A Call to the Dark City (Delve/Mother of Learning/HPMoR/Mage Errant Multicross)

Berix · Feb 6, 2024

Richmond Rain Stroudwater

The air in front of Rain's eyes flickered and wavered. One moment he was stepping into Ascension's newly constructed tavern, the next he found himself twisting and lurching, as if pulled through space by his navel. He only had an instant to jerk his head around toward Ameliah before his armour saturated and his natural resistances were overwhelmed.

As the unnatural force began to suck his body inwards toward the rift engulfing his torso, he sank into his soul. He shut his eyes and forced his consciousness to engage the highest possible degree of time-acceleration his new denser soul-constructs allowed.

Breathing a mental sigh of momentary relief, Rain pulsed Detection, querying for the location of his own armour and body parts. Given that his subjective experience had slowed by a factor of a hundred, he had ten seconds or so before the 100-millisecond pulse returned with information.

What's going on? I've never felt anything like this - but then again, I was asleep when I arrived in this world and don't know what that was like. Is this a similar process?

The pulse returned, showing nothing unusual beyond Rain's body. His legs and stomach, however, were missing entirely from Detection, which was, in fact, extremely unusual. His armour appeared to also be spaghettifying under the unnatural strain. It didn't seem to be hurting him, though, since his health was still at its maximum value, and he wasn't feeling any pain. At the current rate, he estimated there would be around ten subjective seconds - another hundred milliseconds in real time - before his head, already now at the height where his chest would usually be, reached whatever effect was absorbing the rest of his body.

The singularity itself didn't appear to register at all.

By his side, he could sense Ameliah turning toward him in shock, her soul flashing dark in confusion and rising fear.

A blue-background terminal blinked into existence at his avatar's hands, and flashed up a warning:

Unexpected external interference
Connection signal interrupted
Extracting System endpoints and constraints to avoid external access and corruption

Well, that's ominous.

There was still a chance that this effect was magical or in some other way related to the System. Rain flared Suppression at maximum capacity, hoping to in some way hamper the singularity. Beyond that, there wasn't much to do beyond hoping that wherever this was taking him, his connection to his Aura Anchors would remain. Ascension had survived without him, he had to hope they could do it again.

Sorry, Ameliah. I'll try to be back soon.

In the instant before vanishing entirely, he released a burst of Purify.

The last thing his friends saw as the singularity sucked his limbs in like spaghetti was a sphere of light, cleansing the tavern of grit and dust and seeming to linger on each of them before fading quietly away.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres

Harry sat in the tallest tower of Hogwarts, meditating. The early morning light drifted through the chilly air. The Philosopher's Stone rested in one of his pockets, ready for the prodigious number of experiments he was intending to throw at it.

Then there was a yank from just below his navel. A portkey, he thought, but no new objects he had seen had made contact with his skin. Had someone developed a technique to enchant invisibly small objects (dust motes?) with the portkey spell? Or a similar spell that could be cast at a distance?

He had time to strangle out half the incantation to a basic counter charm, and he was gone.

Zorian Kazinski

Negotiations with the archmages of Falkinrea were achingly slow.

During the time loop, it had been - well, not easy to extract information, but at least possible. Back then, he'd been willing to make enormously unequal trades. What's the harm of giving away impossibly valuable magical secrets if your counterparty would forget them within the month?

Now however, the awkward reality of trade was rearing its head, that if you traded someone information, they tended to then have that information, and you couldn't trade it again. Hrmph.

This particular archmage happened to be one of the pioneers of Black Room research in Falkinrea. He was currently also under the effects of a Mind Blank spell, which was rude if nothing else. Rumours of a powerful mind-mage were everywhere these days, but it wasn't as if those rumours applied specifically to him.

Zorian was partway through what he thought was an exceptionally generous offer when an uncomfortable yanking feeling, the hallmark of a foreign translocation spell, appeared to bypass his wards entirely and attempt to pull him through to an unknown location.

Zorian immediately sent a pulse of alarm to his simulacra, and activated his own teleportation spell, stored in a ring on the third toe of his left foot. The archmage would be appalled at his lack of decorum and sudden departure, but that was hopefully a problem for future Zorian.

He found himself in a warded safe house deep beneath Cyoria. Protective enchantments laced the walls, and a pair of small combat golems across the room sprang into action, their sensors whirring, trying to detect any foreign presence.

The tugging continued, and Zorian flung the threads of a conscious connection out toward his four currently active simulacra. Their minds intertwined, they could still only observe as the foreign influence slipped through each of their coutermagics as if they weren't there. Zorian's real body disappeared through a tiny dimensional rift, which promptly closed.

Their connection to the primary Zorian severed, the simulacra reeled in shock for an instant before setting out to inform their allies. There was only a brief time before a lack of mana forced them to dissolve back into the formless mist from which they'd been made.

The first thing Zorian noticed was the oppressive dark. Even compared to the void in which he and Zach had met the Guardian, which had been completely absent of light, this place felt darker. That shouldn't be possible. Flickering to mana sight, it became clear that there was virtually no mana in his immediate vicinity.

Instinctively reaching out with his mind and soul senses, Zorian realised he was not alone.

To his left was a presence he might have been able to feel even as an untrained mage. Mana swirled and pulsed around a single powerful entity, rippling outward in spherical patterns. The emanations appeared uneven, warping around what looked like artefacts in the form of armour.

Of the soul, Zorian was in awe. Even having spent time with dragons, few living creatures came close to the sheer magnitude of the soul he saw in front of him. It blazed out in the darkness of this place, dominating his soul sight with its brilliance. Zorian extended his mind, trying to see if the entity had any kind of mental protections, or if it was even human.

He moved carefully, not wanting to reveal his presence. From what he could read on the surface, a picture emerged - largely human, a bundle of emotions - confusion, fear, wariness. Pretty much what he was feeling, Zorian supposed, so this probably wasn't what had brought him here. Nevertheless, that didn't mean it wasn't a threat.

To his right, Zorian detected a second soul, this one smaller in scale but curiously shaped, like nothing he'd seen before. The closest comparison was probably some kind of magical creature, like a phase spider, and yet the accompanying mind seemed human enough.

Instinctively, Zorian attempted a teleport home. He didn't expect it to work. Whatever had brought him here had brushed past his defences to force him here, and it would be strange to let him return after that. Sure enough, the teleport failed. It wasn't due to suppression or countermagic, it was as if the destination was on another plane or didn't exist. Still, that was nothing new. It was the same experience as trying to teleport out of a Black Room, or escape the time loop. Difficult, but not unsolvable, given time.

"Lumos."

A quiet voice from his right - a woman's? A young boy's? And light spilled out into the chamber, emitted from the tip of a short wand clutched in the hands of a young boy. He was wearing round-rimmed glasses, and looked maybe a little older than Kiri, with tousled black hair framing an angular face marked by a long scar down his forehead.

The room they stood in was marble, ostentatiously carved, and yet inch-deep in dust. Bones were scattered across the floor, but they looked old and dried.

A soft wave of light began to emanate from the figure to his left. Looking almost like a physical manifestation of what his mana sight revealed, the light spread radially. At the centre stood a tall, physically imposing figure, clad entirely in plate armour. At the edge of the sphere of light, Zorian noticed the thick layer of dust on the floor vanishing, leaving behind a circle of pristine marble. More concerning, it looked like a skeleton scattered across the floor had been half vaporised by the light. In the span of a second as the light expanded, he saw a ribcage evaporate into motes of light.

Alright, that's it. Strange figures vaporising bones? Time to take control of the situation.

Around a second before the vaporising light would have reached him, Zorian threw himself backwards and simultaneously dove into the mind of the armoured figure.

On the surface - no obvious hostile intent. Unease, fear of Zorian, of the other figure in the room. So they weren't together? Hm.

And then his mental probes stopped short, unable to force their way through a shield which surrounded this mind like a sphere of steel. The defences were some of the most formidable Zorian had ever seen - at least in terms of raw strength. Within a fraction of a second as Zorian scrambled back across the floor, tendrils of his mind began to snake over the shield's surface, searching for flaws. Although this entity was strong, this was no Mind Blank spell, and he could sense a few vulnerabilities, as if the owner hadn't considered the possibility of an attack from those angles. Zorian seized on the flaws, drilling his way through the shield and into the consciousness below.

He delved deeper into the mind. A feeling of absence. A warm face framed by blonde hair spilling out of a steel helmet. Friends, companionship in a world buffeted by forces far too powerful to confront.

Knowledge of the man's limbs blossomed into Zorian's awareness, as did a strange link to what must be his source of power. Zorian felt around blindly, looking for a way to turn off the bone-evaporating sphere, and pushed as hard as he could. For a moment, the light faded, leaving only the wand illuminating the room, then-

Vast quantities of mana swept out from the knight, this time invisible to the naked eye, and pressed into Zorian's mind, collapsing his outward-directed mental tendrils. His mind shield buckled, but held. Zorian could instinctively feel that projecting his mana beyond the edge of his body would be a contest of strength - and that he would lose. At the same time, the wand flickered, before returning to its full brightness.

Still, the bone-vaporising sphere did not return, and the figure took a step back and raised his hands in what looked like a placating gesture. Zorian thought he understood the intent, but had to admit the gesture was less effective due to the thick metal gauntlets the figure was wearing.

Jarringly loud, all three of them spoke at the same time:

Harry

Harry found himself in a marble chamber, his wand glowing in his right hand. The floor was a lighter colouring than most of Hogwarts, but otherwise this could have been a classroom in one of the higher floors. Dust caked the floor, and disguised the bones scattered around the room.

A quick tap verified that the Stone was still in his pocket. His Bag of Useful Items was also secure at his side.

To his right stood what looked like a mediaeval knight. Fully clad in steel, the arms were raised combatively, but bore no weapon. A sphere of light had spread outward, purging dust and grime from the floor, then vanished.

To his left, a figure in clothes not entirely unlike his own - a loose-fitting white shirt under a simple vest - was scrambling backwards, away from them both. A boy, perhaps five years older than Harry, and otherwise surprisingly visually similar. Short brown curls, gangly longer limbs. Panic filled his eyes as he scanned the room.

"I come in peace!" Harry yelped.

It was cliché, but upon being whisked away into unknown circumstances, it was a good policy to be up front.

Simultaneously, the cloaked boy yelped something incomprehensible, and the armoured man said something Harry couldn't decipher either.

Was that symmetry? Certainly neither of the two figures seemed too aggressive. Given the apparent lack of a verbal line of communication, Harry also stepped backward and raised his hands in the near-universal gesture of 'I am not stabbing you at this precise moment'.

A moment later, the armoured figure turned towards him, and the helmet covering his head flickered out of existence.

A friendly bearded face framed by dark hair greeted him, and an expression that wasn't so much shocked as flabbergasted.

"English! You speak English!"

The man's voice was heavily accented, but it wasn't one Harry could place. Perhaps American or Canadian, but lilted, the words rounded in a strange way.

"Yes! I'm not sure if that's supposed to be surprising though. Do you speak English?" Harry gestured at the cloaked boy, who was still scrabbling to his feet.

He looked apologetic, but seemed to have grasped the intent of the question, because he shook his head slowly.

"Sorry if I sound surprised - I haven't heard anyone speak English for years - long story. My name is Rain, by the way."

The knight stepped forward, offering a gauntlet for a handshake. Harry blinked, switched his wand to his left hand, and shook. Just as he expected to grasp the steel fingers, they too phased out of sight, and he found himself grasping a strong, weathered hand.

"I'm Harry, Harry James Potter Evans-Verres. Pleased to meet you, I suppose, under the circumstances. My guess is that all three of us were brought here similarly - Portkeyed - teleported, that is?"

There was a brief silence, then Harry felt something brush against the edges of his Occlumency barriers. It felt - not like an attack, exactly, more like a tentative greeting. At the same time, the cloaked boy smiled at him, and waved.

"You're a Legilemens? Or psychic, or something?"

The armoured figure - Rain - spoke: "That makes sense! I felt what I thought was an attack a moment ago, that's why I deactivated Purify. I think our friend here misinterpreted it as aggressive. I have a macro enabled to activate Suppression at maximum power if there's another detectable intrusion into my Paling, so don't try anything." The last part was accompanied by a stern look at the other boy.

The lilting roundness to the strange man's voice was quickly disappearing as he spoke, and by the time he stopped talking, he'd settled into a solid Canadian accent with perfect pronunciation. Strange.

The collection of words that sounded capitalised were definitely something to figure out later.

"I think he's friendly," Harry said, hoping that waves meant the same thing here as wherever the cloaked boy came from.

<Yes.> came through a broken signal, coming at the same time as the cloaked boy spoke in some unintelligible language. Rather than words, it felt like receiving a bundle of concepts he could roughly translate into English. Harry started. His mental barriers were still secure, he could feel it. They surrounded and protected his mind like a glass marble. The impressions of meaning didn't try to break through at all. Instead they felt respectful, as if the words had been left outside his mind for him to view at his leisure.

"Can you understand me if I speak like this?" Or is this sufficient, he thought.

<I can hear you if you project the thoughts outside your mental barrier - if you speak out loud, that suffices as well. I see you share a language with the battlemage. Can you tell him I won't invade his mind again if he agrees to leave my bones intact?>

"Uh, he says - 'don't remove his bones'?"

"Right," Rain responded. "That was Purify. It only affects filth and grime. I couldn't use it to remove his bones if I tried. I understand the caution though, and you can assure him I mean no harm."

<Excellent.> From Rain's startled movement, it was clear the voice was now in his head as well. <Given the lack of a common language, I will keep communicating like this until I've picked up enough of your vocabulary.>

"Wait," Harry held up a hand to Rain. "You mean you have abilities that depend on your characterisation of objects in the physical world into non-physical categories which depend on human perceptions? They actually rely on the map, not the territory? And one of those categories is filth? Have you tried to push the bounds of that, by, for example, defining all the dirt in a hole you're planning to dig as filth? What about, say, hair you're planning to cut off? Or faeces you haven't excreted yet? Or simply, the presence of any matter in a configuration you don't find ideal?"

Rain was outright grinning by the end of the series of questions.

"I've tried exactly the hole idea, doesn't work. Nor does the haircut, or the arbitrary removal of matter. The portable bathroom however, is one of my favourites. Would you like to step a bit closer so I can demonstrate the effects? As long as our friend here is willing, of course."

<My name is Zorian,> the voice sounded in their minds. <And as long as I'm outside the effects, I'm actually also quite curious. You both seem friendly enough, and it's time we establish some basis of trust, then ensure our immediate environment is safe, then find our way home.>

"That makes sense," Harry said. "And you're sure you won't remove my bones? Wouldn't be the first time it's happened to a Hogwarts student, so I'm sure we can work around it if it happens."

"It's perfectly safe. I travel with my organisation - Ascension - and they prefer to stay permanently under its effects. Step here?"

Harry stepped forward to where Rain had gestured, and jumped a little as light washed out, bathing them both - but not Zorian, in a tiny sphere of pure white. A layer of sweat Harry hadn't noticed evaporated, leaving his skin feeling like he'd just had a shower. And inside -

"I can't believe it! This actually obviates the necessity for bathrooms entirely! What did you say the maximum range for this is? Could you cover a house?"

"Eighty-seven metres. More if I'm willing to go into a catatonic state."

Harry gaped.

Zorian, having seen Harry retain his skeleton, tentatively stepped forward, and joined them in the sphere. The apprehension on his face melted away as he too experienced the effects.

<That's quite a trick.> The boy half-smiled, looking relieved. <Pleased to meet you both, Rain, Harry. What now?>

Rain

With a nudge to Heavy Armour Inventory, Rain summoned back his gauntlets and helm. Now that the three of them seemed to be on the same page, it was time to figure out what had brought them here, and where 'here' even was.

Rain stood at the exit of their marble room, peeking out the door. This wasn't strictly necessary, since Detection guaranteed him there were no living entities within his range. That said, his trust in the System and its capabilities here was limited. He shouldn't even have access to Heavy Armour Inventory, given that it was Ameliah's skill, not his, and was shared by her assistance via Unity. That must have something to do with "Extracting system endpoints and constraints to avoid external access and corruption", whatever that had meant.

Regardless, he seemed to have access to all his skills, which was the important thing. His connection to his aura anchors appeared to be intact as well. A macro was active, pulsing the stones at low power to signal that he was alright to his friends at home.

Set to marble, Detection registered a city stretching as far as he could sense. Buildings were densely packed, interspersed with city squares and canals. Many were now in disrepair, having crumbled in the time since this place was abandoned.

Looking upward, there was… nothing. No sun, no stars.

His automatic life-sensing Detection ping, set to fire once every second, returned a new, fourth signal. Right behind him.

Rain whirled around, ready to activate Refrigerate, and saw Zorian in the process of creating a humanoid shape out of thin air, while a gobsmacked Harry watched.

<Sorry if I startled you. I'm making a simulacrum, a copy of myself that can act autonomously. It won't harm you.>

"Wait, you can make clones?"

"How many can you make?"

"How long do they last?"

"Can they cast magic independently?"

Harry and Rain rattled off the questions one after another.

<So many questions.> Zorian grinned. His hand twisted as he formed the mist into some kind of plasma which became a body. Was that part of the spell? <Simulacrum Number One will answer them when he's fully awake.>

"Ok," Rain said, taking a deep breath. "If we're going to spend more time together - and it looks like we will, given there's no sun or stars here, I think it's time we quickly described each of our respective capabilities to each other."

