The call came back fairly quickly, the people in charge back at Avonside wanted to talk to us. Of the sentries, the woman appeared to be their leader, and she sent one of the guys back up into the outpost while the other stayed with her. They bristled a little when our obrec called one of his rangers out of the surrounding forest so he could relay what was happening back to the caravan.
“What the fuck? Where did he come from?” the dude sentry blurted in alarm, hand going to his pistol.
Troy spoke with a nonchalant shrug, “There’s a bunch of them around us. Security. They are expert rangers from the Stonechaser nation, or clan. Whatever you want to call it. They’re here to guard the merchant caravan that’s a few klicks back.”
“Right,” the woman nodded, her eyes following the new ranger warily as he moved off, having received his orders. “Well, follow me I guess. Let’s head back. It might take an hour to walk there.”
“We’ve been walking for months, what’s one hour more?” Grace smiled, pushing her wavy hair out of her face. Her soft, distracting hair. My eyes followed its every subtle wave for a moment, drinking it in.
The woman only snorted in reply, whether it was in amusement, I couldn’t tell.
I spoke first, my anxiety over the unknown overpowering my anxiety of talking to the standoffish woman. “I’m Ryn now, by the way. Felt kinda silly to use the old name since it was a dude name and all.”
She gave me a sideways look, followed by a big sigh. “Jenna, and I’ll be honest, I find it hard to believe that you just… turned into a woman. That doesn’t just…”
“Well, the change wasn’t by accident,” I said with a frown. “I didn’t just have my body changed either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, glaring at me suspiciously.
Behind us, the obrec ranger laughed, low and amused. We both turned to look at him as he shook his head in amusement.
“What?” I asked, curious if he understood us.
When he spoke, it seemed that our english lessons with the twins had spread. “She pokes dragon with her tiny stick. Does not know power you hold. Very stupid.”
My eyes quickly found Jenna’s again as she turned to stare at me, her eyes roamed for just a second before they blew wide, “Wait, your eyes are pink! Your hair isn’t dyed… It’s actually pink too!”
“Correct,” I grinned, not saying a word more.
She moved ahead after that, obviously not comfortable being around me after her observations and the words of our obrec friend. I made sure to glance back at him and wiggle my eyebrows. He gave me a silent laugh. It had been pretty funny. I just couldn’t find it in myself to care that someone was scared of me because I was different. There was also the part where she couldn’t do shit to hurt me.
We walked in silence for about ten minutes, the trees staying the same and the rocks getting craggier. I was starting to wonder how this was meant to mellow back out so soon into Avonside’s fairly chill valley. Had the Umare plonked us down in a hidden valley within the mountains?
Troy eventually broke the silence, asking, “How have things changed since we left? Faculty and the CEO still battling it out?”
“They most definitely are,” Jenna said with a scowl. She gave him and the rest of us a long, hard look before she sagged a little, expression softening. “Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this until people with way more authority than me have cleared you… but things are tense. Resources have been stretched thin, people are sick of eating the same unseasoned crap. The faculty won’t stop bitching at each other and at the CEO about things… and security is still doing their thing.”
“By their thing, do you mean throwing their weight around like they own the campus?” Grace asked, with an expression that showed just what she thought of the security people.
“Kinda,” she said, then motioned to her and her companion. “They’ve had a little less room to throw their weight around since the militia was formed by the faculty, but they are still very much the CEO’s attack dogs.”
“Militia,” Troy sighed, shaking his head. “Man, you kids should be getting drunk and studying, like you said. Not… not guarding a town from attack and sitting out in the cold.” His eyes found me and he gave another sigh. “At least we might be able to help.”
Jenna went on to describe how on more than one occasion the ACS, or Avonside Campus Security, had been assholes. Some were actual cops who had been stationed there, and they had a lovely little arsenal of over the top weapons at their disposal. The only upside had been that the fabrication department wasn’t willing to make shit for them.
The fabrication department was apparently a conglomeration of all the skilled construction people, a merger of many different areas of Avonside that had allowed them to streamline the manufacturing pipeline.
They apparently had a lot of power, which had been solidified when the ACS tried to force them to use the dwindling supplies of metal to make armour for them. The fabrication dept had refused, stating that if anyone tried to force them to do anything, they would sabotage the work they were forced to do. They had gotten roughed up, but then the militia backed them and… well a lot had happened.
Something I’d been curious about was how they were still unaware that magic was a thing. I mean, there probably wasn’t a whole lot of it out here, but all of Esra’s plants had still been there. She’d set them up to keep the fruit alive, and part of that had been the lone tender she left.
“Jenna… how much did they tell everyone about my disappearance?” I asked, glancing at Grace as I did so. I still remembered her telling me what those bastards had put her through.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Uh… what do you mean?” she asked, tilting her head in confusion. “We know that you were transported in a similar manner to the way we were brought to the ring in the first place. They didn’t say much more than that. There were rumours about a plantlike alien and a fruit and stuff, like my friend here said… but nothing else really. It was pretty hush hush.”
“Huh,” I grunted softly, a smile forming. Would be interesting to see people’s reactions when we broke the news about magic.
I got another suspicious look from her, but she didn’t say anything else and I didn’t give her any more information. I wanted to wait, do my big reveal when someone was trying to flex on us. I could see her starting to believe me too. Simply asserting my identity through casual dialogue seemed to be working.
When Avonside finally came into view, felt a smile come to my lips unbidden, and weight seemed to ease off me. It had changed, but it was still recognisably Earth. I missed my home planet. I missed ordering pizza and going down to the local second hand bookstore to find a new book to read. I really hoped there was a fiction industry on this world, because if there wasn’t I was going to run out of books to read.
