Nia struggled her way up the steep, noisy street in the early morning light. Clouds choked the sky, causing the world to city to appear leeched of colour. Chiding herself once again on her poor choice of university, she grumbled to herself.

“Of all the universities to choose, I had to pick the one that was perched on the side of a hill!”

The university was a sprawling mess of buildings on the hillside. Old townhouses that had been converted into offices were being dwarfed by the enormous concrete and glass tower blocks, with a main street running straight through the middle. Over the last year or two, the university had made an attempt to spice their mini cityscape up a bit by revamping those buildings closest to the roads, but construction was still ongoing.

She tried to remember if she’d taken her pills this morning, as usual. She always second guessed herself winding herself up with anxious thoughts that she’d missed another day. The pills were life and death to Nia. Not because they did anything to help her physical health, but because they were what made her able to be herself, a girl, among other things. It was a few years since she’d come out as a girl. And although the last year of high school had been an unpleasant experience because of it, she was a girl now in body as well as mind. That’s what mattered.

As she hobbled her way onto a pathway between two of the larger buildings, Nia was hit by a blast of chilly wind that was funneled between them. She had to halt in her tracks and wait for the gust to subside. Normally a gust like that might cause the average 19 year old trans girl to brace herself a bit, or grab a railing to for a bit of added support, for Nia however, the wind was much more dangerous. When she was just 2 years old her bones had begun to develop poorly, causing them to be much more brittle than a normal child's bones. Her life had been one long struggle against her body, with genetic disorders and gender dysphoria stacking up against her. If she fell over, it would could mean a trip to a hospital and, yet another 8 weeks with a cast on.

Thankful for her still vertical posture and lack of broken bones, she continued her weary march up the slight incline of the side road, before turning to a set of automatic doors positioned like an airlock against the ever present wind that plagued the city year round. Her destination, a large lecture theatre capable of holding about 400 people when packed, was down another hallway and through another set of automatic doors into another building.

Looking down at her phone, she checked the gaming messaging app to see if her overseas online friends had woken up yet.

<i>I hope this lecture doesn’t go on for too long</i>, Nia thought. She was keen to get to her helpfully named Coding 25540: Tutorial. She’d finally figured out what might be wrong with her latest project as she’d been falling asleep. Finally realising what may be the problem had an unfortunate side effect. It caused her to lose the progress her mind had made towards sleep, and now she was tired.

More tired than usual, anyway. Usually she was tired because of either gaming late into the night or becoming hooked on a book.

Thinking of class reminded her why she was also anxious about going to this class. One of the guys in the class had started not so subtly hitting on her. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t be interested, but he seemed to like backhanded compliments that made Nia feel small and unwanted.

‘Stooping down to my level’, she thought. Girls were few and far between in her course, and many of the guys in her class were as socially awkward as she herself. It made for extremely awkward situations. She got the feeling that to their minds, considering a “crippled trans-girl” like herself as a potential romantic interest was like making do with the food in the bin. It pissed her off. It’s not like any of them are paragons of male beauty either.

‘Better stick close to StephOh? Where did this name come from? Hehehe., she’ll snarl and glare until he goes away.’

As she approached the doors to the lecture hall, the sound of running feet rapidly approached from behind. Turning carefully, Nia saw a girl of medium height with short brown hair, flushed from the effort of her running.

“Nia!” *gasp* “Hey” *wheeze* “Hey, morning, Nia”, gasped the red faced girl.

“Hey Steph”, Nia looked at her dying friend, “Uhh, why the hurry?”

“We gotta get seats! They were saying that this one might draw a bunch of people, so lets get some seats where we can actually see shit yeah?” Steph said as she grabbed Nia’s wrist and pulled her along through the doors into the theatre.

Nia sighed internally as her energetic friend painfully tugged her along. Steph was the only other girl in the year group for this course, and as such had latched on to the shy reserved Nia instantly. Not that Nia minded. — two girls could defend better against the inevitable attention they got in a class of 30 guys would get.

‘Steph gets most of the attention. I just sit there and drive them away with my nasty face.’

Although Steph’s personality was energetic her body was not, straddling the upper limits of average weight, she was as fit as anyone who spends all their time in a computer chair with no effort made for exercise. In contrast to this stereotype, Nia was a little above average height, bone thin and frail, with long strawberry blonde hair in a hasty ponytail that failed to capture several wisps in random locations. Neither girl could be considered pretty by the standards of university life, but one could argue with the proper diet, and in Nia’s case more effective treatment, they could be considered not ugly either.

‘To the vultures anyway. Steph will always be beautiful to me.’ she thought fondly.

Inside the lecture theatre, rows of faded seats and accompanying desks extended up into dim light. About a quarter of the seats were already full, and several tutors and professors were chatting amicably to each other while they occupied seats in the front few rows. Now pulling her along with less force once she could see there was still space, Steph turned and looked down at Nia from a few steps above.

“Think that’s a good spot?”, she asked indicating some empty seats near the middle in the 6th row.

Nia shrugged. “Sure, I guess”. She didn’t really mind either way, she was just here so their tutor would be happy. Happy tutor means better grades, despite their claims of impartiality.

Nia seated herself lightly next to her friend in the indicated seats and took out her notepad and mechanical pencil. She liked this pencil, it used a very thin grade of graphite, and she loved the neat precision of the lines it produced. Steph did not follow suit, Nia’s friend prefered to absorb the lecture with her mind and store it there, and rarely did she require more than that.

Sitting there quietly, Nia doodled aimlessly on the page, forming random geometric shapes and curves before Steph shifted in her seat and looked at Nia hopefully..

“Hey so I was playing last night with Cardz and TryMe, trying to do the new dungeon, Cern-something cavern, but our other pugPub? Unless "pug" has a meaning that I don't know here.Pick up Group. It's mmo slang for a random person who is placed in your party by matchmaking or whatever :) DPS was real crap. Struggled pretty hard with that dps check on the second boss… do think you could come along? We could use your deeps.”

“Cernbore Depths”, Nia said, supplying the name that Steph had forgotten, “Uhhh yeah sure, that’s fine, but not till later tonight ‘cos I think my mum wants me to go to dinner at her place”.

Steph made a pained expression at her words, “Why’d you agree to that? Don’t you hate going home?”

“Yeah, but saying no is hard too, best to just… go and see them, it’s not that bad these days anyway. They at least call me Nia, even if they purposefully mess my pronouns up sometimes.” replied Nia, lowering her cheek to the desk with a sigh.

They continued to chat randomly as more people filed into the theatre and took their seats. Among those were many of their classmates, as well as a group of people who were very obviously not coders or engineers. The group, some 30 and growing took seats in a group near the back, talking loudly among themselves.

Sitting up to get a better look, Nia asked, “Who are they? They don’t look like people who’d be interested in an engineering lecture.” Pausing to give Steph a sly smile, “You know, judging by the tans and functioning fashion sense.”

Steph gave a snort, “”That is slander Little Nia, my fashion sense is just fine!”

With a smile, Nia blew a burst of air up into her fringe, causing it to dance momentarily. “I’m taller than you! But still, what course do you think they’re from?”

At her words, the boy above Nia, a pasty scrawny student with hints of some sort of mixed ethnic heritage around his eyes and cheekbones looked down at the two girls, “I think they’re design or fine arts or something. I take a drawing paper and I recognise the girl with the big blue wool hat.”

Looking at the boy with a bit more interest, Steph asked, “Oh weird. I wonder why they’re here?”

Callum made a vague noise before replying, “Dunno, maybe they’re here for reference material or something?”

Steph raised an eyebrow, “Reference material? Like to draw- “

Steph was interrupted by the large theatre suddenly going quiet. Looking down towards the stage, a man had stepped up and was waiting patiently with his hands behind his back. He was tall and wore a well tailored suit and dark blue tie. Scanning the crowd and meeting their eyes with a warm smile, his strong jaw and dark eyes competed to see which could be sharper. Short, straight brown hair completed the look look of calm analytical confidence that almost radiated from him like an aura.

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen, my name is Adrian Landon and I am the lead engineer at Teclon Defence Systems!”, Said the dark eyed man with a smile. “Now, this lecture won't have time to cover all that I would like on the subject I’m here to talk to you all today about, but I’ll give it a go. The subject of course being the art of death.”

As he said the last, his charismatic smile faded to a grim, sombre expression and he held this expression as he continued.

“Now, some of you will no doubt be thinking to yourselves right now, ‘art of death? What is this psychopath talking about?’ Well, during this lecture I will be convincing you all that, in fact, there is an art to death and the equipment that deals it.”

Clicking a small device in his hands, Adrian brought the projector screen to an image of a rifle.

His smile returning once more, he met the eyes of the crowd and continued.

“This is the SAR5-20, the Teclon main line service rifle. Currently eight nations use this as their standard issue rifle, along with several private military contractors. Its form, its function, its <i>purpose</i>, is to put a 5.56mm round through another human reliably at range. The care and preparation, the hard work and careful thought that takes the raw materials at one end, through to the bullet ending a life. That to me is artistry. The artistry of humanity, of our ingenuity and intelligence, and of our capacity to inflict misery on each other.”

The lecture continued and the man brought up various Teclon products up on the screen and described their function as though extolling the virtues and history of a priceless painting.

Steph turned to Nia and whispered, “Is this a lecture or an advertisement?”

Nia glanced at her friend, her face unsettled and raised her eyebrows before looking back to the Mr Landon down on the stage. Her eyes once more on the man, she realised with a jolt that he was now looking directly at her as he spoke, his smile widened but his eyes drained of some of their earlier warmth. Nia quivered and broke the unsettling contact and looked down at her notes. Of course, there were no notes on the page, only the fractal and organic patterns she’d drawn so far.

Steph leaned closer to Nia and lightly touched her arm. “We gotta find some way for you to work on that.”

Nia looked at her friend, confused. “Work on what?” She whispered.

Steph motioned to Mr Landon. “That, people making eye contact and making you anxious.”

“I told you I don’t want to see a counsellor.” Nia was frowning slightly now.

“I know I just, I hate seeing you act so meek all the time. We gotta get you some confidence to go with that curious brain of yours.”

‘Steph was being motherly again’, Nia thought grumpily. She didn’t admit to herself that she liked having someone in her life who cared about anything more than her condition or the fact she was transgender.

“I got another text out of the blue from Kelly last night.” Nia mumbled to her friend.

“Another bitchy one? I can’t believe you two are sisters.” said Steph shaking her head.

“Mhm, sounds like my dad was having a go at my mum about my medical bills again.”, Nia said, getting quieter than even before.

“And she thinks somehow you’re making them fight on purpose.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I don’t know”, Sighed Nia, “I’ve stopped trying to understand what gets her angry at me. Ever since I started transitioning she's been at my throat.”

The engineer continued his lecture while Nia was lost in thought, extolling the many achievements and abilities of his companies’ engineering team.

‘What a waste of time,’ thought Nia. ‘This is nothing but an advertisement presented by a guy who probably broke his moral compass sometime in childhood.’

Turning a page on her notepad, she started a new squiggle drawing. This one developed strangely, looking like a cross between a circuit and a tree root system. She continued to let her pencil aimlessly roam the page. She did this often while thinking, letting her subconscious determine the pattern. Something happened to the page she felt like her eyes were rebelling. Somehow the lines she’d drawn on her page shivered and squirmed, rearranging themselves slightly, as though the pattern she’d drawn was wrong, off by a small amount.

All of a sudden the room gave a shudder. People looked around at each other, seeking the comfort of the group.

Mr Landon gave a small forced laugh. “Well I heard you all had a lot of earthquakes in this city, but I didn’t expect to have the good fortune of experiencing one for myself!”

An uneasy laugh from the crowd came in reply and Callum said from the seat behind, “What do you think that one was, at least a 5 right?”

Nia was still staring at her page, the pattern had stopped squirming, but it was now faintly vibrating and touching it caused her fingers to tingle like there was a current running through it.

Steph ignored Callum and put a hand on Nia’s arm, mistaking her downward cast gaze and shocked expression for worry about the earthquake. “Hey you okay? It wasn’t that bad hey?”

Looking up at Steph, Nia said, “Huh?”.

Before Steph could reply, the room shuddered again, and an odd loud sound that was a mix between a drop of water falling into a pond and a piece of paper tearing came from above them. The two friends looked up and saw what appeared to be ripples in the air, as though there was a perfectly clear pool of water a foot deep on the ceiling. The strange phenomenon was centered directly over Nia. More accurately, it was centered over her page of previously harmless doodling. All at once, with a loud crack

, spiderweb fractures violently radiated out from the center of the odd disturbance, as though the pool had frozen over and then been struck with force in the center.

People stared up at the sight in confusion, and called for answers no one could give.

Down on the stage, Mr Landon was talking with his aide and some staff, all of them giving confused worried looks at the roof.

Finishing his consultation with the staff, he turned to the restless crowd and spoke, “Alright people, it looks like I’ll have to cut things short, we’ll need to leave the room, so if you could all stand up and make your way out of the room. Please leave your things behind, we can pick them up when we know the room is safe. Thank you for comi…”

He was cut off at the end by a horrendous screeching shattering noise from above. They all looked up as reality broke like thin glass, the shards rapidly flying to the edge of a perfectly circular hole and beginning to spin violently around the edge of the hole in a river of kareening tinkling slivers.

Nia’s shock at the mind warping strangeness above her was compounded when she felt her hair begin to lift up around her head. She felt her stomach lurch as gravity was flipped on its head, pointing towards the yawning hole above them, through which could now be seen a vast cylindrical cavern. She heard herself and many others scream as they fell toward the opening.

Nia screamed as she dropped head first through the swirling portal of glass-like shards. The cavern on the other side of the portal was not in fact any natural made cavern, but some sort enormous stone pipe. Spinning around in freefall beside the other lecture attendees, she could make out that the walls were made of eroded square blocks about as long on a side as she was tall. Filling the cracks between the dark grey blocks were several types of bioluminescent algae and fungus. The glow from these strange plants was faint and details in the shaft were hard to make out.

Nia’s heart was pounding in her chest, her mind locked up in terror. She could hear Steph nearby and her panicked mind tried to pinpoint her in the mess of falling flailing bodies.

Her spinning somehow stabilised enough for her to see behind her. In the half a minute since the portal had opened, most people had been pulled through already and were in much the same state of panic as she was. Right behind her, relative to the direction they’d come from was Steph, her face contorted with worry and fear as she tried to reach Nia.

Beside Nia about 3 meters away was Callum. He was staring wild eyed in the direction that Nia’s mind had told her was forward, the direction that had previously been up, and was actually down.

“Nia grab on to me!”, Steph cried as she flailed wildly in some attempt to reach her.

Nia wasn’t able to respond, all that came out of her was a wordless noise of fear. A strange high pitched whine had been following them down the shaft, and now it morphed into an angry buzzing sound. This change was accompanied by strange swirling organic patterns beginning to glow a dull white on several of the dark stone blocks making up the walls of the shaft. Nia recognised those patterns, they were not unlike what had been on Nia’s notebook.

With a sudden grinding humming sound, one of the blocks ahead of Nia lurched haltingly into the shaft by two feet. On the opposite side of the shaft from the suddenly mobile block, more blocks of stone moved back into the wall with a similar bone-grating sound, revealing a smaller tunnel. Nia was just past the animated blocks when the air adjacent to the protruding block began to hum with a sound that set her teeth on edge, heat waves emanating through the air from the block itself. This disturbance caught Steph and about a dozen other students and they were hurled sideways into the new tunnel, as though the direction their momentum had been taking them shifted instantly.

The dark block glowing with odd patterns tried to move back into the wall, but something stopped it, and there was a loud popping crack, followed by the stones near it buckling and cracking slightly into the cavern. The glowing block shot further into the wall than its previous position and there was a faint low thud so powerful Nia could feel it in her body. The shimmering air that had propelled Steph through the new tunnel cut off at the same time but it was too late, Nia’s friend had disappeared.

“Oh fuck oh fuck”, said Callum in a wavering voice from beside Nia. He’d rolled around and had seen what had just happened.

They watched as one of the artistic students clipped the protruding shattered stone blocks with a scream of pain on his way past. More glowing blocks of stone activated, the shaft shuddering and vibrating with their activity. Much like the first, these opened corresponding tunnels in the walls and shimmering currents of air moved people into the tunnels.

With a lurch, Nia and Callum were caught in one such trap, sent sideways into a smaller tunnel.

This new tunnel was damp, with more glowing algae and fungus clinging to any hold they could get on the worn and pitted dark stone.

“What is this place?” asked one of Nia’s classmates in a voice that cracked with fear.

The guy who’d spoken, Finn, had his arms wrapped around his chest protectively as he fell through the tunnel.

There were eight of them in the tunnel, six from Nia’s class and two from another one.

This tunnel was more damaged than the larger parent one they had just been forcibly ejected from. On the stone walls were more odd glowing patterns, the lines weaving and connecting in a manner similar to old celtic knots. These patterns flowed along the blocks of the tunnel in the direction they were travelling, the glow pulsing down the tunnel, urging the group further into the dark.

Their speed gradually picked up, the pulsing of the light growing more urgent along with it.

As the seconds ticked by, Nia began to calm down enough to think. She was floating along the tunnel at speed now, but her blond hair, most of which had escaped its confines, floated around her as though there was no gravity. She looked at Callum. He was starting to come back to himself as well, and he looked haggard. Nia realised she must look the same, and she scrubbed her face with her hands. This action caused her to begin a slow spin in the air and she squeaked in surprise.

