Danielle walked across the field to the Ranger that was beckoning her and got into the serpentine line for the Dome of Decision before she got to work getting the sword belt on and settling the sword in the right spot, then putting the knife-and-hatchet belt on loosely over that. She took all her bags off again, then put them back on – school satchel across her chest and back in one direction, new satchel in the other, making an X across her back. Hip pack back on, looser, in the front between the sword and knife, bow properly attached to her quiver, quiver strap played all the way out and settled so it hung low and back against her hip behind the hatchet, backpack purse worn backwards over both shoulders, and then she could put back on the big backpack, her heaviest single bag. The line had moved up by a person while she rearranged her gear, but nobody hassled her to keep up; the line was long and getting longer, regardless of what Danielle did or didn’t do, and she didn’t delay any longer than she needed to.

  “Well, System,” she muttered, “I just claimed ten stations worth of gear, and none of it is the sort that one uses in rooms. Well, maybe the knife. I guess nobody thought we were being sent Outside just to sit in buildings all day, though. Hunting and gathering has to happen, if nothing else.” She looked around. Brown-uniformed Rangers marked the line, standing at the points where it turned back and forth across the field; green-uniformed Sending Authority agents patrolled between the rows. “I didn’t know we were going to see Rangers here, but I can’t be too surprised, I guess. They’re Firmitatem’s hands and eyes on the Outside, and here we are, Outside.”

  A passing agent chuckled. “The Rangers will be your main contact with the rest of Firmitatem while you’re Sent,” he commented. “They had to pull in people from other Sending zones for this – normally, we don’t make them help out inside the gate, but today calls for all the manpower we can muster.”

  Danielle glanced towards the gate, and did a double-take. The gate in the great fence was open. “When did that happen?!” she exclaimed. Too loud – everyone nearby was looking at her now. She blushed beet red. “Um, sorry, I just didn’t notice the gate opening,” she explained.

  Most of her fellow Sent turned away then, some with rolled eyes, others to examine the gate like she was doing. Unlike the gates into the sanctuary cities, this gate consisted of two panels that slid aside in either direction, resting against the inside surface of the fence. The openings they left were square, with a crossbar still across the top supporting the wires, and a dividing post separating them into a domino shape. The road went right through, one lane on each side of the divider, and continued past another wide, grassy field into a woods – more trees than Danielle had ever seen in one place before, and that was just what she could see through the gate!

  Well, on second thought, she supposed she’d seen woods while camping. Akari’s family had even gone hiking on trails through the woods. Somehow, she doubted it was the same, though; the whole point of the fence was that the Rangers patrolled the woods on this side to keep them safe for Insiders. The other side, though? That was the mana wilds. “Somehow I doubt the Rangers are maintaining any hiking paths out there,” she muttered to herself as she caught up to the line.

  She hadn’t thought she was talking loud enough for anyone but the System to hear her, but at that point she was only two people way from a spot where the line went around a Ranger and turned back, and the Ranger replied, “We don’t maintain any paths outside the fence unless you count actual roads, but there is at least one path over there that was made by former generations of Sent, and should still be recognizable.”

  “Really?”

  The Ranger nodded to her. “It might need a bit of maintenance – it’s been quite a while since the last time we Sent people to this area. There are also a couple of really old paths that nobody but the System maintains, but they’re kept clear of trees by some old wards laid down during the Spread.”

  The line moved, and Danielle walked up and around in front of the Ranger. “How did you even hear me?” she asked.

  “Improved Hearing! An excellent trait for hearing trouble coming,” the Ranger said with a wink. “Also good for expanding the range of things you can conveniently overhear without active eavesdropping, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Once you’ve got a few levels in a Trait like that, it actually gets hard to remember what level of input is the stuff that normal people can’t perceive.”

  “Speak for yourself,” the patrolling agent on the other side said. “I have Tactile Improvement, and let me tell you, I’m reminded every time I touch something that my wife thinks is smooth!”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The Ranger laughed. “You’re Returned, wedded to an Insider?”

  “Nah, she’s Returned too, she just doesn’t have that Trait advanced.” The agent turned and headed back up the line.

  Alex, still the next person ahead of Danielle in line, waited until the agent was (probably?) out of earshot before commenting, “I don’t understand why someone who was Sent would ever work for the Sending Authority.”

  “It’s an employer that offers Outside work, and guarantees you won’t have to fight high-tier wild animals on the regular,” the Ranger said dryly. “The Rangers can only guarantee one of those benefits.”

