The rest of the ride was relatively quiet. Sera didn’t say anything, and she eventually stopped fidgeting in her seat as much, though she did remain curled up and hunched over until we rolled to a stop.

When we heard a knock on our door, Sera was quick to jump out of her seat and open it. Laush’s face showed a flash of confusion as Sera rushed past her, but it was quickly replaced by the same neutral smile she always wore. She turned to me casually, as if her former leader hadn’t nearly run her over a moment ago.

“I hope that you had a pleasant trip, Ms. Lena,” she said, giving me a polite bow.

I gave her no reply. Though she offered me a helping hand, I ignored it and stepped down from the carriage on my own. Off somewhere behind me, I heard Oren and Jamie doing the same.

“I’m just saying, not all of us can be as lucky as you, my brother. The rest of us do have a finite amount of mana,” Oren said, with a chuckle.

“I just didn’t think it would be this bad,” Jamie said. With Oren’s arm draped around him, he helped support the older man’s weight. It seemed like Oren was still affected by his mana depletion, which made sense given that it had only been a few hours and his had been a particularly bad case. “How do Mages in your world fight, if using magic makes them like this?”

“They usually don’t. While most fighters worth a damn will have a few spells up their sleeve, pure Mages that intend to get into the fighting business usually don’t last very long,” Oren said, laughing when Jamie’s jaw dropped. “Sorry to disappoint you. But hey! That’ll make your rise to the top even more extraordinary! Not only will you be the first adventurer, you’ll also be the first fighting Mage to roam this world of ours!”

Jamie smiled and looked away from him, embarrassment clear on his face. “I guess,” he said.

Oren smiled at him and pushed himself off of Jamie to stand on his own. He still looked a bit shaky on his feet, but he pretended not to care as he patted Jamie on the back. “I believe in you, my brother,” he said. “You are a great man, and great men achieve great things.”

Jamie smiled and looked away, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment, but didn’t say anything.

I looked away. It was similar enough to what the Mediators had been doing every time I saw Jamie during our travel here, but I hadn’t gotten any more used to the sight. It was disturbing, to say the least.

I tried to tune out of their conversation, but it wasn’t an ability I could apply at will. I felt my teeth clenching in reaction my ears refused to block out the way that Oren continued to sing praises at Jamie, and Jamie continued to give him meek replies of thanks in return.

“Smile, Ms. Lena,” Laush whispered from behind me. “It will help your cause if you can convince Jamie that everything is fine.”

I turned around to glare at her. Even though I had been determined not to react to anything else a Mediator said to me, my rant against Sera had left my emotions running hot. For all I knew, that’s what the Mediators wanted, to make me off balance enough to not realize that they were manipulating me, but at this point, I didn’t care.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “And you know what my cause is, don’t you? You know what my ultimate goal was when I decided to find myself a boy falling from the sky? You finally figured out my master plan, didn’t you?”

Laush frowned. “I did not mean to upset you, Ms. Lena,” she said. “It was a poor choice of words on my part.”

I grinded my teeth. “Yeah, it was,” I said. I lifted my hand, pointing towards the direction of my house. “I’m going home. Forget smiling. I’m going to puke if keep watching this. Come get me if you need me. You know where I live.”

Laush’s frown deepened at my outburst, but she quickly smiled and bowed as she stepped to the side, freeing up the path towards my home. The speed of the change was unnerving, but nothing I wasn’t used to by now. Taking her smile as permission, I walked past her and headed home.

It was almost noon, and though I knew that most of the village would still be working at this time, I wasn’t surprised to see that the street was even emptier than it usually was. With Sera’s supposed fifth team member having been here for a few days already, I assumed that he would have gotten word about our arrival somehow and had warned the villagers. Even so, the village wasn’t completely empty.

I saw a few villagers going about their business on the streets, but none seemed to even notice me as I passed by. Given the last impression Jamie had made, I wasn’t surprised that people were eager to keep their heads down. It was fine by me, since my dour mood might have caused me to snap at anybody who so much as looked at me, and I thankfully managed to avoid talking to anyone before I trudged down the familiar path towards the house that I’d lived in for my whole life.

When I got to my house, I pushed open the door, putting more force into it than I intended, and making a resounding crash when it swung open and hit the wall.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I grimaced at the sound, instinctively assuming that my dad would gently scold me for causing a ruckus like he always did whenever I opened the door like that.

But he didn’t. Staring at me from the other side of the counter, he simply stared at me, frozen and wide-eyed.

I stared back at him.

I don’t know how long the two of us stood there, just staring at each other until my dad finally spoke.

“Lena?”

If it weren’t for the fact that the room was completely silent, I don’t think I would’ve heard him. I’d never heard his voice sounding so feeble and unconfident before, like he doubted what he was seeing.

To be fair to him, I wasn’t quite sure if I was dreaming either.

My dad and I had an okay relationship. We got along with each other just fine, but I didn’t really confide in him too much. We chatted over dinner and lunch whenever our schedules matched up, but the last time we really had a heart-to-heart conversation was when he wanted to talk to me to ask about what I planned to do with my life, and whether he should be preparing to give the butcher shop to me once he eventually retired.