“Pfft”, Callum stifled a laugh.

“Shut up”, Nia replied as her spin took her back to face him, her face slightly heated.

Finn spoke up again. “Where are we? What was that back there?”

A fourth guy, the guy Nia had been worried about avoiding in class, replied, “Not sure dude, maybe we’re on an alien spaceship now?”

“What kind of alien spaceship has stone walls and gross gunk growing on it GeorgeYeah George, you fucking idiot.?”, asked Callum.

“I dunno, maybe it’s not even stone, maybe it just looks like it.” George said testily.

“That didn’t look like we were beamed up. Looked more like some crazy eldritch portal.” Finn frowned.

“Don’t those usually have like tentacles and shit?” George said, his eyes making a surreptitious glance at Nia.

“Uh, please no.” Nia stuttered, her eyes widening a bit.

“And like, why us, why a bunch of random nerds from a lecture hall?”, Finn asked.

Nia felt her stomach drop as she remembered how the patterns on her page had acted when the portal opened above them. She had her suspicions about that. ‘Was it me?’ she thought, ‘was I the one who accidentally opened that thing?’.

“This place looks busted though, look at the weird cracks and dents in the walls”, said George in a somewhat quieter tone.

He was right, there were large cracks snaking their way through the walls of the tunnel, and dents that looked as though something hard and dense had repeatedly impacted the walls. When the glowing twisting lines encountered one of these imperfections, the light snapped and crackled across the gap like some cross between electricity and water.

After an hour of travel through this unending tunnel, the group felt themselves slow. It wasn’t a slow even deceleration. It was a random lurching slow down, the drops in speed corresponding to areas in the tunnel where the glowing lines were too damaged to pull them along properly. The decrease in speed was not enough to save them from what came next.

Ahead of the group, the tunnel was sheared completely through, with the new section looking like it had been shifted a foot to the side in some long ago cataclysm. The pulsing lines stopped at this wound, the magic unable to make the leap from one section to the other.

Where the tunnel was broken, dark earth and rock had spilled into the tunnel, and there seemed to be a small flow of water that dripped down from the area they could now discern was the ceiling.

The break came up at speed, they were still travelling far too fast. When they reached the break, gravity suddenly reasserted itself on their bodies, and they were thrown several meters from their momentum before crashing to the stone ground. When Nia left the section of tunnel that propelled them, she knew this was not going to be good. She landed in the dark section with the crack of her arm breaking as it hit the stone. She screamed. The pain blinded her to all else around her and she curled around her broken arm protectively.

She dimly heard the rest of their group hitting the cold stone through her pain and felt herself being pulled to the side by someone.

“Fuck, I think Nia’s hurt, her arm looks broken.”, a worried Callum said.

“Is she alright?” Asked someone.

“Did you not just hear me? Her arm is broken, look at her.” replied Callum.

“Oh oops, yeah,” they said.

Nia struggled into a sitting position, holding her arm protectively against herself.

“Anyone have something straight?” She gasped through her pain, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

“Like what?”, asked Finn tentatively.Like a Comp Het character, Finn. For fuck's sake.Look, you cheeky fuck

“I don’t know like a ruler or something.” Nia said.

One of the other guys started forward to her, “Uh yeah I still have my bag. I should have a ruler in here somewhere.”

He rummaged around in it for a few seconds before producing a 30 centimeter steel ruler. He passed it to Callum who had his hand outstretched.

“Thanks Josh.” He said as he took the ruler from him.

Nia took off her jersey and placed her broken arm in it. “Looks like it’s my radius this time.” She sighed resignedly.

Motioning for Callum to pass her the ruler, she placed it along her arm to keep it straight, before wrapping her arm up in the jersey and using her hair tie to keep it from coming undone.

“This happens to you a lot?” Asked josh.

“Yeah, I have a condition. My bones are really weak. I can’t even count how many times I’ve broken things.” Nia said, her voice regaining some of it’s normal tone.

She’d been through this a few times in her life. She could get a handle on the pain.

After dealing with the aftermath of being wantonly thrown onto the ground, the group looked about. George tried to go back the way they had come, but as soon as he crossed the threshold into the glowing tunnel, he was thrown back with a firm shove.

“Can’t go that way.” He muttered to the group.

“Well, that leaves the other way then.” Finn sighed as he sat down.

“I dunno. Should we even move? What if people come searching for us? To save us.” Ventured Callum with a hopeful expression on his face.

Nia grimaced, partly in pain and partly because of what she was going to say. “I’m not sure they will Callum. I’m pretty sure I saw that crazy glass whirlpool closing when we were sucked into this tunnel.”

“Closing?” he asked in shock.

“Yeah, all the little bits and pieces were flowing back into the hole and like, connecting together again. I don’t know dude how do I even explain something like that.” She sighed, “It was closing for sure.”

“You mean, we’re stuck here?” choked out Callum.

“Cal we don’t even know where here is,” stated Finn.

While this conversation was being had, George had walked further down the tunnel. “Guys, I can see more glowing down here.”

“What is it?” called Finn.

“Dunno, it’s too far. There’s definitely something though,” replied George.

“Guess we’ll start walking then,” Finn declared with a grunt as he levered himself up from his seated position.

Callum helped Nia to her feet and the group of eight began to walk on the slippery and unsteady stone.

The walk was hard for Nia, and several times she slipped and had to be steadied by Callum. She was anxious, another fall and break could mean her death in an unknown place far from help. The group of university students passed more fractures in the tunnel, walking in eerie silence, no one wanting to break the brittle, hostile peace of the place.

The dull glow at the end of the tunnel hadn’t seemed too far way when they had begun walking, but almost an hour passed before they reached the it. The glow turned out to be a circular chamber at least ten meters in radius, and the glow itself was emanating from an orb of stone on a pedestal in the middle of the room. In the other four axes of the room were more tunnels identical to the one they had just walked down, and all the tunnels were inactive, without the glowing knots of linework.

The orb in the middle was hard to look at, with lines of force swirling and shuddering their way across its surface like they were alive.

The group gathered in the chamber, sticking close to the entrance they had just come through, afraid to go near the strange object at its center.

“Uh which way do we go now?” asked Nia hesitantly, “All the other passages look the same.”

“We could stay here for a bit, maybe some of the others will come from the other tunnels.” replied Finn.

“We should probably rest too even if we do plan to keep going, I’m not used to walking this much.” said Callum wearily.

“Yes please, I need rest, my body is too fragile for this kind of thing.” sighed Nia.

They all agreed to rest, and sat on the cold stone floor. Looking at the Orb in the center with the writhing glowing lines, Nia could see similarities to what she had drawn on her page earlier. As though there was a logic to them that was contant, similar to a language. She cautiously stood up and looked around the room, eyeing the other tunnels. One of them was filled with rubble about fifteen meters inside, while the other two were dark and stretched off into the depths. Hobbling over to one of the open tunnels she tried to see further, but there was nothing, just darkness, stone and faint light from the strange fungus on the walls.

“Nia what are you doing?” asked Callum with a worried tone.

“Nothing just looking around. There’s nothing down that tunnel, uhm let me check the other one.”

“Okay, don’t slip or anything, Steph will kill me if you get any more banged up.”

Nia slowed at his words, looking at the ground, she tried to keep her worry and stress from overflowing at the mention of her friend.

“Yeah, she’ll scold the crap out of me for sure.” Nia said softly.

Looking into the second open tunnel, Nia was confused. There was something moving down there. This tunnel had several offshoots down it’s length, the intersections spaced evenly about thirty meters apart. In the tunnel itself were strange figures, inhuman in their gait as they raced down the tunnel towards the students. The creatures were horrifyingly alien to Nia’s eyes. On the front of their body she could see a disk shaped head facing towards her like the shield of a greek hoplite. Black pearlescent eyes bulged from the flat portion of the head, looking distinctly like the eyes of an insect. They had eight gangly limbs, two on the bottom of their pale body and two on the top, each limb ending in a large hand with long fingers. They were running on the lower four legs like quadrupeds, while the four protruding from their backs were holding crude weapons made of bone and badly shaped metal.

Nia stumbled back from the opening into the tunnel with a small sound of fear.

“Guys there’s things coming down the tunnel.” she squeaked.

“What do you mean things?” asked George, his voice missing the urgency that Nia was hoping to hear.

“Like fucking alien things with weapons!” she snapped while running back to the group.

Some of the others moved to get a look down the tunnel. It was then that they heard the screeching incoherent battlecries of the creatures. Their voices were shrill and grating to the group of humans in the chamber.

“Oh fuck that,” said Finn, “What do we do?”

“This way!” George urged them, heading towards the other tunnel that Nia had looked down.

The group ran to the opening of the tunnel. All except Nia. She was standing near the glowing orb in the middle.

“Nia! Quick what the hell are you doing?” shouted Callum.

She looked up at him and said, “I think this is the way out.”

“Don’t be dumb Nia come here we gotta run!” George said anxiously.

As she was staring at the orb, one of the creatures raised a strange bone contraption and aimed it at Nia. She saw it too late, and a small metal tipped bone bolt flew from the tunnel with a harsh whistle and embedded itself in her left thigh.

Nia’s leg buckled and she let out a gasp of pain and surprise, falling to the damp stone floor.

“Nia!” yelled Callum and he ran to her in the middle of the room.

He tried to drag her frail battered body out of the way of further projectiles but slipped on some glowing slime.

“God fuck damn,” cursed Finn as he ran to help his two fallen classmates.

Another bolt whistled by the trio and pinged off the back wall, shattering and flinging chips of stone ricocheting in all directions.

“I’m sorry!” choked GeorgeI just knew George was a fuckboy., and he ran down the other tunnel without them. The rest of the group faltered and then reluctantly followed him down the tunnel, throwing fearful, guilty glances at the stricken Nia the two trying to help her.

Nia lifted herself up with the help of Callum and Finn, but instead of letting them pull her along she reached out and slapped her palm down on the orb of roiling glowing lines. The room gave a violent shudder, and a deep voice boomed out from the orb in an alien tongue. The voice spoke four short words and the room gave another shudder, this one more violent than the last.

Nia slumped into the grasp of Callum, “I thought that might take us away for some reason. I’m sorry.”

The creatures were almost to the circular chamber, but they had stopped firing their projectile weapons and were raising crude axes and clubs with chittering inhuman glee. In an instant however, golden light spilled out of the ceiling in a scintillating liquid cylinder around them, like some sort of energy barrier from a science fiction movie. The area it protected covered about two meters in radius around the pedestal in the middle of the room. The orb glowing in the center had changed it’s behaviour as well. It was now hovering 5 inches off the pedestal and beginning to spin rapidly. The deep voice returned again, and began to rhythmically chant monosyllabic words.

“It’s counting down,” Finn said in shock.

The trio looked at each other, their minds struggling to comprehend yet another impossible occurrence.

The creatures threw themselves at the shield in fanatical fury, their shrill cries grating on the protected humans within. They tried in vain to beat their way through with clubs and axes.

The deep voice finished counting down, growing louder as it did so and the trio experienced sudden blinding pain when the final resonating word was spoken. Nia lost her vision as brilliant stabbing white light assaulted her eyes.

She could no longer feel Callum supporting her. With his missing effort to hold her upright she collapsed again, her leg protesting in pain at the bolt lodged in it. The pain caused her to scream, or she thought it did. She experienced the sensation and painful vibration in her throat, but her ears reported no sound. Confused, she reached to her ear with her good hand. It was still there. It was then that she realised that she was not laying on the cold stone of the chamber as she expected. Instead she found her hand grasping what felt like grass, slightly damp with dew.

Spots began to dance in her vision and she could hear faint sounds again. She lay there unmoving on the grass as her senses slowly reintegrated themselves with her mind.

Nia could not stay laying on the ground for long. While she lay blind and helpless on the grass, her leg had continued bleeding. With a groan of pain she rolled herself onto her back, careful not to jostle her broken arm and wounded leg. Once she was on her back, she found herself staring up into a blue, cloud studded sky with a warm yellow sun hanging about halfway up it’s surface. Slowing lifting herself into a sitting position, she fought to stay conscious as her injuries sent waves of pain through her mind. Her leg was bad. The action of the past several minutes had caused the bolt to tear a larger hole in her leg and blood was flowing steadily out of the gash in rushes that were timed to her erratic heartbeat.

Nia had heard and read that if an arrow or bolt had barbs on its head that it was better to push it through and out the other side rather than try and pull it out. She seriously doubted she had the willpower and courage to do that. She decided to just try and pull it out the way it came in.

Grasping the bolt with her shaking good hand, she pulled on it. Her grip was weak and sweaty and the action sent more waves of pain through her body, causing her to dry heave and a fresh batch of tears streamed down her face. A few years ago she might have had the strength to do it, but not anymore.

The stress of being hurt and losing Steph in the awful past few hours finally caught up to her and she began to cry in earnest. She brought her good hand up to hold her head, but then saw the blood smeared over it and lowered the limb again. <i>My blood,</i> she thought, and shuddered involuntarily. Still sobbing, her eyes filled with tears of pain and accusation at the universe for doing this to her, she held onto the shaft of the bolt again and pulled, harder this time. The bolt slid smoothly and thankfully she felt it was not barbed, but she was again overwhelmed with pain before it was pulled clear of her leg. Her stomach gave another violent churning heave and she gasped and hiccuped.

<i>Where’s Callum? Where’s Finn?</i> her thoughts wailed, <i>I can’t do this, I can’t.</i>

She brought her hand once more to the bolt, the effort taking almost more than her abused willpower could take, and pulled a final time. The relief of no longer having a foreign object in her leg had almost the same effect as the pain she felt previously. She had no time to recover herself though, as blood was now flowing much more steadily from the wound without the gruesome plug to keep it contained. Removing her belt from her faded jeans quickly, she clinched it around the wound tightly, fumbling as she did so with only a single hand. With the blood flow temporarily held in check she carefully took her shirt off, her bare skin coming up in goosebumps as the cool breeze flowed across it. Undoing her belt from her leg, she tightly wrapped her shirt around the wound before once again pulling the belt tight.

Finally having finished staving off her imminent death, Nia hunched forward and closed her eyes with her arm hugged protectively against her body. She sat there for several minutes while she let herself rest and her mind to tried and comprehend what had happened to her.

<i>Thank god I read so many books. Never thought I’d need to do something like that in real life.</i> She thought to herself once she had some small control back.

Slowly uncurling from her defensive huddle, she looked at her new surroundings.

She was in some sort of small courtyard, only big enough to just hold her moderately sized house back home. The courtyard was overgrown, small shrubs and several gnarled trees grew in the grass and soil. The first impression she got was that the courtyard was so green, almost violently green.

<i>Probably rains here often</i> her shaken mind noted absently.

Outside the grounds of the courtyard itself was a pathway that ran entirely around the place, with a roof for rain over the top of it. Beyond the path on three sides were enormous walls extending up built and of light grey stone blocks. The courtyard appeared to be indented into the larger building, with only one side open to the elements. Of all of this, the most striking aspect was the disrepair. The roof over the path had mostly collapsed, several pillars that were meant to hold it aloft were instead piles of rubble covered in grass and moss, and those that still stood were overgrown with vines.

Nia craned her neck up, looking into the sky at the building that surrounded her. It ended abruptly in a jagged line about four stories up. It appeared the rest of the building had collapsed at some point, and there were lonely portions of it still valiantly holding position as high as 10 stories up.

“I want to go home,” She said with desperation to the quiet courtyard.

She thought of her family, wondering what they would think when she suddenly disappeared. Her older sister wouldn’t give two shits. Her six year old younger sister Karen might though. Poor girl had been a surprise to the family. They hadn’t wanted another child, but at 45 years old, mum had gotten pregnant. <i>I hope she’ll be alright… if I don’t make it back…</i>

She had no idea where she was, or what had happened to her friends.

<i>I don’t even know what happened at the start,</i> she thought as she started to shake a little again.

The most prominent thought in her mind was that she did not want to die. She was scared and alone, although being alone was something she was reasonably familiar with.

<i>I can’t stay here, I need to find Steph and Callum. I need to find help,</i> she thought, almost forcing herself to think as rationally as possible.

<i>If I can walk out of this place and find a road, maybe I can get help from the traffic.</i>

Groaning with effort, she pushed herself up and began looking for what she needed next. After a moment she saw a fallen branch under a larger tree that would work as a crutch. Hopping over to it she carefully bent down and snagged it with her good hand and began snapping off the parts she didn’t need. The crutch was not ideal, bent and gnarled like its parent tree it would have to do for now.

Her next objective was to look out over the side of the courtyard that was not walled off by the wdbuilding and with a few experimental steps she began to hobble over to that side. On her way there she looked around for exits. There was multiple doorways on the three walls, some still had doors of a darker stone clinging to their doorways, although most were open to the invading elements. She stopped at the bloodsoaked patch of grass that marked her strange arrival to this ruined place. She hadn’t noticed it previously, but there was a small square chunk of stone about two feet high near where she had appeared, and faint lines glowed contentedly on its surface.

She eyed it apprehensively. <i>I wish I wasn’t already so banged up, and I wish I wasn’t probably in danger of... </i> Her thoughts faltered and she didn’t complete it, <i>This place might be, might be pleasant without… what happened</i>

Shivering to herself she continued her struggle to the open side of the courtyard.

What she saw when she arrived there took her breath away, the sight surging through her mind and annihilating any thoughts of her current condition or the traumatising events that had caused it.

