Guinevere leaned into his personal space to look out the window. “They cleared out most of the buildings? That's too bad.”

  “You've been here before?” Caen asked.

  “Once or twice, camping with my sister,” Guinevere said. “Nice place, hot as fuck weather though.” She leaned back into her seat and jutted her chin at his window. “They do that sometimes, whenever there's a Planar break in the middle of an inhabited area. Can't imagine how many people lost their homes.”

  Caen recalled the nightmare he'd witnessed yesterday. The Redshadow archway had once been the location of a hamlet not too different from Beslin.

  “Wake up, loser,” Guinevere said, jerking Tilin awake. “We're here.”

  The airship got docked with far less gentleness than Caen was used to. Out his window, he saw attendants bringing a boarding ramp to the cabin door. Passengers rushed out chaotically like there was a prize to be won. Caen was happy to wait for them to clear the way as he retrieved his luggage. He carefully did not comment on Guinevere's lack of any. A very warm breeze ruffled his hair as he walked through the cabin door.

  He, Guinevere, and Tilin made their way down the ramp, at the bottom of which eighty-odd passengers waited in a cluster under the blistering sun. Caen dabbed away sweat from his face and took some liberal swigs of water from his canteen. He’d taken a temperature regulation pill before leaving the airship, but this place was rather hot. Guinevere gave him a few curious glances but said nothing. No one else seemed to be sweating as profusely as he was. A man in the red and green colors of the Rialgarian military stood in front of the crowd, hands behind his back.

  “That's the last of them, sir,” someone called from behind Caen.

  “Apologies for keeping you under the sun,” the man said, his voice carrying over the crowd with not a trace of remorse in it. “You see that pavilion behind me?” He pointed at the roofed structure that lay some yards away. “You'll go in there in an orderly fashion. Nothing like how you fought your way out of the airship just now. You will be broken up into orientation groups based on what services you will be rendering for our good country. This is not a war camp, but you will be expected to conduct yourselves with utmost decorum. Now, combatants to my left, non-combatants to my right. And if you’re both, join the combatants.”

  Caen followed Guinevere and Tilin to join the combatant line, which made up about half their batch's number. The procession brought them under the sweet, sweet reprieve of shade and benches to sit on.

  A grey-haired woman explained their duties and ran over the habitation code. After which, she explained the details everyone was waiting to hear.

  “There was a Planar break some weeks ago,” she began. “It's been contained, as you must have heard. Your main duty here is to clear the Plane's front zone of hostile creatures. Before we determine where to assign you, I'll be giving you a quick rundown of what the Plane entails and how we intend to—”

  What followed was a brief explanation of what she creatively called ‘Odaton-plane’. According to her, there were no records of any plane with similar characteristics to this one. It was inhabited by hostile ants and awakened plant life. She mentioned the ants resided within individual networks of tunnel systems, each one accessible through holes in the ground, of which there were hundreds.

  The Chancellery was currently trying to chop down the trees, which were proving too durable for more conventional means. The ants were a problem too, as they attacked whenever their tunnel entrances were approached, and sometimes came out onto the surface en masse, especially when the trees were being cut into. The ants went into a frenzy whenever a light source was brought into the Plane.

  Duties for combatants were simple: kill ants, hold back the plant life, and protect the essential workers tasked with felling the trees as well as hauling them out.

  It seemed simple enough, which Caen took to mean that a lot of information was being kept back from them. He didn't care much for politics, but Rialgar was not known for its simplicity.

  “I wonder why they haven't collapsed the tunnels yet,” Guinevere muttered under her breath.

  That was a good question, and Caen didn't have an answer to it.

  “Also, it's ridiculous that I've had to repeat this countless times already to previous groups before yours,” the woman said, “Do. Not. Eat. The. Ants. They are lethally toxic. And no, ‘cooking them really long’ will not change that. Let me say that again. You will die if you eat the creatures in the Odaton-plane Plane.”

  This drew a round of low laughter from some of the combatants. They were given further details about the Plane and a quick rundown of basic Planar etiquette in line with the habitation code. Since the ants were attracted to light, light sources were prohibited at the entrance.

  Parties consisted of five to fifteen members but usually fell somewhere in between. Cutter teams consisted of Fellers, Protectors, and Haulers.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Fellers, as their name implied, were tasked with felling the trees through a combination of magical and mundane techniques.

  While they did this, the trees would begin to attack them, and ants would stream out from surrounding holes to join the assault. This was where the Protectors in their teams came in. They would rebuff the tree's assaults as well as engage the ants to keep them off the Cutters.

  Haulers were tasked with loading up fallen trees onto carts, which they pulled out of the plane.

  Roaming Attacker teams would go around the holes in the ground, engaging whichever ants came out. Sometimes, they assist the Cutter teams.

  And finally, Delver teams consisted of specially curated and well-armed combatants with diverse skill sets. Their numbers ranged from twenty-five to forty a party. They went into the tunnel systems to neutralize ants.

