The small scouting party of Akemi tribespeople hadn’t brought any Heidels with them, as the creatures might give them away. So a call to the main camp had to be issued for a group of outriders to come with spare Heidels, unfortunately Seras forgot to mention her weight to the Leonid woman. The mount she was given was an ordinary-sized Heidel, and it was not happy to have Seras on its back.

Unfortunately for it, Seras was used to her Heidel trying to buck her out of the saddle and she clung to its back like a flea on a rat. She held on to the Heidel until the poor thing grew exhausted from trying to fling Seras off and grudgingly accepted her presence for now. She offered it some apples to hopefully make up for the heavy load.

Oddly enough, the whole experience left her really missing her own Heidel Buck. He was an onery beast, but he and Seras had a sort of understanding.

Her display of determination also won her a bit of respect from the Akemi outriders, who had cheered her on and offered encouragement. Compared to Athena who looked immensely uncomfortable atop her docile mare Seras had proven which of them knew how to ride.

“So, Akemi.” Seras said as an opening to conversation. “I don’t know if you know him, but I’ve actually been traveling with one of your people. An archer named Rohan.”

The Celestine with emerald green hair coloring glanced her way, “I don’t know this Rohan, we’re a large people after all, but its not uncommon for younger normal rankers to travel with the outsiders. He must not have been skilled enough to receive any essences from the tribe.”

“Is that how you do it, the elders’ horde the essences and dole them out to the talented?”

She frowned, “your tone makes it sound like a bad thing, but its only right for the most skilled to receive power. They in turn use the power to earn more essences for the tribe.”

“Don’t get me wrong, it sounds very egalitarian. But let me ask you this, what happens if someone finds an essence on their own, who does it go to?”

“The tribe of course.” She answered.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit unfair to the person who got lucky?”

She frowned and looked like she had eaten something bitter, “I see your reasoning, but there is something you don’t understand. We are the people of the desert, we do not hunker down and take shelter like the outsiders during monster surges, we face it out here in the open. The strong protect the weak, and that means they owe a debt back to the tribe. Life out here is dangerous, and we need the strongest to rise and protect future generations. There is unfairness with every system, but at least with our ways we don’t create an oligarchy of the rich who buy essences and cores for just their family and those who swear to them.”

“Fair enough, besides people like Rohan can always earn money outside to the tribe to get his essences.”

The celestine woman frowned but didn’t argue further.

Maybe it was a bit rude to immediately criticize the way their society worked, but Seras had seen enough corruption in her last world to recognize the ways any system could be swayed. They passed the time talking about less intense subjects. Seras learned how the children were raised by the wider community of the Akemi instead of the good’ole nuclear family model.

It took half a day of riding before they arrived at the main Akemi camp. Though the term camp felt disingenuous seeing as it was a city of enormous tents sprawled out over a barren plateau that was of little interest to the Toruachs.

They had to ride up on a series of narrow switchbacks along the plateau cliff, and when they arrived at the top Seras and Athena were immediately blasted by all the noise of an active camp. Cook fires, drying racks, tanners, bowers, Heidel stables, and even a few impromptu smithies.

For the two women who had spent nearly a week in silent cramped tunnels the experience was almost overwhelming.

Seras looked across the small patch of campground she could see and her mind overlaid a different sort of camp on top of this one. Instead of tents she saw lean-tos with metal sheet panels for walls. She saw several trucks, cars, and even a heavily modified dump truck. And people with dark tanned skin in makeshift clothes, most sporting some sort of glass goggles for dealing with dust storms. She smelled grilling synth meat, and the tang of the spicy sauce the Badlanders loved. A radio was playing old songs in the background of her memory, occasionally stopping to fizz with static.

She shook her head and left the dusty Badlands of Ruin to return to reality. “This almost feels familiar,” she murmured.

“How so?” Athena asked.

“Badlanders clans were like this, sort of. There was more rusty metal and the smell of oil, but the vibes are the same here.”

“Badlanders?”

“They’re the people who don’t want to live in cities by Corpo rules. They take old, abandoned vehicles from abandoned land fills and fix them up, then they ride around the dusty Badlands between cities. They don’t have the luxuries of city living, but they’re free to live how they like.”

“You sound wistful,” Athena pointed out.

Seras turned away, “I, I had a chance to join once. I did this job and ended up with a bus full of kidnapped Badlander brats, when I brought them back I was welcomed with open arms. I ugh, pissed some people off with that job and needed to lay low, they offered to let me hang around until the heat died down.”

“Where you bored, or did you have a good time?”

“It was a mix of both, but it was nice to be around them. They have no one to rely on but themselves, and they trust each other. I liked that.”

