Just like last time, a session of aimless walking among the ruined buildings eventually produced a pubescent voice ordering Hanna to stop. The failed attempt at a commanding voice made it obvious who she was talking to. She smiled and gave a carefree wave to her surroundings.

“Nice to see you too, Bengt. Would you mind showing yourself so that I could stop talking to these fucking ruins?”

Bengt stepped out in front of her. “I have clear instructions” he protested. “This is a very important job, and Elsa herself have said that I’m the best man for it”

“Do you honestly think that’s why they put you out here day after day?”

Bengt crossed his arms, looking hurt. “What do you mean?”

Hanna paused for a second. She had virtually nothing to gain from pulling the wools from his eyes. “Nothing”, she said. “Just maybe don’t value rules quite as much. They are only as good as the good they do”.

Bengt looked like he didn’t want to understand her point. “Whatever”, he said.

The two of them walked on in a sullen silence, at least from Bengt’s side, and eventually they were back in the room where the negotiations had taken place the last time Hanna was around. When they arrived, a single guard waited for them. Hanna gave the guard a nod and glanced at Bengt. He had made himself comfortable, so Hanna did the same. Elsa stepped through the door maybe ten minutes later. She was dignified like always, but Hanna thought she had a slight spring to her step, as if she had been really looking forward to this.

“Hanna!” She exclaimed. “I’m so happy to see you. How have you been?”

Hanna scoffed. “I don’t know how to answer that, to be honest. The village was attacked”. Spoken out loud, it sounded like she was delivering terrible news. That wasn’t what she had meant though. In a fucked-up way, Hanna was glad that the village had been attacked. It had given her an outlet that she didn’t know that she needed, and the version of her that stepped out of that battle felt like a completely different person. Hanna was thankful for the change.

“Oh my! Is that why you are dressed up like that?”

Hanna studied her armour and weapons. “Nah, this is just my new look. Do you like it?”

Elsa looked conflicted. “Sure”, she lied. “You look very dangerous.”

“Thanks. That was what I was going for. So how do we do this?”

“You guys usually make the trip in a group, where is the rest of you?”

“They are back in the village. I feel like it was time I stood on my own two legs for a while”

Elsa shot her a calculating smile, probably hoping for a growing chasm between Hanna and the village. “Okay, follow me then!” She said and waved her along, leading her on a tour of the settlement. They spent the time talking about the settlement and the technology they encountered as they walked. Every now and then, Elsa would ask a bit about the attack and the state of the village. Hanna wasn’t sure how much she ought to tell her. It probably wasn’t a smart thing to paint the village as the sitting duck that it very much was at the moment. Going for a more cautionary approach, Hanna shifted the details a bit, focusing on their victory and breezed by the fact of just how much it had cost them. She thought she did an okay job, helped along by Elsa being tactful enough not to press her for the answers that she was clearly not willing to give her. It ended up being a rather pleasant walk.

The dwellers, that was what everyone called them, the strange bunch that Hanna until now had been referring to simply as Elsa’s people. They were a motley crew, the descendants of people who had entered the ruins in search of adventure or answers, and instead had found a home for themselves. The twisting network of underground buildings and tunnels were largely cut off from the outside world, which had left its inhabitants safe and free to engross themselves in their fanatic study of a world that was long gone. There wasn’t a lot of them, Hanna’s best estimate was maybe half the size of the village.

The population was weirdly specialised, except for one or two who had taken to growing things in the caverns, the vast majority spent their time studying whatever struck their fancy. They survived on the weird plants that thrived in the caverns and whatever food they could trade for. It wasn’t a hard life, the metal that they harvested from the ruins and the knowledge they possessed was in high demand in the surrounding villages. It made Hanna wonder why there were so few of them. She hadn’t asked anyone yet, but she had a few theories brewing, like that the surrounding villagers only produced small quantities of surplus food, or that their underground habitat had some very firm limits on the number of inhabitants it could support before it ran out of air or whatever.

