“The eerie power of witches over reality has born magnificent and wonderous things in our world, and likewise wrought destruction on an unimaginable scale.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

A soft golden glow seeped in from the outdoors, spilling through the one open window of the room where Silver lay outstretched on the floor. It illuminated the spinning glimmer of dust in the open air, and pooled against the deeper crevices of the wooden floorboards. With its light, the sun carried much of the stifling heat of the day, and the high trill of some unknown evening bird marked its slow decline.

Silver sighed heavily, stretching more fully, and winced as her joints and muscles flared with the dull, bruised pain of unusual exercise. It had been a hard day. The running had been easy enough, but the exercises that followed had been torturous. Evidently, there were muscles in places she had never even thought about, and all of them were complaining noisily now. Holtson had already promised that the next day would be no different, nor the one after that, nor the one after that…she wrinkled her nose distastefully. There was no way she was going to complain that someone wanted to teach her self-defense – Holtson had already demonstrated how to throw a solid punch, which Ryan had not had the chance to really drill into her at the MASO – and watching the more experienced recruits swinging a sword around got her excited, but she was not excited about the muscle pain she saw on the near horizon.

At this thought, Silver let her hand fall across her eyes, dulling the reddish gleam of the sun. She dared to yawn then, irritated when even that small action made her chest and abs and shoulders ache. At least that ache was better than the bite of the stream water; there was no running water in Alti, and they were all expected to wash up in the stream after training. There were also no modern hair ties in Alti. Trying to finger comb her brown hair after it matted wetly against her scalp was a serious pain. Sori had offered to teach her how to pull her hair back with cotton ties, and Silver knew she was going to have to either take her up on the offer, or die because her hair flew in her face.

Hissing through her teeth, she forced herself to her feet and headed over to the mirror to make herself semi-presentable for dinner. It was a lost cause. She scowled fiercely at the freckles that had leapt into even sharper relief against her pale skin beneath the kiss of the sun. She was going to have to protect her skin with magic or something.

She added sunscreen to her list of really inconvenient things that did not exist seven hundred years in the past.

“They’re beginning to gather,” the wolf rumbled from a few feet away.

Silver glanced at the silvery beast, shrugged, and gestured to the doorway. She had not seen Bek since earlier in the day, and had half-hoped he would return to the shared house before they headed out to dinner. On stamping down the dull, clay stairs of the cabin to the humid night outside, however, she found the building empty except for her. There was an unearthly racket issuing from the depths of the surrounding forest, fed by the calls of thousands of insects and the entire local population of frogs, as far as she could tell. There was an even louder din of human voices closer at hand. She recognized the reckless banter and chatter of people who had exhausted their bodies throughout the day, and were currently running purely on endorphins, food, and will power.

Following the sound and the wolf’s nose, she quickly found the crowds. People were spread out everywhere, on the packed earth or seated on the edges of the wood and stone patios of the surrounding buildings. Someone had erected a smokeless blue fire at the center of the clearing, over a pile of flat, disc-like stones. It was clearly magical.

Silver wove her way forward around the many stinking soldier recruits, most desperately in need of a bath. Many clutched the concave platters of Alti, piled with bread and a serving of a strange, yellowing vegetable and steaming, spiced meat whose origins she did not know or dare to guess. At the very least, it looked and smelled appetizing. Drawn by the crowds, she soon found Cara and a few others she did not know dishing out food from four massive metal pots. Beside them was what appeared to be an entire table of fresh baked bread.

“There you are!” someone to her right declared, dropping a hand on Silver’s shoulder and leaning into her. She staggered and looked around, surprised to find Sori staring at her. “Hiyein and Ren already grabbed a bite. We’re all over there.” Sori pointed in the direction of a smallish maple tree growing in the shadow of a building. Silver caught a glimpse of Ren underneath, leaning against the building, and Hiyein, cross-legged and waving, through the crowd. “I didn’t find Bek yet.”

“What about Cevora?” Silver asked, pulling hopefully in the direction of the food. Sori went with her, but a shadow passed over her expression. Nothing so simple as anger or sorrow, Silver thought, but there was definitely something between the two women. They had hardly spoken since joining up earlier in the day.

“When she comes, she comes. It’s busy work being the kuirsrinn of our nation.”

Silver let the topic drop as they reached the tables. They were shuffled off with food within seconds, and only Cara’s cry stopped them. She had apparently leapt around the table after excusing herself from her tasks, and was chasing them towards the maple tree.

