On the frozen shores of a virgin land two strangers meet and band together to eek out a life in the vast vistas of Minecraftia. While struggling to survive the two would-be adventurers unwittingly release an ancient and powerful evil. Before they can right the wrongs they have caused, an innocent woman is abducted, and the land begins to suffocate under the crushing weight of enormous sand dunes. In the fight to find a way to out run the enemy and reseal the dark forces they come upon many who would help, but lead death to nearly every threshold they cross. With few options, and fewer and fewer friends, they must hold each other up and win, or watch as their mistakes crush the last breath of life out of the world.

This story falls under the following categories:
Genre(s): Sci Fi, Epic Journey, Cross Over (at times) and Adventure Questing
Restriction Rating: Teen (Blood, Violence, suggestive themes, adult situations, substences)
Paring(s): Non Slash/ Non Yaoi
Beta Read: Yes
Disclamer: I do not own the Shadow of Israphel, or work with or for it's creators. While this work is bases on the Shadow of Israphel it will not read like a transcription of the sires. Characters, dialog, and events may be added, omitted, or have their chronological order altered.

I will be attempting to keep most of Minecraft's unique physics properties in tact for the story I may also alter as many as I keep. In short I'll be using my own "Programing" for the rules of the world, and as such liquids, deaths, and some other uniquely minecraftian things will not function in the same way. I will also be adding my own lore, characters, content, and themes in order to flesh out the world. Back stories for minor characters, and Nordic mythology will be leaned upon heavily at times. All of this will be done solely to enhance and support the main plot already established in SOI.

If it helps you can considered my world Modded With things like Tekkit, Timber/Terraria mod, etc.

I considered the "Commander William Riker" introduction and plotted around it, so that its still cannon and at times reveling, but I did not want to lean to heavily on "Star Trek" to carry the story its self. I left out as much as I possibly could, as it is both copyrighted and irrelevant to the over all SOI plot. I also feel like if I write one 'Trek character then pretty soon I'll have all of them tagging along. You saw what happened with Gargoyles, after all...

Besides, Xephos sounds a LOT like Xanatos. I have GOT to be careful.

Chapter One: Arrival

It wasn't dawn yet. Close, but not yet.

He was an explorer of worlds, second in command of the most powerful star ship in history, and a scholar of the most advanced science known to man. Through the shimmering gold of the energy beam he could see the alien horizon, flush with pinks, but void of the sun. He had expected it to be well into mid morning here. His ship's exploration department had studied this uncharted world thoroughly with all of the best science equipment ever built.

The science team had analyzed the planet and had found no trace of sentient life forms, and no noticeable hazards. There were no satellites, no super structures, no roads, not even mud huts as far as they could tell. According to the scans there was life: plants in abundance, and docile creatures no more harmful than lazy farm animals. All of the research results had promised an unspoiled paradise.

His feet, not quite solid yet, were materializing in a small snow drift. There was white everywhere, crawling along the shore, dusting the murky blue of ice encrusted water, and powdering the somber dark trees. Sugar white was falling softly, and bone white was staggering on two legs towards him from the arboreal line.

It should have been warmer here. This was supposed to be a tropical beach. The science was supposed to be infallible. They had sent two probes, and both had come back matching data proclaiming the existence of a palm studded, golden littoral.

They had detected a small, almost insignificant energy fluctuation, but engineering blamed it on a solar flair. The Gravitational Lab blamed it on the planet's core. The ambassador, a raven haired creature of supreme beauty who could read feelings like men could read writing, blamed it on a whisper of malevolence. The captain had taken it all under advisement, and given him the go-ahead any way.

He'd been promised the first look, alone, as a reward for bravery. While he quite disagreed with the praise, he'd simply done his job after all, the captain was adamant that he get a few minutes to himself. He couldn't say he didn't want it, and after coming face-to-face with some of the most horrible man eating creatures any human had ever faced, he craved just a few minutes alone. Really alone, if only to decompress.

He couldn't move, not while he was still materializing and it occurred to him that it was taking too long. He had landed on hundreds of worlds before, and could feel deep in his bones that something was going wrong.

Bones, that's what was shuffling towards him. White like the snow but not, and clattering like old cutlery, the skeleton drew close. It had deep dark pits for eyes, and sharp little white teeth. Clutched in one hand was a wooden bow, the other hand was lifting, reaching towards the shimmer of gold.

Just five minutes. Then he wanted to go back and share the untouched paradise with the others. He wouldn't have fought so hard had it not been for them. It wasn't bravery, not really, it was duty.

There weren't supposed to be humanoids here. The scans had all reported the samething. He tried to move, tried to get away, but he was still trapped in the gilded cage of energy. The sky was growing lighter, and the stars were fading all around him, but all he could see was that dead hand stretched out, fingers like daggers aimed for his heart.

It was also his job. Another day at the office, so to speak. And these few minutes were to be his vacation. But what was a vacation without the people you wanted to spend time with?

Still trapped in the beam all he could do was watch it, and wait for it to reach him. He's been up against hundreds of threats before, and all of them he'd fought and won. He wasn't afraid of the walking dead any more than he was afraid of death itself. He glared, and dared it to mess with the fleet's finest.

Just a few minutes alone. They had insisted. Take a moment, enjoy this gift. Then they would all be there. Together.

It made contact and the energy shuddered under the alien touch. In an instant the view of his ship overlaid with that of the world. He could see his captain, the empathic ambassador shrouded in raven locks, and the science team all huddled around the computer trying to do some thing. He could almost hear them.

The captain was shouting, and he could swear he heard his name. The ambassador looked at him, right at him. Her eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth. She whispered his name.

The bones clawed in to his uniform and pressed past. He could feel them dig deep, into his skin, and through his ribs. It didn't hurt. The energy field shuddered again and he heard the whine of air charging with electricity. For just a moment the view of the world vanished completely, replaced fully by the reality of his ship, his crew, his home.

The skull locked hollow eyes with his. He could feel his heart shudder under icy skeletal fingers.

The energy flared once more and charged the air around him. Sparks burst from the ships controls, erupted from the embankment pad, and rained down from the lights above him. The woman with the raven hair, soft warm hands, and empathy beyond words, screamed.

Imzadi. He tried to reach for her. He tried.

The view of the ship faded and once more the snow and ice sprawled around him. One last time the energy spiked, and he felt his whole body dematerialize. For innumerable moments he was aware, but just only. The hollow black pits that had been staring him in the eyes loomed in his mind like a ghost that lingers, like a memory he couldn't fully conceptualize. Like the impending sunrise on the horizon. He felt himself die. He felt his body knit back together violently. He felt hollowed out and void like the sky after a violent snow storm.

It should have been dawn.

Finally the golden cage vanished. He dropped to his knees in the snow, dazed, numb and trembling. Cold to the core, his bones felt like ice. Ice like the ice all around him. The probes had come back warm and sandy. The frozen, shambling skeleton was gone.

He was so, so cold.

Shaking he reached up and tapped his com-badge. It was an action made up more of instinct than thought.

"Th-this is c-c-commander. . ." He was cut off by his own voice booming over the sounds of chaos.

"No, I'm fine Captain, thank you." There was a pause, more voices, distant, but worried, then, "No, I don't know what that was, but we need to rescan the whole planet. Something isn't right down there. It was dark. It should have been morning already."

Numbly he looked up. "It's not me." The last dregs of night were evaporating. He sank down to a seated position and watched the sky. "I'm still down here." The sun appeared on the horizon and dawn was finally here. The instant he felt the sun's light hot agony shot though his bones. Every inch of his body felt as though it was burning, ignited by the orb ascending in to the frosty blue heavens.

Simon could feel the walls closing in on him. All around him was dirt, damp and sticky, not crumbly like a dry soil, but not runny like mud either. Every time he move he brushed up against the walls. It felt familiar and suffocating at the same time.

All around him he could feel the earth as it shifted, rolled, and breathed in subtle little living ways. The stone deep under him called out in low grinding whispers, the soil around him beckoned in soft scents and he felt the slow rhythm of the rock roll through every fiber of his being. It was like the warm embrace of a loving parent. But it was too tight, too griping, too controlling.

The dwarf in him itched to dig down and expand the little shelter, make it a proper hole, or at the very least give him some wiggle room, but he didn't have the resources for that now. Just before the sun had set he had managed to lose almost everything to a creeper, everything except one flimsy shovel. That creeper attack was what had driven him to dig down for the night.

Only a hand full of weeks ago he'd been safe deep underground in his home town. It was a quaint little mining center carved into the walls of a huge crevasse. There were enough lights strewn about to keep most of the monsters of the dark away, and the ones that strayed too close to the inhabitance were dealt with by patrols or traps. Simon had never had to worry about defending himself before, in fact he'd never had to worry about any of his needs before. There had always been someone home to watch out for him.

He needed food, and more importantly he needed wood. With nothing left to his name but the mostly spent shovel it was clear to him that his survival was in gathering supplies on his own. It was a daunting task, at best, and he wasn't entirely sure he was up to that challenge.

Dwarfs were not, by nature, solitary, and he felt the urge to return to the stone walls of his home town. But without supplies, or even food, that was as useless an urge as was the desire to dig.

His stomach growled, demanding he make his mind up quickly, and get some proper food post-haste.

"I don't need you chiming in." Simon growled back. He leaned against the dirt wall to think. Little flecks of soil rained down and tapped against his horned helmet.

He might be able to work his way back home without starving to death if he foraged for apples and killed along the way, but with out proper tools, weapons, or armor the next creeper could do him in for good. He could set up camp here, but this was a snow biome. Things did not tend to grow well here, and resources were hard to come by without a lot of work; finding iron could take days he didn't have.

So what? I go back and starve, or I stay and starve? Or get blown to bits either way? It was a grim line of thought.

He scratched at where dirt had wriggled its way under his helmet and glared into the dark. I don't even know if it's day time yet. If it is then maybe I could try to at least find a better biome. That was a much more productive, less depressing thought.

He pulled his shovel from his inventory and thrust it deep in to the loam. It shattered on impact and sent little wooden shards flying every which way.

Simon ducked back, cursed, then shook wood and more dirt out of his hair. "And now I literally have nothing." He shook his head again, this time with a sigh.

His stomach growled once more, insistently this time, goading him on. Reaching up he started to dig with gloved hands. The feeling of hunger faded from him for a moment as his dwarf instincts kicked in. Dig, they told him. The earth, soft and malleable, crumbled away in satisfying chunks and sucked in to his inventory with a satisfying 'plip'. In moments he breached the surface.

A waft of cold, crisp, clean snowy air breezed past, and the soft pink light of dawn filtered into the hole. Simon pulled the dirt from his inventory and settled it down into the hole, climbing it as he went. Soon he was standing in the misty dawn air under the swaying pines. Snow drifted off of them and glittered like diamond dust.

For a moment he didn't care if he was the only dwarf in the world, it was a new day, and he was his own. No one could tell him to return to the bowels of the earth and shut him away in the darkness. Likewise no one could force him to live above the ground, to wander aimlessly in the sun's light, without direction.

The first sunny rays split the sky, and real warmth hit his pale skin. Full dwarfs could not handle the sun for very long. They would last a few hours at most before burning so badly their skin would harden, crack and bleed. Simon, topless mostly, basked in the glow. He wasn't fully a dwarf, human blood pulsed through his veins and human skin covered his bones. This gave him an immunity to the sunlight that had allowed him to come this far.

He looked at the slowly rising ball of living fire. It looked like a giant diamond, rising into a lapis painted sky. Reaching up he hovered his index finger above it, and his thumb below, making it look as though he had grasped the hot orb.

"Got you."

The wind picked up a little and the trees whispered to each other. It sounded like laughter. It sounded like soft hissing.

Simon lowered his hand and stilled. This early in the day the creepers would still be out and about. The memory of his near death from the night before sent a chill through his spine. Cautiously he glanced around for anything that might still be lurking in the shade. To one side of him was the thick of the forest, to the other a hill. The hill had fewer trees, and thus more likely to have fewer dangers. From it's top Simon could look for other biomes.

As he made his way towards the crest the wind rolled over the land again. The trees whispered once more. It sounded like hissing, and moaning. Simon stopped the moment he heard the moan. Trees could moan in the wind, but it had to be a good howling wind for them to moan. This was a soft sort of thing, a hearty breeze at most.

