Looking down on the forest of tents and people, Sofie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand, after days of traveling through the deserted plains of Eterium, it was wonderful to finally see some form of civilization again. On the other hand, the civilization in question didn’t look particularly pleasant. A cloud of destitute desperation hung over the city of Obosall and the refugee slums that surrounded it. This was a city of cornered people, and everybody there knew it.

“Well, at least it’s not Crirada,” Sofie muttered, which brought an amused scoff from ‘Jerithim’ nearby.

“This place wasn’t always like this. It used to be a small fortress city, quiet and out of the way,” the elven agent stated. “It’s no surprise that everything’s gone to shit though. There’s no way they’d be able to handle this many new people all at once.”

To Sofie’s surprise and enjoyment, Jerithim had turned out to be a surprisingly personable man, rather than the terse, business-like operative she’d expected. Though he’d kept talking to a minimum while they were on the move—his concentration reserved for avoiding bandits, Ubran patrols, and anything else that could pose a threat to them—when they’d settled down for the night he’d proven to be quite the conversation partner.

One of the many things he’d taught her during their trek was the Republic of Eterium’s rather unique city-planning philosophy. Sofie had learned from Arlette long ago that the Eterians used their geographic monopoly to exact hefty taxes and tolls on all the goods moving through the continent, ensuring their economic supremacy. What she hadn’t realized was just how far the nation had gone to put that system into practice.

In order to best police the flow of goods across its borders, many years ago Eterium had created a city practically sitting on its border with every other country. Not just any small city, either. Known as gatekeeper cities, they were some of the largest metropolises in Nocend. Agosa, the city on the Kutrad border, and Begale, the city bordering Gustil, each had nearly two million inhabitants. Even Drogan, the city bordering the isolationist Drayhadal, was nearly half a million people. Only one gatekeeper city stood out as different from the rest: Obosall. As the city bordering the xenophobic Otharians, whose country was supposedly so pathetic and unappealing that the rest of the world had basically ignored their existence for the last millennia, Obosall had never been a priority. In fact, the place, which harbored at most seventy thousand people, seemed to have been created almost as a formality.

That small city now stood like an island surrounded by a sea of humanity. As the trio of travelers had made their way southeast, they’d run across multiple villages. Some were barely populated, with only those too stubborn, too weak, or too ruined to leave still living there. The others had become literal ghost towns, completely devoid of inhabitants. All these people, from the smallest villages to the largest towns, had fled the Ubran menace to this one place, the city farthest from Crirada and the least likely to be the Ubrans’ next destination.

The end result was... not pleasant to say the least. Sofie’s grasp on Pari’s hand tightened as the three made their way through the camps. She couldn’t help but notice the way the nearby refugees were eyeing them and their packs. Even the children seemed to be watching and waiting for a sign of weakness or a chance to steal.

There was no mystery as to why those they passed possessed such wild, predatory gazes. Filthy clothes hung loosely on thin bodies everywhere she looked. She guessed that nobody here had eaten a good meal in a depressingly long time, and perhaps saw them as an oasis in the desert. To make matters worse, both Sofie and Pari were as thin, if not thinner, than those around them—they’d been living off of tiny rations for weeks and it wasn’t like food had suddenly popped up during their travels either. Only Jerithim looked healthy, perhaps as a side effect of undoing his transformation when they’d escaped Crirada. Once more she thanked her lucky stars that he was there. Only his menacing presence seemed to keep the starving hordes from ripping them apart and taking everything they had. He walked with a wary gait, hands never leaving the two short swords that hung exposed at his sides as a warning to anybody who might get some bad ideas.

After what felt like an interminable length of time but was likely only a perhaps half an hour later, they approached the city walls and the guards manning the gate.

“Let me do the talking,” Jerithim instructed as they approached.

Sofie let out a breath of relief and nodded her understanding before looking around at her surroundings with a clearer mind. The first thought to strike her mind was just how underwhelming the walls seemed after spending so long in the shadow of Crirada’s absurd defenses. These walls were what, a paltry eight or ten meters at most? Compared to that towering facade from before, this seemed almost childish.

Perhaps her opinion was shared by the guards, because they seemed to be overcompensating for something with an aggressive belligerence that she’d never witnessed in a guard before. It was like they were less interested in policing the flow of people through the gate and instead just keeping anybody from entering at all. On second inspection, that was exactly what they were doing. Sofie gasped as one of the guards delivered a meaty kick to a kneeling man pleading with the guards ahead of her. The noise brought the guards’ attention, and quickly they were surrounded.

“I am Daraqon, emissary of the great and mighty Casm clan, here with my two guides to speak with your so-called leaders,” Jerithim immediately stated, his voice overflowing with self-important haughtiness. “You will step aside.”

The woman who seemed to be the person in charge of the area snorted derisively. “Big words from such a little man,” she replied, looking down at the smaller elf with mocking amusement. “It’s going to take more than that. You’re not the first to try this.”

The elf reached into the pack hanging by his side and pulled out a roll of parchment, unrolled it, and presented it to the woman. Sofie caught a glimpse of fancy script and ornate decorations running along the edges. “Perhaps this will change your mind?” Jerithim asked, smugly.

The woman looked over the document for a moment before rolling it back up. “This is fake,” she stated plainly.

Sofie’s heart nearly seized at the pronouncement, but Jerithim didn’t miss a beat. “Bah, what would an uneducated barbarian like yourself know of such things?” he sniffed. Stepping close to the woman, his hand snatching the parchment out of her hand and replacing it with a small pouch. Sofie thought she heard the soft sound of coins clinking as the woman’s hand closed around it. “Parasites, the lot of you.”

“My apologies, emissary,” the woman stated with an expressive bow and a smile. “Welcome to Obosall. Will you require an escort through the city?”