Before her extended a vast cityscape of overgrown and ruined buildings so tall that it would put manhattan to shame. The building she herself stood on was dizzyingly tall and she felt her mind rebel as it processed how high up she was. The ground was almost six hundred meters down at her clumsy estimate, and it was by no means the tallest building she could see. In every direction she could see, the buildings continued into the haze of the horizon.

The next thing she noted was the widespread destruction. The buildings were torn apart, as though the enormous metropolis had been hit by huge earthquakes or had been the site of a terrible battle. Many buildings ended abruptly as hers did, their once tall, proud nature sheared or crumbled away by titanic forces long ago. The ruins were choked by foliage everywhere she looked. Dirt had collected in every nook and cranny and the local flora had taken advantage of this with gusto.

She stared out at the vista in shock, her mind struggling to comprehend it.

“This isn’t possible,” she said aloud in a daze, “what is going on, what… how?”

She and her friends had come a lot further than she thought when they were pulled into this place.

At the thought of them she turned back and looked at where she had arrived in this place.

<i>Oh no,</i> she thought, <i>please let them be okay. Why aren’t they here, why weren’t they transported here too?</i>

She stood there and stared at the small cute cube for a while, examining the glowing lines on its surface.

She thought of everything that had happened in the past few hours. <i>The university day probably hasn’t even finished. I wonder what kind of rukus our disappearance will cause.</i>

Thoughts of university took her back to the lecture, when her little drawing had begun to squirm. Everyone in that lecture hall had been taken through the portal, unless some lucky few had made it out the door if they were close enough.

<i>Sucked through into wherever here is.</i> she thought, turning back to look out over the ledge with a frown.

Lowering herself gingerly down onto the grass in front of the enormous cityscape to think, she

looked at her leg, the pit of her stomach lurching again with the memory of pain.

Looking up at the blue sky she pondered aloud, “It looks kinda the same, but a city that big, a ruined city that big. This can’t still be earth can it? No way would satellite cameras or whatever have missed something like this. If it’s even real in the first place”

She looked over at the cube again,<i>and you. Are you magic or technology? Is there a difference?</i>

A thought hit her then, <i>I don’t have my medication. My girl pills. Oh no, I’m going to de-</i> She quickly crushed that thought, she didn’t need the anxiety her dysphoria provoked at the moment. Her ruined body was a more immediate concern.

She was reluctant to leave the perceived safety of the lush cozy courtyard, but if she wanted to know more, if she wanted to get medical help and find her friends, she needed to explore.

Realising her thoughts were becoming circular when she again thought of her missing friends with fear and longing, she shook herself and thought, <i>I need to make a decision, I need to have an objective. I don’t want to die. Not yet… especially with such an amazing place to learn about and explore.</i>

With a last look at the extraordinary vista before her, she hobbled back to look at the square of glowing stone in the center of the overgrown courtyard. With effort and pain she bent down to look at it closer, careful not to touch it. The cube made of the same light grey stone as the rest of the building. The glowing lines were faintly carved into its surface, and looked as though they had only been carved that day. Unlike the sphere in the room she had recently come from, these lines were not roiling and shifting over its surface, they were static and glowed softly while emitting a faint hum. She poked it with her makeshift crutch. Nothing happened, the stone continued to hum contentedly.

“It’s time to go Nia, can’t stay here,” she told herself, trying to give herself some confidence.

She was scared. Scared for her life, scared for her friends, scared of her future.

It took her a long while to build up the courage to explore into the building proper, but when she did, she chose one of the open doorways at random and made her way towards with a slow shuffle.

Stopping on the threshold to let her eyes adjust to the dimmer interior, she took in the wide hallway before her. It was long, extending for around twenty meters before turning out of view. The style the beings who’d built this place had used for the interior was pleasing to the eye, but restrained. There were skirtings at the base of the walls with simple square indentations in a pattern along them. The walls themselves had small pillars jutting out slightly, spaced every two meters. The pillars were clearly just for decoration, they were too small and only stood out from the wall about 2 inches. The floor was a flat stone, or it probably used to be flat, before time had ravaged it as with the outside of the building. The entire hallway felt the years. Dirt and rubble was everywhere and there was eroded areas where water had forced its way through from above and had carved a small causeway for itself. The local flora had once again taken advantage of the situation, and small ferns and mushrooms covered as much ground as they could get their roots into.

Being careful not to slip and fall, Nia navigated her way through the hallway, stopping to peer into a room with an open doorway. The room was much like the corridor, and had a striking resemblance to an office. There were two battered and crumbling desks made of some dull grey metal, as well as what appeared to be cabinets and stone shelving on the walls. She found nothing else of interest in the room, and continued onwards down the hallway. She found more offices and a storage closet. The closet had crumbled stone shelving that looked like it had been built in with the back wall. A host of mushrooms grew happily on many of the shelves, sharing the space with the broken down remnants of whatever had originally sat on the shelving. Only metal objects seemed to have survived in any recognisable form. There was many things that appeared to be urns, large and small, but little more information could be gained from the degraded objects. Nia left the closet and once again started off down the hallway. She reached the corner and turned down it. As she stared down this new section of hallway, she realised she was still able to see reasonably clearly, despite the outside light having very little access to this area. It seemed, now that she was in a darker area, that the ceiling glowed a soft yellow-white colour and she could faintly make out more strange glowing lines etched into the surface.

This stretch of hallway was around the same length, but it appeared to have more offshoot corridors down its length. She started forward down it in the same slow careful hobble she’d been using.

The first room she came to was different than the others she’d seen so far. It had rows alcoves down the opposite wall from the door. The alcoves had small shelves on the walls and contained beds and side tables made of the same dull grey metal. The beds were in remarkably better shape than the desks from before, and they sported yet more glowing lines on their surfaces.

She again found nothing useful in this room, whatever had happened to this city must have been a very long time ago.

She explored the floor she was on for an hour or more, finding more offices, rooms with bed alcoves, closets and larger rooms that must have been used for storage also. She found a few objects that were not destroyed by the ravages of time. She could not figure out what most of them were for. They all glowed with the faint magical lines she’d seen around the place, and appeared to have been built for functions she could not even guess at. She was beginning to feel defeated on the subject when she found a blade. The knife was small, about six inches long and the shape of a any normal dinner knife that Nia had used to eat countless meals. The handle was made entirely of the same dull grey metal as everything else while the blade appeared to be made of some cream coloured ceramic material, that ended in a very sharp point. The whole blade had dull light blue glowing lines in patterns across its surface and the handle had similar lines that instead glowed a faint white.

Taken as a whole, the blade was odd from her human perspective. It did not seem to be suited as a general purpose knife for going out into rough terrain and surviving, nor did it seem like a good eating utensil, the blade was much too sharp and could possibly injure the casual user. The blade almost seemed surgical, it was long, delicate, and sharp.

Nia carefully wrapped the knife in the cut off sleeve of her shirt and placed it in the small pocket on her jeans.

She found a staircase a little bit later. The staircase was a spiral staircase that had a huge open central shaft that ran all the way down to the ground floor, several hundred meters below.

Looking down the center of the staircase took her breath away, the only thing keeping her from falling down was a small bannister that edged the stair. Strangely, the railing did not extend to the part of the central shaft that was adjacent to the landing.

‘That is a really really long way down,’ she thought with a tinge of fear.

She took the stairs down slowly, not wanting to fall down them and injure herself further.

Looking around the next few floors revealed nothing more of interest besides more of the same, and she didn’t find any more knives.

As night descended, Nia began to feel tired as the events of the day caught up with her. She needed a place to rest and sleep. She needed water and food too, but she was used to forgetting to eat for days at a time, so her stomach was ready for this. The floor she was on was four floors down from the one she’d started on, and was almost identical to all the floors she’d explored thus far. She found where the flow of water passed through this floor. The vertical stream as she thought of it, had wormed its way into the corner of one of the rooms with many beds. She hobbled over to the stream, which disappeared into a hope between the wall and the floor and cautiously drank from it, hoping that it was not contaminated by something. Drinking her fill, she went to the nearest bed and lay on it gingerly, trying her best to get comfortable.

She didn’t have time to get comfortable however, as she heard a crack and a long groan from the floor beneath her. She did not have time to scramble away from the buckling floor in time, and she felt her stomach lurch into the air above her as she fell, the floors collapsing one after another as the weight of each collapsing floor caused the next to fail. When the cascade of broken stone finally met something structurally sound enough to hold it all up, she impacted the pile with the horrifying crunch of breaking bone. She passed out as her body finally began to fail.

Nia was dead. Not yet, but she would be soon and she knew it. Her hurt everywhere, the broken bones throughout her body could be felt grinding against each other and she had trouble breathing. Tears streamed from her eyes, but she desperately held in her sobs to stop them from wracking her body and causing even more unbearable pain. She was laying half buried in a pile of rubble, her torso was held upright by a chunk of stone behind her, while her lower body was covered in debris. She was almost in a sitting position. It was this position that allowed her to see the shadow that limped its way toward her.

As the thing emerged from the shadows, her mind seized up yet again at a truly bizarre sight. The thing was roughly humanoid, but the similarities ended there. Where Nia was made of flesh and bone, this thing was made of random debris. It was as though the rubble of the city had decided to get up and roam about its own ruins. Its head was a roughly spherical chunk of stone that was chipped and pitted with age, the front of which had four holes bored into it. These holes glowed and pulsed a soft soothing green colour. The strange figure of the thing was made up of uneven chunks of rubble and bound together by thick gnarled vines. Around its body it wore a strange wrap of tattered and faded fabric that looked like it had been crudely woven by hand. Across it’s whole body, bar it's strange clothing, glowing green lines pulsed and danced, making it appear as though it breathed, the subtle shifts in tone and hue as lifelike as any small muscle moving under the skin of a flesh and blood being.

The thing stood there and watched her, its head canted to the side. Suddenly, almost jarringly, it spoke, it’s voice strangely high and melodic. The language it spoke was incomprehensible to her, but it sounded as though there were no breaks between words, the whole sentence coming out in a stream of high and liquid syllables.

Nia tried to speak back to it, to ask it for help, but all she managed was a pained gurgle. The rock creature shifted its feet while maintaining eye contact with her. She tried to speak again, and instead dark blood foamed out of her lips. As if in reply, the creature nodded once, a strange brassy sound coming from it. With a gesture of its arm she rose carefully into the air on a cushion of faint green light, the rubble covering her lower half floating out of the way. As she rose, her eyes widened expecting pain as she moved, but there was very little. The stone creature did not acknowledge her as it turned and walked down a dimly lit hallway with Nia floating along in tow.

They slowly made their way through the darkened building and she left a trail of blood behind them, marking their passage. Her mind was fractured, she had thought she was going to die as she lay there on the ground, and now some crazy rock person was taking her somewhere. She waited passively for the end result of whatever was happening, her will to care was almost nil now. Their journey lasted only a few minutes, and took them into an area of the building that looked better preserved than the areas that she had previously explored. The end destination was a wide room with a minimalist slab of stone that seemed to be a bed right in the center. Off to the side was one of the more normal steel beds, this one missing it’s mattress like all the others. Arranged on shelves around the room were more glowing magical artifacts than Nia could count. They overflowed off the shelves, and some bigger ones were laying randomly on the floor about the room.

Carefully, the strange creature placed Nia on the steel bed, her head lolling to the side and giving her a view of the room. The stone slab in the center was lower than her current position and she had a clear view of the little creature that had been placed in the middle. The little thing was some sort of flying creature, although it had four legs as well as feathered wings. It’s head reminded her of a fox, with large eyes and long slightly droopy triangular ears sticking out and back from the head. Unlike a fox, it was missing the whiskers that many such creatures had. It’s sleek body was slightly more elongated than a fox, and its four legs did not end in paws, but small compact feet for the rear ones, and little hands for the front ones. Each only held two fingers and a thumb or larger shorter digit in the lower legs case. Each little finger and toe had sharp little claws extending from the fingers. It’s tail was huge and bushy, almost as big as the rest of the body combined. Strangely, the little creature did not have fur, but glossy purple and black feathers from snout to the tip of its tail, and birdlike wings that seemed to have a few extra joints along their edge. All of the feathers sparkled with what looked like purple stars, as though the whole thing had been dusted in crushed amethyst. The whole thing was perhaps two and a half feet long from nose to the tip of the tail, and Nia thought the it looked like some sort of tiny feathered dragon.

It was also dead, it’s beautiful pearlescent green eyes staring blindly into space. Nia wondered how it looked so perfectly preserved, there didn’t appear to be any wounds on the thing. Maybe the stone person had killed it. She hoped not, that would not bode well for her survival.

The stone person shuffled over to a shelf and carefully took a strange looking implement from it. Wandering back over to the central slab, it held the implement above the little creature and with a low hum the tool began glowing orange and green in alternating pulses. Once it was done, she saw with shock that the creature breathed. It’s eyes did not move an inch, as though there was still no controlling intelligence behind there, just the body maintaining itself.

The stone person, which Nia decided to call a he for now, then walked with it’s strange gait over and placed the tool back on the shelf.

Lifting a square container from the other end of the shelf and taking another tool from a shelf he limped back to the little creature. The tool he held delicately in his hand was some sort of long thin piece of metal that looked like a chopstick. Opening the container, he pulled out a rough crystal about a centimeter in diameter that glowed with a steady white light. He then gently reached down and opened the little creatures mouth, placing the crystal inside. Extending out with the other hand he touched the metal chopstick to the throat of the creature. With a pulse of green light, the creature was made to swallow the crystal. The stone person repeated the process several times, each time making sure the crystal was swallowed.

Nia watched the process with rapt attention, hoping that this somehow translated to her being returned to health. Her body was beginning to grow strangely cold, her skin sweating despite this and she could feel her heart fluttering in an uncomfortable way in her chest.

<i>I hope he gets to me soon, I feel really tired. Please save me Mr Stone Man,</i> she thought urgently.

What was he doing, was he even going to help her at all? The confusion of the situation kept sending waves of fear through her.

He was oblivious to her silent pleas for help as he made his way once more to a shelf and deposited what he’d used there. Moving to a pile of strange tools on the floor he belt down and picked up a larger tool that looked for all the world like a handheld vacuum cleaner made of dark grey and light grey metals, the whole thing pulsing with green light. This time, he did not go to the inanimate creature in the center of the room, but instead made his way to Nia and lowered the vacuum end of the device to her chest. She felt a tugging at her sternum and the slight pain she felt was drowned out by the rest. The tool glowed green with shifting humming lines of power as the task was completed. Finished, the stone man took the tool to the creature on the table, and placed the nozzle onto its slowly breathing chest which again the tool glowed with green power. This had no apparent effect on the little creature, and he replaced the tool where he had taken it from.

The stone man hobbled over to Nia now, and looked down at her for a long moment, utterly still apart from the pulsing of the lines of power along his body. He spoke again in the flowing liquid language he used earlier, before staring at her again. Nia tried to respond, but her body failed her and only a wheezing sound came out of her bloody lips. He took this as affirmation of some description, because he began to weave his stone and vine fingers through the air in intricate patterns. Before him a beautiful vision appeared, glowing lines of force weaved and branched from each other in an increasingly complex formation. The lines were not one or two colours as previously, but every hue and shade imaginable. As the glowing construct was reaching completion, his fingers became more fevered in their artistry, before stopping abruptly with a flourish.

Nia was amazed, <i>That was not technology, that was magic if I ever saw it,</i> the thought popping into her head despite the pain and fear she felt.

Reaching delicately out, the stone man pushed the construct down towards her like it was a soap bubble floating in the air. When it reached her, the peace and wonder of the moment was shattered. Every nerve in her body screamed during the single instant of contact, and then suddenly she felt nothing. Her vision took on a black and white quality, colour becoming suddenly absent in the world, her hearing went dull and muted, as though she were deep underwater. Her vision climbed up in a jarring manner, and she realised with horror that her body did not come with it. She looked down. Her body lay there, broken and bloody, almost unrecognisable now in some areas towards the lower half where rubble had crushed her. A small part of her mind thought, <i>Good riddance</i> when she saw her groin had been destroyed. The face was slack, it’s eyes open and staring, the light of life gone from them, and the chest no longer rose and fell. With a jerk that would have caused her missing stomach to lurch, the stone man took a hold on whatever she now was, and moved with much more urgency than it had so far in the short time she had known it. Moving quickly he placed her in the air above the small feathered dragon, and motioned insistently towards it. With her mind in panic she had no idea what it was trying to communicate, it had killed her! Urgent now, the he again motioned to the little creature on the slab of stone.

Nia was confused, having trouble thinking and her vision was fading to dull grey, even the highlights and shadows leaving her now. With a gentle but firm hand, he nudged her down towards the dragon. With a jolt, she felt something. A warmth, it strange and yet welcomed her with the tingling promise of safe harbour. That feeling came from the body of the dragon, and she reached for it desperately, wanting to feel that sense of warmth and safety much more intimately. As she reached, her vision warped and shifted down, once more filling with colour, although the room suddenly looked vast. With her vision came sound again, as well as the warmth that was promised. Her sense of touch felt wholly strange to her, and random pulses of hot and cold assaulted her poor confused mind. Her body shuddered. Her new body. She could feel it, all the little parts of it, the wings, the little fingers and toes, her tail, and the sensation of her mind adapting itself to the new form was absolutely bizarre.

