Greetings, ____ ______another ___. I have _____ fight for _________. _________ world and heard ____________ ______ __________. I am sorry ________________________ incredibly costly, and __________________________this message ____________forgive __________ and join ____________danger ________________common people are __________________defy the odds. ________________find me at ______________ well. ____________ soon.

  Zig woke with the weirdest message in his head. It was like a letter with most of the words missing. He thought about it, but it didn't really make sense. Was it related to the landslide?

  The landslide.

  For a moment, Zig had forgotten. He sat up in his little bed of rocks. It wasn't the most comfortable, but it was nice and warm, despite a light dusting of snow that had settled in the night. Warm snow? No, warm Zig. He remembered the yeti's legacy skill, and wondered how many yetis he had killed to earn it. Then he wondered what a yeti was.

  He needed to get off this mountain. The rabbit paste, like many things of yesterday, he would like to forget. He wasn't so hungry this morning, so at least it had filled him. He also didn't feel sick or queasy at all from his very questionable meal. Eat Anything and Cold Resistance might actually save his life up here. He looked around at the upper half of the mountain, untouched and still with a clear stream. He said goodbye to his origin in this strange world, and started heading down the mountain, going sideways to avoid the giant slurry of dirt and rock he had created.

  It took the whole day to get to the bottom part of the mountain. There was still a slope, but at least it was filled with trees instead of the bare rocks and snow of before. Then again, snow didn't seem like a big problem anymore, and rocks were becoming a natural ally to Zig. For half a second he thought about going back up, and living out his days as a rock-hurling mountain man. He shook his head and kept heading down.

  He didn't come across another bloodthirsty rabbit, but the trees gave him some ideas. Zig quickly learned that "Eat Anything" didn't mean "bite and chew through anything". Bark and wood? Not great for the teeth. But leaves? In the past two days, Zig had only had one meal of a rabbit. When he realized that leaves were completely edible, Zig stuffed himself with pine needles. Washing it down with mouthfuls of snow that melted into water in his mouth. He'd heard that eating snow like that was bad for survival situations, but that was probably a cold-related thing, and the snow wasn't cold to Zig at all. Finally full and happy to know he didn't need to eat animal paste ever again in his life, Zig continued down the mountain. Every now and then he picked up a rock and practiced throwing it at a tree. Small trees would simply fall over, the larger ones survived the blow but a big chunk of wooden shrapnel would fly in all directions.

  It was fun.

  Zig kept going until eventually the woods started to thin out, and he reached the grassy plains at the bottom of the mountain. He had done it. He felt accomplished. Zig stared out over the plains, feeling a great sense of...

  Zig saw the encampment. He had skirted around the landslide, but not far. The encampment had been packed up, and people were marching away from the mountain. It was a slow-moving convoy, there were old-fashioned wagons pulled by horses and donkeys, filled with supplies. The people walked alongside the wagons. They seemed... happy?

  Zig walked toward them. He would really, really prefer to meet some people he hadn't just slaughtered half of, but these were only people around, and Zig needed civilization. He approached closer and saw his first impression was correct, they were happy, laughing. Zig was very confused. He came right up to the people on the edge of the crowd, and many gave him strange looks, but nobody asked who he was, or where he came from, or if he was a mass-murderer.

  "Umm, sir? The noblefolk are near the front of the army. Would you like my boy to lead you there?"

  A person was nervously speaking to Zig, avoiding eye contact but clearly addressing him. Zig felt like he was back in improv class.

  "How, ahem, how do you know I'm nobility?"

  "The... the clothes, sir. And the lack of a spear."

  True enough, everyone around Zig wore simple brown clothing, loosely fit, made of the same kind of cloth. Like they were straight out of a medieval fair. Zig was wearing a (very bloodied) navy t-shirt and jeans. It did stick out. Zig also noticed that everyone was carrying a spear, using it as a walking stick or at least walking in arms reach of a wagon containing a spear. Did he say army?

  "Any chance you have a spare set of clothes? I would like to walk at the back for a while."

  Zig tried to sound confident, like he was totally meant to be back there. The people all turned to nearby wagons rummaging for some clothes. In short order Zig had some rough trousers and a shirt that went almost to his knees, both brown and perhaps linen? Zig wasn't sure. He saw people eyeing their own spears nervously, and decided not to ask for one. It didn't look like there were any spares.

  Zig thanked the ones who helped him, and walked through the crowd. This time he didn't get so many stares. He was in.

  He walked through a sea of people, there must have been thousands. Eventually he got to a sort of market place, and saw things offered for sale. People were exchanging coins, and Zig didn't have any. He found a clothes merchant and did the only thing he could think of.

  "Hey, I have these clothes, they are from a noble who died."

  The merchant looked up in alarm.

  "Which noble? Are you bringing trouble?"

  "No! No, I'm not sure who but I don't think it was anyone significant. It's just that these clothes are funny-looking, so maybe they're worth something?"

  The merchant gave Zig a long look, and then he gave the clothes an even longer look. They were shredded from the first bunny attack, and covered in blood.