“And spend another moment surrounded by you filthy savages? I have much better uses of my time.” He stepped forward authoritatively and the guards moved out of his way. With a dismissive wave, he called Sofie and Pari to follow him. “Come along, you two. I did not pay you to dawdle.”

Sofie and Pari hustled forward and they passed into the city thankfully unmolested. As soon as they were out of earshot, Sofie quickened her pace and pulled up next to the Drayhadan. “What in the world was that?” she asked. “And where did you get that document?”

“We made it before we left Crirada, just in case,” the man replied with a sly grin. “Worked like a charm.”

“...but she said it was fake,” Sofie objected.

“Of course she did. That was all part of the dance.”

“Uh, what?”

“There was no way we were getting inside without a bribe. That’s just how things like this work. She didn’t say that it looked fake because she thought it looked fake, she said it to squeeze me. And I gave it to her so she’d have something to squeeze me over, so I’d be able to pay her off, so we’d be able to get inside. That’s the dance. We all knew where we were headed, the question was just how to get there. Just take the right tone, play your part, and it will all go smoothly.”

“The guards in Crirada didn’t take bribes,” Sofie pointed out.

“The guards in Crirada were standing in the shadow of their own rulers, who would be very unhappy if somebody besides them were skimming off of their profits. Things are different outside of the capital. Once you get this far away, especially here with the situation they’re in here, I’d be much more concerned if the guards didn’t try for a bribe. A very bad sign, that would be.”

“Why’s that?”

“Did you notice how poor everybody outside was?” Jerithim asked. “Why do you think that is?”

“Well, they were forced from their homes, probably didn’t have much they could bring along with them, and there’s no jobs or anything here for this many people,” Sofie surmised.

“Sure, all a part of it,” the man replied. “But you’re missing the one other major thing. The big reason is that all the people with any money paid their way inside the walls and left the poor out there to suffer on their own. If they had refused our bribe, then that would have meant there was no room in here for us, and that would spell trouble.”

“What would have stopped her from taking the money and kicking us out anyway?”

“Oh, you can’t get too greedy in a place like this,” the elf replied with a feral grin. “Go too far with this many desperate people all around and you’re liable to get yourself killed right quick.”

“Hrmmmm,” Sofie commented noncommittally before changing the subject. “So, what now? Do you have a plan for here on out?”

“Not yet. We need information before we can make our next move. Besides, I think we all need a good meal and a nice bed for a night, wouldn’t you say?”

“Pari hungry!” the beastgirl chimed in, tugging on Sofie’s shirt.

“Well then, what are we waiting for?” the elf laughed.

*     *     *

Sofie was glad to be away from the world outside the walls, but a few hours in Obosall proper was all it took to realize that things weren’t much better on the inside either. The town inside wasn’t some rich cosmopolitan metropolis like Crirada. The houses were simple and plain and not always in the best condition. Rather than streets filled with people, Sofie saw mostly empty lanes. The few people she did see walking about in the early afternoon sun seemed on edge, as if they knew there was a bomb hidden somewhere nearby and they were just waiting for it to go off at some unknown point in the near future. Or perhaps they were just stressed from the insane costs of living in this place.

“Twenty cromars?! Are you out of your mind?!” Jerithim squealed in protest. “That’s more than ten times what it should cost for a night at a high-quality inn, which this is most definitely not!”

“New here, huh? You think you can find a better price, go ahead,” the innkeeper responded with an apathetic shrug. Sofie thought she heard a snicker from one of the few patrons in the inn’s hall.

“I think I will!” With a huff, Jerithim marched out of the establishment, Sofie and Pari right on his heels.

“Look who’s back,” the man remarked with a smirk when they returned over an hour later.

“Don’t say another word,” the elf snarled as he plunked down the twenty coins and grabbed the proffered key before storming up the stairs.

Sofie followed quickly behind, her mind troubled by what they’d discovered. After going around the area, as well as checking the market, it had become clear to them that the prices for literally everything here, even including food, was many times what it would be most anywhere else. Whether it was from scarcity given their situation, or the fact that everybody here had money so people just raised their prices, she couldn’t be sure.

“So... plan?” she asked after they’d set down their belongings and divvied up the beds.

“I don’t know,” Jerithim answered. “I had thought we would have more time, but our money will run out far sooner than I’d thought with how damned expensive everything is here. Let me think a bit.”

“Alright. Pari, let’s go take a bath and get all clean.”

Sofie grabbed the squirming Pari’s hand and led her against her will out the door and over to the small shared bathhouse in the back. Though Jerithim had belittled the inn, it did at least have a small stream running through the shack, the water filling a pool about the size of a hot tub dug in the ground. She’d noticed a lot of small streams of various sizes running through the city and the surrounding lands. They were a pleasant sight, especially after so many days of nothing but dry land and well water.

After undressing both herself and the sullen child—minus Pari’s arm sleeve on her left arm, which she still refused to remove under any circumstances—she lifted up and carried Pari into the pool. Sitting down with the smaller, unwilling participant hugged close to her chest, she let out a sigh of relaxation. She could practically feel the filth detaching from her body. It felt great. Her companion, however, did not seem to agree. She struggled and twisted, trying to break free of Sofie’s grasp.

“That’s enough, Pari,” Sofie scolded. “I know you don’t like water but it’s been weeks since your last wash so you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Eventually, after several more minutes of whining, the girl stopped struggling and let Sofie start to wash her. As Sofie did so, she also decided it was time to bring up something she’d been keeping to herself for a little while.

“Pari, sweetie, have you been feeling okay recently?” she asked the sullen child. “You haven’t been talking much these last few days and you seem rather down. What’s wrong?”

The girl didn’t reply, instead just staring down glumly at her reflection in the water.

