“What do you know of your family?” Evan asked casually as they rode, though Aleric caught the faint stiffness in her shoulders. He’d seen her speaking with Lady Pryce and Catrin earlier that morning—heads bowed close, voices low, deliberate secrecy. Whatever this was, it wasn’t casual.
He offered a half-smile, pretending not to notice. “Not much,” he said. “Told you about my mom already. No brothers or sisters—at least not through her. My dad… she never talked about him. I’ve got an aunt and uncle out west, a couple cousins, but they live half a country away.”
Idris, riding just ahead, turned slightly in the saddle. Her tone carried genuine curiosity. “Half a country? How large is this country of yours?”
He chuckled softly. “Bigger than you’re probably used to. I don’t know what you know about geography, but on the Earth I come from, there are seven continents.”
“Seven?” Idris repeated, brows knitting. “You speak as though that were remarkable.”
“It is,” Aleric said. “At least compared to what I’ve seen here. Ours are massive landmasses separated by oceans—North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica, and Australia.”
The women exchanged puzzled glances at the last name.
“Australia?” Evan echoed, tasting the unfamiliar word.
He smiled faintly. “Yeah. Big island continent in the southern seas. Lot of desert, strange animals, hotter than hell. You’d like it.”
They looked unconvinced, and a little unsettled.
“I can draw you a rough map later,” he offered. “We call this one North America—that’s where I’m from. My country covers most of it, from one ocean to the other. Roughly five thousand miles across.”
Rhyosyn slowed her horse to match his pace, watching him with open fascination. “Five thousand miles… of one nation?”
“Yeah,” he said, glancing toward the ridgelines ahead. “We lived in Kansas—flatlands, farms, nothing but sky. My Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Earl lived up in Spokane, Washington—that’s way in the northwest, near the mountains.”
“Such distance between kin,” Idris murmured. “Do you never see them?”
“Not much,” Aleric admitted. “The world’s big, and people get busy.”
Evan’s look was half curiosity, half pity. “In our world, family is never far. Bloodlines are everything.”
“Yeah,” Aleric said quietly, eyes on the horizon. “I’m starting to get that.”
When he said he didn’t see them often, it wasn’t because travel was hard—it was the time involved. They had vehicles where he came from, faster than horses. The roads were incredible, made from a kind of liquid stone that hardened smooth. People could cross whole states in wheeled machines and barely feel the distance.
Evan frowned, glancing back at him. “Liquid stone? You mean clay?”
“Not quite,” he said with a small grin. “It was poured hot and flattened as it cooled—made travel easy. But that wasn’t the impressive part. We also had machines that could fly. Through the sky.”
Rhyosyn turned in her saddle, eyes narrowing as if deciding whether he was joking. “Fly? You mean… like a bird?”
“Exactly like that,” he said. “Only faster. Hundreds of miles per hour.”
They stared at him in stunned silence. Even Idris, who had been listening quietly, looked momentarily uncertain.
“Hundreds?” she repeated slowly. “How could anything move so fast and not tear itself apart?”
“Engineering,” he said. “And fuel. Lots of both.”
Evan gave a nervous laugh. “You sound as if you come from a realm of mages and skycraft. You speak of these things as if they’re common.”
“They were,” he admitted. “Everyone used them. Some people spent more time flying than walking.”
For a while, no one spoke. The clop of hooves filled the silence, the sound almost primitive beside what he’d just described.
He knew the translation magic—whatever it was—made the words clear, but not the meaning. He doubted they could picture a jet engine or a highway any more than he could imagine the kind of sorcery they called everyday life.
Still, he caught himself smiling faintly. People had said the same thing about cars a century earlier—horses were good enough; who needed more? Then the world changed overnight. Maybe this one would too.
“And you know this… engineering?” Rhyosyn asked at last, her tone measured, as though fearing the answer.
Aleric laughed softly. “Not really. I knew the basics, but I was more of a creative than a tech guy. So no, I didn’t understand the math that made it all work.” He paused, thoughtful. “Don’t get me wrong—I could probably build you an airplane, in theory. I know the shape the wings would need, how air moves over them. But I couldn’t build the engine to power it. Without that, you’d just have a very expensive glider.”
“Glider?” Evan echoed, brow furrowing.
“Yeah. Think of a bird with no feathers and no flapping—just coasting on the wind.”