She lay there on the cold stone slab for what felt like forever while her body twitched and spasmed with the unfamiliar pulses of command her mind was sending out. Slowly she gained the ability to move small parts of herself with purpose. First her eyes, the sensation familiar, then her new ears. She twitched them around, swivelling them this way and that to focus her range of hearing on the small sounds of the room. Then one of them began to itch, and she twitched it in annoyance. Moving her eyes to look, she saw that the stone man was touching it gently. She scowled at the now large bundle of stone and vegetation. He seemed delighted by the expression, responding with an excited jumble of liquid syllables and the lines of power on his face swirled faster.

He left her for a short time to lay belly down on the slab and acquaint herself with the new body she had been placed in. Her mind practically cried for joy at the wholeness of it. It was probably small and delicate compared to where she had come from, but at least this one felt normal, functioning as intended, instead of the defective mess she’d spent her whole life in up till now.

A realisation came to her with a start, one that drove its way through the horrors of the last twenty four hours.

<i>I’m not in a male-born body anymore! I can feel it, the… hole? I have a… a tiny alien vagina? Crazy... Oh! I won’t have such poor health anymore! My bones will only be as brittle as they should be!</i>

Thinking on that further, she frowned, <i>Ah, but it had wings, <i>I</i> have wings, so I might have hollow bones like a bird.</i>

She looked down and saw that her body was in fact a she, at least by earth animal standards. There was no penis, just smooth feathered flesh.

Accompanying those thoughts was the relief that the absence of pain brought her. The pain that had been dogging her mind for hours, ever since that first bone broke as she and her group were ejected from the tunnel.

Her joyous thoughts were interrupted by the return of the stone man. He had with him a handful of small round objects. They were berries, she realised, little red berries. Except they were not so little once they were in front of her on the slab of stone where he placed them. To her new diminutive size they appeared as big as her fist used to look. Once he’d placed them on the slab he motioned to them repeatedly. Nia was not sure how to move herself yet, but she tried. The smell of the berries had hit her as he placed them, and they smelled good, delicious even. Struggling to first move her slender neck, she managed to get a better vantage to look at them. She tried reaching out with just her head to snag one, but he had placed them out of reach of such an action. Turning an accusatory glare at him, she huffed loudly and frowned at him again. The stone man let out a soft sound that was akin to the gurgling of a forest brook and he tilted his head to the side. To Nia it seemed as though he even had an eyebrow cocked, although she couldn’t actually see them.

With an internal groan she tried to get her arms under herself, <i>What do I even call them? Arms or forelegs?</i>

Deciding that she’d call them arms, she lifted her body slowly and shakily off the stone. She was sitting in an awkward fashion now, her legs splayed out behind her. She slowly moved them under herself, and once the task was accomplished, she beamed up at her guardian proudly.

He simply motioned to the berries again. <i>Oh right,</i> she thought, <i>I’m hungry.</i>

Inching her way forward, she found herself over the berries, and reached down with a clumsy little clawed hand to try and grasp one of the berries. After many attempts she was finally able to bring one up to her mouth and place it inside, where she chewed it slowly. It was sweet and almost flowery without the hint of bitterness that many berries contained. Reaching for more, she devoured the small bounty hungrily, her previously dead and empty stomach crying out for sustenance once more.

The food now resting in her contented belly, she felt herself grow drowsy and her eyes drooped in sympathy to the feeling. The movement of the stone man caught her heavy eyes as he walked to the corner of the room and back, retrieving a Nia-Dragon sized woven bed of vines and leaves. Placing it on the slab of stone next to her he pointed at it and then shuffled out of the room.

She crawled over to it, although in her current body all fours would be considered just walking normally, and stared at the nest.

<i>How do I sleep?</i> She thought, <i>I used to lay on my back to sleep before, but my wings will be in the way now.</i>

She pondered it for a few seconds before deciding to curl up like a cat, with her long wings and absurdly large and fluffy tail over her for warmth. Settled into the bed she felt a bit uncomfortable, as there was a small twig poking her in the back, but she didn’t care enough to shift herself, and with a feeling of overwhelming relief she finally drifted off to sleep.

Nia woke up feeling rested and calm, until she remembered the events of the previous day. She let out a whimper and curled tighter in on herself. She wasn’t sure how long she fought the sadness that attempted to overwhelm her while she lay in the bed of leaves. She’d lost everything yesterday, even the body she was born with although that part she didn’t entirely mind. Her friends were gone, even if she found them they would never recognise her. She felt she should be even more upset at what had happened, but she felt numb, as though she had experienced too much and was no longer capable of feeling emotions toward the subject. Laying there and brooding for a while, she didn’t notice the stone man enter the room until he spoke quietly in that liquid language of his.

Lifting her head up from under her wing she looked at him. He was standing in the doorway and seemed to be staring at her with those three impassive green eyes. His hands clutched another handful of berries and her stomach responded enthusiastically to the sight of them. Gingerly she stood on all fours and looked at the berries in a hopeful manner. She decided to try and speak back to him with this new mouth of hers, but all that came out was an odd high pitched squeak. She tried again, a longer series of words, but it ended up as a high pitched warbling, although she thought it might have sounded like she was talking at the end. She sighed, and was surprised when it came out sounding reasonably normal, even if it sounded much smaller and higher pitched that her old sigh. Cocking his head in reply, the stone man placed the berries on the stone slab and left her in the room alone again.

Nia ate the berries with a bit more restraint this time around, taking her time to explore the way this body tasted things. As she ate she saw the bed her old body had been placed on. It was covered in dry blood, but her old body was missing. She didn’t know how she felt about that. She had hated her old body, railed at it for many hours within her thoughts. It had been a cage to her, a cage of weakness and wrongness and the cause of so much strife in her 19 years of life. She felt more worried about the fact she did not mind being transplanted into a new body. She did wish it had been a human one she’d been placed in, so long as it was female, but she was still grateful that this one worked properly.

Continuing to brood on the matter, and the things that had happened, she looked around the room idly. After an hour or two of thinking and laying around she got bored of the room. All the gadgets were obviously too dangerous for her to mess around with so she tentatively walked to the edge of the stone slab and looked down. The previous day the drop had been two and a half feet, now it was the height of her body at full extension.

She looked at the drop carefully, judging if she could get down without breaking herself. If she’d undertaken such an action in her old body with a similar height difference, it would have ended badly. Here and now however, she wanted to try. She wanted to prove to herself that the feeling of wellness was not just in her mind but a part of reality as well.

Gathering her courage, she spread her wings and hopped off the stone slab. The landing was reasonably uneventful. She bungled it of course, her new body was still much too hard to control, but she managed to end up on the floor without anything broken. She celebrated, her tail softly hitting the floor as it rose and fell in response to her happiness.

<i>It’s really true! This body isn’t stupid and brittle and I don’t have a penis… ahh!</i> Her elation at the idea of being in a body that did not betray her, physically and mentally, had surprised even herself in its intensity.

Peeking out the doorway, she saw a hallway much like all the others she’d seen, although this one was in noticeably better condition and was mostly clear of rubble and dirt. She left to explore the hallways and rooms again, trotting along on all fours seemed to be the easiest way to do things.

An hour or so later she found herself in a new type of room. This one was a large atrium of some description. It looked like the grand entrance hall to some lords manor in layout. A wide space covered in grass, trees and bushes lay beyond the large doorway installed at one end of the grand hall. Large moderately ornate square pillars held the two storey ceiling up. Opposite the door to the outside world was a central staircase that led to the second floor balcony that ringed the room. Doorways lined both the bottom floor and the upper floor of the large room. Nia was currently sitting at the top of the stairs looking down them, her ears perked up listening for something in the large meadow outside. She figured there must be wildlife around, and she was now much smaller and probably lower on the food chain than she was used to. She also wanted to test out her wings, so carefully she made her way awkwardly down the steps until she was only 3 steps from the bottom. Lifting her wings out she tried to feel what the body wanted to do with them. There was some sort of previous muscle memory helping her get used to moving the strange muscles, but it was still difficult to let the body do what it was used to without interference from her.

She looked down the three steps and felt a tinge of fear. <i>I don’t want to break anything. I only just got this body! But surely it’s fine, I don’t have to worry about my old problems, I was made to fly! I have wings after all.</i>

She was trying to convince herself it would work but her doubts were clawing away at her confidence with every second.

Taking a deep breath, she didn’t allow herself to think about it anymore and leapt forward with wings outstretched. She felt the air catch underneath them for a brief moment, but she forgot to use them for anything more, and instead hit the ground in a tumble. Her mind groaned and sadness and worry welled up inside her at the thought of having to take care of another break in her bones, especially in this new and strange body. She lay there on the ground for a small while in self pity before she realised she had nothing but a few small bruises to take care of. The distinctive pain of a break was nowhere to be found. Carefully standing up on two legs she looked down and examined herself. There was no blood, no protrusion of bone through flesh and no limbs sitting at odd angles. She was whole.

She tried to fly several more times after that, the elation of being able to jump off things and not have any serious injuries ran through her. Each time she tried to leap into the air however, her doubts and ingrained fears would sabotage her efforts, causing her to overthink the whole thing and ruin what her body was trying to do.

She stopped after a while, not wanting to bruise herself too much Her feathers covered in dust, and she had feathers sticking out at odd angles. She carefully brushed herself down to fix her dishevelled appearance. She looked around after she was finished, and decided to head out into the overgrown meadow out the front door. The place was flush with like, wildflowers bloomed and trees taller than the small courtyard she’d arrived in stood proudly here and there. The trees had needles instead of leaves, and reminded Nia of a pine or conifer tree with their straight central trunk. She trotted further into the strange place, the sun overhead in what appeared to be a mid morning position while the clouds fought to dim it’s light. Pouring out of the building some distance to the left of the large doors was a waterfall that landed in a pool of clear water before flowing off in a stream. The meadow appeared to be about three hundred meters wide but she could not see the far end through the brush and trees. She decided to investigate the pool of water, she was rather thirsty.

The pool was very clear, and appeared to have small fish swimming happily around together between the chunks of rubble. Nia gingerly reached down with her head and drank the water, examining the taste in case it was bad. Having sated her thirst, she made her way to the edge of the meadow and found that it dropped off into thin air. She carefully looked over the edge and saw more of the city below her. Looking along, she saw that this garden she was in was actually on top of an enormous bridge or aqueduct of some kind. The whole thing was built of monumental stone blocks arranged in consecutive layers of arches. It ran off into the distance for at least a kilometer before it split into two, the child branches of the vast structure getting lost among the ruined buildings of the city. Looking down from this vantage she could see the streets several hundred meters below her were choked with vegetation and rubble.

She went further along the causeway to where the meadow gave way to a thin forest. The forest was really just a denser area of trees on the huge structure, digging their roots into the accumulated soil and stone. On her investigations she found one of the bushes the berries must come from. It was a relatively short and squat little bush that had trouble holding itself up under the weight of its bounty. Nia ate a lunch of the sweet berries and decided it was time to head back towards the safety of the structure.

The trip back to the room she had woken up in was uneventful, although she got lost once or twice, and the stairs in the atrium were a challenge. What surprised her the most through the day was how quick and relatively strong she was in her new form.

The next few days were spent relaxing and getting used to her new form. She focused on her present and future, as thinking about the past, her friends, her university dreams and her family sent her into depressive moods that lasted for hours. She knew she was avoiding and delaying the problems to her mental well being, but she couldn’t face things right now. It was much easier to treat everything that was happening as an adventure from a book or game that she could put down at any time. The stone man randomly made appearances during the day, sometimes bringing her food, sometimes not. He tried talking to her frequently, but she had no idea of the language or even how to start understanding it.

She made progress on acclimatising to her new body. She could run on all fours, stand and walk on two, and was able to make short gliding hops with her wings. Flight as a whole still eluded her however, her fear of breaking herself kept her from being able to commit to the action. She frequented the forest on the bridge often and enjoyed exploring the place and watching the city far below. She saw movement down in the green ruins from time to time, but the distance was too great to get a good idea of what was moving down there. On one excursion onto the bridge, she had the feeling she was being watched, the feathers along her spine pricking up with instinctual warning. She cut her explorations short that day.

It was on the fourth day that something truly interesting happened. Nia was lounging on the top of a cabinet in the room the stone man kept, bored and a bit tired from a foray into the hallways in the floors below. As she lay there, the stone man walked in with his peculiar gait and turned to look at her, beckoning her to come closer with his hand. Curious, she hopped off the cabinet and glided to the ground where she trotted over to him. Picking her up carefully, he placed her on the stone slab in the center of the room. Reaching into a crude satchel he carried, he took out several broad flat leaves that were almost as long as she was. Placing one of the slab next to her he cocked his head.

Nia looked down at the leaf in confusion, <i>What does he want now?</i> she asked silently.

After gazing at her for a few moments, the stone man took a thin stick from his satchel and held it in his hand like a pen. Slowly and carefully, he made a mark on the page. The mark looked like two lines twisted once around each other. It looked her like step one in an explanation of how to tie a knot. He drew more of these knot-markings, each one was two lines that twisted around each other in slightly different ways. He looked at her again with intensity before jabbing a finger at the marked leaf. She looked at the markings, then back at him.

<i>Is he trying to teach me to write? What use is that if I don’t know the language to start with?</i>

Carefully he placed another leaf next to that one, and pointed at the first marking he’d drawn, then at one much further down the list. Leaning in to the second leaf, he drew the first marking again, but instead of drawing a new marking, he continued with this one, adding the other marking he’d pointed to onto the end of the first. Completing the joined shape, he pointed emphatically to the marking, then tapped his head.

<i>I am so lost. What do you want me to do three eyes? Remember your weird sailors knot? What am I mea-,</i> She didn’t finish the thought, as her eyes widened in shock.

When she thought of the conjoined marking on the leaf it began to resonate pleasantly in her mind's eye. Examining it more closely in her mind, she felt something warm begin to thrum in her chest like she’d just had a gulp of a warm drink on a cold day. With interest she felt the warmth spread to her mind, her instincts telling her to feed the warmth to the mark in her mind. The twirl of power asked for an outlet, and she directed it to the leaf she had been gazing at without focus. A small breeze suddenly blew the leaf up into the air a few inches before plopping it back down on the stone.

Nia startled at the unexpected and energetic movement of the leaf, and looked up at the stone man. The markings were the same as the glowing lines that flowed over the strange being before her, the same as had been in the tunnel when she arrived in this place and on the cube in the small courtyard above.

<i>He’s teaching me magic!</i> she realised suddenly with excitement.

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t excited by the prospect of wielding unseen power to manipulate the world. Reviewing the lines with renewed interest, she looked at each of them with the intent to memorise them. The stone man began drawing more combination markings on the second leaf. She visualised the first of these new knots in the same manner as the first, allowing the warmth from within her to fill its form within her mind. Focusing the power through the knot and toward the leaf again, she was delighted to see the leaf emit a dull white glow that faded after about ten seconds.

<i>This is so cool,</i> she thought happily.

The stone man showed her many more knots by demonstrating their effects himself. This turned out to be a prudent course of action when he introduced her to the more dangerous knots like heat. It was late in the day when they finally stopped the lesson, mainly due to Nia’s drooping eyelids. Padding over to the little bed of leaves and woven twigs he’d made for her, she wrapped herself in her tail and covered herself with her wings. Now familiar with this sleeping position, her mind trailed off into a sleep full of twisting knots of power and abused leaves.

As the days passed by the stone man periodically stopped by to give Nia more lessons in magic. It was difficult without a common language to explain more complex details, but she was getting the hang of it rather well. She had a breakthrough during her second lesson that allowed her to gain a significant leap in understanding the knots of power. She realised that the system of magic was remarkably similar to object oriented coding. To form a spell, one started with a base <i>thing</i>, an object, and then apply a parameter to the object. The first spell she’d ever cast was the knot for movement and the knot for a direction. She had been reasonably good at code back on earth, and her skill in the subject was coming in handy once again with magic.

Just over a week later after that fateful lecture, Nia was exploring the bridgetop forest. Bouncing around in the grass with her wings stretched out, she was using a spell she had put together on her own. The spell was reasonably simple. It was built with the knot for movement, the knot for forward, and the knot for self. The end result propelled her forward a short distance, her wings catching the air as she moved allowing her to hop and glide short distances. She loved the feel of movement, the air catching under her wings and holding her aloft for a short time.

During one such glide she saw movement from the corner of her eye, causing her heart to drop into her stomach and adrenaline to surge through her at the fright. She failed the landing and tumbled head over tail for a moment before leaping up and looking for the source of her panic. The source of her panic found her instead.

With barely time to react, she threw herself to the side with her spell as an animal the size of a large dog leapt at her with a roar. Through her frantic dodge she was only able to make out several twisting spikes atop a snarling serpentine head. Landing on all fours, she quickly stood up onto her hind legs and used her spell again to launch herself into the air in a maneuver she had dreamed up earlier but hadn’t had the courage to try. The survival instinct flowing strong through her mind and body, she didn’t stop to think as she beat her wings for the first time in earnest. Angling her body up once again, she used her spell to gain more distance from her attacker.

Temporarily safe in the air she circled the clearing and looked down to get a good look at her foe. The creature was nightmare fuel. It had the head of a snake, although the mouth held hundreds of razor sharp fangs crowding the limited real estate in it’s gums. It’s body was that of some sort of canine, but instead of ending in the paws of a dog, the forelegs were equipped with long curved talons protruding directly from the wrist. Along its back was a spine of spikes that jutted out at random angles. The spine ended abruptly at its rear, where common sense said a tail should be attached, but none could be found.