“It’s alright, you can tell your sister,” Sofie nudged.

“...will Sofie-sis be with Pari forever?” Pari asked after a moment of quiet.

“Well... that’s a hard question to answer,” Sofie began with a sigh.

Something that she’d been mostly avoiding thinking about was the conflicting nature of her own goals. On the one hand, she wanted to love and cherish her adorable adoptive younger sister forever, or at least until she grew up and turned into a snarky teen. On the other hand, she desperately wanted to leave this place and go home, which meant leaving Pari forever. Since actually going home had seemed like such a remote possibility for so long, she’d generally simply ignored the issue. But now, there was another person from Earth, one who could build incredible machines. What if that person could find a way home? Would she just leave Pari alone again? What about Arlette? Maybe she’d be able to take them along?

“Forever is a long time, sweetie,” she settled on saying. “But I promise that I’ll do everything I can to be with you as long as possible, alright? Why are you so worried about this all of a sudden?”

“When Sofie-sis isn’t here, Pari feels really lonely,” the child admitted.

“Awwwwwwwwwww!” Sofie squeezed her little angel tighter and gave her an affectionate peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry I can’t always be with you, even if I want to be. Depending on what we find in Otharia, I might be really, really busy, alright? I know! You need a friend you can spend time with when I’m not around!”

“Pari doesn’t know how to make friends,” came the glum reply. “Children say Pari is weird and that children don’t want to be friends with Pari.” The girl let out a sniff as if she were about to weep, setting off waves of sisterly alarms in the very core of Sofie’s being.

“It’s alright, I can teach you how to make a friend!” she hurriedly reassured the forlorn child.

Pari sniffed again. “Really?”

“Of course! Making friends is easy. All you have to do is be yourself!”

“But Pari will just be called weird.”

“That’s just because they don’t know how cool and special you are,” Sofie said with a pinch of Pari’s cheek. “Think about it this way. When you met me, did you like me?”

“Uh huh...”

“And why was that?”

“Because Sofie-sis saved Pari when Pari was scared. Pari should save people and they will be Pari’s friends!”

“Hmmmm... maybe that doesn’t work as well as I thought. Look, Pari, all you have to do is be kind, and be nice, and be caring, and people will want to be your friend without you even needing to ask. You understand?”

“Pari will be the best and save all the friends!”

“No, that’s...”

“Pari will be just like Sofie-sis!”

Sofie’s protest died in her throat as the little scamp turned around and looked at her with a beaming smile and adoring eyes so lovable that Sofie’s heart nearly stopped beating forever. With a resigned sigh, she gave up for the moment and just patted her companion affectionately on the head before starting to wash the child’s hair.

*     *     *

“Pari, what did I tell you about experimenting indoors while we’re in an inn?” Sofie scolded while snatching away a vial filled with who knew what from the mischievous tyke.

“But Pari is booooorrreed!” the girl whined.

“I know, but we don’t have a choice but to wait until we can find a way into Otharia.”

“Why can’t Pari go now? Pari hates waiting.”

“It’s because the border is swarming with dangerous robots.”

“What are robots?”

“Do you remember the big four-legged things that showed up in Crirada a few days before we left?”

“The big grey bugs?” Pari asked with a spark of curiosity and excitement in her eyes.

“No Pari, they’re not bugs and you can’t make ingredients out of them. They’re machines that will kill you if you get too close to them.”

“Awwwwwww...” Pari sulked.

“Listen, those machines won’t let anybody go into the place we need to go, so until Jerithim finds a way past them we have to stay here and be good, alright?” The sound of a key in the door’s lock caught her ears. “Oh look, there he is now.”

A visibly exhausted Drayhadan entered the room.

“Did you find something?” Sofie asked before he’d even taken two steps inside.

“Maybe,” he replied as he sat down on a nearby stool. “Sit down, we need to talk.”

Sofie frowned at the elf’s demeanor. He wasn’t the sort to be this solemn when they were alone.

“Did you actually know Jaquet the Quick?” he asked, his face serious as he stared her in the eyes.

Sofie’s body tensed. “I-”

“Look, I honestly don’t care right now if you lied,” Jerithim interrupted with a shake of his head. “They wouldn’t admit it, but I think that my team agreed to this simply as a justification to get me away from Crirada. After I lost my leg, I was nothing more than a burden to them. The only way I could fix that was by undoing the transformation, but that wasn’t an option in there since once you undo the transformation, you can’t bring it back. So they sent me off with the pretense that I was to escort you to Otharia.”

“You don’t believe that what I said is true, then?”

“I didn’t hear what you said, but their summary of it was absurd. I don’t know how you learned about the Mother of Nightmares but just because you know about her doesn’t mean anything else you said is true.”

“I wasn’t lying.”

“You really claim that you are an acquaintance of not only the prince of the Esmae clan but also the ruler of Otharia and Drayhadal’s greatest weapon against the Stragman savages?”

“Yes,” Sofie responded. It wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough.

“The others didn’t know this or they would have had me question you back in Crirada, but I actually trained with the man who became Jaquet the Quick many years ago. Served in the same mercenary band during his first assignment as well, monitoring him in order to judge his readiness for full-fledged field work. I don’t know about the rest of your flimsy story, but I can’t see that man falling for anybody, especially not a human.”

Sofie gulped as she saw the knowing glint in his eyes. “It’s true, though. He was really protective of her and was always trying to keep her out of harm’s way.”

“What was his favorite food?”

“What?”

“Come now, you claim you spent more than a season with him and you don’t even know that?”

“Well, we were not really in a position to choose what we got to eat most of the time. I guess he did complain a few times about how he missed some sort of Droajan delicacy.”

“Matinau?” the elf offered.

“Yeah, something like that?”

