Kady looked around, mouth twisted into a grimace of disgust. She’d been forced to wade around the woods before, and would have liked to never be again. Especially not suddenly.
“What the fuck?!” There was a guy standing nearby. “Yo, what the fuck?”
Dimitri sighed. This had happened before but he’d been dumped on an island with no way back. At least this time it was just the jungle. As if that helped. They were still stuck. He turned to look at the young woman who apparently was his partner in getting home and shrugged. “This has happened before. Atlantis likes to dump us in remote places and we have to figure out how to get back without guidance.”
Kady rolled her eyes at the very idea of this shitty exercise, but on the other hand she could see how it might be a valuable experience… if you squinted. She eyed the other guy. “You sound kinda bored, this can’t be that bad. Everything looks roughly the same, though. I don’t ev-”
She slapped at her itching neck, coming away with a mosquito of some sort smashed against her palm. “Fuck. This better not be riddled with some disease. Okay, so, I do magic, what do you do?”
“I’m a Guardian in my world. I protect mortal vampires from the undead blood sucking ones. Here I’m the the lead combat trainer. Dimitri Belikov,” he stuck his phone in his pocket after texting Rose and looked at her. “I don’t think the mosquitos carry anything. If you can do magic, can you find out where we are? If we know that maybe we can find a path.” He wasn’t particularly worried, these kinds of things usually didn’t last that long but he didn’t like them because he knew Rose would be worried if she woke up and he was gone.
“Huh. I thought there was only the undead kind. I’m Kady. And uh…” Kady moved her hands in a series of probably weird motions as she murmured something; she closed her eyes for a moment, then turned and pointed towards a group of trees that didn’t really look all that different from the rest. “That’s North. Does that help?”
Dimitri watched her and raised an eyebrow. “Ah you’re one of the magicians! Now I know who you are. You’re a trainer too aren’t you?” He had seen her on base and had asked who she was but he hadn’t made the connection until now. “But yes in my world we have vampires who are born, not made and they eat food and don’t require much blood. We also have the kind who are undead and that’s who my kind fights against.” He didn’t want to go into the fact that he wasn’t actually human but he didn’t figure it would bother Kady since she had magical powers.
“Yes, that does help. So we know which way is North. Can you do something that will point directly to the city?”
“Yeah, magician trainer. Didn’t know we were known.” She didn’t apologize for not knowing the guy at all. “Cool. Never met a lot of vampires. Or, I mean, I didn’t ask about the complexities of their whole thing anyway.”
Kady let out another belabored exhaled and shrugged. She couldn’t remember the last time she had levitated, but if it was innate enough to happen during sex, then it was a piece of cake to recall. She focused on feeling light as a feather but not light enough to float around aimlessly. With her head only slightly above the treeline, Kady could more or less see where the most buildings seemed to congregate. Kady pointed Northwest. “That way’s the city but the lake’s kind of in the way so we need to correct if we get there. Is it cool to rip out trees on the way as markers? Otherwise we’ll get lost again real quick.”
“As lead combat trainer, I have to keep an eye on who shows up,” he explained. “And I read the network like everyone else so I knew that there were a group of you who knew each other.” Part of being a Guardian was being observant and watching the network for new arrivals was part of that. There was always a chance that someone unwelcome could show up from their world or any world for that matter and he wanted to be prepared.
Dimitri had expected a spell, not levitation and he tried to hide his surprise. It was impressive and she got the information they needed. “Sure, I don’t see why not. I’m sure they’ll grow right back. Nothing much surprises me about the geography of this place.”
Evidently, Kady needed to keep a better eye on things around herself. Maybe later. For right now she nodded to the combat trainer, and went about her business. If the man was impressed or surprised, she didn’t notice. Levitation wasn’t exactly unique, lots of physical kids could do it.
“Okay.” That was the response she needed. As Kady started towards the direction she had pointed out, she used telekinesis to at least topple some branches if not a whole tree. Kind of like a trail of crumbs, but more violent. “We keep doing this exactly in the direction I said and we won’t get lost. I guess. Honestly pathfinding isn’t exactly my sphere.”
“I’m good at tracking so if you eyed the edge of the woods, we should be fine. I’ve been in here a good bit but after a while it all starts to look the same.” Dimitri was used to hunting things that were alive and left a trail but he was good with landmarks and Kady seemed to know what she was doing. “The fact that you can knock over trees like that is good. We should get out of here pretty fast.”
“Okay, uh, keep your feet aiming in that direction.” Kady advised, pointing to where she saw the edge of the woods. She wasn’t sure she could keep up the tree killing too long, but branches weren’t so hard, and as long as she kept it up with taller, thinner trees it would be okay. It still took some time, and some energy. Kady wished she had water.
“Um, yeah, telekinesis is sort of my thing.” There was a number of things she could try, including a sort of wisp kind of thing to guide them to a fixed point, but that would work better in darkness anyway. She knocked over a tree, set it across their path, then hopped over it. “You okay just knowing which way is north? I can try to conjure up a marker but it’ll get annoying out the corner of your eye the entire time.”
It wouldn’t be a whole day type of thing, at least.
“We’re not all that far from the edge,” he said. “I’m starting to recognize a few things. I know that doesn’t make sense but we’re nearly there. Maybe you should rest for a bit. I can get us out now that I can sense the trail.” Dimitri didn’t know a great deal about magic other than Moroi magic and he didn’t know anyone who was telekinetic but he knew that it had to take a lot of energy.
It wasn’t too much longer until it was easier to see light and they turned a corner, finding the edge of the woods. “Looks like we made it,” he observed and gave Kady a smile. “I wonder how many other people Atlantis dumped in there. It’s never just one or two. They seem to think the more, the merrier.”
Kady’s brown furrowed in doubt when Dimitri stated he knew they were almost out; to her, this all looked exactly the same still. But he won out due to seniority in general and because he had said he’d been here before. Once he gave her the option to rest, Kady shrugged and lowered her hands, dropping the last branch on their path before stepping over it again. It was good that they had kept moving while figuring things out, too.
She saw the light not too long after he did and returned Dimitri’s smile with a hint of self-pride. It wasn’t every day she managed not to be a total fuck up despite her considerable skill. Or maybe because of it.
“I don’t know, but I think this is better than a huge group. You can never get anything properly done in a huge group of quasi-strangers, then egos start mattering more than logic…” Kady rolled her eyes as she turned back and stepped through the ever less dense forest until finally she squeezed between two trees onto a spot where the terrain changed almost drastically. “And straight on ‘til morning, I guess. Man, this place is fucking weird…”