Four students loitered around the northern entrance on a bright Winter morning as 9 o'clock came and went.
Diana sat in a nearby chair, keeping her two overstuffed suitcases of luggage within reach. Robert stood nearby with a backpack that appeared to be filled with clothes. Michael cowered in the back with nothing more than a large cooler hanging over his shoulder, muttering about how he shouldn't be here. Josh was, quite predictably, nowhere to be seen.
On one hand, JJ felt quite fortunate that nobody had shown up to berate them for their habitually tardy groupmate, while on the other he was cursing himself out for showing up empty handed. 'Were we supposed to bring clothes? Food? Hygiene products? Why didn't anyone tell me about this!' he screamed into his own mind.
He spent all of last night calling his family and friends, well, friend, to explain where he was going and why. That turned out to be a very hard task considering he didn't even know himself, so he hadn't spent any time considering the logistics of their trip.
Unable to decide which was more shameful between possibly showing up unprepared, or running back to throw together a go-bag and being deplorably late, he stood locked in indecision until a giant figure decked out in loose clothes and large chains finally strolled up to the group.
Looking up at a nearby clock, JJ realized that the decision was already out of his hands as he had spent the last 30 minutes debating the pros and cons of each choice. To his relief, he wasn't the only one empty handed, as Josh also carried nothing with him.
“Glad I'm not late” Josh said with a smug tone as he saw there were no teachers around.
As the rest of the group stared incredulously back, a security guard ran up to them and exclaimed “Boy am I glad you lot are here! You're here to meet our guests right? The ones from out of town?”
The students shared a look with each other before nodding, as the guard gratefully continued “Ah, I'm so glad you guys showed up early. We've stowed our guests away in a spare storage room to avoid a commotion, but who knows what would have happened if we had to wait another half hour.”
The group gathered their belongings as Josh muttered “Early?” with a dark tone, looking as though he'd just been betrayed. JJ could barely make out “They tricked me?” as everyone followed the guard out of the campus to a large warehouse with an antique wagon sitting in front of it.
“Wait here please” the security guard asked as he stepped inside. A minute later he came back out and hurried off with a small wave to the students waiting outside.
Three burly men stepped out of the building in a slapdash mix of gym bro attire and business casual, poorly concealing their bulging muscles and what appeared to be genuine medieval-styled leather armor.
The two on either side were easily as tall and twice as wide as Josh. The obvious leader stood in the middle, half a head taller with a massive scar over his left eye. They even carried swords on their backs and hatchets on their hips, making them look like some kind of half-baked cosplayers.
“Get in tha wagon” one of them demanded with the tone that refusal was not an option.
“Why a wagon? Who are you? Where are we going? How long will we be gone? Why haven't we been told anything?” Robert began questioning their hosts as nobody made a move to get into the wagon.
After a brief stare-down that seemed to hold the threat of violence, the leader offered a brief explanation “We already have a deal with yer superiors. We'll answer yer questions on the way. Now get in if ya don't want ta camp outside tonight in a monster infested forest.”
JJ and the rest glanced at each other as nobody wanted to be the first to get in, until one of the men walked up behind them and began waving his arms into their personal space while shouting “Hurry! Hurry!”
They each took several glances back at where the Uni sat, hoping somebody would appear and tell them this was all a horrible mistake. However their surroundings remained peacefully quiet, and no guards showed up despite the man shouting at them.
With their hopes dashed and with much grumbling to cover up the fear they felt, the students allowed themselves to be herded onto the wagon. Josh even let his usual calm facade slip and showed hints of fear as he glanced towards their escorts.
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To everyone's shock, as soon as everybody settled in the wagon, it began rolling down the suspiciously empty street. 'Is the wagon moving itself? Or is the horse invisible? Do they even use horses?' JJ wondered as he glanced at the front of the wagon where a horse would normally be.
Josh was the first to break the silence, “You said we could ask questions. You guys are... guards, right?”
The leader turned around in his seat where the driver would normally sit and grinned “Aye, we weren't kiddin about the monster infested forest.”
“Is that safe?” Diana asked “You're not watching where we're going.”
“Don't ya worry, this baby drives itself, and yer superiors blocked off these roads fer us so we don't hit nobody” he replied, the empty streets of the usually bustling Uni city finally making sense.
“BUT WHY A WAGON?” Robert shouted, as the wagon slowly picked up speed towards the northern exit of the city.
“Why not a wagon?” the leader grinned back.
Robert looked about to continue shouting, but JJ cut in “Wait a second... why did your wagon sound different?”
“What are you talking about, JJ? It sounds like a wagon to me. Not that I would know what a magical wagon would sound like. Or hell, even a regular wagon for that matter. Who would ride a wagon?” Robert continued to focus on the issue of the wagon.