After having seen their settlement, Hanna was both overwhelmed and disappointed Overwhelmed because they had electric lights everywhere and a myriad of ingenious mechanical gadgets that made their life easier, showing just how far behind them the village was. But at the same time she was disappointed. Either they had only found this level of technology in the ruins, or the civilization it had come from had just about begun dabbling in electricity.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, to be honest. If they were even more advanced, it would have made zero sense for them to be holed up underground. Perhaps ‘certainty’ was the word she was looking for. She wanted clear and undisputable evidence for what the fuck was going on here.

From the technological discussions she had had since she got here, at least something was clear. The dwellers weren’t the inventors of the stuff they had here, at least not this generation of dwellers. Their technology was a result of constantly adding to what the generations before them had done. No one knew much about the first dwellers, paper was in too short supply for anyone to bother writing down useless stuff like the history of civilization and shit. It was understandable, but it meant that Hanna probably wouldn’t be getting the answers that she came here for.

After the tour of the settlement, Elsa had Hanna sat down for dinner together with a handful of the most respected members of the dwellers. Much like it had been with Gunnar, it was hard to find a template for how they would transfer the knowledge that Hanna was sitting on. Since it was almost impossible for Hanna to accurately judge what was interesting to them, the format they ended up with was a sort of Q & A.

Elsa and the senior members asked her question after question, and Hanna did her best to answer them. Hanna had thought herself to be pretty knowledge, a lifelong habit of checking up everything she didn’t fully understand coupled with a talent for remembering everything that she read had left her with a wealth of knowledge compared to your average schmuck. After having been subjected to the detail-hungry questions of people who had spent generations dabbling in fields they didn’t fully understand, it was painfully obvious that she only had a surface level of understanding in most subjects. It was still way more than they knew, so whatever, but it kind of made Hanna wish she had been paying a bit more attention in school, at least in fields like physics, chemistry and math. Not that the dwellers were complaining, they were taking notes like crazy and was constantly interrupting each other in their eagerness for answers.

By the end of the dinner, the talks were interrupted by a guard slamming the door open.

“Ma’am! We have visitors!” The guard squeezed out between greedy gasp of air. Elsa gave her a worried look. “We weren’t expecting anyone. Who is it?”

“They are envoys of the kingdom, ma’am”

That blew the air out of the room. Elsa stood up and turned to Hanna.

“I have some matters to attend to. I would love for you to stay the night, but I’m not certain when this will be done.” Then she promptly left the room, taking the guard with her.

For the first time since she got here, Hanna wasn’t the centre of everyone’s attention anymore. All around her, the remaining dwellers speculated wildly of what this visit could mean. Since she had nothing better to do, Hanna eavesdropped shamelessly. From what she picked up, the dwellers, much like the village, was only alive and kicking because the kingdom hadn’t yet been bothered to deal with them. The kingdom was a faction that sat unchallenged in the region, vastly more powerful than the small villages that cowered in its shadow. This disparity in power meant that they didn’t have to bother to actually trade with their neighbours. Once the kingdom considered you as something valuable or even remotely threatening, it was only a matter of time before they came around to do something about it.

The dwellers had quite a solid defence compared to their size and the surrounding factions. The same couldn’t be said about their offensive capabilities, which didn’t come as a surprise to Hanna after having seen their mindless pursuit of knowledge. Advanced science could outfit soldiers with superior equipment, but no matter how you turned it, armies were made up of a lot of people that you wouldn’t be devastated to lose, at least from a more callous and strategic perspective. The dwellers didn’t have a lot of those, judging by what Hanna had seen so far.

This meant that not many thought the kingdom had come in order to stamp out a growing threat. The leading explanation was that they wanted something from them, and the dwellers only had one thing that sat them apart. The million-dollar question was if they wanted to annex the dwellers, or if they would be content draining them dry on the knowledge they had gathered.

A few hours later, Elsa returned to the room. Nobody had left it, despite the dinner being over since long. She looked shaken and defeated.

