Heretical Edge

Something was very wrong. Aylen Tamaya could already tell that much the moment she woke up on the ground. She had been walking through a doorway, last she knew, and now she was lying in dirt somewhere. She could feel normal wind on her skin, the type that didn't come from air conditioning. So she was either on Earth or some other planet. That was even more trouble. How did she get all the way from the Fusion School in the station, down to here? Wherever here was. What could've happened? And exactly how long had she been unconscious? Yes, this was rather… troubling.

Though she had woken up in that state of confusion and uncertainty, the girl didn't move or even open her eyes. She gave no indication that she was conscious. Her mother, Bastet, had trained her entirely too well for how to react to situations like this. Not that Sonoma-Mom had trailed too far behind on that. Between the two of them, with help from Grandfather, Aylen had been very thoroughly coached in exactly how to handle waking up in an unexpected location like this. And part of that was to avoid giving whoever had taken her any idea that she was awake until she could get more information.

Unfortunately, information didn't seem to be in any hurry to present itself. She could hear the faint, distant sounds of water running and birds chirping. The sound of the water was slow enough, while clearly broken up by rocks, that it was probably a simple stream. Another moment of listening told her that it was about two hundred feet away, and down a slight incline. The stream was… roughly three feet wide and varied between one and two feet deep depending on where it was. She could hear the areas where it went a bit deeper. The stream curved way toward the south, fading out of her hearing range. It might have opened up into a larger river in the distance and by a very, very faint sound, but she wasn't entirely sure she wasn't imagining that part. And even if the rumble really was there, it could have come from something other than a river.

For the moment, she put a pin in that thought and focused on the other thing she could hear. Those birds. She had learned a lot about such animals thanks to her mom. Sonoma, being a werecrow, had a pretty strong interest in them. An interest she had passed on to her daughter. That was one of the main reasons that Aylen had chosen a cyberform hawk for her partner. But right now, that interest would pay off in a very different way. She listened intently for a moment, controlling her breathing to continue to give the impression that she was sound asleep. No one had made any sound, or given any impression that there was someone nearby, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. Not until she’d gathered as much information as she possibly could.

There were two different types of birds nearby, or at least, two that were making sounds right then. It took Aylen a moment to piece them together and sort through her memories, but then she had it. One of the species was the dunnock, a small, brownish, sparrow-like bird. There were about four of them near enough for her to hear. Meanwhile, the other species competing to make their song heard was a nuthatch, a pretty bird with blue and black wings, a black stripe up over its head to a dark beak, and a white face and chest. They had been named for their habit of shoving nuts up against trees and then smacking them with their beaks to break them open for the seeds inside. Not that that made any difference here, but still. Her mom would’ve been proud.

Okay, so the two biggest sounds she had been able to make out didn't exactly tell her a lot about what was going on. But they did tell her something. She was on Earth. Or at least on a colony world that had brought over Earth birds--but she was going to go with an assumption that it was Earth. That seemed safe enough. The presence of the two bird species together, combined with the scent of the air and the way the dirt felt under her body, gave Aylen just enough to tentatively guess that she was probably in England. To test that, she shifted her hand as imperceptibly as possible, barely lowering her index finger to press against the dirt. One of the powers she had picked up over the past year since the Rebellion had become active once more allowed her to transform fresh-water into smoke she could control, and salt-water into an equally-controllable tar substance. But as part of that, she was able to send pulses through the ground that would seek out sources of either type of water and tell her how far away they were in that direction. It was how the Kavbarehn (the giant, eight-foot tall frog-like creature with six arms she had killed to gain this ability) tracked down the best areas to nest in. Even when they had to cross hundreds of miles.

In this case, Aylen focused on attempting to find a source of salt water that was at least a hundred miles across. She sent pulses to the south, west, north, and east, one at a time.

The information came back quickly. The ocean was only a few hundred miles away, at most, in every direction. She was definitely on an island. That, for Aylen, was enough to confirm her previous guess. This was England. But how exactly had she ended up here in the first place?

Once again, Aylen tried to remember if anything else had happened. But there was nothing. She had been walking through a doorway up on the school--her house, the one she shared with both sets of twins (Sands and Sarah as well as Vanessa and Tristan), Koren, Gordon, Jazz, and Eiji. She had been going inside to see if any of the others wanted to get some dinner together, and then… then she was here. There was no sense of time passing, no pain to tell her she had been in a fight. There wasn’t even the typical disorientation that came from unexpected teleportation. She was walking through that doorway, and then she was waking up right here in the English dirt.

