It felt like they'd traveled miles, but it had only taken a few more minutes to reach Cinza's little enclave. As Rachel emerged through the trees, she had to shade her eyes from the burst of sunlight through the open air. She surveyed the place in awe, as she hadn't expected such a cultivated and developed home for Cinza and her followers.
There were a couple small cabins, made of the same wood as the forest, sitting at the far end, while scattered tents dotted around the rest of the wide expanse lay at the points of what Rachel realized to be the same eight-pointed star symbol as the book, and as Cinza wore around her neck. The logs for the cabins looked too natural somehow, and Rachel suspected they'd been placed there with magical means. However, it was the centerpiece of the domain which really caught her attention.
There were rows of plants in the center of the clearing, alongside a stream that crossed through from one end to the other, providing a gentle backdrop of trickling water to the birdsong and other sounds of the forest around them. A few people were crouched amongst the field, checking plants and pulling up those that were ready to harvest.
Cinza herself was among them. It was one of the few times Rachel had ever seen her without her robes. Instead, she was dressed in jeans and a light t-shirt, though her charms and necklaces still shone and glittered off the caught sunlight. She had soil caking her hands and knees and sweat clear on her brow, but the girl looked quite satisfied. All in all, it looked like a productive and perfectly ordinary farm—except that it should have been impossible.
After realizing they were under siege, Rachel had done a bit of research into ways to sustain themselves cut off from the world. From what she had read, a farm in such conditions as these—a thick forest full of competitive plants, relatively low temperatures and much less direct sunlight available due to the canopy of branches and leaves—should not have been remotely successful. Yet as Rachel watched, one of Cinza's companions pulled up several large healthy harvests and carried them away to be stored. Cinza herself was still busy working the field while Rachel approached, and Rachel could tell she was being deliberately ignored for effect. She sat down on a nearby folding chair, curious to see what the girl had to show off.
Cinza knelt back on her feet and closed her eyes. Her small hands clenched hard as she exerted herself, drawing some form of energy out into the surroundings. Rachel wished she could see magic in action as Will could, but her ability to view connections only extended to relationships and emotional reactions, and she doubted Cinza would reveal her secrets willingly. Instead, she had to guess at what the girl might be doing while she sat in what looked like deep, intense prayer.
A ray of sunlight shot down from the canopy, visible through the particles in the air. It looked as though it were bending in midair as it landed on the plants, lighting them up where before they had been in shadow. Cinza's eyes remained closed, and the light intensity increased. The plants before her, which she had just laid in the ground and buried only moments before, sprouted immediately. It was as though someone had sped up a video in front of Cinza, watching the leaves and stem poke out of the soil and reach for the lifegiving sunlight. A moment later, however, Cinza opened her eyes and the growth came to a halt as quickly as it had begun.
She let out a deep breath, then finally looked up to Rachel with a knowing smile. Her large, dark eyes sparkled with mischief, as if Cinza were a child doing something wrong, but knowing she was going to get away with it. "What do you think?"
"I get the wave redirection, but how do you manage to speed it up?" Rachel asked, leaning forward.
"Now, how could I give away such a valuable secret?" Cinza replied smugly. She turned to her follower further down the field, a thirty-something who looked like a man straight out of a picturesque farm, with the requisite floppy hat, straw in his teeth, and sun-beaten skin. "Aaron, finish up here for me please? I need to speak with our guest."
"You got it," Aaron answered cheerfully. He plopped himself down and began to cast similar spells, though with much less skill or speed.
"Teaching your followers, though, I see," Rachel commented as Cinza stood and brushed the soil off her legs. Even standing straight, the girl's eyeline barely reached up to Rachel's chest. If Rachel hadn't seen her in action, it would be difficult to take her seriously.
As it were, reminders of Cinza's prowess and her stable of followers were at every turn. Makoto was quietly shadowing them through the camp, Rachel noticed after a few minutes, and was ready to strike at any moment. Meanwhile, familiar faces such as Morton Pollock or Nate Price gave her friendly glances as she passed. Cinza greeted everyone as they passed, asking about their day. More personal questions were quickly whispered out of Rachel's earshot. Rachel was regarded with confusion—not hostility or distrust, exactly, but merely out of place, like a person who'd stumbled into the wrong room and had no particular reason to be there.
"The company I keep is naturally suspicious of outsiders, I'm afraid," Cinza replied lightly. She didn't sound too concerned. "Given our present situation, can you fault them some healthy paranoia?"
"I guess not," Rachel said, watching them carefully. She was trying to determine how many followers Cinza had precisely. After realizing there must be several more unaccounted for by the number of tents and belongings present, she gave up. "How many are you?"
