My surroundings changed. One second I was staring at Eric and wondering what was taking so long, the next I was somewhere different. At least this time I didn’t feel like shit and I wasn’t waking up from being unconscious. I was already sick of that experience and I had no desire to do it again, much less after barely a few hours of waking.

I examined the new room I found myself. Far from some kind of utilitarian train station or the like the walls and room reminded me of a cathedral more than a transport hub. In place of an altar was an identical raised circular platform to the one I’d stepped on earlier. Clearly this was the ‘gateway’ Eric had mentioned.

I felt no visible side effects, though if I hadn’t had my helmet to filter out the flash of light I probably would’ve been left disoriented.

“Hey, that green light, did it happen when we arrived, too, or just back at that other gate?” Larsen asked Eric.

“The bleeding of energy occurs at both ends, yes. I take it you don’t have this kind of thing where you come from?”

“Teleportation? No. Nothing even close.” Larsen murmured as she marveled at the structure around us. I was almost right there with her, hard pressed to keep my mind on the task at hand.

There were stained glass windows that all but glowed as the sunlight passed through them. Large stone columns flanked the path to the back of the room and rhombus-shaped crystal lanterns glowed a deep bronze colour. It reminded me of an old Greek temple. I’d only ever been to one, but I’d walked through simulations of more than a few. It wasn’t the same of course but the gate room reminded me of them. Everything from the lighting to the architecture felt old, aged and weathered, but notably, not decrepit.

I checked my HUD’s system clock and the local clock just under it. This planet had a twenty-five hour day and it was around midday right now. I didn’t know how long it would take to get where we were going, but I didn’t want to travel at night. If these monsters attacked us, I felt sure it would be at night. Then again, I didn’t know that.

Eric stepped off the platform and down towards the entrance, half-turning to face us. “Come. We will need to travel quickly. Can you two ride?”

“Ride a horse? No.” Larsen said.

“Unfortunately no.” I added.

Eric looked at us as if we’d lost our minds. “Is there something you’re not telling me? How else do you plan to keep up?”

“You’ll see.” I promised.

“I suppose I only need the one steed, then.” Eric mused.

I’d been hoping there was some kind of cool magical carriage or other method of transport, a flying horse or some kind of magic car, maybe, but if *normal* horses were what we had to work with, then I’d stick with my armour. I could hit upwards of seventy kilometres an hour and easily sit at a sustained sixty to sixty-five for longer than I could stay awake.

Such strenuous activity was sure to put a drain on our suits’ power cells. Charging our suits was going to be difficult for the foreseeable future and wasn’t technically possible right now without a compatible charging cable, which we didn’t have. Still, what I’d put my armour through so far wasn’t even close to depleting the power cells by ten percent. We would be fine so long as we didn’t make an effort to be careless.

“Larsen, how are you for suit juice?” I asked.

“Green, holding at ninety-four percent. We’re going to run, right?”

“Unless you’d rather *walk*, yeah.” I responded dryly.

Eric looked at the both of us like we were insane. I’d been getting used to that look being directed my way over the last few months and I think I was beginning to take a certain satisfaction in causing those around me to question my sanity. What can I say? It’s fun.

“I’ll be gone a few minutes while I commandeer a suitable mount for our trip. Stay here, please.” Eric said.

With that, Eric ran through the archway at one end of the building and out into the city. I hadn’t yet seen the city itself, just the prison beneath it, so I walked over to look outside. The view outside was nothing to write home about, but it had a kind of rustic charm to it. Cobblestone streets, modest two-story houses, glass windows with intricate iron grilles to prevent the windows from being broken. It was your typical medieval town, or what I assumed was a typical medieval town. I did notice there were a lot of tall towering buildings that stood above the rest, but only in the centre of the city.

Eric walked casually up to me holding the reins of a large horse. It didn’t have any armour or anything like that, but neither did Eric from what I could see.

I turned back towards Larsen who was still examining the architecture of the building we were in.

“This place is incredible, is the whole city like this?” She asked.

“Most of it is not quite so impressive. Mage-built structures have a particular look to them, but they make up only a fraction of the structures within the city.”

“And why is that?” I asked, curious as to the answer.

“Our vanity, I suppose, or perhaps tradition.” He shrugged. “We can make things no one else can, so we decided to make beautiful things that no one else could.” After a moment Eric waved us forward, setting a brisk pace as he ran alongside his mount down a street.

I followed and immediately noticed a lot of curious faces. The paved stone streets were far from empty, a dense throng of people in clothes of various shades of brown, yellow and red flowed through them. All of them gave us a wide berth, though whether that was because of Eric, the horse moving alongside him or the two of us in armoured suits, I couldn’t be sure.

