Brigid Blackthorn had little memory of her time on Earth before she and her mother had found their way back home. The one thing she remembered was how much brighter everything was. The electric lights of the city made it almost daytime all the time. Even though the Druids of Lakinos could craft magical lights and make them dance in the air, none of them were as powerful as the streetlights of Earth. Now, for the first time in nearly two decades, she got to experience what was under those lights. She didn’t like it very much.

  Nothing about Las Vegas felt at all natural. She and Nathan had walked past an endless stream of restaurants, billboard advertisements and automated casinos. The whole thing was automated, with barely a human running anything. The streets were absolutely packed despite it being the middle of the night, but from the sheer strength of the streetlights it was hard to tell. Nathan had said that nighttime would be the best time for them to move out, and much to Brigid’s surprise, he was right.

  They’d both changed since leaving the hotel. Nathan’s hair and beard were properly trimmed for the first time in years, and he’d dropped the cloak for a relatively simple dark shirt and tie. It looked out of place in the heat, but he couldn’t exactly show much skin in his current state. Brigid had changed into a summer dress that had a flower pattern around the hem of the skirt, with a denim jacket on top. It was not exactly practical if they got in a fight, but she preferred something that at least mimicked her traditional Druid garb even if it would look out of place here. As much as she hated the place, she kept up a constant smile for the onlookers, mostly to draw them away from the fact she had pointed ears.

  “Where are we even going?” Brigid asked him. “Are we going out for a meal? I’m still starving.”

  “How?” He asked. “You ate everything on the hotel’s menu.”

  He didn’t look at her when he talked. He was constantly scanning the crowd, endlessly paranoid about being in a city Kable had such a tight grip on. Ironically, despite her elvish heritage, Brigid probably knew more about this Earth than he did. The technology was unusual, akin to the things he’d seen on Kezodora. They’d grown so much in the fifty years he’d been gone.

  “I’ve been in that weird dream place for a year,” she said back, eyeing up a cotton candy stall, “of course I’d be hungry.”

  “I need to buy some supplies for the road. You can get something to eat then.”

  “For the road? We’re going already?”

  “Yes. To Avalon.”

  Brigid’s constant smile faltered for a second. “I didn’t think we’d be going so soon. There’s nothing else we need to prepare?”

  “Best case scenario: we get the jump on Kable and end this there and then. If things go south, we get James and get out. The longer we wait, the more danger James is in.”

  “James…” She thought about him a few times since coming back to Earth. Nathan had so much faith in James, but she couldn’t work out why. He seemed perfectly normal to her, but he just met Nathan’s criteria to be chosen as the Hero of Sable, and since then Nathan had been focused on him.

  “What about the person who awakened the Armoury?” She asked. “Why can’t we find them?”

  “I can’t have another bear this burden,” he replied. “She wouldn’t be able to sacrifice what she needs to.”

  “She?” Brigid repeated, “Do you know who it is?”

  “Not…entirely,” he replied, refusing to elaborate further. The two remained in silence for a while. Then, he looked her in the eyes for the first time since they left the hotel. “I’ve never been to Avalon before. It wasn’t built when I was on Earth. Is it…nice?”

  “The city wasn’t built much when I was there,” Brigid replied. “It was just the tower and homes for the people who worked there. It kept getting bigger, but the bigger it got the less I liked it.”

  The two walked down a side street, still busy, but calm by Las Vegas standards. Brigid looked up to the sky, smiling.

  “There was this wood me and mum used to play in. She made it just for us, so I could explore and she could teach me all about how to be a Druid, and how Kable saved everyone back home. She called it Little Lakinos. The city kept feeling more and more soulless as it was built up…but I loved that place. I wonder if it’s still there.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Nathan sighed. He didn’t want to get her hopes up.

  “If the ‘best case scenario’ does happen,” she continued, “will I have to fight Kable too?”

  Nathan put a hand on her shoulder.

  “If you can’t, I understand,” he said, “If everything goes to plan, you won’t have to fight him at all. I’d always like some help, but I know what he means to you.”

  Brigid looked away, old memories resurfacing.

  “I…just remember him being kind to us. He built Avalon for us. Was I wrong? Was everything I remembered lies?”

  “Maybe it is, but I can’t change your memories. I can’t change the fact he's your father.”

  She wiped a tear from her cheek and looked up. “I think I can fight if I have to.”

  Nathan smiled. “Good. Now let’s get out of this damn city.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “If hotels still accept gold bars, car dealerships do too.”

  >>>

  “What do you mean you don’t accept gold bars?” Nathan growled.

  “I-I’m sorry,” the dealer said, “gold bars or not, you don’t have a driver's licence and you don’t have insurance!”

  Brigid was still examining the motorcycle Nathan was trying to buy. It was a sleek thing, parts of it so thin that she wasn’t sure there was any mechanism behind it.

  “I don’t need that to just buy the thing, right?” Nathan asked, a little nicer. “What if I’m giving it as…a present?”

  “When was the last time you brought a car?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady! I don’t need to be told how to buy a car!”

  Both of them paused for a second.

  “I bought my last car in 1985.”

  She smiled. “Fair enough. A lot of laws were changed in the past 10 years to make tracking road vehicles easier. Even then, you still probably needed insurance back then, right?”

  “I…don’t remember. I didn’t drive that car much.”

  “Why?”

  “Interdimensional Bleed.”

  “What?”

  Brigid walked over to the dealer, smiling. “Hey, I’m buying the motorcycle instead. I got my papers here!”

  She used what illusion magic she was capable of to make a fake driving licence and insurance papers. The saleswoman narrowed her eyes at them.

  “Why is the driving licence bright red?” She asked.

  “It’s custom made!” Brigid replied.

  “Oh. Never seen a custom made driving lice-“

  “Well, as you can see,” she put her arm on the gold bar and smiled broadly, “I’m kinda rich.”

  “What language are these papers in?”

  “Elvish.”

  “What?”

  “Spanish, I meant Spanish.”

  The dealer sighed heavily. “Fine, take the bike.” She handed the keys over to them and pulled the gold bar behind the desk. “Top button is lock, second is unlock, bottom automatically summons the bike to your position. The bike automatically starts when the key is nearby.”

  “These are a lot more advanced than they used to be,” Nathan said. “Thank you for this.”

  She shrugged. “You probably would have robbed me if I said no.”

  “We wouldn’t ha-“

  “If I get fired for this, I don’t care, I wanna quit anyway. Might as well do it with a gold bar in my pocket.”

  Nathan smiled. “Glad to hear some things haven’t changed while I’ve been gone. We’ll take the window then.”

  “Sure.”

  Nathan got onto the bike, Brigid sitting behind him.

  “This is kind of uncomfortable in a dress,” Brigid admitted.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Nathan said. He revved the bike, spun it around, and sent the bike hurtling through the nearest window. People walking outside scattered to dodge the bike as Nathan tried to get it under control.

  “Sorry!” He shouted. “Been a few years!”

  Brigid turned to see an angry looking man run out of a door in the back of the showroom. He shouted some obscenities at the woman on the desk, who calmly left a note of resignation and her jacket on the desk and effortlessly walked out of the broken window with the gold bar, completely unfazed.

  It wasn’t long before Nathan and Brigid had left the dealership behind them and were onto the Las Vegas Strip, weaving in and out of traffic. Nathan was going a little slower than he should have been, muscle memory kicking in after years away from any sort of motor vehicle, and being caught off guard by the punch these new engines could pack.

  Brigid couldn’t wait to get out onto the open desert. The wilds suited her better than the lights of this world, anyway.