“What do you mean you don’t know where Avonside is?” Jerril exclaimed as we stood outside the first major human town we’d visited since we left the mountains.

Between us and Avonside was a huge expanse of low rolling hills, a few rivers, and a whole fuckton of grass. Oh, and the Empire of Ghraiga, who dominated the region north of both the anver and obrec lands, and then some. From the maps I'd seen, they stretched so far east that all the walking we'd done so far on the ring wouldn't get us halfway to the other side of their territory. They were huge.

They were also human, but the obrec considered them to be far more civilized and reasonable than the chaos of the Anverlands, so they were treated as entirely separate in the eyes of our alien friends. It did make me wonder, though, what the heart of the empire was like.

“Well, we didn’t exactly have any maps to follow when we left,” Adam told the elderly obrec, matching his volume. “We didn’t even know fuckin’ magic existed by that point. Or obrec, for that matter.”

“It’s in that direction,” I said, pointing towards where my tracking spell said the rings were. “Like, literally exactly that direction.”

“Ah yes, very helpful,” Jerril huffed, closing his eyes for a moment as he took a few calming breaths.

“The first town we found was called Agoshin,” Troy said, having wandered over when he heard shouting. “It was quite a ways into the plains, but once we get there, I’m confident I can get us to Avonside.”

From what I remembered of the story, they'd wandered aimlessly until finding a road, so… I had my reservations about that claim by Troy.

“Agoshin,” Jerril nodded. “Thank you, finally a name — something I can work with.”

All but dragging Troy by the arm, the elderly obrec man took him over to what I was calling their command wagon. It was where Jerril rode, along with their gold and maps. Goodness, but the man could get grumpy when things weren’t going efficiently.

Adam sidled up next to me as they walked off and leaned down to whisper, “He and Esra would make such a cute couple. They could argue each other hoarse for our entertainment.”

“I don’t think the ring would survive that,” I grinned, shaking my head in amusement.

It had been three days since Kit went into the fruit, and we were struggling. The guards in the Empire of Ghraiga were less than accommodating, and not in the same way that the obrec ones had been. Ghraiga wasn't just physically huge, but apparently so was their bureaucracy.

When the others had originally passed through, they’d just been a band of heavily armed travellers. Suspicious, sure… but you didn’t make money out of taxing people like that. A wagon full of obrec goods, however — that was far more tempting. So licenses were required, stamps and seals had to be added to cargo manifests, and a lot of palms were greased with coin. The Stonechasers acted like it was no big deal, but my mind was blown.

We’d been stuck in this stupid town for days, waiting for pompous aristocrats to sign a document, and they didn’t give a shit about how many mages were in the party. So, three days after arriving here, we were finally ready to leave.

The town wasn’t even interesting. Their buildings were all made of stone and wood, with gross rotting thatched roofs over any building that was obviously owned by someone poor. The whole place felt like it had been built in a hurry on the order of some distant politician, and now they weren't getting the funds to actually maintain the town. That, or they just didn't care if the average citizen lived in half ruined houses. The wealth disparity here was stark and egregious.

We’d stayed in an inn that catered almost exclusively to travellers like us, or… well, the obrec had. We stayed in my grove obviously.

Mer had been mopey as hell since Kit went into the fruit too, trudging around and sighing a whole lot. It was cute, seeing the strong, confident warrior woman pining after my friend. I just hoped it turned out okay… Kit was a mysterious and sensitive guy and had a feeling that he needed a lot of finesse to handle in a romantic sense.

“Hey, whatcha thinking about?” a quiet, caring voice asked as arms wrapped around me from behind.

I hummed in happy surprise and leaned back against Grace, taking in her warmth and smell — revelling in the feelings of safety and love that they evoked within me.

“Just… stuff,” I shrugged, the willpower to fully explain my thought process eluding me. “Nothing terribly interesting.”

Her laugh was tender and quiet in my ear, and we turned to watch the obrec get themselves ready to leave. It seemed that Troy and Jerril had figured out a route to take.

