It felt like Trista’s teleport, but a thousand times worse. When his eyes stopped spinning in their sockets, the first thing he saw was the floor, coming in and out of focus as long lines of silver mana pulsed through its surface.

He was almost certain he had lost his cake to nausea at some point, but when he looked around himself, it was nowhere to be found. Cael still wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Welcome to Genus, Codisco. I take it this was your first time making such a long trip with Portline’s services?” A finely dressed gentleman stepped onto the teleportation field. “Would you like to spend some time in our recuperation room?”

‘I think that’s his way of telling you to get off the portal pad.’

Cael looked at the man. One of his hands was outstretched in an offer to help the changeling off the ground.

Taking the man’s hand because that was the polite thing to do, Cael was hauled to his feet with little effort. After a second of catching his balance again, he addressed the man. “No thank you. I think I might have somewhere to be?”

Tar leaped onto his shoulder, and Cael gave the cat some ear scratches. When he turned to grab his box on wheels, he wobbled a bit, but it was nothing too serious. Just a bit of remaining shakiness after the long-distance teleportation.

“You do not sound very sure.” The gentleman reached out to steady Cael when he almost tripped over one of his own feet. Cael noticed the man's hands looked a lot like bird talons.

“Thank you– and that’s because I’m not.” he admitted, “I need to find someone. A friend of Trista’s? I'm not sure.”

They had been given an improvised set of directions. Since Tar had the better memory, Mercy had given him a detailed list of instructions to act on. Cael had been too busy listening to his own set of directions from Trista to pay more attention.

This meant that his knowledge of their plan was limited to what he had overheard. Trista had mostly focused on other things, like not wandering into the jungle until he was level thirty, and not staying out past curfew— which was nightfall— otherwise, he could be arrested.

He’d made a joke about being arrested by them too and how that had turned out fine, but she hadn’t thought that was funny. She’d ended up laughing anyway when Cael had tripped over a crack in the sidewalk a few moments later.

It was a bit rude of her, but she had made up for it by picking him up with the same magic she’d been using to carry around the box. That had been pretty nice of her.

“If you are having difficulty remembering things, I strongly advise a quick rest or to have one of our on-call healers inspect you.”

Cael shook his head “Oh, I have a lot of memory loss, but I don’t blame Portline. I-”

Tar tailed him again.

‘You’re worrying the nice man.’

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to worry you. Thank you for the exemplary service.”

He took his almost-suitcase and rolled it off the platform so it could be used again. The Portline worker just watched him go without saying anything else, so Cael figured he hadn’t said anything too out of the ordinary.

As they left the building, he was subject to another round of checks and screenings. This set was performed by Genus' city guard. This security check was much more restrained and he was out with minimal difficulty. Not even a single comment about Tar as he left.

Which was a good thing, for the record. Cael was almost certain he was supposed to have a Familiar License which was basically some kind of ‘pet permit’ that he was meant to present to officials. He’d seen it mentioned a few times in the pamphlet he’d been given at Portal TSA.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Was that lucky or just procedure? After all, the premise of this entire planet was to help those with newly-acquired Classes. It made sense that a lot of them wouldn’t have the required documents.

Either way, he was supposed to get the proper license within two months of receiving his familiar, so he still had a bit of time.

As he followed the small trickle of people on their way out, he noted that the Portline building seemed to have a standardized layout, because the path was identical to the building he had entered. If not for the half a dozen aliens all over the building, he could have been fooled into thinking he had never been transported at all.

Cael pushed through the revolving door and officially stepped into the city of Genus for the first time.

He smiled and took a deep breath, only managing to catch a sea of patterned cloth and color before a coughing fit abruptly punched him in the chest. It was dry as hell.

“I just got here and I want water.” He said to the cat when he was finally able to get his coughing back under control. “You’re so lucky you don’t have lungs.”

‘Don’t worry. I’m getting all of this through the bond.’

Cael huffed and fiddled with the cap on the flask. “If there’s hard liquor in here, I might actually die.”

That was, of course, assuming he could even get the lid off the bottle.

“Ugh, is there a [Strength] requirement to take a drink?” He strained against the bottle with all his might, but it wasn’t budging.

‘Try twisting it the other direction.’

“What? No.” Cael shook his head, “It’s ‘lefty loosey’, isn’t it?”

‘This is literally another universe. Just try it.’

Cael twisted the cap in the opposite direction and it popped open. “I think that might be even more jarring than Wednesday 2,” he complained.

It didn’t really matter, but it was vexing at the moment because of his suddenly dry throat. He looked into the flask and was glad to see that there was actually something in it. It smelled pleasantly sweet and unlike any alcohol he could remember, so he took a sip.

‘That’s not bad.’ Tar commented, taking a metaphorical sip of his own through their bond.

It really wasn’t. Pretty good in Cael's opinion. It reminded him of one of the fruits he had tried the day before, only mixed with something to mellow out its sweetness. Cael liked it.

Once he was satisfied, he replaced the lid on the flask and finally looked around.

In front of him, there was a long road of short sandstone buildings. Each had a large tarp cast overtop. While they were all the same purple and white colors, each pattern was dazzlingly unique, and each building was marked by its own set of brightly colored flags. Those probably meant something

Again, the Portline building was out of place against the theme presented by the city of Genus.

Of course, the large cubic block would stand out anywhere. It was especially apparent here, though, where everything else was sandstone and cloth.

Well.

Almost everything.

If each city of the re-education world was centered around a patron school, then it stood to reason-

‘Is the school a dead coral reef?’

“I was getting there. Let me finish my thoughts.”

‘You were taking too long.’ Tar complained.

It wasn’t like Tar was wrong. Through Cael’s eyes, it was hard to miss the massive spire of bleached coral that reached up toward the sun.

‘Stop staring at the sun.’

“Sorry, it's just, uh.” Despite Tar’s stellar advice, Cael squinted back at the sun. “It’s redder than I thought it would be.”

Now that he had stared directly at the sun, it was pretty easy to tell that the whole city was cast in a slightly warmer tint.

He dropped his gaze back to the city when Tar started grumbling at him. Scattered across the city, a few palaces of sculpted sand jutted out like boulders from the field of shorter buildings surrounding them. Though he couldn’t be sure, it looked like each palace had a color pattern that was matched by all of the buildings around them.

“Do you think they’re districts?”

‘Maybe. If they are, that’s kind of adorable.’ his tail flicked slightly.

Cael smiled at Tar, “Well, it’s good that you like how it looks. I think we might be stuck here for a while.” He took another long drink from the flask. He was happy to find that it didn’t seem as empty as he’d feared but was a bit miffed at the fact that he was lightly sweating without even taking three steps out the Portline doors. “Alright, lead me to where we need to go before I get sunburnt.”

‘Do changelings even get sunburn?’ Tar asked dubiously, all the while directing Cael to just start walking. The first turn wouldn’t be for a while.

Cael shrugged and started walking.

How was he supposed to know about the sunburning capabilities of false humans?