<Alright,> came the response, and it was somehow clear that it came from Zorian's slightly glowing double rather than Zorian himself. <This may be a little disorienting>

Flashes of memory and concepts arrived at Rain's mind. Images of explosive projectiles shattering walls. A stone, levitating above a table, crumbling into dust which swirled above an outstretched palm. An invisible mage, slipping through enemy lines, subtly influencing instincts to throw an invading army into disarray. Rows of battle golems charging, directed with a thought. Supervising it all, a cluster of half a dozen near-identical minds and bodies, acting with a single will and singular determination.

From the shocked look on Harry's face, it was clear he'd seen that too.

"So it's not just words? You can send memories? How about other information?"

<Yes, although it requires practice to understand. Most people cannot fathom experiences beyond those possible in their own body, and alien memories can leave people overwhelmed. I have carefully shown you only fractions of my life>.

Rain concentrated, bringing up his interface. The text files corresponding to Ascension's Common Knowledge documents popped up in their familiar blue boxes. Bringing up the command line, he typed:

chmod a+r CommonKnowledge.txt

"I'm not sure if that worked, but I just tried to give you read permissions to the Common Knowledge files I've written for Ascension's members. Can you see them, Zorian?"

"WHAT" Harry interjected. "You have an OPERATING SYSTEM as part of your mind? Can you execute arbitrary code? Have you tried running neural networks?"

"I'm not a developer, just remembering some of what I learned in university a few years back. I've written a few simple macros for combat and utility, and some basic spreadsheet functionality to help calculate mana costs and things like that. I've never tried running anything else - wait, maybe I have. I'll have to think about that."

Simulacrum Number One (aptly named, because Zorian was in the process of creating another from the same misty material as the first) raised a surprisingly fleshy-looking hand to interject.

 He turned and sat cross legged on the floor, taking care to sit in the purified circle to avoid the layers of dust.

Rain blinked. "Right. Of course. You can't speak English either. I'll give you the permissions for a basic dictionary, which should help."

He turned to Harry. "While Zorian - er, Zorian One - tries to figure out .txt files, I can give you a quick rundown. I'm primarily an aura mage. Up to a distance of around ninety metres, I can freeze, incinerate, or electrify most non-magical objects and entities at will. I can sense arbitrary categories of entities within my range. There's a few other assorted utilities as well - increased velocity, cleaning - you saw Purify earlier. I can Airwalk, though I shouldn't be able to without Ameliah here - still a little confused about that. I can provide increased mana regeneration for allies - although I've had both of you under my mana regeneration aura this whole time, and neither of you seem to have noticed."

"I don't know what mana is yet, but that's not sufficient to demonstrate that there's no effect. Perhaps you and this environment have effects that cancel each other out. Can you turn off your regeneration aura for a moment?"

"It's called Winter, and sure."

Rain turned Winter off. Harry didn't react, but Zorian across the room grimaced.

<Ah, that explains a lot. Without you, my mana barely regenerates at all in this place.>

"Why does that explain a lot?" Harry asked.

<My mana usually regenerates at a rate dependent on the ambient mana levels of the environment. My home city is rich in mana, but in the countryside it takes a lot longer to regain energy. Without your aura, I can't feel any ambient mana at all. Can you reactivate it please?>

"That's strange, I don't feel any different here," muttered Harry, turning his wand over in his hands. Looking back to them with a grin he continued.

"I suppose we can do a demonstration at the same time as a test!"

A look of concentration came over him.

"Aguamenti."

A spray of water emerged from the tip of his wand and coalesced into a rough circle on the floor.

"Frigideiro."

With another small movement, the water became a solid ice cylinder with a diameter of roughly 15 centimetres. The ice darkened, becoming opaque and glinting with a metallic sheen. He bent over the shape, and waved his hands around melodramatically. There was a moment's pause, then the young boy stepped back with a proud look on his face.

"That should be around 200 kilograms of tungsten. It's permanent. If I'm extrapolating correctly from the memories Zorian showed us, my guess is that he can't create enduring physical materials with purely magical input."

He continued, "As for the test, that certainly took something out of me, but I don't feel unusually drained. If you exempt me for now from Winter we can see if I regain strength as usual."

The boy's face became more serious, and Rain could see a flash of the adult he would become in his eyes.

"There's one other important thing you should know. I intend to take whatever actions are necessary to ensure the long-term survival and prosperity of sentience, and will do what is required to prevent the end of the World. Our presence here is indicative that there's more to the world than I previously thought, but I hope my intentions won't bring us into conflict."

Rain nodded, and added a filter to his auras to make the appropriate exclusion.

Zorian looked up. <You're right by the way, I don't know of a way to make permanent material constructs. These simulacra are made of ectoplasm, a kind of mana construct which dissipates unless maintained. If we spend enough time together, there's a few things I'll ask you to make for me. For now, we have other priorities - and none of mine involve ending the world, you can rest assured. I'm finished with this simulacrum, which is all I should maintain for now given constrained mana regeneration. Let's get a sense of where we are. Beyond us, I can't sense any minds nearby, so we should be clear to explore.>

In near unison, Zorian's three bodies rose and walked toward the door, beckoning for the others to follow.

Zorian

Despite the seeming friendliness of his two companions, Zorian was glad to be in the majority. Simulacrum One had finally figured out the obscure structure of the memory packet Rain had placed outside the boundaries of his mind. The strange man had peculiar and exploitable vulnerabilities in his cognitive defences, but Zorian had never seen a dispelling wave as strong as the one Rain had produced before Zorian was able to fully take control.

Both these characters were full of contradictions. According to the "Common Knowledge" memory packets, if Rain were standing in Zorian's old dormitory, he'd be able to incinerate every student asleep in their beds while leaving the bedsheets untouched. If the effects of Winter compounded with natural mana regeneration, as it appeared they did, then it would be worth building an Academy around him for that reason alone. And despite that, Zorian had almost been able to seize control of his mind within a few seconds. It seemed like whatever world Rain came from, a competent mind mage could upend it in a week.

And Harry. While both the strangers reminded him of Kiri with their incessant questions, Harry's age, slight frame and messy hair made the comparison more apt. And yet, when presented with a brief collection of Zorian's memories, Harry had almost immediately identified an area in which Zorian was outclassed and proceeded to demonstrate his superiority in it. What else would the boy come up with, given time?

Best to keep them close for now, but stay vigilant. Now that he had three bodies, he would be far more prepared to deal with any unexpected hostilities.

With a nod to the original, each of Zorian's simulacra faded into invisibility. Zorian spoke into Harry and Rain's minds to explain:

<I'm sending my copies to give us advance warning of anything coming. Let's get a sense of where we are. You coming?>

The two others nodded, and together they stepped into the darkened streets, lit only by the dim glow of Rain's aura.

A meandering walk led them through the marbled streets into progressively higher density areas. Rain's auras helped them avoid crumbled buildings, while Harry's constant questioning honestly put Zorian at ease. Harry was particularly interested in trying out Rain's so-called Velocity aura, which appeared to use the equivalent of unstructured mana to apply an additional force to any moving person within range. It looked like the younger boy was trying to avoid laughing in the process, but his attempts to surf the added velocity, while improving, tended to land him on the ground tangled in his robes.

They headed gradually in the direction of increasing building height, hoping to find some evidence of life or current civilisation closer to the centre of this seemingly abandoned city. It wasn't long before Simulacrum Two described finding something out of the ordinary.

In the centre of an exposed plaza, a massive jagged spike of blue crystal stood, hovering motionless point down above the ground. Tiny etched letters - runes? enchantments? - covered the surface. Even in this darkened place, the stone seemed to drink in all light that landed on it, such that the glint of the golden lettering was the only way to discern its shape.

Zorian noted, with morbid curiosity, that the density of scattered bones was much higher here.

"So, uh, not to overly extrapolate from the dramatic surroundings, but I'm guessing that has something to do with why we're here,"Harry said.

Rain's eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and a vast sphere of light spread from his body to cover the entire plaza. In the light, the bones and corpses disintegrated into tiny motes of bright dust which vanished into the air.

"Sorry," he said quietly, responding to their surprised looks. "Whoever they were, no-one deserves to have their remains scattered on the ground like this."

Zorian's simulacra, currently invisibly floating on discs of force high above them, were on high alert, scanning their surroundings for any reactions to the burst of light. Zorian on the ground, however, nodded gravely at his companion and stepped forward toward the spire.

"This reminds me of an artefact from my world," Rain said hurriedly, before Zorian could reach it. "Well, not my world as in Earth - you know, the world I just came from. Be careful, and don't touch it unless you know what you're doing. I spent a subjective few months trapped in a void trying to figure out what was going on."

One of Zorian's simulacra drifted down at that, stepping off the disc of force at the same time as he dropped the invisibility spell.

<Perhaps best if I try first then.>

Harry, meanwhile, was muttering repeatedly under his breath while gesturing at the spire with his wand from a distance.

As a precaution, Zorian and Simulacrum Two severed their mental connections to Simulacrum One as he walked toward the spire. Their group watched with tensions high as he raised his palm and pressed it onto the surface.

No-one immediately disintegrated, nor did anything else unexpected happen.

A moment later, the simulacrum's voice appeared in their minds again.

<The parts I somewhat understand look something like a cross between a powerful wardstone and the enchantments I've seen used to regulate Black Rooms - tiny pocket dimensions. There's something else here too, some kind of permanent mind magic enchantment. I've never seen anything like it, and I'm avoiding it for now.>

"Mind magic? Hmm. That supports one of my theories more than the other." Harry was pacing slowly, but kept an eye on the splinter as if he expected it to suddenly move.

Rain gestured with a hand. "Go on?"

"My first theory was that this city is part of an intergalactic space vessel, and that the onboard life support systems failed long ago, leaving the inhabitants to die. That would explain the absence of easily detectable stars, and why the deaths here appear to have been from starvation or suffocation rather than physical trauma. I didn't see any broken bones on our way here, did you? Apart from the ones which had been burnt for fuel by survivors as their vessel drifted powerless through the void, of course."

<What's a space vessel? And what does 'intergalactic' mean?>

"A self-contained vessel which can propel itself independently to travel between different planets. Galaxies are huge clusters of stars."

Zorian raised an eyebrow.

Rain frowned. "I have very good eyesight, and I can't see anything in the void surrounding this city. Even if we are on an interstellar vessel, judging by the typical distance between galaxies, I think I would still be able to see nearby stars. I guess we could be inside a nebula or something?"

Harry shrugged. "Could be, but that's another assumption, which makes that possibility less likely. There's also plenty of reasons why a colony ship might have a mind-magic enchantment built into its core functions, but it's also slight evidence against the 'spaceship' theory. I think we're in some sort of exile zone."

Harry went on. "There's no free energy anywhere, apparently including mana. This crystal is made of a different material to everything else around us. I can't figure out what, but it's tougher and heavier than any non-magical material ought to be, so it might have been placed here violently by another party. That, plus the corpses, suggest that we're looking at the aftermath of a strange kind of weapon designed to throw its enemies into the Outer Dark, outside of time and light. Which, I surmise, is where we are.

"Anyone have any experience breaking out of prisons without gates?"

<This is going to sound a bit ridiculous, but… that's actually one of my specialties.>

"Oh!" Harry blinked in surprise. "Excellent! Let's get cracking then! I presume there's a better path forward than cutting the pillar in half, or turning it into dust? We can always try one of those later if we run out of ideas."

Rain stepped forward, his iron gauntlets and helm reappearing before he made contact. He stood there, silent for a moment, before stepping back with a strange expression on his face.

"I think parts of the System which gives me power on my world have come with me. They're helping me interface with whatever this machine is. It's only giving me partial control. All I can do is pump mana into it for maintenance purposes."

"That could be useful," Harry mused. "Any way to reverse that? Could we drain its mana reserves to deactivate it? Or feed it too much energy and cause an overload?"

Rain shook his head. "I can sense the capacity as well. Whoever built this thing had a mana capacity vastly larger than my own. I'd drain myself dry and it wouldn't make a dent. That being said, I think this thing has been running for a long, long time, and it's almost empty. I'd guess without us it would have started running out of mana around now regardless."

<That can't be a coincidence,> Simulacrum Two sounded in their minds. <It's been running this long, and we happen to arrive just as it's about to burn out? Maybe one of the spire's functions we haven't figured out brought us here as a contingency.>

"Alright" Harry cracked his knuckles. "We have a few options. We could destroy or otherwise disable the functionality of this device. If the device is actively separating this place from wherever it was excised, that could revert its effects and return us there. The risk, of course, is that the device's activation permanently displaced this city, and its destruction would simply prevent us from returning.

"From what the two of you are saying - sorry, the four of you - it sounds like the device has been constantly expending mana for a long time. Can you tell what that energy is doing?"

Simulacrum One frowned. <The enchantments are in a very unfamiliar style. I think I can see the mana channels for the various functions. Can't interact with them without destabilising the whole thing though. The whole structure's functions are deeply interwoven. Rain, can you add a tiny amount of mana to the system? I want to see how it flows through the channels.>

"Good idea." Rain nodded, and pressed his palm against the stone.



The simulacrum sent a wordless signal to the other instances of Zorian, requesting assistance. Given that numerous people had interacted with the spire without causing incident, Zorian deemed the risk worthwhile, and the three instances of his mind joined in focus on the enchantment.

The mana Rain had injected into the system was being distributed through the enchantment by a series of channels. A tiny fraction was allocated to the mind-magic related sub-enchantment, which certainly deserved more focus later. The majority was allocated to powering a dimensionalism enchantment. Buried deep in the foreign structure, there was what felt like a contingency trigger.

Zorian frowned. <I've found a process that's supposed to run when the spire runs out of useable mana.>

Teasing through the functions carefully, it looked like the trigger had a few parts.

First, a semi-autonomous process was designed to recapture mana from the local environment. Zorian's best guess was that it was intended to work like Sudomir's Well of Souls, ensnaring bursts of expelled mana and soul energy from the death of nearby entities. Assuming the denizens of this city were mortal, which certainly seemed to be the case given the mounds of bones Rain had dealt with, this spire would maintain the city's exile until either its own prodigious mana reserves were exhausted, or no creature had died here in the last fifty years.

In effect, the city was banished to the void until, one by one, everyone here was dead.

Compared to Red Robe's haphazardly constructed wraith bombs, this was a necromantic work of art. Despite the horror of their situation, Zorian couldn't help but be impressed.

Finally, the dimensionalism enchantment would gracefully shut down, returning this city and its remaining material wealth to its place of origin. Empty of life, it would be free for the perpetrator to pillage at their leisure.

Whoever had done this was a monster of the highest calibre.

Time to update the others.

<The spire is designed to return the city to its source world when mana runs out. It's fuelled by the deaths of those around it. There's also some other power source I don't quite understand. I believe it's designed to last until everyone in the city is dead. When it returns, there's a risk that whoever placed this enchantment will be awaiting the city's return.>

<Rain?> Simulacrum Two asked. <Can you sense the current rates of mana consumption?>

"Twenty-six mana a second," Rain responded after a moment of concentration. "Its current reserves are 10413 mana." He jerked in surprise. "That means we only have a little over six minutes until it runs dry!"

"Ah!" Harry exclaimed. "We need to get away from this spire. If there are hostiles in the source world, chances are they'll be concentrated here. Zorian One, you made yourself invisible earlier. Can you do that to others? I have an Invisibility Cloak, but Rain definitely wouldn't fit under it."

 Zorian conjured a broad shimmering disc of force hovering above the floor, and gestured to it.

Rain and Harry stepped onto the disc with confidence. Presumably that meant they both had their own mechanisms for flight. Zorian and his simulacra joined them, and shrouded them in a sphere conferring invisibility. For good measure, he wove in a shielding pattern of overlapping hexagons. That done, the sphere shot upward into the air, coming to a stop around ten floors above the spire, and a little off to the side. Zorian hadn't seen any lightning blasts emerge from the top of the jagged blue spire yet, but there wasn't any point taking chances.

As the final minute ticked down, the five of them stood in terse silence. Even Harry's questions had abated in preparation for whatever was about to happen.

It was fifteen seconds earlier than expected, by Zorian's count, when the dark above them ripped apart and was replaced by a cavernous blue sky. To one side a vast thunderstorm approached. The city below had intersected on return with a swamp which glowed eerily bright in the darkness, and marble buildings were collapsing into the water. Not far from the spire, a huge mass of vines and trees had torn through the marble and stretched twice as high as their bubble. And across the whole city, a battle raged.

Berix · Feb 9, 2024

Harry

Now that the city below them was lit by the glow of golden algae coursing through the canals, Harry was properly able to appreciate its architectural design. Concentric rings of buildings and towers stretched outward, giving way at the edge to a lake shrouded in mist.

The pinkish marble from which the city was constructed, and the pillars and columns prevalent in the wide boulevards, put Harry in the mind of ancient Greece, or perhaps Rome.

At this point, however, Pompeii had the most in common with the beleaguered city below them. A tower haphazardly constructed of vines and trees stretched into the sky not too far from their invisible bubble, and a veritable onslaught was pouring outward onto the city below. As Harry watched, a boulder-sized chunk of volcanic ash was launched from the vine tower and obliterated a nearby building, sending rubble scattering. In the distance, Harry thought he saw a single figure escape, diving away from the explosion propelled by some kind of wind armour spinning around their limbs.

An arrow shot from the tower, bombarding an unremarkable section of the city below. Where the arrow landed, the sound of stone cracking was followed by the near instantaneous growth of a tree at the site of impact. Its roots dug deep into the stone, and a nearby building crumbled into a canal.