“That’s a special dish they only make in his cover’s hometown of Zamery. It’s little more than glorified meat on a stick from what I’ve heard.”

“Ah, interesting. Wait, Zamery? Wasn’t his fake hometown Zlamery?” Sofie inquired.

“Is it?”

“Yeah, I remember this one time, Arlette said it was Zamery and he got all upset. Called that place a ‘pisshole’ and said everybody there was a ‘bunch o’ punters’.”

“That sounds like him, alright. What clan did he claim to hail from?” he asked, more sternly this time.

“Delon. Wouldn’t that be sort of common knowledge, though?”

“Not really. He was widely known as ‘Jaquet the Quick’ and didn’t want to go throwing his clan name about all the time. Just because he was the only ‘Delon’ on this side of the world didn’t mean that he could just use it with impunity. There was always the chance that somebody who’d been to Droaja might figure out that something was wrong.”

“Then what about Lucas and Leila?”

“Who?”

“This older couple that he took us to in Begale. They were from the same clan too. Wouldn’t they have recognized... oh wait, they were spies too, weren’t they?” She saw the man’s frown deepen slightly at her answer and something clicked. “Wait a minute! You were playing dumb on purpose, weren’t you? You knew what his hometown was and you knew about the spies in Begale. You just were trying to trap me in lies!”

“Hmmmm, maybe I was wrong about you after all,” he admitted.

“Hmph!” she harrumphed. “You should have just believed me from the start. Why would I make up something so ridiculous if it weren’t true? I’m sick of people doubting me all the time.”

The spy shrugged. “People do crazy things when desperate. Alright, I guess I believe that you knew the prince.”

“Why are you asking all this now after we came all this way? Why not back at the beginning?”

“Because if I’d found out that you were lying, I’d have to kill you and then report back our failure, and I didn’t want to do that right away. It was nice talking to somebody new for the first time in forever. The traveling was nice too; sunshine, clean air, hunting for actual meat... why would I just throw that away by finding your falsehoods immediately? Plus, it would have put my team in a bad light for their poor judgment, and they don’t deserve that for trying to help me. But now that we’re here, I had to make a choice. I’ve enjoyed your company so if you’d been lying about the prince I was planning on just leaving you here to fend for yourself and reporting that I’d killed you, but since you convinced me, that won’t be a problem anymore.”

“I-I’m glad you believe me,” Sofie replied weakly. Why did everybody in this world talk about killing others so casually?

“Anyway,” the elf continued, rubbing his hands together eagerly with a wide smile on his face, “now that that’s out of the way, I may have found a way into Otharia.”

“O-oh?” Sofie felt like she was getting whiplash from his sudden tone shifts.

“Yeah. There’s just one problem though: it will cost us basically all the money we have left. If it doesn’t work or it’s a scam, we’re toast. Best case scenario, we end up outside the wall with the others.”

“What are the chances that it’s real?”

The elf sighed. “Who knows. You’ll notice that pretty much nobody here has tried to get into Otharia, but then again, with how Otharia is, would they even want to?”

“If it’s a trap, could you fight them off?”

“Maybe. I’m a pretty good fighter, but I’m not amazing. If there’s more than three of them, chances are we wouldn’t survive.”

“Well... we have to take it, right? At the rate we’re going, we’ll run out of money soon enough just paying the inn fees. Wait any longer and we’ll lose the opportunity.”

“It’s still a big risk. Do you really know this Lord Ferros person? Because if that part isn’t true, then we’re just walking to our own deaths regardless.”

“He’ll listen to me. Just get me in the same room as him and you’ll see.”

“That wasn’t a yes.”

“Just trust me for once, alright?”

The elf sighed as he stood up. “Alright, I guess I’ll go let them know. Be ready, we’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Hey Jerithim,” she said to him as he headed towards the door. “Since we’re trusting each other now, why don’t you tell me what your real name is?”

“Seriously, stop asking that.”

*     *     *

“Wait, so you’re a beastkin and she’s an elf? I thought you people hated each other,” Sofie commented as she pushed herself through a patchy bush and hurried after the others. The walk southwest from the city had been an exercise in frustration so far, as her newly-purchased hooded cloak kept catching on the scraggly shrubs that dominated the local Mediterranean-esque ecosystem.

The two people guiding the three travelers through the brush, a lanky beastman and a pudgy elf woman, exchanged a look between themselves.

“We grew up as neighbors and have been married for twenty years,” the man said.

“Oh, uh-”

“That’s just a Drayhadan and Stragman thing,” Jerithim clarified. “Elves and beastpeople who grow up elsewhere don’t have the same hatreds as my people do.”

“Oh, uh... sorry,” she said to the Eterians.

“It’s alright. With how much you’re paying us, we can forgive much more than that,” the woman laughed.

“This had better be what you claim it is,” Jerithim warned.

“It is, don’t worry,” the beastman reassured. “Been a while since the last time we guided somebody here. Must have been what, over a season ago?”

“Yeah, was another group of three people. Not many people ever seek us out for this particular service. I mean, who would willingly want to go in there?” the elf woman recalled, ignoring the glare her husband shot her way.

“Anyway, we’re here,” the man stated as the pair stopped in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

Looking about, Sofie couldn’t spot the walls of the city—they’d ducked beneath the horizon perhaps an hour ago—nor could she see any other sign of intelligent life. All there was to look at was shrubs, bushes, weeds, and the rare stunted tree. Then, off in the distance, she spotted movement. Something large and metallic, moving through the brush on four powerful legs.

“Creepy looking, aren’t they?” the elven woman remarked. “They don’t get any closer than that, though. We’re still in Eterium.”

“For now, that is,” the beastman added. His eyes took on a look of glassy concentration and a hole began to form in a nearby large rock embedded into the earth. Slowly the hold expanded wider and deeper until a person could easily fit through it.

