Other than Terenei’s half-teasing question about whether Serru had satisfied her gathering itch for the moment and more serious hope that we’d had good luck, we were simply welcomed back when we caught up to them at the stream. By that point, I was of course back in centaur form and Serru was riding; we’d been able to cover the final stretch at a faster pace. The ground on either side was definitely softer, and water oozed up to add a film to the bottom of footprints, but the road and the verge on either side were raised enough that my hooves didn’t sink.
It took us a moment to find them, though, since at least half a dozen other new students of various species, most of them with a companion or two, were converging on the school from this direction. I saw another wagon, with a pair of ornithians tethered near it, one predominantly yellow and one mostly green so they were easy to tell from ours, and a few equines, with saddles arranged off the ground on rocks nearby. The fire around which our own companions had gathered, including Kylien and a genuinely massive man, was only one of three. The various new students weren’t at any of them, deep in their own energetic conversation. The fires fnked the road, but dry solid ground was in short supply, and people were using the road as well; that made me a little nervous, but it was unlikely anyone would come tearing along the road at this hour at too fast a speed to be able to react.
Serru slid off and sat next to Terenei, or at least the spot Terenei had been sitting until he got up to fill a pair of ptes from the pot; I settled myself carefully across from the fire. Someday I was going to stop feeling so awkward about the complex motions necessary to get my equine body down and then up again. Probably. Around the time I stopped feeling awkward about my height and how easily I could bump into things with my back end.
“I suppose it makes sense,” Serru mused, accepting a pte of food. “If you won’t be able to reach the school today, or aren’t sure if you can, then pause by a water source for the night.”
“Or just want a chance to catch your breath before you get there,” Terenei said. “This happened when I was on my way here, too, and I’m sure it’s also happening on the other roads to the school. Honestly, I didn’t even think about it, only about making sure Nurea gets there on time.” He moved the pot off the fire before he handed my pte to me. “There’s still tea, too. We got hungry and didn’t wait for you.” He recimed his seat.
Serru just shrugged and dug into her meal. “You did not make this,” she told Terenei.
The huge broad-shouldered man across the fire—seriously, he had to be pushing two and a half meters tall—chuckled. “I did. I settled down when my mate and I chose to have children, but I spent some years wandering and one can only tolerate a handful of raw red berries so often.”
Our new friend’s hair was drawn back in a tail, but even in the gathering gloom and the firelight I was sure his dark hair gleamed like it was oiled or metallic or something; he was wearing deep red leather trousers and a long-sleeved shirt that was red at the shoulders and near-white at the bottom and cuffs, with a white vest open over it that glinted with metal ornamentation. The big sturdy leather backpack lying nearby was also heavy on the metal decorations. Was he human? It seemed unlikely but I wasn’t about to ask.
“Agreed. This is very good. Thank you.”
It didn’t surprise me that the overall atmosphere rather resembled an impromptu party.
I was really gd Serru had had the afternoon to rex and get grounded before this. I wasn’t entirely happy about the situation myself, since casual social chat was going to make it difficult to be sure I didn’t say anything that would fg me.
It wasn’t quite like any party I’d ever been to, though.
One of the new students, a cervid, was on her way there to learn more about music. Her favourite instrument was a trio of drums that rested in a comfortable harness that went over her shoulders, allowing her to py them freely with her bare hands whether standing or in the cervid equivalent of sitting; she also had a triangur stringed thing that made me think of a harp small enough to be portable, with a strap. I knew Aryennos, the child of a musician, could sing quite well; he wasn’t the only one who joined in, even borrowing her drums for a bit, and someone had a simple recorder-like pipe, and all in all, it was a fascinating chance to hear local music. For some reason I’d expected it to sound rather medieval or cssical, but it was less that than just unfamiliar and surprisingly diverse. That got a few people dancing on the road, even.
The social ebb and flow looked pretty simir to what I was used to, though: smaller conversations shifting and merging and splitting, topics evolving dynamically, individuals removing themselves from one and adding themselves to another when something or someone became more interesting than their current location. The students—and I discovered that they weren’t all new, some had been home and were returning—were for understandable reasons mostly focused on each other.