Harry blinked in surprise. It seemed his capacity for matter generation was decidedly not unique wherever it was they were now.

"We need to get higher,'' he hissed between his teeth, hoping the others could hear him over the cacophony of the battle. "There's a good chance of us getting hit by a stray boulder if we stay here."

He got the feeling of assent from Zorian's mental communications, and their bubble rose and rose. From here, the largest of the combatants, a monstrous stone giant wielding an iron hammer, looked no larger than an action figure. The wind from the storm, although blunted by the invisible sphere of force, was still strong enough to whip at his clothes.

<There, uh, might be another problem up here. Can either of you deal with the lightning?> Harry could sense a seed of panic in Zorin's missive as he felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to stand up.

Harry grasped through his robes to his Bag of Useful Items. "Wire," he whispered, and felt a coil of insulated wire appear in his hand.

At the same time, Rain spoke: "It won't be a problem. I've activated inverted Fulmination. Any lightning within my range will be suppressed."

Ah well. There would always be another opportunity to try Operation: Impromptu Faraday Cage. He stowed the wire again.

"Alright," Harry said. "Priorities. There's a battle raging below us between what looks like at least two factions. I think we can weather the storm up here-"

Zorian interjected: <My mana reserves are flagging. Keeping the five of us afloat and protecting us from the storm is draining.>

The patch of air where Harry guessed Rain was responded: "I don't know if this will work, but I'm activating Essence Well"

There was a pause, and -

<Ahhh. How long can you keep this up?>

"Indefinitely, as long as our environment has sufficient essence. This world's essence is strange, but I've modified my intake scoops appropriately and they seem to be handling it for now."

<Excellent.> With that, their sphere stabilised, and the sound of the wind almost completely dropped away.

"The way I see it," Harry began again, "We have three goals here. One, we need to stick together to find out what brought us here, and to get back to our own respective worlds. Two, we need to stay hidden and out of harm's way. I don't know what kind of durable you two are, but if I was hit by an arrow that then transformed into a fully grown tree, I think I would probably die. Three, there is a regrettable amount of death happening below us. Assuming that the creatures here are sentient, I would like to prevent that. Agreed?"

As if to punctuate his words, an orb thrown from the vine tower detonated, and sent a massive stone monument crashing down toward street level. Before it could hit the ground, what looked like - that couldn't be paper, could it? - rushed out from a humanoid figure and formed into a supportive brace, holding it in place for a moment before crumbling under the strain.

<I'd add a fourth goal,> came the voice of one of Zorian's simulacra. Despite their identical origins, the mental communications of the simulacra were somehow different. More… flippant? Something like that. <We have no idea what this world is like. We would benefit from asking a local a few questions.>

"What are the odds we share a common language? It seems to me that it's already an extraordinary coincidence that Rain and I - ah. Your mind magic can read memories."

Harry double checked that his Occlumency barriers were still secure. Zorian seemed friendly for now, but then again, so had Quirrell, in his own fashion. Although he was invisible, Harry still glanced at his left hand.

<It's easier if the subject is conscious and non-violent, so they can be prompted with questions.>

"I would normally object to something like this," Rain responded. "But the sooner we figure out what is going on here and whether we can stop it, the better".

Below them, the stone giant was battering at the side of the vine tower with its monstrously large iron hammer. A pair of duelling figures, one wrapped in spinning wind, the other holding whips of vines, were blasted by wind from the tower onto the giant's back. As the giant turned, readying another swing, they were flung onto the roof of a nearby building. The wind-sheathed figure looked hurt; the other was now better described as a smear.

Harry felt sick.

"Agreed" Harry nodded, before shaking his head as he realised the futility of the gesture if made while invisible. "We stay hidden, and try to stop these deaths where possible. I can put humans to sleep at a distance. Can either of you non-lethally incapacitate at range?"

<As long as their mind is unshielded, I can.>

"I don't think I can. I can shield people from injuries though, if I protect them with my wards."

"Alright," Harry said, cracking his knuckles. "Take us lower, Zorian. We'll try to put as many of the combatants to sleep as we can. Rain, keep us safe and prevent as much lethality as possible."

<Yes, your majesty.> The dry humour of the response was conceptually clear. Ah well, this situation called for decisive action, snide remarks notwithstanding.

As they descended, the stone giant swung again, the monstrous hammer ripping out huge chunks of plant matter. The tower swayed, and began to fall.

"There," hissed Harry under his breath. On the roof of a building on an island amongst the canals, a smaller stone giant, almost person sized, and a younger boy with a pair of crystals hovering at his shoulders faced off against a trio of white-armoured soldiers. He readied his wand:

"Somnium."

One of the white-clad soldiers crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

But he wasn't quick enough. A bolt of indescribably bright light blasted out from the crystal boy, and in a flash one of the soldiers in white was just gone.

"Somnium. Somnium. Somnium."

The boy fell to his knees, and slumped over, his crystals clattering to the rooftop. The small stone giant jumped protectively over him, shielding him with his body. Opposite them, the white-clad soldiers had also fallen to the ground.

That was inconvenient. Even if he could incapacitate the giant, it was possible that its falling body would crush the boy with the crystals. Hm.

Perhaps if he could shove the giant out of the way…

"Glisseo."

The spell was supposed to make a surface far slipperier, but at this distance, it was hard to see if it had had the desired effect.

"Flipendo."

The knock-back jinx hit the giant square in the chest. It seemed it wasn't completely made of stone, because the jinx was able to knock it back about a metre along the now-slipperier surface. In response, the stone around its feet began to meld with its legs, locking it in place against further relocation.

Something about the density of the giant didn't seem right. Given the weight of the stone, it shouldn't have been pushed that far back. Combined with its ability to manipulate the stone of the rooftop, it seemed plausible that there was a human inside with some ability to control stone. Like a suit of mediaeval armour, but composed entirely of stone.

Awesome.

Time to test the hypothesis.

"Homenum revelio."

A small green glow twisted around the exterior of what Harry now surmised was a suit of armour. And if this one was a suit of armour, there was a good chance the massive stone giant levelling the city was too.

Somnium and Stupefy would both be blocked by the stony exterior. His options at this point were limited to either the ineffective or the overly lethal. But of course, he wasn't alone.

"Zorian, the stone figures are humans wearing armour, not giants. Can you knock them out?"

<Rain, can you protect them from their own armour as they fall?>

"I think so. I don't think there's a damage limit here, so I need to be careful with my mana."

There was a pause, and then as one, the two stone figures collapsed to the ground. The smaller one on the rooftop merely slumped to one side, while the larger one dropped to one knee, crushing what looked like an entire house. No longer held together by magical intent, the giant began to crumble, shedding vast boulders of stone in all directions.

"They're fine," Rain said, although there was a hint of strain in his voice. "No damage."

Pausing for reflection, they hovered at what Harry would guess was fifty metres above the city. It looked like Zorian's simulacra had made short work of the mages in the remnants of the vine tower, because their nearby area had become an unlikely oasis of calm.

Harry's attention was caught by a group of five white-clad soldiers stalking through a ruined building in the distance. They held a collection of eclectic weaponry, including a milky-white orb of unknown purpose, and a flaming sword, of which Harry could guess the purpose.

He readied his wand, and -

A flurry of sparks came from behind a building, and in an instant two of the soldiers were engulfed in flames, gone. The milky sphere swelled in response, and grew to protect and hide the other three.

"Somnium," Harry tried, but it looked like the spell had no effect on those inside.

Where was the assailant?

A lump of something - a grenade? - was tossed out from behind the same building and landed on the ground. There was a brief pause, and there was a massive detonation inside the sphere, which faded away. Although it was hard to tell in the distance, he swore he could hear a teenage girl's voice cackling against the wind.

"Zorian, I can't find her. Can you-"

<I'm going> came from one of the simulacra. Next to Harry there was a brief whooshing noise as the invisible figure departed.

Then, as if by some ghostly signal, the city below them faded into the dark. One by one, buildings were replaced by shadows, as if holding space free for the city to return. Then, the shadows themselves vanished.

Beneath them, water rushed in to fill the void. The golden algae in the lake gave the waves a strange look, as if they were above a forge swirling with molten gold.

"What just happened?" Rain asked.

"The city is gone. It has to be related to us arriving here earlier, there's no way that's a coincidence. Actually, this might make more sense." Harry almost started pacing, and had to remind himself he was currently on an invisible floating disc of which he couldn't see the boundary.

"What are the odds of us arriving just as the exile spire runs out of mana? I think the city has been phasing in and out for a while as the device drains the dregs of its energy, and we caught one of the cycles as we arrived. Is there any way to tell how long it will be until the city returns?"



Rain jumped in surprise beside Harry, and Harry felt an invisible armoured gauntlet brush his shoulder. "I, uh, think we have company."

Rain

A crackle of lightning flashed across the sky. In the distance, the sudden brightness silhouetted five winged shapes, each of them at least fifteen metres long. They were still outside the range of Detection, so for an instant, he shut his eyes and activated Aura Focus. The sound of the battlefield and the smell of the swampy air vanished.

The signals returned. 134 humans on the backs of 5 non-human entities. Best to avoid this conflict if possible.

"Can you take us back up Zorian?" It was difficult to keep the urgency from his voice. If these dragons were anything like the mythology he knew from Earth, or the one Tallheart had told him about…

Zorian's agreement was clear by the rate they shot up into the sky, far faster than before. A lightning bolt blasted toward them, but faded out as it crossed the radius of his inverted Fulmination aura. The reversed lightning aura was responsible for a good chunk of his mana draw, but the thick essence of this world helped him refill rapidly.

They came to rest just beneath the low, heavy clouds of the thunderstorm. The dragons raced toward turbulent waters from which the city had just vanished. Reaching their destination, they began circling in the air. About thirty figures jumped off the dragon's backs and dispersed, flying by various means to form a wide perimeter. Some of them looked like they had invisible rocket thrusters attached to their feet and hands, while others seemed to seize control of the wind beneath them. Some simply seemed to be falling sideways.

"I figure we wait this out until the city returns," said Harry by his elbow. Rain agreed, and said so.

They had been hovering in silence for five minutes when one of the dragons, lazily circling beneath them, jerked its head up in what Rain guessed was surprise. Rain barely had a moment to shout a warning before a pillar of fire erupted from the creature's gullet, rushing toward them.

"Protego!" Harry shouted, gesturing with the stick he held. A bright shimmering shield came into being below them, and held back the fire for a moment before winking out. Zorian's shield lasted an instant longer, but in turn also collapsed.

Rain slammed Heat Ward to maximum, and briefly entered Aura Focus.

When he opened his eyes again, the flame had passed over them. He was unharmed, thanks to his armour, although its durability had taken a substantial hit. He could tell Zorian's protective sphere was gone by the howling of the wind. Behind him, he could see that Harry and Zorian were now visible and partially aflame. All three of them were falling through the air. His mana had been completely consumed trying to hold back the heat.

Beneath them, the five dragons and their riders exploded into a hive of activity. Three of the dragons had turned upwards and were rushing toward their sphere. The riders on their backs were launching all kinds of projectiles - metal pellets that shone to his Mana Sight, jets of sulphurous looking gas. Rain swore he saw one of them throw a net.

He activated the Magewell Amulet on his chest, and felt the mana rush in to replenish what he'd lost.

Time to take Airwalk for a test drive on this new planet.

Rain leaped forward, placing his feet one after the other in the air the way Ameliah had taught him. It felt strange to use this skill as if it were his own, without her by his side. Part of him ached at the thought.

The skill caught him, letting him run through the air to the centre of the mass of attackers. Lightning arced across the sky, and reflected in his adamant armour.

With a thought, he ran focusBoost.sh and activated Refrigerate, Shroud, and Fulmination at maximum power.

His mana dropped like a stone, but the effects were hard to overstate. Around him, the soldiers flying to attack were flash frozen and fell from the sky. His own lightning crackled between them to rival the storm above. A few resisted the lightning and the cold, expelling the electricity outward as if by some innate control.

It didn't matter. A moment later, those fell too, their silhouettes dark against the sky as they were torn apart inside by the effects of Shroud.

An instant later, the dragons too fell from the sky, holes frozen in their wings and their dinner-plate sized eyes glazed over. Detection pings now showed that only two dragons, still circling far below, rivalled them in the sky, along with the handful of humans still riding on their backs. As they watched their allies fall from the sky, they turned and fled the way they came.

For a moment, Rain let his rage and frustration boil over and screamed into the wind. Earth had never really felt like home, but Ascension - he'd finally let his guard down. He'd protected his friends and been protected in turn. And now this. If this world thought he wasn't going to fight like hell to get back to his friends, it deserved what was coming for it.

He was barely paying attention to his Detection pings which showed Zorian and Harry approaching him. Beneath them, waves rushed down canals as the city phased back into place on the lake.

Zorian - Simulacrum One

Simulacrum One was having a bit of a difficult time.

He'd flown down to street level to apprehend a particularly violent fire mage. It turned out to be a short teenage girl with a thin fuzz of bright red hair and electric blue tattoos. He'd reached out with his mind, preparing for yet another routine knockout like he'd done to a dozen of the unprotected mages already.

Whereupon she'd lit her own head on fire.

It wasn't a regular fire either. It burnt in an iridescent mix of colours, and left her skin and hair unharmed. There was some kind of twisted mind magic involved too. He'd tried to penetrate her mental defences, and had reeled back each time, confronted with too many images to digest. It was like he was an unprotected mind again, being attacked by Aranean hatchlings.

He'd been further frustrated when the city phased back into the dark realm in which he'd been created, which severed his link to the original and left him with extremely limited mana reserves.

All in all, that meant he was quietly, invisibly stalking a flame-headed teenager as she lobbed sprays of incandescent fire at anything that moved.

The original had instructed him to non-lethally incapacitate the fire mage. Broadly interpreted, however, his remit was to minimise loss of life. If this madwoman got anywhere near an innocent person, he was launching a pebble at her skull at knockout speeds, risk of brain damage be damned.

Still quietly chuckling to herself in a rather disconcerting way, she rounded a corner into a wide boulevarde. It was clear the giant stone armour had been here. Entire rooms and buildings were crushed under massive footprints.

At one end of the boulevarde, the blue crystal spire that had brought them here hovered ominously above the plaza. In front of it, a paper mage was duelling with five white-clad soldiers. His sword left behind echoes which the soldiers were avoiding with deathly care. Reams and reams of parchment were stuck in mid-air, and the paper mage was dancing through them with grace. His wiry frame seemed perfectly built for this, and the white-clad soldiers were struggling to keep pace. Worse still, each time they impacted one of the frozen pages, it sheared straight through them as if there was no resistance. Two soldiers died as Simulacrum One watched, and the red-headed girl cackled, before readying her own flames to join in.

That wouldn't do at all.

Reaching out with his mind, Simulacrum One slipped through into the paper mage's mind and knocked him unconscious. His frozen paper drifted downward, and the white-clad swordsmen stumbled backward, lucky to be alive, looking askance for their saviour.

That is, until the red-headed girl lobbed a gout of flame at the paper mage's head. Unharmed, but engulfed in flame, he leaped once again to his feet and shouted what must be a thanks toward the teenager. Moving quickly, he disembowelled two more soldiers before they had a chance to react.

This was getting out of hand. Time to act decisively.

If Xvim had taught him anything, it was the extent to which a precisely placed marble could break your concentration. A pebble swirled in a tight circle above his hand, before shooting out to impact the girl in the side of her head. She staggered, disoriented, and the fire around her head, and the paper mages, winked out.

Snapping the trap shut, he latched onto her mind and seized control, subduing her consciousness and rendering her catatonic. There didn't seem to be any significant injury from the stone's impact, which was a relief. She would have a hefty bruise when she woke up, but she'd more than earned it. He'd watched her for less than half an hour and had already seen her take more than a handful of lives.

Simulacrum One reached out again, and for the second time, the paper mage slumped to the ground. So did the final white-clad soldier, who by the looks of it was some kind of bone mage. The wounds inflicted by the paper mage's echo sword were rapidly congealing into a monstrous-looking bony mass. Simulacrum One shuddered.

The square was quiet once more. Inside the strange dark of the exile zone, sounds of conflict would echo far, and there were none to be heard. His mind magic also couldn't detect any remaining sentients inside the exiled city. Satisfied, the simulacrum turned back toward the spire. Outlined by the strange inscriptions on its surface, it hovered in place as stably as it had when they'd first seen it.

Who had placed this blue crystalline weapon here? By the simulacrum's guess, the city had languished at least a hundred years in this featureless void, so the creator was likely long since dead. Perhaps some trace of their knowledge had survived? If so, it would be a valuable starting point in developing a way home.

Time to start looking.

The paper mage, his hand still wrapped around the hilt of his strange enchanted sabre, lay unconscious on the floor. Simulacrum One took a moment to stretch his ectoplasmic limbs, sat by the paper mage's head, and began to dig for answers in his memories.

Zorian - the original

Zorian hovered by Rain's shoulder, barely managing to hold himself in the sky.

Rain had frightened Zorian before. He was beginning to think he hadn't been frightened enough. The storm of mana and pain that had erupted from the iron figure would have rivalled an angel.

Zorian's mana was almost empty, spent in a last-ditch effort to redirect the dragon's flame. And yet, here they were, mostly unscathed. Even now he could feel the effect Rain had called 'Essence Well' refilling his mana reservoirs - he would be at full strength again in under a minute.

