The way station that we stopped at wasn’t so much of a station as it was a cleared circle of forest with a decently flowing stream behind it. There was a small covered building off to one side that kept a supply of firewood dry for those who stopped. I didn’t care. I was exhausted and sweating like a pig. Drops rolled down the sides of my face, and I could feel each one trace down the tracks through the dust covering my face. I was both dusty and sticky at the same time, and I hated it. My arms and legs were steaming from sheets of sweat.

  “Head downstream as far as you can and clean up.” Nala said as I brought the wagons to a stop at the end of the caravan. They had circled a bit over half of the clearing, starting near the road and rotating to the back. “We will take care of setting up camp. You’ve earned a rest, and I know Ras wants to speak to you.”

  I couldn’t even muster a thank you. I simply dropped all my barriers and stumbled towards the creek. Then cursed when I realized that I had gone to the upstream portion, and did some more stumbling to get to an area where I could clean myself without contaminating the stream for the rest of the caravan. I didn’t even bother removing my clothes, just dropped into the waist high water and immediately dunked underneath.

  “Pah.” I blasted out my held breath as I broke the surface, settling down facing the current while my back was propped against a stone that came so very close to breaking the surface. And I just sat there for several minutes, letting the cold water wash away all the aches I had developed. It. Was. Amazing.

  “You’re gonna shrivel away to nothing if you stay in there much longer.” A deep voice said, and I turned to see one of the strangest creatures I had come across in this world. He was dressed in chainmail with a steel breastplate and steel gauntlets. As he removed them and carefully placed them in a storage bag, I could see fur poking out from the gaps. Black along his limbs, with a distinctly reddish fur over his torso. His face had streaks of black dropping down from his eyes, surrounded by white and the rest was red.

  “Red panda?” I muttered.

  “Hmm?” He hummed, looking at me. “Oh, where are my manners? Name’s Sonam. You?”

  “Sean.” I answered. “And sorry if I was staring. Never met someone that looks like you before.”

  “Not surprising. The Pandrikan clan is getting smaller each year it seems. Mind if I join you?”

  “Plenty of room.” I answered, scooting over just a bit. “This rock makes a good backrest.”

  “Looks like it.” He said with a smile as he sank in on the other side of the rock. I heard him exhale in relief. “Oh, that’s the stuff.”

  We sat there for a while, just relaxing. Eventually I got around to scrubbing and scraping the dirt off my face with my nails, disgusted with how much had managed to accumulate. I couldn’t even find a stone with an edge to it to do the scraping or remove what accumulated under my nails, as everything had been worn smooth by the stream that I was reluctant to leave. Eventually I managed to get the majority off, and promised myself that later I would get the stuff from under my nails, even if I had to rip off one and use it as a pick to clean under the rest. As I stood up to leave, I noticed Sonam doing the same.

  “You don’t have to get up just cuz I’m leaving.” I said.

  “Actually I kinda do. Ras told me to watch out for you.”

  I let it go, not thrilled that I had a guard but also not surprised. While there were no children from what I had seen of the caravan, there were several young teenagers. “So what are we expected to do to set up and break down camp?” I asked, determined to help out where I could.

  “After hauling all day? Nope. We are considering you as a driver, so you’re done for the day. Younger ones have already headed out with a trainer to find replacement firewood and possibly herbs. Elders are already working on skinning and prepping what the huntresses caught during their rounds. Cooking is on a rotation, and the rest are training with your friend.”

  “Training?” I perked up.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t get too excited about that.” He pointed, and I saw an area with a merry mayhem going on. Twelve mages, including Elendria, were firing low powered elemental bolts at each other. “Elementag. Starts out with one person as ‘it,’ they shoot low powered bolts at others. Nothing sharp, bruises only. You get tagged, you join as a second ‘it.’ To block, you can only use a comparable bolt. Overpowering it is frowned on. And you can’t leave a meter-wide circle so dodging is difficult. No walls, no shields.”

  “Yeah. Definitely passing on that.” I agreed as Sonam led me to one of the small fires that had sprung up in the clearing. We passed a second group of huntresses, these were throwing weird axes with multiple heads at chunks of wood.

  “Hunga mungas.” He said, noticing my interest. “Great for throwing or hand to hand.”

  “Too many points for me.” I said. “I’m sure I would find a way to poke myself more than my opponent.” Sonam chuckled as we finally came up to a fire with Ras sitting there, a bit of snakeskin in his hand. Nala was not quite opposite him, and I sat down naturally finishing the triangle. Sonam stood off to the side between me and Ras, using a comb on his fur that had a suspicious spike at the base of the handle. His positioning, and the feeling that several sets of eyes were on me set my hackles rising.

  “What are you looking to trade this fine skin for Sean?” Ras asked, though I thought his eyes looked a little more calculating than what his question would call for.

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  “When did you figure it out?” I asked instead, getting a smile from him and an immediate tensing from Nala and Sonam.

  “Figure it out? Boy, you’re a hundred years too early to try and pull something like that on me. You didn’t know the common tongue. Or any of the languages we have come across in our trading. One storage bag, and not nearly big enough for wandering adventurers. You threw together a wagon and were pulling it by hand. Adventurers have their own wagons, especially when they don’t have storage bags. And they have mounts. No visible weapons, but you took down an A rank monster? Not happening. But you didn’t really take down an A rank, did you?” He asked with a sly smile. “No, I think you took down something much tougher. See, the only snake monster in the area that could be considered A rank is the portal guardian. So tell me, is the portal finally unguarded?”