The rgest difference was the ck of the predatory sexual undercurrent that I’d seen occur even at work gatherings, though I did see two people edging closer to each other, and Terenei was inevitably his outgoing and flirtatious self with everyone impartially.
I didn’t start to suspect deliberate protectiveness until the third time Terenei very casually joined conversations I’d been drawn into despite my uneasiness, and smoothly turned the subject into new directions that were not edging anywhere near my own history or experiences. Aryennos did it too, between musical moments. Once I was watching for it, I saw Terenei step in several times to shield Serru, as well, although I couldn’t hear the details, and it might have been just recognition that while she was confident and competent, this was a situation he was far better at handling than she was.
Everyone had been travelling all day and no one wanted to be te tomorrow, so the whole party broke up retively early, with people trailing off to find pces to set up tents.
The trees, rocks, water, road, and damp ground limited the clear ground avaible for tents. Nurea wanted to share with Zephys and another new student, an androgynous alchemist-in-training who was aquamarine-skinned and travelling alone; with minimal discussion, we decided on Terenei sharing with Serru and Aryennos sharing with me. My tent had the rgest footprint, inevitably, but the others adapted to the intention of being shared simply by having more than one hand on them while activating them.
Secure inside and out of sight, I switched to my felid form and nestled into the bnkets. I didn’t want anything over me, but there was something comforting and comfortable about pulling them into a kind of nest around myself and curling myself into a ball in the centre. Some nights, this was better than human for sleeping.
“Thanks,” I told him, as Aryennos darkened the lumina stone he’d had out. “For helping me avoid telling even more people where I’m from.”
“No one means harm. It’s just better all around if you don’t have to outright say that you’d rather not talk about it.” He yawned. “That more or less decres that there’s something unusual going on. Anyway. Sleep well.”
“You too.”
I did—for a while, at least.
I woke to discover that Aryennos’ hand was gently stroking the top of my head and around my ears and down to my shoulders, while he hummed what sounded like a lulbye.
“What...” I started, too sleepily confused to even figure out what to ask.
“You were dreaming. It didn’t look like it was a good one.” He withdrew his hand, which was oddly disappointing.
“Oh. It...” I thought back. “It was just... something about not being able to get home, and my family never knowing what happened to me.” It wasn’t the really bad one, at least.
“That would be bad enough. We’ll do our best to get you home to them. It’s still pretty early, try to go back to sleep.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I squirmed around, trying to get comfortable again, but nothing quite worked. Worse, the echoes of that dream lingered as a vague sadness and loneliness. I was tired enough to gradually doze off again, but it was with a hazy sense of restlessness.
An odd bugling cry nearby outside, picked up by a second voice, then a third and fourth a little farther away, and the shrill whinny of a horse, jerked me back to full alertness. I’d managed to snuggle myself against Aryennos in a way that probably should have been embarrassing, if I had time to waste on that.
“What the hell?” I did have the presence of mind to stand up and then change back to my centaur form before I ventured outside.
Peace and Cheer were stretching their tethers near to the breaking point in an effort to get farther away, making that strange cry I’d heard from inside; Terenei, emerging from the other tent with Serru, hastened to them.
I couldn’t bme the animals for being freaked out—or the various people who were emerging, to a chorus of gasps and small cries, not with a zombie walking into the middle of everything. This one was human and female, with dramatic hourgss curves and long hair that looked bck in the moonlight, but I recognized the deliberate way she moved, the ck of response to anything around her. This wasn’t a person, just a puppet, strings being pulled by a gamer from my world who was safely far away. Her head turned, searching the area.
If she was looking for a specific target...
“Get everyone back inside,” I told Serru and Aryennos. “I think this is about me.” I circled around behind our tent on my way, hoping the chaos would keep anyone from noticing as I spun my HUD back towards my natural human form. A phone booth might have been handy but I wouldn’t have fit in one anyway.
My own body felt vaguely ill-fitting after so much time recently in my centaur and occasionally felid forms, broken only by yesterday’s dawn with Terenei. I ignored that and strode onwards, out onto the road. From there, I whistled, first a single piercing note, then the first five notes of ‘Shave and A Haircut’ which should suggest that I wasn’t a local. Unless it was some kind of weird universal.