The moan sounded again and this time Simon was sure it wasn't an arboreal sound. It had to be from a person of some sort. It was too low to be from a zombie, and far too pained sounding. Quickly he ascended the hill, the snow under his boots crunching loudly, mingling with the low groans.

He crested the hill and searched the land below. Half curled on the frozen beach was a figure clad in red with dark hair. Simon knew instantly it was a human. It's limbs were too long and gangly to be a dwarf, there didn't seem to be an echo of magic rolling off of it like the elves of light had, and it's skin was too pink to be an ogre, orc, or dark elf. It was alone, unarmed, and without a tool.

He had never seen one before, and he had no real idea of what they could do. He did know for a fact that many of the elder dwarfs were not overly fond of them, and liked to tell horrible stories about the humans to the children before bed. Humans who grew into monsters, or had terrifying evil powers, or hunted and killed dwarfs for fun. They were dangerous, the elders said, even when unarmed. Supposedly they were animals, strange fierce animals. Like rabid timber wolves they could smell your fear, and they were clever too, they'd use your fears against you.

Simon had always liked animals, to be quite honest, and never met one that he was afraid of. Besides, he didn't really believe what the elders said about humans. He couldn't and he wouldn't.

It was in pain.

An animal in pain was likely to bite you, a human in pain...

Simon was not by nature cruel, and the human's tight groans touched Simon's soul, bidding him to do something, though he didn't know what. With little to offer, and even less to share, Simon started to descend.

Maybe the elders were right. Maybe they weren't. He was going to take the chance and find out.

As the agony of the sunlight flared and died and flared again courage and terror battled with in him. Whispers of a life once lived, but now long spent, echoed in shards of memories. The cold air pressing in all around him, whipping over his skin in the breeze, caused him to shiver uncontrollably.

He grit his teeth against the fire within, and the ice without. I've been abandoned. He wrapped his arms around his ribs in an attempt to quell the shaking. They don't know I'm here. They left me! His skull felt like it would split in two.

The wind drove into his back and he swayed. Now, as the sun was climbing higher still, the cold was winning over the burning. The fiery pain died down and a dull, numb ache replaced it.

I need to move. He struggled to get to his feet and managed to get to one knee, but the wind drove him down mercilessly. Ice crystals, like daggers, bit into his exposed skin. This time he went down, all the way, and curled into the snow. The cold was nearly as bad as the heat, but the numb was growing stronger.

He moaned. He couldn't help it. The terror of being alone was quickly taking over all of the bravery he had cultivated through the years as 'the commander'. His training and experience was blowing away like footprints in powdery snow scoured clean by a blizzard.

Everything he was had burned away in only a few minutes. He had heard his own voice on his own ship and heard his comrades – his family - accept that voice with out question. A duplicate, it had to be a duplicate he had heard, there was no other explanation. He would die here, alone, and no one would ever know.

No, I can't think like that. Shaking he reached up and tried his com-badge again, and once more he could hear his own disembodied voice talking. He couldn't make out what it was saying, but laughter followed it. Warm and easy. The sound fizzled and cracked for a moment, then fell into a fuzzy white static.

He shoved himself up to one elbow and dug out a spare com-badge. It took a little working to get it to sit in the palm of his trembling hand. He dropped it twice in the snow, but with a deep breath and a lot of concentration he managed to try and hail the ship.

More static met his ears. His shoulders sagged and he sank back down in to the snow, weary and freezing cold. After burning all over from the inside out the snow felt like an icy cold heaven.

Screw fire. He thought. I hate fire now. Or anything that's like fire. Or has fire in it. His inner mind sounded strange to him, accented. Flavored with an alien tongue.

As he laid still in the snow, glaring up at the clouds, he started to itch. It was a bone deep itch that crawled all over and made his teeth ache and his skin tingle. He sat up with a hiss and scratched at phantom ants marching up and down his spine. Never before had he felt like this after teleporting.

He clawed at his skin, trying to get the itch to go away. His mind drifted to another incident where they had found another copy of him on another world. This happened again. But how?

They had never quite been able to explain how he had been duplicated. You couldn't just make some thing from nothing, you had to be able to create a duplication in accordance with the Law of Conservation of Mass theory, if at all. Back on that Nervala world there hadn't been any mass that they knew of to assist in the double ended materialization.

Worse yet was that no one had known about the doppelgänger for eight years. By the time they had found the transport clone madness was starting to set in. It had stayed sane until then, the duplicate had claimed, only because he'd focused on her. His beloved, his sanity, his counselor.

His Imzadi.

Raven hair, soft hands, and a warm understanding heart, she was a goddess. But back aboard the ship she had another doppelgänger.

Or am I the doppelgänger? He dug his nails into slithery skin. Their voices no longer sounded the same.

He grabbed his head, clutched at his throbbing temples, and shook away the confusing thoughts. He didn't have eight minutes, let alone eight years, lying in the snow freezing. Focusing on her wouldn't save him from hypothermia or insanity if he had to spend the rest of his life here. And possibly his afterlife, if those walking bones were any indication.

Belatedly he wondered where they had gone to. Then a realization struck and he knew, knew where the needed mass for duplication had come from. Those bones are inside of me. His stomach churned and he shuddered. Through the thin skin over the temple he could feel it's skull. The two hollow eyes of the dead flashed in to his mind and he squirmed.

Panic flooded him, and he staggered to his feet. For just one bleak horrible moment he wanted to cut out his own bones.

"No." He shook his head, hard, and closed his eyes. "No calm down."

Desperate to contact his people and sort this all out he snatched the com-badge up from the snow and clicked it, while striking the one attached to his uniform. The two hailed at once, created a feedback loop, and squealed like stuck pigs. He yelped, dropped the free one, and slapped at the one attached to his tunic. They both fell silent.

He started to pace, and looked around for anything he could use to help himself, but there was nothing. He could possibly try a higher location to hail the ship from. Maybe, just maybe, there was interference here. Sometimes large deposits of unmined metals could do that.

He spotted one icy cliff not to far away. He could climb it and try to hail them from it's peak. If he slipped and fell he'd shatter every bone in his body. His undead bones.

He shuddered and scratched the tingling itchiness nervously.

If there was interference strong enough to block him from communicating with the ship here on the beach then simply going up a cliff wouldn't help. He would have to get very far away, possibly all the way over to the other side of the cliff. Maybe then he would get a clear signal.

It was a bad plan, really, stupid and full of danger. He didn't have much choice though. He refused to spend the rest of his life alone and forgotten on a frozen beach that should have been a shared paradise.

He turned about once more, 'falling and killing yourself' be damned, only to slam into something short, solid, red haired, and sporting a pair of bone white horns. He yelped, leaped back to get clear of this new creature and slipped. He landed hard enough on the ground that the wind was knocked out of him. Stunned and shaking from the cold, he couldn't pull himself back to his feet.

He closed his eyes and resigned himself to his fate.

The snow under Simon's feet had thawed a little at some point in the past then refrozen, and then been buffed slippery smooth by the wind. He had to pay close attention every step of the way, lest he slip and crash down the slope. Between treacherous steps he stole glances at the human below him and watched as the man in red altered from curled in the snow, to fumbling about, to lying in the snow again, to scratching neurotically.

By the time Simon made it half way down the human was sitting up and nearly clawing through his own tunic. His hair was a wild mess, and, as far as Simon could see, the stranger's eyes were darting all about trying to take the world in all at once. There was a frantic, helter-skelter panic in those eyes, the sort you would see in an animal that was about to be struck down for the last time. The human dropped again, agitated and shaking.

Simon stepped off of the slope and picked his way closer cautiously. "Hello?" He called softly.

The human bolted up with a strangled yelp and clutched at his head for a moment, mumbling miserably to himself. He shook himself and turned to look up at a cliff off in the distance. He staggered towards it, then tore away from it rather violently looking ill and bewildered.

The human looked like it had gone quite insane, and that gave Simon pause. He stopped behind it, and watched it stager around and mumble incoherently to itself. He couldn't quite make out the words against the whistling wind and the shoe crunched snow, but they sounded absolutely despondent.

The stranger sounded like a raving dwarf who was hopelessly lost in an abandoned mine complex. It was the low, guttural tones that came just before a desperate decision needed to be made. But he wasn't lost, he was on the surface, and at dawn too. He looked strong and fit, so survival shouldn't be too hard.

Maybe the elders were right, maybe humans were just clever animals.

Simon took a breath and steeled himself to press on. He still didn't believe everything the elders told him. He never would. "Excuse me, hello?"

The man in red paced past Simon blindly. His face was pale and his lips were the most astonishing shade of blue. It was like looking at a zombie who's green had been washed completely out of it's skin.

"Hello?" Simon tried again more firmly. He started to follow the pacing stranger.

The human paced a few more steps away, then turned about suddenly and plowed into Simon. The impact sent Simon flying back. He landed with a thud in the snow and saw sparks dance through his vision.

The human yelped and leaped back as though he'd just bumped noses with a creeper, which would have been hilarious to Simon if he hadn't been knocked so far back already, and the human not already looking like he'd fall apart at the seams at any second. He landed in the snow hard, whimpered, and curled away while hiding behind his arms.

"Ow." Simon sat up and shook the snow from his hair before picking himself up and getting to his feet. "Well that could have gone better." He grumbled and rubbed the back of his head, inspecting it for any damage. His helmet had taken the blow, faithfully, and once again disaster had been adverted.

The elders would be having a fit right now if they'd seen what had just happened. Some would be roaring, others diving for the dirt.

Simon did neither and opted to take the opportunity to look the stranger over more carefully instead. The elders hadn't lived as long as they had without caution.

The human was clutching something small and shiny and it was at least prudent to make sure the object wasn't something that could be lethal to a dwarf. It was much too small to be a weapon, or even a proper tool, yet he was clutching it like it was a life preserver and he a drowning man. Maybe it was a talisman to ward off evil spirits?

Good luck with that. Simon thought dryly. Better off with a sword for our sort of spirits.

Satisfied it was at least reasonably safe to proceed Simon inched closer. "Hey." He tried, "Friend? Easy now."

The tangle of long unwieldy limbs, red fabric, and raw nerves lowered his hands and looked up. "Who... what... are you?" His eyes flicked up to the horns on Simon's helmet, then back down to gaze at Simon directly. He could see all of the white of the eyes around big black irises.

"What am I?" Simon reached up and shoved his helmet back a little, taking note of the way the human kept inspecting it's horns. "I'm a dwarf."

"Dwarf." The stranger said slowly, as if testing the word. There was still a lot of fear in his eyes, but there was a keen sort of intelligence there, he was focusing now. "A dwarf." He said again, more firmly this time.

"A Dwarf." Simon confirmed with a nod. Mostly. He added to himself silently, and thanked providence that the elders weren't there. "Are you all right?" Simon asked. "You seem terribly put off and confused. Did you hit your head?"

"My head. . ." The human reached up and, despite already looking quite pale, lost even more color. "It's in there. . . I don't even know how it happened." He shuddered, another wave of panic building visibly, and clutched at his temples. "My ship. . . They can't find me and it's in there, it's in my head!"

As he tried to make sense of the words tumbling from the human's mouth Simon's eyebrows hefted up towards the rim of his helmet. "What's in your head?"

"The skull!" The human winced and shuddered again. This time his skin shifted towards a sort of grey green color.

"That's where skulls tend to be." Simon took a small step closer. "Unless you happen to be a squid, I think."

"Don't!" The human looked up with such pitiable confused terror that Simon stepped back again.

"Oh for pity sake, calm down already!" Really, you think sitting in the sunlight would be comfort enough for a human.

The human winced back. "Sorry, sorry."

Simon took another calming breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. Under him the frozen snow was muffling the echoes of the earth, making it hard for him to even feel grounded. The conversation was not helping. Slowly he looked up again and a little pity found it's way into his senses.

"I'm sorry." The human said again and cowered down, once more like a pig about to be given the final blow.

"Easy friend. I'm not going to eat you." Simon soothed. It was at that moment his stomach snarled it's most savage snarl. "Oh for crying out loud! That is not helping!"

The human sniggered nervously at that. "I didn't think you were going to eat me."

Simon looked the man over, confident that the little laugh was a good sign, and found the human looking up at him with much less fear. "Let's start over, all right? Why are you out here alone, friend? It's freezing cold out here."