“Holding you like this, it makes it so clear that the fruit really did give you a form that fits who you are,” Grace murmured, kissing my ear. “My strong but hesitant girl, powerful mage with the restraint not to use it on the innocent. You’re incredible.”

My cheeks heated with her words. The kiss to my ear was also a lot to handle, and my thoughts dove into the gutter. It had been so long since we’d made love — properly, at least. We’d tried a few times, but exhaustion was my constant companion and I just didn't have it in me. Hopefully, all the waiting would make the next time even better.

“You two ready to mount up?” Troy asked, oblivious to where my thoughts had been.

Mount up.

I choked on my tongue and started coughing at the unintentional pun he’d made while Grace laughed and nodded. Time for more mind numbing days of wagon travel followed by magecraft in the evenings. Hurray. At least my grove was well fortified and I had spells for all sorts of strange crap.

My tree had spells for airflow now, spells for heating, actual lights in the form of spherical fruit hanging from the ceilings. They had to be high enough to be out of reach of the buns though, because apparently the little critters thought they were mighty fine snacks.

The landscape of Ghraiga was not the most pleasant place to travel through. At least in the mountains the view had been stunning every single day. Vast low rolling hills and grass as far as the eye could see — it was monotonous as hell.

I’d heard great plains like this being described as seas or oceans before, but I’d never realised how true it really was. Sure, the weird freaky one from a month or two ago had been something, but this was… a whole other level. By week two in the massive empire, the never-changing vista was beginning to wear on my sanity.

The only break in the endless sea of boring, was a wide river we came across. We were forced to pay tolls at the Umare-built bridge, where the Ghraiga had set up forts blocking each end. According to the obrec, the river ran almost the entire length of the plains before disgorging into the large Mediterranean-style sea that the Ghraiga controlled. In fact, if we followed it downstream far enough, we'd come to their capital city — Ghraigara.

Along each bank of the river were all sorts of forests and wetlands, which had my ecology brain zooming. Wetlands like these, especially if they were seasonal, were incredible sources of biodiversity — not to mention probably harbours for all sorts of species found nowhere else.

Actually, did the ring have seasons? I couldn't tell, but I thought maybe it'd been getting warmer? Honestly, I hadn't been in any one place long enough to notice real changes — plus, how would seasons even work on this strange ringworld? It definitely wasn't the type of ringworld depicted in any fiction I'd read.

I wasn't the only one who hated the monotonous countryside — both my friends and the obrec complained about it regularly. When the Avonside party had originally come through here they had been further to the west, using the river system to travel across the width of the plains and into Anver territory. Wait, actually I think there was a section of land between the two that the Abers claimed. Who the Abers were, I had no idea.

It was no wonder the Ghraiga Empire couldn’t entirely control the nomadic tribes that roamed around the western steppes though. Even with the rivers for transport, the sheer magnitude of the region would make it impossible. You could send millions to their deaths in these golden grasslands, withered away by horse archers without ever wounding one of the enemy. I wondered if we might meet some of those tribes. It had been one such tribe that had attacked Avonside, oh so many months ago. I hoped any we met were more peaceful than that one.

“Do you think the others are okay back at Avonside?” Grace asked sleepily as we rode in the wagon during another dull  day. I was in her lap, slouched and dozing as she played absently with my hand, pushing at the squishy bits and moving my fingers randomly — like she did with her thumb, but my hand instead.

“I really hope so,” I replied after a moment of thought. “They are still alive, at least. I think. Their rings move around ever so slightly whenever I cast the tracking spell.”

“Things were stable there when we left, but also… worrying. I remember we talked about the politics stuff, but the reality of our situation was really beginning to sink in with people. I mean, most of us are students who had whole lives — families — back on Earth, you know? We were so used to how the world worked, but now everything is different,” she said morosely, sighing and pulling me closer against her. In a whisper, she added, “I’m coping because I have you.”

