Ryn of Avonside

From the Perspective of Rynadria

The broad leafed tree punched up into the sky, each branch trailing green growth magic as it did so. Around me, the Jagdar and his men gasped and took several apprehensive steps away from it.

Growing a tree as heavy as this one took a ton of effort, and I began to wane before it cleared the top of the Jagdar’s round manor house. I think it was the massive taproot that was giving me trouble. Even at this relatively minor height, the root was now twenty feet deep, and the energy to push down through rock and soil had to come from somewhere.

As I sagged, I felt Grace's hand touch my arm, and a trickle of power began to flow into me. With her help, I pushed on until the sun was blocked by the bulk of the tree.

Breathing deeply, I let go of my magic and looked up at my work. It was at least thirty feet tall, with long spreading branches and broad leaves. On many, many branches, fruit were still in the process of ripening as residual energy made its way through the tree.

“Absolutely incredible,” Jagdar Marat said, staring up at the tree in wonder.

Smiling, I reached up with my telekinesis and plucked several ripe fruit. One by one, I delivered them to everyone who was watching.

The Jagdar tentatively bit into the fruit, then hummed with appreciation. “Oh, this is quite good. Very sweet, and quite juicy.”

“The idea was that you could potentially turn it into alcohol,” I explained, then when I bit into my own fruit, I muttered, “Oh damn, we did a good job.”

It was so yummy. If I had to put a label to the flavour, it was something between a strawberry and maybe a mango. It definitely had the texture of a mango, anyway. Maybe a peach would be a better fit, flavour-wise.

On the opposite side of me to Grace, Eilian appeared and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Fine work by a fine mage,” she said in that warm, perpetually sultry voice of hers. “Shall we begin the process of distributing the trees to the farms that our kind host has selected?”

“Sure,” I agreed, looking sidelong into her eyes. Now that I knew it was there, it was difficult to miss the deep sadness that her flirtatious nature was masking.

She nodded, still with a good natured smile on her face, and shucked off her green and grey coat. Underneath, she wore a vest with a low, open back, revealing the golden fur there. It was subtle, but some of the fur wasn't quite as golden as the rest. As she rolled her coat up and stashed it in a harness at her hip, she saw me staring.

“Admiring my patterning?” She asked slyly.

I glanced back at Grace sheepishly, but she didn't seem bothered. She just shrugged slightly.

Clearing my suddenly dry throat, I asked. “Pattern?”

“My fur. The whorls and stripes are difficult to see because my fur is all gold, but the shades are different,” she said, turning to give us a better view.

“I can see it,” said Grace, who took hold of my hand.

Now that it'd been pointed out, I could actually make out the patterns. There was a more obvious floral pattern that rode her spine up to cradle her neck — her grove tattoo, if I had to guess. Besides that, however, there was a more animalistic pattern similar to what a tiger might have, if both the orange and black parts were different shades of gold. The most prominent section of the markings were at the shoulders, where it almost looked like she had small wings painted on.

“Okay, that's enough staring,” she chuckled, and with several fruit being towed telekinetically behind her, she leapt up into the air and vanished.

Grace and I were silent for several moments, until my girlfriend surprised me by saying, “Man, girls are so hot.”

I stifled a laugh. “Agreed. Very much agreed.”@@novelbin@@

It took us several days to get the trees planted and the crop fields sprinkled with fertiliser. In that time, Dr. Ross got the preliminaries of a trade agreement rounded out. The Jagdar was a little nonplussed about the whole thing, because most agreements in this part of the world were word of mouth and handshakes. Still, he saw the wisdom in setting out clear rules that were agreed to by both sides.

The evening after we finished, I was on the balcony in Stormpine, sipping tea and recuperating. Grace was off tinkering with her guns, so I was alone. Outside, the sun was sending gorgeous rays of sunlight through my forest and Stormpine’s branches as it began to dip below the misty horizon.

“This place is a dream.”