  "I'll give you 4 gold pieces, but only if you never tell a soul who you sold this to. Deal?"

  Zig was accustomed to a world of price tags and non-variable prices. He had no idea how to haggle. He had no idea how much a gold piece was worth, but never take the first offer right?

  "6 gold and you'll never see me again."

  The merchant practically threw 6 coins at Zig, swept the clothes out of sight, and made shooing motions until Zig went away. Ducking between two wagons, Zig thought he probably just made a bad deal.

  Zig walked with the people for the rest of the morning. He tried to listen in to conversation, to see if it could help him understand what was going on. He heard things like "What will you do when you get back?" and "Miss Agnes had twin girls just before we left", but nothing like "many of my friends are dead". At some point he tried asking "where are we going?" but all he got as an answer was "home" and "are you ok?" People looked at him like he was crazy, so he quickly moved to another part of the army and started again with a new group of people. Eventually he pieced together that this was an army. As in, "off to fight a battle" kind of army. As in, "off to fight another army". This wasn't the army that got squashed by the landslide. This was the other army. They had come to this mountain expecting a huge fight, and then the mountain spontaneously fell on their foes and gave them a full victory. No wonder everyone was in a good mood. Zig wasn't a hunted criminal, he was a hero. At least, if anyone knew what he'd done. Should he say something?

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  "You know, I started that giant landslide."

  He tried to slip that in nonchalantly when people were discussing it. It didn't go down well. Everyone burst into laughter, and someone promised to buy him a drink for giving them such a laugh. Zig was the boy who cried avalanche, and he didn't even have his strange clothing to prove he was different. One man did eye him up and down, however and ask:

  "I don't see a spear on you lad, you got a special weapon hmm?"

  "I, umm, I use rocks."

  Zig stammered back, which kicked off another round of laughter. This time someone did go off and come back with a mug for Zig. It didn't taste amazing, but Zig drink it down to be polite.

  "Cauthorn's beard, that was a full mug of dragonspit!"

  Everyone looked mighty impressed that Zig had just downed such a strong drink. The man had brought it to him for a third laugh, waiting to see the boy spray it everywhere. Zig stood there with an empty mug, realizing Eat Anything seemed to include spirits.

  "The lad throws rocks and has a stone stomach! Looks like we have a little stone elemental here."

  Someone jeered and another man brought Zig a second mug of dragonspit whiskey. He drank it to chants of "Stone boy! Stone boy!", and wondered if he was getting too much attention. He pretended to struggle finishing the second cup, and fell over to cheers of the crowd.

  "Stone boy! He who eats rocks for breakfast! Who brought down the mountain on the goblins! He can turn you into stone with a single touch!"

  The stories were spreading, and truth was taking a backseat to whatever sounded interesting.

  "It was one time, and I didn't even swallow it in the end." Zig mumbled. Everyone started drinking mugs of whiskey, trying to challenge themselves against the legendary stone boy. The party was in full swing until guards came, rounded up the lot of them, and put them in a caged wagon. Dragonspit whiskey was expensive, it turned out, and the fellow who was graciously handing them out by the mugful had stolen a barrel from the army supplies.

  Zig was in the cage for the rest of the day, and all of next. The others were happy to be sleeping off the whiskey in a wagon. By the end of the next day, a guard banged his short spear against the cage to wake everyone up.

  "Oi! You lot can either pay a fine or get lashes. Which will it be? Fine's a silver each. Lashes is six each."

  The five other men in the wagon with Zig groaned at the price. Not one of them looked ready to pay. Zig whispered to the man next to him.

  "How many silver to a gold?"

  The man started giggling.

  "You really didn't survive that second mug did ya? Twelve silver to a gold, boy, and if I see a gold coin this year I'll wear my pants on my head and sit on my hat."

  Zig felt a bit conscious of the six coins weighing down his pocket. He pulled out one and offered it to the guard.

  "Here, this is for all of us."

  Everyone turned to Zig like he'd pulled a unicorn out of his pocket. He suddenly had five best friends and four suspicious guards all looking at him.

  "And what's a boy like you doing with gold like this? More stealing is it? Fine, I'll let you lot got free, but the fee is now 12 silver."

  The guard snatched the coin and stared at Zig, daring him to ask for any change. Zig didn't want to escalate the situation any further, so he kept silent as the door was opened and the six men stumbled back out into the world.

  Zig was a free man, with five gold left in his pocket, which seemed to be quite a lot now. He stuck with the five and they all bought him meals and drinks to say thank you. Which was good for Zig, because he had a feeling that asking for change for a gold coin when paying for a meal wouldn't go down well. This world seemed to have the classic money system of copper, silver, and gold coins. 20 copper to a silver, 12 silver to a gold. Zig wondered if he should share the joys of the metric system, but he was just starting to fit in.

  Of the five he'd been jailed with, one of them became a good friend. His name was Hellic, and he was farmer from Stult River, wherever that was.