Note to self: keep Rain happy wherever possible.

By his side, Harry rode some kind of broomstick he'd produced from inside his robes in time to prevent his fall into the roiling waters below. Both of them had been burned by the flames that had made it through their collective barriers, but Harry had done something with his wand, and he could already feel his skin beginning to regrow over the burns. Being composed entirely of ectoplasm, Simulacrum Two wasn't quite as resilient, and had dissolved as the flames had washed over them.

Below them, the city phased back into place, and his connection to Simulacrum One returned. A deluge of collected memories came with it, which he filed away for later examination.

Harry looked like he was about to throw up. Then he threw up. The vomit sprayed against the invisible disc of force below Zorian in a weirdly disgusting way.

"I'm sorry. If I thought there was any other way I wouldn't have done it," Rain spoke quietly, but was still shaking in what could have been shock.

Harry wiped at his mouth with his sleeve. "They were attacking unknown entities who had done no-one any harm. They'd given up the deontological protection of the innocent. I may not have the stomach for it, but you did the right thing given the circumstances."

Rain nodded, slowly and grimly, and released a small burst of Purify. The vomit on Harry's sleeves vanished.

<My simulacrum says that the fighting on the ground is over. We should go back to the spire, and see what else we can figure out.>

The others nodded at that, and Zorian made his disc larger and briefly opaque so that the others could join him. Harry fed his broom back into the too-small bag it had presumably come from, which belched. Strange.

Zorian once again wrapped them in a simple shield and a layer of protective invisibility. Before they could reach the city, however, it started to phase out again.

"Ah. The cycle period is decreasing now that there's less power available" Harry said weakly. "Makes sense. Unclear if it will be safe. We should stay out."

Zorian brought the disc back upward as the city began to phase in again. He sent a mental order to Simulacrum One to rejoin them when possible.

They hovered quietly above the city as it flickered in and out, the gaps about a minute long at this stage. The lightning above continued, and the clouds began to glow a faint blue.

After a short wait, Simulacrum One arrived, with additional cargo. Rain was the first to notice:

"You brought someone back." It wasn't a question. The detection skill he'd mentioned must bypass invisibility entirely.

<Yes,> the simulacrum responded, with an appropriate touch of sheepishness. 

Zorian sighed internally. Although the simulacra were created exactly in his own image, their awareness of their own temporary existence led them to behave somewhat more recklessly. Still, perhaps this was for the best. The snippets of memories Simulacrum One had sent him were already very promising, and it looked like there was plenty more to dig through.

"Alright," Rain nodded. "Any clues on how the spire brought us here yet?"

The simulacrum responded: <Nothing precise yet, but this paper mage calls it the Exile Splinter. He believes it also drew power from a labyrinth, which is some kind of connection between->

They paused. The light in the clouds was becoming brighter moment by moment.

Zorian had an instant to throw together a more powerful shield before the heavens themselves cracked open and the sky lit up with the brightest light he had ever seen.

The light itself was shocking enough. What truly gave Zorian pause was the colour.

It was unmistakably the same shade of crystalline blue as the Exile Splinter.

Berix · Feb 10, 2024

Zorian

When Zorian's eyes recovered from the glare, he saw a massive sphinx descending. The body of a lion was silhouetted against the dark clouds. Broad crystalline wings hovered at each side. They didn't flap to keep the creature afloat, instead staying perfectly horizontal, eclipsing the storm above with their vivid blue brilliance. The sphinx's human face bore a clear emotion: wrath.

The creature came to a halt a few hundred feet above the city, which had ceased its flickering, and lay silent beneath them. Zorian instinctively reached out with his mind. As he'd suspected, it was futile. It was a similar experience to brushing against the mind of Oganj, the dragon mage from his world, or one of the more dangerous denizens of his home world's dungeon. The sheer intensity and strength of the creature meant she would be able to shrug off his mental intrusions with ease.

Atop the sphinx, perhaps half a dozen humans stood, looking out across the city. From their stance, it was clear they'd expected an enemy, not the empty ruins. Jumping from the sphinx's back, they caught the air with ease and fanned out across the city, looking for survivors.

<Kanderon Crux, the crystal sphinx,> Simulacrum Two provided, presumably drawing from the paper mage's memories. <One of the creators of the Exile Splinter.>

So this was the monster responsible for the city's centuries of banishment. In a way, Zorian supposed, it was a stroke of good luck that this creature had a longer lifespan than a typical human - it meant they had a better chance of recovering information about what had brought them here.

Now that the humans had disembarked, the sphinx began to fly in looping circles, then descended, and landed with the tip of her nose almost touching the Exile Splinter. Her expression of wrath had faded into a stony, unreadable, blankness.

She stayed there, motionless.

Rain spoke up, whispering despite the sound dampeners Zorian had attached to his shield. "Is it safe to approach them?"

As far as Zorian was concerned, the answer was a resounding 'no'. The three of them had been in this world for less than an hour, and he had already narrowly escaped death once. From here on out, he was going to be appropriately cautious.

<No. We wait, and observe. At the first hint of danger, I'm teleporting us to the horizon.>

Harry and Rain mentally assented, so the five of them - three humans, a simulacrum, and an unconscious paper mage - hovered in silence.

Below them, the humans were combing through the ruins of the city, extracting unconscious survivors. Half of them, they awoke, and brought into a central plaza to recuperate. It appeared the new arrivals were not on the side of the white-clad soldiers, because those were bound and taken prisoner. If one awoke, they were confronted with a display of force - usually something like a hovering rock, or a spinning whip of fire, and promptly surrendered.

Zorian was glad that the process seemed to be happening without loss of life. He'd done quite a bit of work to prevent the prior battle from spiralling out of control, and it would have been a shame to simply hand victory to a bunch of ruthless murderers. Still, given the brutality of the combat they'd witnessed, and the terrifying fate this sphinx had inflicted on the city to begin with, he didn't have high hopes for the treatment of the prisoners below.

It seemed like a good idea to avoid tangling with the sphinx for now. She sat, motionless, as if communing with the Exile Splinter. He couldn't detect any notable surges of mana, but a skilled enchanter interacting with their own equipment was rarely a legible process to an observer.

He sorely felt the lack of his own equipment here. The battle would have been a far smoother affair if he had been accompanied by his wartime suite of golem-mounted simulacra. Hell, his enchanted cube would have absorbed the dragon's blast without a problem.

He was part way through reading the surface thoughts of the humans below when he noticed the gathering cloud of dust around them.

As if by some signal, the dust solidified into a collection of tiny crystals, and began to arc about his shield at tremendous speeds. The crystals formed into a pair of concentric rotating spheres, one with poles above and below them, and a hair's breadth outside it, one with poles to each side. The overall effect was clear - anyone attempting to leave their bubble by mundane means would be shredded.

At the same time, despite their invisibility, the sphinx turned to face them.

Alright, time to go.

He reached out, grabbing Rain and Harry by their arms. The world rippled, then changed, and they were above the edge of the lake.

Three more short teleports, and their little group was resting on a forest floor, roughly fifty kilometres to the north-east of the ill-fated city. Harry and Rain collapsed to the ground, disoriented. Moments later, Simulacrum Two arrived with his captive.

<Unless the sphinx has some way of tracking us, we should be out of danger. Well, not all danger, just danger from the sphinx.>

Rain stood up, shaking leaves off his armour, mumbling to himself.

"If I had a nickel for every time I've been unexpectedly dumped in a forest I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's still weird that it's happened twice."

Turning to Zorian, he spoke up: "I can't sense any other humans, or any non-animal entities within range. Thanks for getting us out of there, Zorian."

<Time to learn a bit about this world. Can either of you meaningfully contribute to an interrogation?>

Rain

The forest around them was far wetter than Rain would have liked, perhaps blurring the line into jungle. Despite the lack of absurdly large insects, it was uncomfortably reminiscent of Ascension's new home in Bloodmarsh. Still, they'd managed to find a patch of dry soil on which to place the paper mage's unconscious body.

Both Harry and Zorian's real bodies were just at the edge of his Detection radius. Zorian had described in some detail the ease with which the man before them had sliced through his enemies. Rain was pretty sure Force Ward would handle a piece of paper, no matter how artfully it was manipulated, but Harry had still opted to stay out of the interrogation, provided that Zorian kept him filled in via mental communications. Fair enough.

Harry was in the process of transforming - transfiguring, he called it - several thick wooden branches into solid metal. Zorian was seemingly making good use of the veritable torrent of mana Rain was sending him via Essence Well, and had promptly summoned half a dozen additional simulacra. Most of those had stayed behind to work on the crafting project Zorian had started on, but two of them stood here with Rain, one at each side.

Zorian apparently had control over the appearance of his doubles, because the ones here with him almost exactly matched Rain in height, and had the faces of nondescript middle aged men. Even so, they were wearing long black robes and hoods that entirely covered their faces. Harry had enthusiastically approved of the whole ensemble, saying that one medieval knight and two faceless wizards was the perfect makeup for a mysterious and powerful faction.

Rain sighed. Despite all his various and extensive idiosyncrasies, he was beginning to feel he was the most well-adjusted of their eclectic group.

The plan was for Zorian's simulacrum to release his mental clamps on the figure before them, allowing him to wake up, then to mentally interrogate him about the Splinter, the various factions in this world, how magic worked in this world, how one might go about travelling between universes, and anything else that seemed useful. Rain would be able to hear the words in an as yet unintelligible foreign language, and the meaning Zorian picked up from within their subject's mind would be transmitted to both Harry and Rain.

While Zorian's mind magic was obviously invaluable for communication in a strange world, Rain was hoping to pick up some rudimentary language patterns by hearing the paper mage's words out loud. He'd modified his stats accordingly, dumping all the points he could spare into Clarity. The mental effects were already apparent - he'd already accidentally memorised the weaving pattern on the paper mage's pants, and was on to categorising the local plant species when Zorian awoke the man in front of them.

Instead of the panic Rain had anticipated, the man breathed in and out slowly, sat up, and looked at the trio before him calmly. He was tall and thin, and looked perhaps in his early thirties, with scruffy brown hair.

"So, do you talk first? Or would you like to maintain the whole inscrutable and ominous aesthetic you've got going on?"

Even accounting for his Clarity, the language was oddly simple to understand. With Zorian's impression of the intent behind the sentence, Rain was almost immediately able to match concepts together with words. It felt somewhat unnatural, like his mind was latching on to deliberately constructed language. Did this world have some kind of… linguistics magic?

<We are going to ask you a number of questions, and you will answer truthfully.>

The man laughed, and brushed his brown hair out of his eyes.

"Of course! I'm not the type to leave people in ignorance or let questions go unanswered."

<Who are you?>

"I'm Alustin Haber, a travelling librarian."

<You've killed at least four people in the last day.>

He laughed. "Well, I'm a real stickler for overdue fines. I'm joking! I'm joking."

He put his hands on his knees and leant forward toward them. "If you must know, it is of vital importance that the Havath Dominion does not obtain the Exile Splinter. You're not part of the Dominion, are you? I suppose the Havathi could have acquired someone with a mind affinity or something. So, are you Havathi? Does my endless torture begin now?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, seeming awfully cavalier about the whole situation.

<What is the Exile Splinter?>

Alustin sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. "So not the Dominion, or at least pretending not to be. The Exile Splinter is-"

A tattoo on his right arm glowed blue, and a whole ream of paper appeared from nowhere. It shot out, splitting into dozens of separate sheets. They scythed through the air, heading for the apparent weak points of Rain's armour at his neck and shoulders, and toward the robed figures by his side.

The paper was halfway toward them when Alustin spasmed and fell to the ground - Zorian must have taken control of his mind. The paper lost its acceleration, but continued forward under its existing momentum.

Immolate, 10 metre range, exempting all sentients.

The paper was incinerated instantly. A number of nearby plants were unfortunate casualties, and burst into flame. Beneath their feet, swamp water began to boil.

The hot ashes of the paper still moved forward, and sprayed across their faces. Heat and Force Ward prevented any damage, and a short burst of Purify vanished the remaining ash.

As the figurative dust settled, neither he nor the two simulacra had moved an inch. Rain was quietly pleased with the impression. He didn't want to appear utterly terrifying - Death Zone was a nickname better left in the past. Imposing and not to be messed with, that was the goal for now.

<Do not try that again. If you prefer, we can obtain the information we want by digging through your memories instead. That would, however, be significantly more painful.>

Once more released from Zorian's mental control, Alustin sank back into a more casual resting position.

"You can't blame me for trying, my dear faceless interrogators. Could I at least get an explanation of who you're pretending to be, before I spill priceless and potentially world-ending information?"

<You can rest assured we have no intention of ending this world, nor of harming anyone in it, provided they do not harm us first. We have no association with the Havath Dominion, and no intention of using the Splinter as a weapon.>

"I suppose that's as good as I can ask for. The Exile Splinter is a weapon designed to send a city to the void to die. While it was active, it also purged the city and everything inside from living memory. It was constructed roughly five hundred years ago in the war against Imperial Ithos in a collaboration between a number of great powers and archmages. It was eventually deployed against Ithos' capital city, which is where you incapacitated me, I presume. It didn't end the war immediately, but lacking coordination, the Empire fractured. Some parts still exist today as independent states, like Tsarnassus, but the empire itself ceased to exist as a political entity."

Alustin stood up and started to gesticulate as he spoke. Despite his situation, which would have made most other people collapse into shock or fear, the man gave Rain the impression of a particularly passionate university professor.

"The political fallout from the collapse of the Ithonian Empire was widespread, and set the stage for the world we live in today. Several nations lay claim to the mantle of successor to the empire. This is further complicated by the aforementioned fact that until now, no-one could remember or identify where the capital was actually situated. Tsarnassus, for example, designates Champions in a manner reminiscent of the Ithonian Empire. Over the last century, the Havathi Dominion has claimed to be the Empire's successor, conquering neighbours, committing horrific atrocities, and aspiring to unite the continent once more."

Here, Alustin gestured with an exaggerated fist, reminding Rain of Vader promising to rule the galaxy as father and son.

"The language of the Ithonian Empire remains the dominant one on the continent, stabilised and refined as it was by their mages, and is still the language you would find in nearly all books you would read today. Correspondingly, it has a significant cultural impact on most existing states, particularly those which claim to be its descendants. The iconography of the Havathi Dominion is of particular interest. They frequently use marble and bronze as construction materials in an attempt to draw a line of continuity between the ancient Ithonian Empire and their own. This continues to be the case even when it acts to the detriment of their soldiers in battle - bronze is clearly inferior to steel as weaponry, for example."

"This is, however, in strong contrast to their farming techniques. Modern farming techniques have evolved enormously since Ithonian times. The invention of the-"

<We can discuss farming later. How does one travel between worlds?>

Alustin blinked in surprise. "That's quite a non sequitur. Why do you want to know about that?"

There was a pause, and no response.

"I see. Well, the basic concept is as follows. Many worlds exist. When their planes approach, rather than violently intersecting, a labyrinth forms. Labyrinths, along with being the primary source of aether on Anastis, are a junction between many worlds, stabilised and protected by some highly advanced, ancient magic. Typical journeys between worlds, if there can be said to be such a thing, involve entering a labyrinth, navigating its deadly twists and turns, and finding your way to an exit in another world. Of course, you need to evade the ferocious monsters, traps, and obstacles, and avoid getting lost in a place which often seems to want to mislead you."

Alustin leant forward again, looking intently at the outside of Rain's helmet.

"Now, perhaps I can better assist you if I had more of an idea of why you want to know these things. If what you've said is true - that you don't intend to harm anyone who doesn't harm you, and that you're not affiliated with Havath, I don't see why we can't have a more collaborative arrangement. You'll find that I'm an exceedingly reasonable fellow, and can be a reliable and useful ally to those I consider my friends."

To this message, Zorian attached a note of mental clarification.

<This man's idea of 'allies' depends very strongly on overlapping goals. However, he does believe what he's saying. He does not at present intend us violence, nor does he forsee that changing unless he determines that our goals conflict with his.>

That's good enough for now.

Rain stepped forward, and tucked away his helmet with Heavy Armour Inventory.

Constructed entirely from words he'd heard Alustin say, and in what he was sure was a terrible accent, he spoke for the first time in this interrogation:

"Good to meet you, my dear librarian Alustin. Do you have a language book?"

Harry

Assisting Zorian with assembling a robot army turned out to be tiring.

According to his new ally, the primary requirement of material for golems was that it be strong. To that end, Harry had transfigured at least a dozen thick wooden branches into titanium, covertly made the change permanent with the Philosopher's Stone, and then handed them over to Zorian's simulacra. Moving in eerie synchronicity, a trio of the ectoplasmic bodies were magically carving tiny lettering into the metal rods.

As a break from the tiring work of transfiguring so much matter, Harry was now working on assembling a small rod out of carbon nanotube lattice, to test if it was compatible with the enchantments Zorian was using.

Beside them, Zorian's real body and another simulacrum sat on the leafy ground, intently focused on a metallic cube.

After five minutes of mild annoyance, Zorian had eventually allocated an entire simulacrum to answering Harry's questions.

"So, on your homeworld, you absorb ambient mana from your environment, and also generate a tiny bit within your soul. Sorry if it's a bit of a philosophical question, but what is a soul?"

Simulacrum Seven looked a little amused.

<Why would that be a philosophical question? Every living entity has a soul. We don't have a perfect understanding of its functions, but we do know that it's tied to magical capabilities, and that if it's removed or damaged, it's catastrophic. Like you said, it's also the repository for a mage's magical energy, or 'mana' as we call it.>

"Can you see or detect souls? Do I have a soul?"