“And this… ‘balloon’ you spoke of?” Rhyosyn pressed, leaning forward now, curiosity overcoming skepticism.
“Hot air balloon,” he said with a grin. “Big silk envelope filled with heated air—the air inside gets lighter, so it lifts off the ground. You hang a basket underneath and ride the wind wherever it takes you.”
The women exchanged incredulous looks. Idris muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.
“That sounds suicidal,” Evan said finally.
“It usually wasn’t,” Aleric replied with a shrug. “Usually.”
Their laughter was short and uneasy, but it broke the tension that had hung since morning.
For a time, they rode with him talking and them listening, their questions tumbling over one another. He told them about the harnessing of electricity, about engines and turbines, about ships that crossed oceans made not of wood but steel. About computers that could talk, and screens that could show the whole world in a single image.
He kept his explanations simple—comparisons, metaphors—but even so, their expressions flickered between disbelief and awe.
At one point, Rhyosyn murmured, “Your world must have been filled with gods.”
“Just people,” Aleric said quietly. “People who got very good at breaking things down and putting them back together.”
Silence followed, thick and thoughtful.
He smiled faintly, glancing down the winding road ahead. “I wish I’d paid more attention to the show Connections,” he said. “Would’ve made me sound smarter right about now.”
“Connections?” Idris asked.
“Yeah,” Aleric said, chuckling. “Old documentary. About how one invention leads to another—chain reactions through history. Funny how I’m in one now.”
Evan tilted her head, curious. “And what invention do you represent, Marine?”
Aleric looked up at the sky—impossibly wide, impossibly alien—and sighed. “Honestly? Probably the mistake someone’s still trying to fix.”
He trailed off mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing. Something on the horizon caught his attention—a flicker of motion where the road curved into a low stand of trees.
He straightened in the saddle. “Hold up.”
The group slowed, hooves crunching over gravel and sparse grass.
“What is it?” Catrin asked, her hand drifting to the hilt of her sword.
Aleric didn’t answer at first. He swung his pack around, reached inside, and drew out a compact black box—his binoculars. The lenses gleamed faintly as he twisted the focus knob and brought them to his eyes.
The world leapt closer. The ridge ahead sharpened—the rutted path, scattered boulders, and there, half-concealed among them, the telltale shapes of men. No… not men. Figures crouched low, small and wiry, weapons in hand. The faint shimmer of movement where none should have been.
“Goddamn,” he muttered.
He lowered the binoculars, scanned again with his naked eyes, confirming the angles. Classic L-shape. Kill zone dead center. Whoever set it up knew what they were doing—or had watched enough to learn.
“What do you see?” Rhyosyn asked, her voice calm but tight.
He handed her the binoculars. “Take a look—just past the third boulder on the right. You’ll see a few shapes tucked in close. Might be bandits, might be something worse. And see that fallen tree on the left side of the path? There’s movement behind it.”
Rhyosyn hesitated, then took the strange object gingerly, as if it might bite. She raised it to her eyes and gasped softly. “By the gods… you can see them. Clear as daylight.”
“Yeah,” Aleric said grimly. “Field glasses. Tool for scouting. Pass it to your swordswoman—she’ll see what I mean.”
Catrin accepted the binoculars, adjusting them until the scene snapped into focus. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Ambush,” she confirmed. “They’ve picked the perfect spot. Narrow road, loose gravel, no room to turn the mounts quickly.”
“Someone’s learned tactics,” Aleric said. “And they’re not amateurs. They’ve got spacing, line of sight, probably a rear element waiting to close in once we’re boxed.”
Evan frowned. “How do you see all that from here?”
“Experience,” he said simply. “And a bad habit of assuming the worst.”
He looked back toward the group. “We’ve got maybe a quarter mile before we’re in range. Best to dismount, move off the road, and flank them from the rise.”
Catrin lowered the binoculars slowly, studying him with new respect. “You sound like a commander.”
“Just a Marine,” Aleric said, scanning the ridge again. “But trust me—walking into that mess head-on would be suicide.”
The women exchanged glances. For once, no one argued.
Catrin nodded. “Then we follow your lead, Marine.”
Aleric adjusted the strap of his cloak and took a steadying breath. “Alright then,” he said quietly. “Let’s ruin somebody’s morning.”