Ryn of Avonside

A week later, after so much buying and selling of goods that my head was starting to spin, we set out for the Stonechaser lands and eventually Avonside. Coming with us was Claih and a few of her magitecht friends, as well as the entire Stonechaser party. There were a lot of people, and it made me feel quite a bit safer.

Sitting in my recently extended storage rooms were enough raw materials to sink an armada. Literally, like there was so much ore alone that any fleet of ships trying to fill itself would sink like the rocks it was carrying. Then there were the books stacked up in bookshelves in a floor I had converted into a library. I already loved that room half to death.

I’d missed reading so damned much. Kit, Mer, and I had been camped out in there every chance we could get. Mer was there because she had oh so graciously offered to teach Kit how to read and speak some of the obrec language. I was picking up on it pretty damned fast too, which had me more than a little suspicious about what was done to my brain while I was in that fruit.

Besides ore, books, and everything else, we’d gotten our hands on a bunch of magical tech and other such things — everything Claih had said we’d need to learn and begin tinkering. 

The obrec people had been very lucky with where they were placed on the ring, although they hadn’t realised it until recently. The smashed canyons that they lived in were overflowing with a strange type of magically charged crystal, and it was so prevalent further south that there was said to be entire forests of the stuff. When we learned about the crystals, where they were mined, and such, Kit posed a hypothesis to us all. The evidence was literally all around us written in the strata of the stone, he said — somehow, someway, the ring had a molten core.

The crystals were apparently the key to the puzzle, because of how they were formed or whatever. They could only form when an extremely high temperature molten slurry of various elements was suddenly exposed to much colder conditions. Like, when lower molten layers of a planet's crust were suddenly exposed to the surface. How such an event might occur was anyone's guess.

Interestingly, the astronomical worth of their crystal reserves had only been discovered recently because Magical technology was a fresh development on a historical scale. Originally, the wood from certain titanic trees that grew far to the west had been the magical energy storage king. Then, less than a hundred years ago, one bored obrec magitekt had decided to mess around with the crystals.

Their near monopoly on the precious resource had seen extravagant levels of wealth flow in, as magical tinkerers from across the continent switched to the superior magical storage medium.

Speaking of raw wealth, I was a little terrified of how monetarily powerful I was, if I was honest. I’d come into a small fortune in gold stones, which I’d be using to fund the Order of Eleos as it grew. I’d never been even close to rich in my life, and having even this relatively small amount had my anxiety running overtime.

Since I'd already loaded up on ore and other heavy things, the Stonechaser’s wagons were full of smaller, more lightweight goods that they intended to try and sell in Avonside — cloth, spices and other such things. I offered to let them leave their wagons and stuff in my grove while we walked, but they laughed and said that there was no way they were walking the whole way. Which was good, because oh my lord did I agree. Riding on a wagon was so much better than walking. It basically meant I got to cuddle Grace all day.

Leaving the gates of the amazing city of Millowhall behind, we trundled down the cliffside road again, Grace had her head in my lap as we lay sprawled across bundles of cloth. Her eyes were closed as she relaxed, but she hadn’t fallen asleep quite yet.

“I’m so glad to be out of that city,” she mumbled, turning to smoosh her face into my thigh. “It was getting so draining.”

“That’s because I was literally draining you to refill my magic,” I grinned, stroking her cheek with a finger affectionately.

“You know what I mean,” she laughed, swatting at my stomach.

I grinned and ran my hand through her hair. “I do.”

She was right — all the growing trees, selling trees, negotiating with all the different factions of the city who wanted a piece of the action — all while pretending to be a confident and powerful mage. A powerful mage with one key difference — I was much kinder than they were used to.

All in all, it was absolutely draining, so much so that we hadn’t even managed to make love again, which I was lamenting. It was hard to work up the motivation to have fun when you felt dead by the end of the day.

Opening her eyes, Grace glanced up at me with a more serious expression. “We’re going to be back at Avonside soonish. How do you uh, how do you feel about that?”

“I’m scared shitless,” I told her honestly. Like… there were so many reasons to be worried. Would Bray accept me for who I was now? Would the university recognise me as one of theirs, or would I be viewed as an outsider? Would they try some ridiculous attempt to control me, or worse, fight me for some reason?

I sighed and scrunched my eyes closed. “There are so many people who know me as Elias back there, and each one is going to have to come to terms with who I am now.”

“Yep. Bray,” she said with a sympathetic sigh of her own. “I’m scared he’s going to flip out or something. Especially now that we’re together. Like, he might see that as a betrayal, and we’ve pinned a few of our plans on him, you know?”

“I know,” I nodded, feeling ice form in my gut. Our return to Avonside was something that was beginning to take up more and more brainspace as we got closer. I needed Bray to be okay with me, he was the only friend I had from more than a year ago. I left the few other people I considered to be friends behind back on Earth.

It was amusing — in a morbid way — to wonder how folks back home had reacted to Avonside just vanishing. The other two guys who Bray was friends with, Miles and Logan, for example — imagining their faces when they arrived at Avonside after their day off, only to find it… gone. Kayla, their roomate, would've been worse actually. I had vague memories of her dipping from her classes to head into town that day for some shopping. Goodness, I hoped they were all okay.