  “Uh – ”

  “Move on up, now,” the Ranger said, as the line moved several spots nearly at once again. “Think about what Skills you want!” he added. “I’m not saying you have to take a System Skill to defend yourself, but you need something to defend yourself!”

  That was something to think about, all right. Danielle had far more time to think about it than she wanted, too; for all the line was moving up at a fairly steady rate of perhaps a dozen spots every ten minutes, there were a lot of people in line. Danielle could see that Sent were gathering in the field outside the gate as well, though it wasn’t entirely clear what they were doing there; a lot of waiting, it looked like. Noon came, and one of the box trucks rumbled off toward the gate, then made a sharp turn and drove along the fence and behind a screen of trees. A few minutes later, it returned and Sending Authority people started unloading and distributing brown lunch bags to people on both sides of the fence.

  Lunches consisted of a wedge of cheese, a chunk of summer sausage, a bread roll, an apple, and a juice box. Jokes were made about the cafeteria staff being lazy, but the agents told the jokers, “The cafeteria packed your boxed dinners – lunch is from the Rangers, so it’s what they’re used to!” Danielle was a bit suspicious of that claim, but when she got to the next turn of the line, she found the Ranger there with a brown bag tucked under one arm, eating the summer sausage as if it was an apple. By the time she got around the bend, he’d finished it and started in on the actual apple. She supposed that whatever the Rangers normally ate, they were at least eating the same thing as everyone else today!

  In spite of the big breakfast, Danielle found herself hungry, and devoured the lunch on her way down the next leg of the line. There, she found that trash cans had been placed at the bends. She threw out her apple core and the juicebox; she kept the bag, though. It was paper – fire starter, if nothing else. Then she was around the bend, and finally in the first rank of the line, where she could observe the process at the Dome.

  There was a notable gap between the line and the dome itself; Danielle would almost say they were being kept just out of normal conversation and hearing range of it, though with Improved Hearing she supposed the agents might be able to pick up more than the people in line. Four agents were posted where they could see into the four archways, and whenever someone exited, they would wave to the agent managing the front of the line – who could only see two of them, but from the far end of the line, Danielle could see how the one to the east would relay a wave from the one to the south. Presumably the northern one was doing the same for the one to the west, monitoring the arch facing the fence.

  Whenever she saw a wave, the agent at the end of the line would reach into the massive backpack at her feet and remove what looked like an oversized silvery coin. She would give the ‘coin’ to the person at the front of the line, and send them to whichever agent had waved. That agent would direct them into the dome (if their spot was empty) or around to the next arch (if they’d been relaying a wave from there).

  One by one, each of the new Sent went into the dome alone, carrying their gear and their token. A few minutes later, they would come out and head for the gate. As Danielle got closer to the front, she could hear the instructions, such as they were – “Go in, make your choices, then go through the fence.” Short, clear, and completely unhelpful. The agent wouldn’t allow anyone else to offer advice either, though; the next most common words out of her mouth were “Be quiet!” and “No yelling at the people in the dome!”

  The temptation to yell came in part from some people taking a long time; a few people seemed to know exactly what to do, and exited in little over a minute. One girl stood dithering for over ten minutes, while the agent at the head of the line tried to quiet the people waiting and the agent by her archway kept calling out how many minutes it had been to remind her that people were waiting.

  Danielle was also close enough to see through the gate better, now; see, but not hear. There was obviously some sound barrier at work, because people were obviously talking over there, and not quietly; they were all sitting in squares painted on the field, and many were calling back and forth from one square to another. Rangers patrolled the field, there, walking along the gridlines of the squares. Whenever a fourth person joined a square, a Ranger would soon follow, and take the foursome out of the field. It wasn’t until Danielle got to nearly the front of the line that she could see where these groups went: down the road, on foot, until the mild curve of the road took them out of sight.

  It was just before one pm when she finally stood at the front of the line and saw the agent at the north archway wave. The agent managing the end of the line handed her the silvery token; it was perhaps two inches across and a quarter inch thick, had the crest of Firmitatem on one side and “Sent” stamped into the other side, and the edge had “FEA” stamped into it as a repeating pattern. Danielle had no idea what FEA stood for, but she didn’t have time to reflect on it either. “Go in, make your choices, then go through the fence,” the agent told her. “Please move quickly, we need to get everyone through the line today.”

  https://discord.gg/u5dtzpShv2