Taking the automatic public shuttle this distance was draining, in all respects. Unfortunately, Sjakal didn't answer any of Boi's summons anymore, which was worrisome to say the least. She wondered what became of the three of them, even that jerk Aghvesi who got them all into this mess in the first place.Vepar, though—he wasn't prepared for planewalking. It was one thing to have the ability to emulate others. It was another entirely to get thrown into another plane of existence where all the rules were changed. Of the three, he was the least likely to come back...
And it was her fault, sort of. Yes, Aghvesi was ultimately at fault, but she dragged Vepar into the battle with Sjakal. It was difficult to overcome the feeling of responsibility. Maybe if she had been taken along with them, she could have helped, rather than be stuck here feeling stranded and alone.
"Now arriving at fourth face port 20,59. Last stop for this line, all disembark. Please see a ticketmaster for transfer options. Thank you for choosing Automatic for the People."
The automated recording shut off abruptly as Boi disembarked. She glanced around the unfamiliar port, not certain where to go and really starting to regret not learning at least some of Sjakal's base. However, even learning basic shortcuts proved to be irritating—how difficult would it have been to learn what was arguably the most complicated base in existence?
"Hoy," she called to an agent, ambling toward the nearest booth and thumping her hooves on the counter. "How do I get to the Zither-Ay Reefs Retreat grounds?"
The agent made the same face everyone made when she ambled up, which would have gotten old long ago if she hadn't had thick skin. "Off the counter, please!"
"I don't have hands. This is how I have to see you."
"Well, your hooves are dirty. Please take them off the counter."
"Then how am I supposed to talk to you? I can't see you from all the way down there."
"You can back up a bit to where I can see you."
Boi grumbled but did as she was instructed. "So?"
"Destination?"
"I told you!" she snarled. "Zither-Ay Reefs Retreat grounds!"
"What face is that?"
"You're the agent. You're supposed to know this."
"Perhaps, but it's not one of our stops."
"Just Google it."
"We are not authorized to use—" The agent stared at her dark and menacing glare for a bit, finally shaking his head in defeat. "Fine." He looked up the location from the global online optical grid list engine and cross-checked it with the shuttle directory. "Okay. You want to take the XYZ shuttle to fourth face port 21,53 and transfer at third face port 3,8. From there, it's one more transfer to second face port 9,3. I hope you know the way from there, because I can't help you after that."
"Thanks," Boi grumbled, turning around so quickly that she whacked a big notch in the booth.
"Hey!" the agent shouted, but Boi didn't care anymore. She needed to keep her skin thick for the dull trip still ahead of her. Grumbling, she searched the port for XYZ shuttle with considerable difficulty, since few of the signs were readable at her four-legged height.
As it happened, Boi was getting bored enough that she was starting to wish Vepar had never broken her out. At least then she had an excuse for not getting anywhere, instead of being lost in Yonkers. Furthermore, everyone was treating her like a stupid beast—she couldn't recall being treated like such an outcast before Sjakal lost contact. Did her prior really serve as such a thick buffer between Boi and other people? If so, that was just one more thing she should have already learned that she would have to learn to do on her own. It had just never been enough of a priority for her to be independent, something the retreat made clear, which must have been why she was sent in the first place...
As she was thinking it would be terribly convenient if a sort of deus ex machina would help her find her way back to the Brigade, Boi happened to scent the flow again. Or, 'scent' was the closest sense to how she could detect the crossings of planes, but she could feel it growing stronger again. "Sjakal?" she cried in excitement, trotting in the direction of the flow. She jabbed her snout into the heart of the crossing, waiting in anticipation. "Sjakal!"
A grubby hand latched onto her horn, and Boi pulled back in reflex, startled. It felt completely unlike Sjakal, which meant it could be anything or anyone... As she withdrew from the flow, Boi dragged a sweaty young man through the rift, one with four ears and wearing a mud-caked poncho. "Eek!" cried a young woman holding fast to his back, wearing wings and a sparkling headband.
"Who are you?" Boi demanded, ready to throw them back through the rift at the first sign of trouble. "Where's Sjakal?"
The young man stood, brushing himself off. "I am Zmaj of Odani style!" he blurted, as ordered. "I do not know a Sjakal person!"
The young woman was somewhat less obliging. "Who are YOU?" she demanded, glaring at her in suspicion, turning to the young man in dismay. "I wish you wouldn't tell everyone we meet who you are, Zmaj!"
"But she asked me, Arratoi!"
"Arratoi?" Boi stared at them more closely. The young woman bore a close resemblance to that undisciplined girl with Cavall, and the young man resembled that insipid boy with Hebi. "Were you two part of the Brigade?"
They stared at her in surprise for a bit, exchanging glances as they seemed to recall long-distant memories. "Are you – Boi?" Arratoi asked, lowering her guard.
Boi was astonished beyond comprehension, nearly falling over save that this was a harder task for a four-leg to accomplish. "How did YOU two planewalk?"
There was a moment when the two staggered in synch, feeling the effects of lag. The feeling passed as quickly as it began, however—if they were, in fact, the two Boi thought they were, they had been young and resilient enough to learn the pitfalls of planewalking without suffering from any permanent side effects. "Orne came through a tear, and we went through it," Zmaj answered at last.
"Orne?" She parsed the root, eyes widening as she did. "Vepar?!"
"You remember that?" Arratoi seemed surprised, scratching her chin in thought. "It was so long ago..."
"How long has it been?" Boi probed, trying to ascertain the extent of their journey. Due to the infinite scope of planes, it was unlikely that they stumbled upon Sjakal, but the chances improved the longer they had been away—relatively speaking.
