The disparity between her ageless patience and her enhanced body became more apparent every time she looked at Xochipilli walking around. Without haste on, the child was agonizingly slow compared to her, but at the same time, she was in no haste of her own. In a way, she wished that those liminal moments were eternal.

  They marched early in the morning toward the Cottonpull field she had spotted yesterday. Whilst the allotment was somewhat far away, enough to justify renting or riding along some of the vehicles that passed by on the road, Aloe still chose to walk alongside Xochipilli at their own pace.

  Trusting others was hard, but at the same time, she doubted people would trust her. This age was different in what travel was related to. Long-distance travel, if possible, was done through the metal colossi that were the trains, so beasts of burden had shifted to the background. It was almost mind-shattering how a camel was now considered the tool of a poor man but considering that rich people no longer needed beasts of burden to move their luggage – except for urban travel – and could just take the train, it made more sense.

  Not fully though.

  Logistics had been an important part of her job, and seeing old men on the road with poorer clothing compared to the lowest caste of city workers with one if not more beasts of burden in their possession was hard for her mind to wrap around the sight.

  Adding to that unsettling feeling, it didn't help that the vast emptiness of the desert had been substituted by sparse yet lush forests and grasslands with a road cutting through it.

  An actual road!

  Aloe couldn't stress enough how important that was. Roads were uncommon even on the most traveled paths of her time. Normally they were just vaguely marked paths that had naturally formed through the erosion of terrain through the steps of thousands of people across the ages with an occasional landmark to guide the way and a caravanserai for wary travelers to rest.

  The only real pavemented road she had seen was the one between Asina and Sadina that passed through the natural port of Aramita. And that was the longest road of the Sultanate at a measly week of travel. Now trains made months of distance with their rails.

  When no random travelers or farmers were passing by, she grabbed Xochipilli and put him on her shoulder to make their journey a bit smoother. The boy hadn't originally liked it, but now that she carried her parasol with her, he enjoyed carrying it himself and covering the both of them in the shade. It made him feel like he was providing a service instead of being carried around like a babe.

  Now that she was carrying Xochipilli every moment they had a respite or the boy had to switch to recovery, Aloe realized how foolish her fears were. As mighty as she was, her control was also greater than she thought. Her enhanced senses made sure of it. Proprioception was one of the many senses passively enhanced by her vitality after all, so it was next to impossible for her to do something that would harm Xochipilli unless she wanted to.

  Even then, a constant sense of unease gnawed on her. She felt that if she hadn't complete control of herself, she would hurt him. That if she slipped her concentration just once, it would be all over. She was too… massive, whilst he was too small.

  As the sun reached its zenith, her unease shifted to discomfort as her eyes laid upon the fields she had spotted barely a few hours ago.

  "Here it is," she told Xochipilli who was holding her hand and walked next to her.

  "Here?" The boy looked around, but the massive undergrowth blocked his view. "Could I have some help…?" He asked sheepishly with a hint of blush on his cheeks.

  Aloe handed him her parasol and then heaved him up on her shoulders.

  "I see people!" Xochipilli alerted her.

  "I see them too, child. There's no need to shout." The old druid calmly responded. "But yes, I understand your excitement. They are from your lands."

  There were many workers in many conditions in the fields, their clothes were dirty and sometimes broken, but mostly a chimera of patchwork. Even someone with half a wit could tell that their conditions weren't the best nor were they here out of their own accord.

  "What is the plan, Aloe?" The Tecolatan boy inquired with a hint of worry.

  "Truth be told, little druid, I have no idea." She shook her head. "Whatever we do, we must get people out of the farm, and I don't think we can take the route of diplomacy here. They are employing illegal slaves, and even if we worked under the assumption that they were actual criminal slaves, there's too much paperwork involved in the movement of criminals. They wouldn't be able to sell them back to us if they were willing – if they even were – and I doubt we could afford them."

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Aloe did have a plan to make money considering this was a Cottonpull plantation, but alas, no matter how much evolved cotton she sold them, they wouldn't accept such bargains. It would take a show of force in any case.

  "Uhm…" The boy grunted in a mixture of ponderation and confusion.

  "Sorry, was that too fast for you?" He nodded shyly. "You are so proficient with Ydazi that I forget you have barely started." She patted his head in consolation. "I was saying that there's absolutely no way for us to free your fellows by might of word."

  Perhaps she could with her divine-like charm, but she preferred not to use it. Every time she had used it so far, she… stopped feeling like herself and more of something else.

  "So are you going to kill them?" Xochipilli said without any hesitation.

  "What? No!" She busted in indignation. "What has given you such ideas?"

  "Well… you did kill that man when he was trying to make a slave out of me."

  "I…" Aloe sighed after comprehending her mistake. She grabbed Xochipilli, put him on the ground, and squatted before him. "I don't normally do those things, Xochipilli. That was just… an exception."