“Oh Grace…” I gulped, my heart in my throat. I wiggled around until I was facing her so I could give her a tender little kiss. “I haven’t had time to deal with any of that, sadly. I’ve had almost no downtime to really think about things since this all began — just non-stop shit happening. Maybe when we get back to Avonside I’ll start to feel it…”

“It’s more than just my individual worries, though,” she said with a shake of her head. “People were tense at the uni. They would get angry over stupid shit, there were fights between the more testosterone-fuelled guys — that kind of thing. Plus gossip, oh my god the gossip.”

“I remember you telling me about how people were talking about you,” I said, thinking back on our conversation in that inn so long ago. “How people blamed you for my so-called death

.”

I really hoped the tension she described had ebbed in the time since… but there was a chance things might be even worse than before. With that being a very real possibility, our party had discussed our options if things had gone bad at Avonside. We had more power than the entirety of Avonside — hell, even more than that now, with my grove expansion and Esra’s return to teaching me. We could, if we wanted, impose our will on the university and there wasn't much they could do to stop us. I shuddered at the idea, however.

“I’m not sure what I'll be able to do if things are bad in Avonside. I am terrible with confrontation — with conflict,” I said at last. “I try to find peaceful solutions, even if those… even if the solution is to give in and let myself get walked over like a doormat.”

“Not anymore. You’ve grown,” she disagreed, kissing the tip of my nose. “You still try to be peaceful, but you know how to use force when you need to. Just remember how you picked us up and hung us in the air when we chased you.”

I laughed, a smile forming on my face involuntarily. “Okay, yeah. But still, I—“

“Hey you two, we might need you to be up and on your guard,” Otho said, poking his head into the back of the wagon. “Mer thinks she saw someone, not sure who. Just a shadow…”

My first thought was about ring builder anxiety-field trickery, but we would have felt it here in the wagon too if that were the case. It meant that there really might actually be someone out there, watching us. I guess it was time for me to do magey things. Time for Esra’s relentless training to pay off.@@novelbin@@

“Let me take a look,” I said, pushing myself up and exiting the slowly moving wagon.

“Mer’s eyes are pretty good, I don’t know—“ Otho began, but I smiled and shook my head, cutting him off, “Not with my eyes dummy, with magic.”

“Oh, right…”

Moving off to the side so I wouldn’t get slowly and excruciatingly run over by the wagons, I raised my hand and closed my eyes. The spell was there, ready for me to call on it.

I felt the tattoos swirl up my arm for a moment, building into a bubble of energy that formed within my fist. Clenching my fist tight, I popped it and sent out a pulse of seeking magic.

Like a flock of curious birds, it raced across the landscape, surfing the undulating hills up to two miles out before it doubled back and returned to me. I took it back into my hand and inspected it with mage sight, squinting as I tried to understand what it was telling me. The spell was confused, which couldn’t be right. It was telling me nothing was out there, and then for a split second it would falter, telling me the opposite, although only in vague terms.

“My spell is… acting up,” I said, opening my eyes to find Troy and Mer had joined us, along with several of the caravan guards. “It’s almost like— Esra said this was a fairly standard spell, hold on. Let me try something else.”

If my standard and well known mage spell for scouting an area was acting up, it might mean that there was also a spell to counter it, and I was getting odd readings rather than nothing because of how much power I could bring to bear.

Something I’d noticed about mages from the ring, both young and old, allies and enemies, was that they all dismissed the half of them that was flora. They saw it as a sometimes useful but mostly irrelevant side effect of being a mage. They didn’t explore it, didn’t embrace it. They left it to sit on a metaphorical shelf to gather dust.

I transformed, taking on a moderate amount of my plant nature. Enough that I could move freely while still being able to do what I wanted — I didn’t want to root myself to the ground in a potentially dangerous situation, after all.

Crouching in the grass, I wormed my fingers into the dry soil and cast another spell, one I’d thought up and created myself. The spell tattoos flowed eagerly down my arms to burrow into the soil. A connection was established. With the gentle empathic voice of a flower, I spoke to the grass, amplifying their sapience for just long enough to ask them all a question.

What is out there? Do you feel boots crushing your stalks, kicking up your roots. Do you feel the insects scatter as vibrations warn them of potential danger?

Yes. We do.