  All team lead positions were filled by military personnel, and they were strongly discouraged from forming teams of their own. Team leads would be waiting by the Aperture to gather team members. Though those in Cutter teams who would be dealing with felling trees were encouraged to persist in fixed teams.

  After this, the combatants were asked to queue up for processing. Two queues were formed. One line for those particularly versed in Flora magic, Ice magic, Body-enhancement, and Venefic magic. These were the necessary disciplines for Cutter teams. The other line was for everyone else.

  Guinevere tipped an imaginary hat at Caen. “Guess, we're going thataway. See you around, Caen the glaive guy.”

  “Guinevere the sword guy,” Caen nodded at her, smiling. “Tilin.”

  When he got to the front of his own line, an official took his badge and recorded his name.

  “Magical specialty?”

  “Weak instances of Fire and Body-enhancement,” Caen said. Then he added, “I'm also skilled at mundane healing and Spirit-healing.”

  She nodded as she carefully inscribed something on his badge with a stylus. Then she looped a cord of cotton through the badge. Once she was done, she handed the badge back. “Head down to tent 9. Grab some sleeping gear from the pile on your way there.”

  Caen examined his badge in amusement. Color-coding disciplines of magic wasn't an effective or even accurate system in the slightest, but some people found it aesthetically pleasing. The nigh-white, lacquered wood of his badge had been marked with three blotches of ink. A sickly orange for Fire magic, a soft pink for Body-enhancement, and gray for Spirit-healing. He wore the badge around his neck. He was rather curious to see what colors they'd assigned to the other disciplines.

  He grabbed a pillow, a blanket, and a blue bed sheet, which had been folded into a neat rectangle. He made his way out of the pavilion and into the Odaton camp. It was a stretch of perfectly level, flat ground with very low, yellowed grass. Dirty white tents were the most prevalent sight here. Dozens of them, few of which were wide and long enough to harbor a large number of people. On one of these, he found the Thermish glyph for the number 43 drawn in faded black paint. He walked between a row of tents.

  There were stone buildings here, too. He caught snatches of them in the gaps between tents. Above the tents, however, the large stone fence he'd seen from the airship jutted above everything. Odaton-plane was behind that.

  Tent 9 was one of the regular-sized ones. There were ten cots within, five on either side, and though the tent was empty, only two cots looked occupied. He moved from the tent's sole entrance and picked a bed by the far corner.

  Caen retrieved essentials from his backpack and placed them in the bag of holding Zeris had given him. He retrieved the rest of his armor and gear as well. Then he put the backpack under his cot, made the bed, geared up, and headed out for the fence. It was painted a white that was almost as dull as the tents, which lent a rather dour atmosphere to the camp. It rose nearly ten feet into the air. A large gate on the fence had been removed from its hinges and leaned against the fence.

  Caen walked through the entrance. He was greeted by a tear in space up ahead. It was less than twice the height of the fence, shimmering around the edges and wide enough for five armored persons to walk astride.

  A stout cabin wrapped around it with the front wall and the roof completely removed, allowing for the portal to jut a few feet higher. It looked eerily similar to the one he'd seen in that girl's nightmare.

  A sturdily constructed platform hung above the cottage, in front of the Aperture, and well above the people trickling in and out of it. Looking through, Caen saw how incredibly dim it was. Coupled with the blurring effect all Apertures possessed, he could hardly make out anything.

  Four young men pulled out a six-wheeled cart upon which a thick, green-barked tree lay. The tree’s foliage was confusing, with its branches ranging from the girth of his wrist to that of his torso. Each one looked serpentine and root-like. It had been hewn at the base and trailed several feet out of the back of the cart. Some people cheered around the cart-pullers as they came out of the Plane.

  Three men in military uniform stood off to one side, waiting. Two of them were big, burly men with a few people standing around them. The two uniformed men had pink bands sewn into the upper arms of their uniforms. Caen supposed that marked them as… Body-enhancers?

  The third military personnel, however, was a wiry man with an angular face, and he didn't have anyone around him yet. The band on his arm was orange, and he was actively moving a speck of fire around his hand in a very familiar magical exercise. Caen immediately connected to the man.

  When he walked over, the soldier nodded at him. “I’m Lerim,” the soldier said. “Attacker team. I do Fire, as you can see.” He wiggled his fingers, and that disturbed the smooth movement of his flame speck.

  “Caen. Bit of Body-enhancement and just a bit of Fire.”

  “Nice. We need three others in order to go in, but I usually move with seven. Are you fine waiting?”

  Caen nodded and folded his arms as he got to work, Mimicking the man's affinity.

  By the time Caen was done, two other persons had joined their party. He breathed a small sigh of relief as the passive augmentations from the Mimicked Fire affinity regulated his body temperature, and the smiting heat of the sun abated. The group waited another fifteen minutes before they hit seven members.

  Then Lerim took them through the Aperture.

  a follow, a favorite, a rating, and/or a review. Doing these will keep me motivated and help the story grow.