It was with a sense of dread that Nia noticed the last feature of this awful predator. Unfurling large leathery wings from its back, the beast launched itself into the air with a bust of power from it’s meaty hind legs. She activated the boost spell once again, sending her further from the clearing and the airborne beast. The edge of the bridge was coming up fast as she urged herself forward with frantic beats of her wings. In an attempt to avoid flying out over the terrifying void beyond the bridge she angled her flight trajectory back towards her home building, but the beast altered its course to intercept her. Fearing the void beyond less than the threat of a gruesome death filled with spines and teeth she turned to move out over the empty air. The course corrections had allowed the beast to decrease the distance between it and it’s prey as the edge of the bridge came and went.

Nia dove and twisted in the air until she was flying alongside the arches that held the bridge up.

<i>If I can follow the supports back to my building I can climb the floors back to safety,</i> she thought as her mind reasserted its dominance over her actions. Rational thought back in command, her flight lost some if it’s instinctual grace and speed. The beast was quick to take advantage and dove from above to cut her off from her destination. Reacting with a squeal she dropped in altitude and banked hard away to the right from the attack from above. The thing was gaining on her, and with fear she realised it was not going to allow her the safety of the stone man’s building. Several hundred meters away was another building, standing tall and slender compared to the monolith she’d been living in. Seeing an opportunity she made for it with another burst of speed provided by her magic.

Her speed was perhaps too high she realised in alarm as the slender building expanded rapidly in her vision. Down the side of the building sprang a multitude of hardy twisted trees, the small spaces between their branches being too small for the horror behind her to follow her through. She knew if she screwed this maneuver up, her body would not survive impact despite any amount of vitality it had. Her insides drained of all feeling bar the unique dread that comes upon those set in a course they no longer have any means by which to alter the outcome.The gap she’d been aiming at flashed past with a rush of air and she felt the very tip of her feathers clip a branch. Behind her was a roar of anger, but to her dismay, not one of pain. Craning her neck she glimpsed her pursuer had simply flown to the side, avoiding the thick foliage altogether while it kept its eyes trained on her small form.

Thankfully, the stunt had at least gained her some space to think and maneuver. As she sailed out of the cover of the building, Nia was debating another attempt to fly back toward home when she heard another roar, but this one came from left, rather than the right where her attacker had been a moment ago.

<i>How did it get over there?!</i> She thought with concern.

A quick look back to her right confirmed the beast was still there in pursuit. Looking the other way she saw a second beast coming in at her from the left. It was close, and diving to strike. Fear lanced through her and she dove again, barely dodging the scything claws of her attacker as it flashed past her. She realised now that she’d been herded into this ambush, and only the creatures ill timed roar had saved her from death.

She took her flight past more buildings with the overgrown streets rushing along beneath her. She continued dodging attacks, twisting randomly to try and throw her pursuers off, but they gained ground on her every time she tried to shake them. She was fast running out of air between her and the ground despite her magic and inexperienced wingbeats. On top of her current issues, another problem was beginning to surface. She was getting tired, her wings unaccustomed to the strain of holding her aloft for so long.

With the ground now a scant hundred or so meters below her, and her home nowhere in sight she feared this was it. Her options had run out, she’d tried everything her untrained mind knew about aerial maneuvers. She banked hard again down another street, and lost more altitude as she hastily folded her wings in a dive to dodge another streak of spines and fangs. She was so focused on her attackers that she almost didn’t see the newcomers ahead of her.

Walking down the street between the rubble and the trees was a group of five people. They looked like they had just fallen out of a sword and sorcery novel. Two were clad in a kind of half plate armour and carried a sword and shield each, while another two were wearing sturdy jackets and leather pants and carried nothing. The third had thick leather armour and held a large bow in her hands. The group below saw her and her hateful attackers at the same moment she had spotted them. Seeing a slim chance at safety Nia dove for the band and with the last of her strength flipped her body end over end back toward her attackers. Her body now pointing her back the way she’d come, she activated her spell with a surge that broke her momentum enough that she only hit the forest floor with a light thump and roll.

The young woman with the bow reacted first, her hand pulling the bow back in a swift motion and taking a bead on the lead attacker. The arrow whipped out toward the beast with a whistle of disturbed air and thumped into the chest of the awful creature with a wet thud that caused the beast to cry out in pain and tumble to the ground. Next to react was one of the men in half plate armour brandishing a sword and shield. He rushed the downed beast and stopped it’s attempts to right itself with the edge of his shield to its face. The sound of something in the hateful beast’s face crunching loudly at the blow caused a savage gleeful feeling of revenge to well up in the little dragon that was Nia.

The second creature dove at the source of the arrow that had hit its mate with a roar of rage. Before it could reach the woman with the bow, one of her companions in the stylish coats raised his arm. Issuing from his raised hand, a bolt of superheated air ripped free in a streak of angry white-orange light and smashed the diving beast from the air.

The second creature landed with a crunch at the feet of the bow woman, and she drew a shortsword and drove it into the throat of the wounded beast with a wordless cry of satisfaction. The first creature was reeling from the shield it had taken to the face and was busy trying to keep the man who had bludgeoned it at bay. It lost this struggle when another arrow whipped past the metal clad bulwark and into the head of the creature and with a crack its skull broke under the impact.

The three who had fought stopped to catch their breath and the whole group watched for more attackers with wary upturned eyes. The moment passed and suddenly they remembered the little dragon who had kited the monsters into their group. Nia cowered under their gazes, ears drooping and tail laying limp on the ground. She was exhausted from the gruelling pursuit, both mentally and physically.

“H-hello, I’m sorry, I was...I was desperate. Thank you…” she spoke haltingly, her mouth unused to the effort of forming words.

Her saviours stared at her in shock, their eyes wide. One of the jacket duo, who Nia realised was a woman, turned to the man who had cast the bolt of heat and spoke in a language unfamiliar to the dragon. The tone she used was confused and questioning, and the man replied with a shrug of bewilderment. The woman was perhaps mid twenties in age and short with long curly blonde hair. She was pretty in an angular way, her eyes taking cover behind prominent cheekbones. The man was of a similar age and middling height. His hair was similar, although cut much shorter. He held features similar to the woman, and Nia thought they may be related in some way. Both wore trim brown peacoats with dark pants and sturdy boots.

One of the two armoured frontliners said something to the group and motioned to the dead monsters with a considering tone. Unlike the blonde pair, these two were definitely related. They were twins sporting dark eyes and brown wavy hair. Their armour was also very similar, half plate with leather and chainmail underneath.

In reply to his brother’s words, the other twin shook his head and pointed to the sky, his words carrying a contradictory tone. The two began to argue and gesture animatedly while the coated blonde duo rolled their eyes in amusement and added to the debate with comments of their own.

Nia watched the four argue with a confused expression across her face. The last member of her band of saviors was looking at the little dragon with curiosity and something Nia had trouble recognising shining in her eyes. The girl looking at her was around Nia’s own age. Her light brown hair was tied up in a messy ponytail that kept it out of her face. Nia guessed the girl was around the same average to tall height that Nia used to be. Unlike the rest of the party who were clad in thick armour or clothing, the girl wore form fitting leathers that showed the thin and muscled body of someone who knew how to use the twin short swords at her wide hips.

Nia looked up into the girl’s kind dark eyes with hope thinking, <i>Please take me with you, I don’t want to be afraid of every shadow, please.</i>

Standing up on two legs Nia faced the girl and offered her tiny hand in greeting. “Hello, I am Nia.” To Nia’s surprise, the words came out mostly intact.

The girl’s reaction to her introduction was that of someone who had suffered a disastrous containment breach in her cuteness reactors.

Carefully the girl held out a finger for Nia to shake, which she took and shook lightly.

Taking her finger back the girl pointed it at Nia and asked, “He-llo?”

Nia thought for a moment, trying to figure out what the girl was asking, before realising the girl probably thought ‘Hello’ was her name.

Nia shook her head and pointed to her feathered chest, “Nia”.

“Nia!” the girl repeated enthusiastically.

Pointing to herself with a smile she said, “Sarra.”

Nia feld her tail thump the ground a few times in response to the greeting. Looking thoughtful for a moment, the girl, Sarra, tapped the back of her left hand with her right. Lifting her hand up she twirled a finger in the air to indicate the area they were in and then brought her hands to the side of her face and clasped them, pretending to sleep.

Nia watched with head cocked, trying to parse out what Sarra was trying to communicate.

<i>This area and sleep. What does she mean?</i> pondered Nia.

Her eyes lighting up in understanding she shook her head in the negative and said, “No I don’t sleep around here. I don’t even know where I came from now, there’s too many tall buildings around.”

Sarra looked up at her companions and spoke for a small moment, ending in a question. The twins shrugged at her in response and the other girl said something noncommittal. The coat man spoke softly and this began a much less animated conversation between the group members.

Nia took this opportunity to lay down and watch them, resting her tired body after the terrifying chase. She wondered what the stone man would think when she wasn’t there tonight. She wasn’t sure she could make it home for a long time, or even if she wanted to try. She only had a vague idea of how far she’d come or in what direction the place was. Another large factor in her reluctance to find her way back to the large building was that she was lonely, and these were actual people, kind people by the looks of things too.

Nia woke with a twitch and a start when she was jostled by something. She raised her head and blinked her large luminous green eyes. It was late evening, the sun having already descended behind the craggy ruins of the enormous city, plunging the street into twilight. Looking blearily around she could see the group that had saved her walking through another tree filled, rubble strewn ruined street. Except for Sarra who she could not see anywhere.

<i>Oh,</i> she thought as the realisation hit her and she looked up. Sarra was smiling down at the drowsy little dragon that she was carrying in her arms. Nia felt her inner awkwardness rise and she had no idea how to handle the situation. Sarra had no idea she was carrying a being that used to be human like her and Nia had no idea how to communicate that.

Sarra softly spoke a single word to Nia. The language the group spoke sounded strange, like a mix of French and English to her untrained ear. She repeated the word back to Sarra with a questioning tone to her voice. Sarra nodded and picked up one of Nia’s hands with her own and imitated their gesture of greeting earlier repeating the word as she did so. Nia guessed the word meant ‘Hello’ or something to that effect. Nia repeated the word back to her while they shook finger to hand again.

Nia enjoyed being carried and learning words in the group’s language. The other members of the group treated her and Sarra’s attempts to teach her their language with bemused curiosity. It was almost an hour by her reckoning when the group stopped for the night. They made their way to one of the buildings that lined the street they were on and climbed a small mound of grass and rubble to a large open window that allowed them access to the interior. Before they entered through the window the two coated blondes, whom she now understood to be mages, checked the room from outside using complex strings of twined magical energy.

When they were certain it was safe to enter the overgrown decrepit building they did so, finding a moderately sized room. The ancient use of the room could not be determined, unlike back in the building Nia had arrived in, it appeared this one held no discernable objects from the people who built it. She suspected they did not want to risk running into anything dangerous further inside when they decided the room was good enough to set up camp inside. They moved rubble to partially block the doorway further into the ruin and began building a small fire and unrolling bedrolls. One of the twins handled cooking while the mages performed some piece of arcanery around the room.

Nia had been placed by Sarra on the ground near the small fire and she watched the group set up camp with curiosity. It seemed they used mostly high medieval level technology. The clothing and armour they used exhibited a reasonably high level of precision with how it was made. She guessed that whatever civilisation they were from had a reasonably functional industrial base to provide the everyday things they used. She had hoped that there would be some form of civilisation on this world so that she would not live the rest of her life as a hermit.

As she watched, she saw some tasks she could help with. The fire had been piled up and was ready to light, but no one had gotten around to the task yet, so Nia walked over to it and lit it with a spell for heat. She wished she could breathe fire like a proper dragon but she couldn’t do that, not yet anyway. She looked up from her task to see the blonde man staring at her with interest. She looked down shyly at the ground at his gaze and twitched her tail. She had always felt uncomfortable when there was too much attention on her and that had not changed. He walked over to and kneeled in front of her. He spoke to her but she only vaguely understood some of the words that were used from her conversation with Sarra. Her response was to tilt her head in confusion. He wiggled his fingers at the fire and pointed at her with a questioning look. She nodded and brushed an area of the dirt free of random debris. As carefully as could be managed she sketched out the knots she’d used to light the fire and pointed when she was done.

He grinned back at her and nodded enthusiastically before turning and calling to his fellow mage in another burst of unintelligible dialogue, pointing to Nia as he did so. Walking over, he pointed at her sketch and seemed to be explaining what had happened. The female mage seemed as interested as he was that Nia could cast magic and they spoke rapidly to each other. Realising that she was being forgotten as the two kept up their animated dialogue she slowly padded backwards but was stopped when they turned to her and tried to get her to speak to them.

Using one of the few words she remembered of their language she spoke, “Hello,” pointing to herself she said “Nia.”

“Hello,” said the man and pointed to himself, “Farden.”

“Vosa,” said the woman with a smile while also pointing to herself.

The little dragon smiled up at the two mages, wiggled her fingers at the fire and made a questioning noise. Farden wiggled his hands and said a word that meant magic. Opening his palm flat he formed a small flame above it and said another word.

Using magic the two mages taught her a bunch of words for things that could not be readily pointed out in the ancient crumbling city. Nia was glad her memory was up to the task due to her background or she would have had a much harder time remembering all this. She was still having trouble keeping the words she learned in her mind straight but she expected that simply immersing herself in the language would get her there eventually. A small while later one of the twins finished preparing the ingredients of the meal and began to cook some meat and root vegetables on sticks over the fire. They had some form of spice lightly covering them. Sarra, who had been outside, came back in and sat down in front of the fire while speaking to the group. Unable to join in with the conversation Nia simply curled up on the ground and watched them with curiosity. She actually caught a few words here and there but she didn’t pay much attention. She was thinking of the food. So far she’d only eaten berries and was unsure if her stomach would even be able to digest the meat and vegetables.

When the food was cooked each of the band grabbed two sticks and began to eat. It smelled delicious to Nia so she thought she might be able to risk eating it. Sarra carefully give her a stick with half the amount of food on it and watched with a curious smile. The little dragon gingerly took the stick and sniffed it. A small lick from her pointed tongue later she had decided it was edible and was happily gnawing on the meat and root vegetables. The food tasted great to her, something like beef covered in a faintly spicy powder. The twin who’d prepared the food, whos name she learned was Sogr, was happy she enjoyed it and kept nodding enthusiastically. After dinner they spoke for a short while before getting into their fur bedrolls to sleep. It seemed that they had set watches because Vosa stayed up and awake, positioning herself just outside the door that let to the old street. Nia lay down to sleep herself on a bed of leaves she brushed together with her tail, much to the amusement of the others.

The next morning she woke with the others as they gathered their things to move out. Having no things to gather, Nia smothered the fire with some dirt instead. The day passed in a crawl for her as she trotted along next to the armed band, occasionally leaping into the air to get a look at something that caught her eye. They came across what appeared to be another branch of the huge bridge she’d jumped off, although this one was damaged, with huge sections having collapsed entirely. The excitement started when they came to a large thoroughfare that was blanketed in grass and shrubs. The broad road was sandwiched between rows of tall crumbling buildings that overflowed with enterprising plant life.

Travelling down the wide street for only a few hundred meters they began to hear a rumbling sound akin to a dozen people drumming their fingers on a desk. Looking around in alarm the band could not see the source of the rumbling, although it seemed to be coming from a side street, their vision of which was obscured by trees. Leaping up onto one of the twins who provided an easy springboard, the small dragon boosted herself up onto a ledge, scaling the side of the building with leaps and bounds between the decorative protrusions on the facade. With a view over the tops of the trees she could see a herd of animals running full tilt down the side street towards them in a panic.

The animals resembled a cross between a deer and a kangaroo, with strong rear legs and small front legs that only occasionally were used to balance their headlong flight. Reaching out behind the animals were long thin tails that had a ridge of brightly coloured fur sticking up along the top.. Some had large horns spiralling out from their heads and duller tail manes. Unable to see the source of the animals panic, she leapt off the side of the building and glided down to her new friends.

“Lots animals, uh no want be meat,” she told them haltingly in their language.

Getting the gist of what she was trying to say, the rest of the group began looking for a place to hide while the herd went by them.

They found a way into the building nearest them and went inside without stopping to check it like their campsite from the previous night. They made it with thirty seconds to spare before the huge herd of deeroos cascaded out into the wide boulevard. The panicked animals split, one section going one way and another section going the other. The confusion about which way to go caused the animals to crash into trees, rocks and each other with a surging violence . A new sound cut through the chaos and cries of pain from the fearful animals. A huge roar of anger and victory shuddered through the air like the biggest truck in the world downshifting.

From their hideout inside the building, Nia and her new friends stood frozen in fear as a beast that was as large as two of the hypothetical truck barreled into the herd of flailing animals like a wrecking ball. The massive beast was three storeys tall and much longer than that, resembling one of the large bipedal predator dinosaurs. It’s head was huge, featuring a wedge shaped head and rows of viciously sharp teeth as thick as a person's arm. Flaring out the back of it’s skull was a huge bony frill like a triceratops. It’s long arms ended in huge scything claws of bone. It’s hide was made of large interlocking plates of bone around vital areas, joints and the like, with leathery scales taking up the space inbetween. As the 3 storey tall death machine crashed into the herd of animals it whipped it’s claws through the crowd in powerful strokes that caused bloody carnage to erupt in their wake. As it destroyed the herd with its front end, powerful swipes of its body tail went through the shocked deeroos, sending bodies crashing tens of meters away. The scene was nightmarish, and the smell of blood and offal surged outward from the source like a physical wave of obscenity.

