She looked at the throng of people, now interspersed with far too few white robes. It was all mostly green and gold. What was the poem that had green and gold in the line? She couldn’t remember it properly, only the lines, Green and gold, repeated. There’d been a knight and…and there was something off-putting to it, something that made her mistrust all those shining people. Green and Gold…but nothing good. “Do you have more people elsewhere?”


    “A few in the kitchens. A few more in the gardens, harvesting more than we can afford to feed the Earth’s representatives.” A sigh. “I shall have to petition the Earth for food again, this cycle. Which means I shall have to surrender yet more of this temple’s lands. And we do not have much.” Another of those long sighs. “I wish you could have come when this temple was in its prime. I was not living then, nor was my grandfather. But when the other Gods still valued their Father…”


    Hawk was pretty sure that Edgar Studdard was the “father” they were talking about. She didn’t have much empathy for the forgotten memory of a modern-day railroad baron. She just didn’t like the implication that Nasheth was Naomi, which meant the woman who had chained Hawk’s husband to the floor of the building just behind her was also the goddess this throng of gold-and-green were worshipping. That didn’t say much about her character.


    Gawain and the Green Knight, her mind kicked up, finally. The green-and-gold belonged to the titular knight. He had not been the good guy in the story. He also hadn’t been bad. In fact, the person she most wanted to compare the Green Knight to was the Archon beside her.


    “You’re helping me because you’re bored to tears.” She said.


    “And because I’ve made mistakes that have endangered you. I fix my errors, Hawk.” The mask bobbed as he looked her up and down. “The clothes I gave you will do, for now. I will task an acolyte to bring a message to your people. Do you know which Nexus they reside in?”


    “Whichever one leads to my world.” She said. “Which is a fancy way of saying ‘no’.”


    “A woman who claims to be from the God-world,” the Archon mused. “Who does not understand how enormous that claim is. I’m also helping because you’re amusing. There is another option, now that I think of it…we could simply tell the Earthmaster that you are from the God-world. That would certainly impact how this gathering will go.”


    She waited. He remained silent, watching her from the safety of his mask. After a few minutes of this, she said “And what would that do? For me?”


    “Likely, place you precisely where you do not wish to be: Directly before the Gods. After all, have They not always said their greatest goal was to return home?”


    And on that less-than-comforting note, the Archon turned away.


    The Archon told Hawk to go to the Temple’s kitchens and “help”, and he handed her off to a female acolyte in as few of the white robe layers as she could manage. This woman spoke just enough of their so-called Sacred Tongue to give Hawk a few bare orders—“go” and “Come” and “Bring that” seemed to make up most of the woman’s English vocabulary, and it was enough to make Hawk mindful of her actions. It’d be far too easy for one of them to do something to give the other offence, and until she was back at the geode…Nexus…thing with the rest of the team, she needed these people to help her.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    Following her helper’s abbreviated instructions, Hawk collected several canvas bags, obviously made to be thrown over an animal’s back. She’d seen huge creatures like over-grown Guinea pigs, and these strips of canvas would sit on their shoulders like a bookmark, so she assumed that they’d be riding something smaller, and hopefully more horse-like. Into these bags went travel rations. She’d expected something like bread and cheeses like Colby, possibly even something mystical and magical like elven bread. She seemed to have fallen into a medival world, after all.


    But she was handed several dozen paper wrapped…somethings. They were hard. They had some of the same marks you’d put on a cracker. She took a square of it and unwrapped the outer tissue paper, which had been oiled. She tried to break a piece off, and discovered that it would not break. She tapped it on the table, where it made a very hard knocking sound. Finally a vague childhood memory of history lessons coughed up the word hardtack. It was, she realized, the most profoundly perfect word in the English language, because it perfectly encapsulated the nature of these hard little edible rocks she was apparently meant to pack as provisions. She was also handed four net bags of small orange-adjacent fruit, and four water-skins, already full of water. Hawk thought, shit, because she didn’t know how to empty or, more importantly, how to fill the things. She was also handed a knapsack filled with white robes, chemises, and three extra pairs of shoes. These latter were simple wrap-around things that reminded Hawk a lot of the shoes the inhuman apes had worn, at the Bronx Zoo Event.


    Hardtack. Oranges. Water. A change of clothes. This was nothing at all like the insane pageantry of the green-and-golds. She was able to carry the knapsack, two of the packaged bundles of hardtack, and both of the orange sacks. Her helper carried the rest, and moved through the dark, back hallways of the Temple towards some unknowable goal. She followed, unable to do much more than that. The music of the green-and-golds was loud, even in here, and not entirely pleasant. Maybe it was just her Earth-centric ear, and this pocket universe had developed a taste for discordance. And she was going to be behind all that noise for god knew how long.


    They came out in what had to be the stables. It was a large, high ceilinged room made of yet more milk-crystal, divided by its main corridors into a cross-shape, the shortest arms being the entrance to the main Temple complex, which Hawk had yet to see, and the courtyard outside. At least, she assumed it was a courtyard. If you had stables, you had to have a way for the animals to get there.


    And the animals were what drew her eye, immediately.


    There were ten of them, and each was white, of course, without blemish or flaw or black spot. She thought they were rabbits, at first, albeit very large ones. Their heads were the most rabbit-like, with big doe eyes and buck teeth, and their ears were large, rabbit-shaped, and soft as velvet. She went near one to get a better look and was fixed by that large, brown gaze. Soft lips and a very pink nose sniffed at her, gummed her clothes. But up close she could see the lower anatomy was lean and long. Deer-like legs ended in soft paws, and the torso and hips were more horse-like than anything else. It had a rabbit’s tail, though, and a long neck that turned curiously with every noise. This was where her guide left her, to somehow saddle up these beautiful creatures when she didn’t even understand modern horse’s tack, let alone whatever these things would use.


    And she was alone, for the first time in two days.


    She lowered the bags to the ground, thought for a moment, and then took one of the water-skins with her, draped across her shoulder. Then Hawk closed her eyes and tried, very hard, to translate her memories of the Temple of Light into some kind of map. If she was right—and that was a very big if—she was near one of the pylons that lead to a Nexus. She could possibly climb that structure up to her people. But she’d have to move swiftly, before the Archon—either Archon, she amended, because the Earth-Archon would undoubtedly be keeping an eye out—came back to check on her.


    She walked swiftly to the rear door of the stable, where the silent rabbit-beasts watched her with interest, and examined it closely. It was, naturally, locked and barred. The bar was easy enough to lever upwards—“easy” if you could lift the hundred pound bar on your own, which she could, albeit just barely—but that left her with a locked door that she couldn’t guess how to pick.


    “Ahem,” a voice cleared itself from behind her. She turned. The Archon of Light had arrived at his stable.