"I am freezing." He admitted. "My uniform will keep me a little warm, but it's so cold here." He rubbed his thumb absentmindedly over the small scrap of metal he was holding. "I can't believe they left me." He glanced down at the device with a deep frown. "I need to contact them."

"Who?" Simon asked.

"The people on my star ship." He looked up, his face serious.

Simon stared down, not sure what to make of that at all. "Your what?"

"My ship, I come from the stars." He said, like it was supposed to make all the sense in the world.

For a moment Simon the dwarf stared down at the red clad human in silence. The wind howled with laughter, and the trees whispered to each other like grand old elders passing judgments in the corners of the hall.

"You don't believe me." The human actually started to pout.

Simon scrubbed a hand over his face and down his beard. "Well..."

"I need to contact them." He cut in, interrupting. "They don't know I'm here at all."

"The people aboard your star ship?"

He nodded, winced, and started to scratch again. This time he was attacking his scalp. In no time at all what ever hairdo he'd worked on before was reduced to a savage looking mess of tangled brown hair. "It doesn't matter if you believe me or not." He closed his eyes. "It doesn't if they don't know. It doesn't matter if you think I'm telling you the truth."

"Truth." Lost and alone, that was the truth radiating off of the creature before Simon. He reached out and offered a hand. "I believe you, friend."

"You do?" He opened his eyes and looked up with hope, spotted the out stretched hand, and gazed at it.

Simon pressed his hand forward gently. "Dwarfs were made from the giant Ymir's bones, and he came from the stars."

"Really?" The human reached up and grasped his offered hand with a surprisingly strong grip.

"That's what my elders told me." Simon could see little bumps raising on the human's wrist, and felt strong tremors radiating from the man. He stared at the little bumps only for a moment before hauling the shivering human to his feet. "Do you know of Ymir?"

The human shook his head. "No." He held on for just a moment longer and steadied himself against Simon. "Thank you." He was still pale and his lips were even more blue. He curled in on himself and rubbed uselessly at his arms, trying to coax warmth back in to them.

What a mess. Simon sighed. He's never going to survive the afternoon, let alone night in this shape. "Come on, lets get you to a warmer place."

"Why is it snowy here? I thought it would be warmer." The human squinted in to the distance. "There, over that one hill, it looks like it's clear of snow. The ship didn't pick up any snow. I could hear them. They couldn't hear me. It's freezing here!" He rubbed and scratched savagely. "Why is it snowy here? You know I don't. . ."

Simon took a breath and momentarily blocked out the half coherent rambling and looked around. The sun was crawling higher and higher, and he still didn't have anything to his name. Well he had this stranger, but that wasn't much of a possession really.

You couldn't posses a human, could you?

". . . the world at all." The red clad man shivered violently. Then he looked down at Simon and huffed. "Um. . ."

"Look, this place, all of it, is called Minecraftia." Simon waved his hand around to indicate the world sprawled out in all directions around them.

The snow rolled away from their feet and dried up the sides of billowing slopes. Trees, solid and towering stood around them like sleeping giants. The sun light caught on the snow on the top most branches and shimmered. Past the lofty canopy cliffs reached up and yawned lazily towards the sky. Clouds drifted over every thing, casting cool shadows that danced over the landscape. Not far off a lick of green was sprawled in a space between two hills. It looked like an emerald wedged tightly, tantalizingly, in the heart of a granite boulder.

The human took it all in seemingly for the first time, and blinked at all the world sprawled before him. His eyes shimmered, like a child shown the surface for the first time. His mouth moved, but no sound came.

It would have been an awe inspiring moment had Simon not feared for the human's immediate safety. "Minecraftia, like I said before." He started to trek towards the warmer area. "Come on, follow me, you'll be all right over there."

The human tromped after him with stilted, stumbling footsteps. "Minecraftia?"

"Right." Simon nodded once, firmly. "It's a world where dwarfs mine then craft things from what they have mined. Hence Minecraftia." Simon looked back to see if the human was comprehending.

"Ah." He glanced down at his feet. "But the snow?"

"That's an example of Biomes." Really, it was like teaching a child the basics. He reached the edge of the frost and stepped eagerly onto the green grass. Instantly he felt the warmth here start to sink into his body.

"Biomes. So, the weather is just sort of. . ." The man in red trailed off as he stepped off of the snow and into the grass. "It's so much warmer here." Surprise lit up his face again and he sagged.

"Yeah, they just stop and start." Simon bounced on the balls of his feet testing the dirt under his shoes. Nice and soft. He could dig it with one hand. "Isn't that how it is on your world?"

"No, we have environmental zones and the equatorial zones and ice caps and elevation and..." He trailed off and looked lost again.

Simon stopped testing the soil and turned to stare at the stranger. "That sounds complicated and strange."

"That's Earth, my home world is called Earth." He gave Simon a pained, lost look. "It goes around a star we call Sol, our sun."

"Your sun has a name?" Simon craned his head up to look at the bright orb ascending in to the sky. How utterly strange, how useless. You did not have to name the sun, it was the sun. It burned dwarfs alive and made callouses so thick and hard they were like stone. To name the sun - Simon nearly scoffed at the notion - you named things you could posses, but you could not posses the sun. It burned things, that was all. That was all, anyway, the dwarfs thought of it. It hadn't occurred to him that the human's might name something like that until just that moment.

"Does your sun have a name?" The stranger asked, glancing up, then wincing back.

"No." Simon replied, baffled. "Or if it has a proper name I don't know it."

"Xephos. That's what we call it." The stranger said. "It's a blue giant." He rubbed his arms again, then stretched them out. The shaking was dying down, and the color was returning to his face.

"Really?" Simon asked, surprised. "A giant like Ymir?"

The human gave him an odd look. "I don't think so, no."

"You said it was a giant." Simon pointed out. "A blue one, or some thing like that."

The human laughed a little. It didn't sound nearly as panicky as it had before, and that was good at least. "No, no that's not what I. . . I don't have any idea what you are talking about." He shifted and rubbed his still cold fingers. "Don't dwarfs have a name for the sun?"

"Well. . ." Simon pointed to the bright orb above them. "Most of them would die after a few minutes of direct exposure from that, so I know of a couple of things we call it, but they are words never used in polite conversation."

That got a real laugh out of the human. It was a shallow, but heartfelt sound. "OK, yeah, I get it." He glanced up at it and frowned a little. "You're OK though?" Real concern showed on his face, and it made him look much more sane.

"Perfectly." Simon replied, glad to be entering a real, understandable conversation. "It would take a lot of exposure to bother me."

"Good." The human fiddled with the metal, glanced around, and scratched at the nape of his neck. "So, um, do you have a name?"

"Of course I do." Simon felt a little silly for not thinking to offer it before now. They had talked about the name of the sun, after all, and once you start doing crazy things like that it seemed almost bordering on the absurd to not give your own name. "I'm Honeydew." He announced with pride.

"Honey Dew?" The human's voice held a lot of skepticism. "That doesn't sound very dwarf-like, if you don't mind me saying."

Simon's pride crumbled like a load of gravel. "Yes, well, I have a human name too." He managed.

The man gave him a solid inquisitive look, like he was studying a rock for the right angle to hit it from. "A human name for a dwarf?"

"Yes, I'm also called Simon."

"Simon and Honey Dew." He said, still looking at him like a strange new ore.

"Yes, Simon." He didn't have anything but his name at that point, and he felt a little goaded at having to explain it to this very strange stranger. "You can use that one if you like it better. You are a human after all, right?"

He nodded. "I am, but two names? Why two names though? Is one a surname?"

"No, they are both my full names, and you can use on or the other." Simon rubbed at his temple. This was starting to get complicated. "Why is that so strange to you, star man who names his sun Blue Xephos?" Simon felt just a little glad he managed to keep from sounding as agitated as he felt.

"No, our sun is Sol. Your sun is Blue Xepho... I mean Xephos. Blue is what it is."

"It's white, and I like Blue Xephos better." Simon declared.

The human sighed and scratched at the back of his neck again. "Well, it's your sun, you can name it any thing you want."

A few very nasty words sprung to mind, but he dismissed them immediately. It looked so shiny up there, in the blue sky, like a diamond. He just couldn't hate it any more than he could fear the strange creature before him. Simon was tempted to 'pinch' the sun again but he could never hold it, so he had no will to name it. "I'll pass." He turned back to the stranger. "But what about you? What's your name?"

The human opened his mouth to answer, and then just sort of froze.

"But what about you? What's your name?"

He had no idea. He knew who the man was that had beamed aboard the ship in his place. He wasn't that man.

The snow now behind him he felt much warmer. Some of the tingling itchiness was fading, and he was starting to feel right again. He still couldn't shake the chilling dread that he was now stranded, and he couldn't quite get the image of those hollow eye sockets out of his mind.

He focused as hard as he could on the creature before him. The dwarf's existence alone proved that they had all been wrong about the planet. With possible scanner interference from metal deposits, and a race that lived it's whole life mostly underground, then maybe they hadn't so much been wrong, just not looking for the right thing. It was inhabited, just not by men, but dwarfs. Other than the sun burning issue there was that much difference.

Was there?

The short, stout, red headed creature before him was waiting.

"I. . ."

Under shaggy red bangs the dwarf's eyes widened. "You don't know? You did bump your head didn't you?"

He shook his head, sure the only thing wrong with it was the presence of alien bone. "No I don't think so, it's just that when I beamed down to your world there was an accident. I think I absorbed something dead."

The look he got from that was little better than exasperation. "Okaaaay." The dwarf, Simon, glanced up at the sun and mumbled some thing. He then looked back, intensely, with a thin smile. "If you don't have a name then... You're Xephos, Blue Xephos!"

He didn't know what to say to that. The day, growing older, was getting more and more strange by the minute. He couldn't help it, he laughed. "No, that's the name of the sun!"

"Look, here, you don't name the sun you name people." Simon huffed. "And you are a person. You need a name. So if you haven't anything better...?" He left the sentence hanging.

"I. . ." He closed his eyes and took a slow breath. Name, how did any one name themselves. Tomas was taken, so his middle name was out, and he wasn't going to name himself after his father or any of his grandfathers... He dug deeper.

There were trees, he could remember trees. Alaska? No. Maybe. But a name was there. It was dark in this memory, and someone whispered a name between the dark spooky trees and the bright roaring red light of a town.

"Lewis." It was like grasping for a cloud high over head. Insubstantial, vapor, and out of reach, but real none the less. "I don't know why but that name sticks out in my mind." It was discouraging to be without everything, even a name. That one would have to do. It wasn't bad, at least.

"Lewis." Simon said, sounding out the name. "I like Blue Xephos better."

He scratched at his scalp. The skull bones were firmly there, but still felt like the surface was slithering. Frustrated, and yes, still frightened, he scowled. "Look, it's my name, I should get to pick it. Blue Xephos is not my name. It's..."

Simon cut him of with a laugh. "You don't get to pick. Your parents name you. Or is that not how it works wherever you are from?"

"Earth." He snapped. But Simon was right. He sighed. "But you aren't my father." It came out much more whiny sounding than he'd wanted it to.

"And thank goodness for that." Simon grinned. "Are you warmer yet?"

He, Lewis, not Xephos, nodded. "Yes."

"Good." Simon gave him a sturdy pat on the arm. "Come on, we need shelter. You don't want to spend another night in the dark, do you?" He started to walk away, a bounce in every other step.

Lewis followed him. "I just got to your world. I've never spent a night in the dark." He found the ground was a little hard to navigate than Simon made it seem. It was a bit lumpy and uneven, like it had frozen and thawed a few times, causing it to buckle. Maybe the biomes weren't as firmly fixed as they appeared to be.

"Oh, right, sorry." Simon was leaping here and there like it was nothing. "It's not good to be with out shelter. The undead will get you."

Lewis shuddered, scratched at his arm, and stumbled on. "What do you mean?" He managed, though he had a sinking feeling about the answer.

"Zombies, mostly." Simon scampered up to a high place and eyed a stout looking tree. "But skeleton archers come out too."

Bones, that's what was shuffling towards him. It had deep dark pits for eyes, and sharp little white teeth. Clutched in one hand was a wooden bow.

"I've already seen one of the archers." His own voice, still flavored with an alien accent, sounded raspy and hollow in his own ears. "Where do they come from?"

Simon placed his hand over the tree limb. "They just spawn in the darkness." He closed his eyes and pressed firmly against the wood. "So much softer than stone..."

