Katya stepped through the portal and found herself in a much dimmer location, surrounded by trees. Immediately in front of her was a short spire of crystal; it looked like a miniature City Crystal, but this didn’t look like any city she’d ever been in. Perhaps that was why Serenity didn’t know of any teleport locations on his planet; maybe they’d been damaged?

Where was Serenity? She hadn’t taken that long to say goodbye to Hale; he should be right in front of her.

“Pmg ffn snn, qsim? Qiv wnv dcd adm mwws?” A completely unintelligible man’s voice startled Katya. She turned to see a man dressed in an odd but wealthy-looking outfit; strongly dyed blue pants and a shirt that was an actual white except for an extremely colorful pattern on the front. She hadn’t ever seen anything with such distinctly separated colors that was all one piece, but it didn’t seem to be sewed together at the lines between the colors. Katya could only assume that the dye had been anchored in place with some sort of specialized magic; whatever it was, it was surely expensive.

Even odder was his apparent lack of weapons. This must be a relatively safe place to not show arms. Maybe it was common for Serenity’s people to put up weapons when in public? He’d kept his weapons in his belt where they weren’t visible; Katya had assumed that was due to how large they were, but maybe it was considered polite?

The man was human, but then, Serenity was half-human. Katya hadn’t asked where he’d been raised; she’d learned better than to push for history people didn’t want to share.

“I’m looking for Serenity. He was right in front of me, do you know where he went?”

The man looked puzzled. “Mmax wb Serenity. Snn msas wi hwjs bvjn h’f xsdwwa, ch dgz?”

Katya had no idea what language the man was speaking, but he didn’t seem to know Bridge. She doubted he’d know any of the other languages she did if he didn’t know Bridge; who didn’t learn Bridge?

The man turned away from her and shouted something. The only word she caught was “Serenity”. He didn’t seem hostile, at least. Where had Serenity vanished to?

Katya heard another voice; this one sounded like a young girl, but Katya couldn’t find her immediately. The man and the girl called back and forth a few times before Katya realized the second voice was coming from above her.

When she looked up, she realized the trees were even larger than she’d originally thought and there were camouflaged structures hidden between the branches. The man had snuck up on her by climbing down from above.

She’d been told she needed to look up more than once. Apparently she’d made the same mistake again.

The man said something else unintelligible, then gestured for her to follow him and started climbing up one of the rope ladders. How were they going to talk without a common language?

When she got to the top of the rope ladder, the man led her into the building; it was surprisingly comfortable inside, with brightly-colored cushions spread all over the polished wood floor. The only person in the room was a girl sitting in a pile of cushions. “Vtej ww! Mhm igbb, kisa tx dcd.”

From her gestures, Katya gathered that she was supposed to get her own pile of cushions and sit down. Once she had, the girl pointed to herself and said “Echo.” She then pointed to the man and said “Doyle”. When she pointed at Katya, she didn’t say anything.

It took a few repetitions for Katya to figure out that “Echo” was asking for her name.

This was going to take a while.

Serenity and Raz waited for more than an hour for Katya, but she didn’t show up. Raz didn’t have any spells that would help find her; Serenity could probably build one, but unless she was very close, it would take a ritual. It would have to wait.

A few vehicles had driven past while they waited; Serenity suspected the people driving hadn’t paid any attention to who was on the sidewalk, since no one had stopped to stare or talk. At least, no one had called the police - or if they had, it wasn’t believed.

They needed to find out where they were. That meant asking someone, and Serenity decided he’d better look as nonthreatening as possible. Being mistaken for an invader would be bad, and even though he knew the Sterath didn’t look like him or Raz, he couldn’t count on other people knowing that.

He pulled his cloak over his wings and concentrated on the cloak’s ability - the one he hadn’t used yet. Minor Disguise wasn’t much, but it was enough that he could make the armor he was wearing look like everyday clothing. He went for jeans and a long-sleeved shirt; anything short-sleeved would reveal his scales, and hiding them seemed like a good idea.

It was too bad that he couldn’t hide his wings better than wrapping them around himself and covering them with a cloak, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. He tried to make the cloak look like a puffy coat; hopefully, that would make his wings less obvious. He couldn’t do anything about his hair, horns, eyes, or claws. He’d want to get some sunglasses when he could, and a hat of some sort. For now, he’d just have to hope people assumed he dyed his hair and painted his nails. The horns were short enough; people might miss them.

It was too bad there wasn’t a way to make Raz blend in more, but hopefully being with Serenity would be good enough.

Either direction was functionally equivalent to the other without more information, so Serenity picked a direction.

