Starborn Oddessey (Mastergryph and Whitebrand)

[MasterGryph]

There was a forest. At first glance, it could be mistaken for many other forests. It had the right proportions of trees, underbrush, and animals of various kinds to last for eons. But on a second glance, one would start to notice oddities. To start with, the ground was very close to flat - not too strange, many areas were like that. And the roots of the trees seemed to spread out a bit further than one might have expected, like they had trouble burrowing very deep into the ground - which would make sense if the soil was thin over the rocks, but what soil there was looked very high quality. When one found a clearing or a path, one might notice that they seemed very square, with just a bit of recently spreading undergrowth detracting from the sense that this was constructed.

Oh, and the sky was close enough for a traveler to see that it was a clear but solid dome over the land. Past the tinting on it that changed by the hour to keep what inhabitants there were comfortable, one could see the swirling substance that filled inter-planar space.

It wouldn't take Whitebrand the silver dragon long to realize that this wasn't the world he'd meant to go to. In fact, it didn't seem to be part of a world as he usually thought of them at all...

[Whitebrand]

The dragon emerged through the portal, stepping through with his head held high and his eyes scanning the land around him...just in case there were any creatures nearby. He was very big, thirteen meters long from nose to tail with a wingspan at least as wide. The portal glowed brighter than the sun for several second as the silver-scaled dragon emerged, then dimmed rapidly once the last of the tail came through. He looked around imperiously at the empty forest and the strange sky...and wondered where the hell he was.

Seeing that no one was around the dragon relaxed his pose and let out a sigh of relief. No having to play scary badass to fend off potential enemies. He shrank down to his human form: a tall, broad shouldered man in a tunic and kilt with knee high leather boots. Brand sniffed at the air and wondered why it smelled like a tended garden...any why the sky was so odd-looking.

[MasterGryph]

The huge dragon's entrance had seemingly scared most of the animals away. With the superpredator's apparent disappearance, a few varieties poked their heads out of their hiding places to investigate. (That was odd, didn't wild hares turn white in anticipation of snow? That color wasn't camouflaging it at all in these temperate surroundings.)

With the forest's ambient sounds returning to normal, the dragon's keen senses would soon pick up something that caught his interest - the sounds of a wolf snarling, a woman grunting, and perhaps even wood hitting flesh. It couldn't be very far away...

[Whitebrand]

Brand took off running in the direction of the sound. If his ears were right then a woman could tell him what kind of a place he was in. The transformed dragon raced through the trees, shoving brush aside and scattering prey and predator alike. Brand burst into the next clearing, his hazel eyes slight.

[MasterGryph]

As Whitebrand broke into the clearing, he saw the fight in progress. The brown-haired woman was already a bit scratched up by the woods, and had the physique of a youthful farmer - both were obvious because she didn't have any clothes. She was wielding a large stick she mush have picked up recently, and several similar ones were scattered on the ground - and dropped alongside them was a strange gray tablet that warranted investigation later.

The wolf, meanwhile, was a typical adult specimen much like the ones Whitebrand was familiar with on his home world. Which meant that without his assistance, the odds were in the animal's favor. Sure enough, as the disguised dragon began to make his move, the wolf broke past her guard and pulled her to the ground to finish off...

[Whitebrand]

Brand roared and charged at the wolf, ignoring its teeth and claws. His hands caught fur and he slung the canine around in a circle before letting it go. The wolf flew several feet before crashing to the earth. Brand set himself between the wolf and the girl and roared wordlessly at it again. The message was clear: Mine.

Brand was very big and he was letting a bit of the predator in him to peek out. A lone wolf without its pack surely would have to consider different prey in the face of that.

“Down, puppy!” Brand barked. “Sit!”

[MasterGryph]

The wolf, upon getting back up from where it lay, took a look at the large man, gauged it's chances, and began running in the opposite direction. It wasn't going to risk its life against an experienced combatant.

The woman groaned, her eyes half-lidded. Those bite marks the wolf left before and while being pulled off didn't look life-threatening (or even very deep - was it trying to do something that didn't involve tearing her to pieces?), but they clearly hurt. It would take a while for her to fully come back to her senses without help.

[Whitebrand]

Brand immediately caught the girl up in his arms and held her close. A good healing spell began coursing through his hands and into the girl. Wounds began to close and disease was cleansed.

“Hang on, lass,” Brand said as he looked around. Where there was one wolf there could be others. Best to beat feet...but only the girl knew where she’d come from. If he moved too far she might not be able to recognize where she was. “I’ve got you. There’s a fine filly.”

He looked up and realized that the stars made no sense to him.

“Someone tell me about that sky,” he muttered. “Come on lass...any minute now...”

[MasterGryph]

The healing magic quickly restored her vitality, and she blinked in puzzlement as she returned to full conciousness and saw her rescuer.

"Did you... drive off that wolf?" she asked clumsily, "Sorry, I wasn't expecting to see another... person in here."

[Whitebrand]

“That I did,” Brand said, still holding her gently. “And if you don’t mind I’d really like to get away from here before the rest of his pack arrives. Is there a shelter or something around here? I’m not from around here.”

He looked around, listening. Odd. The wolf should be howling for its pack by now. Maybe it really was alone?