“An Uthendyr,” breathed Farden in terrified awe, naming the beast of death in the street.

Stren, the twin that hadn’t cooked last night, replied but Nia could not follow his sentence. She thought she heard the words “Too many” and “here” but the rest was said too fast and quietly for her to make out.

The Uthendyr didn’t take long to tear through the helpless creatures. Many of the animals had escaped in all directions, running madly over the uneven landscape between the buildings. Most were torn apart in the carnage before them however, body parts and viscera littered the road in a disgusting carpet of death. The Uthendyr ate some of the bodies but it left an overwhelming majority dead on the ground to fester and pollute the previously lush tranquil street. It roared in victory again, scanning the street with small black eyes that displayed far too much intelligence. When they realised it was paying attention to its surroundings again they quickly hid from sight in fear. It shook the ground with its heavy footfalls as it roamed the street outside for a moment before getting bored and making its way down the wide street in the direction they had not been intending to go.

Farden kept them hidden in the building for what felt like half the day before they finally decided it was safe to move out. None of them wanted to go out into the street made charnel house though, so they cautiously made their way through the buildings. Nia soon learned how lucky she’d been with the building she arrived in, as every second or third room they moved through had some malfunctioning magic inside it. The first problem they came across was a room where gravity did not work. Debris and dust hung in the air lazily, a light breeze nudging it all around the large room. Vosa halted them when he saw the disturbance and she and Farden puzzled their way through the strange enchantment, eventually disarming it and allowing them to pass. The next malfunctioning magical device was some sort of large apparatus that resembled an MRI machine.

The thick ring of the object had arcing bolts of power flickering around its inner surface at regular intervals. Every eight bolts it would send out a line of power that hit a random object in the room. The object that was hit would undulate and shift in a geometric way that defied reasoning, the process halting mid transformation as the power spent itself. Everything in the room was a mess of strange shapes and fractal patterns like a kaleidoscope had vomited it’s contents over the room. The mages took one look at this room and and declared they needed to find an alternate route through the building. It took half an hour before they decided it was safe to leave the relative safety of the buildings for the street again, emerging two hundred meters away from the intense carnage.

They did not encounter anything as overtly violent as the Uthendyr again over the next three days, but the group paid much closer attention to the city and its strange wildlife after that incident. Nia took to leaping and soaring from building to building as an aerial scout sometimes, when she was not learning to speak her friends’ language. She slowly began to understand more of what was said, but her ability to speak still had a long way to go. Her biggest problem was that in her dragon form, her mouth was not ideally suited to human speech, often causing her to slur or miss important sounds in a word. What alarmed her was the speed as which she was learning the language. Normally it should take a person months at leat to gain the level she was at, however it had only been 5 days since she’d started. On the evening of her 5th night they found another room just off the street they were currently travelling down. The room appeared for all the world to be some sort of decrepit store like those found off the street of any large city main street. She took the opportunity to speak with Farden and Vosa as the group ate dinner around a fire.

“Are you magic me to learn speak better?” she asked, her sentence a rickety thing constructed of what words she had available.

Farden stared at her for a moment before replying, “No I’m not putting any spells on you. Vosa?”

Vosa looked up from her bowl of stew and shook her head, finishing her mouthful before speaking, “Nope, no spells from me. Not sure I even know a string to get that sort of effect.”

Farden tapped his spoon on his bowl and said thoughtfully, “It would be interesting to try and achieve. It’s probably possible, most things are with the Power…” he trailed off in thought.

Nia hugged her large fluffy tail in thought at his words, the piece of fruit she’d been gnawing on laying forgotten on a leaf before her.

“Then how do I learn the speak so fast?” She wondered.

“Do you know many languages Nia?” asked Sarra with curiosity sparkling in her eyes.

Nia shook her head and looked over her tail at the girl. “Only my one and your one.”

“Your language, it sounded vaguely familiar actually,” mumbled Stren around a mouthful.

Sogr elbowed his brother with a clank of metal, “Speaking at all is a struggle for your sparked brain, you sure you can even tell the difference between ours and one you can’t speak?”

Stren send a retaliatory elbow back with more force, “Uh huh, and yet you’re the one who got all tongue tied ordering a drink from the barmaid back at that last town we stayed at.”

“That… I wasn’t… I was pausing to allow her to continue if she wanted to, it’s not proper to interrupt a lady.” Sogr said while his face betrayed him with a flush.

“I’m not sure that girl could be described as a lady sogr, considering the way she dressed,” Sarra said with a smile that was more of a barely controlled grin.

Raising an exasperated eyebrow at the banter, Farden turned the conversation back to Nia, “Your language, your species speaks it? You have a culture and civilisation then?”

“Uhh yes I people speak it. We are big towns and lots of people.” she didn’t want to lie, but she held off from telling her new companions that she used to look very much like they do.

“So did you come through a portal then? I’ve never heard of a race that looks like you do!” Sarra asked excitedly.

“What is portal?” Nia asked, although she could guess.

“Hole in the air, looks like the air got broken by a hammer,” Supplied Stren.

“Yes, I arrive in portal. Many come too but I lost myself from them,” her ears wilting as she said the last part remembering Steph’s fearful scream the last instant she’d seen her.

Burying her face deeper in her tail for comfort she asked, “Portals happen many?”

Farden nodded, clearly interested in the subject. “Yes, they bring many new things. Most of the time they only bring through new beasts or plant life. It’s very rare that a new sapient species is brought through.”

“Why?” the little dragon asked curiously.

“Well I imagine there’s a great many more lands with animals than with peoples. It must be very rare for a thinking species to come into being.”

Nia blinked at the man for a moment in confusion as she parsed out his words before slowing saying, “Oh ah, I ask why portals happen.”

“Ah in that case, we do not know. There’s talk that the Protectorate of Knowledge has made progress in researching the reasons behind the phenomena of this world, but they rarely stoop low enough to enlighten we who make the Shattered City our home.”

“The city is not forever?” she asked with surprise.

“It is true that the city is large. Large enough in fact to hold many dozens of nations, but there are lands beyond.” he replied in answer.

His statement lit a spark of flame under her sense of adventure, her eyes widening with excitement. She loved the idea of exploring this new exciting and dangerous new world.

‘Screw my old one, my friends are somewhere in this one now anyway,’ she thought with determination, ‘I gotta find them and we can explore and adventure together!’

Then she realised something. She had no idea where they were going.

Looking at the group as a whole with her large expressive green eyes she asked, “Where is we walking towards?”

“We’re travelling to a city called Rivol. It’s relatively near the edge of the wilderness where things get really interesting!” Sarra said in rush, her dark eyes alight with excitement. “I can’t wait to explore the untamed lands!”

The group chuckled and Stren explained, “It’s Sarra’s first time going out into the real wilderness where the mages haven’t been through to clear the nastier enchantments.”

Blushing a little at her outburst of excitement, Sarra spoke again with her enthusiasm slightly more contained, “Yeah and where there might be amazing artifacts and stuff still around!”

The girls excited anticipation made Nia grin, showing her sharp teeth.

The conversation shifted to inconsequential things before the twins began another argument. As soon as it was clear the bickering would continue for a while, the others made ready to bed down for the night, with the twins being voluntold to take first watch. The night was cooler that the previous nights Nia experienced so far on this world and Sarra donated one of her shirts to be used as a tiny sleeping bag. Complimenting the general temperature of the night, the wind had picked up and was flowing freely through the shattered storefront, the fire dancing gleefully to its tune. Sleep took a while to come to her, so she was disgruntled when one of the twins kicked dirt and leaves onto her as he woke Sarra for the second shift.

The two brutes stomped around the camp before eventually settling down in their bedrolls with grumpy murmurs to each other, their argument clearly unresolved despite the hours that had passed. Just as she was about to return to sleep, a noise caused her to jerk back to consciousness. Her ears pricked up in alarm, wondering what the disturbance had been. She listened carefully a moment, ears alert for the sound. When she heard it again, her mind went from alert to annoyed in an instant. The sound had returned and she could tell now that it was Farden’s snore. Giving up on sleep in disgust she gathered up Sarra’s shirt, looking like a child wearing a giant’s shirt, and padded outside to sit with Sarra on her watch.

She found Sarra seated on a fallen log with her bow in hand. The girl heard the swaddled bundle of feathers approach and turned, her face breaking into a smile when she saw who it was.

Hopping up onto the log next to Sarra, Nia grumbled, “Same brothers loud, Farden sleeps with much noise.”

Sarra giggled quietly, “I noticed that. He can really get going sometimes.”

Nia made a kind of disgruntled huff in reply, although her smile betrayed her.

“You’re so cute all bundled up in that shirt of mine,” Sarra said with her smile still on her face.

Blinking in surprise at the comment when her brain caught what Sarra had said. She’d very rarely been called cute before, her thoroughly average looks and height not lending themselves to that effect.

“I am cute?” her mouth helpfully spouting a reply while her mind was still trying to process it.

“Yeah! Look at you, all fluff and big eyes, adorable.”

Nia’s eyes widened further at the extension of her compliment.

“I am thank you,” murmured the little dragon bashfully.

They sat in silence after that. Nia curling up with her head resting on her tail, watching the night from her vantage next to Sarra on the log.

Nia woke back in the room they used as a campsite, evidently having been moved there after she fell asleep. The night had apparently been uneventful she learned as the group prepared to depart. Farden was fairly sure that they would make the city before nightfall and she was excited to see what a city looked like in this place that was already a city. With their usual banter the twins led the way towards civilisation.

The first hour was pleasant, walking through the cool shadows cast by the enormous and hulking ancient buildings. Unlike their previous route through the ground level streets of the ruined city, in order to reach their target they needed to make their way onto one of the raised thoroughfares. Like the one that Nia had leapt off in her fateful aerial chase, the huge raised roads cut through and over the lower buildings of the Shattered City. Held aloft by soaring arches and buttresses, she had a hard time picturing how the things had been constructed.

The whole city was like gazing up at the moon and stars at night, feeling your mind take a tiny step in grasping the vast distances involved. As they had approached the city of Rivol the ancient structures had begun to take on a more squat and solid appearance compared to the physics defying superscrapers of the region she’d arrived in. The substantial buildings they found themselves surrounded by invoked a more military or industrial feel. Some areas were raised upon foundations of solid stone like a giant had selected several city blocks and simply hauled them a few hundred meters into the air.

They were almost to their second hour of travel that day when their route up onto the skyways came into view. The building was much like any other, a modestly decorated stone building that rose several hundred meters into the air, joining with a skyway some ways up its height. Climbing the building was tough on the Nia’s human companions, and she’d be lying if she didn’t show off a little as she darted on stretched wings up the open shafts of the staircases they traversed.

Panting at on the landing Sarra wheezed, “I am so jealous of your wings right now Nia.”

“Yes they are helpful,” the little dragon replied with a goofy grin on her little face.

An out of breath Farden pointed to a strange marking on the wall and tried to speak, but ended up coughing. Getting a handle on himself he tried again, “That marking means we should be at the right level, we just have to find the exit.”

“Oh thank the Mad Artificer,” said Sogr, “the Builders must have had thighs of forged steel to climb those steps all the time.”

“I think Builders used magic to fly up middle,” Nia said pointing at the open shaft of the staircase.

The rest of the group looked at her in thoughtful silence for a few moments and her ears drooped in embarrassment.

“You know like not visible lift, “ she hurriedly explained, saying the word ‘lift’ in english and miming a platform going up and down with her hands.

Vosa looked at Farden, “Isn’t there a theory to that effect that floats around the mages guilds every now and then?”

“Yeeaaah,” he replied, drawing out the word as he thought.

“Ugh, mages! We can discuss the theory of Builder staircases another time, it’s time to move again! The climb wasn’t that bad.” grumbled Stren loudly as he climbed to his feet.

“Easy for you to say muscles, some of us aren’t giant tall slabs of meat like you,” Sarra shot back.

“Uh huh, you keep telling yourself that tomorrow morning when I’m up at dawn exercising while you snore your pretty little head off.” he replied with a friendly smirk.

“Sarra do not snore. Farden do though.” quipped the little dragon.

The group paused at her words before all except Farden began to laugh, Vosa almost in tears. Farden’s fair complexion betrayed him by flushing an intense shade of pink.

Having rested, the group moved through the building in search of the access to the enormous skyway. It took them more than a few dead ends, arguments between Farden and the twins. Nia suspected the twins only got involved because they wanted to argue. The exit onto the skyway was very similar to the one Nia remembered from what she now thought of as the Hospital. Like the one she spent time in before, this one was multiple storeys tall with raised upper floors and a central area of open space. A large sweeping staircase connected the ground floor to the second floor. Wasting no time gawking at the now mundane architecture of the Builders, the band moved out and back into the sunlight. The world seemed brighter now that they were no longer within the shade of the buildings below.

Hey chatted happily as they walked along the huge road, safe now that any attacker would have a hard time surprising them. The road was mostly covered by dirt and grass, with a few low ferns dotted here and there. Nia had decided to perch on Sarra’s shoulder once more and take in the view. The city still took her breath away with its crumbling majesty even after the weeks she’d spent in it. She saw a flock of birds wheeling and diving around a particularly tree infested building a few hundred meters away. The birds had been started into flight by a flash of red that she assumed was some beast attempting to get a meal.

It was after midday when they turned a corner on the road when the city of Rivol came into view. Rivol perched several hundred meters above the ground atop a collection of tightly packed raised city blocks. Real estate looked to be at a premium as the buildings crowded around and atop one another. The buildings seemed to be built of wood and stone in a style that was a strange mix of Norse and medieval italian architecture. Huge wooden bridges spanned the gaps between the enormous slabs of stone that the city was built on, connecting one section of the city to another. It was a beautiful sight to Nia’s eyes. As incredible as the Shattered City was, the sight of lived in and cared for buildings was a relief.

As they got closer, their view of the city became partially blocked by an enormous stone gatehouse that was perched atop the skyway. The thing was very obviously not built by the same beings that constructed the road that supported it. Up close she could tell that it was built out of stone that had been crudely carved off some building in the shattered city before being mortared together in a much more mundane fashion. Regardless of the comparatively poor workmanship of the structure, it was still sturdy and intimidating as their footsteps took them closer.

With a jerk Vosa stopped and turned to Nia who was perched on Sarra’s shoulder again.

“I just realised, we’re going to have to pretend you’re just a pet Nia. If they catch on that you’re a sapient creature there will be a lot of awkward questions.”

“Yeah it might be easier to just let them think you’re an odd animal. There’s lots of people with strange pets.” said Sarra.

Nia didn’t like the idea of being anyone’s pet, but she the thought of the commotion she might cause drove her to go along with the idea. Nothing was worse than becoming the center of attention.

A little bob from her feathered head sealed the plan and they continued forward.

Passage through the gate was reasonably uneventful, the bored guards forcing the group to play a few square copper coins to move through to the other side. Nia had been expecting at least a cursory search of their belongings for the sake of appearances. Passing through the gate, she was surprised to see a hundred different rickety wooden walkways and bridges connecting the road to every ancient building that rose close enough to the road. When she peered at the buildings in curiosity the reason became clear. The ancient industrial buildings had been converted into vertical farms. The walls that were not essential in keeping the building stable had been removed to allow light deeper into the structures. Wooden trellises clung to the sides with vines fighting their way up them. Workers repelled down the sides to pick fruit and place it into baskets tied to their hips. All this time and the little dragon had not even considered how the people of this world would approach the problem of agriculture in a landscape such as this. The life and culture of these people fascinated her in a way that surprised her and she openly gawked at all the strange ways things were being done.

It wasn’t long before they moved off the roadway and into a cramped city square that was the transitional point between skyway and the sprawl of buildings. The place did not seem to be very lively, only a few stalls were set up in the square and a plain worn fountain burbled lethargically in the middle. Farden was quick to lead them into the maze and away from the suspicious stares of the townsfolk who lazed in the open space. The oddly muted and guarded nature of the people and buildings took Nia by surprise, who’d been expecting the bustling medieval fantasy town she’d seen in games and read about in books. It wasn’t long before she realised the reason for the dreary nature of her surroundings. They’d entered the city in a neighbourhood that was far from affluent. Trash was piled in alleyways and bundles of skin, bone and wiry muscle that appeared to be youngsters glared at them from their perches atop broken crates and masonry. Luckily for her anxiety the people became less threatening and the trash became less prevalent as the streets passed by. Soon they came to a square that was much larger than the one they had seen earlier, and this one bustled in a way that aligned much more smoothly with her expectations.

Making their way through the stalls and crowds of shoppers the group came to the other side of the square where the entire length was dominated by a large sprawling walled complex. People appeared to be moving freely through the unguarded gate and into the place. Nia rode Sarra still as her ‘owner’ and new friend followed the others into the strange complex. Buildings twisted and climbed over and atop one another as though each room had been added as the need arose.

Once inside a section that looked to be well maintained they found themselves in a moderately sized foyer where Farden trudged wearily up to an elderly man seated behind a counter. The old man appeared to be a mix of wrinkles and faded scar tissue stretched over a frame that had probably dwarfed most others, but which now twisted in strange ways.

“Yes?” he asked as Farden approached, his tone a neutral and bored tone as he surveyed the tired travellers.

