As the woman walked out of the trees, the boys froze.

  What they were seeing wasn't human, or at least, not entirely. Lee recognised her race immediately, but the reality of it didn't make sense. Cat girls weren't supposed to exist. Looking to his side he saw the others stop just as he had, Parmo trying his best to edge closer to Liam, Ste raising his knife, just slightly.

  The woman stood there watching them. She raised her hands slowly, palms open. She stopped about ten metres away, close enough to talk without shouting but still far enough that she wasn't threatening. "My name is Shai," she said. Her voice was calm and steady. "I'm the guard captain from my village. I was out scouting in the forest here and I saw your fight with the goblin. Are you five from that town over there?"

  She waited for a response, curiosity clear on her face.

  The boys exchanged glances. Liam's eyes flicked to Paul, then to Ste. When they made no sign of answering, he shrugged and looked back at the woman. "Yeah, we're from the town. I'm Liam." He paused, then added, "We were out practising when that goblin rushed us from the trees. None of us have ever seen anything like that before." He glanced at Lee, then back at Shai. "Well, if you don't count anime."

  Shai tilted her head. "Anime?" The word clearly meant nothing to her but the way her ears twitched as she heard it and how her swaying tail sped up, she clearly wanted to figure it out.

  Ste lowered his knife. He still held it at his side, ready for use however he didn't get the same sense of danger from Shai as he had from the goblin. He watched her as she glanced over each of them, her soft eyes and the brief look of concern a hint of what she was thinking. She spoke again.

  "It's obvious you weren't expecting the goblin or the fact you needed to kill it to protect yourselves. You don't need to feel like you've made some horrible decision or taken the life of another person. That isn't the case at all. What you did is no different from defending yourselves from a wild animal attack. If anything it's not even that—a wild animal may try to kill you for food but a goblin won't need a reason. They're malicious and kill for the thrill of it. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. They're a pest that needs wiping out for the safety of everyone. You did a good thing so be proud of yourselves. If that goblin got inside your town, I'm willing to bet there are children in there, right? Think of what you just stopped from happening."

  Paul's whole body went slack while the colour came back to the rest of their faces, the clammy pallor leaving them along with some of the guilt they had been feeling. They may not have fully believed her but someone telling them they hadn't just murdered someone was enough to give them a small measure of relief.

  Ste spoke up. "So, you were out here scouting? Are you from nearby or something?"

  "That's right. I occasionally scout for my village," Shai said. "I was sent here when your town was discovered since it hadn't been here a week ago. It became a priority to understand what happened and who you are. That's why I was here."

  She paused, her golden eyes moving across all of them again.

  "How can you not know about goblins or the beast-kin? Goblins are known throughout the kingdom, them being seen around the Wilds is a common occurrence. And beast-kin are even more common. You will find them in most human towns so it would be stranger not to know about beast-kin than goblins."

  The boys' eyes widened. Parmo's mouth opened slightly. Lee glanced at the others then back at Shai.

  "Wait, what?" Paul said.

  "Yeah, beast-kin might not make up the majority of the empire or have any say in its rules—that would probably make a lot of people's lives easier—but there are still a lot of them. Not just in the empire either. My people can be found all over or at least that's what I've heard."

  Lee took a breath. "We don't know. Just over a week ago we were living life as we always have. We went to the pub for a get together and the sky started to flicker. Everyone's phones died, most of the electric cut off. Then we all got hit by this weird mental pain and a floating screen appeared in front of us. Since then, things have only gotten weirder."

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  He shifted slightly, looking just over her head so their eyes didn't meet. "The screen's still there. We can dismiss it whenever we want, but it's always available. It's changed things for us. Improved us and let us use magic. I don't even know how to explain what it actually is."

  Shai's tail froze and her expression shifted slightly. She was quiet for a moment, processing what he'd said.