  The assassin he killed back in Selen flashed before her eyes too. A man who had never raised a weapon or any ill-intent against her, yet she extinguished her life just because his existence was repulsive to her.

  "I just…" She continued talking with broken sentences. "I… don't do that. That's all. This world would just be a better place if we could resolve everything with the movement of our tongues instead of our arms."

  "I see…" Xochipilli nodded respectfully. "But you did say just now that talking wasn't a possibility."

  "That I did, yes." Aloe nodded back at him and rustled his hair. "We may have to use a bit of force, but the last thing I want is bloodshed, do you understand that?" The boy hummed in agreement. "Let's get going then."

  Entering the plantation by the main entrance wasn't a possibility, but the Mother of Plants needed no doors. With a casual jump after she made sure no one was looking at them, she carried Xochipilli over the paltry wooden fence that was in place. More than a deterrent for the slaves to escape, it was just to delimit the expanse of the fields.

  She then switched to subterfuge as glamour would only make everyone look at her. Curiously enough, instead of turning her into a moving shadow as it had done the night prior, the stance gave her a normal human body with a tarnished and dirty-looking chocolate skin. It is not invisibility, but camouflage. The words of sultanzade Fatima from centuries ago echoed in her mind. In the night, I become an extension of the star sky and the darkness, but now the best way to not highlight is to be yet another Tecolatan.

  "Just in case, switch to subterfuge." She ordered Xochipilli and the child dutifully nodded.

  He was a Tecolatan already, but the stealth stance would mask his footing and make his mannerisms subconsciously more similar to those of the workers on the plantation. It also didn't help that their clothes didn't exactly blend in. Sure, they had chosen their cheapest attires, but they still looked a bit too fancy to pick cotton. And clean.

  Subterfuge might be able to falsify dirtiness in her skin, but not her dress. And for some reason, the internal infusion decided that her assets did not need to be reduced. In a way, she felt some parts of her body tighter as the dress pressed against her flesh and highlighted her outline a bit too much for her liking. Aloe supposed it was because her stature had been somewhat lessened and the mass of her body needed to go elsewhere because otherwise it made no sense to her.

  They walked across the Cottonfields without raising any attention. The only people tending the inflated sacks of cotton were a handful of Tecolatans, though there was a cultivator here and there keeping guard. Nothing she couldn't manage, but neither did she need to as the guards paid them even less attention than the Tecolatans. For them, Xochipilli and she were but workers, though the slaved foreigners couldn't recognize them even if they saw them like fellows.

  As she guided Xochipilli to the similar source of vitality of his, they were able to see how the workers picked up cotton by hand. Even though it was cotton, the tools they used to pick it were different. For starters, a ladder. Each worker had to carry a foldable ladder to pick the antigravity cotton from the balloons. Some of the shorter Tecolatans even had wooden pincers as they would be otherwise unable to reach into the sack.

  What was more fascinating to Aloe was the device they used to store the cotton. It was a backpack of some kind as they carried it on their shoulders, but curiously enough, the only entrance it had was a small opening at the bottom. These backpacks were also made of an elastic material, probably a derivate of the Cottonpull's sack, as it had a massive capacity that just kept getting bigger with each new cotton ball.

  Soon they reached the first source of vitality similar to Xochipilli's she had detected the night prior. It was a man of middle age but with serious wrinkles. Aloe could tell from her many senses that the man couldn't be older than forty, yet he seemed a few years passed fifty. Aloe didn't have time to announce that the man shared vitality with him as her disciple rushed to him.

  "Uncle!" The boy shouted.

  The man turned to the source of the shout and his face twisted into surprise, only to quickly change to horror.

  "Xochipilli! Not you!" The wrinkled man grabbed the child's shoulders. "Didn't you escape?"

  "I did!" The young druid happily stated. "I've come here to rescue you!"

  "Rescue? How are you even going to that, boy?"

  "With the goddess I brought with me, of course!"

  "Goddess?" Xochipilli's uncle looked at Aloe in confusion, unable to believe his nephew's claims.

  Just to amuse her disciple, Aloe changed to toughness. A few moments later, she grew slightly taller, but not thinner. A layer of bark covered her body, and some small plants littered her arboreous skin in the semblance of a forest. Ivy hair sprouted from her head, but now there was no glamour to make it go unnoticed. Ivy there was, and ivy he saw.

  "Xe katupae huotlcotae…" The man whispered in another language which she guessed was Tecolatan. And most likely also a curse. "Xe zotohal ec hetartal."

  "Nehel toh," Xochipilli responded in that language. "Yes, she is my goddess. But please talk in Ydazi so she may understand us."

  "I don't understand… Is she a goddess of these lands?"

  "Yes!" The boy added with much glee. "But that matters not now. We must gather everyone. Where are Mother and Father?"

  "Xochipilli…" His uncle mouthed with a tired expression. "They are dead."