“But you said you turned them down.”

“Yeah, I was so focused on my legend that I couldn’t contemplate just retiring to a Badlander clan.”

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“Your legend?”

“Yeah, you know, like the stories they tell after your gone. I wanted to be remembered, like Nightmare or Ronnoc, I figured it was the closest to immortality I would get. I did it too, no one on Ruin is going to forget about Seras ‘Blackiron’ Cross, not until the world ends at least.”

Athena stared at her for a long moment before she sighed, “your world really is an awful place.”

“Yeah,” Seras agreed.

“Are you done gawking world walker?” the Celestine woman asked, “I need to bring you to the elders.”

“Yeah, just a bit of nostalgia,” Seras called back.

The Celestine looked back and frowned but said nothing else. She led them through the messy campgrounds to a big tent in the center, one with wisps of pink and blue smoke drifting out of the top.

There was an honor guard at the entrance, but they seemed to recognize the Celestine woman and let her through without challenge. Inside Seras and Athena were greeted by the familiar sight of an administrative center crossed with the tribal esthetic of the Akemi.

Papers were being reviewed and responded to, but instead of a quill or pen they had a carved bone that they scratched the paper with. An arial illusion covered one side of tent with view of tiny black dotes moving about over irregular green patches, it took a solid minute for Seras to realize that these black dots were Toruachs. For them to appear so small the image must have been taken from high up, and for the black dot to span so far… fuck, how many Toruachs were in just this image.

It shifted and a new image took its place, this one from a different angle. More Toruachs.

She fiddled with her hearing settings and caught snippets of conversation around the room, “with this we should reach pre-war numbers”, “Might need to cull the old bulls for the new generation”, “More poachers on the southern,” “finally recovering” “when’s lunch”.

At the center of the tent, floating above the hustle and bustle of administration were several seated figures. They had magical fields around them that obscured their features, and no sound came from them despite obviously being deep in conversation. What was more curious was that she couldn’t feel a single trace of their auras.

Dustin had said Seras was good with aura projection and detection, better than a new iron ranker had any right to be. And though she knew she still had a very long way to go to reach the peak of an iron ranker’s ability she was still fairly confident in her abilities. At close proximity to the Silver ranked Leonid she could feel the minuscule eddies in the world from her presence. These people she felt nothing. Nothing as in there wasn’t even a hint they existed at all beyond what her eyes could show her.

To her aura senses there was nothing there, nothing at all. It like they had edited themselves out of existence.

Now that was skill.

Their Celestine guide led them to a small silver disc and had them both stand on top of it. The disc rose into the air on invisible treads of magic and brought them level to the floating dais where the gold ranked Akemi ancestors were arranged. There were five here, but the fifth one was fuzzy, more a magical projection of presence.

They looked her way and the magical privacy field seemed to dial back several notches, because suddenly Seras was able to make out their genders and species. Though something about the magic still kept their exact facial features indistinct. Not like a blur filter, it was more subtle than that.

The one on the left spoke first, he was clearly both male as he was a hulking Leonid with a great bushy mane of hair. “So you are our trespassers.”

Athena jolted, “I could understand that,” she said in surprise.

The Leonid waved it off, “translation magic is easy enough when we know the language. And the language of (name country with Vitesse) is globally recognized.”

Seras quirked an eyebrow, logging that little tidbit for later.

The woman next to the Leonid elder leaned in, the slight point to her ears marked her as an elf, “in fact, you do look quite… familiar to us. Are you here on family business?”

Athena shook her head rapidly, “no, this is all just a coincidence.”

They shifted and looked unconvinced; it was the matronly voice in the center that spoke next. “We shall believe you girl, how shall we address you?” her voice was soft but commanding, and just a bit familiar to Seras.

“Just Athena, please?” Athena pleaded.

“Then Athena it is.” The Matron said.

Seras realized that they had somehow recognized Athena for her mysterious family and realized that she had been sidelined in the conversation. She stepped up and crossed her arms, “to be clear, we’re not trespassers. We fell into the labyrinth before the proclamation and had no control over where we came out. we have no intentions of poaching and just want to go back to Cupric.”

They all focused on Seras, and she got to experience her first gold rank auras in this world. They wafted over her, pried deep, searched out her every secret, and left her feeling completely exposed. It was far worse than the silver ranked aura’s she had clashed with, by a magnitude of a hundred. With those she could feel that any attempts to resist would be futile as she was matching herself against a titanic force, but these were on a whole different level. She could push and push all she wanted with her aura, but it was like trying to push against a mountain.

This was the tyranny of rank at its clearest.

Seras didn’t stop resisting the unyielding weight. Not even if it was pointless.