“Climb in,” he said as he blinked, the unfocused look gone.

Sofie looked down into the hole to find that the stone only went about a meter down into the earth, and beneath that were...

“Stairs?” Jerithim asked as he too peered into the opening with a puzzled look on his face.

“Yep. Made this back when the new guy took over and the government locked down the whole border to stop the Otharians from swarming their way north. Figured it would come in handy for smuggling people or goods in and out, but largely it ended up being a waste of time. Never got much out of it other than getting a few people past those things up there. Now hurry up and get in before something sees us.”

The five of them climbed inside, one at a time, taking with them their assorted belongings. Sofie had her clothes and books, all neatly packed inside the large waterproof bag made of some sort of animal bladder that the Stragmans had issued her. Pari, as usual, had her sack of candlemaking equipment and the few wax-encased ingredients that remained after all this time. Jerithim just seemed to have some clothes and a few weapons.

Once they were all inside, the man closed the hole above them while Jerithim created a little light with a small candle flame. Once the entrance had closed fully, the beastman made his own equally small flame and worked his way to the front of the group before heading down the stairs. The rest of them followed, carefully taking step after step through the dim darkness.

“Rather trusting of you to lead us here like this,” Jerithim opined as they made slow but steady progress, the stairway spiraling down, deeper and deeper into the earth. “You didn’t blindfold us or anything. Don’t you worry that anybody who you lead here could just kill you once you show them where the entrance is?”

“Not really,” the other elf replied. “You need us, for reasons you’ll understand soon enough. Besides, nobody who we’ve brought through here has ever come back.”

Sofie swallowed. She didn’t like the sound of that last part one bit.

Suddenly, the sound of a splash echoed through the stairwell.

“Here we are. The hard part,” said the elf.

“Water?” Sofie asked, confused. “Are we so deep that we hit water?”

“Those government bastards were worried about Otharians tunneling under them to get through, so they would check for tunnels fairly often for a while. I heard they even had that famous general down here to command the troops, and he’s known to be the strongest earth and stone Observer in the world.”

“That asshole?” Sofie muttered with disgust.

“Oh, you know him?” the elf woman asked.

“Unfortunately,” Sofie replied. “He locked my friend away in Crirada and I had to bargain with him to get her out. Most pompous man I’ve ever met.”

“Well, regardless of your feeling about him, he’s undeniably strong. Any tunnels under the border would have been found by him pretty easily, but there’s always a limit, even for him. All you have to do is go deep enough. As long as nobody finds the shaft down, they’ll never check deep enough to find the passage going under the border. Once they hit water, they stop and assume that that’s the limit.”

“You dug a tunnel beneath the water table? That’s insane!” Jerithim hissed. “How would you even go through it? If this goes all the way to the other side of the border, you’d drown way before you made it to the end!”

“That’s why I’m here,” the woman explained. “I’m an air Observer. I go first and create places to breathe.”

“You’re crazy, both of you,” the spy said. “Digging a passage through the water at least a hundred paces below the ground? Honestly, I’m rather impressed.”

“A hundred and sixty paces or so below the ground, actually. I went deeper by about thirty paces just to make sure that one general wouldn’t find it,” the man said in return as he felt around under the water. After a moment he pulled a thick rope up for everybody to see. “Take this rope and use it to pull your way down through the water. At the end of every rope is the next breathing spot. Tie everything you have to your body so your hands are free to pull the rope.”

Sofie removed her cloak and shoved it into her sack. Seriously, it was incredible just how wonderfully useful the bag had turned out to be. She didn’t even want to think about what she would have done if all her hard translation work had been ruined by water.

“Pari, take off your cloak and give it to me so it doesn’t get wet,” she instructed, only to find the girl shivering in the dim light. “Pari, what’s wrong?”

“Pari does not want to go anymore.”

“It’s only water, Pari. It won’t hurt you. I know that you don’t like baths, but it’s just water, it’s not scary.”

“Grandfather said that the water had things that were scary even for him. Grandfather said I should stay away.”

“He didn’t mean this water, sweetie. See how small the water here is?” Sofie stretched out her hands to touch the walls on both side of the stairs at the same time. “Your grandfather is really strong, right?”

“Uh huh...”

“Surely only something really big could scare somebody like him, right? Nothing that scary could fit in here, right?”

The girl stared at the dark water, her thoughts wavering, but Sofie could tell that she wasn’t totally convinced. Taking off her shoes and socks and stuffing them in the bag, she squeezed past the others and hopped in.

“Look, see? Nothing to be scared of,” she said after coming back up for air.

Pari bit her lip for a moment before standing up straight and giving her a nod filled with courage. “If Sofie-sis is not scared, then Pari will not be scared,” she declared. “Sofie-sis is much weaker than Pari. Sofie-sis is the weakest person Pari knows!”

“Gee, thanks,” Sofie responded, doing her best to ignore the snorts coming from Jerithim’s general direction. “Now put your cloak in the bag. Apparently they’re all racist or something over there so we need to hide your ears and tail once we get inside and we don’t want it to be all wet.”

“Here, put mine in there too,” Jerithim said as he held out his cloak.

“Bag’s full, Mister Snorts,” Sofie sniffed as she shoved Pari’s cloak inside the bag and sealed it back up.

“There’s totally enough room left in there for-”

“Bag’s. Full.”

“...right.”

The trip through the underwater tunnel took hours. First, Sofie had needed to teach Pari, who had never truly been fully underwater before, how to hold her breath beneath the surface. Then, they’d needed to make their way down beneath the water, a few meters at a time. Getting used to the water pressure was also no easy task. The shaft down was constructed in a zigzag pattern, working generally deeper but at a slight angle that would reverse every four or so meters. At every spot where the direction reversed, there would be a bit of an overhang in the tunnel with an indentation in the bottom of it. The elven woman would go ahead of the others and create a pocket of air inside that indentation just large enough for everybody to stick their heads into and breathe for a minute before continuing onward.

