever.