The day is wearing on – the sun is already well on its way towards the horizon. I find that a relief – that no matter which world I’ve been on recently, there has always been a sun and the planet continues to turn. The one constant. It’s like going to another country with a different language and different alphabet, and seeing a McDonalds. Familiarity among all the novelties.

  Having my Bound around me is also reassuring – although I’ve once more world-hopped, this time it isn’t alone. And I think with amusement how I’m now as blasé about travelling between worlds as I used to be about going to France on holiday with Lucy when I started making some good money at my job.

  We haven’t done much in the time since Sarran brought us to this garden area. River and I have been exploring the plants around and she’s been experimenting with a few cuttings from them – several of them have turned to have alchemical purposes. Hunter has been working on her runes, testing whether the new world makes any difference – it appears the answer is both yes and no but she wasn’t in the mood to explain. Happy is itching to be back in a forge – I’ll need to negotiate access to one for her when Nicholas is well enough to speak to us. Though how I’m going to communicate is another question. Communicating with the samurans was achieved by Binding River and then others; I’m not sure that that strategy will work well in this new context. At least, Sarran wasn’t Bound to Nicholas despite clearly being trusted. Perhaps that’s an indication that they don’t use Bonds on humans in this world, even if it’s clearly possible.

  Catch and Iandee started sparring at some point, too full of energy to just continue relaxing. Some of my other Bound decided that play-fighting was a good idea – Trouble and his two new friends were keen on the idea though they didn’t manage to convince Ninja to join. Lathani did, though, and her larger size proved a difficult obstacle to overcome. Still, the three raptorcats continued until they found a strategy that worked. That was, until she used their shadows to vanish before their eyes and then leap at them from behind. It was amusing to watch, at least. Even Aingeal got into the game, working against Lathani by banishing shadows with his presence. The young nunda appeared to enjoy the challenge for a while before she got tired.

  Most of the others were happy to just relax for a bit with their bellies full and nothing else they had to do. Kalanthia seems to be one of those – until I start feeding my mana into the ground and find that her presence is already there.

  “Planning on making a den here?” I ask with a hint of teasing. “You like this garden that much?”

  Kalanthia eyes me with a baleful look.

  You should know that it’s always easier to defend an area if you have an existing relationship with the earth.

  “That’s true,” I admit, which actually was one reason why I was reaching into the earth at all. “How are you doing?” I ask more quietly, not that the volume of my voice makes much difference where there are Bonds involved.

  Kalanthia shifts a little uneasily.

  I do not like being so close to humans, she admits. And the stink in this place is far too familiar to me. Memories bother me, recollections I believed to be forgotten.

  “Smells have a habit of doing that,” I agree, remembering with a pang how once I’d got a whiff of the same perfume my mother always used to use. Even seven years after her death, it had brought me right back to the last time I’d smelt it. I look at Kalanthia in concern. “You say the smells are familiar…how familiar?”

  I know that she came to the samurans’ world from somewhere else while pregnant with Lathani. What would be the odds of her having come from this world? And if so, what if it was Nicholas’ family who had Bound her mother and caused her so much suffering? It seems like a rather impossible coincidence, but so much of my current existence would have been unbelievable to me a year ago that I find it hard to discount any possibility.

  Kalanthia probably reads my mind as she addresses my concerns directly.

  They are not those humans. But they are similar enough to make me…uncomfortable. I can feel too many chains in the magic that suffuses this place. She shivers.

  My concern grows. I don’t feel what she’s talking about, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there – I’ve experienced enough readjustments of my worldview upon adding Wisdom points to know that there is probably a vast gulf between what is actually there and what I can sense.

  “Do we need to leave sooner rather than later?” I ask, feeling the attention of several others focus on us. Even Lathani lifts her head from where she was dozing and watches us. Kalanthia takes a long moment to respond.

  If I stay outside, I can manage for now, she answers finally. The house is little better than a cage, but out here I do not feel the chains so clearly. I do not trust the humans here, but the situation is tolerable – for now. I feel honoured at the exception I feel her making in ‘humans’ for me. I guess that that’s why she’s sinking her awareness into the earth – for if the situation is no longer ‘tolerable’.