Looking up, I found Bray looking peaceful and tired. He sat heavily on an obrec armchair and sighed. “Thanks, Ryn — for inviting me here and letting me do the workshop stuff.”

I smiled and reached over to touch his arm. “Bray, no need to thank me. You're doing important work. I should be thanking you for this sick as hell armour.”

“I’m so stoked that I got the armour done,” he said with a grin.

“You did do an excellent job,” I said.

His grin turned roguish, and he winked at me. “Oh, I know I did a good job. I’m the fucking best.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Okay there, buddy. You don’t have to compete with Miles anymore. You can put the ego inflating pump down.”

As soon as I said his name, both of our faces fell. Miles Anderson was one of our friends from before the Ring. Him, Kayla, Logan, Bray, and me — that used to be our little posse of nerds and drama geeks. The other three had been left behind on Earth because they didn’t have classes on the day of the… when we got taken.

“How do you think they’re doing?” He asked quietly.

I had to think on it. We left without any warning, taking most of a year of academic progress with us, along with two of their friends. “I don’t know. I mean, Logan is probably coping fine, he was always able to keep a brave face.”

“Logan spent so much time in his own head that he probably wouldn’t notice the changes in his life until he surfaced and found us missing,” Bray said, and although he was being kinda critical of our friend, his tone held nothing but affection. “I think Kayla would be having the worst time of it.”

“Yeah,” I winced. Kayla was the kind of person where everything had to be going right in her life before she could keep it going right. If something interrupted her hygiene routine, for example, she’d have more and more issues keeping up with it.

“I hope they're okay — I hope Earth is safe,” he said solemnly. “That stuff you told us about how we might be the last transportation from Earth to the Ring — that scares me.”

My thoughts drifted back to the meeting in Millowhall, when Grace speculated about why the transportations stopped — specifically, her fear that Earth was in danger. We never really figured out why the Ring was transplanting a wide variety of intelligent species to itself. Hell, we weren't even sure if it was the Ring doing the teleporting.

“I hope the xenology department manages to interface with the computers we found in that lab,” I said. “Then we might actually get some answers.”

“It would be cool to see what their tech can teach us, too,” Bray agreed. Then he gave me another anxious look. “Did you know they're trying to figure out how to make semiconductors here on the Ring? We only have a finite number of computers and phones, and unfortunately those things were built with a limited lifespan.”

“Oh fuck, I hadn't even considered that. Fuck, Bray, there's so much data in our servers and computers that we will never get back if it breaks down,” I gasped — the full implications of our tech situation finally hitting me.

Bray nodded slowly, and dropped another bombshell into my technological complacency. “They printed out a bunch of important stuff, but we're really low on printer toner and ink.”

Everything about modern life that I took for granted was going to run out, and when it did, I wasn't sure if Avonside would be able to adapt. We needed a solution — some way to create microchips, semiconductors, all that fancy stuff. We needed… ah, hell, there was no way that our small settlement would ever be able to bootstrap up to an industrial base that could replace the one we previously relied on.

“Magitech can fill some of the gaps,” my friend continued, having followed the same thought process as me. “Hell, I've finished building two lift mechanisms for the tree. I just need somewhere to install them.”

“Wait, really?” I blurted, my thoughts momentarily diverted. “Oh man. Next time we have a storm roll through, I'll put in some lift shafts.”

Goodness, it would be good not to have to fuck with the stairs anymore. Although… the stairs did mean that my girlfriend's ass was incredible — Kelsey, Melody, Mer, and Catherine also all had gorgeous thighs too… was it weird that I admired the cake that my friends had gained?

As if summoned, Catherine burst through the arch from the Stormpine's foyer and stopped to catch her breath. “Ryn… Bray…”

Bray and I shared a confused glance, then stood up.

“What's wrong?” I asked, moving over to place a hand on Cat's shoulder.

“Go… go out to the Ring, right now,” she said urgently. “Everyone needs to go outside and look up.”