  "My da got sick, and at the same time we were told a frost storm was coming. I harvested the fields myself, as fast as I could to get everything in before the storm. It brought me up to Adept and gave me Strength, so here I am."

  Some of that was confusing to Zig, but the story was common among the men.

  "I'm a shepherd, didn't mind it much but then I got in a fight with three wolves. One or two is ok, but keeping an eye on all three? I almost died, but got Wolf Leap out of it. Thought I'd try my hand at the army."

  That was Haynes, another of his whiskey-jail-companions. They happily demonstrated their skills. Hellic lifted a barrel off a cart like it weighed nothing. And then carefully put it back as a guard stared at him. Haynes took a couple of steps, and then leapt over a wagon.

  "Now imagine me holding a spear as I do it!"

  Others started joining in. One woman could run twice as fast for about five seconds, another could throw her spear with surprising accuracy. Another could throw their spear, hold out a hand, and the spear would fly back into it. Zig laughed and clapped along with everyone. This was so cool. Everyone had skills. Everyone had... Something similar to his Weapon Proficiency - Rock, when it was still (basic). Zig didn't want to demonstrate his rock skills, because it was just a different level to everything else he saw. When someone did nudge him, his thoughts raced to find something he could show.

  "Well lad, what have you got?"

  "Nothing so fancy as you folk! I'm just good at drinking, I can survive the cold, and I can eat bad food."

  There were laughs at the drinking, but eyebrows raised by the end of it.

  "Three skills? At your age? Not bad kid. No wonder you're here, even without a fighting skill."

  Then, of course, there was a discussion about what counted as "bad food", and people spread out to find the most disgusting things in the camp for Stone Boy to eat. Zig waited for the moment people weren't looking and bolted toward a new part of the camp.

  The next day Zig was with a new crowd. He would find Hellic, Haynes, and the rest later, but he was still exploring this army, this world, and it was a good idea to start fresh with people who didn't know he could eat garbage like some kind of human raccoon. The camp broke at dawn, as usual, but within an hour's march there was a change of direction. Everyone turned left and started going that way. Zig called out to a nearby guard.

  "What's going on?"

  "New orders. There's a horde of forest animals roaming around, looking angry and heading our way. General's says there's a local druid that blames us for the landslide."

  "Huh, what? Ha, as if we had the power to cause the landslide. Ha, ha."

  The guard looked at Zig oddly, then ignored him and walked off. Zig kept marching with the people around him for an hour or so, until suddenly he heard noises. Screams. Shouts. Fighting. Zig had been somewhere in the middle of the army, not near the front. He didn't realize they had already met the beasts. He thought a one-on-one with a rabbit was pretty intense. He was not ready.

  Bears the size of cars were roaring and with one cuff of their paws sending men flying off their feet. Wolves were teaming up, distracting fighters while other wolves snuck up from behind and leapt on their unsuspecting victims. Deer were charging the front lines, heads lowered, smacking into people and sometimes launching them with their antlers. And there were rabbits. Oh yes. Hundreds of the same creatures Zig had fought on the mountain were shredding their way through the army. They were small and fast, hard to hit with full sized spears. It was a bloodbath. Zig looked around, but they were on grassy plains, not the rocky mountain now. There were no... there. Zig picked up a little stone in the dirt, aimed at the nearest bear, and threw. There was a thump and half the bear's face was suddenly ripped up. It kept fighting for a while, but the injuries were too great. It fell, and all the soldiers around cheered for a moment, before jumping back into the fight.

  There were stones in the ground. Not a lot, but some. Zig didn't go right to the front, he stayed a few lines back and picked out the bigger targets. Bears, wolves, one horse that looked ridiculously muscular with teeth far too pointed for a herbivore. The blood dripping from its mouth also clued in Zig that this wasn't a grass-eating animal. It stood in a circle of corpses. Spears stuck it, but they didn't go very far, and each fighter only got one chance before the horse turned around and tore off their head. Zig had a handful of stones by now, but for this creature he threw all of them at once. The horse went down with broken bones, and soldiers surrounded it with spears, finally stopping the rampage.

  There was no signal for the end of the battle, the fighting just petered out. Suddenly there was nothing left to hit, and sounds of cries and roaring died down. Someone started up a different sort of shout. Relief, for being alive. Triumph, for winning. Just a wordless cry for the sheer nerves everyone was feeling. The cry was quickly taken up, until everyone was shouting and shaking their spears into the air. Some people were still stabbing the dead horse. A few people were shouting about new skills. Fewer still would shout "class shift!" and be swarmed by cheers and celebration. People were covered in gore, standing over corpses, but shouting with joy. Because the alternative would be crying for friends lost. Screaming for how many times they'd nearly died. So they shouted instead.

  The mourning occurred later that night. Zig sought out Hellic and Haynes, only to find they had both died. Zig was numb to shock by now. Too much had happened. He just stared at a cart loaded with barrels, and remembered how Hellic stole the whiskey. Zig wished he could get drunk. A lot of people were, that night. The next day, the army packed up and kept marching.

  That's what the army did.