Their landing is perhaps not the softest, although it's cushioned somewhat by the wildflowers and grass of the meadow they find themself in, stretching into the distance, with overgrown hedgerows visible. It's quiet, in a way, the wind gently blowing, and the calls of birds from distant trees, and the humming of insects.

They are very confused as they stand up and look around.  

The visual itself isn't too unusual from the VR recreations of the dead world.  That it comes complete with touch and smell is different.  He also doesn't know what the sounds are, as his only experience with humming noises are the ever-present processes keeping the ships running.  

Out of habit, he checks his phone.  No signal to the fleet.

There's no obvious evidence of other humans, the entire landscape, despite the animals and the other wildlife, seems...empty somehow? Almost dead.

...Is that a cottage over there? Maybe, hidden in amongst trees.

The animals and other wildlife are quite interesting to the new arrival.  He knows what pokemon are, even though they've been extinct since before the ships left the dead world.  These tiny creatures are much smaller, and not familiar.  He watches for a moment, moving around the smaller flowers of this world.  Maybe everything here is small?  It makes him hesitant to move and crush anything, though if anything hiding in the grass were sapient Florentho's ability to sense nearby emotions should warn them before they step on any.  It doesn't detect anything from insects.

He slowly starts walking towards the cottage.

From a distance, the cottage looks normal, but as they near it, it's broken down and ramshackle appearance becomes apparent - the roof is still mostly intact, but the doors and windows are broken beyond repair. There are signs that someone - or something - was recently making a home here, and there's birds nesting in the eaves, chirruping to each other, somehow muted. Although they probably don't have enough of a frame of reference to realise that the birds are a little quieter than they perhaps should be.

He steps closer to peer through a window.  Is there anything interesting inside?  

Not particularly. There's some furniture that's slowly decaying, some of which has definitely been broken down to be used as firewood. A stack of mouldering paper books next to what was once a bookcase. There's other doorways that can be seen - perhaps there's something more interesting in one of the other rooms?

They make their way to the door and step inside.  He wouldn't trust the roof for anything long-term, but the next five minutes are unlikely to be the five minutes that the roof finally gives in if its lasted so far.  

Inside smells...musty, and like the forest around it - broken windows will do that to a place.

There's a staircase to the left of them - although the wood might not hold his weight with the decay that's set in - and two doors - one into the room they were peering into from the window, and one into what looks like a toilet, tucked partially underneath the stairs.

"It feels strange that a building would just be left to rot like this," Florentho says.

Azure hums agreement.  "I guess if they have so much space around, it doesn't matter if some of it isn't used?"  Even with a logical answer, it still feels wrong.

Florentho is much more durable than a human, and can teleport back to the entrance if he gets stuck.  He glances outside and memorizes the terrain, just in case, then cautiously tries the staircase. 

It makes some concerning noises, but holds - at the edges at least, the centre of the stairs seem a little less sturdy.

The hallway the stairs lead onto has three doors - two bedrooms and a bathroom by the looks of things. And also...

Is that a hole in the wall? It doesn't look natural. It looks like something busted through it.

There are quite a few Moves that can break through walls, if not done in a special arena or reinforced as thick as a ship's hull.  Hyper Beam?  Or a few Tackles, even, if the wall isn't too thick.

If there's anything noteworthy, he'll stay up and investigate.  Otherwise, they might as well move on.  

It looks like one of the bedrooms had a map painted onto the wall at some point? And there's piles of what...might be map booklets on the desk beneath. That said, given how open to the elements the place is, they might not be any use any more.

He hesitantly nudges at the booklets with his blades, not wanting to get his hands dirty.  Even assuming the pages aren't too stuck together to open, they won't do any good - they've only ever used the digital maps of the ship, and wouldn't be able to tell distances.  

He'll return downstairs and leave the old house alone.  Perhaps there will be a road or path of some kind, assuming the person who lived here didn't Fly everywhere.  

Well, there's an overgrown path leading around the cottage - a little deeper into the forest, but also towards what looks like it might be a more open area? Perhaps a road?

It's that or any other direction at random.  They might as well try the path.

And they will, indeed, come to a road! There's only really one direction to go in - apparently this road ends at the house, and to the left there's what appears to be parking area (...with a car that looks like it's been torn apart?), and to the right the road itself leads off through the forest, overgrown and a little obscured.

He ignores the car and starts walking.  

The road goes on for quite a ways, winding through the forest, until it reaches a set of gate posts - slightly tumbled down, but the gates appear to have been long long gone. Beyond it there's a tarmac road, fallen into disrepair, with grass starting to grow through it.