  I heard a pair of deep inhales come from behind me, but judging from how relaxed Ras was I had a feeling that things were going to be ok. “And if I say they are?”

  He gave a grin in return. A predator’s grin, full of fangs. “Ah, that would make several of our hearts sing and our voices roar.”

  “Not fans of the Ap- the snake god?” I corrected at the flash of fear in Ras’ eyes as I almost said his name.

  “That’s putting it mildly, and any non reptoid from this world would know that. Snake and lizard kin have far more rights than us, and the only real reason we are tolerated is because we can head to the colder climates to retrieve resources. What about you? Why do you hate him?”

  Rage flashed through me for a second, but I fought it down. “He killed my family.” I simply said, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “And within a year, one of us will be dead.” Ras’ eyes widened at the dead delivery of my final words, and the fire seemed to flicker at the gravity of the words.

  Everyone sat frozen for a full ten seconds after that, but it felt like much longer. Eventually Ras shook his head, blinking away whatever fog seemed to be eating at his mind. “Well. I do believe we can work with that. Nala? Sonam?”

  “Fine by me.” Sonam answered.

  “What would you need of us?” Nala asked instead.

  “Money. Knowledge. Where are his closest temples? The biggest ones? Any areas that could be pushed to break away from his rule with a little help.”

  “Fighting?”

  “No. I’ll be doing the fighting.” I answered immediately. “But I do need a bit to relearn some of my magic. And maybe someone to help me with the basics?”

  Ras stared at me for a bit, rubbing his chin. Making some decision, he said, “We can give you a base to operate from, provided you do everything you can to keep our involvement secret. I can teach you magic basics, though you seem to have a lot of bad habits to break. I’ll try not to take too much pleasure in that.” As he was talking, the temperature dropped as Elendria strode into our meeting.

  “Ras.” She said in a low, dangerous voice. “You were supposed to let me know when Sean was done bathing. Not split us and interrogate him.”

  “Relax Elendria, your secrets are safe with us.” He said, and I nodded in confirmation. “In fact, we were just discussing taking you into our village. I’ll teach Sean some magic, get him up to speed. We can provide maps, intelligence, everything you need to take down that Snake. We’ve suffered under his tail for long enough.”

  She glared at me, but Ras interrupted before she could give me what was likely another lecture about sharing too much, “It’s not his fault. We knew you were outlanders when you needed the artifact to learn our language. It was the only one that had the language of Vitae after all.”

  “Fine.” She said with a huff, sitting down next to me. “What will you need in return for this? I’ve yet to meet a merchant that won’t look for at least some profit.”

  “Ha! Profit indeed! What would you say to giving us the remains of that guardian you took down? We have more than enough storage to keep it fresh for the remaining three days to our village. Once we get there, you will be like honored guests. We will provide food, lodging, basically everything you need. You two get to train and figure out how you are going to take down that Snake.”

  As he was talking, I started to feel a strange itch between my shoulders. All this talk about Apophis, even if we didn’t mention his name, got me thinking about my wings and their sad state. “Hey, do you think any of your healers could deal with this?” I asked, wincing as I forced my wings into being. Their sudden emergence caused Nala and Sonam to flinch, but it was Ras’ horror filled eyes that caught my attention.

  “What in the seven hells happened?” He asked.

  “Portal guardian.”

  “How are you not? The pain….” He trailed off, hand half stretched out towards my wings before quickly pulling them back, as if my wings had shocked him. “Have they healed any at all?”

  “Elendria?” I asked, not really able to see the majority of them.

  ‘No. They aren’t worse, but they haven’t made any significant healing progress either. And that is something that is concerning. We will need to move fast eventually, and flying is our best option. Do you know what is wrong?”

  “Know? Not really. I do have a good guess though, but you will need to see Rehema in our village. She’s the healer.”

  “So what’s the issue?” I prodded.

  “There’s a lot of residual energy still fighting you. You’re gonna have to get rid of that somehow before they can heal. We will help with it, of course.”

  “What do you think Eelendria?” I whispered. “It’s not like we can really do anything with the body.”

  “I still think it’s fast, but fine.” She whispered back, but I could feel the irritation. She spoke up so the others could hear her, “It’s hard to trust since they split us up like that. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you were prepared to attack both of us if things hadn’t gone well over here.”

  “Are you saying you would do something different?” Nala asked, eyes narrowing at her. “Two travelers just happen upon our broken down convoy. Travelers with plenty of issues, as Ras explained? And you haven’t even heard of what the followers of that worm feel entitled to.”

  “Worm?” I asked, confused.

  “Worm. I refuse to admit he is a snake.” She hissed as her tail whipped around in agitation.

  “So.” Ras interrupted before we could go off on another tangent. “Are you willing to trade?”

  “Fine.” I answered. “But tomorrow I am riding on one of the wagons at least partially.”

  “We can do that. I’ll start your actual training. Making shields to pull a sled on isn’t training, it’s a way to develop bad habits.”

  “FOODS READY!” came a bellow from one of the central fires, and around half of the people started heading in that direction. The rest headed to cover the perimeter.

  “We can work out details tomorrow. Come. Eat and rest with us.” Ras said, hauling himself up with his staff. As we got up to follow him, I noticed that several of the huntresses were moving around us with a lot less tension than they had been earlier. For now, I was happy. We had secured an area that we could prepare safely without running into more danger. Not only that, but a helpful village would be perfect for teaching us things to better fit in with. I let myself smile as plans started unfolding in my head.