It wasn’t quite fear exactly, but more a healthy mix of respect and curiosity, I think. Regardless, I stuck close to Eric so we didn’t suddenly find ourselves separated from him. Now would be a very bad time to get lost.

Most of the people in the streets we travelled down just seemed like normal people going about their day, but there were four in grey steel armour that stood unmoving at the end of each street. I noticed that they noticed us long before we got close. They didn’t do much more than nod at us respectfully as we passed them though.

They looked like professional soldiers and their armour seemed well-constructed, at least judging by the construction of the buildings around us. It was no solar-forged alloy shaped into armour using specialised nanite swarms, but they weren’t wearing sloppy iron scrap pieces welded together either. I would be very interested to see how the men performed in combat if I was to be training others like them. Their armour and weapons looked impressive, but their training was what I wanted to see. I’d no doubt get the chance soon enough.

Stolen story; please report.

I used my sensors to look behind me without turning my head. Sure enough, there was another four guards at the other end of the street dressed identically. Halberds and swords, but no ranged weaponry that I could see. Maybe their magic covered that area for them. I expected it was like this throughout the whole city, four guards for each section of street, which seemed to serve as a checkpoint as there was a portcullis by each collection of guards. I idly wondered how an armoured vehicle would fare against one of those portcullises. Whoever had designed the city was a professional paranoid if they had such dense security. I supposed there was a good reason for that though.

We’d kept walking through the streets at a brisk pace. Eric clearly knew the city well from the way he took turns without hesitation and cut through side streets. No one had approached or talked to us so far, but I suppose we didn’t exactly look approachable. A mage with a horse and two unknown men in exotic, red metal armour weren’t exactly the friendliest of sorts. I suppose it didn’t help that it looked like we were flanking Eric and bodyguarding him and we all looked like we had somewhere to be. They probably assumed he was an important noble or something and we were his protectors. They weren’t entirely wrong, to be honest.

“We’ll make straight for the edge of the city. From there it’s just a two day ride to Blackshire.” Eric told us as we passed a florist and opposite her side of the street, a store that was titled ‘rune scribe’, whatever that was exactly. The pulsing blue letters engraved into a piece of bare metal above his stall definitely stood out among the other mundane storekeepers.

“What’s a Rune Scribe?” I asked.

“Saw the sign, did you? A Rune Scribe is someone who can engrave runes and read runic script. It’s a basic qualification any mage worth his salt will pick up. We can visit a similar establishment in Blackshire when we get there if you wish to sample their wares.”

“How do we pay?” I asked, realising neither Larsen or I had any kind of wallet on us.

“Leave that to me. I doubt you could bankrupt me even if you bought the whole shop.” He joked.

We continued our trip to outside the city, Lilith’s earlier words ever-present in my mind. We were on a time limit, hours, days, but probably no more than a week.

I observed the way people behaved and spoke as the streets funneled people to other parts of the city. I hoped to pick up on anything interesting or opportune, but really I just tried to meet the ever-increasing pace. The white stone streets . It took a while to get anywhere and while opportunities for sightseeing did exist, the city was huge. It took us a while to get away from the crowded streets and find an empty path to the outermost city wall. Forcing myself to run at a snail’s pace relative to what I knew Larsen and I could accomplish in armour was a pain, but we didn’t want to cause a panic and we couldn’t leave Eric behind. I doubted he would appreciate two tornadoes ripping through the streets and out into the unknown, especially when he was the only one of us who knew where we were going.

When we finally passed a pair of massive wooden doors, engraved with so much silver that I was hard-pressed to tell it was wooden at all, I smiled. There was nothing in front of me but open land. I turned behind me to look briefly. The outer walls of the city were both huge, and extremely thick. Large blocks of stone made up the defensive structure and I could see large patterns composed of silver runes running across the exterior.

“Ready to finally get going?” I asked Eric, turning back to the expanse of land in front of me.

“Please.” He agreed, grasping the reins of his mount tightly.

“Proc, travel mode.” I ordered.

A small piece of text flashed in the centre of my HUD for a moment.

Travel Mode Engaged.

I didn't see much of a change from that command, but I'd become familiar with the suit's basic capabilities and I felt a strange shift in energy around me. Whether that was real or imagined, I wasn't quite sure. Regardless knew my suit was going to adjust and enhance my movements from now on and I intended to stretch my legs after being cooped up in a pod for the better part of eleven years, nevermind the fact that it had felt like a fraction of that time.

“Proc, reset operational parameters and designate ‘Eric’ as a friendly.”

“Acknowledged.” A monotone female voice responded.