<I can see souls, although not everyone on my world can. You do have a soul. It doesn't have many features I recognise. Most souls have a natural, fluid-seeming boundary. Yours and Rain's both look like they have hard shells, or something, but they're quite different apart from that. It's hard to describe.>

"A shell? As in, protective? What do you mean?"

The simulacrum stroked his chin.

<Protective, yes, but that's not all, I think. It's as if there's some additional soul construct which has completely subsumed your soul. If I had to guess, that's why Rain's mana regeneration aura doesn't affect you - at first glance I don't think the shell is permeable to mana at all. That would also explain why you were unaffected by the void, since the only source of mana you have access to is your internal soul. Hm.>

At this point, the simulacrum was starting to look at Harry's torso like it was a particularly interesting insect specimen.

<If I look carefully there's also an additional soul marker underneath. This might sound strange, but have you made any pacts with angels recently?>

"I can think of what that might be, although describing it as a pact with angels is much too generous."

<Right, it reminds me of the contract the angels made with Za- with someone from my world.>

Zorian could, at a glance see that he'd sworn an Unbreakable Vow? Harry was beginning to think he'd drawn the short straw in terms of legibility of magical systems.

"Can I learn to see souls? How does that happen?"

<The process involves either a potion made from a moth which is only available once every 23 years on my world, or a deliberate, extended near-death experience.>

"Right, okay, we'll leave that till later. How do you do magic where you come from?"

<It relies on manipulation of mana. Most early training involves practice in being able to detect and manipulate mana in tiny amounts. Kids start trying to channel mana into a basic toy enchantment that glows in response to mana. Later they learn specialised pre-designed spells that restrict the mana enough for it to have a useful effect without them having to shape the mana too carefully.>

So Zorian's world had mana, a quantifiable resource which could be expended in flexible ways to magically influence the world. This was so much more coherent than the Wingardium Leviosa stuff he'd been saddled with.

"You can make me one of those toys, right? And you can see mana as well?"

<Yes, and yes.>

"What does it look like when I do this? Wingardium leviosa." A small rock levitated in the air.

The simulacrum frowned.

<It looks… strange. There's the usual flow of mana from you into the environment, but the patterns of mana in your soul are definitely unusual.>

Simulacrum Seven squatted down, squinting alternately at the rock and at Harry's wand. <It's hard for me to tell without more intrusive inspection. I think the mana lifting the rock is coming from the shell construct wrapped around your soul, not from you. It's also being channelled through your wand in a way I can't figure out.>

This was starting to come together. There was some kind of 'soul shell' wrapped around his soul, which prevented him from absorbing ambient mana like Rain and Zorian could. At the same time, the shell itself was what powered his spells when they interacted with the environment, and severely limited what kind of magic he could use. It was clear at this point that Zorian's spellcasting was far more flexible than his own. Was there some way to bypass the soul shell, and use magic as freely as Zorian could? Was that what wizards like Dumbledore and Quirrell were doing when they cast spells without their wand or without incantations? And why was there a shell around his soul to begin with? Was it something to do with the markers on his blood that he and Draco had determined were linked with magical ability? Some kind of key to the ancient magical constructs the Atlanteans had built?

Harry and the simulacrum stood in silence, each digesting the implications of what they'd observed.

Harry shook his head. There were too many loose ends to chase down, too many questions unanswered. It wasn't a good idea to get stuck down one path when other potential win-conditions might be within reach.

"How does the simulacrum spell work? Do you and the others have independent souls? Can you independently regenerate mana? Do you each have a single mind, or are you like a Cerberus-type three headed dog or something, with many minds coordinated and interlinked? No offence."

Interrupting the simulacrum's response, Rain brushed aside a fern leaf to enter their clearing. He looked around, half amused, half impressed by the hive of activity, and walked over to Harry and Simulacrum Seven.

"That interrogation went pretty well, I thought!"

Seven looked at him with a sour expression. <There was no need to let him see your face. You have no idea if one day that will let him track down and kill you, or your friends and family.>

"In principle it's a good idea to keep your cards close to your chest, but at a certain point, it's useful to make friends with a friendly face."

<His 'friendly face' killed four experienced battle-mages in a matter of seconds.>

Rain sighed, a serious expression coming over his usually playful face.

"While I wish I'd seen less death in my time, there are times when there isn't any other choice. We don't know much about the factions of this world. Maybe the Havath Dominion actually is the monstrosity Alustin seems to think it is. Point is, we know so little - let's hold off on the judgement till we've got a more complete picture. Besides, you've already got him camping separately from us, fifty metres away, with a simulacrum breathing down his neck and making sure he doesn't think or move in a way you disapprove of. I'd say he's not likely to cause us problems anytime soon."

Brightening again, he turned to Harry and offered him a thin book. "Anyway, check this out. Alustin gave me a dictionary!"

Harry blinked in surprise. "He was just carrying around a dictionary? I know he claimed to be a librarian, but who just carries around a dictionary?"

"That's the thing - apparently he has a massive extra-dimensional space tucked into his arm! That's how he summoned the paper he used to attack us. According to him, he has hundreds of books in there. He highly recommended one on differences between farming techniques in the mana desert of Emblin and the rest of the continent. Charming fellow, really."

"Awesome! I don't suppose he had some kind of Rosetta stone featuring paragraphs in the local language and English as well? Otherwise I'm probably not going to be able to make much use of it."

"Oh, right. No, I've already figured out the basics. If you want, I can annotate the dictionary in English? If you have a pencil, that is."

Harry blinked in surprise again, dug through his bag, and handed over a mechanical pencil. Rain had already figured out the language? What kind of savants was he travelling with?

Rain laughed. "Don't look so impressed. Alustin said the local language has been somehow magically reinforced or something. It was surprisingly easy to pick up. Plus I went over it while under hundredfold time acceleration inside my soul, so really I've had a while to study."

Harry's eyes were popping out of his head at this point.

"You have time acceleration inside your soul?"

"Yeah! It took me a while to figure out but it's very useful. I don't know how it would work for you without a System to facilitate it, but it would be interesting to try to figure it out."

"Give me a minute." Harry sat back on the ground, breathing hard. So Zorian could make a bunch of copies of himself to work in parallel, and Rain could just jump inside his soul and think for an hour in thirty-six seconds. This was starting to feel unfair.

Time to see if his unfair advantages still worked here.

"I need a bit of time to myself to do some magical experimentation. I won't go out of your range, just around a few trees. Try to ignore it if anything strange happens."

Simulacrum Seven and Rain nodded at that as if it was the most normal thing in the world. They would have fitted in pretty well in Ravenclaw. The original Zorian even briefly looked up from his intricate metallic cube as he left.

Harry's long black robe trailed a little in the swampy mud as he rounded a thicket of trees. If he was going to spend any length of time here, he would have to figure out some more practical clothing.

After a brief search, Harry found a mound of dry-ish earth, and made himself comfortable, sitting cross-legged.

Then, he whispered to his Bag of Useful Items: "Time turner".

The hourglass was cool in his hands against the warmth of the humid air.

He thought back to his first experiment with the device. The universe, it appeared, would only tolerate consistent loops - that is, the universe abhors a paradox. If you went back in time, you had already been there.

His first attempt to exploit this property to magically brute-force prime factorisation in constant time had ended in a discomfiting surprise. Instead of receiving the correct factorisation of a product of two three digit primes from his future self, he'd received a note in shaky handwriting: DO NOT MESS WITH TIME. Of course, he'd then gone back in time to pass himself the same note - as he knew he would, because he'd seen it.

The explanation for that result was obvious in retrospect. If there was a simple loop in which Harry passed himself back a single note which then caused him to pass that same note back in time, why should the universe prefer a scenario which depended on complex rules to occur? Naturally, there would almost always be more than one possible stable loop - it seemed the universe chose one which was in some sense as simple as possible.

For now, Harry was planning on a simpler experiment. He had yet to see any form of time travel here (subjective time acceleration, while awesome and extremely useful, didn't count), and there was no telling whether the time turner would function as normal, or indeed at all. So, it was time for the most basic possible experiment with the device:

He was going to go back in time, leave a note saying "Hello world", and that was that. Nothing complicated, no bells and whistles, just a straightforward, simple test.

Harry fetched a sketchbook from his bag, and tore off a small scrap of paper. About three metres away, he noted a fist-sized rock resting on the ground. In addition, he fetched a mechanical pencil. Then, he precommitted:

I am going to turn around, and look under that rock for a note from my future self. I will then wait for an hour, before going back in time to place a note under the rock for my past self. If this works, I will consider this test a success.

Harry sat, facing the trunk of a broad tree. It was polite to leave his future self some privacy, and give him a moment to place the note.

After five minutes of intense staring at an alien tree, he turned around. The rock wasn't too heavy - he'd chosen a smaller one, of course. He lifted it easily aside.

There was no note. The soil under the rock looked like it hadn't been disturbed by human hands.

A chill ran down Harry's spine. There were two possible explanations, neither of them good.

First, it was possible that time travel didn't work on this world. For that matter, it might not work anywhere outside of his homeworld. Rain had mentioned that the 'essence' of this world was different to others - that might interfere with the time turner's function? Or possibly Time as a navigable, single consistent entity was an artefact of his world alone, and outside it time flowed linearly, the way Harry had always assumed would be the case everywhere. There were too many possibilities, and not enough evidence to distinguish between them.

Second, and more worryingly, the time turner might be working perfectly. In that case, the reason why there hadn't been a note would have to be that something had prevented him from returning to this time and placing it here.

If the first theory was correct, although he would be deprived of one of his most powerful tools, there was no immediate danger.

If the second theory was correct, there was a significantly elevated risk that his death would come in the next hour.

Harry quickly enumerated the possible risks:

First: The monstrous sphinx who had created the Splinter. She could have traced them here somehow, and she was undeniably capable of killing him near-instantly.

Second: The other faction from the battle above Ithos - the white-clad soldiers.

Third: Their captive paper mage, escaped and seeking revenge. (A bead of sweat ran down Harry's forehead, and he hastily stuffed his paper back into his extensible bag.)

Fourth: Another, as yet unknown faction native to this world.

Fifth: His companions, working quietly in the grove less than fifty metres away.

Zorian and Rain seemed friendly, and so far seemed to share his instincts that life ought to be protected wherever possible. Then again, a portable time machine was a powerful prize…

There was an obvious tradeoff in between preparing for the first four risks and preparing for the fifth. If it was any of the first four, he should immediately return to his companions, and inform them of the potential danger.

If it was the fifth, then giving them any reason to suspect that the time turner existed could be the trigger for them to turn on him.

Harry pressed his fingers to his temples. He was in an unknown world, facing dangers about which he knew frighteningly little. Even if they presented some additional risks, Rain and Zorian were his most useful tools.

He returned the time turner to his bag, and jogged back to the glade.

"Zorian - is the paper mage secure?"

Simulacrum Seven turned toward him and nodded.

"For good measure, could you ensure he doesn't move or access his magic for the next hour? I have some reasons to believe that there may be a threat within that time."

The original Zorian looked up toward him. A trio of simulacra ceased their work, and faded into invisibility. Rain's armour phased back into place.

<Done. Alustin is paralysed. Why?>

Harry swallowed. "This sounds strange, but I swear that I will tell you in an hour. Before then, I have good reasons to say no more."

Zorian narrowed his eyes. 

The next hour was spent in tense silence. Harry stood a few metres away from the others, eyes flickering between Rain, Zorian and his simulacra, and the skies above. After a few minutes, a few of Zorian's simulacra returned to their work, although most remained invisible. Rain darted around, moving faster than ought to be humanly possible.

An hour ticked by. With the others watching him warily, Harry took the time turner from his bag, placed it around his neck, and rotated it once.

Nothing happened.

Harry exhaled.

"Just in case - have either of you observed a duplicate of me at any point within the last hour?"

They both shook their heads, and Rain looked even more confused. "Am I the only one here who can't make clones?"

Harry sighed. "Apparently not."

Since they didn't appear to function here, there wasn't too much point in keeping the secret - and given that his allies didn't seem to be the cause of his death, they did deserve some kind of explanation. As his heart rate gradually returned to normal, Harry described the basic function of the time turner.

Rain looked astonished. That was the reaction Harry expected - it was how he had reacted too, when Professor McGonagall had handed him the device.

Zorian, on the other hand, looked sceptical.

<Are you sure that using this device sends you back in time to the same reality? There's no way it could be placing you in some kind of simulation, or false reality?>

Harry tilted his head to the side, musing. "I don't think so. Often, the first sign I have that I will use a time turner is receiving a signal from my future self who has already used it. That isn't possible unless all versions of myself exist within the same consistent reality. Why do you ask?"

Zorian put his head in his hands and gritted his teeth. <Because a considerable amount of work has gone into producing similar effects on my world - and in the end, all of them turned out to be some kind of time dilation, rather than actual time travel. This includes devices allegedly constructed by the gods.>

There was a pause as the three of them digested that. Then, Zorian raised his eyebrows. <Harry, is your reality embedded in some kind of larger-scale device?>

"... not that I'm aware of? Although I don't know of any mechanism by which I would be able to tell."

<Right, of course.> Zorian was staring into the distance now. <The Sovereign Gate was only detectable during the process of leaving or entering. If you were on the inside, it felt no different to the physical world.>

Harry thought back to a conversation they'd had in the dark city. "So that's what you meant by having 'experience breaking out of prisons without gates'."

Zorian nodded, but refused to share any further details.

Ah well, there were other questions to ask, and more tools to build. The three of them turned back to their work, and Harry kept probing Zorian for information he was more willing to share. There was always more to learn.

Hugh Stormward

Hugh looked out across the horizon. From atop Kanderon's back as she flew through the sky, the sight was magnificent. In the distance, the sun was setting over the peaks of the Skyreach range. His affinity sense could feel the vast networks of crystal that made up Kanderon's blue wings, and the pinkish light refracting through them would have been the first thing on his mind.

If their mentor and friend hadn't just been kidnapped, or possibly killed.

His girlfriend Talia nestled up against him, and he ran his fingers through the fuzz of her short red hair. His fingers brushed the edge of the purplish bruise that was spread out across her temple. He couldn't help but ball his hands into fists.

"This is all my fault," he said through gritted teeth.

Talia reached up and gently slapped him across the cheek. "Obviously it's not your fault. You don't have any kind of natural mental protections, so you didn't stand a chance. It's my fault. My dreamfire gave me the tools to resist whoever it was that took Alustin, I just screwed up."

Hugh sighed in response. "Don't blame yourself. You did the best of anyone at resisting. Even Artur just fell apart. We're lucky Kanderon was with us and could sense their pocket dimensions with her planar affinity, or we'd all be… wherever Alustin is." He looked across Kanderon's broad back, to where the rest of the Librarians Errant were guarding a cluster of bound and gagged Havathi Sacred Swordsmen.

"The dreamfire worked. That's the important thing. They could only put you down by distracting you, so the dreamfire got put out. Is there some way we can keep the fire burning without you needing to concentrate on it?"

Talia stood up, energised by the idea. "Is it possible to stabilise a spell like that? If we can, the dreamfire could protect us from whatever they did!"

There were no enchanters with them, but with Kanderon and Artur's help, after many hours of failed experiments, they were making steady progress. As they approached Skyhold, they finally had a single droplet of dreamfire suspended in a crystalline container. It wouldn't burn forever, but Talia only needed to refuel it with mana once an hour or so. They were sure that with further refining, it could last even longer.

The next time this new faction crossed their path, whoever and whatever they were, things were definitely going to go differently.

Berix · Feb 14, 2024

Zorian - Simulacrum Number Six

The original's instructions had been clear. Take Alustin to a secondary campsite, ensure he doesn't escape, and do not engage. They were still comfortably within the range of Rain's Force Ward aura, so the simulacrum wasn't worried about another escape attempt. He wasn't, however, prepared for how talkative this man could be.

For the first hour, Alustin had been paralysed at Harry's request. The simulacrum had reached into his mind, and suppressed not just his control over his body and his magic, but every scrap of conscious thought. He'd felt vaguely guilty about it, but those feelings abated when he remembered the glee with which Alustin had killed his enemies in the dark city.

Alustin had been free for a matter of seconds when he started talking.

"So! The three of you have some kind of pecking order going on? You're designated to watch me? Is that knight your commander?"

The simulacrum offered no response.

"I've already put together that you're offworlders, in case you're wondering. It's not too common for powerful mages to show up out of nowhere with affinities no-one has ever seen before. Especially when they then interrogate me about how to travel between worlds. I would have thought you'd know all about that already? How else would you have arrived here?"

Six remained passive, leaning against a tree. Alustin had laid himself back on the ground, arms stretched out as if he was trying to make a snow angel. The man appeared perfectly at ease.

"You're new to this world, then. I figure in the interests of mutual collaboration, I'll fill you in on the nuances of this continent. I'm sure an honourable organisation like yourselves will return the favour and give me back the capacity to choose where I'm allowed to walk."

<There's really no point fishing for information. I'm not going to respond.>

Alustin shrugged. "Well, there's not much else I could be doing. Unless you want to let me leave?"

The simulacrum shook his head.

"As I was saying earlier, the invention of the shaduf significantly advanced irrigation capabilities in the mana deserts of Emblin, and in other regions where mana is limited. It's a bucket on the end of a long pole, which is mounted on a pivot, with a counterweight."