"Spawn? Like how?" Lewis climbed up next to him and looked the tree over. "Things don't just appear out of nowhere."

Simon eyed him. "Said the man who appeared from the heavens."

"Ah..." Lewis shrugged. "All right, I guess I'll have to give you that one." It was plausible that the undead were being sent through some sort of energy transport system. It might just explain why the bones – don't think about them, focus, be scientific – had been attracted to the beam in the first place. It didn't, however, satisfy the heart of the question. "But where do they come from?"

Simon cracked his knuckles. "Who knows?"

"Someone has to." Lewis glanced around. He could see the snow behind them, and the tracks that wound their way to the shore. "They have to come from somewhere, anyway. They were human once, or humanoid anyway."

The sound of flesh hitting wood drew Lewis's attention back to the dwarf next to him. Simon fist was buried a quarter inch inside of the tree's bark. "What are you doing?"

"We need shelter." He replied as if that answered everything.

"Yeah but..." He stared at the dented wood.

Simon turned to him. "We need wood for shelter, and I don't have an ax, so..." He shook his fist loosely towards the tree. "Punch tree, get wood." He slammed his fist in to the trunk again and a large chunk of wood was shoved, for a lack of a better word, almost free of the main body. The severed top of the arboreal life form drifted, but didn't fall over.

"Uh..." He gaped. "It's not falling down."

"What?" Simon asked. "Never taken a tree out with your own hands before?" He punched the chunk again and it popped free of the confines of the trunk. The rest of the tree exploded and rained down in chunks. The leaves continued to drift, like a green cloud. Some of them started to fall gently down. Little green snowflakes that brushed against his skin, mocking logic, and falling silently to his feet.

Lewis felt his jaw hanging and closed it.

"You haven't, have you?" Simon's eyes widened.

"Not like that, I used an ax. Our trees don't do that." He shook his head. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn't real. Maybe he had beamed down and landed in a noxious cloud of gas. Maybe he was hallucinating all of this.

A sapling fell and smacked him on the head, cracking against his undead skull.

"You OK?" Simon asked.

A part of him wanted to laugh. This can't be real.

"You look all shivery again. Cold?"

A part of him wanted to cry. I don't want this to be real.

"Lewis!"

A cold chill was racing down his spine. "A little." Lewis admitted. "This is all new to me."

Simon picked up a chunk of wood. He held it up and before Lewis's eyes it vanished with a soft 'plink' sound. "How much do you know about Minecraftia, really?"

"Only that you punch trees to get wood." Lewis picked up another chunk of wood and held it in the palm of his hand. It looked like Earth wood. It smelled like Earth wood. "And that horrible things lurk in the darkness."

It's real, I'm trapped, they'll never find me. He felt his breath hitch and a new wash of dread filter up from deep within. He pushed it back and leaned on the training he had been given.

Study the environment, consider the advantages, discover and advert the dangers. He could do that, he could. He was one of Earth's finest, after all. He'd faced monsters of unimaginable terror.

He had faced them recently enough to be given the 'gift' of beaming down here alone for some non-requested shore leave.

Simon was picking up wood rather quickly. "I don't want to sound demanding or any thing, but don't just stand there. Help me."

"How?" Lewis looked down at the broken wood in his hands. "I don't know what you are doing." A part of him didn't want to know. He didn't want to look the situation over, or think of the danger. He just wanted to go home.

The dwarf stopped and sighed. "OK, from the start then." He blew some of the stray red hair from his eyes and marched back over to Lewis's side. "Give me your hands."

Lewis did as he was told and offered both of his hands, stretched out, still holding the wood. "Where did your wood go? How did you do it?"

"Hush." Simon said. "First of all, for all instances and questions, my answer will be Magic. Mostly because I haven't a flipping clue on the exact how or why any of this works the way it does."

"Magic?" Lewis frowned. He hadn't believed in magic since he was five years old. Still, wasn't there an old quote somewhere, that technology advanced beyond someone's understanding was magic, or something like that? "All right." He swallowed an argument that started with 'But science dictates. . .' and let Simon continue.

"So everyone has magic in them, on some level, and we store things within this little bubble of magic. Most dwarfs call it your 'inventory'." He cupped Lewis's hands with his, and Lewis found them to be warm, even past the ragged dark gloves. "It's easy to get to it, you just have to concentrate. Be warned, though, once you are focusing on it it's going to be pretty much all you see. Don't forget to look out for monsters while your digging around in there."

Lewis tried not to fidget in the dwarf's grasp. "It'll blind me to the world, OK, got it."

"Good." Simon closed Lewis's hands together around the wood. "Think hollow, hungry thoughts, like this little chunk of wood is all you want. Like it's. . . I don't know. . ."

"Beaming aboard my ship?" Lewis asked.

"Sure." Simon shrugged, which made Lewis's hands roll over the rough wood and grind against the bark.

"OK." Lewis closed his eyes and fumbled around with trying to imagine what an inventory would look like. From deep within his mind an image, like a faded photograph, like a memory from another life, came to him. A night, a forest, darkness, and his vision was filled with an inventory that had...

"I think I get it."

… total junk. All of it, was a mess. Whoever owned the fragment of a memory before him had not been the neatest of people.

Before his still closed eyes a pocket in reality opened, like a little cave carved from flesh and bone, and the wood just popped in to it.

Simon gave out a victorious whoop, which startled Lewis enough to make him jump back. Simon's hands were still tightly around his, however, anchoring him. He pivoted on that grasp and slammed into the ground. Still, through it all, all he could see was the 'inventory'.

"How to I make it go away?" He asked through clenched teeth.

"Just wish it away." Simon let go of him, and was gone again.

Lewis huffed at that scrap of advice and wished with all of his might that he could see again. But it wouldn't go away. He could hear Simon attacking more trees. Without meaning to he picked up some of the wood and saplings that were falling around him. Still, all he could do was stare at his given storage space. "I can't get it to go away."

Simon grumbled something that bordered on sounding irritated, and came stepping back up to him. "Just, I don't know, try to think of something else."

Lewis felt two warm hands land on his shoulders. He realized then just how cold he still felt. "Like, what?"

"I don't know, I've never had a problem. I've never been trapped in my own inventory." The words came out as more curious than mocking, but then he added, "I've seen children get stuck in there, though."

"Fantastic." Lewis closed his eyes and rubbed them, but the image was still there. "I am literally trapped by magic I can't understand."

Simon gave him a soft 'there-there' pat on the shoulder. "I really don't know what to tell you."

Panic started to build again, and Lewis scooted back an inch or so, bumped into Simon's knees, and stilled. It was like he was blind, anything could sneak up and grab him. He felt helpless, an animal caught in a cage. "How do I escape?" It was disconcerting how panicky he sounded even to himself.

"You just do." Simon replied unhelpfully. Those solid hands were still there, though, anchoring Lewis.

"I can't. . ." The moment the panic started to peak the 'inventory' vanished. "Oh, never mind, I got it. I think." The panic faded a bit. Lewis looked up and back at Simon, who was staring down at him with a strange look.

"I know you are new to this world and all, but it's like you were born yesterday."

Lewis scowled at that. "When my ship comes back for me you'll see. My world, and every other world I've ever been to, works on a whole different set of rules than this one does."

"Well," Simon gave his shoulders a small squeeze. "We'll wait for your ship together, and in the meantime, now that you can pick up wooden blocks like all the other kids," there was a smirk in his voice at that, "you can help me build a shelter." He let go after that, and started to turn away.

Lewis picked himself up to his feet. "Do we have to build a shelter? Where did you come from?"

"Yes, and far away." Simon pulled a chunk of wood out of his inventory and looked it over. "We basically have two options when night falls," Simon closed his eyes briefly, and the wood vanished again, then reappeared as four slim planks. "One is to entomb yourself underground until daylight comes again. I did that last night, and it isn't ideal for obvious reasons." The planks were set down, at four corners, marking out the shelter's rough dimensions. " And two is to actually create some sort of house which should offer some form of protection."

"Right." Lewis stepped up to the wood and looked down at it. "How did you make planks?"

Simon reached for him, grabbed his hand, and grumbled. "Like a freaking child." He looked up then, and gave Lewis a firm look. "Once I explain this to you, you are on your own figuring every thing else out. We don't really have time for this."

"Right." Monsters. Darkness. Trees. He felt the fear swirl around like fog in the back of his mind. He'd never been so unable to pull himself together before. Focus. He told himself. Your life depends on this.

Simon opened up his palms and stuck a chunk of wood in them. "The first thing you need to know about crafting is that it's magic, like every thing else."

"And by that you mean you have no idea how it works." Lewis supplemented.

"That would be correct." He closed Lewis's hands around the wood. "Now, listen to what I'm saying..."

It was one thing to try and teach a child how to do things properly – they asked questions, yes, but they just sort of took your word as empirical truth and didn't question you – but teaching a man who was for all instances a frightened, half crazy, self proclaimed alien was another thing all together. The human was asking questions at an alarming rate, didn't trust things would work as they were supposed to even when they did, and took his time to think things over. His thinking seemed to take as much effort as trying to run up a waterfall. That was possible, but very difficult.

Of course Lewis hadn't believed him about waterfalls either, but since there wasn't one around, and time was of the essence, Simon had let it go.

Despite Simon warning Lewis that he was only going to show him one more thing he ended up going over all of his basic training, something that had taken him nearly a year to master when all was said and done, in the span of about three hours. It did not help that at every turn the human was distracted by almost everything. Little noises made him jump, animals made him freeze mid stride, and one heavily pregnant cow gave him such a fright he actually shrieked and fell over.

It was costing them a lot of time.

To his credit the human was learning at a rapid clip. What had taken Simon a long time to grasp Lewis found he could do it almost immediately, so long as he didn't over think it. Once the basics of small personal crafting were down Simon had shown him the larger crafting table – a tool essential for augmenting one's crafting abilities. With it Lewis cobbled together his first ax and spade. They were crude things, rough and poorly shaped, but they were proper tools.

Simon found himself just a touch proud of his own teaching abilities. And, yes, of the human.

Poor sap, still looks like he's about to drop dead of fright. Simon added another plank to the shelter. Better hurry, he'll be bloody useless after the sun goes down. Simon glanced over to where the human was supposed to be using the crafting table to make a door. Unfortunately the red clad man had been completely immobilized by, of all things, a flower.

"Uh, I think you are getting a bit distracted, friend." Simon called out. He abandoned the project again and glanced up. It was nearly mid-day already, and the sun was about to reach its lofty zenith.

"It's so," Lewis gazed at the flower, "red."

"Hmm." Simon glanced down at it. It really was a nice flower. Dew was gracing it's petals, it's stem was a bright green, and the red was like a crimson crown...

"We have GOT to hurry." Simon shook his head. "Basically if we don't get this done we're screwed." He itched to dig down again, to save himself, but a part of him knew, somehow, that the human with him wouldn't do well closed in underground. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did.

Lewis reached out to touch the flower, the cow mooed behind him, and he startled, slipped, and snapped the flower clean in two. The top half fell with a soft flutter to the ground. Simon scooped it up and stuffed it into his inventory. "Lewis."

"Sorry, Sorry! What should I do next?"

"Do you have the door?" Simon asked.

He shook his head 'no'. "I don't know what I need." He held up some wood. "I need to at least know the recipe if I'm going to make something. Don't you have a spell book for your magic or something?"

"A spell book?" Simon pulled out the needed planks and walked up to the crafting table. "We're not enchanting this stuff for goodness sake."

Lewis followed him to the table, but was looking all over wide-eyed, once more distracted. "That cave up there," he pointed, "I saw some thing moving in it. It's bouncing. Look."

If it's another cow I'm going to smack him with one of these planks. Simon glanced up from what he was working on and saw it. Green and lithe with cold hollow red eyes a monster was looking over the land.

Creeper! The memory of green, a whiff of sulfur and a flash of light erupted in to Simon's mind. It wasn't even twenty four hours since he'd nearly been killed by one of those things. He yelped, dropped the wood and shot back several feet.

"What is it?" Lewis asked, his voice caught between terror and intrigue.

Simon shook himself to chase away the momentary fright, but the reality of the situation was setting in. "It's a creeper. Those are very, very bad!"

Lewis glanced over his shoulder. "But I thought you said the sunlight destroyed them." Curiosity drove him forward.

"Don't go toward it! It'll see you!" And if it saw him then that was probably going to be it. The human didn't look all that much more sturdy than a sickly dwarf.

