The Outworlder

expressionless face and big, murderous eyes, who didn’t deign to speak with me.
The journey went without a hitch, but it was long and tedious, giving me more than enough time to ruminate. I tried to distract myself by reading or watching the news on my obsidian mirror, but all that everyone seemed to talk about was the rebellion on Maurir, so for most of the way I just stared out the window. The pink bushland of Sfal was easy to lose oneself in. The rocky desert of Kooine was slightly less so, but there we got to leave the train—since the tracks only laid between junction worlds—and cover remaining distance by bikes, which allowed me a different kind of distraction.
I thought I was getting used to people’s stares, but when we joined the rest of Mespana, my anxiety spiked again. Espa Solia was an ugly, swamp-covered world, refusing me even the small comfort of natural beauty. I was hoping we’d traverse it quickly, but after a few hours of trudging through the oily drizzle, we were told to set up camp. I hid in my tent and spent the evening chewing morosely on a raw rock apples.
The next day we traveled farther, to the spot where a group of sorcerers drew a diagram of gold-and-black lines. Above it, the air above rippled as if above fire. I’ve seen such an effect enough times to know what it was: a merge.
The path to Maurir stood open.

Chapter 2
I couldn’t stay in the camp. A shadow of guilt hung over me, as if the whole rebellion was somehow my fault. Although no one gave me a reason to feel this way, I guess it’s just that no one gave me a reason to feel different, either. Malyn Tol tried, but she was alone, and since she bestowed her motherly attention on everyone who seemed to need it, I found it hard to take her seriously.
So, I wandered across the hills surrounding the camp and tried to reconcile what I saw with what I knew about Maurir. It wasn’t a big world; if I sat on my bike and stuck to the sky-dome, circling it would take about twenty hours. It was also rather flat, so I could probably scout it from edge to edge with a spyglass. Even now, I noticed the glimmer of the three seas and the pale belt of desert snaking across the world. Aviga, the closest thing to a mountain, stuck out near the geographical center, no bigger than my thumb. The most interesting feature, though, was the sky, with a sun shaped like an arch running from one edge to the other. Despite its size, the land beneath was quite comfortable: warmer than Kooine, but still cooler than Sfal. Permeability, as I’ve been told. The size of the sun didn’t matter as much as the amount of Vhalfrlight it let through.
It’s only a shame that as far as I saw, the land beneath it was burned to the ground, with charred skeletons of farms and trees jutting out now and then. Only Montak Mansion, the biggest structure and the one taken over by the rebels, still stood, its walls darkened with soot and checkered black-and-white banners with green tridents hanging from the windows.
Last time I was here, Maurir was covered with a mosaic of blue bushland and fields of imported Tarvissian greens divided with irrigation channels and dotted with picturesque villages. It had been colonized by Tarvissian farmers, sometime after the rebellion on Nes Peridion liberated them from their old lords. People quickly cleared large areas of rubbery growth and planted their own crops. The world had rich animal life, full of small, slippery creatures with no bones but many tentacles. They were useless for keeping Tarvissian plants alive, though, so colonists had to bring over pollinators and worms to keep the ground aerated. I know because my father told me how in Nes Peridion they’d had to do the same.
It used to be a beautiful world, is what I’m saying. Now, the oppressive grays made me think of Sorox.
My eyes drifted toward the nearest burned farm, and I couldn’t help wondering what our house looked like. Was it burned down to prevent return? Were our zeeäths roaming free? Or still locked in their coop, left to die? Was the garden overgrown with weeds? No, it was too early. Still, I thought about all the effort I’d put into weeding it and fixing roofs after the last storm—all for naught.
A crunching sound snapped me to the present. I turned around to see Laik Var coming towards me with purpose, and I immediately looked away.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, stopping next to me. His eyes were redder than usual, and a veil of magic covered the lower part of his face.
“I’m fine,” I said mechanically.
His eyes fell on the farm below and a frown formed on his forehead. “It’s not too late,” he said quietly. “If you want to return to Sfal, the path is still open.”
I peered off to the side, imagining I could see the air rippling, though, at this distance, it was impossible.
“We had that conversation,” I replied, rubbing my forehead warily.
“I know. But it must be different… seeing with your own eyes.”
He had a point. Back in Sfal I was ready to do whatever it took to restore the peace, but now that I was here, my resolution was melting. What could I do about such destruction? Even if we were to defeat the rebels, what difference would it make if the entire colony was destroyed?
“It seems I have nowhere to go,” I replied, waving my hand toward the horizon. I think he wanted to say something else—it was hard to tell with his mouth covered—but I didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to ponder the alternatives. If there even were alternatives. So I changed the subject, “Do we know anything about the rebels?”
He shook his head. “No, not yet.