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  “Goats are cheaper,” the young mage informed him. “Even my father would go broke if he fed you on cows every day.” He tried not to think of the dragon eating horses, for some reason that image disturbed him more than the thought of Desacus eating people. “How often do you think about eating people?”

  “Only when I’m dreaming.”

  Moira must have been seriously disturbed when she made his personality, thought Matthew. “Do you really have dreams like that?”

  Desacus laughed again, “No. Usually it’s deer, or horses.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Though sometimes I imagine them with a nice human sauce drizzled over the top,” continued the dragon.

  Now he knew Desacus was pulling his leg. His companion had a bizarre sense of humor. “How would you even make human sauce? Dragons don’t cook.”

  “I’ll admit I don’t understand human cooking, pun intended, but I would imagine you just mash them up. What could be simpler?”

  Matthew couldn’t help chuckling, but after a moment he added, “Just remember this, you are not to eat any people, ever.”

  The dragon sighed, “Not even the bad ones?”

  Was that sarcasm? Desacus’s voice was too foreign to the normal range of human inflection to be certain and without being able to hear his thoughts directly it made his true meaning ambiguous for Matthew to know. “Not even the bad ones—unless I give you permission first.”

  “What about dead ones?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if they’re already dead? Say perhaps if we found some that had fallen off a cliff and they were already dead? It would be wrong to let them go to waste…”

  Matthew gave Desacus a flat stare, “No.”

  The dragon chuffed, “Fine.”

  “Are we done with this topic now? I need to focus on getting us out of here.”

  “Since you refuse to be objective about that matter, then I suppose we are,” answered Desacus, but after a brief pause he spoke up again. “Wait, what if they want me to eat them?”

  The young wizard gaped at him, “In what scenario would that ever happen?”

  “I’ve heard that sometimes your kind kill themselves.”

  “You mean suicide? It’s against the law. You shouldn’t do it, even if someone asked. Why would you think that was alright?”

  The dragon coughed, “I like helping people.”

  Matthew fought to suppress another laugh, Of all the dragons I could have chosen, I had to pick a comedian. Then another thought occurred to him, “When was the last time you ate?”

  “Yesterday.”

  A single day wasn’t long for a dragon. They tended to eat large meals and could go several days or even a week without eating again, although it depended greatly on how much they exerted themselves. He’s definitely not hungry then.

  “Let me concentrate,” said Matthew. “This isn’t going to be easy.” Opening the pouch on his belt, he reached in to withdraw an item he thought would help, but his fingers came up short, discovering the bottom of the pouch just inches in. While that would have been normal with most such containers, it wasn’t with this one. The pouch was enchanted to open into an extra-dimensional space that he used to store various items.

  Of course, it wouldn’t work here, he realized. I’m no longer on the same plane. That demi-plane isn’t close to this one. It was a sobering thought. He had stored a lot of useful items there and being unable to reach them seriously limited his options. He made a quick mental tally of what he had left, my clothes, a sword, dagger, eating knife, and not much else. Oh well, nothing said he had to stay long. If a need arose, he could always just return and fetch whatever he needed.

  Staring at the heavy granite that blocked their exit from the mountain he felt uncharacteristically nervous. Using magic while being unable to properly use his magesight was an unfamiliar sensation, akin to sword fighting while wearing a blind fold. He couldn’t sense anything beyond the cave itself, which now had a small amount of aythar filling it, a product of his presence and the magical light he had created. Not knowing how much stone blocked the way, or what might lie beyond it was discomfiting.

  It would also be much more difficult, since the stone had no aythar of its own. It was utterly dead, which meant all the power had to come from him. Even so, he didn’t feel it would be worth drawing upon Desacus. I just need to use an efficient spell procedure to minimize wasted aythar.

  He toyed with the idea of carefully removing the stone in blocks to gradually create a tunnel, but while each step would be simple, it would ultimately cost him more energy, and a lot more time. Sometimes the best solution just happened to be the more dramatic and explosive one.

