"Come on!" she shouted."Come on!" she shouted. I wheeled Smoke around. He argued, but fuck him, I pushed him on and chased after her. She stopped in front of the house, and without bothering to tether Lab, ran inside. I was right behind her when she came out of her rooms and headed up the spinward corridor at full tilt. I was sure she was going to run headlong into the wall when she vanished! The wall! The wall was the house's goddamned stepping disk! I ran after her, and came wheeling to a stop on water. A waterborne stepping disk, in a pond. I was impressed. Whoever built this one was good. When it was active, you could walk on the water of this small pond. The area of the disk was defined by a glowing, blue-white pentacle, the apex of which just touched a flat stone on the edge of the pond. Brieanna was already running for the rim, and at the edge were two Centaurs and two horses. She ran for one of the horses, she said something in to the Centaurs, who left the other horse and followed her as she began riding hard out of sight, the two Centaurs following. I hadn't recognized the Centaurs, but that's not surprising, the population of Centaurs had shot up beyond fifteen thousand. I ran for the other horse, untethered it, and followed the trail. It was a long ride, and at a trot it was quite a while. Like most Pendorian towns, it had followed the tradition of putting the stepping disk thirty kilometers from the center of town. When I got to town, I realized that we were nowhere I'd ever been before, but I thought I'd been to most of the established area of Pendor. |