“Show us what you’ve got.” I told Eric, excited at the chance to see Eric show off a bit.

“Very well.” His eyes blazed with a purple inner fire and the air became charged with very visible energy. Wisps of purple light began to bleed from underneath Eric’s clothes like embers flitting away from a fire. The effect spread to the horse beneath Eric’s saddle for a moment. The process took just a hair under seventeen seconds. Just as quickly as his eyes had been set alight, Eric and his horse returned to normal. All trace of his magic was gone.

While Larsen and I had been watching him for any changes, it wasn’t just us that had noticed the brief change.

My proc noted an above average level of infrared radiating off of Eric and marked the anomalous reading in my log. It was obvious to me now that this was what had happened during the ambush we’d stumbled upon. I assumed the effect must give a mage greater speed and power in exchange for significantly heating up their body.

“You can enhance yourself?” Larsen asked.

“And others, but it is more difficult to do so, and also dangerous.”

I considered that. “Dangerous?”

“There is the likely possibility of damaging or destroying the mind of whoever I affect. Simple beasts,” Eric’s hand ran over the horse’s neck. “Do not have to worry about that, but men have more complicated minds.”

A soft clearing of Larsen’s throat brought a smirk to my face.

“Funny.” I said.

“Hey, I didn’t say anything.” She snickered.

Rolling my eyes, I put my attention back on Eric. I observed wordlessly, eager to see what he could do.

Eric’s answer to my curiosity was twofold.

He pulled back on the reins and leaned forward as the horse began to blitz across the open grasslands. Automatically tagged and annotated, my sensors put him at just shy of thirty klicks an hour and increasing.

Wordlessly, I broke into a run and engaged my suit’s artificial musculature.

Our suits, more properly called Mark 12 ‘Aegis’ Powered Combat Armour contained a layer of compact artificial musculature that increased our natural strength, speed and agility. That alone wasn’t quite enough for the suits’ designers though, so we had a more conventional exoskeleton, too. Working in tandem, both systems could let me be faster and stronger than any normal man could ever hope to be.

With full command of both these technologies I shot forward to keep pace with Eric, my sense of balance assisted by my suits’ automatic subroutines. I quickly reached sixty klicks an hour and began keeping pace beside him. I doubted he could hear me from the sound of the wind rushing by his ears, but he seemed to have a destination in mind so I simply took the time to think about my new reality.

We hit the edge of a sparse spindly tree line and kept on going, pushing deep into a forest of deciduous trees. Already, I could see the leaves were turning brown.

We weaved through the trees, Eric hampered somewhat by being on horseback, but fortunately that didn’t last long and we made up for the delay at the next open area we encountered.

After a few hours, I’d had time to think about things, not just about what had happened, but what I was going to do going forward. Training and equipping a fighting force was all well and good but the amount of time and resources it took to properly train even just a regular infantryman wasn’t small. That was to say nothing of the more complicated disciplines, like being an Armour Crewman or a JTAC, short for Joint Terminal Attack Controller.

Such disciplines took weeks if not months to be trained on. I wasn’t sure how the soldiers these Ebonwreath sent me would get on just being trained as common foot soldiers but that was about all the expertise I had to give them, besides my aviation and spaceflight experience of course. I was still wary of the idea of training people I didn’t exactly know or trust to be a threat, but we’d already said yes to the proposal and we needed the support and manpower Ebonwreath could offer.

I was mulling over whether or not I thought I would ever trust these people with my life when Eric slowed to a standstill over a dozen second, his mount apparently none the worse for wear. He stood in a the middle of a paved road we’d began following a few hours ago. Eric held his hand up to signal us to stop. I did so, glad to be free of the constant motion and the scenery rushing by me.

Larsen and I slowed to a walk. I walked up to Eric as he peered into the distance.

“Something wrong?”

Eric pointed south, my HUD cheerfully highlighting the bearing for me. I cast my eyes over to a spot in the distance. Nothing but plains, grass and wilderness with the occasional tree to spice things up.

“There. We’re about a thirty minute run from the city but I sense a large group of armed men not far from here camped along the road out of town. Two of them are mages.”

“I’m assuming you want to investigate?” Larsen asked Eric.

“Correct.

“As long as it doesn’t take too long, I don’t see the harm in it. Maybe they’ve seen this Davian guy.”

“I do not believe that’s likely. It is possible, though.”

“Shall we then?” I asked Eric.

“By all means. I’m interested to see how you handle introducing yourself.” Eric grinned, gesturing for me to take the lead.

“Oh, thanks so much. What the hell am I supposed to say to them? ‘Hi, I’m from another world and I’m here to track down a fugitive, do you know where he went?’”