  He began by drawing a circle around himself to reinforce the shield he would need to protect himself from falling stone if the cavern collapsed, then he mentally drew a series of crosshatched lines on the stone face in front of him. Rehearsing the words in his mind first, he then began a short chant in Lycian, carefully describing what he intended to do with his power, “Nailu en strath—Lines reinforced by my strength, focusing outward, fracturing stone and pressing outward. Break the earth and seek the sky!”

  The last part was a bit poetic, but poetry often worked better than dry exposition, although both had their place. As he spoke he visualized what he wanted and put forth his magic, driving it into the dead stone with his will. His magesight expanded with his power, following it into the rock, like a vision seen on a dark night during flash of lightning.

  It took far more of his strength than it should have, and still nothing happened for several long seconds. Sweat began to build on his brow as the tension in the granite grew ever greater, until the rocks around him seemed to vibrate.

  And then it exploded.

  Parts of the cavern ceiling broke away to be harmlessly deflected by his shield, while the entire wall of stone in front of him vanished, shattering and flying outward. Sunlight, impossibly bright after being in the cave, flooded in making the stone dust in the air difficult to see through.

  Matthew had anticipated the dust and made sure his shield would keep it out. Summoning a stiff breeze, he dispersed it quickly, but the effort made him pant. He felt as though he had run a marathon. What he had done required a lot of power, but back home he wouldn’t have expected to tire so quickly.

  “Stay here,” he told the dragon.

  “But…”

  “I want to look around first. There might be people out there. I doubt they’d react well if they saw you,” he explained. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  Desacus growled, “What am I supposed to do while you scout around?”

  “Take a nap,” suggested the young wizard.

  “I don’t want to…”

  “That’s an order,” added Matthew, putting a tone of authority in his voice. Desacus promptly laid his head between his forelimbs and closed his eyes.

  Well, I didn’t mean that kind of order, but I suppose that’s fine, thought Matthew. Walking forward carefully, he picked his way through the rubble. After forty or fifty feet he had reached the edge, allowing him to look out and study the mountainside. It was nothing like the mountain he had left in his own world.

  The slope here was anything but gentle. From the rough edge of his new cave opening, the stone dropped away vertically for almost a hundred feet. Looking down, he could see a winding trail following the slope of the mountainside. Small trees and shrubs grew here and there, but even the ground near the trail looked perilously steep. His eyes followed the trail to the left until they met those of a young woman looking up at him, her expression filled with surprise.

  She had a strange hat of some sort perched on her head, with black hair spilling out in a tight braid down her neck, and her shirt was bizarrely patterned with brown, red, and green stripes in a rectangular pattern. Her mouth opened as she called to him, but the words were unfamiliar and Matthew’s attention was taken by a loud crack that shook the stone bene
ath his feet.

  For a moment, he feared the rock face beneath him was collapsing, but it held steady. Glancing to his left, he saw a massive shift as the granite wall moved. A portion of its surface several feet thick began to slide downward, filling the air with a grating noise that drowned out all other sounds.

  The rockslide was heading directly for the trail, where the stranger stood.

  Trying to divert the stone or shield the woman was likely to kill him as tired as he already was, so instead he reached out with his power to snatch her out of harm’s way. Even at that distance it would have been a trivial feat, but in his current environment it was a strain. He wrapped the stranger in a soft band of aythar, and once his hold was secure he lifted and pulled her toward him.

  Matthew was a careful person by nature, and he had had years of practice and play with his sister to perfect his control. He knew almost instinctively how dangerous it could be to move a person too quickly, and even in that moment of stress he moderated the initial force he applied.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t spend enough time making certain of his own position. He had anchored himself out of habit, but while he focused his attention on his target, the extra difficulty of using aythar in this new world caused his grip on the stone at his feet to slip. The young wizard felt the ground slide from beneath his feet and his stomach tried to jump into his throat.

