Cary didn't speak to David for the rest of that week. Even when they were in the room together, Cary was always hidden away behind her bedspread. In the mess hall, there was an invisible line running through their section of the table, with Siobhan and Nelgomi on Cary's side, and Sam and Reggie on David's. Of course, the rest of the Cadavraball team fell in with David as well, giving him plenty of friends to fill in the gap. As for Cary, Nelgomi and Siobhan were nothing compared to the best friend that she had lost.

"Forget him," Nelgomi scoffed, as the three of them were heading out of the mess hall on Saturday morning. "You don't need that one, Girlie. There are far better friends out there to be had."

"Yeah, like us," Siobhan said, motioning towards Nelgomi and herself. "David always seemed like an idiot to me."

Cary nodded at her, smiling a little in thanks for her words. But Cary wasn't one to bad mouth her friends, ex or otherwise, and she was still hoping that she would make up with David at some point. While they hadn't had many fights over the years that they were friends, there were a few. None seemed anywhere near as bad as that one was.

"Let's just focus on the trip," Siobhan said. "Ignore the stinkfaces we wish we could leave behind."

"Right," Cary said. But her tone was as down and depressed as she had been all week. There was no celebration in her voice, nor her soul.

"Come on," Siobhan said. She took a step to her left, bumping into Cary. Cary's arm automatically went up, pulling Siobhan into her side. But the orientation only reminded her of when David and she would walk like that together. "It's the first time any of us have been off campus since we got here. This is something to celebrate."

"Bah," Nelgomi scoffed, in his typical fashion. "Not much of a difference between one campus or the next. And it's Merlin Prep we're heading towards." His voice was suddenly filled with poison for the other school, their closest rival. In both location and skill at the game.

"And the fact that we're only being allowed off campus to watch the team play," Cary said. "Why did it have to be an underclassmen game?"

"If it was JV or Varsity, you'd be complaining about David being in the stands with us," Siobhan said. "It's better this way, don't you think? He'll be warming the bench, and we'll be all the way up on the top of the stands, with all the other fifth graders."

"How are we–" Cary started to ask. But before she could get the full question out, it was answered.

The largest horse that Cary had ever seen was just coming through the front gates of the school. It was huge, just barely making it through the opening beneath the sign. As it came onto campus, it shook its head, flinging out its hair in a wide arc, as it let out a snort that was easily heard from the other end of the road. Once it cleared the entrance, a bus came through after it, with the horse pulling it along. The bus stood two stories tall, but there were four rows of windows along its side, suggesting that it was bigger on the inside, much like the mead hall was. It took several seconds for the horse to pull the bus through, with the driver angling it just right so that it came up next to the fountain, rather than running right through it. The horse paused when it got to the fountain, its head sticking over so that it could drink from the bottom basin, before pulling the bus around in front of the admin building.

"Wow, that thing is huge," Cary said. When the horse came to a halt in front of them, Cary moved forward, her hand leading the way. All she wanted was to touch its flank, to pet the gigantic horse in front of her.

"Don't get too close, kid," said the driver. He flicked his whip towards her, blocking her access to the horse. "Tabby doesn't know her own strength right now. She'll bite through your arm like it's a carrot."

"Come on," Siobhan said. "Let's get on so we can get a good seat."

Before anyone could say anything more, Siobhan rushed over to the door to the bus, quickly climbing up the stairs heading inside. Cary took her time as she followed behind the others, looking at the bus and the strange door. The door went all the way up the two stories, but when she looked inside of it, there was only the one floor visible. Siobhan had made it up the first three stairs and was starting to head up the aisle, but Cary could see her in the lowest of the four windows. The stairs kept heading up, spiraling around on themselves, but Cary couldn't see any of that in the door.

"So weird," Cary muttered to herself as she followed behind the others.

The inside of the bus seemed as normal as ever. She hadn't been on a school bus in over a year, not since the school trip to the museum in the third grade. But that bus had the same feel, and the same smell, as the one she remembered from then. Even the seats looked exactly the same, with their strange green leather upholstery and complete lack of seatbelts.

Siobhan and Nelgomi had gone halfway up the aisle before heading off to the right, to the three seater side of the bus. Cary wasn't sure what made that seat better than all the others, but she went along without complaints. The last thing she could afford was to ostracize the last two friends she had at that place.

"I still don't get why they use horses," Cary said, as she sat next to Nelgomi.

"How else are they going to get the bus to move?" Siobhan asked. "Or were you expecting some magical form of propulsion? Flying brooms or something."