“I’ll be grateful if you’ll point the way,” he added. “You’re safe with me.”

For now, anyway. She was quite pretty...and Brand was always on the lookout for new harem girls.

[MasterGryph]

"Shelter," she repeated, feeling out the word and its meaning. She took a step away from him to survey the surroundings, "...We can get out of the woods in that direction," she pointed, but it was hard to tell whether the trees showed signs of thinning out there from where Whitebrand stood.

But before starting, she looked down and started gathering the things she'd dropped. What she needed a bunch of improvised clubs for wasn't entirely clear, though that rectangular gray tablet didn't look like it belonged with all of these trees...

She looked suspiciously at the tablet's surface, then back at him. "Okay, let's go."

[Whitebrand]

She’s gathering more than just for herself, Brand realized. He let her carry her things, preferring to keep his hands free in case he needed them.

“This place smells strange,” Brand said as he walked, keeping his head on a swivel. There was something painfully...unnatural about the forest. It’s trees were too evenly spaced and everything had an artificial air to it.

[MasterGryph]

"I guess it does, but I don't have much to compare it with," the young woman responded.

The two came to an ivy-covered wall which, if Whitebrand looked up, extended a few dozen meters to the bottom of the domed "sky". Set into the wall was a sliding door made of reinforced, thick metal.

"This is how I got into these woods. There's a sign on the other side labeled "Habitat Sector Alpha. Prime A,P; Second F, Mb," she explained, shufting her load so she could push the door open.

The other side was a metallic hallway, poorly lit by a few red and orange lights. While Habitat Sector Alpha approximated something Whitebrand knew, the outside looked completely different.

[Whitebrand]

Brand stared. It looked like a metal tunnel into a metal mountain. Like dwarves might imagine but far stranger. Her description meant nothing to him at all.

“How can this...wall touch the sky?” Brand wanted to know. “And what brings dug this tunnel? Dwarves? Xorn? What madness is this?”

[MasterGryph]

She sighed, "I don't know. I woke up further in this section, and found some notes - and this," she held up the tablet, "Suggesting I should explore. Before long I found one of the rooms had an entire forest inside."

Her voice dropped to a mumble, "Maybe going from the forest to the metal hallways is harder than the other way around."

[Whitebrand]

“You awoke here? So where did you come from before that?” Brand asked as he took an uneasy step after the girl. Normally he’d be admiring her attractiveness but this place weirded him out. “And what is that...shingle anyway?”

[MasterGryph]

"...I don't have an answer to that," she responded, "I woke up a few hours ago, with no memories before that point. I know that my name is Celia Tres. I know the basics of survival in the wilderness, but didn't see how that would be useful until I found this area. I've found paper notes addressed to 'Cecie Una' and 'Corna Dos'... and hints that they didn't survive long."

"Shingle?" It took several seconds for her to guess what he was talking about. "Oh this? It's not something I have a word for. But it knows a lot." Turning it so that Whitebrand could better see it's surface, he at first saw a slightly-glowing map marking part of the forest, and part of what was on the other side of the door. At a touch, it was instead a message apparently addressed to Miss Tres in squarish letters. Whitebrand recognized the language as one common among civilizations in his usual areas, but she didn't give him time to read it right now before changing the display to something different.

"Celia Tres, C1, 2/2" written in white, right above a bright green bar a fragment of an inch thick, on a dark-green rectangular background that was almost black.

Underneath was a purple box containing a similarly formatted readout. But while the numbers relating to Celia were single-digits, his readout was in double or triple digits. It didn't list his name either, identifying him as "Silver Dragon".

"I don't think it trusts you." she flipped it back around to look at it herself, "At least it's stopped marking you in red, like that wolf."

[Whitebrand]

“Well I’m Brand ,” he said. “And I can’t even begin to fathom what kind of magic that...thing has. For the moment anyway. So someone erased your memory of where you are from and your personal history, bought you here without any clothing or equipment, and expects you to accomplish some vague task? Naked and unarmed? Madness indeed.”

He looked around, still sniffing the air. He decided not to call attention to the device identifying him as a silver...since this girl didn’t seem to react to the revelation he suspected she had little idea what it meant.

“Well now you have me to give you a bit of muscle,” Brand said, trying to sound confident. “Tell me of this task.”

[MasterGryph]

"To put it simply, 'Look around. If possible, find useful things and bring them back to the starting point.' All three notes go on a tangent about how 'Every intelligent being has free will; so I don't need to do anything,' but mine in particular says that this resource-gathering is most likely to help improve conditions here," She paused to think back, "Cecie was told to look around, find things that looked broken, and it might be dangerous. Corna was told to try mapping things out, but there was something dangerous around."

"...Let's go through," she said, "It's safer, compared to the forest. And I don't want a lot of wild animals to figure out this is worth opening and changing that." On the other hand, the hallways were too cramped for the dragon's true form to fit through. He wasn't sure whether he or they would buckle first if he tried, but it would be uncomfortable either way.

[Whitebrand]

"So...any idea what happened to the others?" Brand asked as he followed her. From your situation..."

Yeah, that didn't bode well. Mystery after mystery here.

"Okay...define 'useful' for me," Brand said. "I have no idea how that shingle-thing works but somehow you do. Help me help you by telling me what you're looking for."