It was a lovely morning, with a low sun and a slight nip in the air. A morning made for the sound of birdsong, not the sounds of human anatomy. Apparently, being in the Regulars also meant having a free pass at letting out gas among other people. Hanna was just thankful that they were finally out of that poorly ventilated bunker. It had been a long night of twisting and turning, needlessly mulling over things, churning over details in memories that were irrelevant years ago. Hanna and the bunch she met yesterday was waiting outside of the bunker.

Despite the lack of sleep, she was feeling pretty swell. The past couple of weeks of hard workouts and gorging on food had done wonders for her body. She guessed that she had gained at least ten kilos of muscles compared to when she woke up in the valley. With how fast her body recovered from workouts it was practically cheating. They hadn’t done any more tests of her strength but given how strong she had been in her previous paltry frame, Hanna was willing to bet that the gains were substantial. She felt like her body was brimming with power, ready to explode into action. Her backpack was on her back, and every available space in it was filled with rations that she had been given by a small mouse-like man that she hadn’t met before. He was apparently the resident cook, but he disappeared much like a mouse before Hanna had the time to catch his name or butter him up for future food-related favours. Her sword and knife were on her hip and she carried her spear over her shoulder. It seemed petty, but Hanna couldn’t help to feel a measure of pride when she saw the group from yesterday ogle it when they thought she wouldn’t notice. Today would be a good day.

“Morning asshats!” Birgitta announced her arrival, making everyone present turn around. She looked lively despite her greeting. Next to her was a cart that by the looks of it was made to be pulled by a human. It was loaded full with sacks and barrels. Rune was the poor sod pulling it. He was heaving and was flushed red in his face, hair soaked by sweat. Hanna gave him a cheerful wave.

“Gudrun and Leif, you’ll watch our rear. Karl, you will be with me at the front so that I can keep an eye on you. Rune will be joining us as usual, but I’m demoting him from cart-duty. Otherwise we’ll be waiting on him the whole trip.” Birgitta turned towards Hanna. “That means that you get the cart, kid. I’m sure you’ll do better than young mister Noodle-arms here.”

Hanna groaned. This day was going to suck.

“What about me?” Bucky asked.

“You’re with Hanna, make sure she doesn’t piss herself when things go south”.

Bucky acknowledge the order with a thumbs-up.

The way down the mountain first led them back through the village. As they made their way along the winding turns of the road, the people nearby cheered them on and it was a generally chirpy atmosphere. A teenage girl that they passed even threw Rune a blow kiss. It was a far cry from how Hanna was usually treated, and it only made Hanna more bitter about it. Still, she couldn’t really complain. The cart weighed practically nothing, and planted square in the middle of her field of view was Rune’s shapely backside, neatly bouncing up and down as he walked.

It took about an hour until the ground began evening out. Behind them was the picturesque view of the village, cosily nestled up on the mountain. Seen from this perspective, it was easier to understand the village’s xenophobia. They were so isolated and secure up on their mountain, that every visit from a stranger was bound to feel like an invasion of their personal space. Understanding was not the same as forgiving though. Hanna still considered them a bunch of paranoid bastards.

As they slogged forward on the road, the creek-turned river eventually departed from the road. Except for the mountain, all that they could see was the road and the surrounding fields. Closer to the base of the mountain there had been a good deal of crops, but they were practically hugging the foot of the mountain, and they were soon left behind. Walking long distances had always been a slow way to pass the time, but the constant back-and-forth between the Regulars proved a pleasant distraction. Of course, Hanna took the time to chat with Rune, making sure he was on the same page when first opportunity presented itself. She had been a bit confused by him following along on the trip. It turned out it was the usual order of things. In Rune’s own words, he was the shrewdest businessman on the mountain. Hanna thought back at his arm wrestling scheme. She wasn’t sure if that supported his claim or not.

“Incoming”, Birgitta stated without any hurry. Hanna swivelled around in search of whatever it was that was coming. Far to the right she spotted a growing could of dust.

“On it!” Bucky called and climbed up on top of the cart. Hanna was still holding the cart so she let it down as gently as possible.

“The rest of you know the drill. Line up!”

Hanna didn’t know the drill.

“Move your ass Hanna!” Birgitta ordered as the rest of the group grabbed their spears and formed a line in front of the cart. Hanna grabbed her spear and mimicked the others. They had pushed the butt of their spears into the ground and were now doing a combination of holding their spears and pushing them down with their bodyweight. The cloud of dust got closer and Hanna squinted her eyes. The creature charging them looked like some kind of horned bovine. Squat and muscular, but not thick as if it was breed for meat.