Cary shuddered at the thought of flying brooms, always associating such things with witches. "I just meant, why not use the bus's engines?"

"Engines don't work in the magical realm," Nelgomi said. "Redstones only work in the dwarven realm."

"What are redstones?" Cary asked. "No, I mean gas and stuff."

"Like air?"

Cary just shook her head, trying to think of how to explain the internal combustion engine to her friends. But they both looked at her with confusion, making it clear that neither of them knew what she was talking about. Unfortunately, Cary didn't know enough about such things to explain it to them.

Not long after the three of them had settled down in the seat, more of the underclassmen started making their way onto the bus. While the upperclassmen were allowed to come to the game as well, there wasn't much of a draw for them. So, the bus quickly filled with fifth, sixth, and seventh graders. As the cliques formed on the bus, the place started to have the same feel as the mead hall. But when Sam came onboard, he was alone, opting to sit in the two seater across from Cary. Neither of them said a word to each other as the bus started to make its way forward.

Cary tried to see where the bus was heading, but her view through the front of the bus was blocked by the spiral staircase and the kids in front of her. Even the view out the window next to her was blocked by Siobhan. There wasn't much for her to see, other than her fellow classmates and her two remaining friends. Seconds after they would have passed through the gates to the school, Siobhan turned to the window next to her, staring out through it at a city that they were suddenly heading through. All that Cary could see of it were a few buildings passing by in the distance, but it didn't look like the same city that they had come through before arriving at the school. She silently hoped that she could get a window seat for the return trip, but she offered no complaints to Siobhan.

"Where are we?" Cary asked, as she craned her neck around, trying to see.

"Avalon," Siobhan said, as if that were all the explanation that was needed.

"Bah," Nelgomi said. "Elf city." He sat there between Siobhan and Cary, arms folded across his chest, showing no real interest in the area they were heading through.

The trip between schools wasn't much longer than the trip from the portal to TPS. The buildings flowing past Siobhan in the window soon shifted to trees. From what Cary could see, it looked like they were actual trees, rather than the giant mushrooms that surrounded TPS. A few minutes after the shift, the bus took a sharp turn to the right, heading through gates that looked just like the ones in front of TPS. Only the bus didn't need to turn after coming through it, just heading straight before coming to a stop. The entire trip couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes, but from everyone jumping to their feet and heading for the door, Cary figured that they were there.

"That was quick," Cary said, as she got up. But the crowd heading up the aisle was already too thick for her to get out of the seat.

"What were you expecting?" Siobhan asked. "It's just portal to hub, then through the city. Same as all trips everywhere."

"It's not like that in the other realms," Nelgomi said. "I was on a mole ride once that took five hours once. And that's not counting the three hours that Dad had us there early."

"What's a mole ride?" Cary asked, as she managed to get out of the seat. "I wouldn't imagine moles go that fast."

"Well, they're boring through solid stone," Nelgomi said, immensely defensive of his realm's transportation method. "And it was halfway across the globe. How fast can your transports run?"

"Yeah, okay," Cary said. "I've heard of plane rides that take twenty-four hours."

"Wow," Siobhan said, as she came along with the other two. "No wonder why you think ten minutes is fast. Just wait till the game against Shangri-La. We'll need to leave long before breakfast to make it there in time for the evening game. And yet, that trip will still take about ten minutes."

"If we make it that long," Sam muttered, as he tagged along. "We'd only play against them in the finals. And it might be a home game."

"Hey, that's fine with me," Siobhan said, not seeming to mind the interloper. "It means we can sleep in that day."

As Cary descended from the stairs, coming out into the main campus of Merlin Prep, she was surprised to see the similarities between it and Thorbjorg. The admin building looked exactly the same, down to the stone. But instead of longhouses and a mead hall, the place had several stone buildings that looked like castles. It seemed like they were going for a medieval England theme, and the solid backdrop of evergreens in the distance behind the buildings seemed to go well with it. Despite the differences in the buildings, though, they all seemed positioned exactly like they were back at TPS, so much so that she knew exactly where everything was without needing a map. But as the students were already flowing around the admin building, heading off towards the Cadavraball field in the distance, she wouldn't have gotten lost anyway.

The main, most noticeable difference between the two campuses came just after the group passed the churches. Even they looked quite the same as back at TPS, though the Christian church looked more like a stone chapel, soaring high overhead. But in the area next to the Elven clearing, instead of an open field, there was a cobblestone paved section nestled within the forest. And at the center, poking out of a huge stone, was the handle of a sword.