The biggest difference I could see was the defenses. They had dug a trench around the campus and compacted the dirt into a berm, then begun building a wooden wall on top of that. It was almost complete now, with a gate and towers at regular intervals.
The wall was actually far larger than the area that had originally been schwooped, but there didn’t seem to be a massive number of new buildings. Rather, the wall encompassed a large number of fields, as well as a section of river nearby which had a dam built at one end. I could see a few windmills too. I guess that was how they had solved the energy situation.
“The dam generates energy too, right?” I asked, pointing to it. From what little I knew about power grids, you needed a stable and adjustable source of power to keep it working. Windmills were too volatile to provide the backbone of a grid.
“Yeah, as far as I know,” the male sentry said with a shrug. “It’s not enough though, unfortunately. We have to ration power still.”
“I wonder if there’s a way to convert…” Kit began quietly in anve, making pointed eye contact with me. “You know… magic, into electricity. We could definitely do something about that power problem.”
“It wouldn’t be hard,” I agreed, ideas already forming in my mind. “I mean… we’re already doing it with my baths… just increase the heat and put a turbine on top of it.”
“Oh… true, that’s actually really simple,” she said with a quiet laugh. “Duh. I was way overthinking it, dreaming up lightning plants and shit.”
The sentries gave us both looks. “What language was that?” Jenna asked, looking very suspicious.
“Anve, it’s the language of a region back that way,” I said, motioning vaguely behind us. “Don’t worry. She was just asking about power generation. We had an idea that would help, but right now it involves something that we’re not going to talk about until we can tell the people in charge, or I guess, if someone forces it out of us.”
“You seem to have all the answers for us, don’t you?” she replied sceptically.
I shrugged. “What do you think made us take like four months to get back? We were running around trying to find solutions to Avonside’s problems.”
“Good point,” she nodded, conceding. “If you’re genuine, I’ll be more than happy. Until the bosses give you the tick though, I’m going to be suspicious. This world isn’t friendly and if we let our guard down, more will die.”
I had to agree with her on that one. I had a sneaking suspicion that she might have lost someone in the attack that had happened so many months ago.
The gate was manned by a pair of militia who looked bored right up until they saw us. They stood up straight and called, “Jenna! What’s going on?”
“People to see the faculty,” she said, then pulled an apologetic expression. “Sorry, can’t say more. You’ll probably find out soon enough though.”
The gate was also made of wood, and the two militia who’d been guarding it nodded, signalling to those inside that we should be let through. They might be amateurish, but at least they were trying. Made me a little hopeful that we could win them over once we’d shown ourselves to be genuine.
Sadly, we didn’t make it more than ten yards through the gate before something bad happened. A group of ten ACS guys rolled up with their blue uniforms and riot gear on, trying their best to look intimidating.
“Militiawoman Jenna, we’ll handle them from here, CEO wants to talk to them,” the lead one said gruffy, giving us all a once over.
“I was told to take them to see the faculty council,” Jenna replied, glancing worriedly back at us.
The ACS guy shook his head. “Change of plans. CEO wants them.”
“Um… let me just call and ask,” Jenna said, turning her back and pulling out a phone. I could see her expression was worried.
The guy at the lead frowned, his hand going to the pistol holstered at his hip. Oh hell no. Fuck this.
“Here, let me fix this situation,” I said, moving forward and patting Jenna on the shoulder as I went. To the dicks in their dumb blue uniforms I gave a glare. “You all heard her. She has orders, and she hasn’t heard differently from her chain of command.”
“Ryn…” Troy said quietly from behind me, and I turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. Was this a bad idea? His expression was neutral, and speaking in anve, he said, “Quick and brutal. Beat their faces into the fucking ground. Like you did in the battle, don’t leave any doubt about who has more power.”
My eyebrows rose. Alright, if Troy condoned a little use of force, then I was going to use a little force. As a treat.
“Alright, I’m going to give you all a few seconds to think, and then I want you to turn your asses around and go back to whatever it is you do in that security room of yours,” I told the assembled ACS.
“And who the fuck are you?” the lead guy asked with an amused sneer. “You’re coming with us girl, or we’ll make you come with us.”
I gave him a look of disappointment. That was the only warning he and his buddies got.
With a flourish, I whipped my hand forward as spell flower tattoos snaked up my wrist, a blast of concussive force throwing them all sharply backwards. They tumbled like forgotten luggage behind a jet engine, their gear going everywhere, limbs flailing. I couldn’t help a laugh at how comical it looked. Helmets, shields, guns, batons and grown men all flying into the air to scatter across the trampled earthen area behind the gate.
Before any could recover, I wrapped tendrils of telekinetic power around them all, lifting them into the air. Orienting them all so they were prone, I twisted them so they were facing the ground that was a few feet below them. With a sharp, dismissive wave of my hand, I brought them all down hard, following Troy’s orders to the letter.
My finishing touch was to sow the seeds of vines throughout their ranks, urging them to grow up and lock around the necks of each one, pinning them there. I made sure they wouldn’t suffocate, I wasn’t cruel after all. Maybe someone would take pity on them later, cut them off the ground. I don’t know, and I didn’t really care.
“Should have listened,” I said with a poison smile, and turning to my group as casually as I possibly could, I asked, “Should we continue?”
All the militia people were staring at me in shock, and I took a little satisfaction from seeing Jenna’s eyes so wide they looked like they might fall out. The dragon was revealed.
Everyone was silent for long moments, before the male sentry who’d been escorting us let out a nervous laugh, “Well then, that was satisfying to watch… why don’t we all just uh… go see our friends in the faculty, eh? I mean, I’m sure dirt is really nutritious if you’re desperate, but I’m not very keen to watch the pigs wallow. It’s kinda gross.”
“Yes…” Jenna nodded, still staring at me. “Good idea. Let’s move.”