The thwack of a bowstring being released sounded behind Hanna, and an arrow sailed overhead. It struck the creature in its shoulder, not slowing it down in the slightest. Another arrow joined the first one and the bull stumbled. It didn’t fall but it lost most of its momentum. A short moment went by where the whole group just watched the bull trying to catch its bearings.

“Hanna, you’re up!” Birgitta snapped.

“Uh..” Hanna was not mentally prepared for this.

“Bring that fucker down!” Coral cheered.

Hanna took a few tentative steps towards the bull. It was still approaching them, but its charge had died so it was basically trotting. It was close enough now that she could hear its laborious breathing. Blood was trickling from its wounds.

Hanna gripped her spear tight and gathered her resolve. She could do this. Pushing hard against the ground with her feet, she ran towards the bull with as much momentum as she could muster. Her body brimmed with power. The bull seemed invigorated by her aggression and tried to increase its pace, head turned down, horns pointed squarely at Hanna. It was a lot bigger than her, if they collided she would be the one sent flying.

That wasn’t her plan though. She ran towards the bull at a slight angle. Her plan relied heavily on timing, but she could pull it off. Probably. With only meters between them, Hanna twisted in the air and rammed her spear has hard as she could into the bull, hitting it from its side.

The spear sunk deep, and the weapon was ripped from her hands as the bull slid to a stop. It was probably lucky for her, otherwise she would have tagged along with it.

Someone gave out an impressed whistle. Coral applauded her. Hanna took a moment to regain her bearings and then walked over to inspect her work. The bull lay dead just a few meters from the cart. The spear had impaled it deep enough that the tip was sticking out on the other side.

“Flashy”, Birgitta commented. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“It was awesome!” Coral injected as he walked over to Hanna and patted her shoulder.

Hanna felt rather pleased with herself despite Birgitta’s disapproval. Standing firm against the charge might have been a surer kill, but the bull probably had a couple of hundred kilos on the uniboars, and she had frankly had enough of being trampled.

Hanna knelt by her kill to get a look at the animal. She wasn’t a farmer, but as far as she knew it wasn’t normal for bulls to charge people unprovoked. From just looking at the creature, it didn’t seem to different from a normal cow. But then again, she wasn’t a farmer.

“Aggressive fuckers.” Birgitta gave her expert opinion as she hunkered down next to Hanna. “They attack everything in their territory that isn’t their mate or spawn and they breed by the dozen. They are a pain to get rid of. The meat is delicious though.”

“How do you keep them docile?” Hanna asked.

Birgitta looked at her as if she was mentally challenged. “What part of what I just said made you think we keep them docile?”

“Well, I assumed that you would need to keep them calm and orderly in order to breed them… Wait. You don’t breed them?”

Birgitta gave her a repeat of the previous look. Hanna was baffled. They were literally living next door to the perfect meat-factory without taking advantage of it. Sure, they’d have to curb that aggression somewhat, but that’s nothing a couple of generations of selective breeding couldn’t handle. They might even make decent beasts of burden, Hanna figured. Then it hit her. They didn’t have any animals for pulling carts and plows. That’s why she got stuck on cart-duty. She was the fucking donkey.

Hanna and the others laboriously wrangled the carcass on top of the cart. Birgitta stood by the side and gave helpful words of encouragement. Hanna couldn’t help but feel a bit grumpy at being literally treated like an ass. The minute they got back to the village, Hanna was going to kick that fucking settlement into at least the thirteen-hundreds. Whether they want to or not, Hanna thought as she grabbed the handles and began pulling the cart again. In front of her, the dirt road stretched onwards.

When the first part of the ruins they were heading to came into view there was a subtle change in the group’s mood. The banter ceased, and Hanna noticed that even Coral kept his hands close to his weapons. They continued on without being disturbed until they were a fair bit into ruins. All around them were the overgrown remnants of buildings. Given their square shape and grid-like placement, Hanna got the feeling that they were walking in an old city, but everything was far to worn down for her to be certain.

“That’s far enough folks!” Someone shouted. It sounded like a young man, likely hidden in one of the nearby ruins. “We’ve got you in our sights, so no sudden movements!”

“Kick it down a notch Bengt, you know very well who we are!” Birgitta growled. “And don’t think I can’t see you messy red hair sticking up over the wall”.

Hanna looked around. She didn’t see shit until the youthful face of a redheaded teenager slowly peeked over a nearby wall. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

“I have to check, it’s my job!” Bengt insisted.

“Do you want to starve to death, or are you going to let us in?”

The teenager didn’t answer, but Hanna could hear him making his way down to them.

“This way”, he said as he stepped out from around a corner. He was armed with a bow and a small knife, and he waved them over without any further discussion.

He led them through the twisting ruins. With how worn down everything was, Hanna quickly lost track of the way they had taken. Eventually they came in front of a large metal gate, and the boy walked over and grabbed a string that were hanging out off a hole in the wall. He expertly pulled it in a complicated pattern, each pull causing a bell to ring. Soon after, the gate began moving with a small rumble.