“Good day sir. My team and I are transfers from the capital.” explained Farden.

“Good for you.” grumped the old man.

“We’ll be needing an apartment?” replied Farden with an exasperated tone.

The grumpy wrinkle glared at him for more than a few moments before giving a wheezing grunt and bending down to take something from behind the counter.

“Number thirty one,” he said curty, placing a dirty key in front of Farden.

Reaching down to pick the key up, Farden asked in an impatient tone, “Where is Number thirty one?”

A gesture and a grunt sent the team down a poorly lit hallway. It took what seemed like hours to Nia before they successfully navigated through the maze of corridors to find apartment number thirty one. Emerging into the room beyond the entryway they paused to get their bearings. The main room was small for a shared space. Containing a counter along the right hand wall, a small stone fireplace in the middle of the opposite wall, and an open hallway on the remaining wall that lead to the bedrooms. The apartment was constructed out of roughly cut wood that was worn smooth with wear. A rough table sat in the middle of the room surrounded by battered chairs. All the wooden surfaces in the room were polished with what seemed like centuries of use, dark stains and scuff marks dotted across each face like the pockmarked skin of an ancient old man.

Rooms were very quickly chosen by the tired band of pathfinders. The twins were to share a room, with Vosa, Farden and Sarra taking a room each for themselves. Sarra decided that Nia would sleep in her room with her. Having chosen rooms, they split to make themselves at home.

Sarra stood inspecting the bare wood of the small room with Nia having perked on the small desk that sat against one wall. The other side of the room held a small single bed, and apart from the chair that was paired with the desk there was no other furniture in the room.

Looking up at her ranger friend, Nia asked “Why is this place so empty of things?”

Continuing to stare at the empty room, Sarra answered, “Because depending on how long a pathfinder team means to stay here, we’re meant to decorate it ourselves.”

After another moment of silence, Sarra turned to Nia with a smile and said, “Well, guess I’d better unpack.”

Nia was pretty sure that was sarcasm, seeing how small her pack contained only a few changes of clothes and camping supplies, but she didn’t remark on it out loud.

As Sarra began to arrange her things in the room, Nia felt a strange feeling creep up on her. She felt as though she’d forgotten something really important, something that she needed to do. The baseless feeling of pressure to do something swelled within her, increasing her heart rate as anxiety kicked in. She shook herself and gazed around the room, looking to see if there was anything that may be causing her to feel like this. She sat on the desk quivering and alert for what was wrong, but nothing presented itself. Watching Sarra bustle around the room setting things up, Nia felt the feeling begin to ebb back, but it did not entirely fade. She inspected this strange pressure like one would examine a newly discovered blemish on their body. As the minutes wore by, she twisted and poked at the strange sensation, but it remained inert, calmy exerting a small vague pressure to do something.

She was startled from her reverie by a soft tapping on the top of her head. Looking up into large dark brown eyes that asked her, “Do you want to go and take a bath? I think this place has a pretty large one.”

Nia laughed, “I don’t think I need a large bath. A big salad bowl would work.”

“Alright then let’s go find a salad bowl then,” says Sarra after giving a snorting giggle.

The bathroom ends up being separate from the toilet room, a fact for which Nia is greatful. She’d never liked waiting for her family to finish showering before she could use the toilet. The bath itself is a large tarnished copper tub set into the aging tiled floor. The tub could easily fit four people without any awkward touching of feet. A pipe made of some dented grey metal extends from one wall, hanging over the tub. Striding over to the pipe, Sarra placed her thumb onto a square protrusion on the wall near the pipe. A pulse of magic travelled through the air to the pipe, causing a languid jet of water to flow from the pipe with a dull rumble.

While the tub was filling with warm water, Sarra began peeling her leathers off . The road dust coating the tiles as it dislodged from her travel wear. Averting her gaze to preserve her new friends modesty, Nia hurried to the rapidly filling tub and belly flopped in. They bathed quickly, Nia having no idea how to clean her new body aside from lathering it in soap from a bar bigger than her head. Newly clean, the pair exited the room so the others could take their turn washing the week of travel off themselves.

It was well into the day before everyone felt rested enough to go in search of food despite none of them having eaten lunch. When they finally found the great hall of the pathfinders guild they were just beginning to serve dinner. The hall was huge, and Nia thought it looked like the great hall of hogwarts if it had been built of sturdy rough cut timber instead of stone. Set in regular spacings among the arches of the ceiling were glowing orbs of glass that emitted a pleasant yellow-white light, giving the hungry men and women below plenty of light to eat by. The twins led the rest of the team to one of the long tables, where they seated themselves at the end. Before long a young boy, perhaps ten or eleven years old, spotted the newly arrived group and rushed to a side door. Pausing to let a rush of other young boys and girls push through with plates in hand to feed the people in the hall.

“Why are the servants children?” Nia asked, hoping the answer was not slavery.

“Orphans, or the children of pathfinders. They serve, do a bit of cleaning and the like. We teach them what we can and keep them fed. Better that letting them run through the streets causing trouble like I’ve heard other lands doing.” replied Vosa casually as she eyed what was being served today.

“Oh!” chirped Nia, happy the answer was benign.

“Little one, if you want to keep up the pet charade, you shouldn’t be speaking.” chided Sarra gently.

“I thought that was just for the guards at the big door?” asked Nia with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

Before Sarra could reply, a man from the group next to them, who looked like he had had perhaps a little too much to drink already, turned and looked at Nia with wide eyes.

“Did that little fluffy thing there just talk?” he asked in disbelief.

“I’m feathery! Not fluffy!” Nia retorted, before her mind could catch her. Bowing her head in embarrassment she avoided the mans startled expression.

“Yeah we picked her up on the way. Saved her from a pack of Bagfel Dogs,” said Sogr calmly.

“She could sell for quite a bunch at the market!” He drunkenly exclaimed.

“No! We’re not selling her, shove off!” Growled Sarra.

The other group of Pathfinders didn’t try and talk to Nia and her friends after that, giving them grumpy glances every now and then. When dinner came, it was some sort of curried meat on thin noodles. Nia found it quite delicious, and happily munched it down. They left for their rooms soon after, eager to get Nia back into a safer space.

The day after Nia and her new friends had arrived in the city they split ways. It would be a long week of research, practice and learning. Nia herself had learned much already and she was excited to settle down and learn everything without distraction. That morning, Farden and Vosa had bundled themselves off to the pathfinder library for the day. The twins then rushed off to the training grounds soon after. This had left Nia with Sarra in the apartment.

Neither of the two minded all that much, and they began to really flesh out Nia’s ability to speak the local language. Nia enjoyed it immensely for two reasons. The first reason was that Sarra was a pleasure to talk to, always quick to laugh and quicker to encourage her. The second reason was that she was now able to remember and comprehend information at a truly terrific rate. She had obviously been granted some form of increased intelligence, because she had never been this good at wrote learning before.

Of course, Nia couldn’t take up all of Sarra’s time, and so she decided to accompany the young woman to the training yards when she felt like improving her skills with the bow or shortsword. The little foxdragon watched in awe as her new friend placed arrow after arrow practically on top of each other. The young woman was very good with her main weapon of choice. Her swordplay was not so impressive. When she matched up with other pathfinders willing to spar, it usually ended badly for her, and Nia wanted to soothe the bruises whenever she saw them. Sadly she was no healer. Her skill with magic was still very minimal despite her repeated practice at every free moment.

The second day in the pathfinder complex, Nia complained to Sarra as they made their way towards the training areas. “I’m just so useless. I can... what, light things on fire and jump? It’s so frustrating!”

Sarra laughed at her little friend, “You are in the very earliest of days with your magecraft Nia, there will be time for you to become a terrifying warrior. That’s just it though, <i>time</i>. Becoming a master of combat doesn’t happen overnight.”

“I know, I know. It’s just really… lame to see you getting to have all the fun.” Nia whined.

“It is not fun to bruise my ass when I try to get better with the sword,” Sarra grinned, rubbing her rather well shaped ass.

“Yeah, I know. Ugh.” Nia grumbled.

When they arrived at the target range, Sarra stepped up to one of the marked areas and began to stretch her arms for the coming practice. The range was a large open expanse of dirt, with packed straw targets at various ranges at one end and a line drawn in the dirt at the other. A free standing roof had been built over the area where trainees were expected to shoot from. The whole place smelled of sweat, dirt and occasionally burnt straw from when a mage came to practice.

Once she was done with her stretches, Sarra lined herself up and began to shoot, her shots flying fast and true. As with the other archers, when she had used all her arrows, she waited patiently for the all clear signal to be called before she walked downrange to retrieve her arrows. When they had come here yesterday, Sarra had been at it for almost two hours and Nia had grown awfully bored.

It was during the start of their second hour at the range that Nia found herself feeling very strange as she spaced out watching the targets. Her throat felt fizzy and warm, like she’d just had a drink of warm coke. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling and she felt like she needed to cough.

She finally gave in to the urge, her neck extending to let the cough out. Only it wasn’t a cough. With the whip crack of something breaking the sound barrier, a bolt of darkness shot from her mouth at terrifying speed. The lance of dark energy lashed into the ground, causing a small explosion and gouging a divot into the ground.

The training ground froze as everyone turned to look at the little dragon in surprise. Nia herself was just as alarmed, her large green eyes wide with confusion as she stared at the foot sized crater she had left in the yard.

“Um, I don’t know what just happened…” She said.

“You just blasted the ground Nia,” Sarra grinned, “Looks like you aren’t so useless after all! That looked lethal!”

“Yeah. I just wish I knew how I did it!” Exclaimed Nia, her friend’s enthusiasm lifting her own mood as it so often did.

“You must practice! Take the empty space next to me and let us see what you can do.” Sarra told her.

“Aye aye,” smiled the dragon.

It took her almost five minutes before she figured out the muscles and switches in her brain she needed to use to activate her apparent ability to cough bolts of darkness. <i>I am such an edgelord right now. I am a black dragon, capable of firing bolts of puuuuure darkness out of my maw!</i> she silently mocked herself. Her aim was less that perfect, but she managed to figure out the basics of firing and aiming herself during their remaining time at the range. When they finished, Nia was almost sickeningly proud of her new status as potentially deadly two and a half foot long dragon.

Sarra motioned for Nia to hop onto her shoulder and the little dragon happily obliged. With an absent minded scratch to Nia’s ears, she walked off towards the sparring grounds.

When they arrived, there was a lot of people there, many of them waiting for a space to become free so they could get their own training in.

Sarra sighed in frustration, “Damn. Maybe we’ll try the obstacle course?”

“I’m your pet after all, you choose where we go <i>master</i>,” Nia said with a little chuckle.

Sarra coughed and her face flushed, “Right. Um. Let's go then.”

Unlike the sparring ground and target range, the obstacle course was clear across the pathfinder compound.

“I was talking to some of the other archers, and apparently they needed to put it over there because they didn’t have the room to build it next to the other training facilities.” Sarra told Nia.

“Really? It’s that big? The obstacle courses I saw back home would have fit in the target range,” Nia said thoughtfully.

Sarra giggled, “Yeah, that’s because you’re tiny! Your houses are probably as big as our room!”

“Wow, that is hurtful Sarra!” Laughed the little dragon, bopping her friend on the head with her tail.

They chatted and teased as they made their way through the twisting and chaotic hallways of the compound. They had to double back a few times when they found themselves at a dead end.

“Oh wow, this is the obstacle course?” asked Nia sarcastically when they found themselves on a balcony overlooking the sparring grounds.

“Oh shut up you snarky little fluff ball!” Exclaimed Sarra, “I’m feeling the urge to make a scarf!”

Nia gave a giggle and moved to wrap herself around Sarra’s neck, “But I already <i>am</i> a scarf!”

“Ah! No! Stop! You’re too soft! That tickles! Get off me you pest!” Sarra pleaded as she wriggled, trying to get the dragon off her.

Nia held fast, laughing at her friend’s attempts to dislodge her. Then she had an idea. She positioned her head under Sarra’s chin and gave her a big lick with her fuzzy little tongue.

“AHHH!” Squealed Sarra and she writhed, finally managing to unwrap the little dragon.

Holding a very smug Nia by the scruff of her neck, the flustered ranger glared at her. Nia winked and began to laugh a tiny full bellied dragon laugh, causing the glare of her friend to melt into laughter as well.

“Alright you little shit, we’re going to keep trying to find that obstacle course!” She laughed.

They finally found it almost an hour of wandering later. The place was indeed huge, but it was actually multiple obstacle courses. There was your typical crawl through the mud and climb things one, then there was a freerunning style course that would be very useful within the ruined city. Sarra expressed the most interest in this one. There was also a course based around moving through a set of rooms and mock streets where you had to also hit targets as they appeared. The last one though, that was what caught Nia’s attention.

“That one?” Sarra asked with a knowing smile, “That one is for pathfinders who can fly. We don’t have many of those around since the peace treaty with the Mist Raptors fell apart. You should see them though! They look sort of like us humans, only they have feathers running down their sides and up their arms. When they spread their arms if all forms a pair of wings. It’s not like birds or anything. They have a small pair of actual wings on their backs too. I’ve heard them called harpies before, but they seem a bit too big and mean to be harpies. Oh and their hair is amazing! It’s made of feathers.”

Nia stared wide eyed at her friend, that <i>did</i> sound cool. She wished she could meet one.

“So do you think I can go on the flying course?” asked Nia hopefully.

“Of course! No one else is using it,” Sarra encouraged her with a smile and a snort.

“Awesome!” The little dragon cried and leapt to start tackling the monumental course.

What a flier had to do when they went through the course was touch a set of foot wide pads. The pads were magically linked, so the next one in the chain would glow when it was time to hit it. The pads were set up in a sequence and the whole thing was timed.

Nia rushed to the starting plate and hopped onto it. Nothing happened and she frowned down at it. Then she decided to jump on it. The starting timer lit up for a moment, but turned off when the pressure of her jump let up. She looked up at the timer board with consternation.

“Work you stupid thing! I’m right here!” She growled.

Sarra started laughing behind her, and she turned to find her friend holding her stomach, as she fought to breath. Her peals of laughter only intensified when she saw Nia’s glare.

When she had finished her laughing fit, Sarra walked over and placed her foot on the starting pad to weigh it down enough for Nia to begin the course.

“Thanks,” Nia huffed.

The magical device dinged, and Sarra took her foot off the plate as Nia launched herself off the ground with a burst of magic. The first pad was at the end of a long stretch that seemed to be designed to let the flier gain speed. She flashed past the pad and thumped her tail against it, causing the next one in the sequence to activate. It was up and to the right. She had to fly around several poles to reach her target. With lithe grace she twisted and turned her body through the poles, then landed sideways on the pad, all four of her feet planted on it. She hung there as though glued to the wall before she launched herself off the pad with a burst of magic.

She made it all the way to the sixth pad before she failed it. The pad was nestled between two blocks of stone, a small crevice allowing a flier with normal human size and proportions to latch on to the wall and reach in to touch it. Unfortunately for nia, she was too big for the crevice and her arms were too short to hit the pad. When the timer chimed, indicating she had run out of time to hit the pad she flew back down to Sarra.

“I couldn’t reach it! She complained.

Sarra gave her a sympathetic smile, “You’ll figure it out. I’m going to run the freerunning course a few times though if it’s okay?”

“Yeah sure, I need to figure out how I’m going to get that pad anyway,” Nia sighed.

She tried several different things to try and get at the pad during her next few runs, but she couldn’t figure out a way to do it. Her tail wasn’t long enough either she discovered. She’d tried to hit it with a blast of magic, but she’d been failed instantly by the magical mechanism in charge of the course. She gave up for the day and ruminated on how to approach it while Sarra finished her last run.

The next day, Farden and Vosa stumbled into the common room with two truly massive piles of books in their hands. They thumped them down on the table in unison and Farden beckoned Nia over.

“I have several books here that I think will be perfect for teaching you both how to read and how to become a better mage. If it’s okay with you I’d like to spend the morning teaching you?” He asked.

“Yes! Please!” Nia exclaimed excitedly, glad of the distraction from her frustrations.

“Great! I think you be an exceptional asset to the team once we get you trained up. I hear from Sarra that you have learned to fire some sort of bolt?” he asked.

“Yes, but I think it’s more of a natural magic than anything that you can cast through the normal way.”

“I see, well, we’ll just have to teach you the conventional ways,” he said with a smile.

First, Farden began teaching her how to read. He had picked this world’s equivalent of children's books and fairy tales for the task.

As she began to learn and read the books, she learned more about the world she found herself in. Humanity inhabited a huge inland sea, the center of which was a vast archipelago. The whole continent and much of the surrounding ones was one great ruined city, and the sea was liberally studded with huge superscrapers just as the land was. What was fascinating was the legends around the beings known as the builders. Many espoused them as a great culture of divine beings who had grown bored of their urban existence and left. Another group lauded their left behind creations as deities. The shape these beings took was always different. Some had no physical form and simply moved through the network of magic that permeated the great city, while others built themselves bodies of rock and rubble. Whatever their spiritual nature, the academics of the world all agreed on one thing regarding the strange creatures. They were all some degree of insane.

Nia learned about the various cultures that had made contact with human kind on this world. The Mist Raptors of the southern mountains who raided the great kingdoms of the south for anything they could get their hands on, or the ethereal and disturbing Venmet to the north who raided the northern kingdoms from the grey wastes of the north.

As midday rolled around, Sarra appropriated Nia to go back to the target range and then on to the obstacle courses again.