-and a footprint? Except no human could have made something of that size.

It would be strange if every creature on the planet were the smaller-than-flabebe insects and the roughly pidgey-sized birds.  It isn't obvious by looking at a footprint if it belonged to a daemon or a wild creature.  Either way, it hasn't occurred to him that it's a thing to be alarmed by.  

Hanging around a broken gate doesn't seem any better than hanging around an abandoned cottage, so they might as well keep going.  Even in bad repair, the road is better than dirt.  Fleet shoes aren't made for anything other than flat smooth tile surfaces.

While the tarmac road is smoother, it regrettably is not entirely smooth, nor flat. It will be an increasingly exhausting hike - the road undulates, following the terrain rather than cutting through it.

There continues to be no sign of anything resembling an actual human. Although they will encounter more houses - in varying states of repair.

That's strange.  A single house falling to ruin would be one thing, but all of them?  They'll check any that look like they might still have something inside.  Before each one Florentho takes a moment to memorize the safest-looking clear spot on the road as a safety precaution.  Teleporting anywhere that wasn't an officially-marked teleportation pad was dangerous, as had been thoroughly drilled into him while he was getting his teleport license, but with a complete lack of proper teleportation pads they were going to need somewhere to retreat to if necessary.  (Florentho does try to send them back to the fleet, but it predictably fails.  There's a limit of about a hundred miles and they're well past it here.)

The houses are...mostly missing things someone might grab if they had to leave in a hurry, and didn't expect to be able to come back? There's still some things to find though - apparently not everyone thought to take all the canned food in their house, or forgot one in their hurry to leave, and some of the houses where the windows are in better repair some of the books will have survived without becoming mildewy. There's also the remains of technology - the computers and such like are probably somewhat less advanced than Azure and Florentho are used to.

He doesn't know much about the shelf life of canned food or about finding food in the wilderness.  Florentho is stronger and has far more endurance than his human, so he'll grab a few cans that look un-damaged to carry.  Azure doesn't intend to eat them today, in the hopes that he'll come across some humans instead, but he might as well have the option.  

Do any of the books seem useful?  

That would rather depend on what he counts as 'useful' - some of them are fiction books, but there's a number of non-fiction books as well, a few encylopedias, and in one house a series of science textbooks.

Attempting to get back home by re-learning all of science and building his own spaceship from the half-rotten wood is not what he's planning on doing, so the science textbooks don't interest him.  He'll skim through the encyclopedia to see if he spots any major differences between here and what he would expect from a planet after watching movies set in the dead world.  

Any book he brings with him would probably get ruined from being outside.  Instead, he finds places near the houses to sit down on to read and puts the books back inside after.  He needs to take an occasional break anyway, being unused to walking for hours at a time.  

Well, the animal section doesn't include anything even remotely similar to a pokémon, and there's no references anywhere to daémons either. In fact the world seems...boringly mundane?

He wasn't expecting the exact same species he was used to.  Other than their overly brown and gray colorations, they aren't too much different than he'd expect a decent CGI Alien Planet movie to come up with, visually.  The lack of elemental abilities is certainly strange, as is the fact that some species can apparently have their wool and skin and ...muscle tissue(?)... harvested.  He'd always assumed that pokemon just faded into golden sparkles if killed, like daemons do, but then again so much knowledge of the dead world was lost no one actually knows. 

The lack of daemons is much stranger and more alarming.  A planet of zombies?  Who seem to be otherwise capable of living in normal houses and writing encyclopedias, before abandoning them? 

Certainly based on this encyclopedia humans do not appear to be meaningfully impacted by the lack of a daemon? Except for insomuch as their infrastructure isn't built to accommodate them.

Apparently.  It's still about as strange to him as landing on a world where everyone is walking around normally despite missing their heads.  (In the back of his mind, he's thankful that his reaction is happening where the locals can't see rather than being probably-rude in front of them.)

Breaks aside, he continues travelling for as long as he can.

There's a couple of times where he might think he sees something large moving in the distance - but it's momentary, and hard to locate where the movement actually came from.

And eventually, the sun starts to set over the forest. And it looks like it's going to get dark.

They have a basic understanding of how planets and suns work, even if it's never been practical.  Once the sun starts getting low, they can stop at the next decent dwelling.  While they could teleport back and forth between the best house found so far and the furthest distance down the road and maybe get a half-hour further, they won't do it unless there's really nowhere in sight worth considering.  