"Just eleven or so, actually," Cinza replied, startling her. "I trust you, Rachel, though my friends warn me against it. I believe you are still the best suited to lead us, as much as I'd prefer the position myself. I think we could form a great partnership, if you're willing. I would not have invited you here otherwise."
"Only eleven?"
"The cult moniker does drive away potential newcomers," Cinza said with a touch of irritation. "This is no cult, though."
"You have a pretty strong devotion to a single person, though," Rachel pointed out. "Wouldn't that qualify you as a cult?"
"So does the whole of Christianity. Is that a cult?" Cinza replied. "Our goddess walks among us, helps us, saves us. If we are a cult, then we are one with a justifiable and decent figure to worship. Not that any of us worship her exactly," she added. "I don't think she'd much like that, and none of us are particularly inclined toward it."
"So why do all this?"
"All what?"
"Dress the way you do, live out here in the wilderness, all of this."
Cinza smiled. "Because we are preparing for the next world."
She laughed. "That's exactly what a cult would say."
"Fair enough, but it's the truth. The Emergence has begun, and the end of the world is not far beyond it. When that happens, my people will already know how to live in a society where the magical and the mundane are intertwined."
"Do you really think the world will end?"
"I think that Ryan put it best. The old world will end. A new one is coming. We don't know what that new world will be like. It's already occurring in small-scale here in Rallsburg, though Omega's interference is throwing everything into disarray. But even without this mess, do you really think we could just integrate ourselves into the modern world without incident? That society would take us in and continue mostly unchanged?" Cinza held out a hand, and a bottle of water flew through the air of its own accord into her grasp. She took a deep drink before continuing. "It'll be chaos."
Rachel sighed. "I hope you're wrong."
"I would love to be wrong, but I know better by now."
They passed a small blanket laid out near what seemed to be a steam generator, wired up to something inside the cabin. Rachel raised an eyebrow, and Cinza shrugged.
"You didn't think we'd just give up on modern comforts, did you? We have cell phones and internet here, same as the rest of the town." She pointed, and sure enough, there was a small satellite dish mounted on the roof. "It's not a great connection, but it's enough. It helps that we can make power from almost nothing," she added with a grin.
Two yellow eyes emerged from the forest near them, slinking around a tree trunk. They were followed by the largest mountain lion Rachel had ever seen, bronze furred and with thick killing muscles. It eyed her with something that seemed like distaste. Cinza beckoned to it, and it approached, allowing her to scratch its ears affectionately.
"Have you not met Scrappy yet?" Cinza asked, obviously enjoying Rachel's consternation.
"What?" Rachel asked, her eyes locked on the cat's and not daring to break contact.
"Natalie's favorite pet. Only because she couldn't find a wolf yet, I think." Cinza slid her hand across its thick smooth fur a few more times before it slinked away again. It curled up on the blanket in front of the generator, which was emanating heat like a furnace.
"Does Natalie come out here?"
"Yes, every so often. She managed to find us despite the measures we put in place. Don't worry, we make sure she's safe. Though truth be told, I think she's probably better suited to keeping us safe these days," Cinza replied. "That girl has power. Way more than all of us."
Rachel frowned. "She's only twelve. How could she be so powerful?"
"I've had a few theories about that," Cinza said. "Perhaps it's simply the length of time since she awakened. Natalie was one of the very first, was she not?"
"Yes."
"The rest of us came after the Gods and the first few. We were random, or we were chosen by the council and allowed through the process," she added pointedly. Rachel ignored it. "Natalie and her contemporaries, Kendra and Hector, have been routinely able to perform feats far exceeding what we would believe possible. Natalie just doesn't use them much. Or perhaps she doesn't use them where we can see her, since she prefers to spend her time out here in the forests with her friends."
"But they were powerful immediately, not over time. It's been a year and the rest of us aren't nearly to that level."
"So they have some other secret." She shrugged. "If we can find out the truth, then all the better, but I don't lose sleep over it. What would worry me is any others with such power that we've never discovered."
"It's not likely," Rachel said. "I'm pretty sure I've tracked down everyone actively using magic."
"Yet you cannot track Omega."
"...You're right," Rachel admitted. "Maybe there are more I've missed, who can't be tracked in the same way he can't."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Cinza said, patting her arm. "If they were going to cause us real trouble, I'm sure they would have shown themselves by now." She took a few steps in front of Rachel and pulled open the cabin door. Makoto was still lurking behind, but did not follow them. "After you, glorious leader."