This was getting somewhat tiresome. The simulacrum reached into Alustin's mind and took control of his mouth. Alustin stopped talking.

Irritatingly, this didn't seem to deter the librarian, and Six could sense that his thoughts were continuing in the same didactic vein.

It would have been trivial to extract himself from Alustin's brain, but doing so while continuing to monitor his thought patterns for dangerous behaviour was a bit more tricky. It seemed the simulacrum was doomed to listen to a man lecture about farm equipment inside his own head.

<The counterweight and the leverage provided by the long pole allows a non-magical citizen to easily lift large amounts of water out of a river or well into either containers, or up into an irrigation channel.>

<Of course, this is entirely irrelevant in nations which have access to mana and mages with the relevant affinities. Agriculture in these nations is dominated by mages with particular affinities - water affinities, naturally, allow for very effective irrigation. A variety of other affinities are also useful. Plant mages are invaluable, and are responsible for most high-value crop production on the continent.>

The simulacrum frowned and inclined his head slightly. Magic here seemed awfully specialised. The structure Alustin was calling 'affinities' seemed to limit mages into manipulating only certain categories of matter and energy.

Alustin must have noticed the simulacrum's minute head movements, because his thoughts revealed a feeling of success.

<Ah, so you're interested in affinities? We'll make a student of you yet, my dear faceless jail-warden.>

<A small proportion of sentients born on this continent are 'mind-blind', and are unable to interact with mana at all. Typically, those who can interact with magic develop a number of affinities as they age. These can be broadly categorised into material, process and structural types. Material is obvious - stone, metal, air, for example. My affinity, which I… demonstrated for you, earlier, is paper. Process affinities are something like fire, which is the process of a material changing state. Structural affinities are the most complex to describe. The language affinities of the erstwhile Ithonian empire are a prominent example. Abstract categories also exist- I've met mages with affinities for crystal, fibre, even dreams.>

<Mages can manipulate the subject of their affinity, and sense movements in it. My affinity sense for paper, for example, tells me that you aren't carrying any, and that the knight is currently reading my volume on the successors of the Ithonian Empire around fifty metres to my left.>

The simulacrum frowned again. It appeared their precaution of keeping Alustin away from the main campsite was insufficient. At least Rain's Force Ward would keep them safe if the paper mage tried to slice all their throats or something. He sent a short message to warn the original nonetheless.

Affinity senses sounded powerful. The simulacrum was used to being able to sense the minds of those around him, but a mage who could sense all the stone within range would be immensely valuable to someone exploring underground. And Alustin had said there were affinities for air!

This was beginning to explain how their group had been caught twice in the battle above the city, despite the cover of invisibility.

Alustin continued thinking, clearly buoyed onwards by the changes in the simulacrum's body language. He sat up, making use of the body parts he could still control.

<Affinities develop their own separate mana reservoirs within people. A mage with stone and scent affinities, for example, might have much more stone mana than scent mana.>

That was curious too. On Zorian's world, there hadn't really been any subcategories of mana, at least not that he knew about.

<How does mana become specialised within these reservoirs? What changes about it?>

<Ah, a response. Could you give me back my mouth? I much prefer talking that way.>

The simulacrum relented, and upon regaining control, Alustin breathed in and out heavily a few times. He ran his hand over his jaw and moved it around.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to that. Anyway, mana reservoirs naturally absorb and refine mana over time. Once refined, the mana is able to be used in spellforms that are specialised to interact with things conceptually related to the mana type. Fascinatingly, the conceptual boundaries are related to the conceptual boundaries of the mage's language, but that's getting a little off track. We have very few ways to observe or interact with mana directly, so I can't say much about what enables different mana types to work with different spellforms."

<What's a spellform?>

"It's a pattern in which mana can flow to create a specific effect. If I want to move a piece of paper, or shape it into a suit of armour, I'll do that by visualising a spellform in my mind and using it to direct the flow of mana."

<You say you use the visualisation of the spellform to direct the flow of mana - how does that work?>

"While visualising the spellform - it's a little hard to describe - basically I just push my mana a little and it follows the paths laid out in my mind's eye."

<That's interesting.> The simulacrum paused for a moment weighing the benefits and risks of sharing more. <Where I'm from, we have other ways to define the paths of mana and restrict spells, and a great deal of skill and practice is required to shape the mana to follow those paths.>

Alustin looked excited at that. "I've seen references to the existence of different states of aether in different worlds. Anastis, which is where we are, in case you didn't know, is described as having 'liquid' aether. Perhaps in a world with, for instance, gaseous aether, it might require more finesse to control the flow of mana."

Six didn't really know what to make of that, but states of aether, and mana refined to a particular type both sounded like they deserved further research.

Alustin put his hands on his knees, and looked serious.

"Since you can see my thoughts as they unfold, you know I'm telling the truth here. I do want to help you. Barring the kidnapping, you seem like friendly enough people. More importantly, I am always on the lookout for new friends and allies. Please let me know if there are things I can help you with."

The simulacrum turned to face him.

<Tell me more about labyrinths.>

Alustin grinned.

"As I mentioned previously, labyrinths form when the planes of worlds approach one another. They come in a variety of forms, often depending on the aether types of the universes they connect. Newly arrived creatures from another world often feel a kind of 'aether sickness' as they adjust. That explains any queasiness you might be feeling."

That was strange. The simulacrum, itself lacking a soul and depending entirely on the original for mana regeneration, hadn't felt anything of the kind. Nor, to his recollection, had the original. Then again, in terms of proportion, virtually all their mana had come via Rain, rather than being absorbed from the world directly. That was something to ask the knight about later - did he have some special way of absorbing mana that was avoiding this effect?

"Labyrinths are notoriously difficult to navigate, often shifting and changing over time, but it can be done. There are books that describe the patterns particular labyrinths follow, and the worlds they connect. The ones with enough detail to successfully find paths to specific worlds are very rare, but I believe my mentor Kanderon Crux has one."

The simulacrum remembered the wrathful expression of the crystal sphinx as she descended from the sky. He really hoped he could find his way home without her.

Alustin tapped his nose conspiratorially, and continued.

"My theory is that you're a part of an inter-universal organisation that lost their navigator. So now you're stuck here until you can figure out how to travel worlds on your own."

That was… pretty far from the truth, Six noted, somewhat reassured.

<Let's say that's what's happened. How would we find a labyrinth in this world? What do we look for?>

"Well, like I said, it depends. Labyrinths can vary enormously in form and composition."

<Alright, give me an example.>

"My adopted home in Skyhold University has a labyrinth. That's one of the properties that makes it so ideal for mages, since it emits huge amounts of aether. The labyrinth is buried deep beneath the earth, inside the mountain. The pathways are stone tunnels laced with traps and populated with unusual creatures, although near the surface they're not too hard to handle. When you get deeper, the creatures get far more dangerous. The prevailing theory is that they're denizens of other worlds that have wandered into the labyrinth and made themselves at home. Eventually, when you reach a low enough level, provided you can navigate to the right place, the labyrinth connects to other labyrinths in other worlds. Or that's the theory at least. I've never been that deep."

If Simulacrum Six had a spine, chills would have been running down it. As it was, the ectoplasmic hair on his forearms was beginning to stand up.

So this labyrinth in Skyhold was buried deep under an institution of magical learning. It emitted huge amounts of magical energy, which mages could harness. The deeper you got, the more dangerous the creatures. And somewhere very deep, boundaries with other worlds grew thin.

He had a growing suspicion that there was a labyrinth on his world. And he thought he knew where.

He created a memory packet of the last few minutes of conversation, and sent it to the original with an instruction to review it immediately.

Zorian - the original, minutes earlier

The three of them worked well into the late hours of the night. Well, the nine of them, if simulacra counted. They certainly thought they did.

On his homeworld, Zorian's ectoplasmic doubles had a habit of poking fun at his bodily functions, seeing as they had no need to eat or relieve themselves. Here, Rain's aura was helping even the scales on that front, as well as shedding a small circle of light across their improvised workbenches. Without the need to find a bathroom, Zorian had comfortably worked away as the stars appeared overhead and alien insects began to chirp in the trees around them

Zorian was the first to notice his rumbling stomach. Despite the benefits of an existence lasting longer than a few days, he had to admit there were some downsides to a physical form.

<Harry, can you transfigure some food? I'm getting pretty hungry.>

The younger boy looked up from his current project. He'd been working on an experimental tougher coating for metallic parts. Zorian was keen to use it for the mana-conserving metal frames for his simulacra, and hoped it might even amplify the effect. Simulacrum Five had been tasked with assisting and learning about the materials involved. Zorian hadn't reviewed the simulacrum's memory packets yet, so the project was still inscrutable to him. Simulacrum Five was buzzing with excitement though, so it was bound to be something useful.

"I suppose I could, but there's a certain witch who would skin me alive if I even thought about transfiguring us dinner. I haven't run enough tests to be conclusively certain that the transfigurations don't revert under some odd circumstance. If I transfigured us dinner, and some kind of magic reversal effect exists on this world, I'm pretty sure we would all die instantly as the glucose in our blood reverted into rocks or something."

Zorian frowned.

<Wait, so dispelling transfigured materials turns them back into the material they started as?>

"Usually, yes. I can make the transfigurations permanent in a way that I believe is irreversible. I haven't done enough tests to be absolutely certain."

<What if we started with water?>

"Wouldn't work. If we'd metabolised the food and used the carbon to build brain tissue, any kind of chemical change during a reversion would likely lead to a sudden and gruesome death."

At this point in the discussion it was probably safer to find something else to eat.

<Rain? You don't happen to have an aura that magically gives you a full stomach?>

Rain was deep into one of Alustin's books, but couldn't be reading - he was flipping to a new page every ten seconds. He'd requested and received a book on the political factions of the continent they were on. Ithos, it was called. At the same time, he was annotating the Ithonian dictionary with English - the language the other two shared - for Harry.

"Uh, I actually didn't take that skill. I'm saving a single skill point, but I'd need to spend two more to get the prerequisites. Now that I think about it, I have no idea how my soul would react if I tried to spend a skill point. There's no System to interact with here. Sorry, I'm getting side-tracked. Point is, if it's essential, I might be able to do it, but I'd much rather find another way."

Harry, in the meantime, was pulling some square shiny-looking packages from the pocket dimension in his bag.

"Don't worry about it. Just because I don't want to transfigure us food, doesn't mean I don't have a solution." He tossed one of the packets to Zorian, and another to Rain. "Nutritionally complete mealsquares for everyone!"

Rain grinned and tore open the transparent packaging. "You have no idea how nostalgic I am for processed foods. I haven't eaten anything that wasn't roasted over an open fire in over a year."

Zorian followed suit. The bread-like substance inside was dry and bland, but filling. The three of them munched away as the simulacra continued to work in the background.

Although they appeared to be a little inflexible in combat, Rain and Harry were turning out to be excellent crafting companions. Rain's Essence Well was enormously useful, of course. It was strange having so much mana at his disposal. He'd immediately used it to create more simulacra than he'd ever had before, and it still felt like he'd be able to throw boulders around like Zach if he wanted to.

Harry let Zorian skip nearly all the material-gathering parts of crafting. The 'titanium' the boy had produced was lighter and stronger than the steel Zorian was used to. It appeared to hold spell formulas just as well as steel, too. According to Harry, it was impossible to transfigure materials that were magical in nature, which was a significant limitation. It meant Zorian would have to rely on simulacra alone, and wouldn't be able to create his usual suite of combat golems, since they relied on crystallised mana as a power source. Unless they found some replacement on this world, of course.

Harry paused, mid munch. "So you're originally from Earth, right Rain? What's the story there?"

Rain, who was sitting cross legged, responded between mouthfuls. "There's not much to tell, really. About a year ago I was asleep in bed on Earth, and woke up in a forest in another world. Made some friends."

Rain's mental defences had massively improved over the last day. Zorian had respected the integrity of Rain's mind, as requested, but the feelers he automatically put out were brushing up against a mind that felt far stronger than the one he'd been close to overpowering when they first arrived. Strange. Improvements of that nature usually took months of study with an experienced teacher. The shape of his soul had also changed in some difficult to categorise way.

Despite the changes, Zorian could still feel his basic emotional state. Zorian got the distinct impression that Rain had stopped there not because it was the end of the story but because he didn't want to get too emotional in front of them.

"Do you miss Earth? Does the world you were just on have a name? Do you miss it? What was that world like? How did magic work there? Does everyone there have as much mana as you?"

Zorian was getting used to Harry's rapid-fire questions, but six in a row with no breaks was still surprisingly many. Rain was unfazed.

"Not really. There wasn't much for me on Earth. I suppose I wish I could visit again, but I wouldn't stay there. I think I'm at home with Ascension now - that's the organisation I founded with a few friends. We help each other and keep people safe. I actually don't know if that world has a name. I arrived on the continent of Ekrustia, but we're in Bloodmarsh on the western coast of Bellost now."

He paused mid bite, looking suddenly concerned. "That's classified, by the way. Not that I expect you to meet anyone who even knows where that is. Please don't tell anyone."

"My lips are sealed" Harry assured, and Zorian nodded in response too. Looking relieved, Rain continued.

"I miss it a lot. The people there are my family. They're fine without me for now, or so they tell me."

Zorian did a double take.

<You mean you can communicate with your world?>

"Yeah, my Aura Anchors just didn't stop working. I'm not sure why. I send them signals as pulses of light in a variant of Morse code - that's a pattern of short and long signals, Zorian. And they communicate with me by moving objects around near one of my Detection anchors. It's clunky, but it works. That way I know that everyone's ok, and they know I'm ok too."

Zorian put down his mealsquare on their plastic wrapper and gulped. So for some reason, Rain's magic was able to cross the boundaries between worlds. That had significant implications.

Either these 'Aura Anchors' were in some way powerful enough to transmit across the dimensional boundaries between worlds (Rain was undeniably strong, but this seemed unlikely) or the pathways between worlds were more permeable than he'd thought so far.

<Could you tell me everything you know about how Aura Anchors work?>

A short debrief later, and a picture was beginning to emerge. Aura Anchor allowed Rain to create small stones, from which he could emit a chosen aura as if he were there. The key benefit, it seemed, was that they worked at a practically infinite distance. According to Rain, the System of his world claimed there was no limit, but that was difficult to believe. Still, somehow the signals were reaching here.

As soon as the explanation finished, Harry requested an Aura Anchor with Force Ward to carry at all times. It made sense. The boy was by far the most vulnerable of the three of them, since Rain's armour and wards made him nearly impervious to physical harm, and Zorian never needed to be in danger when his simulacra could go in his stead. Rain had agreed, and started work on creating a new anchor immediately.

The process was strange to watch. Rain held his armoured gauntlet out in front of him, palm upwards, and focused. At first nothing happened, then Zorian sensed a trickle of mana flowing out of the man into a point above his hand.

After a moment, the seed of a small crystal began to appear. Zorian and Harry were both staring intently. Rain looked a bit embarrassed and waved them off with his other hand.

"Don't get too excited, this takes an hour."

Zorian sat back and absentmindedly picked up his mealsquare again, as Rain went back to answering the rest of Harry's questions.

It was hard not to be jealous of Rain's contact with his friends. Still, the potential here was undeniable. Alustin had described that labyrinths were the key to interplanar travel here. He'd said that one could simply walk through them. If so, that might explain why Rain's Aura Anchors were still able to communicate with his home world.

His friends and allies back home were probably stirring up a hornets nest right now. Kiri would be concerned, of course. Spear of Resolve would be on the lookout for some secretive assassin who had managed to remove her strongest ally. Zach would be… he didn't want to think about what Zach would be doing. He just had to hope some of Falkinrea would still be intact when he managed to get back home.

There were still many unanswered questions. If Zorian were to enter a labyrinth here, and could in some way navigate the thing and find a path to his home world, which Alustin claimed was very difficult, where would he even wind up?

This was when Zorian received a memory packet from Simulacrum Six, the one assigned to guard Alustin. And several things fell into place at once.

Mana wells, like the hole in Cyoria, were the entrances to a vast labyrinth stretching through the core of his planet. The Dungeon and the dangerous creatures within were escapees from other worlds.

<Rain, have you read anything about labyrinths in those books yet?>

Rain nodded, again unfazed by the seemingly random question.

"They're discussed a bit in Erasmus' Tsarnassus and Havath: Heirs to the Ithonian Mantle. Apparently they're seen as a significant resource for nation-states. Lots of mana - they call it aether here, if I'm translating right - flows out of them, which means that cities are often settled atop calmer labyrinths in order to keep mages happy. There are loads of rare resources in them too, if you're crazy enough to go inside to get them."

Rain

Harry and Rain sat quietly as Zorian explained. His working theory was that he'd been brought here through a labyrinth that lay beneath his home city.

There was only a brief pause before Harry interjected. "We all arrived at the same time in the dark city. If your path was via a labyrinth, what about us? I don't recall any massive dungeons containing hordes of monsters anywhere on Earth. I suppose I could have missed it if it was deep underground. How about you, Rain?"

Rain pondered. "Well, there are plenty of dungeon-like structures filled with esoteric monsters on my world. I think they might even emit mana under certain circumstances. They're called lairs. But I'm fairly certain there's no way to use them to travel between worlds. They spawn at a fairly frequent rate, and I've personally destroyed one before."

Harry spoke again: "You've mentioned that there's something called 'the System' which regulates most things on your world. Does it seem to regulate the lairs in some way? And why did you destroy one?"