When they came to a cross street, Serenity looked both ways and saw a car approaching slowly. Serenity checked and found that the vehicle was coming up on a stop sign; that seemed convenient. He headed over to the car.

Serenity slowed down after a few steps. He could hear the car trying to talk to him, both as a single entity and as all of the components that made up a car. It was loud, but all he could make out was static. His head pounded as he tried to push the noise away from himself.

The person inside was a woman with short hair; she didn’t seem to notice Serenity until he was well into the lane next to her. When she did look up, she braked as she turned to look at Serenity and cracked the window open.

Serenity approached slowly. “We’re lost. Can you tell me where we are?”

“Corner of 5th and Mimosa.” She seemed like she wanted to say something more, but she didn’t.

That didn’t help at all. “I’m not sure what that means. Uh, where’s the nearest Metro stop?” If he was right and they were near DC, there would probably be a Metro stop nearby.

“Oh, go back that way, I think it’s two or three blocks, turn left, it’s another couple blocks past the turn.”

“Thanks.” As Serenity nodded, she rolled up the window and headed forward.

Serenity’s headache improved as she got farther away, but his head still ached. He sat down on a curb to give himself a moment to recover. He wasn’t sure if his healing was helping or not; he wasn’t actually being hurt by the noise, after all; it was simply overwhelming and made it hard to think.

“This place is strange.” Raz sat down beside Serenity.

Serenity rubbed his forehead. It wasn’t exactly pain; it was more like being overwhelmed than being hurt. Still, all he wanted for a moment was to hide in a dark, quiet room with nothing - especially no electronics - and no-one near him.

Not that a dark room would actually help.

“Strange? What do you mean?” Serenity turned to Raz.

“You have these wide streets built for vehicles instead of people, yet you space everything out so far. Why not put everything closer and say no vehicles? That is what Stallet did. I don’t understand how those who cannot afford a carpet can manage with everything so spread out. Or do each of these homeplaces include their garden and work area. Even then it seems spread out, but that might work.” Raz seemed to be trying to measure the homes with his eyes.

Serenity laughed and forgot about his headache for a moment. “No, these are all homes. Most of them won’t have gardens, and even the ones that do won’t be intended to be the majority source of food. If you can afford one of these homes, you can afford a car or you won’t buy here. As for what other people do, let me introduce you to mass transit.” Serenity hopped up and headed in the direction the woman in the car had indicated. His head was feeling better, though he still noticed a pressure from outside.

If only he could turn this thing off.

As Serenity led Raz past the houses and followed the directions, he wished he’d thought to ask which station it was. He didn’t have any money, unless someone was willing to trade cores or Etherium for dollars. Still, even with the weariness from being in a lower-magic area than he was comfortable in, he and Raz could walk a long way if they had to.

The directions weren’t great, but they were good enough. The woman in the car had gotten the turn correct; the station was simply several blocks farther than she’d guessed. As they came up on it, it looked oddly familiar to Serenity. At first he thought it was the generic familiarity of having been through a lot of Metro stations over the years, but as they got closer, Serenity realized that he knew where the entrance to the station was from the parking lot.

He turned and saw the parking garage across the parking lot from the entrance, exactly where he expected it. Most of the trees were even where he expected them, though they were bigger than he remembered. It had been years.

This was the station closest to Brandon’s house, back before his family moved away. Thomas had spent a lot of time walking between the Metro and Brandon’s house. He knew where he was.

Now if only he could figure out how to turn that knowledge into a route home. He’d never walked or bicycled to Brandon’s house from his own; it was too far and he’d always taken the Metro. Brandon had moved away before Thomas learned to drive, so that didn’t help either. He knew he needed to go west, but how far west, and was it north or south?

No, he was overthinking it. He needed to get across the river if he wanted to get to his parents’ house. That meant using the metro or finding a bridge. There were only so many bridges; he ought to be able to find his way home from them.

He looked over the station. The parking lot wasn’t full, but there were a lot of cars in it and not many people moving around. It was probably during the day on a weekday.

It was good to know that things were still somewhat normal, despite the Tutorial and the invasions. People weren’t hiding at home yet; they were going about their ordinary lives. Serenity wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing in terms of his reaching home. Fewer people meant less of a chance for panic, but it also meant that his chances to find someone who would trade money for cores would be lower.

Traveling the Metro without being able to see would be difficult; Raz could see, but he couldn’t read a subway map, so that didn’t help. Still, the trains did announce which line they were as well as stops and direction; he could probably manage it. It was worth a try; if it worked, it’d be much faster than walking. If it didn’t, well, they could walk.