  “OK, thanks for telling me. Just, please, Kalanthia – if your discomfort increases, for whatever reason, tell me before you do anything. Can you do that?”

  I will not ask for permission to act, she growls, her fur starting to stand on end as she glares at me. I lift my hands and shake my head.

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean that we’re among humans now. In the samuran village, if a samuran offended you, you needed to complain to me or to one of the council rather than killing them; it’s the same here. And that goes for all of you,” I tell them since I seem to have pretty much everyone’s attention now. “I don’t know how things work here, but where I’m from, the consequences of taking the law into one’s hands often outweighed the satisfaction of doing so. And until we know what those consequences are, we will need to tread carefully. That’s not to say that we should let anyone here walk all over us, but we need to use words to communicate rather than actions.” And hopefully Nicholas has a way of allowing me to do so. Otherwise I’ll be restricted to gestures; that might make things a little difficult.

  My Companions aren’t entirely happy with my instructions, but most of them understand and agree. Even Kalanthia – she’s familiar with tolerating beings she doesn’t like for the sake of peace. And by the end of it, I think that she’d even become a bit fond of a few samurans – not that she’d ever admit it.

  I’ll need to keep an eye on Blaze and Spot, though. Trouble seems to understand better than they do – I suppose that he also saw some of the politics with the samurans so while he probably didn't understand them exactly, he has a better basis for my words than the two raptorcats who have never known anything but other raptorcats and the law of the wild.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  My Bound slowly return to what they were doing and I turn my attention back to my original intentions – feeling the differences between this place and what I’m used to. I know that the Energy density here is thinner than the other world: I can both feel it and see it in my status screen. But the earth feels a bit different too. I can’t put my finger on why. It just feels…foreign in some way. I decide to ask someone who has far better senses in that respect than I do.

  “Do you notice any differences between where we were before and this world?” I ask Kalanthia.

  The Energy is weaker here, the nunda replies immediately. But the earth is the earth. We are on a fertile plain rather than the side of a mountain, which you should also be able to tell, but apart from making it more difficult to create rock spines and easier to form sucking mud, that makes little difference.

  It’s a good point she makes about how the type of earth we’re on can impact the best offensive and defensive moves to use. I take a moment to follow my magic into the earth, feeling the differences Kalanthia has pointed out.

  She’s right – I can immediately feel that the earth we’re standing on is far more fertile than that I’m used to. I hadn’t realised that I’d got used to always having bedrock not that far below the surface of the earth, the roots of the trees sometimes all that kept the earth on the mountainside when torrential rains came through. I learned that to my detriment when we had a nasty mudslide in the area where I had destroyed the vast majority of the vine-stranglers not long after we returned from the Festival. Fortunately, with several Earth-Shapers working together, we were able to return the area to its previous condition, and then used the Plant-Shapers to weave roots through the area to stop it happening again.

  Here, though, it feels like centuries or millennia-worth of plant and animal matter has created a layer thick enough that I really have to reach to touch the bedrock. Of course, there are plenty of rocks in the area – ranging from pebbles to massive boulders. But the real bones of the earth are buried deeply here. I’d probably be better off using Lava-Shaping to create rock than Earth-Shaping it with the bedrock so far away. Still, I’m pretty sure that the different composition of the earth isn’t the reason for it feeling so foreign.

  The sensation of footsteps treading on the ground feels almost like an ant is walking over my skin when I’m in this state, but it’s enough to return me to full awareness. I know what my Bound’s feet feel like and this is different.

  I sense my Bound becoming more alert around me as I push myself to a standing position – the majority of them are attuned enough to my mood to be able to detect when they need to pay attention and the newer ones are probably picking up on the cues from the rest.

  It isn’t long before two figures appear from the hidden passageway that Sarran used to bring us here. One of them, of course, is Sarran himself. He looks wary. The other is Nicholas. I’m glad to see him hale and hearty, if only because I’ve been dying for answers for the last year and having to wait longer for them even when I’m now in the right world just seems awfully unfair. His eyes are just as wary as Sarran’s and he’s clearly controlling his reactions as he slowly looks over all of us.