Now that she was fairly certain of where she was, it was time to check something else. Namely, how many people were around her. That would come from the same ability she had just used to find the ocean. Instead of searching for salt water, Aylen sent a few more pulses in each direction, focused on finding small sources of fresh. She kept the size limited to what something up to roughly the size of a human or perhaps a bit larger would have in them, and limited the distance to within a hundred meters. That would tell her how many people she was dealing with.

And yet, she got no results whatsoever. Oh there were a few sources of body-sized water, but they were too far away to be guarding or watching her, and a couple follow-up pulses told her that most of the bodies were far too small to be humanoid. More like small animals. A couple were larger, but she remained fairly certain they were deer, or something like that.

So, there were no people around here. No one was standing nearby just watching and waiting for her to wake up. Unless they were shielding themselves from that power, or just sitting up in one of the trees. The trees were another thing that held plenty of water that she’d had to filter out of her detection. But, after those few seconds of focus, Aylen was as certain as she could possibly be that she was basically alone out here. Wherever here was, exactly. Besides simply ‘England.’

No matter how confident she was through her testing that there was no one around, Aylen still wasn't going to take that for granted. Without giving any other indication that she was awake, the young woman immediately sent two very different bursts of kinetic energy from her body. The first was a strong blast that erupted from her back and spread out in a three hundred and sixty degree arc all around her. It would hopefully be enough to stagger anyone who might have been standing nearby without her detecting them, or knock them out of the trees if they were up there.

The second kinetic blast came out of her stomach and chest and into the ground, propelling the girl upward. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, she was ten feet in the air, flipping backwards to land smoothly on one of those tree branches. It was shaking wildly from that first kinetic blast, but she still managed to come down on it, using one hand to catch the main trunk while her gaze snapped around in every direction.

Nothing. The trees were swaying, she had sent a spray of dirt in every direction, and those birds who had been nearby were positively terrified now. But other than that, the forest was pretty quiet and peaceful. No one had been secretly standing over her, just waiting for the first sign of consciousness. She had been completely alone out here. Which, in some ways, made her feel a little bit silly for going through all that. But still, she wouldn’t have changed anything about how she had reacted. In a situation like this, being careful was the only way to stay alive.

Hah, ‘situation like this.’ The truth was, Aylen had absolutely no idea what sort of situation this even was. It almost would’ve been better if there had been someone here watching over her, guarding her, waiting to fight her. At least then she could have gotten some actual information out of them. Now all she knew was that she was alone in the woods in England.

Okay, she could still work with this. Staying up on that tree branch, the first thing Aylen did was reach for the phone in her pocket. She found it, but producing the thing showed no signal. Which was… odd. The phone was special, it should have worked anywhere. She could have been on a completely different planet and still been able to at the very least connect to the phones her mothers and Grandfather had. Was the connection being blocked somehow? That was worrying, considering what sort of power it would take to block something her family had given her.

While staring down at her somehow useless phone, Aylen gave an absent whistle. She didn’t expect to get a response, but one came anyway. A sharp, somehow reproachful and relieved trilling cry came back, and Aylen looked up just in time to see Sovereign come gliding in. The metal hawk flew through the treetops, and she raised her arm just in time for him to land there. The cyberform nipped her ear a bit affectionately, obviously relieved to have finally found her after what had apparently been a long few minutes of searching, before making his own confusion apparent.

“Sorry, I don’t know either,” Aylen quietly admitted. “And I can’t call anyone. Let’s get a birds-eye view of where we are, huh?” She could have stayed there and simply watched through her partner’s eyes while he scouted around, but she really didn’t feel like letting Sovereign go off on his own just yet. He was the only familiar presence she had right now, and… yes, she was going to stay with him.

So, her cyberform partner took off from her arm, and Aylen jumped after him. In mid-leap, she transformed into her crow form, and the two very mismatched bird figures flew up out of the trees to look around. Surely they would get some idea of what the hell was going on. Or at the very least, get away from whatever was blocking her phone signal.

