We blasted past the gate guards right as they were beginning to close things up for the night, and their startled shouts followed us out into the descending night. Unfortunately, the closest gate had been the eastern one, which meant we’d have to make distance east to get away before we could turn south towards our goal.

“Shit that was close!” Adam blurted as our feet pounded on the road.

I was beginning to feel winded, I was not used to all this physical activity! Maybe I needed to start doing some fitness training or something, a bit of cardio? That was what the cool kids said right? I should ask Grace once my lungs stopped burning.

“He survived a round to the heart,” Troy frowned, looking at me for an explanation.

I just shrugged helplessly, I had no idea how he’d survived it. He’d looked wounded, but nothing at all as badly as he should have been.

“Fuck,” he swore, mostly to himself.

He pulled his gun out and did something with it, the magazine dropped out and he caught it, staring at it hard. “I have… five rounds left. One more mag in a pouch. God damn it, we need an alternative to these things and fast.”

“An alternative? I mean, you’re low on ammo now, but when we get back to Avonside we can make more right?” I asked between wheezing breaths.

“Not entirely. We don’t have sources for any of the resources needed to make the smokeless powder used, and the workshops were only stocked with a small amount of materials when we were transported here. The local stuff is… let’s just say that we’re significantly further ahead of them in material’s sciences. We’ll most likely need to buy the raw ore and process it ourselves,” Kit replied for Troy. Kit was quickly proving himself to be insanely smart and quiet, kind of James’ polar opposite in a way.

Troy chuckled appreciatively as Kit interjected, then nodded, “What the man said. Without our old industrial base back home, sure we know how to make a lot of things, but we also don’t have the time, manpower or resources to actually do any of it.”

“Alright, guns are going to be off the menu soon,” Grace grimaced looking down at her own one.

With our defence situation put into perspective, my thoughts almost instantly turned to potential solutions. Repeater crossbows maybe? That would eliminate the need for all the chemicals needed for fancy gunpowder. Black powder seemed… less than useful, even given advances in technology and stuff. Having to clean the barrel of gunk all the time made building semi automatic weapons with that stuff less than useful. I could see one jamming and exploding in someone’s face, which was not a pretty thought.

I’d probably just have to leave the problem in the hands of people like Bray, because I was probably wrong. I’d focus on what I could help with, like becoming powerful enough that no one would fuck with us lightly. Medicines too, and possibly I could use Grove tenders to help with mundane tasks?

Our pace slowed as we gained distance, this side of the city being one that had a lot more farmland than the side that bordered the forest, so we needed to get further to break line of sight.

“Ryn, how far away do we have to get before they won’t be able to find that… mark thing when we get into your Grove? We need to rest somewhere safe,” Troy asked after another hour or so.

“The buildings blocked my view of the mark that Fennimore left, but I could sorta smell it for a block or two,” I replied.

“Good to know. Alright team, follow me, we’re going offroad,” he said, turning us off the road and into someone’s orchard.

We followed him out into the farmland, then made the jump into my Grove to rest for the night.

****

The next morning saw us recouping. Troy had decided that rather than trying to outrun mounted search parties, we’d just hide in the Grove until they’d passed us by. We were banking on there not being enough mages to properly search for my mark, or just simply any devices that could find it anyway. It was a gamble, but we needed some downtime to get our shit together, and I needed time to work out how to make spell plants.

“Hey guys,” I said, standing up from where I had been sitting on a low branch. “I’m going to go outside for a bit, I want to look at some magic related things.”

“Wait, outside! By yourself?” Grace asked quickly, reaching up and grabbing hold of my arm.

I glanced down at her hand, at the way her fingers almost encircled my forearm. It was so small and almost delicate compared to what I was used to having. I was so focused on her hand, with its smooth skin and soft strength, that I completely forgot to reply.

When she gave my arm a squeeze, I crashed back into reality and blurted, “Oh no, I mean, like... not outside onto the ring, outside into the Nameless Garden.”

“Uh, outside?” she asked, confused. “How do you go…?”

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“Rather than explain, do you want to see?” I grinned, already knowing I’d enjoy her reaction, whatever it was.

“Sure…?” she said, squinting at me now. Oh no, was my grin giving the game away?

“So long as it isn’t dangerous,” Troy said from nearby, eyeing us with concern.

“Nah, it’s fine,” I reassured him. “I went out there and it was fine, just kinda… weird looking.”

“Alright, I hope you can achieve what you’re trying to do,” he replied, going back to sorting through his pack.

Turning to Grace now that we had permission, I pulled her hand gently off my arm and gripped it instead, asking, “Ready?”

“Why do you need my hand?” she questioned quietly.

“Because I don’t want you to float away,” I replied as nonchalantly as possible.

Her eyes grew worried and she glanced down at our joined hands with concern. “Wait, float awa—“

With a flash of directed willpower, I pulled us out into the Nameless Garden.

It was just as I remembered, strange plants stuck in a cycle of growth, maturity and death over and over. Each one reforming into something new during its next beginning. It was as mesmerising to watch the third time as it had been the last two, and I would have floated there in that sea of chaos without moving if it hadn’t been for Grace’s… reaction.