Behind the gate, the ground was gently sloping downwards, and Hanna was surprised to see that it was covered by intact and smooth concrete. It looked like the entry to an underground garage. On all sides they were surrounded by the matte finish of concrete, and the tunnel twisted inwards like a spiral. They followed it in silence, the sound of their steps echoing between the walls. A full revulsion down there was a wooden alcove cut into the wall, with another metal gate square in the middle. Bengt fished out a key on a neckless from under his shirt, and after a short moment of fumbling with the lock the door swung open. Inside was a larger room, some kind of antechamber by the looks of it. It was rather cosy, with paintings on the walls, a sofa and a few stuffed chairs. The cosiness was decreased somewhat by the couple of armed guards that eyed them suspiciously. They were surrounding a woman with enough commanding presence to make it obvious that she was the one in charge.

“Elsa.” It wasn’t the warmest greeting. Coming from Birgitta it was pretty standard.

“Nice to see you again Birgitta”, the woman answered. She didn’t sound very enthusiastic. Birgitta walked over to the woman, ignoring the minute movements of the guards as they gripped the hilts of their swords. The two of them chatted for a while, but Hanna was too distracted to pay any attention to what they were saying. Something had been nagging in her mind ever since they entered the tunnel. She had been unable to place it until she noticed the small wall-mounted lamps than illuminated the room. Electricity. Honest to god, actual and proper electric lighting. It must have been how the tunnel was lit, they hadn’t carried any torches. It was jarring really, to simultaneously feel that electric lights were too normal to think about, yet exotic to the point that it sent her mind reeling.

What was worse was the implications of it. Hanna did a quick mental tally of what she knew about this world. Things that was weird: the fucking mental creatures, her own body, the technologically impaired villagers and the physics of the swamp. Things that was normal but weird in their context: the bunker in the mountain and the electric lights in what was probably an old underground garage. Adding all of this up meant… absolutely nothing, Hanna realised with a dejected sigh.

It could mean that something had happened to the world she knew, collapsing civilisation and changing the flora and fauna. But it could just as well mean that she was in a different world, where the weird creatures were normal and the signs of ancient civilization was what was weird. The first explanation meant that she had somehow been sent through time, and the second meant that she had somehow been sent to another world. Was it more bizarre to travel through time or to travel between dimensions? Both options were completely unreasonable sci-fi material in Hanna’s opinion, and she couldn’t readily accept either of the them as plausible.

Still, they obviously had some semblance of technology here and she’d be damned if she didn’t milk them for as much of it as possible. She elbowed Coral that stood closest to her.

“How come you guys don’t have electricity when they have it?” She asked and pointed towards the lamps.

“What? You mean their magic lights?”

Ugh. “It’s not magic you moron. It’s just electrons passing through a metal wire”

“What!” The woman in charge was alarmed and hurried over. “Do you know about electricity?” Elsa grabbed her arm with a manic look.

“Sure…” Hanna said, taken back by the woman’s intensity.

“You must tell me everything!” Elsa said and tried pulling her along without waiting for an answer. Hanna wasn’t of the same skeletal frame that she had been when she woke up in the valley. She didn’t move an inch.

“Hold on”, Birgitta interjected and put a firm hand on Hanna’s other arm.

“Come on now, Birgitta. This is huge!” Elsa tried.

“I’m not saying you can’t talk to her. I’m saying you can’t do it for free.

“Enough!” Hanna shouted and pushed the two of them away. She wasn’t a thing to be bartered with, and she definitely wasn’t the reward in a fucking tug-o-war. Everything was calm for a second as the two leaders sailed through the air. Then all hell broke loose when they hit the walls of the room with two heavy thuds.

People screamed all around her, making it impossible to make sense of what they were trying to convey. One of the guards threw himself on Hanna, trying to pin her down. The sound of metal striking metal told her that someone was fighting. The guard on top of her tried to force her into an armlock. Not happening buddy, Hanna thought and tossed him away. He flew like a ragdoll.

She got to her feet. Gudrun, Bucky and cashier-guy were fighting the guards, sword to sword. Coral was looking around, indecisive and useless. Rune was stringing Bucky’s bow while Bengt did his best to stop it. Birgitta was on her way up. Elsa was still laying prone on the ground.

“What the fuck is going on?” Birgitta bellowed, the authority of her voice making everyone halt in their movements.

“Coral, stop spinning around you useless twat! The rest of you, stand the fuck down!” The Regulars hesitantly followed Birgitta’s order, stepping back a pace from their opponents. The three standing guards eventually did the same. One of them put his weapon away and hurried over to help his boss. A short while later she was standing with his support. The mood was tense.