"Won't it burn up in the direct sunlight?" he asked, pausing mid stride.

"Sunlight doesn't kill them, it just kills zombies and skeletons. These are tougher, meaner, and will blow up in your face." He felt like he was still talking to a child, somehow. The man just had no knowledge of the surface world whatsoever.

Lewis stepped back, and cast a worried glance up to the cave. "It's gone."

"Gone?" Simon glanced up, the sun was at zenith. He breathed a sigh of relief. "It won't come back. The sun is above us."

Lewis gave him a look. "But you just said the sun didn't burn them."

"It doesn't." Simon picked his wood back up. "It just... oh never mind." He kicked the work bench and the crafting mechanics blossomed in to his view. He tossed the wood in shape for a door and pressed it together with a little will, and a tap of his own energy. "All you need to know is that Creepers are dangerous and you should avoid them."

His stomach growled to remind him that energy wasn't some thing he had a lot of.

"Simon?" There was another edge of panic to his voice. "What's that?"

Glancing over his shoulder Simon spotted a sheep peering out at them from behind some tree trunks. To Lewis's credit it looked very creepy peering out like it was. "Sheep." He said flatly.

"Oh." Lewis inched towards it.

"But they blow up you know." He went on, continuing his explanation.

That stopped Lewis in his tracks.

"Not sheep." Simon amended with a roll of his eyes. Way to reassure a fellow, idiot. "Creepers. Creepers explode."

"So they all appear at night then?" Lewis's voice was colorless.

"And we'll be fine if we can get this shelter up." Simon stepped back, with the weight of the door in his hands for only a moment, before it slid smoothly into his inventory. "And we'll be able to come and go as we please." He smiled, dusted his hands off, and turned to look at his newly acquired companion.

Lewis was staring at the sun through the shade of his fingers, his features hard and his eyes darting. "Right." He looked down, blinked a few times as if clearing his mind from the bright vision, and held up that little chunk of metal from earlier. "Survival. Shelter." He nodded. "Just like during basic." At that he turned back to the ramshackle hut and eyed it over. "How much time do we have?"

Simon glanced up. The sun was past zenith, and they didn't have enough wood to finish the basic shelter. Besides that they didn't have anything to defend themselves with, or even lights. Now, despite the calm thoughtfulness he'd been trying to cultivate, and the wight of responsibility of keeping the first human he'd ever met from becoming a snack for a zombie, real tangible panic kicked into his heart.

They just didn't have time.

"Lewis, at this point," he looked at the man in red and laughed nervously. "I think we're screwed."

To this point Lewis felt like he'd been set adrift. Floating aimlessly between mountain peaks, unable to grab one, and being swept to and fro in the clouds. Danger was everywhere, and yet he couldn't steer himself to a landing point. He tried, tried to apply everything the fleet had taught him, tried to come to grips with his past, but nothing from his memory could be implemented here. Nothing worked like it should have.

Monsters were coming from an unknown source during the night, and then burning up in the day, only to reappear at night. Simon said that this sun had no name, or at least not one that people could speak of in every day conversation. So everything on the planet he'd met so far had adverse, possibly deadly consequences when exposed to the sun.

"Don't dwarfs have a name for the sun?"

"Most of them would die after a few minutes of direct exposure from that, so I know of a couple of things we call it, but they are words never used in polite conversation."

"You're OK though?"

"Perfectly. It would take a lot of exposure to bother me."

Lewis turned to the supposed dwarf who was now feverishly working on the hut. "Why are you different?"

He glanced over his shoulder blankly. "What?"

"Why doesn't the sun bother you?" Lewis puled wood out of his own inventory – still a novel concept to him – and started splitting in to planks. "You said it can kill a dwarf."

"Same as why it doesn't effect you." He shrugged.

"So you are human?" Lewis tried to attach the wood to the house like Simon was doing, but it just fell. "Um, are you using nails or is this more of that magic?"

"Magic." Simon answered in a half panicky, half sing-song voice. "Everything here, even the night monsters, are magic." He hopped down from the wall and picked up Lewis's fallen chunk of wood.

The cow lowed and shook her head, and then stuck her nose in between them to see if what Simon had was edible.

"Well, maybe not everything." Simon said, giving the beast a look. "But almost everything."

Lewis felt himself smiling a little despite his fears and doubts. "She could be a wizard cow." He sniggered. "Simon. . ."

"Let me show you this." He said, ignoring Lewis and brushing the nosy bovine away. He held the wood up to where its grain was matching the grain of the other planks of wood. "You can feel when it's starting to connect."

"Like a magnet?" Lewis pulled his own wood out and held it up. Small but present was the gentle pull. He let it guide itself into place. "Wow, no need for nails."

"Never heard of them." Simon glanced around, and then looked up with a fair bit of worry in his features. "I'm out of wood!"

"I still have some." Lewis dragged another plank into place. "Do we have enough for a roof?" He looked up and to his surprise some leaves from one of the trees Simon had cut down was still floating up above them, and more importantly, above the shelter. "Wha...?" He pointed. "Why are they not falling?"

"Why would your people ever name the sun?" Simon asked, exasperation mixing with panic.

Lewis looked up and scowled at the logic defying leaves. They seemed to be stuck in the pattern at which they grew, like some sort of over grown Kirlian sculpture. Maybe that was the key to all of this, the Kirlian theory, that all things had energy auras and even if something was cut the aura was still there for a while. But hadn't that been disproved?

"Lewis!" Simon almost wailed. "It's getting dark. What are you doing?"

"Thinking of qi." He mumbled, generalizing his whole thought process. He started to toss the planks on faster.

"Thinking of what?" Simon was punching one tree, before abandoning it to go hit a couple of rocks. He wobbled, shook his head, and then went back to the tree. A little rumble from his stomach sounded out.

"Well, according to science..."

Simon tripped, growled something nasty sounding, and slammed his fist into the nearest trunk.

"Never mind." Lewis swallowed the theories and the science, and focused on getting the shelter up. The wood he had wasn't enough to reach as high as he wanted it to, and the leaves that were acting as a roof were drifting, fading, and falling apart. "I don't think these leaves are going to protect us."

"I was afraid of that." Simon trotted over, planks in hand, and started to climb up to where he could work on the roof. "Won't last through the night." He grabbed a hand full and tore them from their strange perch. "Oh!" He looked down with a smile. "Apple."

"Apple?" Lewis craned his neck up. "This was an apple tree?"

"Well, yeah. All oaks drop apples, but not all apple trees get big enough to really be called oaks." He held the shiny red fruit out. "Want it?"

Lewis reached up and took it. "Oaks drop acorns, not apples. At least, that's how it works on Earth."

"We aren't on Earth, friend." Simon was already snapping planks in to place roughly. There were several gaps, but nothing big enough to let some thing as large as zombie in. "All right, that should be good." He glanced around and looked to where the sun was hovering sluggishly over the horizon. Every thing was starting to glow pink. "Oh gods preserve us." He scrambled down. "Not that the freaking Æsir would care."

"The who?" The word sounded familiar, and in a few moments a fragment of memory bubbled up to the surface. The Æsir where Norse gods. Or one set of them anyway. "I don't think they'll help us, friend." Lewis walked around to the back of the shelter, rolling the apple around in his hands, and looked the structure over.

Simon followed him, inspecting the work. "You know of the Æsir but you don't know who Ymir is?" He rolled his eyes. "Typical human for you right there."

"Well the Ass-er ..."

"Ay-see-yer." Simon corrected.

"Them." Lewis allowed with a nod. "They are just myth."

Simon gave him a stout look, and then started off towards the shelter's entry way. "Well a lot of dwarfs do believe, mind you, so you best watch out who you say that to."

Lewis followed him. "And just how many dwarfs are around us, right now?" He asked pointedly.

"You never know." Simon shot back, a small grin forming under all of that red bristle. "They could be just one spade full of dirt away from you, and you'd never know." From his inventory he pulled the door, and set it into place. It was a rough piece of work that looked to fragile too hold up to a breeze, let alone an onslaught of the undead.

By the look the cow was giving it she agreed.

"Come on, Xephos, in!" Simon held the door open.

Lewis cast a look around. The sun was dipping low now, sinking under the horizon. He watched it, and wondered if his ship was still in orbit.

A dirty gloved hand snagged his elbow and pulled. "IN."

Lewis had no time to brace or balance himself against the sudden tug,and found himself crashing in to the not so sturdy back wall. The whole shack swayed with the impact. "Hey." He managed. Some stray leaves floated down and landed in his hair.

"I forgot the work bench." Simon grumbled, and stepped through the doorway. "Stay." He tossed over his shoulder, then he was gone.

Lewis rolled the apple around in his hands some more, while watching the sunlight fade away through the door, and felt like a scolded child. Then again all of this was new, and he knew that he didn't have enough information on this planet to understand it. Everything he'd been told back on the ship was wrong.

Simon, he realized, was his only real chance of survival. He probably already owed him his life because if they hadn't met he'd be half way up a snowy cliff, freezing to death. Or worse. Had he climbed and then slipped... no. No, he wasn't going to dwell on it. Had he made it up the cliff there was no guarantee that he'd be able to communicate with his people. He'd be up there in the dark without shelter, at this very moment were it not for the dwarf.

Simon had more or less hauled him here, erected a barrier between him and the undead, and then given him food, without being asked. There were few planets, and even fewer people, that exhibited such instant kind hospitality.

I should be dead, but he save me.

He shuddered and turned his attention to the apple in his hands. Truth be told he wasn't feeling all that hungry, but he knew he needed to eat to keep his energy up. He wasn't sure how long dwarfs could survive without food, and he had no idea how long Simon had been wandering around alone with out supplies. He considered giving it back, but at the same time his need to get home was nagging at him, reminding him that he needed every advantage he could possibly get.

Simon had the home field advantage over him, and may already have more apples. He'd taken down a lot of trees, and who knew, maybe he had other food supplies in his inventory. It was a solid theory, and Lewis was to desperate to wait and test it.

He ate the apple, then felt enormously guilty, and shoved the incriminating core into a corner. He wiped his hands off just in time to clean himself of the sticky evidence when the door swung back open.

"There." Simon dropped the crafting table down, right on top of the core, and leaned against it. "Home sweet home, and we even have furniture!" He grinned. "Better than last night, that's for sure."

Lewis stood and gave the small space a careful look. "It's cramped in here."

"Yeah, well." Simon waved his hand around the small room. "I spent last night in a hole that was a lot smaller than this. This is much better."

A small dark hole? All night? Lewis shuddered. "Buried alive?"

Simon pointed to himself. "Dwarf." There was a touch of wary exasperation in his voice.

Lewis swallowed that information along with any lingering sweetness from the apple. "But you like it above ground better?"

"Well," Simon said, picking at the rough edges of the table, "it's more roomy." The grin returned. "And now I have someone to talk to!"

Lewis smiled at that. He couldn't, just couldn't, imagine what he would have done with out his odd little benefactor. "Thanks."

"Thanks." Lewis mumbled while looking at his hands like they were the most fascinating things in the world.

Simon stretched. The extra room in here was luxurious compared to what he'd ended up in the night before. "For what?" Not that he didn't have a guess, but he might as well be polite and ask.

The human waved one of his hands around. "I don't know what I'd have done..."

Simon cut that line of thought right off with a wave of his hand. "You'd have been fine." A lie, but he didn't need to rattle the man's cage any more than it already had been. Whatever had happened on the shore that morning had been both painful and terrifying.

It wasn't really all that surprising, given that Lewis had been basically alone in the dark, and that's how your mornings ended up when you were alone in the dark, but it bothered Simon to think that this human was so very ignorant of that fact.

Maybe he really was from the stars.

Now that they weren't scrambling to get a shelter up Simon had time to reflect. What he'd said about Ymir was basically true, the dwarfs did believe that they were carved from the bones of that celestial giant, then given the breath of life by the gods. Or, if you followed some sub-sects, intelligence was given to maggots that lived in Ymir's bones, and those became the dwarfs. It didn't really matter to Simon, either way, but some old stony hole diggers would rage at you for calling their ancestors maggots.

"I think I would have been dead." He was back to looking at his hands again.

Probably would have. "No, you look like you could handle things. You'd have figured it out."