She screamed and grabbed at me, pulling me close and putting us into a wild spin that had me dizzy in seconds. I giggled as we spiralled through the void, her reaction being everything I’d hoped for.

“Ryn!” she yelled in annoyance, hearing my giggle seemed to calm her fear just a little, replacing it with annoyance. “Make it stop!”

“Okay, okay,” I laughed, focusing my mind on keeping us still.

We slowed quickly coming to an abrupt halt some distance from my Grove, our hair floating around us. Grace looked… grumpy with me, which was understandable, but still very funny.

“You little…” she began, but I dropped us straight down at speed, and her words cut off as she clung to me again. “Ryn!”

I might have been enjoying teasing her just a little too much, but she was just so damn cute like this.

“Sorry,” I said, trying very hard to keep my expression neutral. “I’ll stop now.”

“You’re a little shit,” she growled, leaning away from me to give me an irritated stare.

It was at about that moment that I realised just how intimately we were holding one another. Her legs were wrapped loosely around mine, her hands clasped tightly behind my neck, fingers tickling at my hair. In turn, my arms were around her torso, fingers splayed across her warm back for extra support. I gulped and met her clear green eyes, suddenly unable to breathe.

Her expression softened into one that I didn’t recognise, and I watched as her gaze roamed my face with an intensity I hadn’t seen from her before. “Ryn,” she murmured quietly.

“H-hi,” I whispered at a similar volume. My body felt like it was both hot and cold at the same time, but hers was all a sweet warmth.

Wait, was she getting closer? What was happening? My face felt like it was going to ignite into roaring flame at any moment now. Her breath was so warm as it tickled across my cheeks, her eyes shining now like the outside surface of my Grove.

Then in an instant she blinked and backed off, and I felt a little tremor go through her body. She bit her lip, now avoiding my eyes as she looked anywhere but at me.

“What was it you were going to do out here?” she asked finally, after several long moments of silence in which I was rapidly running out of oxygen.

“I wanted to... Uh, watch the plants,” I said, unable to bring my volume back up to normal levels again. We were still tangled up together.

When she raised an eyebrow for further explanation, I tried to order my thoughts enough to explain myself. I needed her to be like, a little further away. I couldn’t think. Her thighs were so strong as they held my legs in place, and then the thought of how her legs were open wide right now sent a flood of boiling arousal through me. Oh no, I was turned on by Grace! I was being super creepy right now! Abort! Bad Ryn!

“I’ll explain, just… um, I need…” I mumbled, my voice a strained squeaking thing as I looked down at our intertwined bodies.

“R-right,” she breathed, carefully letting go of me and untangling our bodies in the process.

I grabbed her hand to keep her stable, and even that contact was a lot to handle right then. God damn, my nerves were humming like the strings on an electric guitar.

Before any more awkwardness could jump out of the bushes and maul us, I dove into my thought process surrounding the plants. Anything to escape the thoughts of how her thighs felt wrapped around me or how it might feel to run my hands over them with intention.

My voice was all kinds of shaky as I began to speak. “I think that I can learn a little about magic if I watch the plants around us. I think they have magical properties, like they’re each just a random mess of spell components all forming and dying over and over.”

“Right… you um, explained before that the plants are like spells,” she said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, so I don’t know, I guess I just want to watch them and see if I can learn anything,” I shrugged, now realising that my idea might sound stupid.

“Okay, so we just float here?” she asked, her hand squeezing mine.

“Yup,” I nodded.

“That sounds relaxing.”

So we did, floating among the ever shifting and changing forest of the Nameless Garden. At first I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything other than the feel of her hand in mine, but as time passed my eyes sought out the almost-patterns all around us. I shifted into mage sight and stared around, watching a nearby plant as it grew into a broad flower, each petal humming with imminent energy.

Another plant, gnarled and twisted like the roots of a great tree, was collecting stray wisps of magic from around it and funnelling it all into its core. It didn’t do anything with the energy, and when it died, the magic floated free once more. It was fascinating, and the more I watched, the more I realised I had been right. The ever changing plants in the void were nonsensical spells, like the whole garden was some sort of random number generator, spitting out and then destroying possible combinations.

I tried to memorise each twist of root and curve of petal that I saw around me, doing my best to figure out how it worked. I saw one stem that seemed to channel magical energy into itself and convert it into a dark elemental form. I saw flower buds that promised kinetic movement, any energy pumped into them becoming raw potential motion.

At some point, I began to experiment with the plants around me, gathering magical energies from around me and funneling them through the randomly generated plants to see what happened.

When one of them burst into song, I jumped on it and did my best to figure out how it worked, all while Grace held tight to my hand as she tried to figure out what the hell was happening. I did attempt to explain what I was doing as I played around, although I knew she had only the barest idea of what I was talking about. I wasn’t surprised though, no one would be able to really grasp what was happening without mage sight.

We had to end at some point though, and when my stomach began reminding me that I still needed to eat to survive, we moved back into my Grove, appearing on the edge of the plateau. I could see my tree standing tall in the middle and my smile widened. I was going to have fun with this whole magic thing.