“Uh, I didn’t mean to push quite that hard”, Hanna tried. Birgitta glared at Hanna, making her unsure if she meant it as “Stop talking” or “Don’t do it again”.

Elsa looked shaken. “It was an accident, no harm done”, she said with an unsteady voice. “Is anyone injured?”

That took the last of the hostility out of the room and the two groups checked on their members. Cashier-guy was bleeding from a shallow cut on his arm but the rest of the Regulars were unharmed. The guy that had tried wrestling Hanna was a bit sore but without anything broken. Hanna thought it a bit odd to try to continue with their previous business after what had happened, but Elsa seemed really eager to smooth things over. Apparently they needed the food that they were bringing, and Birgitta was rather keen to get the steel that they usually received in return. Beer was brought out, probably to help break the ice. Someone who Hanna guessed was Rune’s counterpart came out, and the two of the begun hammering out the details of the trade.

The rest of the Regulars were standing to the side, trying to pass the time. Hanna avoided the chit-chat as much as she could. She had never been very fond of it, and she needed some time to herself. She had no qualms about breaking up their tug-o-war as she did, but she was once again reminded that she was no longer a normal human. An average person could shove people away in rage. She couldn’t do that, at least not if she expected them to survive the fall. Constantly keeping herself under perfect control wasn’t really an option, but avoiding contact with people for fear of hurting them wasn’t one either.

“Sorry for being so abrupt earlier”, Elsa said. Hanna hadn’t seen her walk over.

“Yeah, sorry I tossed you away like that”

“Think nothing of it!” Elsa waved her apology away. “If you wouldn’t mind, I would love to hear more about what you know”. She obviously tried being more casual about it, but her thirst for knowledge was evident.

Hanna shot a look towards Birgitta. The woman gave her a short nod in return. “We could talk for a bit. But we would need something in return”. Hanna had never been a great haggler, but what the heck. She could probably wing it.

“One of your guys, three months at our disposal” Birgitta butted in.

Elsa acted bothered by the terms. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think? She might not even know anything substantial.”

“Four months”, Birgitta countered, hiking the price up. “And I promise you, Hanna knows plenty”.

Elsa continued her acting, taping her cheekbone as if she wasn’t sure about the terms. Hanna was bothered to once again be treated like a commodity, but she needed some answers about what had happened to the world. These guys probably didn’t know shit about it, but they must have gotten their technology from somewhere. There was a clue around here, Hanna was sure of it. So she decided to sweeten the deal.

“Engine” Hanna said, making Elsa’s eyes open wide.

“Generator”, she added. Elsa flared her nostrils.

“Magnetic field”.

Elsa lost her composure. “Deal!” She said, almost shouting. Hook, line and sinker, Hanna thought and chuckled.

Elsa and Birgitta argued the details for a while after. They were done at about the same time as Rune had closed the original deal. What they had agreed upon was that they would return some time later for a longer stay, and then Hanna would be available for a long and extensive discussion about whatever might strike their fancy. On the condition that it was a fruitful session, they’d be accompanied back by someone from Elsa’s group. Apart from the steel that the Regulars came here for, the most valued thing Elsa’s group had to offer was their technological expertise which apparently was miles ahead of the surrounding villages’. Hanna couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Gunn having yet another wiz-kid to compete against. In Hanna’s opinion it seemed unfair that a discussion with her was wort several months’ time with one of their experts, but given Elsa’s reaction to it, knowledge about electricity probably wasn’t common.

With everything they came here for wrapped up and all goods exchanged, the Regulars soon departed the garage with Bengt in tow. The day was gone and they’d have to stop for the night before they could return to the village. They walked for about an hour at a good pace, leaving the ruins and Bengt well behind them. The return trip usually was a good deal slower when they were loaded up with solid bars of steel, but to no one’s surprise that was alleviated by the heavy-duty donkey that they had brought with them this time.

When they set up camp for the night they put it up by the very side of the road. The soldier in Hanna protested and wanted them to walk off the road and find some location where they weren’t as visible. But the only thing around them were the flat and empty field and it would do them no good to leave the road. Plus that the cart would be a bastard to pull in the uneven terrain. Birgitta arranged a schedule for the guard, and of course Hanna got the shittiest slot. Late enough that she couldn’t stay up, but early enough that she wouldn’t get any solid sleep before it was her turn. Dinner was the usual fair of boar-jerky, which Hanna chewed silently on while she listened to Coral lying about his performance at the fight earlier. Eventually she snuggled up in the thick blanket she had gotten from Björn or Olof way back. Its fat wool did a good job of keeping the chill out, and in its warmth she slowly dozed off, dreaming of light-bulbs and rifle toting Vikings.