“Friends, I have some bad news. The queen has demanded we submit to her rule. As I think you can all agree, we don’t have a lot of choice in this. I will depart immediately, and I have no clue when I will be back. I’ve been allowed to bring a small guard with me, and I have their assurance that no harm will come to us as long as we peacefully submit.” Elsa’s words set the rest of the room into animated discussion.

“We have no time for debate”, Elsa cut them off. “Sort out the issue of leadership as you best see fit. I must leave now.”

Hanna stood up with sudden inspiration. “Let me come with you.”

Elsa looked at her with surprise. “You want to follow me? This could very well be rather dangerous”

Hanna smiled. “All the better. I think you’ll find that I can pull my own weight.”

“And what will Birgitta think when you don’t return?”

“I don’t know, send a messenger or something. She’ll understand. I want to see this kingdom for myself”

Elsa considered her proposal for a moment. “Deal. But you’ll need to keep quiet about not being one of us. There is no reason to pull anyone else into this mess.”

“That works for me”, Hanna conceded with a feeling of elation. The answers she had been looking for wouldn’t be found here, and the kingdom was her second-best chance at getting them. Following along with Elsa also meant that she finally got to learn a bit more of this world, and as much as she considered herself a countryside-girl, she longed for the pleasures of an actual city.

She and Elsa left the dinner and headed to the antechamber where the envoys waited along with the guards that would be following them on the trip.

“Are you ready?” A man asked with a sleazy voice as soon as they entered the room. He stood in stark contrast to everyone else, being the only one with actual colour on his clothes. Hanna had barely noticed before, but everyone she had met since waking up in the valley had been dressed in clothes that was uncoloured, shades of grey and brown being the only variation between garments. This man was wearing clothes that seemed to be made of cotton, and was uniformly a deep blue, with little details of gold here and there. Compared to her standards before she woke up in the valley, he didn’t look fancy at all. But here, where everyone was forced to dress in what was at hand or what was easy to repair, he looked practically royal.

The man noticed her gawking and gave her a look full of disdain.

“If your guards can tear themselves from my beautiful face and everyone is present, then I suggest we leave at once. The queen does not appreciate tardiness”.

Without waiting for an answer, he snapped some orders to his men and set off. Hanna noticed that a few of them made sure to walk behind them, boxing them in. All of the envoy’s guards were dressed in heavy plate, and every single one of them was equipped with swords and shields. They all stood straight and quiet, not moving at all unless they were specifically ordered to do so. The kingdom seemed to value discipline.

During the walk out into the ruins, Hanna spent her time thinking about how she would fight people with heavy armour. Anyone she had faced so far had been wearing none or very light armour, practically making it a non-issue. She wondered if she would be able to cut through the plate, or if she would be forced to target the few spots of their body that wasn’t plated. Hanna liked her brawn-based fighting style and didn’t like the prospect of having to actually look for weaknesses in her opponents. Maybe she should just get a weapon heavy enough to punch through the plate and be done with it?

The group reached ground-level and then kept walking for a couple of minutes in the ruins, until they reached an open area where a lot more guards were. Soldiers, Hanna corrected herself, seeing the ordered structure of their camp and the banners they were flying. This was an actual military unit with proper training, something Hanna hadn’t seen since before the valley. The whole reason that the village had come out alive from the fight with the Wolves were their inability to work as a cohesive unit. She highly doubted they would have fared as well against these guys.

With the village’s lack of horses, Hanna had been half expecting that they would be walking the entire distance, but to her delight she found that not only did the kingdom have horses, they even had carts that were pulled by them. The envoys return to the camp set the soldiers in a flurry of motions, and they dismantled the camp and loaded everything up on the carts with an efficiency that made Hanna nostalgic of her time in the army. It wasn’t long until Elsa, Hanna and the four guards that came with them was ordered into one of the carts. Elsa looked a bit bothered by the unfriendly attitude, but Hanna didn’t care and just planted her ass in the comfy seats of the carriage, thankful that she wouldn’t have to walk. Leaning back into her seat, Hanna breathed out with satisfaction. This is surely the transportation of the future.