Lewis pulled something from a slit in side of his pants. It was the small shiny metal object. Simon sat up and leaned closer. The light was getting dimmer and dimmer, and though mostly a dweller of the underground like any other dwarf, Simon couldn't see in the total darkness.

"What do you have?" He asked.

Lewis looked up. "A communicator." He poked at it with his thumb and the little device started to hiss like a creeper on the war path. "Normally I can use it to talk to my people."

"Well it isn't working." Simon winced against the grating noise.

Lewis poked it again and it fell silent. "I don't know why. They are always supposed to work. They can be jammed, though, or blocked I guess. Maybe that's what is happening, I'm being blocked by some metal deposits."

"That's possible." Simon nodded. "We've got plenty of metal here, you can take my word for it as a dwarf."

Lewis smiled just a little at that. It was darker now, his teeth glowed like a crescent moon. "Well, maybe if we get farther away from the deposits I'll be able to signal out."

"It's not possible to get a way from it, there's metal everywhere, scattered, and it'd take ages to find it all in just one area." Simon sat up a little straighter. "Maybe in one of the older mines there'd be less, but you just can't be sure."

The smile vanished. "Oh." He fingered the little device for a moment, then stuffed it back in to that thin slit in his pants.

Simon tried not to stare as he watched the human's movements. Naming the sun, not having a name for himself, keeping things in your pants – other than the obvious things one would keep in one's pants – and generally being clueless as to every little detail necessary for survival despite being all alone convinced Simon; Lewis really was from another world. Maybe not another planet, but definitely another world.

"Um, I don't mean to pry, friend, but..." How to word this without sounding like an idiot? "Your trousers? Um... You keep things in them?"

The look he got from the human was an interesting one. For a moment, just a moment, there was a tint of red in his cheeks. "What?" Then he blinked and smiled a silly looking smile. "Oh, um, do you not use pockets?" He put his hand back in the small hole and pulled out a number of things. "Or do you only use your inventory?"

"Inventory." Simon inched closer to the small pile of objects. Apparently Lewis had deep... what were they? Pockets? "What is all of this?"

"Most of it's tools from my ship." He held up a flat black thing that looked like an obsidian brick. "This is a tablet, it's sort of like a book, but it can hold a lot more information that just one book. And you can do more things than read too." He pushed something on the thin side making the broad side light up.

"Ooh." Simon peered down at it. "Shiny."

Lewis tapped it several times and it's surface shimmered and changed colors. Shapes appeared and disappeared, and strange text sprung to life. "It's supposed to be used mostly for taking notes in the field, but it has enough memory in it to do a lot more than that. I have hundreds of books on here, mostly from my home world. History, mostly, some classic stories, and a lot of facts and figures."

Simon felt his hand itch to toy with it. "Magic."

"No, a computer."

"A magical, glowing, computer."

Lewis laughed out right at that. "Sure, OK." He poked it a couple more times. "Do you like music?"

Simon looked up at him, the blue light that was radiating off the little black brick was making Lewis's face take on ghostly colors. "Yeah." It was sort of creepy and scary and very exciting. "But, I warn you, the music dwarfs listen to is, as I understand it, not quite what you humans like."

"Oh?" He was focused on the little computer thing. "Why not?"

"Well." Simon sat back and tried to remember what he'd been told. Apparently humans liked slow, lumbering, tweeting music that made everyone slow down and dance like they were caught in soul sand. Not at all like the dwarf music, that could get you to hopping or tunneling or just moving all over. "I've never heard human music, but I've been told it's boring."

"Hmm." Lewis continued to poke at his computer. "Elevator music."

"Pardon?"

Lewis waved his hand. "Never mind. Here." He set the thing down between them. "March of the Trolls, or some translate it to March of the Dwarfs, by Edward Grieg, one of Earth's finest musicians."

Simon watched as the little black thing lit up and shimmered all sorts of colors. Along with the colors music started to tumble out of it, from where he couldn't tell. It was good, too, rambunctious and hopping... for a while, then it became everything he expected human music to sound like.

"It started out good."

"It goes back to the start again, give it a second." Lewis chided.

Simon listened and was pleased to hear the original sound return, with more vigor the second time. "I liked it." He wanted to scoop the little thing up and poke at it, but held back. "I liked it a lo..."

A low, husky, gargling moan cut him off. Zombie. He ignored it. "...a lot." He said, finishing the sentence firmly. "Really, that's not at all what I expected. Do you have anything else?"

When Lewis didn't say any thing Simon looked up. In the soft glow the human's skin had lost all appreciable color, his expression had snapped back to one of fear.

"What is that?"

"Zombie." Simon shrugged and found his fingers somehow inching closer to the computer thing. "They can't get us in here."

"What about the animals?" Lewis stood and scratched at his arm. "Are they going to be OK? That cow out there hasn't got anywhere to hide."

Simon rolled his eyes. Really, you'd think he could figure somethings out for himself. "They're safer than we are."

"But..."

The cow from earlier mooed, as if waiting for just that moment. "See?" Simon stood, his hand grabbing the device as he went. "If all of the animals were in danger then there'd be none left."

"Right, OK." He didn't look, or sound convinced.

The zombies continued to groan, and the cow mooed. It was it's own kind of creepy music. "See?" Simon prodded again. "She's fine." Though she didn't sound nearly as interesting as 'The March of the Trolls/Dwarfs'.

Lewsis started to relax. "They can't get us?"

"No, they..." The cow started to moo, and then in the middle of one long low note, fell suddenly dead silent. "Oh." Simon sank back down.

Lewis dropped down next to him. He was shaking again. "Ah, AH... that cow!"

Indeed. Simon swallowed thickly. "I'm sure she..."

The cow mooed again, sounding close, and maybe it was his imagination, but also amused.

"There." Simon let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and laughed. He felt just a bit shaky. "There she is." And she'll be supper one day for that, he added to himself.

Lewis let out a laugh as well, only it didn't have much humor in it. "Right, well, so they can't get cows."

Imagine if they could. Dwarfs were by far stronger than humans, or so he'd been told, but cows just sort of took the trophy for being big and powerful. First of all they were big, and big helped. Secondly they were covered almost entirely with leather. What wasn't leather was hoof or horn. So basically they grew their own armor and weapons. Simon touched his own helmet and found himself appreciating the horns there. The bull he'd taken them from had been one hard-to-kill beast.

"No, they can't. Zombies really aren't all that strong. There just tends to be a lot of them, sometimes." Simon lifted the device in his hand, his thumb almost sliding over the glowing edge. "You going to show me more of this, or are you ready for a little shut eye?"

"I could use a bit of a lie down." Lewis admitted, though there was no room for such a thing. "I don't know if I can sleep tonight, though."

Simon felt his stomach grumble. "Yeah, it'd be better here if we had more room and didn't have all the company." His stomach continued to grumble until it let out its own gurgling growl.

The moment Lewis heard the guttural sound he shot back in to the corner and blanched. A moment latter his eyes snapped on to Simon's middle, and he let out a huge huff. "That was you!"

Simon giggled. "Sorry." He held out the device. "So, music and good reading for the evening it is then, yes?"

Lewis took his computer thing back. "Sure." His finger tips were like ice.

"You still cold?" Simon asked, getting comfortable again.

Lewis nodded. "A bit." He set the computer down on his leg and rubbed his chilled fingers together. "It's alright, never mind about that." He looked like he was almost back to calm when suddenly the chime like clattering of bones filled the air.

"Lewis?"

Every hair on his body sprung up like a frightened cat's fur. His face lost what ever color it had gained and he curled up, trembling. "Simon. I'm scared."

That, the dwarf noted, was obvious.

The moment Lewis said it, he regretted it. Admitting there was fear was the same as giving yourself an excuse to wallow in it. But he just couldn't help it. Now that it had been said, and heard, it tried to consume him. His heart thundered unchecked in his – HIS – ribs. The raging pulse made his head swim.

Calm down calm down calm down...

He took a gulp of air and forced his attention onto anything else. Anything but the bones rattling just outside.

The dwarf. Focus on the dwarf, ask questions. Knowledge is power. "So, um, Simon, uh..." Think. Ask anything. Ignore the sounds. Can't get in. Can't hurt. "How many humans do you know?"

"Just you." The dwarf shrugged.

That wasn't comforting at all. "No one?"

He shook his head, red hair swaying here and there. "Nope. You are my first."

"You know, our scans didn't show any advanced life forms at all. Or any dead life forms. Actually that is a contradiction. Life forms can't be dead. Can they? They can't. We didn't see any structures either. The ship saw nothing. We just, uh, we looked!" Lewis knew he was rambling, but it didn't matter. As long as it kept him from total panic then so be it. "We looked for it."

"For what?" Simon asked.

"Structures or roads or anything." Itchy. Lewis started to feel itchy and crawly and squirmy all over again. "Do you all live underground?"

"I am a Dwarf." Simon leaned forward, his eyes a bright shimmer in the dark. "We've established this."

"Right." Lewis scratched at the crawling, found that it was starting to hurt, and then pulled his hands together, holding them tightly over his knees. "Right, of course you are." His tablet teetered for a moment, before falling on the dirt floor with a dull thunk.

Low growls sounded from just beyond the walls. Something scratched the wood behind Simon.

For a long moment they sat in dark silence. In time the sounds faded, then were gone completely. The stillness was almost as unsettling as the night noises. Lewis tried his best not to fidget.

"They really can't get us, you know." Simon stood and inched his way over to the door past Lewis's feet. "No creepers that I can see." He sighed. "Good. I hate those things." He glanced over his shoulder. "You'll hate them too, everyone hates creepers."

Hate, he already hated it here. "But we're safe?" He couldn't stand how much of a whine his voice held now. I'm an officer of Earth's best, what's wrong with me? I've taken on hoards of terrifying things before, alone even. But his shipmates had been looking for him. He'd been alone, but not without a watchful eye from above.

"Perfectly."

Angels in star ships. That's what his crew was. He wanted one to descend and tell him everything was going to be OK.

"I'm going out." Simon stepped up to the door.

"WHAT?" Lewis found himself on his feet and pressed back into the corner. "Why?" The memory of the sounds were echoing now, rattling around in his head, making it hard for him to even focus.

Simon shrugged. "Bored now, and there aren't any creepers, so..."

A small part of Lewis wanted to go too. Go where, he had no idea, but he wanted to go. That was almost more terrifying than the sounds. His bones itched.

"But..." He scratched at the crawling feeling that was racing up and down his spine. "They have bows!" A bow. That's what he wanted... Somehow that seemed right. Pull back and aim. You don't need the light to see targets now. He shook the thoughts from his head.

"Do you use bows?" Simon asked, distracted.

"No!" He swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment. "I use another kind of weapon. An energy one that shoots light."

"Like that?" Simon pointed to the tablet, now laying discarded on the floor. "That has light in it."

"No." Lewis scooped the tablet up, turned it off. His hands were shaking just a bit. Breath, be calm, you are safe. "No this is just a complicated calculator." The itch to pull string and let loose a bolt, however, was drifting through him like clouds over a mountain top. He couldn't shake it. A part of him didn't want to.

"You said it was a book." Simon was grabbing the door latch.

"Yes, well..." Wait. I have my phaser. He dug around in his other cargo pocket and pulled the weapon out, checked it, and frowned. It was warped looking, like it had been partly melted. "Damn it!"

Simon looked over his shoulder at the remains of the weapon. "Oh. That's busted for sure."

"Yeah." There should have been warning signs, or an energy reading. There should have been some thing. He looked at Simon, who was still at the door. They should have been able to see the tunnels. Had they even looked? He couldn't remember seeing any reports other than the surface scans. Maybe nothing could be seen.

Belatedly it occurred to Lewis that the whole planet could have been soft cloaked. It would explain the malfunctions and the communication jams. Why he had no idea. Soft cloaks were some times erected by the 'fleet to protect under developed planets from dangerous prying eyes. Wooden tools, not even stone ones, and 'magic'. This planet was odd and very primitive. Dangerous too. He had no idea who would want to hide it, but he did know a large enough structure, built above the ground, could breach the cloak, assuming it was there to begin with.

"Ready?" Simon asked.

"No." Lewis was a little proud of himself for not letting the word come out as a squeak.

"Look." Simon opened the door then stepped back as far as he could. "Look out there and tell me what you see."

Against every instinct crying out to NOT look Lewis stepped up to the door and peered out. All he could see, really, was darkness and stars.