  He was falling.

  If he had had time to calmly observe what was happening, he might have pondered the unexpected turn of events with some humor, but instead he only had time for one though, shit. Pulling harder on the thread of aythar that bound them together he met the woman in mid-air, and as their bodies slammed together he felt the air leave his lungs. He ignored the pain of that as he surrounded them both with a springy cushion of pure aythar to break their fall.

  They bounced when they hit the ground, and the sudden change of direction threatened to pull them apart. Matthew gripped her harder, using both his arms and his power to hold the woman close as they spun in the air. Their second landing was farther down the mountainside and no less violent, sending them back into the air again.

  With each bounce, they rolled and fell farther down the steep slope. Matthew couldn’t breathe, and he felt his strength failing. This isn’t going to end well. Looking into the eyes of the woman, he couldn’t read her expression. Fear? Shock? Or was it simple surprise?

  A heavy copse of trees hove its way into view. Unable to speak, he sent a thought to the stranger, You’re going to be alright. I promise… The shade of the trees blocked out the sun as he used the last of his aythar to stop their spin and put himself between her and the onrushing trunks. Then the world went white.

  Chapter 3

  Karen blinked as a bead of sweat dripped into her eye. Stopping for a moment, she removed her hat and used the hem of her shirt to wipe her damp forehead. The mountain air was cool and dry, but she had set a hard pace for herself going up the trail.

  “Time for a break,” she told herself. She had a habit of talking to herself. It was something that might be expected for a hiker, alone on a long trail, but for Karen it was a part of everyday life. She had grown up with very few people around and after her father’s death she rarely saw other people in the flesh.

  She had plenty of friends; she wasn’t antisocial, but talking to people online didn’t completely fill the need. It was almost as though her vocal cords simply demanded the exercise.

  Sitting on a relatively smooth outcropping of rock near the trail, she pulled her PM out and looked at it. There were several additional notifications waiting for her attention. With a sigh, she shoved it back into her pocket. She was hiking to get away from such things, though it hardly mattered. She could be just as alone at home as she was a hundred miles from other human beings.

  “But back there I wouldn’t get to see all the flowers, or smell the fresh air,” she said softly. Glancing skyward, she gauged the position of the sun, purposely ignoring the urge to pull her PM back out just to check the time. “Mid-afternoon, I’ve got hours to go before I have to worry about light. I’ll wait a couple more hours before calling the pert for my gear.”

  Setting up camp in the dark was no fun, so she had learned to give herself plenty of time to accomplish the task. Plus, it would take twenty or thirty minutes for the pert to reach her. She pulled a bottle from her shoulder bag and took a drink of water. Zipping the bag back up, she held it out in front of her for a moment, contemplating its light weight.

  She carried very little in it, aside from her water, a small bag of trail mix, and extra sunscreen. She couldn’t imagine what backwoods hiking had been like in the old days, when people had had to carry everything with them. “They must’ve been tough. I get tired just carrying this little thing.”

  The wind had died for the moment, so Karen fanned herself using her booney for a few seconds before putting it back on her head. “Time to get moving.” She stood and began picking her way along the trail again, following it ever higher into the mountains.

  Karen ascended slowly for another half an hour. She was beginning to pant now. The trees had begun to thin out, and she knew the tree line was probably less than a few hundred feet higher up. Of course, gaining that extra several hundred feet might mean trekking another mile along the trail as it slowly wound back and forth up the difficult terrain.

  “I don’t really want to camp any higher up,” she told herself. “Maybe I’ll stop here and in the morning go on. That’ll put me well into the descending portion of the trail before it gets dark tomorrow.” She pulled out her PM to locate herself on the map.

