Page 3 of Ragoru

Leaning forward from his own crouched position, he too drank deeply until he couldn’t possibly drink anymore and peered at the other male thoughtfully.

“I think we are far enough that the Shining Ones won’t bother with pursuit,” he observed out loud.

The other male nodded as he finished drinking and sat back on his haunches to breathe deeply. “They could set a hunting group on us still, but I think you are right. We have covered much ground.” He scratched behind one ear and grunted. “Where do you think we should go now?”

The corner of Thral’s mouth quirked. “We?”

His companion shrugged. “We are both alone. We will survive better with each other, at least until we are certain that we are free.”

Thral inclined his head in reluctant agreement and pushed to his feet. “Very well. Let’s find a comfortable spot to den down for the night. We will continue heading east in the morning.”

The other male nodded and stood as well. “That plan is as good as any other. I am Vrishna.”

“Thral.”

CHAPTER3

Evie scowled at the huntsman. The checkpoint itself was little more than a small cabin set up beside the road just large enough to house the small group of huntsmen stationed there. Just to the side of it was a pole with a red marker that extended across the road. It would have been easy enough to walk around it, but Evie made the decision to grin and bear it—a mistake since now her temperament was beginning to swing toward homicidal in response to the condescending attitude of the huntsman peering down at her.

He was the only one who had even bothered to leave the cabin. The others she could see through the window. Two sat at a table eating something, the smell of which made her stomach rumble, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since that morning, and a third reclined on the couch. Their full force was so obviously needed. She barely resisted rolling her eyes and instead focused on staring holes through the head of the man annoying the hell out of her.

She just barely kept herself from snarling when he looked up from his datapad, squinted at her, and then glanced back down at the pad. Even upside down, she could clearly see that the exploratory permit from the Citadel that she’d transferred to his device was sufficient. It had all the official signatures and electronic stamps required to give her access beyond the secured zones.

Blessed Mother, how much more verification does he need?

“As you can see, my permit is in order,” she pointed out, resisting the urge to grind her teeth as she spoke.

His eyes lifted to meet hers as a dismissive expression crossed his face. “So I see. It does not explain, however, what your business is beyond this secured zone.”

“Research of vital importance. As it says,” she replied blandly as she fought to hold onto her temper.

His lip curled. “Yes. Research. The problem is that permits to go beyond the secured zone are now required to be filed with the Order.”

Evie stared at him aghast. “Since when? We’ve always been able to move wherever the High Council deemed fit to send us. We aren’t even within the boundaries of the secured zone as it is. All of our important research takes place out here.”

His lips thinned, and he opened his mouth to argue but then paused, his hand going to his ear to his private comm speaker, his expression turning to a scowl as he listened to someone on the other end of the line—presumably within the station. His put-upon sigh irritated her, but to her relief he affirmed her passage on her permit and slapped his hand on the lock plate to retract the checkpoint marker from blocking the road. Stepping back, he waved her with a pinched expression.

“We are approving it—this time. I’m told to communicate to you that any further passes will have to be sent through the appropriate channels within the Order, and that you need to be aware that you will be going outside of our jurisdiction. If anything happens to you in the far northern territory, no one from the Order will come looking for you. The forest beyond this point holds nothing but death for a lone, untrained human.”

“Got it,” she replied, adjusting the weight of her pack.

She didn’t so much as give him a second glance as she hurried through the checkpoint, relieved to be on her way. The checkpoint was ridiculous anyway. This area looked no different and smelled no different than the one she’d just left. There was the same hum of insect life, and somewhere a few birds called to each other with their haunting songs. It was beautiful, and it certainly didn’t give her any sense of dread to have crossed into it.

The idea that she should be terrified of it as the huntsman suggested made her snicker quietly to herself as she hurried along the road. She was eager to make up the time she’d lost arguing with the huntsman and to put as much distance between herself and the checkpoint as soon as possible before someone in command changed their mind.

She shook her head. The inanity of it. That the High Council permitted the Order to regulate people’s movement in such a way beyond the obnoxious checkpoints disturbed her. She would be making a report of it as soon as she returned to her post. Although, by that time, they would probably already be aware. Still, putting her objection on file wouldn’t hurt. And she would be. The Order was directly interfering with The Science and Exploratory Department. It couldn’t stand.

In any case, they had to know that the so-called secured zones were arbitrary. Solum’s wildlife certainly didn’t conform to it. The huntsmen were constantly digging up the predatory plants that found their way into the zone with no one being the wiser until some unlucky person stumbled into its path. The sleep-bite insect, as they were popularly called, were another problem that regular spraying and planting of repellent plants barely kept in check. Thankfully, the bugs typically preferred very specific habitats and didn’t propagate in large numbers like the Old Earth mosquitos they vaguely resembled.

She didn’t worry too much about them. Not like she did the predatory plants that she had to keep a constant watch for when in the forests. The sleep-bite insects had bodies that were roughly equal to the length of her hand, even larger when including their wings. They were easy enough for her to see to kill one preemptively if it came near. Repellant made from the leaves of a certain plant that grew all over the planet also worked exceptionally well. They were more of a nuisance than anything else. Not like some of the local predators or even the wild pigs that went feral in the early days of Solum’s first colony city. The boars were the first of Earth-originating lifeforms to have mutated on Solum, and they had proven to be a danger for those cornered by them.

Nothing she couldn’t handle.

Worst case scenario, she had her solar-charged shock stick that would disable even the largest of animals on Solum if set to the appropriate setting. She certainly wasn’t worried about the Order refusing to come rescue her. She snorted quietly to herself, laughter threatening to bubble out, as the checkpoint finally disappeared behind the growth of the forest.

In fact, the northern route was about as quiet as she expected it to be. Many of the roads across the northern continent, outside the main lines running between the citadels, were as of yet unpaved. The slight kick of dust was normal, but the frequent rains cut down on that and offered a more packed surface for walking despite the lack of traffic over the years. The dense tree cover also blocked out the worst of the sun, lending a pleasant dappled light that was comfortable over hours of walking. The sun shifting over the forest gradually threw more and more of the road into deeper shadows, but she was accustomed to living and working in those forests and it lent a comfortable familiarity to the scenery.

After years living just beyond the northernmost edge of the secured zones, Evie had long determined that it was the most beautiful part of the continent. Each zone had its own distinct beauty. The forests thinned and the trees got larger and spaced farther apart in the midlands, and along the coastal regions where warmth and precipitation aided in their growth they bled out to rocky shores with stretches of purple and pink sands. Then there was the grassland belt that ran just below the midland forests that she found unnerving for its openness. Just below that lay the Great Desert, miles of sand dunes which were pretty in a stark sort of way. But the northern forests, as little actual ground as it covered beyond the northern route’s checkpoint, were pure chaos. They were lush with various plant life and cut with numerous rivers before it too would eventually yield to a great force—the Hyalee Mountains that bordered the arctic tundra.

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