The stars! He stared up at them, wondering if one bright fleck of light was his ship, his crew. His family. You didn't survive the missions they had without becoming a family. He wanted to go home.

"See?" Simon asked, "Go on. Have a look."

Lewis backed up, hit the dwarf, and was shoved gently forward. "No wait. . ." Too late he stumbled out of the only safe place in the world, and found himself standing in thin moonlight on the grass.

The cow gave him a curious look, and then lumbered off towards a tree.

Lewis stared dumbly after the alien bovine. Whispers in the back of his mind begged him to get back in to the house. Begged him to go in to the trees and shuffle around. Begged him to do...

"Do you see anything out there?" Simon asked from behind him.

… He didn't know what he wanted to do. No, he did know. He wanted to get away, leave the dwarf alone, crawl back into bed on the ship and sleep it off. He wanted to hit someone, but he didn't know who. Simon, maybe for making him come out here. Yes. Simon.

Movement at the tree line made Lewis freeze. "There's something out there!"

"What?" Simon asked. "What do you see?"

"Something. Something is out here!" Black and white lumbered in to view. "The cow." Lewis let out a laugh. "It's just that cow."

"Oh for goodness sake." Simon stepped out as well. "Well, so far so good."

"Hmm." Lewis craned his neck around. A sheep grazed off in the distance.

"For now, anyway." The dwarf stepped up to his side.

Lewis clutched his broken weapon and swallowed the different little commands and urges running around in his mind and chalked it all up to being scared and tired. Adrenalin was still pouring through him, but it was waning fast. "Now what?"

Instead of Simon's voice answering a low gurgle sounded from the shadows of the night. A staggering figure loomed in to view, it's eyes blank and it's jaw hanging open.

"Back in the house! Get in!" Simon darted back, opened the door, and waited. "Lewis!"

Not needing another command he darted back in and slammed the door. It hit so hard that it popped back open. "No!" He grabbed it again and slammed it once more. Once more it snapped back open.

"Stop." Simon reached for it. "It's not that sturdy, you'll bust it." he closed it gently, then laughed again.

Lewis took a breath. "OK. OK, lets not panic." He ran a hand through his hair. His heart was pounding again. His vision swam just a bit.

"Weapons." Simon shoved him out of the way and stepped up to the crafting table. "Come here."

With out protest Lewis stepped up to him. "OK."

"Do you remember our crafting lessons from this morning?"

Lewis nodded. "Yeah."

"Good." Simon shoved some wood in to his hands. "Time to make a sword. Follow my lead."

It was a rough few minutes, and a thorough exercise in patience, but Simon managed to guide Lewis through the making of a sword.

It wasn't exactly the best of weapons, but it was solid. Lewis took a few swings with it and showed good form. He had been trained prior to coming here, Simon noted, and the wood was sharp enough to do what it was intended to do.

"Ready?" He asked. They could say in, but Lewis was stewing in his own worry, making the monsters out there more powerful than they really needed to be. If he got a good swing at one, maybe killed one of them, then a lot of that panic would take care of itself.

At least that's how it had been for Simon the first night he'd been out on his own. He remembered taking down a zombie after a rough chase and a few missteps. It wasn't like a bull, but it was scary. Bulls kicked and gouged, but if you lived you lived. Simple. Zombies bit, and if you lived through the fight some times that bite changed you.

What mattered here wasn't what they were fighting, though, because eventually you fought it all. What mattered was that you took that first step. Fear could cripple.

"Sure. I'm ready!" False bravado was as apparent coming from a human as it was from any dwarf. Fear was clear in the Lewis's eyes. "Lets do this."

There was a nigh-on giddy feeling coming to life in Simon, like he was about to go into a new cave for the first time and didn't know exactly what was in there. Creepers could be lurking, but there could be treasure too.

Maybe not treasure. He stepped up to the door. But maybe creepers. Still, he was excited. One glance back confirmed that the explorer was with him, at the ready. Good, at least he's not cowering any more. Simon tossed the door open and stepped out.

Slowly. "OK... I see..." There, in the shadows, was something. Two legs, long, and arms as well. Zombie. Good, not a creeper. "It's..."

Lewis hissed something alien and fidgeted. "What is that?"

"It's a zombie." Simon inched towards it. "Careful now, it'll see you."

As if the fates were watching and waiting for just that phrase, the Zombie turned, let out a low growl, and started towards them.

Lewis made all sorts of panicky sounds. "Simon!"

"Steady!" Simon gripped his sword tighter. He strode forward to intercept, maybe kill it if he could, when Lewis let out a giddy yelp.

"We're surrounded! Friend! Simon!"

Simon spared a glance back, and saw Lewis swinging rather crudely at his own zombie. So much for prior training.

A wet snarl reminded Simon what he was supposed to be doing, and he focused on the now much closer undead figure before him. It lunged awkwardly. Simon blocked with matching grace, found himself too close to snapping teeth, and shoved the green body backwards. It teetered, unbalanced, before catching itself.

"SIMON!"

Simon stepped back, quickly, and put a bit of ground between himself and the monster. "What?"

"I..." Lewis made a strangled sort of sound, then whined, "Two of them!"

"I know." Simon glared at the undead still shuffling for him.

"No, NO, two... I have... Do something!"

Sparing another glance Simon saw Lewis was cornered by two lumbering zombies. To his credit Lewis wasn't quite panicking just now, but he wasn't faring well either.

An arrow zinged through the air, narrowly missing Simon's nose. Oh good, bone archer, as if we didn't have enough trouble as is. "Back! Let's head back!"

Lewis retreated, made it to the door, and stopped to wait. "Hurry, friend? Simon?"

"Get in!" Simon ran back, keeping an eye on the four monsters as he went. When he got to the door Lewis was still there, blocking it. "Move. In. IN!"

The human was frozen. His eyes locked on to something.

Simon turned and scanned the dark. He saw the archer at the tree line. At this distance, though, it couldn't track them. "Go." He gave Lewis a firm shove. "It's not a threat right now. But if it gets closer it'll see us."

Lewis shuddered and all but shrank back into the hut.

Well, so much for overcoming the first fear. Simon sighed, stepped in, and shut the door. The human was not faring well now, not at all. His eyes were unfocused and he was trembling all over again.

"Where do they come from?"

"The darkness, Lewis." But they had been over that, hadn't they?

"The darkness." Lewis slumped back against the wall. He was still shaking, but his eyes were focusing now. Thoughts were taking hold.

Simon waited.

"So... so what, we wait till morning?" He glanced at the door, licked dry lips, and shifted in place. "Then we... we look around. Maybe we can find a high point and I can try getting a message out. If not," here he paused, looked back at the window, took a breath, then continued, "then I, I don't know." Right then he sank a little. "How long till morning?"

"Well, I'm not to sure. You can tell time by the moon, just the same as the sun." Simon reached up to pull off some of the roof to look and see if he could find that big rock in the sky, discovered he was to short, and settled for looking out the window of the door. "If the moon is, you know, right above us then it's midnight. When the sun sets it rises. And if the moon sets the sun will come up on the other side of the horizon."

A figure was shuffling towards them, white and thin under the light.

Lewis stepped up to him, peered out the door, and cringed. "It's coming, the skeleton is coming. But we're safe in here?"

Simon stepped back, and leaned against the far wall. "Um, well, I didn't want to tell you this..."

"What?" The look Lewis gave him was worry hewn from solid fear, and smelted into a sharp blade of anxiety. He griped the wooden sword till his knuckles turned white.

"Well, you see those windows in the door?"

Lewis glanced at them. "Yes?"

"The archers can shoot through them."

He shot back to his own corner. "You have got to be kidding!"

"'Fraid not." Simon fidgeted, not sure himself. He hadn't really forged any plans before now, and just sort of let his feet take him wherever. It had worked mostly because he was alone, and little holes for shelter didn't really bother him that much. But a human, that was different. They needed the sun. They needed it like plants needed it.

Plants! That reminded him. He opened up his inventory, pulled out the little rose from before, and pressed it in to the dirt. It took hold, stiffened, and stood firm. "Here."

"Oh." Lewis looked at it, visibly allowing himself to be distracted.

"I thought this place could use a little cheer." He smiled.

"Thanks."

The red was nearly a glow in the dark, and Lewis found himself once again surprised by the flora. The rose simply replanted itself. Did things here not have roots? Some planets had rootless vegetation, but all of those plants tended to snake along the ground and toss out air-roots that sucked moisture right out of the atmosphere. Earth had plants with air-roots, and roses, but this was all together different.

He wanted to show his shipmates. Some of them would cultivate and studied the little flower for days, maybe even weeks, with pure unbridled scientific fascination. They'd study everything here in pure unbridled scientific fascination. This world was so different, so alien, that it was hard to accept as real. But it was and he was trapped here and there was nothing he could do about that. Not now, at least.

In the morning he'd be able to go out and explore, maybe find a place where there was less interference. Then he'd contact his people, and they'd come, or bring him aboard. A little part of him hoped they would just bring him home. He knew that it was selfish, like eating the apple had been, but his survival instincts were in overdrive. That he blamed on what had happened during the transfer down, and the following events.

His bones still felt crawly. He reached up to scratch at his temple, felt the bone, and fought off a new feeling of anxiety.

Had it not been for Simon... No, he already told himself once he wouldn't dwell on it, so he wasn't going to.

When I make contact I'm having him transferred up with me. The crew would love to meet him. That was a much better line of thinking.

Music started to drift through the shelter. Startled Lewis blinked and looked around, momentarily thinking the tune was coming from outside. Unless one of the undead had somehow formed a band and started to play he found that scenario quite improbable.

Though, after what he'd seen, not quite impossible.

"Oh hey, I got it to work!" Simon held up the tablet and grinned.

Oh, right! Computer. Lewis was glad it was too dark, and Simon too distracted, to see the look of embarrassment he was sure was on his face. Music... ambient in the world... ha.

Then again, leaves floated in mid-air, and the dead attacked you. He realized he wouldn't be totally surprised if music suddenly started playing randomly, from nowhere.

"Does this have anything for sunrise? You don't get a lot of sun in caves, you know, so dwarfs play a song in the morning, sometimes, not all the time, to let everyone know it's time to get up. Mostly that's not how it happens now, we all have our own clocks, but now and then, on holidays mostly..." He played with the tablet for a moment. "Do humans have holidays?"

"It does, and we do." Lewis reached out and took the tablet. "Here, Edvard Grieg's 'Morning'." He played the music, and was rewarded with Simon's not-quite-in-tune mimicry.

"I like it. I'm going to sing that. Every morning."

Lewis winced. "You really don't have to, I could just set the alarm..."

"Every morning." Simon said again, ignoring him, grinning like a cat with a mouse.

Lewis desired not to argue. If his benefactor wanted to sing old Earth tunes then he wasn't going to stop him. "OK. If you must." He hopped it would be a one time thing. Maybe a never time thing.

"What else is on here? Any more human music like the other one you showed me?" Simon asked, almost bouncing on his toes.

"Well, lets see..." Lewis opened up the master list that was categorized by approximate composition dates, and started with the earliest music he had. They could work their way to the most recent, and see what they both liked. Music was the universal language, after all, you could gain a lot of knowledge about someone just from what they liked to listen to. "Lets see, we'll start with a simulation of what the Divje Babe flute might have sounded like, and go from there."

"OK!" Simon plopped down and got comfortable.

Lewis sat down next to him and started the sound file. The haunting breathy sounds of the flute seemed to echo the wind outside. It seemed some how terribly fitting.

Tomorrow it would literally be a different tune, he'd find a way to contact his people, and go home. For now, at least, he pushed all of his doubts and worries aside. He wasn't alone, freezing to death, burning alive from the inside out, in any other immediate danger, or starving. The last one nagged him, and fed him a trace of guilt, but he'd make it up to Simon. He swore he'd show the dwarf a food replicator.

"Boring. Next!" Simon demanded with almost childlike enthusiasm.

Lewis chuckled. "OK, OK, maybe we'll bump the time line up a millennium or two..."

It was a startling contrast to how he'd spent the night before, but Simon found that everything he'd endured out there on his own had been worth it. The shelter was good, the music was mostly alright, and the company, while odd, was some how comforting. The hunger was an irritation – he was sure Lewis had eaten the apple – but he'd been hungry before. He wasn't going to die tonight, and that was all he could really ask for.

