The alleyway Luca entered from the portal was damp and smelled faintly of garbage, which was not how he preferred to make his entrances.
Quickly he stepped out of the alley and into the blinding sunlight of a metropolitan afternoon.
Cars honked.
Music blared from a shop across the street.
A pedestrian nearly walked into him while staring at their phone.
The air smelled of exhaust fumes and hot asphalt and, somewhere nearby, something delicious being deep-fried.
He was back!
After days in a world of centaurs and elves and magic, he was standing in the middle of a metropolitan city that never slept, and the whiplash was almost dizzying.
'My life has taken a very strange turn.' He thought. 'One minute I'm examining centaur legs in a medieval council hall. The next I'm standing behind a dumpster next to a fast food restaurant.'
As bizzare as it was, he was happy about that.
But right now, he had priorities. And the first priority was not the solution for the centaurs.
