Chapter 124

"Is there such a thing as portal lag?" Riley asked with a yawn, waking from her nap.

Tobias sat up in the pew.

"I'm up, I'm up, portal lag?" He asked, looking down at Riley with confusion.

"Time change whiplash. We call it jet lag where I'm from. You show up in a new place, halfway across the world, and it throws your internal clock out of whack," she explained.

"Internal clock? I've only ever lived in the Ashenrealm. I've never been through a portal before today, or was it yesterday now?" Tobias grappled for what he did know like a bit of flotsam in a sea of confusion.

"Ah..." Riley yawned, having hit an unexpected dead end.

"So what's a jet?" Tobias asked, trying to get comfortable in the pew.

"It's a gigantic, super fast, metal flying machine," she said, playing tour guide to her original reality.

"But metal is heavier than air?" he puzzled.

"Yeah, it has something to do with principles of lift or some such. Needless to say, it works," Riley bobbed her head in lieu of being able to shrug.

"Without magic?" Tobias scoffed.

"Science!" She intoned with the full force of a 1940s radio announcer's drama.

"The more I learn about your science, the more I think it's just a more complicated magic," Tobias shrugged this time and scratched the back of his head before pulling his pocket watch, trying to distract himself.

"Why is this taking so long?" he sighed, sounding every bit the impatient teenager.

In truth, it had been too long since they had slept. They had lunch, then dinner with the priest, but they had been ordered not to leave the Cathedral, which only left them with two places to go. The pews or the office.

"Because this is boring, but it's better than the passively speciesist colonial asshat," Riley grumbled, then adjusted her sprawled out body against the pew, trying to find some way of being comfortable.

"Why are these as bad as the ones I remember on Earth? I was heavier then, but these suck just as much!"

"Well, they aren't made to be an all day thing," Tobias explained with a shrug, "There's no padding."

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"Bullshit. Darius is practically renting his spot these days," she retorted.

"I know. It's just another reason we need to get home!" It was impossible to miss the look of concern on his face.

Riley sat a paw upon his knee, cocking her head to get a better look at him. "Hey, it's going to be ok. We got the baddie, and we got another lead out of it. It's becoming the mission that never ends. We'll be back home before we know it, and we can redefine our relationship with the concept of job security. I'm sure there are just dozens of monsters masquerading as nobles and ne'er-do-wells to hunt out of all of this."

Tobias chuckled before taking a knee and began to pray.

Her ears perked in surprise as she felt the devotion mixed with concern. Riley had never known Tobias to be a religious man, but in that moment, he was.

Like Darius, she concluded, it depended on the situation, and she could not ignore the fact that while she was curious about these new lands, he had been much closer to abject terror.

After all, he had less experience with being thrown into a world or a country he didn't understand unexpectedly. She, on the other hand, that was just her life now. Daily terrors, mixed with wonder, formed the foundation of her strange new life.

No matter how comfortable Calaria got, and in some ways, it was getting strangely comfortable and home-like, it was never going to be Earth, never going to be what she had once known, and while Riley had come to accept that, accepting something was quite a different thing from feeling truly at home.

Tobias, meanwhile, was just coming to grips with that lesson.

She let the minutes pass by in silence as Tobias prayed, wanting nothing more than to get out of there, when suddenly, the door opened, and for the first time that day, there was another visitor to the small cathedral.

Riley craned her head around as her ears shot forward with surprise.

This was no black-cloaked ranger; they weren't even human to begin with. Instead, a towering 7'5" Dracovani entered, complete with a sword almost as long as Tobias, protruding up from behind massive shoulders.

The sheer width of sway in her tail brushed against the sides of pews as she walked forward with surprising grace. Iridescent black scales caught the light of crystal lamps in all the myriads of color the various angles of light hitting them could provide.

Fierce white teeth poked out here and there from a long muzzle. Purple eyes shone out with a disciplined ferocity, highlighting her scaled head and two long protruding horns.

"That cannot be our contact!" Riley said, startled.

Tobias's jaw was hanging slack, his head craned around from the kneeling position he had taken.

In a seemingly suicidal gesture, his hand fell to the hilt of his sword as the massive, dragon-like creature slid awkwardly into the pew behind them, perching on the end so that her tail could drape across the back.

She groaned with the discomfort before, in hissing, accented Calarian whispered, "Greenbriar, Rowan, as one that dwells under the Birch. I bid you follow, yes. You are to come with me."

Tobias and Riley each shared another look of shocked concern, added to the pile of thousands that had passed between them in the last few seconds alone.

"Is this about passage?" Tobias replied, keeping to the code they had been given.

The Dracovani rumbled, the vibrations passing like a pleased growl.

"Passage, yes, though your purse was cut, arrangements have been made. You will travel with me peacefully."

Tobias, on trembling legs, rose.

"Come on Riley."

"Which... is which...?" The dracovani asked, long pauses framing each word like monoliths in their own right.

"I'm Tobias, Rowan; Riley is Greenbriar," the ranger explained.

"Not human, yet ranger? Odd for the Asehnrealm, yes," she replied with a grumble before rising.

"This one is Terrox."

"I've been pretty lucky overall," Riley affirmed.

"Terrox, I greet you as a friend," Tobias bowed clear of the pew before holding out his hand.

Terrox gripped him at the elbow, swallowing Tobias' arm with her massive claw.

He gulped before she chuckled, let go, and led them out.