The elders were wrong. Lewis wasn't a dwarf, certainly, but if you dug past all of the fear and got him to calm down and think he was definitely not an animal. Animals couldn't craft.

Lewis started to yawn somewhere between what he called the 'baroque era' and the 'classical'. Well into the 'romantic' period he started to fall asleep.

An hour latter Simon had the device and was listening to music quietly. Lewis was curled up next to him, sword at the ready.

He'd survived his first night, but that was no guarantee.

Humming? Who the hell is humming? Lewis cracked one eye open and looked around. For just one moment he thought maybe he was back on his ship, in his bed, with his people.

A badly broken tune, sounding some what like Edvard Grieg's 'Morning', drifted discordantly through the air.

"Simon!" Lewis covered his head and rolled dover. Or he tried to roll over. His knees hit the crafting table, and his nose kissed the edge of his wooden sword. A little cut and a drop of blood was not a good substitute for his morning cup of simulated caffeine.

"Good morning!"

Lewis scowled.

"Sleep well?"

Not really. "Perfectly." He sat up slowly and rubbed the kink out of his neck. "What time is it?" It was still mostly dark in the shelter, but the first traces of sunlight were warming things.

Simon shrugged. "Dawnish. Look, the sun is coming up."

He tried to stand and felt an angry creak from every joint. He got to both feet, discovered his knees hated him the most for slamming them in to the bench, and threatened to give out. He'd slept on the ground on dozens of worlds before now, and each time he'd been alright in the morning. He was young, he shouldn't feel like this. It was like his skeleton was all old and creaky and...

Oh. Right.

Simon tossed the door open and grinned. "Look! I love sunrise. You just don't get to see it when you live in a tunnel."

Lewis peered out and saw pink lining the horizon. A sliver of bright white split the sky, and the sun was up.

As the agony of the sunlight flared and died and flared again courage and terror battled with in him. Whispers of a life once lived, but now long spent, echoed in shards of memories.

Lewis stepped back into the shelter of the still dark structure. Tea, coffee, even a shot of that sugary fizzy syrup called 'soda' the ensigns like to drink by the gallon, would have been welcomed right about now. His brain just didn't want to process what had happened, what he had to do, and what it all meant.

"I think it's lovely." Simon went on, mostly oblivious. "Don't you think?"

Lewis swallowed his apprehension and stepped back up to the doorway. The sun was lifting, a golden radiant globe, warming the world. "It really is beautiful." He admitted.

"The big Blue Xephos." Simon grinned at him. "Oh wait, that's you."

Lewis rolled his eyes. "It's not my name. That'll never stick, any way. Lewis is much easier to say."

"Xephos." Simon bounced on the balls of his feet. "Trust me, it'll stick."

"It'll never..." Bones rattled from very near by. Lewis swore at the sound. At least this time he wasn't beaming down to the world. They couldn't get him in transit this time. "I thought these things burned in the morning." He inched forward and peered out the door, his nerves re-fraying.

Two cold, hollow eyes met his. "It's out here! It's right there! Right there!" Lewis scrambled back and fumbled for his blade. I will not panic. He grabbed the wooden weapon tightly and took a breath. I am a trained officer, I can over come this.

Simon pulled his sword from his inventory and stepped out. "Where... OH." He laughed a little. "Like, he's stuck on the door some how. They are so dumb." He swung the sword a couple of times, then left the shelter all the way. "Lewis! There are more!"

Gathering his courage, and scrapping the memories of his Earth based training together, Lewis hurried out. Look, count their numbers, think, what advantages do you have? What advantages do they have?

He spun on his heal and backed away from the shack. Trees had sprung up, over night, giving shade to the aria. Simon was full on attacking the skeleton between two short oaks, but his moves were slow and a bit labored. Behind the dwarf, stepping out and snarling, were two zombies.

"They were camping!" Lewis gripped his sword tighter. I want my bow. "They were waiting... Simon!" His fingers itched for the pull of the draw string.

"Just kill them!" Simon swung again, and stumbled. His stomach roared. "Shut up, not listening to you!"

The skeleton ducked around the side of the shed, Simon hot on it's heals, leaving Lewis with the two sickly green monsters.

The thin rack of white was gone, fleeing from the sunlight, and had vanished in the trees behind the house.

His whole body, from the stomach out, felt hollow. Depleted of energy he sagged against an old oak and tried to catch his breath. The hunger had changed from a gnawing, rib sucking need, to an almost shaky stark blank feeling.

The world tilted, and he hurt. Though he'd slept he was tiered.

Back with the other dwarfs he'd never been this hungry before, never, and he didn't like the feeling. The elders had told him going out would be suicide.

Well, he wasn't dead yet.

Bones rattled and an arrow slammed in to wood an inch from his nose. He leaped back, away from the arrow. and was swamped with vertigo. His balance shot he stumbled back to one knee, and cursed.

"OK. I can do this." Lewis took a breath then bounced on his toes to limber up his still stiff knees. "Easy. They aren't fast, they aren't smart and they aren't that strong looking." Besides, they aren't armed. He added to him self. He clutched his sword tighter and grit his teeth.

Encouraged by the feeling of the wooden blade in his grip he charged the first zombie and took a hard swing. The sword slammed into rotting flesh, sliced through and snapped bones.

The zombie turned dead eyes on him and gurgled. It did not stop however, and reached for him.

Lewis yanked his sword free and stepped back, bitting down a curse. "Fall! Die!"

The zombie followed him, it's arms out stretched, it's eyes rolling unfocused in deep pitted sockets. The moment it's flesh entered the sunlight flames licked up over the knuckles, and spread rapidly up it's arm.

"Yes!" Lewis darted back into the light. The sun was aiding now, not hurting. Xephos. He grinned and turned back to the undead before him. It was sort of a cool name, not that he'd admit it to Simon. "Die, you ugly..."

The second zombie slammed into him cutting him off. Lewis cried out and tried to shove it off, but it was surprisingly strong. Slimy teeth appeared and bit down hard into his arm. He dropped his sword in shock. Then fire sprung up over both of them.

"No!" He twisted back, but couldn't wrench free. "Off! OFF!" He shoved again, harder, and managed to pry it's jaws loose before they could get through his tunic's sleeve, but the first zombie grabbed his other arms and pulled, dragging him towards the darkness of the shade.

Lewis twisted again, then kicked the first green limb he could reach. A leg snapped, and one rotting body fell away. Still in flames the first zombie collapsed, nothing more than a rotting pile of half burnt flesh.

Ignoring the slimy mess at his feet Lewis turned his whole attention to the second zombie. It was snapping it's teeth near his neck, gurgling on slime and old blood, and burning up all over. Lewis turned his face from the flames and gave the undead one more desperate, hard shove. "Just die!"

There was a horrible moment when it didn't budge, then one arm popped out of it's socket and it too collapsed in to a heap of decomposing meat.

Lewis, singed and shaking, slumped to his knees.

Simon scooted around the tree and staggered up to his feet. He could hear the bones clattering around, still trying to get to him with out sacrificing it's self to the light.

Gathering his nerves and taking a chance he peered around the trunk. There, an inch from his face, was a chalky white grin and two dark hollow voids where eyes should have been.

Fear like a bolt shot through him and he screamed.

"Lewis!" The cry echoed over the whole aria.

"Simon?" Lewis picked him self up and steeled his nerves. "SIMON!?"

Only the hush of a new dawn answered him.

Fear started to settle in, but Lewis shoved it to the back of his mind. He grabbed his sword and made his way around the side of the building.

"Friend?" He peered around the corner.

Simon was pined down and gasping under a lofty tree, his sword a dozen feet away. Between him and his weapon was the skeleton. "Help!"

Lewis tried to take a step forward. He tried. The skull turned, it's dark sockets locking on in a hollow stare.

Bones, that's what was shuffling towards him. White like the snow but not, and clattering like old cutlery, the skeleton drew close. It had deep dark pits for eyes, and sharp little white teeth. Clutched in one hand was a wooden bow, the other hand was lifting, reaching towards the shimmer of gold.

Lewis moved a step backward, the past giving way to the dawn of now. Yesterday was over. Over! He didn't have to think about what had happened. He knew, his training had told him, that clinging to the past would only trap him there.

It was like being dead, if you couldn't move on.

The sun was at his back, he could feel it's warmth through the red of his shirt. He was alive. Alive! He had to grasp that much.

He lifted his sword.

The bones pulled an arrow from the thin air, and loaded it's bow.

Fear swelled and he glanced at the dwarf kneeling near by. "Simon, we can run."

"I can't!" he wailed. "I'm starving!"

The bowstring creaked with the tension it was being put under.

Lewis stepped back, the urge to run nauseatingly strong.

"Lewis!"

I'm an officer. I'm one of the best. I'm not going to let you frighten me. Lewis broke in to a run. His heart thundered in his ears.

The arrow was loosed. It sailed straight and true, right for Lewis's chest, but he jerked the wooden sword up and blocked the shot. Flint struck wood with a dry thunk.

I am not going to die here!

He lifted the scarred blade and charged.

I'll live, because I'm going to find a way to get home. You can't stop me!

The bones reached for another arrow, but before it could draw and load Lewis slammed the sword blade down onto the skull. The white dome shattered and sent shards every where. The whole body crumbled before him. Shattered. The sky above him was living blue.

The sun shown down, broken up by the leaves in the trees, and danced over bone shards , making them glitter like star shine.

Lewis heaved a trembling breath in, then sank on jelly knees, as all tension he'd been holding since the dawn before ruptured and bled out like a lanced wound. The weapon tumbled from his fingertips to the grass.

A long moment passed where all he could do was breath.

"You OK?" Simon asked eventually.

Lewis nodded and turned to look back at Simon. "I'm. . ." He felt the lat dregs of the adrenalin rush drain, and his limbs went numb. "I'm shaking." He laughed. "That was horrifying!"

Simon peeled him self off of the tree and stepped up to him, also shaky. "You did good. . ." His stomach snarled angrily.

Lewis looked at Simon and felt a new wash of guilt. "I ate your apple." He turned away, shame burning where the fear had left him hollowed out.

"I know." Simon stepped aaround and stood in front of Lewis, grinning. "I gave it to you. But you," he pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the trees, "get to do the chopping today. I'm starving. You aren't." He reached down and picked up one of the little white shards. "But we have bones, so farming should be a snap." He offered the shard to Lewis.

"Farming?" Lewis backed away from the little white fragment.

"Yeah. With bones you make bone meal and. . ." His stomach sounded out once more. Simon huffed, sounding tired. "I heard you the last twenty times already!"

Lewis dragged him self up, and rubbed his hands together, trying to coax feeling back in to them. "I'll get you some thing to eat." Skirting around the pile of bones Lewis approached a tree. "Never mind the farming though, Simon. It will take to long."

"We'll farm latter then." Simon settled down in the grass and poked at the remains.

Lewis turned away. "When we are done maybe we can find some place where my communicator will work."

"Oh. I forgot about that." Simon's voice held dejection. And weariness. "You'll be looking for your ship then?"

Lewis attacked the tree with purpose, having nothing but his hands. It was still strange, but it gave him some thing to do to work through the after effects of the fight. "We'll get you sorted first, friend." He promised. After all, I owe you.

"All right." Simon sounded pleased. "Maybe we can find another place to live, some where cool, this place is OK but. . ."

Lewis only half listened as Simon rambled on about the world, his preference to rocks, the merits of caves and all things ore as he worked on finding apples. I'm still down here. He worked harder on the tree and was rewarded with the whole thing shattering. An apple fell neatly between his feet. But I'll find my way home.

That he promised too.

Authors notes:

About my other stories...

Alright, yes, I know, it's not "The Fox and the Wolf", but I've hit such a huge writer's block with it that it's like trying to write chapter TWO all over again. I don't know how many Fox/Wolf fans know this, but I hovered between Chapter one and Chapter two for Two years before I figured out what I needed to do. I KNOW what to write next for it, I just can't do it with out it sounding mechanical.

I needed to write something just to get the muse all warmed up, so consider this a good sign.

About This Story...

Yeah, I'm a Yogs fan, but if you know me and how I write then I'm going to mess with things in a very cool way. I've already said more or less every thing I needed to say about this story at the top, but I'll add one last thing... I can not promise you I'll ever finish this. Fox and Wolf is still my baby, and I will be giving that more love very soon. Growing pains too, because I am itching to see what happens next! So this story is just going to have to get in line and wait it's turn!