  "Okay, first of all that sounds terrifying. I can see why you all seem so stressed and out of sorts." She waited, letting that settle before continuing. "This world is known as Valoris. You're currently on the Aeloria continent and on the border of the Boundborn Empire, a human kingdom. Does any of that sound familiar?"

  Parmo spoke up. "We're from a world called Earth and a country called England. Like Lee said we were at the pub when all of this kicked off. Whatever brought us here more or less ripped up the part of town we were in and dropped us here. You see the street and the barricade over there? That used to keep going, with more houses and stuff. The town is way bigger than what you see here but most of it got left behind."

  Parmo's words hung in the air for a moment. The implication of what he'd said seemed to take a beat to settle on Shai.

  "A different world," she said quietly. "You're saying your town came from a different world entirely."

  "Yeah," Parmo said. "We don't know how or why. We didn't feel anything when it happened, like no earthquake or anything that would give us some sense of movement. One moment everything was normal, the next the sky went white and apparently we ended up here."

  Shai remained quiet for a moment. Her ears flicked forward as she assessed. "How is that possible?"

  "We don't know," Lee said. "We've been trying to figure it out since it happened."

  Shai was quiet for a moment. Her eyes moved to the barricade, to the street beyond, calculating.

  "That would explain the strange damage to the edge of town. Is your town more advanced than others of its size?" she asked. "When I was scouting, I saw things I've never encountered before. The glass, the roads. Structures and materials that I don't think exist here."

  The boys exchanged glances.

  "Our town's actually somewhat behind the times," Liam said. "Our country's government doesn't really care about us or our region. All the funding goes to the capital in the south and other regions."

  Paul nodded. "Yeah, we're not really a priority."

  Shai nodded slowly. "I can understand that. The core of the empire is very much nobles first, other humans second. Other races are allowed in their towns and cities, but they aren't protected at all." She paused, her ears flattened slightly against her hair whilst the tip of her tail flicked sharply. "Some nobles will snatch a pretty beast-kin woman off the street and enslave her. That is their right, according to them. They keep us as pets or force us to fight in their arenas for sport. It's why so many of my kind either travel in groups in the core or have moved to the border regions. It's safer close to the Wilds where monsters are at least obvious at first glance."

  The boys went very still.

  "They can just... take someone?" Lee said. "In broad daylight?"

  "And no one stops them?" Paul's voice sounded incredulous, anger starting to build. "That's fucking ridiculous!"

  "The law protects nobles," Shai said simply. "Not us."

  Liam shook his head. "In England, if someone enslaved another person, they'd go to prison. Life, probably. It's one of the worst things you can do. Sure the whole one rule for them and one rule for everyone else is a thing for the rich but slavery? Never."

  Ste looked at the others, then back at Shai. "Where we're from on Earth we have none of this. No nobles, slavery or monsters. No races beyond humans and animals like cows, dogs, stuff like that. No magic."

  "Wait, hang on a second. You said there's no magic in your world? How can that be? I saw you casting magic before the goblin attack." asked Shai. "Also how can your world have no other races? Did the humans wipe them out in your world's history?"

  Lee spoke up again. "As far as we know, there have never been other humanoid races on Earth besides humans. Well, we had Neanderthals, I suppose you could consider them a different species of human, but they went extinct tens of thousands of years ago." He continued. "We have myths from our history of other races. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Dragons, that sort of thing, but there has never been any evidence of them being real. More folktales that have evolved over time."

  Lee took a breath and looked around. None of the others looked like they wanted to add anything so he kept going. "As far as the magic we were doing earlier, the screen we talked about—we call it the UI—mentioned it, so we thought we'd try to figure it out. It worked, it's obviously not very good at the minute but that's why we were out here practising."

  Shai's ears flicked forward. "Those other races you mentioned—all of them exist here. Do Elves have long ears and are beautiful? Do Orcs often have green skin and are well muscled? If so then the same creatures from your myths exist here. They always have." She paused, her tail swaying slowly behind her. "That's not a coincidence."