Once they’d made it down to the bottom, the same general pattern continued, only horizontally this time. The straight tunnel had indents every so often just like the overhangs did. Like before, the group would float with their heads in the air pocket before taking a large breath and continuing forward to the next one, then repeating the process.

The journey was an arduous one for Sofie. The pressure of the water felt like it would crush her beneath its weight and strained her physically to the point of exhaustion. Even worse, the entire ordeal had to be done blind. Down in the water, not even a tiny flame could manifest, and when in the air pockets, it was more important to save energy than to make a light for nothing more than momentary comfort.

Sofie spent the entire time in a near panic over the thought that Pari would get lost somehow, that they’d all surface at an air pocket and her little sister wouldn’t be with them anymore, lost to the deep darkness. Pari herself seemed to misunderstand her fears, assuring her several times during the trip that Sofie didn’t need to be scared and that Pari wouldn’t leave her alone in the dark.

In the end, the ropes were what kept Sofie sane. They were always reassuringly present, connecting one air pocket to the next. Sofie clung to the knowledge that as long as they just pulled themselves along the ropes they would eventually make it through.

And eventually, they did. The journey back up went agonizingly slowly for her, but she suffered through the process of slowly ascending from pocket to pocket willingly. Sofie didn’t know if they were at risk of decompression sickness, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Let’s never do that again,” Sofie muttered as she flopped onto the blissfully dry stone stairs.

“Pari had fun!” the small girl replied, hefting her waterlogged sack out of the water.

The five of them took some time to rest after the long ordeal. Everybody looked exhausted, especially the elf woman, but they were all in relatively high spirits after the successful journey.

“I must say,” Jerithim remarked, “this is perhaps the most impressive underground tunnel creation I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen my fair share over the years. You might be the most talented tunnelers in the entire continent.”

“You praise us too much,” the man replied.

“I’m serious. Your skills are incredible. To make something like this, just the two of you, and to do it underwater and in such a short time, that’s special. Did you ever consider working for the army? The people in Crirada could really use people like you two.”

The man’s face darkened. “I’m not gonna help those bastards,” he replied. “Not even if they got down on their knees and begged me. They can all die for all I care.”

“I see. I apologize for prying.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman chuckled. “He’s just very prickly about the government here. Besides, as I said before, with how much you’re paying us, we can forgive a little prying.”

Soon enough, the group rose to their collective feet and climbed the stair back up to ground level. Sofie had to squint as the exit slowly opened and the afternoon sun finally pierced through the darkness. They’d entered the other side in the mid-morning, and already the sun was well on its way down back on the other side.

“We made it!” Sofie cried, throwing her clenched fist up towards the sky.

“Shhh!” Jerithim hissed. “We don’t even know what’s out there.”

Slowly, he pulled himself up to the lip of the hole and peered around, before hauling himself out. “We’re clear.”

Sofie helped push Pari up towards the elf’s waiting hands and then followed after. Looking about, she saw that they stood in a small grove of trees surrounded by the same brushland that they’d been walking through on the other side of the border. Had she no memory of what they’d just endured, she would have never known they were in a different location than the one they’d been in that morning. Luckily, she couldn’t spot any robots around.

Jerithim fished out a small sack of coins and tossed it to the couple still in the tunnel. “Here’s the other half.”

The two nodded and the hole began to fill in with stone.

“Hey,” Sofie interjected, crouching down to the shrinking gap, “I’m sorry, I want to thank you but I never got your names.”

“I’m Remo and she’s Nerva,” the man replied.

“Thank you both for your help. You don’t know how important it is for me to get this far.”

“You’re welcome,” Nerva said with a smile just before the hold closed up completely. “Good luck.”

Then the stone filled in and became whole once more. Sofie stood back up and stretched her tired body before turning to Jerithim and remarking, “See? They told me their names and they don’t even know me.”

The Drayhadan just rolled his eyes.

*     *     *

“What in the stars is that?!” Jerithim sputtered, stepping away from the large metal monstrosity closing in on their position.

“Calm down, you’re blowing our cover, mister spy,” Sofie hissed as the train cars pulled up to the station and came to a halt.

“Our cover was blown the moment you stepped onto this platform,” the elf retorted. “Did you not see the looks of everybody around when you ran up those stairs? It was like you’d grown a second head.”

In retrospect, Sofie couldn’t deny he had a point. Though it was the early afternoon here in the city of Nont, and many people were out and about in the surrounding area, not a single Otharian had stepped within five meters of the train station. She’d just been so overjoyed to see something resembling modern transportation that she’d run right up to the tracks without even realizing what she was doing.

With a series of clicks, the doors on the three cars slid out and then to the side as a disembodied voice suddenly spoke a series of unintelligible gibberish. Sofie listened carefully, unable to make sense of any of the words except the only one that mattered: ‘Wroetin’.

“Well, no use crying over spilled milk,” she replied with a shrug. “Get on. We’ll be so far away from here in a minute that it won’t matter anyway.”

Pari approached the nearest open doorway and peered inside curiously, sniffing up a storm. Jerithim, however, didn’t move.

“I don’t know about this... there’s likely a good reason that one woman gasped like you were about to be eaten alive,” he said, looking about the empty station.

“I swear to god, if this train leaves without us, I will fucking end you,” Sofie stated with all due seriousness. “I’m sick of walking. Get on the train.”

With finality, she stepped into the cabin of the front car while ushering Pari along with her. Hesitantly, the elf followed suit.

