I’m not sure how many hours I floated down that river, but I knew that the days that followed were the worst possible start to my new life.

  Whether because of the multiple suns and moons, or the intensity of my time here, the days and nights dragged on for what felt like centuries. Two suns and two moons in the sky felt very odd to me, and messed with my perception of things. Both suns looked like what my memory described as “normal”, but one of the moons appeared off. It was cracked and seemed like it could tear apart at any moment.

  Yet another thing to be afraid of in this world…

  Regardless of how long it had been since escaping my nest, I spent almost the entire time running. Running from carnivorous fish that almost drowned me when I hid in the pond the river drained into. Running from sadistic monkeys that chased me up a tree and pulled on my limbs until they nearly ripped them off. Running from a floating orb that shot glowing arrows at me like I was walking target practice.

  Even when I had a moment of calm to eat, everything I tasted was just as dangerous. There were red berries that were so spicy they nearly burned me alive from the inside out, and sweet-smelling nuts that actually bit me before I could bite them. There were strangling vines, landslides, swarms of insects, and I swear a volcano the size of a mouse appeared underneath me just when I was about to fall asleep the first night.

  However, there was nothing as terrifying as the bird monster or the masked figure I had seen after being born. But it was all bad enough to make every moment feel like my last. Wherever I was, it was a place that really, really wanted me dead.

  And surviving all of this isn’t enough to level up?!

  Throughout this horrible time, a few more memories came back to me. I still didn’t have everything, but a lot flooded into my mind after I recalled one thing in particular. It was after one of those monkeys threw a rock at me. I dodged it (just barely), but it triggered a very specific memory. One that scared me almost as much as the bird monster’s open maw above my helpless form.

  It was me, but not as I was now. The me I was before. I was standing on a large platform. There were crowds of other people, so many that I could barely stand without being shoved. Suddenly, a massive metal thing came speeding in from my left. It looked kind of scary, but everyone there seemed relieved it was arriving. But just as I looked up at it, someone behind me shoved just a little too hard. I tripped over my own feet and stumbled forward off of the platform. I looked back and forth, unsure where to go or what to do, frozen from fear.

  The last thing I remember were bright lights coming directly at me and then…

  Nothing.

  I think it was my last memory. Whoever I was before had died quickly and unexpectedly, then somehow ended up here. People in that other world believed in something called reincarnation, but could this really be it? All evidence pointed to yes, but it seemed too wild to be true. Though, a few days ago I had been born out of an egg, so really anything was possible.

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  Other than that, most of what I remembered seemed unimportant. An image of a building, the smell of a meal, a voice I recognized but couldn’t describe. It all felt important, but none of it was helpful in understanding how I ended up here. And there was certainly no memory to help me against the murderous creatures that were around every corner.

  Text box thing? Can you show me my status?

  My status screen appeared in front of me, but there wasn’t any new information. I had called it up to review several times, but despite all I had been through, I was still level 0. Usually, after spending a minute reviewing the status screen, I came up with a decent question to ask. But before I could ask it, a new enemy always seemed to pop out of nowhere and send me running for my life again. Fortunately, nothing had come after me for some time now, so I finally took a breath and started to try and figure some things out.

  I don’t really need to see my status. I wanted to know…why am I here?

  You ran from your nest.

  That’s not what I meant…forget it. Can you just tell me what to do? I don’t know where I am, I’m scared of everything, and I just want to feel safe.

  Suddenly, the text box that had my status screen gained a new option to the left. Above “Status” now read the word “Map”.

  Perfect! Thank you text box.

  It didn’t answer me, but I liked to believe it appreciated the common courtesy.

  I simply thought about opening the map, and it immediately did so. However, it wasn’t nearly as expansive as I had hoped. I was expecting to see a map showing borders and landmarks and distant mountains. But all I got was an image that looked like a bunch of random spirals on a foggy background. Thankfully, whoever I had been in my past life, they recognized this. It was an incomplete map that only showed the places I had been. And judging from how frantic and erratic the lines were, anyone could tell the last few days had been spent lost and running for my life.

  Most of what I saw in those lines were faded images of the rivers I had crossed, trees I had climbed, and fields I had run through. But one place had a few words next to it. The place where the line started was called: Meebur’s Hatching Zone. It was the place I had been born. Or reborn.

  Text box, why is this place named? Who is Meebur again?

  Meebur is the tamer who operates the hatching zone where you were born.

  His information has been added to your Almanac.

  In the text box menu, the word Almanac appeared above Map and Status. When it opened, there were only a few entries in it, like an incomplete encyclopedia. Most of them were clearly the names of the things that had tried to kill me in my first few days alive. The only one that scared me the second I read it was the entry for “???, the Harrowhawk”. It was the bird monster that ate the other eggs. And nearly me. The only thing that didn’t have an entry was whatever masked figure had appeared behind the hawk. The powerful presence that saved my life, yet managed to scare me so bad I almost wished I had died.

  As much as I want to thank them for saving me…I really hope we never meet again.

  I shook my head to stop thinking about them, and then opened up the entry for Meebur. There wasn’t an image but he was something called a “tamer”. They were people who hatched monsters like me. He trained them, helped them grow, become stronger, and together they would conquer dungeons and find treasure and go on adventures. But what his entry didn’t tell me was why he wasn’t there to protect me and the others from the Harrowhawk.

  If I wanted the answer to that, there was only one way to get it. I had to go back to the hatching zone.

  Back to the Harrowhawk. And the masked figure.

  I’m going to die.

  The Almanac has been updated with the entry for the word “obvious”.