We had that conversation when I turned fifteen two years ago, and we hadn’t really had any deep conversations since then. Not that we didn’t want to, but more due to the fact that we were country folk. Our lives were simple, boring, and calm, for the most part. We just never had anything exciting to talk about, and I was too busy being a teenage girl to want to share my innermost thoughts with him on a regular basis. All in all, I didn’t have a particularly special bond with my parents beyond what was expected of a typical teenage girl living in the countryside. Our relationship was painfully normal.

But I hadn’t seen normal in a while.

It had been less than two weeks since I left Plainswood, but it felt like I’d been gone for a decade, and the sight of him reminded me of what I had, and what I was. I was just a girl who had been sucked into this mess. A normal girl.

“Hi dad,” I said, or at least that’s what I tried to say. Instead, I just sunk to my knees and started to blubber wordlessly.

I didn’t hear what he said next but judging by the fact that I quickly felt two people pulling me into a deep hug, I guess that he’d called my mom. Enveloped in their arms, I don’t think I dozed off, but I also couldn’t quite remember how I ended up in my bed, with my mother draped over me and crying into my chest. She was pinning one of my arms to my sides, and my dad was gripping my other hand tightly in both of his own.

I considered smiling at him, and I probably could’ve, but the thought of giving him a smile that I didn’t fully feel sickened me, given what I’d seen over the past few days. Instead, I chose to give his hand a little squeeze.

I saw a few tears well up in his eyes and drip down his bearded cheeks as he raised my hand to his forehead, like he was using it to pray. As he gently pressed down my fingers one by one, muttering whispered words under his breath, I realized that he actually was praying. It had been years since I’d seen my dad practice his old religion, but I supposed if there was any time for him to turn to prayer, it would’ve been when his daughter was kidnapped by an Otherworlder.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that this whole situation was created by a God in the first place, though I doubted I could tell anyone without the Mediators somehow finding out and hunting me down to kill me anyways.

I squeezed my dad’s hand once more before turning to my mom. “Hi, mom,” I said.

She didn’t respond with words, choosing to bury herself deeper into my chest instead. She was heavy, and her tears had soaked through my blanket by now, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her to get off of me. I also didn’t have the strength to keep myself from crying either, so I just joined her.

I don’t know how long the three of us spent there, crying with each other, but by the time we finished, we were exhausted, and our throats were sore to the point where it was difficult to talk.

Even so, I managed to muster a few words when the door to my room creaked open.

“Oh, you motherfucker,” I said. “Can’t you assholes give me a break?”

My parents hadn’t noticed the door opening but shifted their gaze towards it when I spoke. Their expressions shifted into a mixture of anger, confusion, and worry when they saw who was standing at the door.

I didn’t recognize the man standing there, but I could guess who he was.

Unlike the other Mediators, the fifth member of their team looked painfully unremarkable. He was a middle-aged man with a visible pot belly and a receding hairline, wearing a loose-fitting shirt that would have looked completely in line with what the other villagers in Plainswood would wear. If it weren’t for the fact that he was standing outside of my bedroom door, wearing a cocky grin, I might’ve assumed he was just one of my dad’s old friends from out of town, coming to visit at an inopportune time.

“Sorry, girlie,” the man said. “You’re not off the clock yet. I gave you the time for a good cry, but that’s about all I can afford.”

“Mr. Marten,” my dad said, his voice still hoarse from our crying. “I insist you leave my house.”

“Sorry, Hal,” Marten said. “No can do. Unless you want your daughter to go gallivanting off with the Otherworlder kid on his next adventure, she needs to listen to what I say. You’ll get the time for crying later, once she’s home permanently.”

My dad pursed his lips together, but I didn’t.

“The other Mediators at least pretended to be polite,” I said, feeling annoyed enough to berate my supposed saviour.

“Yeah, and there’s a reason why I’m out here, instead of going face to face with an alien brat with a fragile ego,” Marten said. “Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, girlie. My strengths just happen to involve figuring out a way to save your ass. Some appreciation would be nice.”

I glared at him.

“If this persona you’re putting on is supposed to be endearing, it isn’t working,” I said.

Marten shrugged. “I don’t give a shit. I don’t care if you like me or not. You just gotta do what I say.”

“And why would I trust you?”

Even if I’d already sworn to myself that I would never trust an expression on a Mediator’s face, Marten seemed genuinely surprised by what I said.

“Because you’re a real pain in the ass?” he said, making my mom grip my sheets angrily, though she didn’t say anything in response. “The only reason why I would do anything to sabotage your chances of leaving is if I wanted to fuck with the rest of my team and force them to deal with babysitting a civy for even longer than they already have, and I don’t have enough of a grudge against any of them to risk getting my pay docked. I don’t got a reason to mess with you, girlie.”

I frowned.

It upset me that he was right. I still wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t putting up this obnoxious persona for a specific and nefarious reason, but nothing he said had been wrong.

I thought about it for a few more seconds before I glared at him.

“Fine,” I said. “Tell me what to do.”