Jerithim’s words were true. All three cars were entirely empty and showed no sign of use whatsoever. Each car seemed to be arranged in the same way: an open space in the center, with rows of seats facing forward at the front and rear and a single row facing the center on the front end side. The smooth metallic seats gleamed in the midday light. Looking towards the back, Sofie saw that there was one section in the very rear that was closed off into a separate room. A sign hung over the door to the room, a sign that sent literal tears streaming down her cheeks.

“What’s wrong?!” the elf asked in alarm as the doors closed. “Are you alright?!”

The train began to accelerate silently, and the force, combined with her surging emotions, brought Sofie to her knees. The sounds of her companions faded out of her consciousness as she just stared at the sign. On it were two figures, generic representations of a man and a woman in a dress and a vertical line running between them—the universal Earth sign for a restroom. An honest-to-god restroom.

Earth. Civilization. Home. It was here, right in front of her.

Emotions she’d had bottled up inside her for months began to spill out uncontrollably. She’d seen the robots and the trains, but somehow this was different. The little cartoon people were like a direct acknowledgment from the creator of these trains, something far more significant than robots or zeppelins or secondhand visions of World War Two Japan. They were a message meant just for her, a message that simply said: “you are not alone”.

“I knew we shouldn’t have gotten into this thing,” Jerithim muttered to himself.

“I’m sorry,” Sofie apologized, standing back up on shaky legs. “I’m fine. I just wasn’t ready for what came over me. Let’s sit down, it’s probably going to be a while before this stops again.”

Pari and Sofie took a seat by one of the windows in the front. Pari practically smooshed her face up against the glass as she stared outside, enraptured by the scenery flying past her eyes. Normally, Sofie would have joined in—she’d always loved watching the world outside zip by—but her head was clouded by a haze of disparate thoughts. She’d seen much since leaving that tunnel a week ago, but she still didn’t know what to think about any of it.

Maybe they had just missed some villages, or maybe nobody lived that close to the border, but for whatever reason, they hadn’t run across anybody during that first evening. Instead, there had only been wilderness. Once they’d gotten a lay of the land, they’d focused on drying out their wet belongings and finding a place to sleep.

It was around midday the following day when they’d spotted their first Otharian. The man, an animal herder of some sort, had been far too busy with his flock to notice them, and they’d worked their way past him without alerting him to their presence. It was important that they not be seen coming from the border itself. Not until they could act like they were coming from a northern village would it be safe to let themselves be spotted.

The rest of that day, they’d spent their time slowly and carefully working their way around a few small farming villages before camping once more. The nights were cold and uncomfortable, even for Scyrian standards, bringing back memories of her early days with Arlette and the others. Even the fear of being discovered felt familiar.

On the second full day, Sofie and the others saw their first example of life in the new Otharia. They’d come across another farm, this one larger and more populated than the others so far. The farmers seemed busy digging in the dirt, clearing out the fields for spring planting. Sofie had found it puzzling that the people still used what looked to be crude hand tools for everything. There were people clawing at the dirt with rusty, worn-out hoes, others digging with dented shovels, and even two farmers hard at work chopping down a tree with shoddy-looking axes. This was not the sight she’d expected to see in a land of airships and robots.

There was one inconsistency, however. Perched on a hill overlooking the farms stood a single four-legged robot. Sofie watched the machine for a good while, but not once did it move even a centimeter. As time went on, she couldn’t help but notice how the farmers avoided looking at the hill and the robot atop it. It was like they were terrified of even acknowledging its presence.

What was this robot? Was it a jailer? A protector? A policer? A surveyor? Sofie couldn’t say, but it was clear that the people here feared it deeply. What sort of country was this? And what sort of ruler was the man who controlled it?

Those questions had dominated every point of Sofie’s trek from that point up until the present. As they’d made their way further and further south, the frequency of robot sightings and other technology had increased, but so had the incidents. The sight of Otharians running in terror from a robot passing through became depressingly normal. Sometimes all it took for an entire village to panic was for a robot to move a single step. And then there was the worm.

Just the day before, they’d been walking down a well-worn wide dirt road. What had been villages before had now grown into small towns, and with that had come infrastructure, like the occasional shop and inn—not that they’d been able to partake in any of that, given their complete lack of money, Otharian or otherwise. Even the farms were more impressive, with fences and neat rows and more people working hard to clear out more land for planting.

Pari confused “nya?” had been the first sign that something was off. Then Sofie had felt the tremors, the unmistakable feeling that something was moving beneath them. The tremors faded away as quickly as they’d come, leaving the three of them to look around in befuddlement and a hint of fear.

A cry from the left directed their attention to the fields nearby. Off on the other side of the field, perhaps twenty men and women with axes and saws had been working away at a cluster of trees that dominated the area, standing proudly in defiance of the workers and their fields. One extra large tree stood in the middle of the rest as if it were the leader of the local foliage. Easily more than two meters in diameter, it towered over the others and seemed to laugh at the efforts of the farmers. It wasn’t Stragma level in size—not even close—but it would have been an attraction in most any national park back on Earth, to be sure. Just looking at it, Sofie had felt that there was no way the farmers would be able to remove it with tools they had available.

However, as soon as that cry had gone up, the entire group of farmers had turned and ran away from the trees as quickly as they could in all directions. And then that giant tree, the one that had seemed nigh invincible just moments ago, had disappeared. A massive grey metallic worm had seemed to leap up from beneath the ground, swallowing the tree from the bottom up. Sofie had simply gaped as the mighty trunk was quickly pulled into the mechanical beast’s maw like a branch fed into a wood chipper. Just seconds later, the worm had receded back beneath the surface and seemingly vanished from the world. Only the missing tree served as proof to the three of them that it had ever been there at all.