Four auras retracted, but a fifth remained. This was from the center Matron obscured in shadows. It tamped her down fully without a thought, like giant place its foot on a rat tail. “And who are you World walker,” The Matron asked in her aged voice?

“Seras Cross, of Ruin.”

The Matron continued to stare her down, “then please, tell us your story Miss Cross.”

Seras began to relay the same exact story she told the Leonid woman, but a slight increase in the pressure of the aura shut her up. It was like the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

“Not that. We can tell quite easily that you have glossed over much. I would hear it,” the Matron commanded.

Seras tried to say something, not the full story, but to reword the first story in a way that seemed like she was revealing new information. But again though she couldn’t speak.

“Miss Cross, I think you underestimate what Gold rank means. Even a silver ranker could easily feel your intent to hide and obfuscate, we however can see so much more from your aura. I can feel the new essences powers, the echo of those you fought, I can even feel the tension between you and Athena over a recent argument. I can even almost tell what that conversation was about, she has some ideas that have made you very uncomfortable around her, but you’re trying to hide that fact. Now think a little bit more on what your next words will be.”

The aura loosened its grip on her, Seras gasped and glared, “your almost as bad as Knowledge. Theres this thing called privacy you should look in on, might make less of an ass!”

A stunned silence filled the room, every conversation in the whole tent, and those outside of it stopped. The sudden silence in the tent had a physical presence of its own. Everyone stared at Seras with dumbfounded looks of complete horror.

Seras realized belatedly that she was mouthing off to the human equivalent of a thermobaric bomb. Might not have been the smartest thing to insult her. Oh well, this was her hill and she would die on it if she had to.

She suddenly felt like something was smirking at her exasperated amusement. It wasn’t coming from the matron, and it felt like she was the only one who could sense this. She searched the tent for the source but saw nothing.

This was just like that time she was taking a test in the magic society and had written explanations of grav-… “See, this is what I mean. Are you in my head!”

“I am in all heads, I know all that is of this world, including your thoughts. You really should be careful who you mouth off to.” Knowledge said into the tent, just her voice though.

Seras lifted her middle finger skywards, “this is exactly what I mean, fuck off!”

The presence faded away completely, though now she was reminded that Knowledge always knew what she was thinking. What if she thought about really graphic stuff all the time out of spite? Or wait, would that compound her issues and attract Fertility’s attention?

Gods were fucking weird. Good thing hers were all dead.

The Matron did… something with her aura and drew Seras’ attention back towards her. It was like something had made Seras want to turn her head, like when you had an intrusive thought and didn’t stop yourself from acting on it. Auras were also fucking weird.

“World walker, your kind never cease to surprise me, but do not blaspheme in this camp again. Do it somewhere far from us so that we are not caught in the fallout.” The Matron commanded.

“I’ll consider it, now are you going to let up with your aura or not?”

“Not.” She answered.

Well, that fucking sucked. Not really much she could do to stop her though, not yet at least. Seras didn’t stop her own pointless attempts to resist.

“I don’t know what you want from us; we fought a bunch of monsters down there. I got lucky with a looting power early on and got a second stone from the next thing I killed.”

The Matron leaned in “You fought back against multiple bronze rank opponents. How did you kill them?”

Danm, could she read that too? How powerful were gold rankers? “I have been working on weapons from my world, they’re more potent than this world’s.”

“Show me,” the Matron commanded.

Seras wished she still had a grenade, she could have pulled the pin and tossed it between them. Instead she summoned her trusty rifle, now bearing much more wear and tear from her struggles.

A force lifted it out of her hands and into the air. The force spun it around and towards the Matron and squeezed the trigger.

The gun went off with a loud Bang!

And the Matron casually caught the bullet out of the air with two fingers. Seras hadn’t even been able to spot her arm going from her side to where it was now, no more than she could have watched the bullet flying forwards.

“Hmm, yes, with the right essence abilities this might prove dangerous to the right bronze rank monsters,” she commented idly as the gun settled back into Seras’ hands.

She dismissed the gun and tried to hide her shock, though knowing the power of these gold rankers she had little chance of them not noticing.

The Matron looked at the two of them, “I would have your full story, with no alterations, I want you to tell it to the best of your abilities as you can recall it.”

Seras glared at her harder, “why, we’re just two iron rankers, what’s our story mean to you?”

The Matron gestured around them, “this surprising bloom of plants and plant quintessence is a boon to the Toruach herds and our people who rely on them. But we have no knowledge as to why this has happened, we are looking for clues. And I have learned over the course of my life that World Walkers have a habit of wandering into trouble, you appearing here does not strike me as a coincidence. So child of the Ruined world, tell me your story.”