Unfortunately, flying up out of the trees didn't help much either. With her crow vision, Aylen was able to see for miles. But there were no cities in view. No, scratch that, there was a city, but not the sort she expected. It was more of a village, and definitely not a very big one at that. The road leading up to it was made of stone rather than pavement, which, combined with everything else she was saying, was starting to make a very unsettling idea come to mind. She was trying to avoid thinking of it as a possibility, hoping that she would spot an obvious sign of modern technology that would prove this was just an isolated village somewhere. Maybe it was a hidden Alter village, shielded from mundane eyes. Those types of places definitely existed. Just because she couldn't see any real cities, or powerlines, or freeways, or any other sign of modern technology didn't mean that she was actually… That she had somehow been thrown… Damn it, there had to be something that could prove her assumptions were wrong!

And yet, no matter where she looked, there was nothing. Flying a bit higher, she spotted a couple more villages but they were very small and primitive as well. As were the horse-drawn wagons using those dirt and stone roads, and the soldiers on horseback wearing swords and padded armor. No matter where she looked, no matter how high she flew and cast her gaze around, the only possible take away was her first assumption, the one she had been trying to ignore. But that was rapidly becoming impossible. She had to face the inescapable truth.

She was in the past. How that had happened, she had no idea. Of course time travel was possible, but to end up here with no idea it was coming? Stepping through a doorway at the Fusion School and then randomly waking up possibly hundreds of years in the past?

And what was she supposed to do now? She wasn't good enough at magic to time travel back to where she belonged on her own, not by a long shot. But on the other hand, who could she go to for help with that? If she went to her mothers and grandfather, she would absolutely be spoiling the future. Possibly by a hell of a lot depending on just how far back in the past she actually was.

Maybe that was what she needed to focus on. If she could find out just when she was, she could go from there. Besides, there had to be some sort of reasoning for why and how she had been sent through time in the first place. That sort of thing didn't just happen on its own. And maybe she would find that explanation by looking through the nearby village.

It was worth a shot, anyway, and she didn't exactly have many bullets. If she couldn't get any information this way, her options were… well, limited to say the least.

Flying down past the village to land in a field out of sight, Aylen waited for Sovereign to join her, then took a moment to draw and activate a disguise spell on both of them. Her metal hawk would look like an ordinary version of the bird, while Aylen herself now looked like a simple brown-haired caucasian girl from this area. Definitely not Native American. She was trying to gather information, and standing out seemed like the wrong way to do that. Granted, she would probably get a lot of information about a lot of things if they thought she didn't belong in this area, or was something unique. But it probably wouldn't be worth the problems that came with that.

Speaking of avoiding problems, just in case, she also used a spell to stop herself from triggering the Reaper warning (technically it wasn’t a Heretic warning in her case) for any Alters who might happen to be around. That would’ve been another way to very rapidly and dangerously get information. Too dangerously. She needed to blend in. Well, as much as a complete stranger who didn’t know anything about this place or this time possibly could blend. Fortunately, she happened to have some experience when it came to blending in where she didn't really belong.

Suitably disguised, Aylen kept Sovereign on her shoulder while walking up to the road and then toward the front of the village. On the way, she reached into one of her extended space pockets (her clothes had been disguised as well) and took out a backpack. Another quick spell on that made it look like an old bag that might have been in use around now. That way, as the bag was slung over her shoulder, she wouldn’t attract as much attention as someone wandering in without any apparent bag or supplies whatsoever might have.

Almost as soon as she had assured herself that she was as ready as she could be to meet people from this place and actually get some answers, the sound of a shout made her head snap up. She braced herself for some sort of confrontation. But instead of armed troops, what she found herself facing was a couple small, scrawny children running past the fence around the village. Both had dark hair, one boy, one girl. They appeared to be around eleven or twelve. Or maybe younger. It was hard to tell.

Both of the children were carrying sticks that were clearly meant to be swords, the girl chasing the boy while calling him a Roman dog. They each stopped short, skidding to a halt upon the sight of Aylen. For a moment, all three (four counting Sovereign) stared at one another.

Finally, Aylen broke the silence. “Uh, hello there. I mean you no harm. I’m a… traveler from far away. My name is--” She racked her brain for a suitable name. Both of her mothers would’ve been shaking their heads at her for not already having one ready. In the end, she just blurted out the first one that came to mind from stories she’d been reading lately. “Ganieda. I am called Ganieda. May I ask your names?”

The two kids exchanged glances before the girl answered. “Hello, Ganieda. I’m Morgana.

“And that’s Arthur.”