At dusk, we roll out, full of thaums, rested, and ready to play. We’re extra-careful with our travel, and in addition, we do extra scouting along the way, to protect our path home. We still reach the copse of trees where we’ve been hiding within a couple hours.

This evening looks no different from the prior few. Basically everyone in town retires to their huts by about ten at night, for nocturnal recreation or meditation or some of each. We wait another hour for the usual forgettings and random wanderings to settle down, then portal into a shadow next to the women’s barracks. Immediately, I surround both us and the hut with a sound-bubble to prevent outgoing sound. Then Mu drops a portal into the longhouse and D. goes through. She’s the best at defending herself, and she should be less scary in the women’s building. Even in deep shadow and silenced, the next fifteen seconds are nerve-wracking, as we hope no one discovers us. Then, at the agreed upon time, Mu and I hop in through a portal as well.

“... we’re getting you out of here,” Danae finishes. Seeing us appear, she adds, “These are the friends that I told you about. We’ll be leaving in five minutes. Get whatever stuff you need, and let’s go. Snake, you’re the timer.”

There’s a little grumbling, and a bit of scowling as most of the fifteen women start collecting their bits from around their beds, and stowing it in their pocket-spaces. Two of them say that they’re not sure they want to leave. Are we going to make them? Danae says yes, and tensions start to grow. Danae’s hair starts to rise behind her in a cloud that looks kinda like Medusa from the comics getting angry.

“We can bring you back later tonight, ladies,” I add before anything gets out of hand. “If you stay here now, though, it could endanger the escape for the rest of your friends.”

That defuses the situation at least a little. After another few minutes of negotiation, all fifteen of the ladies agree to come with us for the moment.

Cara, the tall one who looks a bit like Merida from Brave, is the most enthusiastic of the escapees. She asks what we plan to do about the men. Our plan calls for all of us to escape together, and we admit as much. Cara offers to be our mouthpiece to the men’s barracks, so with a few extra holes and an extra sound bubble, Cara, Mu and I portal over to the men’s longhouse, leaving D. to ride herd on the ladies.

Cara quickly introduces us to the men, and then stands with her apparent boyfriend as we explain the escape plan. Interestingly, four of the thirty-five men are unwilling to go with us. They’d rather stay with the slavers. They’re more suspicious of us than of Mike and his crew. I recommend what I did for the women: that we leave altogether, then bring the remainers back. I’m at something of a loss, sputtering like a landed fish, when they reject that offer. There looks to be something of an argument brewing, potentially drifting towards violence when one of the beds stands up.

Shit. I thought it was a bed. It seems instead be Iz Kamakawiwo’ole’s younger, bigger brother. I think he’s seven and a half feet tall, and nearly as wide. Jesus H. Fucking Matilda Christ. I think he outweighs D’s horse. But as he moves, it doesn’t look like fat. Fuck me sideways with a xylophone. It’s all muscle. He can’t be real. Is he a golem?

Then he speaks in an absurdly soft, deep voice. It’s like Tim Foust’s singing voice … even deeper than his speaking voice. And damn, he’s resonant. “Maybe we don’t have to fight.” Everyone stops as they look up.

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I think there’s still a lot of old human psychology still wrapped up in our newly constituted alien bodies. I haven’t met a person since we switched dimensions who didn’t respond to human size. Skinny boy that I am, I remember reading once that in an attractiveness contest between two men that are almost the same, the heavier guy basically always wins. 161 pounds is better than 160, and 281 pounds is better than 280.

Besides that, humans are mostly monkeys with better music. In the animal kingdom, in any fight between two critters, the heavier one wins almost all the time. Sure, some things cheat with poison or flight, but the rest of the time, it’s mass FTW. It’s why we get runaway sexual selection among Elephant seals and Gorillas. A million years and a dimensional recomposition later, men still look for the big guy, and default to staying out of his way.

“Maybe we don’t have to fight,” calms everyone down real damn fast when it’s spoken by a living mountain. His thighs are bigger around than I am. His arms outweigh Danae. He doesn’t say anything else. Indeed, he sits back down slowly, and everyone is shocked that the bed doesn’t break. It doesn’t even creak.

With a calming influence in the room, it takes us ten minutes of negotiation, before we agree to bring them back immediately after getting ten miles away. Goliath manages to convey “Me too,” at me with one of his 5-pound-fryer-chicken-sized hands.

“Are you coming too?” I manage to ask him. He nods. Okay. No arguments with the Pol-ynesian Bunyan.

Having settled that, Mu portals all the women over to the men’s barracks, and we get ready to go. I set up a little sound tunnel to Mu and Danae, where I share my worries about folks following after we bring the remainers back. 20 seconds of conspiring gets us three deceptive tactics to help throw off pursuit.

First, we decide to head the wrong way to start. If we can have folks who follow us heading the wrong way, we will hopefully be better off. Second, we make a lot of noise about Mu’s portal and how dangerous it is to be stuck in it as it closes. The best way to stop our escape would be to have someone block Mu’s portal. If we mislead them into thinking it’s dangerous to them instead of us, we’re mitigating our biggest weakness. And then Mu will make a big show of taking a long time to open and close portals, so our embedded spies will think we can’t travel so fast. That settled, we get to going.

It turns out that it takes unreasonably long to get fifty-odd people through a gate, and it’s dark, so Mu can’t see as far. Rather than moving at the rate that we 3 merry gentlefolks normally roll at, we’re barely faster than a normal person jogging at the beginning.

We speed up a bit with practice, and make it ten miles in the first hour. Fifty people take about two minutes to go through a gate, and we’re going about half a mile per jump in this lack of light. Setting up the portals takes the rest of the time. Having made it 10 miles away, we prepare to take the minority back to the barracks.

One of the two no-go women changes her mind, having seen how effective we’ve been so far, and decides to come with us, but the other five remainers choose to head back. As we’re getting ready to take them back, Mu and I have a whisper-ma-phone conversation with Danae. We consider a change of plans. Mu, Danae, and The Hulk could head back with the no-goes. Unfortunately, my abysmal sense of direction means we have to reject that plan, and D. gets the refugees. As soon as we close the portal, she’ll turn towards town, I’ll block sounds around the returners, and everyone will hurry.

It takes us 10 minutes to get back to town, deposit the people in their cabins, and start the race back.

We make the first step slowly, as per our deception, but as soon as that one’s closed, we tell Fezzik we’re hurrying, and start moving in a more correct direction, and much faster. Fezzik turns out to be faster than I’d thought: professional athlete fast. In three minutes, we catch the runaways, I pull out my thaum-beat, and start running away for real. Cara says, “Thanks for helping us escape. At least no one is following us.”