  Still, I’m rather satisfied to see his eyes widen slightly as they pause on Kalanthia, and then again when they spot the samurans. Hunter is still holding the engraving that she’s been testing and River is standing behind a fire. I can only wonder what Nicholas is actually thinking, but I can’t help a moment of glee at realising that it’s outside his expectations.

  Finally, his eyes land on me and I feel the weight of that purple gaze. It hadn’t seemed so weighty before, but I suppose I only caught it for a brief moment before the man collapsed. This…it kind of feels a bit like Kalanthia’s domain, though far weaker and less…present. Out of curiosity, I pull on my own domain. I’ve been practising using my soul as a shield against Kalanthia’s presence ever since the day I discovered how to do it, though I haven’t yet managed to turn it into a weapon as she can. The sense of pressure abruptly lessens even if the gaze is still as weighty as ever.

  Apparently Nicholas wasn’t expecting that either as his eyes widen again and actual shock loosens the set lines of his expression. A moment later, he schools himself and his face tightens again into unreadability.

  He steps forwards slowly and reaches out with a hand. In it is something familiar – a Skill stone. This one isn’t a colour I’ve seen before – dark blue, almost black. I’m a little wary about it – the black Core that I encountered a while ago would have quite happily done something to my soul, probably something unpleasant. Still, Nicholas is touching it with his bare hands, so it’s probably not anything bad. I still eye him warily, trying to see any hints of duplicity.

  He sees my gaze and makes a gesture between his mouth and me and then me and his ears. He then smiles in an exaggerated way, before proffering the stone impatiently to me. Something that will help us communicate? Sarran did say that he thought Nicholas might have a solution to our issue.

  If this does something to me, please protect me, but don’t leap to conclusions unless you can see that it’s actually harming me, I say to my Bound, bracing myself. Reaching forwards, I take the stone from Nicholas’ hand. A box appears in my vision which I haven’t seen since the beginning of all this.

  It’s annoying that it doesn’t tell me what the Skill stone is. Still, when I throw a quick Inspect at it, my Skill returns with a feeling of safety and a sense of easing communications. That sounds pretty much what I need right now. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. Continuing with being unable to communicate with anyone here isn’t an ideal situation so if this is an opportunity to change that, I’d be foolish to pass it up.

  The Skill stone falls apart into dark blue liquid which is quickly absorbed into my skin. A strong pain strikes me between my eyes and I instinctively close them in response. The pain then spreads from the spike between my eyes to my eyes themselves where they prickle painfully. The prickling extends to my mouth and throat which burn as if I’ve just eaten a hot chilli, and then to my ears. Finally, pressure builds in my head and for a wild moment, I’m worried that it might actually explode.

  And then, finally, it dies down. I cautiously open my eyes, prepared to close them again if the burning returns, but it doesn’t. In fact, after a few more pangs, the pain disappears, as do all the other sensations which recently assailed me.

  Are you well? Bastet asks anxiously, River and several others seconding her question.

  I’m fine, I tell them reassuringly. It was painful, but that’s all gone now. Wanting to bring up my status screen to find out what’s changed, I soon find out without needing to block my vision.

  “Can you understand me?” It’s Nicholas’ voice. I recognise it from when he spoke to me before. And the oddest thing is that I can. He’s not speaking English, I can immediately tell that. But yet, I understand him as well as if he had been. It’s very disconcerting.

  “I can,” I respond in the same tongue. I change my mind: this is disconcerting – speaking words that should come out in English, but instead come out in a language I’ve never learned.

  For a moment I fear that I have lost my mother tongue.

  “I can speak English,” I say, focussing on English words. To my relief, they come out in the language I aimed for. Even if no one else understands English, it’s still a part of me, and a remnant of my history. Even if my past hasn’t always been happy, I don’t want to lose everything about it. Enough has changed as it is; my language has been part of my identity for so long that I don’t want that to disappear too.

  I return my attention to Nicholas.

  “I can understand you,” I repeat, this time focussing on whatever odd language he used before. Nicholas nods as the unfamiliar syllables fall from my tongue. He seems to study me for a long moment and I wonder whether I measure up to his eyes or not.

  “Good,” he says finally with a thin smile. “Then I can finally bid you welcome and introduce myself. I am Lord Nicholas Titanbend.”

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