  The first thing that grabbed her attention, as always, was the notification alert. “Three messages from Dad, and one from Mom—what the heck?” Since transitioning, her mother rarely bothered to contact her anymore. One or two messages a year was the most she expected, and that was fine with Karen. She bypassed the message alerts. There would be plenty of time to review them later, after the tent was up. She was just starting to look at the map when something flashed farther up the trail.

  Looking up, she searched the trail ahead, along with the nearly vertical stone face that rose to the right of it. A tremor passed beneath her feet as a thunderous crack sounded and stone flew from the stone wall in exactly the place she was looking.

  “What the hell?” The explosion was clearly not natural. Was someone using explosives? Something like that should be illegal on public land, especially so close to a hiking trail.

  A cloud of dust hung in the air above, until a sudden gust of wind dispersed it. She stared at the opening that was revealed and was utterly surprised when a man stepped into view a moment later. He must’ve been right there when it blew. How reckless can you be?

  The man looked down at her, his eyes meeting hers with a look of surprised curiosity. The wind tossed his light brown hair as he gazed at her. He was slender built, but otherwise perfectly average in his form; what really caught her attention was the strange attire he wore.

  A sudden pop took her attention off him for a moment and a glance above and to her right showed her a huge section of the mountainside sloughing off. It was sliding directly toward her.

  There was no time. None. Even if she had been running already she couldn’t hope to clear the endangered portion of the trail quickly enough.

  Something touched her, accompanied by another flash of that same strange light. Or was it light? She could see it, sort of, but she felt it as well, and the sensation brought with it a wave of dizziness. Or perhaps that came because she was flying through the air. The ground must have pitched her upward somehow, although she could have sworn she was being pulled.

  She saw the stranger slip and fall, his face registering surprise. Their eyes locked again, and she saw his arms open wide. He was growing closer, almost as if he was flying purposely toward her like some strange bird. He looked determined, rather than afraid.

  Without thinking about it she bent at the waist, drawing her l
egs up to shield her body from the impact as they slammed into one another, and she heard a whoosh as the air went out of his lungs. Her knees had struck him in the belly, even so his arms went around her, gripping her fiercely against him. Fire raced along her nerves as their bodies came into contact.

  He can’t be that strong. It felt as though they were bound together by ropes.

  And then they were falling, and fear finally found her heart. Everything up to that point had happened so rapidly that her mind hadn’t had a chance to react properly. She felt it now, though, a rush of adrenaline as her heart began to flutter in her chest, with her breath coming in shallow gasps. They landed, but were somehow unhurt, and then they were flying again, spinning through the cold mountain air.

  He was staring at her, no, through her, as though he was distracted. Then his eyes focused on her. He’s glowing, she realized. And then she felt him inside her, a voice within the privacy of her heart.

  It was a feeling, a thought, or perhaps it was a different language. The words were strange but she could taste the meaning of them, You’re going to be okay. Their bodies turned in the air, and then she saw the trees slam into his back.

  ***

  Karen opened her eyes again, though she didn’t remember closing them. It was dark, and she couldn’t breathe, as though a great weight was pressing down on her chest. She tried to roll over, and then she understood, the stranger was on top of her. Light was filtering through the trees and creeping around the edges of his hair. The sun was still up.

  “I’m alive,” she managed to whisper, but she needed to get out from under him.

  Absently she noticed his smell, distinctly masculine and yet unusual in some way she found hard to define. It fit well with his odd choice in clothing, earthy and mild, as though he bathed regularly but had never discovered deodorant.

  She grunted as she rolled his limp form to one side and clambered out from under him. She took a moment to study the stranger.

  He was obviously wealthy. Everything he wore was bespoke, in fact, as she looked closer she could see that even the stitching had been hand-done. Unlike most handmade clothes however, these were masterfully fashioned. What truly made them odd was the style. Was he some sort of medieval enthusiast? He wore at least two layers, a richly embroidered grey tunic with wide sleeves that came halfway down his arms covered a not-quite-white undertunic with sleeves that tapered to fit him all the way to his wrists.