Rain shook his head. "I don't know enough about lairs to be sure if they're created by the System, but they're certainly influenced by it. They've got stats which show up on the System interface that you can see after being Awakened. I destroyed one because it's one of the very few ways to Awaken someone. Destroyed lairs also drop what's called an Accolade, which gives the bearer additional strength or skills."

Harry frowned. "So these lairs spawn, and then the System gives you an explicit reward for destroying them. Does the System seem to have been designed by anyone, or have other goals you can discern?"

"The prevailing wisdom is that the system was designed. There's a few artefacts on my world which date back to the people who were probably the System's creators - the Majistraal. We're not certain how long ago their civilisation fell, but it's widely believed it was about three thousand years ago."

Harry held up a hand. "Wait a moment. I want to make some predictions."

He sat down on a stone near Rain, and shut his eyes. He opened them again, and started counting off his fingers.

"One. I predict that the System in your world appears to have been designed in such a way that it would endure, and bind the citizens of your world long after the fall of the System's creators."

He held up another finger.

"Two. I predict that the System in your world constrains how magic works. In particular, I predict that it prevents many uses of magic which would otherwise constitute risks of exponentially growing threats, or permanent destruction. This includes harnessing power from necromancy, creation of independent magical creatures or devices which autonomously produce more of themselves, any large-scale magical destruction on the scale of continents or larger, and mechanisms by which powerful individuals can live forever or duplicate themselves."

Rain rubbed a hand over his forehead.

"Three. I predict that visitors from other worlds are extremely rare."

Here, a darker expression fell across Harry's face. It looked as if the boy was ready to pronounce a death sentence. "Fourth. I predict that there is at least one existential threat which travels between worlds."

Zorian stood up. <What are you talking about? How could you possibly know that?>

Harry gestured to Rain with a hand. "How'd I do?"

Rain didn't say anything for a moment, merely thinking through what Harry had said.

"Let's go through those one at a time. First, we don't know a lot about the Majistraal. It certainly seems that they built the system to endure. That doesn't count as a real prediction by the way, since you already knew that I operate within the System and that the Majistraal have fallen."

"Second. The System isn't unbreakable - if someone is powerful enough, like a gold or platinum plate, they can push against the system and force certain outcomes regardless. Still, I'll count this one as broadly correct. The only exception I can think of is that the most powerful mentalist on my world can place copies of herself in the minds of others. It's unclear why, but those mental images tend to decay relatively quickly, so it doesn't act as an effective path to immortality."

"Third. Since I'm from Earth, I'm an obvious exception, but this one is pretty much correct too. I think there might have been other travellers, but I've only heard rumours."

"I have no idea about the fourth prediction, and frankly I'm not sure I want to know. Now, please explain how on Earth you worked any of that out."

Harry shivered a little in the night air, and pulled up the hood of his cloak over his head. Rain noticed and activated Immolate on a very low level to warm the air around them. The young boy sent him a grateful look, and responded.

"Patterns. My world also has an ancient magical civilisation which has since been completely wiped out, leaving us only their most powerful and resilient artefacts, and the constraints they imposed on our magical capabilities. Atlanteans, we call them."

Rain spat out some crumbs of mealsquare. "Wait - like the lost city of Atlantis? In the ocean?"

Harry waved a hand dismissively. "They're probably the source of the myth, but I don't actually know if they have anything to do with the ocean." He looked over at Zorian. "You said there's a shell around my soul. Do you think it's the kind of thing that could have occurred naturally, or does it look like it was designed?"

Zorian spent a moment looking at Harry's chest, then responded. <It doesn't look like something you could add to someone's soul while they were alive without crippling them. It reminds me a little of shifters - people whose ancestors merged their bloodline with animals in order to obtain some of their skill and magic. So, deliberate, but long ago, and passed down via blood.>

"There you go Rain, that's my System. The same way the Majistraal built and bound your world, the Atlanteans built and bound mine."

<But why the prediction about the travellers between worlds?>

"I think there used to be a massive, advanced, inter-world civilisation. And some parts of it opted out."

He started pacing. What was it with the boy and pacing? Harry continued. "Whether or not your Majistraal and my Atlanteans were the same people, they clearly had the same idea. Magic is dangerous, and travel between worlds is more trouble than it's worth. They both massively constrained magic in order to prevent cataclysm, and both locked down travel between worlds to protect themselves from whatever's out there." He paused for effect. "And there is something out there. There always is."

Harry sat back down, and continued quietly. "Whatever they did, it wasn't enough. It sounds like your Majistraal fell, one way or another. The Atlanteans were erased from Time. They tried so hard, with all the knowledge and power their civilisations had. And it wasn't enough. They still fell."

Rain felt an urge to reach out and comfort Harry, and did so. It was an awkward manoeuvre, since his other arm was still palm up, conjuring an aura anchor. It almost looked as if the boy felt personally responsible for the collapse of two ancient civilisations which had occurred millenia before his birth, one of which was in another reality.

Harry looked up at Zorian. "I'd like to talk to Alustin now. Could you bring him here?" He tapped his foot in irritation. "Actually, don't bother. I can't speak the language yet. Rain, you said it was easy to learn? Could I have the dictionary?"

Rain passed it over. "I'm only part way through the English annotations. Actually, give me a minute."

He closed his eyes and descended into his soul, feeling time slow around him until the outside world was moving at a hundredth of its usual rate. Pulling up a mental interface, he began to organise a text-file version of Alustin's Ithonian dictionary.

It took him around three hours of subjective time to get the basics right. Ithonian was a very structurally simple language, and a collection of coherent rules governed conjugation and tenses. Compared to English, it was a walk in the park.

The final touch was to change the file permissions to allow access to the dictionary from outside his soul. He opened his eyes a little less than two minutes in real time later.

"Zorian, I've just created a .txt dictionary, can you see it?"

The mage's eyes unfocused for a moment. <Yes, I have it. Thank you.>

Rain mused out loud. "Would sending the text files to Harry work? You know the principles of file encoding, right?"

The younger boy nodded, but Zorian shook his head. <The human mind struggles to comprehend experiences it has not already felt. I spent years with a spider's memories inside my head. I couldn't even tell they were there until I had the skill to read them.>

"Could you translate them into human experiences somehow?" Harry asked. "Perhaps allocate a simulacrum to think through the dictionary, and send me those memories?"

<Done> Zorian said. A simulacrum put a skeletal metal arm down on a workbench and sat down in a meditative position. <That will take a little while.>

Harry nodded, looking appreciative. "Thank you." He turned back to Rain. "Operating under our working theory, your world and mine have been designed by some ancient magical progenitors to limit or prevent access to other worlds. And yet we're here anyway. How?"

Rain paused for a moment to think, then cursed under his breath. "The Maelstrom".

Harry blinked. "What?"

"Not long ago - a few months, maybe, two of the most powerful figures on my world fought. Even I can bend the System's rules if I try, and compared to these people, I'm an ant. Barely an ant. Where they fought, the System's rules have completely broken down. There's hundreds of square kilometres in which the System has no more control. If the Majistraal and their System were what was stopping inter-universal travel, it would make sense if those measures have weakened recently."

Rain continued, noticing his confusion. "That doesn't make sense though. I'm probably thousands of kilometres away from the Maelstrom. Why would the Exile Splinter take me, and not someone closer?"

 Zorian added. <If the Exile Splinter is what brought us here, it wasn't due to proximity to a labyrinth.>

They sat in silence, each of them thinking through the possibilities. After a few minutes, the meditating simulacrum stood, and tapped Harry on the shoulder. The boy jolted as if he'd been hit by an electric shock, but calmed once he realised it was just a simulacrum.

<I'm ready to send you the dictionary, if you'd like.>

Harry nodded, closed his eyes, and settled into a cross legged position. "I'm ready."

To Rain, nothing visibly happened. Then Harry's face started to contort with what looked like pain. He was about to intervene when Harry opened his eyes and gasped. With an even worse accent than Rain's, but undeniably in the local language, he spoke: "I know Ithonian."

Rain grinned. "Sort of."

Harry

Rain was right, Ithonian was a beautifully simple language. It reminded Harry a little of Lojban, with its clearly structured rules and lack of ambiguity. Still, the pronunciation was tricky.

"Does it count as language immersion if one of my friends is only communicating via telepathy and the other one only learnt the language today?"

Rain laughed and shook his head. "My pronunciation isn't great yet either, I'm sure we'll pick it up with time."

Harry nodded, and looked over toward Zorian. "Time to get a native speaker. Can you bring Alustin here?"

Zorian looked conflicted. <Simulacrum Six seems to like him, and hasn't found any aggressive intentions since the interrogation. At this point he seems keen to be our ally and guide here. He thinks we'll make excellent weapons, and hopes to persuade us to destroy his enemies.>

"Well, that's not great in the long term, but it does make him less likely to kill us for now. Rain, you're still warding us, right?" Harry asked. Rain nodded.

"It should be fine then. I have some questions I'd like to ask him."

Zorian nodded. A minute later, one of Zorian's simulacra pushed his way through the thick foliage, followed by an extremely excited Alustin. His eyes darted across the clearing, from the wooden workbenches where hooded figures were manufacturing metallic skeletons, to the armoured knight with a glowing crystal hovering above one hand.

Harry didn't need to be able to read minds to guess how Alustin was feeling now.

"We finally meet under friendly circumstances! I'm Alustin, a travelling librarian. By what names should I call you?"

"I'm Rain of Ascension. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"I'm Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres. It's always a pleasure to meet a librarian." Drawing from the simulacrum's memories, the Ithonian syllables rolled off his tongue easily. He could tell from Alustin's expression that he hadn't quite got the pronunciation right though.

Zorian had pulled up his hood to conceal his face. "I'm Benisek." A fake name, presumably. Should Harry have used a fake name too? Regardless, there were more important things to think about.

Harry looked serious, and faced their guest. "Alustin. This is a very important question. You need to be honest. Is there a danger that moves between worlds?"

Alustin looked grim. "So you know about the Cold Minds."

Harry groaned and rested his head in his hands. "I'm the first to admit that I don't like being wrong. But sometimes I hate being right."

Berix · Feb 17, 2024

Zorian - Simulacrum Number One

The first moments of existence never felt like they were the first. At least, that was the simulacrum's experience, and he had memories of a thousand beginnings.

Like all beginnings, at the time it felt more like a change. One moment, Zorian was standing by a skeletal frame, twisting ectoplasm through the ribcage, then there was a spark of life, and Zorian was inside the metallic frame, feeling his flesh grow over metal bones.

Still, this was a first, of sorts. This frame felt different. Stronger. Simulacrum Five had spent hours poring over Harry's alterations, ensuring that the enchantments and spell formulae would hold, and had passed those memories on to the original. So Simulacrum One knew the theoretical properties of his own skeleton - substantially increased durability, decreased weight, and reduced mana consumption.

This was a good skeleton. Far better than the original's, the poor fellow. He was still relying on bone.

Moments later, the process was complete, and Simulacrum Number One stood up. He noted that he was around a head taller than Zorian now, who was already moving on to a similar skeleton on the next workbench. Since their consciousnesses had diverged only moments ago, there was nothing to say to his creator.

There was going to be a short wait while his partner was created, so the simulacrum meandered over to where Harry was slowly waking up in his sleeping bag.

The simulacrum knew why it had been created. It was time to start practising.

"Hey. How's your Ithonian coming along?"

Harry looked up with a bleary expression. "Good morning to you too."

Neither of their accents were good. Hours of conversation with Alustin last night had certainly helped, but they were still clearly identifiable as foreigners. And that wasn't good enough.

"Could you please transfigure me fifty kilograms of gold?"

Harry rubbed his eyes. "Coins or ingots? And can I have breakfast first?"

"Ingots, thank you. And I suppose that is acceptable."

Simulacrum One walked back to the workbench as Harry pulled a mealsquare from his pouch. There were times when the simulacra were jealous of physical digestive systems, but this was not one of them.

The first project to work on was a small bag not unlike Harry's - larger inside than out. It wasn't a wise idea to carry around that much gold in a visible way. Then came a few other tricks.

After a moment, Simulacrum Number Two came into existence and joined him in the enchanting. They didn't need to discuss what was planned - they hadn't had time to diverge, so remembered intentions were enough to ensure fairly seamless collaboration.

Simulacrum Number Two, his intended partner for most of his existence, was roughly the original's height. Both of them wore different faces, however. Simulacrum One's face was reminiscent of detective Haslush, Zorian's old friend and divination tutor. Two's face was more generic, a bit younger, and fairly forgettable. They worked together in silence for several minutes.

After completing his enchantments, Number One walked back over to Harry, who was just finishing the fiftieth oblong ingot. One by one, the simulacrum lifted the ingots with unstructured magic and shuffled them into his bag. Then he sat down by Harry's side.

"We should test if you can activate my magic items."

Harry suddenly looked much more awake.

The simulacrum handed over a small titanium ring. Zorian was growing fond of the foreign metal.

"This is just a test enchantment. If activated, it briefly glows. Could you try to channel mana into it?"

Harry slipped the ring onto his left hand, and squinted. Nothing happened.

"Hm. As I thought, the shell around your soul appears to be impermeable to mana."

Harry drew out his wand, and tapped the ring. It began to glow.

The simulacrum frowned. "That's acceptable, but inconvenient." He held out another ring. "This contains a single teleportation spell. When activated, as long as you're within a hundred kilometre range, it teleports the wearer back to this clearing. It's intended to be worn on your toes so enemies don't think to remove it, but that would be impractical to activate with your wand. I guess it'll have to go on your finger, then." He handed over the ring.

Harry dropped the ring as it was red hot. "If someone fills this clearing with rocks, will I get crushed? What if a person is standing in this clearing in the spot I would teleport to? Will I get splinched or something?"

The simulacrum shook his head. "If there's an obstacle at the destination, the divination component of the spell will either find a nearby unoccupied space, or fail to activate."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Divination? As in, knowledge of the future?"

"I can't tell the future. It's a poorly named discipline, I suppose. It's used to gather information about the past and the present."

Harry continued the line of questioning. "Can people on your world interact with the time? Reading the future, travelling through time, things like that."

The simulacrum shrugged. "There are people on my world who can, but it usually returns probabilities rather than certainties. Even then it's notoriously inaccurate."

Harry looked simultaneously relieved and disappointed. "And there's no way you foresee this ring causing some kind of teleport misfire which kills me?"

"It's extremely unlikely."

Harry nodded appreciatively. "Thank you." He replaced the glowing ring with the new one. "With this and Rain's aura anchors, I'm starting to feel a little less vulnerable." He gestured toward the trio of small crystals embedded into a titanium locket around his neck.

Rain had exceeded Harry's request, and spent three hours making Force, Heat and Arcane ward anchors. He'd promised to maintain a two metre range of protection at all times, unless there was some emergency and he was unable.

He'd offered the same to Zorian, who had refused for now. Thanks to Rain's Essence Well, the original planned to stay close to Rain at all times, and would as such be under direct protection regardless.

"Oh, and there's this." The simulacrum tossed Harry a small inscribed cube. Harry fumbled for a moment, then caught it.

"What is this?"

"This is one of the training cubes we give to youngsters. You mentioned yesterday that you'd like one."

Harry turned the cube over in his hands, looking at it sceptically from various angles. "What… what do I do with it?"

Simulacrum One took the cube back, and briefly sent a pulse of mana into it. The side of the cube began to glow a dull red. "If you can channel mana into it without using your wand, then you're on your way to doing magic like I do. That's it, basically. It's meant to help you practise control. Here, you try." He handed the cube back.

"But you just said the shell around my soul prevents mana from flowing out!"

The simulacrum shrugged. "You wanted the cube, I made the cube. Good luck!"

Satisfied, Simulacrum One stood, and moved on. There was one more conversation to be had before they left.

A minute later, he and Simulacrum Two sat in front of Alustin.

Despite the mid-morning sun, the scruffy paper mage was still slowly waking up. In fairness, he'd had a long night. After the revelation about the Cold Minds, their trio had grilled him for hours.

Unfortunately for all of their sleep schedules, the list of entities which threatened massive destruction was very long.

There was nothing particularly actionable about the Cold Minds. According to Alustin's description, they were the remnants of a vast civilisation whose universe had eventually starved of aether. Ever in search of more energy, they collectively hibernated until they made contact with a still living world. Then, they absorbed everything, consuming the entirety of the other world in order to prolong their existence.

Alustin claimed that either the Cold Minds were here, in which case everyone was imminently going to die, or they were not here, and everything was fine. This did not do much to inspire confidence. Alustin had performed some kind of ritual and claimed there was no such incursion, and that everything was in fact, fine.

Harry had made him perform the ritual three more times, while explaining each part. Then, they'd discussed other potential threats. Alustin had said, and Zorian had confirmed, that he wasn't aware of any other threats which might destroy their entire reality. Stepping down an order of magnitude, the list grew very long.

The Sleeper in the Sands was… well, no one was quite sure what it was. It lay buried beneath this world's largest desert, layered with spells intended to prolong its slumber. It was apparently universally agreed that terrible things would happen if it awoke. The guards who protected its unusual prison were one of the only truly neutral parties on the continent, and were honoured and respected by all.

Intet Slew was undeniably capable of destroying cities, but seemed content to convalesce in the ruins of Louthem.

Dorsas Ine was a monstrous phoenix with an affinity for gold. It flew across the continent, sacking cities and looting their gold to add to its massive armour.