"I was Grade 6 when we entered the tear!" Zmaj answered without hesitation. "I am now Grade 13!"
"Zmaj!" Arratoi complained, scowling at him. It was clear she still didn't trust others, even of her own plane.
This time, Boi parsed Zmaj's root. "So you learned his base," she deduced. "Base-RS—how did you manage it?"
"Base-DE is the fastest default base!" he shouted, just as blunt in his obedience as when he was a pup.
"I mean, who taught you?"
"No one taught me!"
Bold declarations, indeed! To learn a complex base in the time to advance only seven grades? "How did you learn?"
"Hebi told me to go after Arratoi and bring her back! I did what I needed to do!"
"Amazing," Boi mused. "You're some kind of idiot savant. So if I told you to learn Base-DK, you would?"
Zmaj shrugged. "I'unno."
"How did you open the rift?"
"I saw your horn and knew it was from a plasma plane. Arratoi told me that that was the way to find the way home again, to look for a plasma plane, so I grabbed ahold."
Really? That meant... "Can you go back?"
Zmaj turned around, reaching out to the spot where the rift had been moments before. "Where?"
So it wasn't his own ability alone. Then... "Get on, both of you."
"What?" Arratoi snapped, obstinant. "No way!"
"Get on, unless you WANT to hang around fourth face port 20,59."
She glared at Boi, looking around the port. As she did, her face fell, that expression of a lost child in an unfamiliar place displacing her haughtiness. "...fine," she mumbled. "Let's get on, Zmaj."
He did as he was told, taking a seat behind Boi's shoulders. Arratoi sat down behind him, grabbing him tightly around his waist. "Now emulate me," Boi instructed.
As she poked her snout back into the flow, Boi felt Zmaj amplifying the strength of her latent Base-DK ability. It took some rifling around in planarspace to find a hold, but she did, hefting herself and her passengers forward into another plane of existence.
What she saw – was beautiful.
The earth was lush, with verdant fields unlike the golden but crisp, dry grasses on the star. Even the hills were green, not rocky or the equivalent of large mounds of dirt scattered about the landscape. The air had a hint of something she couldn't quite place when she scented it, but the atmosphere itself was cool and pleasing, vs. hot and desolate. Boi bent her head down and munched on one of the flowers at her feet—it was like eating a piece of heaven.
"Welcome to Terra Firma," Arratoi announced. "Zmaj and I have lived here for – seven years, is it?"
"Sjakal!" Boi cried, her heart racing at the idea of her prior being nearby. "Where are you?"
"I don't think she can hear you, whoever she is. Terra Firma is large and doesn't have quite the same rules."
"What are the differences?" Boi turned her head as best she could to see Arratoi out of one eye. "How do bases work here?"
"The same, we think, but they blanketly call what we do magic. It's been difficult trying to get along here—they aren't at all familiar with what we can do and treat us as monsters or something. I had to teach Zmaj and myself Base-ES/C to help us deal with the natives when we couldn't avoid being seen."
"CTRL-Z!" Zmaj shouted, not truly performing the incantation.
"What are they like?" Boi asked, curious—but not curious enough to engage one of them to find out for herself. "What do they look like? What do they do? What do they wear?"
"They look kind of like us," Arratoi explained, thinking of all the various people they had encountered. "The pups don't have legs like ours before we come of age, though, and most have weird flattened snouts. They wear clothes all of the time, covering most of their bodies, I think because all of them have very thin fur – like they're bald except on their heads. None of them use their bases or really ANY kinds of spells except rudimentary ones, and those by using the raw ingredients directly, such as actual eggs and flour and putting them over a fire for 35 mins when conjuring a cake. Simply reciting the components and performing the ritual doesn't work."
Such a strange realm! "How did you survive here for so long? I mean, the vegetation is divine, yes—"
"I finally mastered Base-FR/B. It took some effort, but I can shift our forms to appear to be like the natives." She disembarked to allow Boi the ability to witness her mastery. "Like this."
Boi flinched to see Arratoi morph into a bushy-haired girl with a strange dress and frizzy striped tail. She had the legs of an adult, with tiny feet compared to her pup form's, and she had sleek skin that was hairless like Boi's, but not scaly like Boi's.
"This is the shape of a girl I observed, by the name of Aitne."
"Name?" Boi cocked her head at the concept. "What is that?"
Aitne-Arratoi bit her tongue to think about how to compose her answer. "It's – a strange piece of code, seemingly unrelated to anything about the person, used to identify the person. Apparently there are only about eight distinct roots on this planet, so no one uses them to identify each other. This girl is a root ursine, sub-routine cacomistle—I think."
"Are the males different?"
Arratoi morphed again, this time taking the form of a small boy with a thin tail, wearing some kind of uniform and hard shoes. "This is the one I've seen hanging around Aitne sometimes, by name of Darian—root jird, sub-routine vole. I've even talked to him once in Aitne's form, to see if I could fool him. He wasn't convinced, though, and he managed to talk me into revealing my secrets. I was able to revert him, though."
"Is that wise?" Boi scolded. "Who knows how the natives might react to things that aren't natural for them? Don't you know what happens when nonindigenous things are introduced to a habitat that doesn't know how to handle them?"
She morphed back to her default state. "It's FINE," she insisted, haughty again. "I watch closely to make sure nothing happens to change them permanently."
Boi had a difficult time believing this, but she wasn't the one who lived here for years, surviving on her wits.
No comments:
Post a Comment