"I'd rather not touch any of the soft surfaces inside," Azure considers aloud.  "And between the hard floor and grass, grass seems like it might be better."

"More dangerous, though," the other part of him says, walking around the place.  He'd appreciate a good fight to burn off his nervousness at seeing the distant shadows throughout the day, but only if he's ready.  Unfortunately, daemons and their humans can't take shifts to watch as they both sleep at once.  Florentho looks up, though trees also seem like a bad idea to try and sleep in without some sort of harness.  "Would the grass even be cleaner, really?  It'd smell better, but probably way more of those tiny crawling creatures."

They look for the best of whatever available soft surfaces there are, and any abandoned towels or tarps that might be better than touching it directly.  Otherwise, they can cut off some small branches from outside to make a leafy nest layer over the top of the indoor material.  

It'll take a little bit of hunting, but they'll find a house of still solid construction, in what appears to be a cluster of farm buildings. There's a downstairs room that seems to have escaped the decay and destruction. A bit of searching will yield a tarp from one of the outbuildings - that had been covering up old machinery, and searching through the cupboards will yield a few towels that look...fairly okay to be honest? A little musty from not having been taken out of a closet for so long, but not obviously decaying or harbouring dangerous spores.

Sleeping while hungry is hard, and the odds of running into anyone in the next few days seems unlikely at this rate - one of the decent-looking cans is opened and eaten by Azure.

Afterwards, they prepare a place to sleep out of the nicest materials and Azure fully wrapped in the tarp.  Florentho, wanting to be ready to jump up if anything dangerous approaches, lies down between Azure and the rest of the room uncovered.  

The night is quiet until the early hours of the morning, so they'll get at least some sleep.

And then, in the early hours, there's the sound of something large moving through nearby trees, making no attempt to hide its presence or mask the sounds of trees being broken and uprooted. There's a kind of cry echoing out as well, no discernable words, just a...wailing?

Florentho stands up as quietly as possible, preparing to use any of his Moves if necessary.  Cautiously stepping away, he sidles up to a wall and attempts to peek out of the window without being spotted.  It'll have to get within about 7 meters before he'll be able to detect emotion, if it's sapient or at least cleverer than whatever small creatures have gotten in range so far, but he can use his eyes from any distance a human can.

To begin with, he won't see anything, but then...

...Yeah, there's definitely something out there. It's larger than a human, and also larger than many animals, possibly all except elephants, and it's gait is lumbering and uncertain, using...arms? To haul itself through the landscape. And it...might have more limbs than is standard for creatures of this size? And-

-Yup, it tilts its head back and makes that wailing cry. It's mostly just outside Florenthos' range, but it does stray into the range, stopping and tilting its head around, sniffing at the air (...does it have eyes??) and... There's something there, emotions and half-thoughts that can't be followed through to the end, the train flickering out before it reaches completion. It certainly isn't like the small creatures that they've encountered so far.

Given the wanton destruction of trees, whatever it is probably isn't nice.  They'll both stay very still and hope it passes by.  Hope that whatever sense it's using can't detect them.  He wishes he'd been able to plan better Moves before getting thrown here - his current set is entirely utility and defense, with only his mundane blades to fight with.  

It turns its head towards the house they're staying in, sniffing, mouth lolling open - it seems to have one long fang set in amongst more normal appearing teeth, and it doesn't appear like there was a pair to that fang, unless it broke off a long time ago.

And then it pauses. No, it freezes, attention very focused on the area of the house where Azure and Florentho are, fear spiking and-

-And it turns, and does what is best described as fleeing, although it's still slow, cumbersome in its movements, it's definitely trying to get away.

What?

They stay completely still until it seems gone, then Azure slowly tries to disentangle himself from the tarp without making too much noise, then fold it up.  Freezing completely won't help, so they won't do it.  At least if he's standing he might be able to get out of the way if something starts trying to take down the walls.

"We weren't expecting anything that big," Florentho notes aloud, in a whisper.  "Trees getting torn up... that's going to be dangerous."  

Azure hums in agreement, ears straining for any other movement.  The few cans are put into the tarp as a makeshift bag for running quickly, though the noisy fabric isn't ideal for that.

It's...quiet outside now? Just normal forest sounds, and nighttime sounds, although...yeah, muted in a way that is probably becoming familiar at this point. But there doesn't seem to be anything else of that size moving around. Although that doesn't necessarily mean anything, given how suddenly that thing appeared...

Azure isn't sure what the best course of action is. 

