After settling the puppets in place, Hill gave in to a flicker of curiosity and began searching the second universe.
The inhabited planets had all burned away, but in a fantasy world, there were always people who liked building a place of their own out on the Astral Plane.
A Star Fortress or a small satellite someone had built might have survived tucked beside a Resource Star.
Hill was still careful. Even when he found clues, he refused to follow them into dangerous areas, especially places with only one way out.
He had caused plenty of trouble with his curiosity as a child, but he was now mature enough not to walk into a dead end.
Of course, Toril had also taught him that lesson the hard way. The moment he felt tempted to take a chance, he was almost certainly walking into a trap.
Hill truly believed that unless you were a chosen one, you should never gamble on a path with no alternatives in a world like Toril.
And in a world so hopeless that its entire universe had been destroyed, the traps and schemes would only be crueler.
He had no desire to make himself a cautionary tale.
Hill finally stopped at a planet hidden behind several larger ones. The flames had not reached it, though Cosmic Storms struck its left side.
Unfortunately, planets rotated. Even someone who could travel freely through space could not survive here.
But just as Telashir once had, this place received a few pieces of Astral Drift Iron every day.
It was a material Hill could not create himself, so he planned to stay a few more days and search the planet's southernmost reaches for signs that humans had once lived there.
Leaving Purvi to collect the iron, Hill set up a