On her way to the starting plate, Nia realised something as she gazed over at the troublesome pad. The blocks of stone could move. She could see little runner that would allow them to be moved sideways. So with determination in her heard, she rushed on into the course, blitzing her way through until she reached the pad. This time, she sent a pulse of force magic into each stone, and felt them shift to the sides. Quickly she lunged forward and placed her hand on the pad, then threw herself backwards to clear the crevice before the stones closed in again. She saw the next pad light up with a surge of satisfaction.

As she moved through the course further, she found a new favourite section. This one was a series of descending hoops that a flier needed to go through. The rings were set up so that a normal sized flier would need to furl their wings to fit through the hoops, then quickly open them again to retain their glide. While she was small enough that she didn’t have to do this, she did so anyway because it was fun.

It wasn’t until the end that she hit a problem she wasn’t sure she would be able to achieve. The last three pads were situated at the end of a long dive. The flier had to dive from the very top of the course down to the bottom. There was a dip where it went below ground level and a pad at the bottom. Nia flew down and used her tail to clip the third to last pad and then quickly angled her wings back up, using the great momentum she had gained while diving to lift her back out of the hole.

Only the last two pads were seemingly impossible for her to achieve. Spread at five feet apart, they were meant to be hit simultaneously by a flier who spread their arms to hit them. Nia was off by more than two feet. She tried over and over again, and gave up in dejected frustration as the day came to a close.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do that one. I don’t think it’s something I can do,” She said sadly.

“I’m sure you can figure something out. You managed to get through all the other problems,” Sarra said, trying to encourage her little friend.

The next morning during reading practice, Nia complained to Farden about her problem with the obstacle course.

“I just wish I was big like you guys. I hate being tiny in this big world!” She grumbled.

“How about I come with you two this time and I’ll see what we can think up eh?” He said placatingly.

“Sure, I hope you can think of something, because I’m stumped,” she said gratefully.

Continuing to learn was difficult for Nia, she was just much too frustrated by the problem of being small.

When the three of them made it to there Nia immediately launched into the course, inevitably failing at the last two pads. She looked at Farden imploringly.

“See, how am I meant to do that?” she whined.

“I’m not sure, may I see you do it again?” he asked thoughtfully.

“Sure,” she sighed.

When she got back to the troublesome pair of pads on that run through, she felt something lurch in her body, but nothing happened and she fell in a tumble onto the landing mat. Stretching up to her full height, she howled in tiny impotent rage.

“I’m doing it again! Sarra, please stand on the starting pad.” She said angrily.

“Are you sure…?” hesitated Sarra.

“Yes!”

Nia threw herself into the course again, demolishing every other challenge with brutal efficiency. The blocks of stone that held the pad out of her reach were blasted to the side with a surge of power and she had all the time in the world to press the pad they had hidden. Approaching the hoops, she didn’t bother with the enjoyment she’d gained from doing them as intended, instead just gliding through them with ferocious speed.

When she reached the top of the long dive to the finish, she paused, eyeing the two pads she hated. Pulsing her magic, she tore down the last stretch with incredible speed, the wind whipping at her feathers. When she reached the bottom she struck the third to last pad with such force that she bruised her tail. It was when she flew up and out of the hole towards her enemies that she felt that feeling from her first day in the complex again. The driving need that had plagued her subconscious mind since that time finally tore free, ripping through her body and mind like a bolt of lightning.

To Farden and Sarra, they watched in awe as the body of their tiny dragon friend tore apart. The little dragon erupted in swirling multicoloured light and her body disintegrated. Now a floating mass of energy, Nia kept her momentum, coming up to the two pads. Just before her momentum carried them into range, the swirling energy that was the little dragon began to reform.

It did not reform into the form of a small two and a half foot dragon. Before the eyes of her friends, a young woman took shape, tall and lithe, a body built to fight. Her long hair was a swirling nebula of black, green and purple. Her soft yet angular face bore an expression of utter determination on her face as her hands reached out and smacked against the two pads simultaneously, completing the course.

Nia landed in a controlled roll, springing to her feet as she came out of it. She stood there, her naked breasts heaving with the exertion of what she had just done. Still not fully aware of her new self, she turned and flipped the bird to the two pads that had given her so much trouble. Her friends stared at her in shock.

“What?” Nia asked them in confusion.

“Nia… look at yourself right now?” Sarra asked slowly, her eyes averted as her cheeks blushed a delicate pink.

Nia looked down, and saw… a human body. She spun around, trying to get a better look at it, and succeeded only in tripping over her own feet. Sprawled in a heap on the ground, she struggled to remember how the muscles on a human body worked. Signals from her brain were doing wholly strange things when interpreted by the new body she found herself in.

“Nia!” Sarra cried, kneeling next to her fallen friend and trying her best to help.

“Move her onto her side Sarra, I’ll put my jacket over her for warmth and then go and get one or both of the twins with some clothing. Keep her company,” Farden said calmly, doing as he’d said and placing the large coat he wore atop the shaking girl.

“O-oh, okay. Be swift Farden, she needs to be in a safe place while we figure out what’s going on,” Sarra urged, her voice tinged with worry.

“Agreed, keep her safe Sarra,” he nodded, then left at a swift walk.

Nia struggled with her body, trying to get it to work in any way she was familiar with, but even after recalling how her old one had worked, it still did not cooperate. To Sarra, the attempts Nia was making to master herself seemed like a seizure, and she held her friend tight to keep her still.

“Nia can you hear me? Are you hurting?” she asked as calmly as her worry would allow.

Nia stopped trying to move, realising that first, speech may be a better avenue to pursue. However, when her mouth moved in attempted speech, only gibberish and strange sounds issued forth. Hearing her friend trying to talk, Sarra moved Nia’s head and gazed down at her, trying to determine her state of mind from the look in her eyes.

What Sarra saw in her eyes caused her to gasp and draw back for a brief moment. The feathered dragon turned strange humanoid did not have eyes that could be found on the average human woman. Nia’s eyes were large, only just within the scope of human range, but the strangest aspect of their appearance were the irises, and the lack of pupil. Rather than a shade of brown, blue or green, they seemed to contain ethereal windows to a swirling starscape.

When Sarra moved her head, she observed with awe that the pattern of the stars within her friend’s eyes moved too, and she found herself both entranced and disconcerted. She gulped, brushing her hand absently through the brand new nebulously coloured hair that sprouted from the dragon’s head.

“You look incredible, I’ve never seen… I’ve never seen anyone like you Nia,” she breathed.

Nia finally managed a moderately purposeful movement when she produced a pure little smile. She was just beginning to make sense of how her new body felt, and she could already tell one thing, it was a girl’s body. A girl’s body that did not have to fight the terrifying fight that was a transition, using hormone replacement therapy and years of waiting.

“Hey,” Sarra said with a relieved little giggle, “You can smile! The strange beautiful girl can smile!”

Nia could do nothing but turn her smile into a radiant grin as she was held by her ecstatic friend.

It was some time later when Farden arrived, twins in tow and clothing in hand. The clothing appeared to be fairly a simple linen tunic and pants, but Sarra quickly took it from him. Ensuring that the men were turned away with a glare, she did her best to dress the transformed dragon. It was tough for the ranger to keep her composure as she dressed Nia. When she had been just a little feathered creature with a penchant for mischief, she’d had no trouble. Now that she was holding a girl who was very much to her own tastes however, it was an entirely different problem.

Finishing dressing her in the cheap clothing, Sarra tried to mask her furious blush from her friends. She did not succeed, and one of the twins let out a soft chuckle and whispered something to the other.

“Does she seem okay?” asked Farden, bringing the group back to the business of the situation.

“Yeah she seems fine, apart from the shaking and inability to move. I had her smiling at me before,” she explained, glad to draw attention away from her attraction.

“You’re telling me that fine girl there is our little feathered friend? Really?” asked Stren, his voice straining to keep the disbelief out of his tone.

“Look at her, does she look normal to you dumbass? Her eyes are all strange and unnatural like her feathers used to be,” Sogr jibed at his brother.

“What? You believe it all just like that?” Stren shot back.

“They’re our teammates you builder brick brain, of course I believe them! Yeah Sarra might play a prank or two, but Farden ain’t got a shred of humour in his whole body,” Sogr said with an eyeroll.

“Sogr, sometimes I wonder if the same is perhaps true of you,” Farden remarked in a deadpan.

“Wh-at?” Sogr spluttered, taken off guard.

Stren bent over, using his knees for support as he broke down in a fit of uproarious laughter.

“Can we <i>please</i> get back to the apartment? You can go back to flinging wits once Nia is safe,” Sarra scowled.

“Sorry lover girl, you’re right,” grinned Stren, knowing full well the reaction he’d get.

The blush on Sarra’s frowning face redoubled, and she reached down to scoop Nia into her arms. With a grunt and an initial stagger, she was able to get a stable hold on her friend.

“You need some help there?” chuckled Sogr.

“I’m <i>fine</i>,” grunted Sarra.

“Well, let us hurry then,” Farden said, urging them towards the exit.

The trip back to their apartment was largely uneventful, apart from a few odd looks sent their way by people they passed in the maze of hallways.

Nia felt strange, being carried like thisby by Sarra, it felt more intimate than when she’d been a little dragon. She felt strange in general though, she told herself, after all she’d just turned <i>back</i> into a human after so long as a small feathered creature.. How body was slowly, haltingly bringing itself under her control, one experimental movement at a time.

When they arrived back at the apartment, she’d gotten her mouth working in a way that she felt was serviceable, and she was ready to try speaking.

“Th-ank y-yo-u Sa-rra,” she stuttered as she was placed gently on the bed in Sarra’s room.

“You can talk now too!” Sarra squealed in delight, sitting down on the bed next to her.

“Ki-ind of,” Nia grinned, “Yo-u know this i-is the seco-ond time I’v-ve had to do this?”

“Do what?” asked Sarra in confusion.

“Learn ho-ow a new body wo-rks,” Nia said slowly.

“Really? What was your body like before the last one?” the ranger asked in surprise.

“Hu-man, l-ike you,” she said with a frown.

“Really? Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Sarra, feeling slightly betrayed by the omission.

“I didn’t re-eally know when to s-say it,” Nia said apologetically.

“Hmmm, I guess that’s about what I’d do as well, were I to be placed in your shoes,” she nodded.

Nia nodded, and began absently moving her limbs in an attempt to gain further control over her new body. She didn’t feel like she would be able to explain the concept of her transgenderism to the girl who had grown up in a high medieval style society, but maybe it didn’t matter. She was in a body that represented her far better than her old failing one had.

“How does it feel then? To be in a new body?” Sarra asked curiously.

“I have to slowly relearn-n how to move. I seem to be rather quick with it though, I’m getting the ha-ang of this much faster than before,” Nia explained.

“So that’s why you’re sounding better and better every time you speak then,” Sarra nodded.

“Pretty much, just got to get the rest of the body sorted now,” Nia said with a groan.

Hesitating for a moment, then blushing, Sarra climbed into the bed next to her dragon friend. With a sigh she rolled onto her back and placed her hands under her head.

“I’ll stay with you until you’re properly mobile. I would hate it if you were to be hurt while you do what you need to do,” the ranger said.

“Thank you,” Nia smiled, looking over at the woman trying very much to be casual about their close proximity.

“You are most welcome,” Sarra said with mock seriousness.

<center>****</center>

Several hours later, Sarra woke with a start when a shadow loomed over her. She gave a strangled yelp as something soft brushed her cheek, and she tried to sit up, only to realise who the shadow was.

“Sorry,” Nia giggled, “I was trying to see if you were really asleep or not. One of the twins bashed on the door a few minutes ago talking about dinner, do you want to help me try and get down there?”

“Nia!” Sarra exclaimed breathlessly. The two were almost nose to nose, and it caused Sarra to feel very warm in places she was trying to avoid thinking about.

“That’s me,” the starscape eyed girl said with a wry smile.

“You want to get dinner? Do I need to carry you again?” asked Sarra as Nia allowed her the room to sit up.

“No, just an arm to lean on. I’ve been practicing while you dozed,” Nia said enthusiastically.

To demonstrate her point, she wriggled off the bed and tottered to her feet, using a wall for balance. She knew it would improve soon enough, but she was impatient to get full control of this incredible body she’d been given. Given by a mad stone construct in a destroyed building, what felt like so long ago already.

“Wow, that’s a damn sight more movement than before!” Sarra grinned, proud for her excited friend.

“Yeah!” Come on, help me down there I’m hungry!” Nia laughed.

“Calm your horses, I’m getting up!” Sarra chuckled.

She got off the bed, and moved to help Nia walk to the dining hall. They’d be late for sure, but Sarra knew her companions would save them some food. The trip down was slower than if Nia had still been a small feathered dragon, but not overly so, and they made it into the great dining hall in no time.

Sarra helped Nia down onto the bench, and the temporarily infirm girl couldn’t help but smile as the ranger began to pile her plate with different foods.

“Here, I figured it would be easier to get you a plate than let you do it, wouldn’t want you spilling gravy everywhere,” Sarra said with a wink.

“Yes, you’re probably right there,” Nia said with a nod.

“So you’re walking and talking now?” Farden asked.

“Yeah, thank you for the jacket earlier by the way, turns out being featherless is quite cold,” Nia replied with a jovial smile.

“Glad to hear you’re mobile again, I must ask though, how did you come to be like this?” Farden asked, leaning forward with the spark of a curious mage dancing in his eye.

“I think it’s probably a good idea if I waited to tell you that until later?” Nia asked, tilting her head slightly to indicate the group of pathfinders nearby. The same group who had asked about selling her when she was a little dragon.

“I agree,” Vosa piped up, placing a hand on Farden’s shoulder, “I’d also suggest you keep your eyes shielded while you aren’t able to defend yourself. Your hair can be explained away with dye, but those eyes are unusual to say the least.”

“Oh shit, good point,” Nia said, allowing her hair to fall forward and partially cover her face.

“Don’t worry,” whispered Sarra, “If anyone tries anything I’ll put some steel through them!”

“Thanks Sarra,” Nia laughed softly, “I’ll let you carry me for a while, share the load.”

“I didn’t think carrying you was necessary anymore?” Sarra asked, cocking her head in confusion, “Although, that’s not to say I won’t if you need it!”

Nia giggled and shook her head with a smile, “No, no it’s fine, I was making a private joke.”

“Oh I see, I hope it was not at my expense,” she asked cautiously.

“No, definitely not. If anything it was praise,” Nia smiled reassuringly.

“Ah! Well then, thank you!” Sarra said, happy but still slightly suspicious.

The rest of the dinner went well, and the group left the hall in high spirits. The twins marched on ahead as the group walkedafter the marched bit it sounds weird maybe unnessesary back to the apartment, arguing about some minor detail of their training that day. Vosa and Farden were similarly faster than Sarra and Nia, their heads bent together as they discussed something arcane. So it was that the two women were alone in the hallways when the unscrupulous Pathfinder group tracked them down.

“Hey there, we need to talk to you two,” the leader of the group grunted.

He was large and brutish, his head sporting a few too many blunt impact scars to give a ringing endorsement of his mental capacity. His friends were equally grizzled looking specimens of the Pathfinder’s guild. They carried themselves with deadly purpose and a casual brutality that only came from those who had left their morality somewhere in a gutter.

“What do you need to talk to us about?” Sarra asked, her voice dripping with false cheer.

“Your friend here’s got funny eyes, we just wanted to take her for some questioning ‘bout her origins. We’ve heard there’s new people from <i>Earth</i> who’ve arrived in the Shattered City. We want a cut of what she knows, or we’ll gut you, and take her, in more ways than one,” he threatened, stepping forward.

“Nia, I can’t take all of them! Can you do anything?” Sarra whispered urgently.

“Yup,” Nia said calmly, “Stand back.”

What Nia had not told Sarra when she’d woken, was the ability she’d discovered while she was practicing.

“Why?” asked Sarra with worry lacing her words.

“Trust me, just do it,” Nia urged, eyeing the dimensions of the corridor.

“Okay,” Sarra replied, moving to the side of the hallway with doubtful eyes.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” asked the large scarred man with a menacing step forward.

“This,” Nia said with a cocky smile.

As the word left her mouth, her form disintegrated into a myriad of nebulous energy. Purples and blues swirled together with vibrant greens and warm yellows, all of which were peppered with a multitude of shining stars. The sight, which Sarra recognised from earlier, took her breath away once again.

The surprise came when Nia did not reform into a small feathered dragon no more than three feet long as she had been before. Rather, Nia coalesced back into a form so much larger than that. As the magic of her transformation settled, the aggressive Pathfinder group took a few unconscious steps backwards.

Before them all stood a feathered dragon, but this one was not small, she dwarfed them all, her body easily four meters long. Her claws were almost three inches long and razor sharp, her teeth shone menacingly within her maw, and her eyes sparked with a hot fury.

“I really don’t like rapists, and if you’re willing to threaten me with it… well I’m willing to bet you’ve already done exactly that to some poor soul,” she growled, her voice low and dangerous.

“You! You’re a- a beast!” stammered the leader of the group.

“Oh yes, a beast that is going to give you until my fire begins charging to get the fuck out of my sight,” she said, her eyes lighting up with dark starlight.

Along her neck feathers began to rise as though she were a dog with it’s hackles up, except these feathers began to shimmer with all the colours of the night sky as energy built up within her maw.

The Pathfinders did not need a second warning, they ran, because their lives very much depended on it.