My mind had wandered past the topic of conversation, and Grace evidently didn't feel like continuing, so we were silent after that. Silent, except for our swirling thoughts as the wagon bounced them around in our skull. Gently, though — goddess, but suspension was amazing.

“I wish that I could have found you earlier,” Grace said an hour later, her voice gaining even more melancholy. “Well, that and have you be born into a girl body.”

“I’m actually glad my life happened the way it did,” I whispered, feeling the anxiety in my gut freeze just a little more.

“What, why?” she asked, a little too loud for my liking.

This stuff was personal and I didn’t want anyone knowing. I hated talking about myself, about my past. Except Grace… I think I could trust Grace.

“Because of my family, because of my father,” I told her, below the volume of even a whisper. “Imagine what… well you don’t know him or what he did, but… just thinking about what he’d do to me if I were a little girl…”

I shuddered as abandoned memories flickering to life once more within me. The raw animalistic fear that had gripped me every time he punched a wall, wondering if I would be the next target for his bloodied fists. The ugly slap of those fists on my flesh when I was the target. The aching as my body was never able to fully heal from one beating before the next happened.

“What did he do to you?” she asked, sitting up and placing herself next to me, back against the inside wall of the wagon.

“Physical abuse,” I told her, scrunching my eyes tight against the maelstrom of pain. “Psychological abuse. More. I don’t know what the courts would call it, because the whole thing never made it to anyone. It’s hard to properly think back on it, my mind sort of skips off it like a spaceship coming in at too much of an angle to the atmosphere.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding a little helpless. Instead, she put her arms around me and gently guided my head down to her shoulder. “I can see what you mean then. I’ll add, Ryn gets to grow up as a girl with a loving family, to my vague wishes.”

“That would be nice,” I mumbled, latching onto her like she was one of those funny ring things a surf life-saver uses to save you. “We could be next-door neighbours — figure out we’re gay together one night, maybe when we’re having a sleepover and we kiss. Try and hide our cute little teenage relationship from our families and school friends.”

“That sounds lovely,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “Just so long as one of us doesn’t fall for the other first. It would suck to pine after you for years while you bumble around like an idiot not realising you’re gay for me.”

“Hey!” I grumbled, feeling a smile of my own forming. “I wouldn’t do that!”

“Uh huh, sure… so you wouldn’t be so wrapped up in that pretty little head of yours, thinking about all sorts of wild things instead of facing the feelings inside?” she chuckled, kissing the top of my head.

“I wouldn’t… I mean… I’m sure I’d realise it,” I pouted, enjoying her affectionate words and touch even as she teased me.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she laughed, squeezing me tight for a moment. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” I sighed happily, melting further into her comforting arms. Of course, then I had to ruin the feeling by posing a question that had my heart racing, even if I was sure of the outcome. “This means that you’re my girlfriend, right? I know we had that talk, but we haven't really used… big solid definitions, and—”

“Ryn,” she laughed gently. “Yes I think that does mean we're girlfriends.”

“Okay good,” I nodded, content again.

The wagon trundled on into the day as we continued to talk and cuddle, rocking gently with the uneven road. At some point we turned into a side-ravine, and the paving stones gave way to a simple and well travelled dirt road. Night began to descend shortly after, and the caravan of wagons all pulled into a broad section of wide ledge.

“Would you all like to use my grove to sleep in?” I asked Jerril as I gave a long, weary stretch. Damn, but being cramped up in the wagon for hours had made my muscles very angry with me.

“No, thank you for the offer though Ryn,” he smiled, bowing slightly. “We’ll do things as we always have. Need to protect the wagons after all.”

“Uh, I wouldn’t mind a nice bed though,” Mer said, shuffling her hooves on the ground as she gave me a hopeful look. “And a bath…”

Jerril just rolled his eyes and wandered off. They had a lot of other guards, I guess.

I giggled wryly and motioned both Mer and Otho over as our group assembled. “Sure, you and your brother can come with.”

We made the jump over into my grove and immediately began to head for the Happy Little Tree. It had been near to pitch black in the obrec mountains when we left it, only a thin strip of dark blue sky visible high above, but here in my grove the sunset streaked through the clouds and lit them afire with gold. I smiled at the sight, then found my gaze drawn to Grace to see what her reaction was. I found a smile on her face too. I liked that smile.

My wistful loving stare was interrupted by a frantic Cream the bun as she barrelled across the grass towards us at full speed. She skidded to a halt and rushed towards me, tugging insistently on my arm, trying to pull me out towards the rim of the plateau we were on.

“What’s up Cream?” I asked, frowning down at her. The little bun gnashed her teeth in frustration and used her little fuzzy paw-hand-thing to point out in the direction she’d been trying to pull me.

I glanced up, squinting to get a look through the trees. Wait… a person? A person casting magic! Shit!

Before I could identify who they were or figure out if they had done any damage yet, I was sprinting towards them, my shield slamming down around me. It had finally happened, someone had found my grove.