"There are probably people around somewhere," he notes after a while, deciding to re-fold the tarp more tightly, then turn a towel into a makeshift bag instead.  That might be quieter.  "So we might as well keep following the road."

Before that, however, he decides to wait a little longer and check the area for anything useful.  A proper bag, a wheelbarrow, or anything that will help Florentho carry things.  Another can or two of food, if anything can be found.  He's thirsty, too, but any water might be dangerous.  Something that can start a fire and a pot to boil it in might be worth looking for.

Florentho considers the best place to teleport to if they need to come back here.  Somewhere out in the open, where it would be unlikely for trees or walls to fall into it as obstacles.  He considers what he knows of the places he memorized yesterday, and keeps only the best handful of possibilities, including the flowery clearing they originally landed in.  

There's a rucksack in one of the wardrobes - it's a bit tatty, and might not hold up for long, but it'll be somewhat easier than just using a towel as a makeshift bag. There's a box of matches in one of the kitchen drawers - pushed towards the back, forgotten, and half empty, but better than nothing! There doesn't appear to be any cans left in this house, and the pots that are left are on the heavier side - although they'd still do the job until they can find something lighter, and could perhaps work as a weapon in a pinch.

As for potential areas to teleport to, the yard formed by the buildings around them seems like it might do the trick? It's a mostly clear space of reasonable size, and although there's a few things scattered around, there isn't many?

They'll collect the rucksack, matches, and a pot. 

Florentho takes a moment to circle around the center of the clearing, far from walls, getting it into his memory.  Grass means he'll have to pick up Azure and teleport up a few feet in the air, but they'll have a soft enough landing.  If anything that looks like a sapling is around, he'll slice it with his blade, just in case.  Perhaps trees grow unusually fast here.  

That out of the way, they can go find a water source and some wood for a fire to boil it.

Wood is in slightly more ready supply than water! Although the tap against one wall will supply a gush of rust coloured liquid which...probably would not be a good idea to drink.

It sounds like there might be stream over that way? Towards where the sun is starting to peak over the horizon.

They will head in that direction, though are careful to keep their directions straight so they'll be able to return to going the correct direction on the road later.  

And they will find a picturesque stream! It looks, frankly, like something straight out of a painting, rather than something that could actually exist in real life, but here it is. The water tumbles over the rocks, swirling and eddying around them, and then slowing as it reaches deeper pools. There might even be fish in it? Small ones, but fish nevertheless!

The water isn't poisoning the fish - that's a good sign maybe? 

They'll gather enough fallen branches and dry leaves to light a small fire and put some water on it.  Perhaps Florentho will have time while the water boils to try and pester the fish and see if they can use Moves.  The birds haven't seemed to, but normal and flying are subtle Types and they're not fast enough to catch one.  

He will indeed have time!

They scatter when Florentho comes near, but he'll probably be able to catch one or two to pester. The fish do...not particularly seem to be able to use Moves? They seem to be just...mundane fish? A little way down the stream, far enough that Azure and Florentho aren't disturbing it there's a bird standing still, focused on the water. Abruptly it moves, head darting down, and when it comes up...it has one of the fish in its beak?

What strange creatures.

-And yup, the bird just flipped the fish in its beak and is now eating it?

This is presumably helpful to the bird, since its doing most of the work.  It's hard to tell for sure whether it's helpful or not to the fish, though it doesn't look especially pleasant. 

The fleet has a handful of old novels from the dead world.  A few mentioned that pokemon would eat each other, though exactly why or how had been so obvious to the people writing that they hadn't bothered to explain.  If that information had made its way to the fleet, it had done so in the crystal data banks which had failed upon launch.  It was subject to quite a bit of scholarly debate that Azure typically avoided.  The two main camps were that pokemon must have been made from meat and bone like a human and fed like humans, or that they were made of whatever daemons were but had stomachs which could absorb energy in some way from the golden dust particles given off upon death.

Either way, it doesn't seem like a good time to experiment.  Bad enough to potentially rely on wild berries if they went without finding intact food cans for long enough.  Berries of some kind are something he knows humans can eat. 

Well, the bird gives them a brief look, and then stalks away, wading further downstream.

There's a few insects buzzing around near the surface of the water, and they can probably hear birds singing but... Yeah, they're still pretty much completely alone, at least of anything more complicated that the bird.

They'll watch over the water as it boils for a few minutes, then cools enough to being drinkable. Still-warm water isn't very refreshing, but it's better than nothing.

Then it will be time to keep walking.  

And they will find much the same thing as they continue to walking, and eventually, on the horizon, they'll spot an actual village!