“Silver, right? And Sori?” she asked, matching their steps and joining them as they settled into the dirt. The wolf sat solidly between them, but Cara did not seem to mind. She tickled behind the beast’s silvery ears.

“That’s us,” Sori agreed. “And you’re Cara, Sara’s apprentice.”

Cara blushed red with pleasure, and her smile widened. “Not quite her apprentice, but yeah,” she replied a bit shyly. “Can I sit with you?”

“Fine on me,” Hiyein piped up when Sori and Silver glanced at him. Ren shrugged. “I heard you’re an apprentice baker as well,” Hiyein continued, holding up a dense chunk of bread. Cara blushed again.

“You made this?” Sori asked in surprise.

“I helped.”

“I wish I had a daughter like you,” Sori muttered, biting off a chunk of bread and chasing it with meat.

“You wish you had any sort of daughter,” Hiyein observed, “No place for children where we’ve been these past few years.”

The conversation lapsed into a sober silence for a moment. Silver was not quite sure how to ask where they had been, but she thought she knew. Some sort of jail, if they had been considered criminals. She was so glad to have food in her mouth that she could almost forgive the awkwardness.

“So…I actually came over because Illian mentioned a rope that you have, Silver. He said it reminded him of my handiwork, but it was cut in two,” Cara said.

“Oh, that,” Silver said, “it’s in the room. I can give it back to you if you want.” The words were out of her mouth before she quite realized what she was saying, and Cara stared at her questioningly for a minute. “I mean, Bek already told me I can’t fix it myself, so I can give it to you.”

“Well, I could do more than just fix it. I was thinking, if its magical it could be a useful tool for you, maybe even a weapon. I could make a few upgrades, maybe add a bit of a metal alloy coating to the outside, pretty thick, I think, and—”

“Is there anything you don’t do?” Sori interrupted to ask. Cara blushed again, going silent.

“More to the point, should you be offering a magical weapon to the woman who lost control of her magic today?” Ren asked. Still leaned back, he fixed Silver with his dark eyes. There was no animosity in them, thankfully. It was possible, though, that there was a hint of suspicion.

“We all heard what Holtson said,” Sori chided him.

“But I want to hear straight from her own mouth,” Ren stated flatly, “Rank five magic users don’t just pop out of the woodwork, and they know better than to use their magic to the point of nearly killing themselves.”

“He comes off sounding a bit harsh,” Hiyein had set his platter down to lean forward so his red curls caught the firelight, “but really, we’re all just wondering what happened to bring the princess here. The two of you were with her today.”

Silver stared between the two men, glad for the moment that she was sitting next to Sori. “Bek and I only just met Cevora,” she explained truthfully, “and we’re not from here. I have no idea why she suddenly appeared. Is it rare to be rank five? There are so many magic users here.”

“Now that’s a question you don’t hear every day,” Sori said with a chuckle.

“If not from here, where are you from? Outside of Alti?” Hiyein asked, eyes widening slightly. At least he seemed genuinely surprised instead of suspicious.

“I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you that,” Silver said, deciding that leaning towards Illian’s influence would help her more than lying one way or the other. Even though Illian would probably say the two of them were from Atlantis, she knew nothing about the other country, and did not want to risk that someone in their tiny group had been there.

“To answer your question, Silver, it is rare,” Sori said. “At least here it is. I don’t know about where you come from.”

“Neither do I,” Silver said, again realizing she probably should not have said anything. The wolf shifted its head to her leg, seeming to decide she needed some encouragement. Cara, who had been silent through this entire exchange, shifted a little closer to the wolf to stroke the fur down its back.

“Do you not have a ranking system where you come from?” Hiyein questioned.

“We do…”

“But you don’t know what rank other people are?” Ren pushed.

“No.” She was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed, so she continued to eat while they stared at her, and took her time to answer when Ren asked, “So, what exactly put you, a rank five, in this state, then? Whatever it was must have done in Bek, too.”

“What do you mean?” Silver asked calmly, “Bek is fine.”

“Sara is treating him,” Cara explained softly, “because his wounds are so severe. She asked me to prepare more bandages.”

Illian had not let Silver see the wound. He had not let her use her healing magic, either, though after today she had an idea why. Silver wondered now if the Zara had left Bek with wounds like the ice bird and the nightwings had suffered, blackened and haggard with the Zara’s poison. For the first time, she felt alarmed. So many of the nightwings had died, even when she tried to heal them. If he did not survive, she would be left alone with no way back to her own time, possibly forever.

Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself against that possibility. If Bek died, she would make her own way. It was as simple as that. Relying on him was the last thing she needed to do, especially if he was as injured as she believed.

“You okay?” Sori asked, bumping up against her shoulder. “It might seem like we’re all reaming you for answers, but Hiyein, Ren and I have known each other for years. We’re in the same spot you are, I’d bet, trying to figure out what we’re up against.”

Silver looked up at her, surprised by the concern in the older woman’s face.

“We fought one of the Zara,” Silver said after a moment, eyeing Hiyein and Ren, and finally glancing at Cara, who looked shocked. “That’s how we ended up like this.”

“Zara,” Hiyein repeated weakly, “are you joking?” Ren averted his eyes from hers.

“Now, we all keep mum on this, you hear?” Sori said sharply, glaring around the group. Hiyein nodded grimly.

“Why?” Silver asked, looking between them all.

“Because people are terrified of the Zara,” Ren said, “and the last thing we need right now is for anyone here to think we’ll be up against them. There are enough rumors.”

“And everyone’ll hound you for details of how you survived,” Hiyein said a bit less seriously, “you’ll never get any sleep.”

“The last time someone fought the Zara and survived, wasn’t it fourteen or fifteen guards who finally took the thing down?” Sori asked.

“I remember hearing about that!” Cara agreed.

And somehow, from that moment, the entire dynamic of the group changed. Silver listened in silence as they started sharing stories about the Zara, about the dragons, about the king’s army and everything they were up against. Hiyein laughed about the day he had met Ren – a thief from some western city near the mountains – a day where he had received the most solid beating of his life. Sori reminisced over one of the festivals in the port city, saying the spiced meat reminded her of the street food. Silver could see a little of what Sori had said in their interactions. The three friends had years of stories together, years of shared laughter and hardship. There was a small part of her that was glad they had chosen to welcome her into the group anyway. They could have ignored her completely.

After a time, Cara asked about the wolf, and Silver introduced them. They asked if Elorian had also fought the Zara. They asked about the hatchling dragons, which had made themselves scarce as the occupants of the outpost gathered for their evening meal. Silver could sense them coiled up on the rooftops, watching with eyes that gleamed in the darkness. Her human eyes were too weak to find them and point them out, but their little group seemed impressed anyway.

Long before they were ready to call it a night, it seemed, she was too tired to keep up with the conversation. It had been a long day. Too many new places, new faces, and difficult realizations. Bek was still nowhere to be seen, and she was not sure she wanted to see him anyway. She wanted silence. So she gathered her platter and rose, excusing herself. The wolf rose with her, following like a silver shadow. Elorian knew what she wanted. Implicit between them was the understanding that the wolf did not count as company. She could be alone with Elorian, and that was alone enough.

Together, they wound their way away from the voices and the food, away from the blue light of the magical fire and the gleam of the strange symbols on the doors of the buildings. It was refreshing to explore the outpost in the night. There were few people where she wandered, and the insect sounds of earlier evening had faded. There was a hush now, settled over the rooftops and the swaying trees. The flats of the training ground yawned empty, the stakes pounded into the soil like dark scarecrows that turned with her as she skirted the open ground. There was a peace around her, a tranquility she could not explain. Maybe she felt it because her stomach was pleasantly full, her body tired, and the silence so very welcome.

Eventually, Silver found the other end of the outpost, where they had jogged earlier in the day. There was an old oak there, its branches vanished far overhead into the canopy of the trees. Now, she found it again. It was a beautiful specimen, branches spread in every direction, dipping down low to the soil. It was perfect for climbing.

Forcing her weary muscles into action one more time, Silver pulled herself up clumsily, sliding up to the second branch, maybe five feet off the ground. The wolf did not follow her, but hmphed something about humans and apes and trees. Silver laughed softly at the beast.

“You would climb if you could,” she said.

“I am a creature of the earth,” the wolf rumbled, settling in the grooves of the tree’s great roots. “I see no appeal in looking down over the world.”

Silver laughed again, leaning back into the wood and closing her eyes. “One day, Seijelar will be big enough to ride, Elorian. You should come with me.”

The wolf did not answer. That was answer enough. Between them, the companionable silence stretched, and the world settled in. They were a part of the stillness, a part of the hush. It felt like they always had been. And around them, the magic sang. Never in her life had Silver felt anything like it. A lullaby to her soul. For a moment, she could almost forget everything that frightened her, everything that had driven her to where she was, and everything that had come before.

Elorian must feel the same.

How could anyone not?