“That's not what I meant” JJ retorted “I noticed it when he repeated your question about the wagon... the words didn't sound the same.”
“Heh” the leader smirked and pulled out a small necklace “Pretty clever there, boy. These here are translation artifacts. It attaches meanings to yer words so anyone wit a spoken tongue can communicate. Quite handy for tha hired muscle like me, heh.”
The introduction of a genuinely magical item with fantastical abilities caused all of the students to pause their questions and stare. The gears in their heads started turning as they began wondering how such a thing worked, where you could get one, and how much it would be worth.
But the most pertinent question, at least to Robert, was still “BUT WHY A WAGON?” As the wagon sped through a wide open checkpoint on the northern side of Uni city, he began pointing at a smattering of cars parked nearby and yelling “See that! Those are cars! They're faster, stronger, more comfortable, and better looking than wagons! So why not a car?”
“Ah, that” the leader said softly “I heard about those things. Technology doesn't work so good with magic. I don't know all tha specifics, but magic does as magic does. Sometimes it fizzles and sometimes it frazzles, nobody can say which, except maybe them wizard folk but they work off instinct more than anything. The ways I understand it there's two types of dead technology most common in new worlds. First there's the fragile stuff that needs precision and magic breaks it 'cause it ain't precise. And then there's the explodin' stuff that magic breaks 'cause it makes things explode better.”
“No way” Robert responded in horror “but they're working just fine! That means our technology doesn't have a problem, right!?”
One of the guards sitting to the side started cackling, before dousing Robert's hopes further “Yer world is an empty lake, done just introduced to tha Pathways, as it fills up with magic yer little toys are as good as dead. Only the gnomes ever managed otherwise, and yer no gnome.”
“Alright, that's enough fer now. Any other questions?” the leader announced rhetorically. “We'll be entering what yer people call slime forest soon, and we'll need to be on our guards. It's mostly just harmless goblins and even more harmless slimes in there... but you lot are even more harmless than they are.”
“How long is this all going to take?” Michael raised his hand and asked. 'When will we be able to go back?' remained unasked but was heavily implied.
Apparently, the implied question did not make it through the guards' translation artifacts as the only response they gave was “Two hours into slime forest we hit tha Pathways. Two more hours into tha Pathways and we reach tha Eden Empire. Four hours later, we'll reach my beautiful home city of Magnolia, and you lot are off my hands. As long as we don't have no trouble, o' course.”
The leader remained in his seat but turned back around to watch the front as the wagon veered off of the paved road and began heading directly into the untamed wilderness on the outskirts of slime forest. The entire area was considered off-limits to the general public due to the danger of monsters in the area, but clearly these three knew what they were doing as the forest seemed to pull away from the wagon's headlong charge.
The students remained quiet as the forest whipped past, taking cues from the serious expressions on each of the subordinate guards' faces as they unsheathed their swords and guarded the back of the wagon.
40 minutes later, one of the guards swiped his sword towards the right back side of the wagon.
*TWANG*
“Goblin!” he shouted “Archer in the rear!”
“Keep guarding tha kids. It's just a lone hunter, it can't keep up with us” the leader directed, still scanning the front for any more threats.
JJ dove into the bottom of the wagon to hide behind the hopefully sturdy walls, and the rest of the students soon followed. They spent the rest of the trip crouched on the floor, but there were no more attacks on the wagon.
By the time they arrived at the entrance to the Pathways, most of them had gathered enough courage to start taking peeks outside, except for Michael who still had his face plastered to the bottom of the wagon like an ostrich.
In front of the wagon stood a three meter by three meter hole in reality. A ghastly blue light shone from within and a thin mist rose up to waist height both inside and in the immediate vicinity of the entrance.
The wagon rolled to a stop as the leader of the guards once again turned to face the group.
“Okay, we've got one more thing ta do before we move on” he announced. “We won't have time in tha Pathways so I need ya'll to sign this here magical contract now. Without it ya won't be able to enter tha lands o' the Eden Empire.”
He handed a heavy piece of parchment, covered in a beautiful but foreign language, to each student. As they watched, the foreign characters appeared to swim on the parchment and rearrange themselves into perfect cursive English.
“I _________ do so swear to abide by any and all laws of the Eden Empire. I will use the abilities manifested in myself by the grace of magic to further the aims of the Eden Empire. I will follow all commandments imparted unto me by those with the power of authority under the Eden Empire. I will report any threats to the prestige or the workings of the Eden Empire to an officially appointed justicar of the Empire. I will maintain no hostility in my heart towards the Eden Empire and will not consort with those who do. So swear I _________”