That seems like a good place to find either people or clues.  Does it look as badly damaged as the outlying cabins?  Either way, he's going to check it out.

From a distance it seems to be in a bit of a better state? Although approaching shows that that isn't entirely true. Still, these buildings do, in fact, appear to be in better repair than the ones he's passed so far! There is not, however, any immediate presence of people?

He'll go closer and look for clues for where the people went.  

At first, it's much the same as what they've passed so far, buildings, left to the elements. (Does that building look like something burst out of it?

And then, there's one with an arrow daubed on it, somewhat weathered, but not overly so, pointing to the next building, and on that, there's another arrow, daubed on the door, pointing...up? It might be supposed to be 'in'.

It makes as much sense as anywhere else to start looking.  They try entering the building, Florentho going first. 

We wrote what we could on the walls.

That seems like a strange choice, but he doesn't know what options they were working with.  They'll keep following the arrows and reading.

Paper might decay, might catch fire. If there's going to be anything left for people to find, it won't be paper.

Humanity's rule has ended.

That sounds ominous.  Unless there is a set of arrows suggesting a different order, he'll just go around the room clockwise, reading for details.  Florentho keeps watch.

There's not a set of arrows, and clockwise is as good a direction as any. It's not massively coherent, and some of the sentences don't make much sense, as though the person couldn't keep what they were trying to write straight in their head and the words got jumbled. But so long as he persists, he'll be able to piece a basic story together.

Some kind of contagion appeared - whether it evolved, or was engineered, is unknown - and it's effect was horrifying. It either killed, leaving twisted, broken corpses, or it transformed. Twisted humans beyond all recognition into horrifying, grotesque creatures that seemed biologically impossible, that are dangerous. Monsters who prowl and hunt and attack, who make travel dangerous, and who can come from anyone, and for anyone. There was, as far as anyone could tell, no cure, although rumours that people were working on it had persisted.

Underneath the declaration that humans no longer rule there's a roughly drawn map, labelled to identify where they are, and then an arrow with a question mark pointing to the north east, with the word 'Sanctuary?' written over a crude drawing of a walled house.

He'll have to be more careful to avoid the monsters, if there's a chance of infection from them.  Does it mention how it spreads?

Whoever wrote it doesn't seem particularly stable, but the map is better than going off in another random direction.  Azure will memorize it as well as he can.

There's vague references - to people being bitten, wounds being bled on, but no definite answer, although from the references, it's probably reasonable to assume that the infection is spread by bodily fluids.

The map, handily, has crude drawings of landmarks - although how similar they actually are to reality is another question.

He'll be careful, and in particular careful of bodily fluids.  If they were once humans, that means they might be easier to make bleed than something more like a daemon would be.

Azure will look through the rest of this building.  

It seems that the people here, at least somewhat, hadn't panicked when they left. There's a couple of stocks of non-perishable food, piles of cans in cupboards, these ones still labelled. There's even a few oddly shaped tools which might be designed to open cans?

There's not much else of interest, although one of the porches does have a seemingly serviceable rucksack, and another has a set of discarded hiking boots. The boots are slightly worn, but the leather is still intact and they're probably better for walking in than Azure's current footwear.

He replaces the old rucksack with the better one.  His old shoes are also thrown away.  It's a shame to leave them behind, but they aren't worth the space they'd take up in the bag since it doesn't look like he'll be walking anywhere sufficiently flat and clean for them.  More food and the can opener can be taken.  Florentho's blades can also open cans, but its messier than with technology.  

They check the position of the sun.  It might not be a good idea to set out too close to sunset.  

Unfortunately, the sun does look like it's starting to begin its descent from the sky, slowly sinking towards (approximately) the western horizon - if he doesn't have a strong internal compass, he might want to mark which direction that is so he can orient himself to follow the map the next day.

Getting to sleep in one of the intact buildings here doesn't seem like a bad thing, even if it does slow them down a little.  

Well, the buildings are mostly sturdy, and even aside from the house with the (literal) writing on the walls, there's a couple to choose from. There's one with a bedroom on the second floor, the bed tucked into a corner away from the window, and there's a bolt on the inside of the door. The blankets are a little musty, but in the way of something that hasn't been aired in a while, there's no sight or smell of mould, or anything else unpleasant, and a brief exploration of the still-intact chest of drawers will reveal other bedding.

This seems like as good a place as any.

Not having seen another person in so long is starting to get to him, but Azure does his best to ignore that as he prepares to sleep.  At least he's never had difficulty sleeping in unfamiliar places.