It worked, anyway: the zombie swung in my direction, and abandoned the others in favour of coming to join me on the road. The horses and ornithians all calmed and quieted as it got farther from them.
The zombie sucked in a long breath of air, and said, “Newcomer.”
“What can I do for you?” I spread both feet and crossed my arms, trying to pretend my skin wasn’t crawling. Death happened. Fighting it was my job. No one won all the time. This was just... wrong. “I assume I’m talking to the Zombie King.”
“This world is complicated.” While that voice had a definite wheezy texture, I could still hear the pleasant contralto it must be when she was alive. “So is your pce in it. We need to talk about some things so you know what’s going on. You won’t get that from locals.”
“No thank you. I’m trying to get home. I have a family and a job that matters and a girlfriend.”
“There’s no way home. You’re wasting your time if that’s what you think you’ll get at the end. That’s one of the things we need to talk about.”
That might have been devastating, if I had any reason to believe him.
“Oh well. Thanks but I’m the kind of person who needs to try for myself.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll be happier not doing all five sites. For a lot of reasons. You’ve been to two. Settle down somewhere and we’ll both leave you and your community completely alone, no zombies or mosslings anywhere in the area. It’s a standing deal with any newcomer smart enough to take us up on it.”
“Tempting, but I’m going to have to take my chances. Maybe you could have arranged this conversation without scaring a lot of people?”
“Do you ever listen? Take your hot chick with the pink hair and big tits, find a pce you like, set up shop there and spend your life doing whatever job turns you on and banging her.”
“Stay away from her!”
“That’s part of the deal, yeah. Her and the community you choose.”
“What about that poor woman you’re using as a puppet right now? She’s someone’s sister, daughter, friend, whatever, and she can’t come back to them while you’re doing this to her. This is your only warning. Keep your hands off my friends or so help me, I will find a way to seriously mess with this sick zombie empire thing you’ve got going on.”
“You’re being stupid. You won’t like where it gets you. I’ve been here a long time. You just got here. You think I might know more than you? You might want to think about that. Stop trying to speedrun the Quincunx, accept that we need to talk so you know what’s going on, and start thinking about where you might want to live with your anime girl. Preferably after we talk.”
“I am absolutely not having any more of a conversation than we’re having right now with someone using a dead body as a go-between. And ditto for taking advice.”
“Fuck, do you ever have a steep learning curve ahead. Never skip the tutorial, bro.” The zombified woman started walking again, along the road in my direction—but when I moved out of the way, she kept going without her heading varying at all.
I stayed and watched until the road’s curves hid her.
I recognized the hand id on my shoulder from behind as Serru’s. “Was it an invitation to join him, like the Moss Queen’s?”
“An invitation to talk, at least, and an offer I can’t take. And there is absolutely no chance I would ever choose to be friends with either of them.”
“I know. The ornithians and horses settled down. We told everyone that your healing magic includes a way to keep zombies away and persuaded them to go back to their tents because there was nothing they could do and nothing of note to see and they would be safer out of the way. Occasionally healers turn up who can defend against or unmake zombies or mosslings or both, so it won’t be difficult to believe. I can’t promise that no one will wonder about an unusual human, but it’s dark and I doubt anyone was paying much attention.”
“Good. Thanks.” The thought of her not being a real person, just a helpful NPC with no self of her own, was absurd. If the Zombie King honestly believed that, then he had effectively created his own nightmare existence, perpetually alone. I’d feel sorry for him if he hadn’t done it to himself in the face of evidence to the contrary—and maybe if he wasn’t using it as an excuse to be one of the two things people were actually afraid of here.
I went with her back towards the scattered tents, and urged her to go back to bed.
Me? I went back to my centaur form before anyone could ask questions, but my mind was spinning too much and my adrenaline was too high for me to rex. It wouldn’t be the first day I’d spent short on sleep, not even the first since I’d found myself in this world. I could manage.
I’d rather patrol the area and watch for threats while my brain did uncontrolble loops and spirals. Judging by the moons, it was te in the night. The sun would be up soon.