While it could be argued that this Lord Ferros’s zeppelin was a more impressive technological feat, the revelation of the worm had forced Sofie to reconsider her view of what the man was capable of. Blimps and whatnot had existed on Earth for decades, after all, but never had she seen nor heard of something like that. However, the sight had also helped to crystallize the uneasy feeling she’d been getting since the first robot’s sighting.

This was not a place where the people and technology worked in harmony. This was a place where the people lived like ants, trying their best to survive without being crushed beneath the feet of giants in their midsts.

Nothing served as a better example in her mind than the image of the farmers sprinting for their lives as the worm arrived. There had been no warning, no alarm, nothing. Anybody who hadn’t felt the tremors, or had too slow to evacuate, or perhaps even tripped, would have been gobbled up along with the tree and died a horrible, gruesome death. Maybe that worm had helped the farmers out by removing the tree, accomplishing in seconds what would have taken them hours, if not days, but it had done so without seemingly acknowledging their existence. It was as if they didn’t matter.

Arriving in Nont the next day had only reinforced this perspective in her eyes. Dozens of robots stood guard around the city, some standing vigilant while others patrolled through the busy streets. The people here weren’t afraid to look at them like the northern farmers were, but they still gave every robot a wide berth as if getting within five meters of one would cause it to explode or something. The image that most stuck in her mind was when they’d crossed through the central market while making their way towards the train station in the south of the city. A robot had slowly walked through the area on some seemingly preset course, and the large crowd of Otharians had parted like the Red Sea itself in order to allow it to continue on its way unimpeded. This was a populace steeped in fear.

As if to accentuate that feeling, subtle tremors continuously sprung up around the city, leading everybody in the vicinity to freeze like a deer in headlights until the rumbling moved away. What was going on beneath the city? She had no idea, but whatever it was, it didn’t seem like the locals were too excited about it.

What, exactly, was the point of all this? Sofie couldn’t say. Her eyes momentarily caught sight of some more farmers as the train zipped along its track. Though she couldn’t tell much for the quick glimpse, their thin frames managed to register before they moved out of view. While the severity varied, almost all the Otharians she’d seen since arriving in the country had been noticeably thin. Was her fellow Earthling, with all his wonderous technology, actually improving the lives of the people at all? The existence of things like the very train they rode inside suggested that progress was indeed being made, but that didn’t entirely outweigh everything else.

Just a week ago, the thought of meeting the ruler of Otharia, this wizard of robotics and machinery, filled her with excitement and anticipation. Now it filled her with anxiety. What would he be like? What would she even say? She didn’t know, and it troubled her greatly.

*     *     *

The grey fortress towered over the city of Wroetin, its massive metallic walls and spires gleaming in the light of the three moons and the multitude of crystal street lamps placed throughout the capital. It wasn’t a castle, nor a citadel. No, only “fortress” could properly convey its imposing, almost aggressive presence. An imposition upon everything around it, the fortress existed as a reminder of the current order; as long as it stood, nobody could possibly forget who was in charge. Sofie forced herself to look away from the ugly thing, lest it anger her further.

“So that’s it, huh? The place where your friend lives?” Jerithim asked as they stepped out of the train car and onto the Wroetin train platform.

“Yeah,” she responded.

“Do you have a plan? How are you going to get in touch with him?”

Sofie sighed, looking up at the stars. The sun had set perhaps half an hour prior. “I’ll have to try to contact him tomorrow.”

“We don’t have any money for an inn, Sofie.”

“I’m not ready yet, sorry. Plus, I’m tired and hungry. We haven’t eaten in like ten hours. Do you think you could find us some food, and maybe a safe enough place to sleep for the night? Somewhere out of sight?”

“I can try,” the elf replied with a tired sigh. “You know, if you would just let me swipe some coin, we could be sleeping in a warm bed right now.”

“Do these people look rich to you?” she shot back. “Everybody’s struggling to get by as it is. I’m not going to have that on our consciences.”

“Fine, have it your way. I’ll go see what I can find. You two stay here; you’ll slow me down too much otherwise.”

“Wait! You can’t just leave us alone in a foreign city! No way!” Sofie protested.

“As far as I can tell, nobody here dares to even get close to this place,” the elf replied, indicating the train station where they stood. “Here, if it makes you feel better, take this. I’ll be back soon.” He handed her one of his long knives.

Sofie took the knife with a frown but didn’t say anything. Together with Pari, she sat down by the train tracks to wait nervously for Jerithim to return. She’d never really felt safe in this world, especially without somebody else who was good at fighting around to protect her, but there wasn’t much she could do about it at the moment.

The street in front of her seemed to be a major one, and a good number of Otharians moved about it even though night had recently fallen. Sofie watched them warily, but outside of worried looks from some of the passersby, as well as a few that seemed to say that the two of them were crazy for even going near the place, nobody had given them trouble so far.

Then Pari’s head jerked upward with a start.

“Pari? What’s wrong?” Sofie asked. She couldn’t see much of what Pari was up to since the hood of the cloak covered the girl’s head and face very effectively, but it seemed that the child was looking about furtively for something and sniffing intently. It was never a good sign when she started sniffing intently. “Pari, what is it?”

Her sister didn’t answer. Instead, she suddenly took off running, jumping down the station steps two steps at a time and hightailing it into the thinning crowd. Even though she’d just been behaving strangely, Pari’s actions still caught Sofie by surprise for one simple reason: she’d left her candlemaking sack behind, and if there was one thing that Pari Clansnarl almost never did, it was willingly separate from her candlemaking sack.

“Pari!” Sofie called out to the child’s retreating back. “Pari, get back here!”

Letting out a series of curses that she would never, ever utter where Pari could hear them, Sofie picked up both her own and Pari’s belongings, threw them awkwardly over her shoulders, and ran after the trouble-making beastgirl with everything she had.