Harry had insisted on hearing a short description of each entity capable of massive destruction. The list went on for a long time. Only then, with alien birds chirping in the swampy trees and the sky beginning to glow with the light of dawn, had they all gone to sleep. All the flesh-and-blood people, that is. The simulacra had continued to work regardless. Now that the stabilising skeletal frames were complete, the pure ectoplasm simulacra knew their dismissal was imminent. It followed that sleeping was a waste of time.

Simulacrum One coughed politely. Alustin groaned, sat up and faced them.

"I don't think I've met either of you before. There really are a lot of you. If I didn't know better I'd say some of you were appearing out of thin air."

Simulacrum Two scoffed. "Please, what a ridiculous theory."

Simulacrum One elbowed him in the metallic ribs. That was a bit obvious.

"Alustin, you've recommended that we seek out and work with Kanderon Crux to get back to our world. It's clear to us that Kanderon is at least in part responsible for the creation of the Exile Splinter, and thus responsible for tens of thousands of brutal deaths. Please explain why we should collaborate with a monstrosity."

Zorian was no stranger to working with murderers. Inside the time loop, he'd spent months studying with Quatach-Ichl, and had eventually grown to grudgingly respect the murderous old lich. He'd made a deal with Oganj, the dragon-mage, who had slaughtered hundreds of humans and would undoubtedly do so again.

It was out of practicality, not soft-heartedness, that Simulacrum One was asking this question. He was more than willing to work with Kanderon to find a path home - if that was what was necessary. That did not mean he was going to blindly trust the crystal sphinx, or that he would close his eyes to other options.

Alustin pressed his fingers against his closed eyes and sighed. "Kanderon is… not perfect. None of us can afford to be, in this world. I don't know if it's different where you come from, but here, it's a constant battle to protect the people you care about - and sometimes, it's a battle you lose. Kanderon and I have that in common."

Simulacrum One didn't need his mind magic to feel Alustin's regret. "Elaborate."

Alustin opened his eyes, and a hint of the professorial manner he'd displayed yesterday began to return. "Yesterday I gave you a brief primer on the rise of the Ithonian Empire. I didn't explain what that meant for those in their way. The Ithonians wouldn't just subjugate any culture they conquered - they would destroy it. We don't know exactly how, but we think it had something to do with their language affinities no-one has since been able to replicate. The survivors would be left without a language in which to think, and were typically driven insane in the process. And that was just the unusual cruelty - all the usual cruelties were there in spades. Slavery, mass murder, genocide."

"I don't know if there are sphinxes where you come from. They live for a very long time, mate for life, and don't often reproduce. The expanding Ithonian Empire killed Kanderon's child and blinded her mate."

The simulacrum winced.

"Kanderon joined the alliance of independent powers fighting against the Empire. Together with eleven other archmages and great powers, she and her mate created the Exile Splinter. Her mate, and four of the others died in the process."

Alustin bowed his head. "The world is a large place - larger than I will ever know, and morality is a complex thing. But every time I've seen an empire grow, it's meant the deaths of many who should have lived. I was a teenager, studying with Kanderon at Skyhold University when the Havathi Dominion melted my home city of Helicote, killing almost everyone I knew."

Alustin clapped his hands together in mock satisfaction. It didn't stop the simulacra from noticing the tightness of the lines around his mouth. "Alright! Well, that's my story for this morning. Anything else you'd like to know?"

Simulacrum Two shook his head. "I'm sorry that happened." He paused for a moment "Do you have a map of this continent?"

Alustin produced a paper map from his extraplanar space, and that was that. The pair of simulacra took it and walked behind a grove of trees. Together, they stepped onto an invisible disc of force, which rose high into the sky.

From here, the city they'd arrived in - the Ithonian capital, apparently, was barely visible on the horizon.

That wasn't their destination. Zorian had already sent a simulacrum there hours ago. He'd found just the ruins. Kanderon must have removed the Exile Splinter by some as yet unknown mechanism.

No, their destination was further south, in the lich-city of Zophor.

The word 'lich' didn't seem to translate perfectly. On Zorian's world, a lich was a mage of substantial skill who had managed to attain undead immortality by storing their soul inside a hidden phylactery. Here, Alustin had explained, rather than a ring or chalice, mages spread their mind and soul out across a vast area, losing their original body and instead becoming the land. They often chose to have humanoid avatars, but they were confined to the land that made up their domain.

A series of airborne teleports took them past the lake and down the river. The jungle beneath them was thick and leafy. Nevertheless, the boundary of Zophor's territory was clear. The mangroves grew abruptly far taller, stretching at least a few stories into the sky.

Even from a distance, the wide branches that formed boulevardes and bustling avenues were visible, strangely busy for a city set this deep into a jungle. Alustin had described the lich as hospitable and generous, but this was still a surprise.

"We should enter the usual way, right? We don't want to alarm anyone." Simulacrum Two said, practising his Ithonian. Simulacrum Two was probably right. Simulacrum One began to lower their disk to touch down a little way outside the city. They were both wearing cloaks, but no hoods, leaving their faces exposed.

Zorian's plan was to do his due diligence. If he was going to work with the crystal sphinx, he wasn't going to take Alustin's word that she was trustworthy. He was going to ask around first. They landed in a small clearing, dismissed the disc, and walked together into the lich-city of Zophor.

Rain

Despite the lack of connection to the System, Rain's onboard clock appeared to be functioning, and was surprisingly in sync with the world around them. It told him that it was mid-morning, a little after 10. Rain wasn't able to see the sun however, as he was sitting inside his soul, waiting for his guest.

Not too long ago, one of the most powerful figures on his world had upended the political landscape. The Warden had used her vast mental power to take control of the ruling elite and use them as thralls in her self-destructive war against the Adamant Empire. Both the Warden and Fecht, the near-mythical Adamant Emperor, had presumably died in the process, but not before ripping a massive hole in the System. Storms engulfed hundreds of square kilometres, and the now uninhabitable area was dubbed the Maelstrom.

Well, whether or not the Warden was now dead was really a question of definitions. Before she had died, the Warden had left an image of herself inside Rain's soul.

The image's intent was to help Rain figure out how to protect his soul and his mind, then to wipe itself away. Ultimately, Rain had managed to stabilise the image. As a consequence, he was now walking around with a partial copy of the Warden inside his head.

She was proving to be extremely useful.

A small 'ding' announced her arrival. The Warden - or her image - walked through a door in Rain's soul-space and took a seat at the table he'd conjured. She had control over her form here, and had chosen to appear as a stern-looking older woman with greying hair cropped to shoulder length.

"So," she began. "How are things with the pesky mind-mage?"

Rain nodded. "We're on good terms for now, so he hasn't tried to break into my mind again. Still, I'm glad we took the precautions we did."

With the Warden's help, he'd spent a subjective week reinforcing the boundaries of his soul and mind to prevent incursion. He hadn't admitted it to his new ally, but Zorian scared him. A lot.

There were plenty of threats that could squash Rain like a bug. None of them - barring the Warden herself, of course - had made him feel as powerless as Zorian had, even if it was just for a moment. Losing control of your body and your mind was a special kind of horror.

"Never let your guard down, boy. You never know with someone like me. One moment they'll look friendly, the next you're trapped inside a prison inside your own head. I should know, I've done that to more people than you've ever met." She grinned, showing a lot of teeth.

He nodded. Her paranoia was probably a good influence here. He really didn't know Zorian at all. And the way he created simulacra and dismissed them at the drop of a hat made Rain uncomfortable, even if they appeared to be willing.

"These labyrinths sound like the key to getting home. Do you know anything about them?"

The Warden slowly shook her head. "I only have a fraction of the real Warden's memories. If I'd tried to create a full copy of myself inside you, your brain would be mush by now. I think the real Warden might have known about how to travel between worlds, but I don't have that information anymore."

"Right." Rain sighed. "My choices right now seem pretty limited. I work with Harry and Zorian, we find our way into a labyrinth, and try to navigate our way home."

The Warden shrugged. "The sooner you get home, the better. There are things I want you to do once you're back." She stepped outside, and dismissed her corporeal form, fading back into soul-stuff. What a way to leave a conversation.

Rain focused, and exited his soul. As his System clock had assured him, the dappled mid-morning sun was illuminating their clearing. Zorian's simulacra-skeletons were gone, presumably off on some mission Zorian hadn't explained. Zorian's original form was resting against a tree nearby, still drinking in mana from Rain's Essence Well.

Rain sighed, and re-entered his soul to double-check on his mental defences.

Zorian - Simulacrum Number One

Zophor was a surprisingly hospitable place. The entire city was set into the roots and branches of a vast network of mangrove trees. The whole affair was unusual, but quite pleasant.

They'd been through quite a few stores, and although no-one had known much about Kanderon, the shopkeepers had been universally polite and friendly.

"Good morning! I was wondering if you know of Kanderon Crux, the crystal sphinx?" Simulacrum One went through the rehearsed spiel for the fifth time, expecting a bit of a blank look, or the same basic scraps of knowledge - she was a sphinx, she had enormous wings of crystal. Despite the generous bribes of gold they were offering, they weren't getting much more.

This time, they were in a bookshop. The wooden shelves were grown straight out of the trunk of a vast mangrove, and were stacked to the brim with books. The owner, a rotund man with a long dark beard, looked surprised.

"Kanderon? Why do you want to know about Kanderon?"

Simulacrum One suppressed a grin and continued. He started to keep an eye on the man's surface thoughts, in case he was hiding anything.

"We're new to the area, and she's a potential business partner. We want to get a sense of her reputation before entering into long term agreements."

The shopkeeper sucked air through his teeth. "Well, I could tell you. But you should probably talk to him."

He pointed behind them. There, near the entrance of the bookshop, was a massive mangrove branch the simulacrum was sure hadn't been there before. Atop the branch was a roughly human-sized wooden statue. Or at least, it looked like a statue until it winked at them, beckoned a hand, and began to speak.

"Why don't we continue this conversation somewhere more private?"

They gave the surprised shopkeeper a gold ingot, and followed the lich's avatar through the streets. He eventually led them to a grassy park, in which children laughed and played. They came to a stop at a small wooden table, and sat down.

"Welcome to my city! I am Zophor. I don't believe we have been formally introduced."

Simulacrum One coughed. "I'm Kael, and this is my friend Benisek. Your city is beautiful."

The lich gestured magnanimously. "I do what I can. Now, what brings you here? I'm told you are potential business partners of Kanderon's, and are throwing around enough gold to make Dorsas Ine take notice. Care to explain?"

This was a pivotal moment. Until now, they hadn't encountered anyone who seemed trustworthy. Whatever tragedies lay in her history, Kanderon had killed thousands. Alustin wished more than anything that he would get the opportunity to kill thousands. Zophor, on the other hand, was well regarded, and the people living in his city seemed safe and happy.

Simulacrum One made a spur of the moment decision, and told the truth.

"We're wanderers from another world. We believe we were dragged here by accident as a consequence of the return of the Exile Splinter. We want to return back home, likely via labyrinth. Kanderon has been recommended as someone who might know how we could navigate through labyrinths."

Zophor sat silently for almost a minute.

"That is one of the most bizarre stories I've ever heard. And I think I believe you."

He stroked his wooden chin with his wooden fingers.

"I'm afraid I cannot help you myself. As a lich, I am bound to the land, and cannot directly influence the world beyond my borders. I would gladly grant you a place to live, if you are content to stay here."

The simulacra both shook their heads.

"I was afraid of that. In that case, there's not much I can do to help. For what it's worth, Kanderon is known to be a staunch ally to those she sees as her friends. If you approach her peacefully, she may ask for something in exchange, but I would expect her to help."

The simulacrum nodded appreciatively. "Do you know of anyone else who could help us find our way home?"

Zophor sat still for a moment. The mangrove leaves sprouting from his branches drifted in the wind.

"There is perhaps one other I could recommend. Do you know of Keayda, the stone lich? No, I thought not. He's one of the oldest beings on the continent, older than Kanderon, even, and he's a collector of knowledge. If there's anyone else who might know of paths between worlds, it's Keayda."

The simulacrum pulled out the map. "Where can we find Keayda?"

Zophor gestured at a mountain range north of Havath city, and described how to contact the stone lich.

"Thank you. We really appreciate this." Simulacrum One started lifting out ingots of gold, and only stopped when Zophor objected after the tenth.

"Please, I'm a mangrove lich. If Dorsas Ine decided to pay me a visit that would be quite a problem, so I'd rather not have too much gold. Besides, I have a feeling your friendship will be worth more than material rewards. Let me know how your quest unfolds."

The simulacrum nodded. "I will." They shook hands. Zophor's wooden fingers were oddly strong. Having said their goodbyes, they walked to the edge of the city, and took flight once more.

Harry

Harry sat in the dappled sunlight of their clearing. In the eighteen hours since their group had arrived, they'd made quite an impact on the natural environment. A collection of magically assembled workbenches ran along the edges of the clearing. The nearby ground had been stripped of fallen wood, and hardened into stone. The wood had largely been transfigured into an odd-looking pile of titanium branches. They had no fireplace - Rain's auras made heating and cooling trivial.

Harry toyed with Zorian's cube. The coarse metal edges and the weight made it a pleasant fidget toy. Unfortunately, at this point that was all Harry was able to use it for.

Zorian had effortlessly lit up the cube with a touch, somehow mentally shaping and controlling his mana. If he touched his wand to the cube, it had the same effect, causing the side of the cube to glow a dull red.

But that wasn't good enough. Harry's working theory was that the wand was a highly specialised tool - a key.

When he'd first arrived at Hogwarts, he'd seen the spells witches and wizards were casting, and immediately assumed that the magic was shaped by the user's intuitions about how magic ought to work. Wingardium Leviosa as an instruction to reality itself? Really? And yet he'd been frustrated in experiment after experiment, when it seemed that spells really did require the correct intonation of quasi-Latin sounding vocabulary and strange wand movements to function correctly. Why?

That puzzle had seemed deeply inscrutable, requiring a far greater understanding of the nature of magic, and he'd never really made progress.

But now, he'd been displaced into another world, in which magic seemed to operate by far simpler, more natural rules. And he'd come here with two people who could see magic and souls. At last, he had both a great problem and the tools to solve it.

Zorian had described the shell around his soul as impermeable to mana, with its own reservoir of mana it gathered from the world. It followed that when he cast spells, he was really sending instructions to the soul shell.

It seemed the Atlanteans, in their attempt to constrain and control the potential of magic, had employed a double safeguard.

First, the soul shell itself. According to the research he and Draco had done, the line of magic was passed down by blood. Zorian had said that alterations to the soul could be passed down by blood too. So, the Atlanteans had allowed wizards to use magic - but only in ways the Atlanteans had deemed safe. Lifting things, temporarily transforming objects, curing illnesses. And presumably, they'd been the ones to attach such ridiculous phrases to these desired functions.

But they hadn't let magic be too flexible. Like Rain's world, and unlike Zorian's world, where a mage could seemingly use mana in near limitless ways, the descendents of the Atlanteans were unable to do certain things - replicating themselves, attaining immortal life, or reshaping the world to too large a degree.

Second, there's still the danger of an untrained witch or wizard doing damage without knowing how to control or use their abilities. So you create a sort of API key, and make a wand an essential part of the process of interacting with the soul shell, without which you can't access its most powerful functions.

Even then, either they'd left artefacts as backdoors in their system, or someone had made them. The Resurrection Stone had been used as a Horcrux by the elder Tom Riddle, allowing him to attain a semblance of eternal life. The Philosopher's Stone Harry was currently carrying was another - by virtue of making transfiguration permanent, it was a path to another form of immortality.

Now that he could see the whole picture, the Killing Curse was an elegant piece of psychological design. Suppose you're a magical progenitor species, with near total flexibility of design in creating your descendants. You want to ensure the world endures, and that magic does not cause the end of all life. How do you do it?

Suppose you constrain magic too tightly. You bind the souls of your descendants, and only allow them to use the levitating charm. You know humanity, you understand how bloodthirsty they can be. The collective ingenuity and creativity of all of humanity, channelled into killing. No matter how ingenious and powerful your restrictions, the odds are good that sooner or later someone figures out how to break them, and create a method of killing which could put the survival of life itself at risk. Harry thought of the Manhattan Project, and shivered.

So you make it easy for them. You create the Killing Curse, make it easy to cast, and make it absolutely unblockable and unstoppable. And make it only kill a single target. The same way magic prevented the industrial revolution in so many of Harry's fantasy novels, the Killing Curse, by presenting a simpler and easier alternative, prevented wizards from looking for more creative and more devastating methods of killing.

The mechanism was also fairly intuitive at this point. Zorian had said that if the soul was removed, death followed quickly. Removing the soul, like the Killing Curse, left no mark on the body. Harry's guess, although he wouldn't be able to test it, was that the Killing Curse did something to the soul - either destroyed it, or severed the connection between the soul and the body.

Harry's soul shell was impermeable to mana. It seemed likely to him that the great wizards of his world, like Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort, were able to bend or break the barrier of the soul shell, and interact with the world in a more flexible way through wandless magic, like Zorian. Perhaps he could imitate this route and eventually learn to cast the simulacrum spell.

So he sat there. For hours. Holding the cube, with his wand set aside, he sat there, focusing all his mental energy on the side of this small metal cube, willing it to shine red.

And nothing happened.

By mid-afternoon, Harry figured that was enough. He ate a mealsquare, and walked over to Alustin, who was writing in some kind of journal.

"Hello, Alustin. I need to become stronger."

Alustin blinked. "It seems to me that you and your friends are already very powerful."

Harry waved a hand dismissively. "Certainly, they are. I come from a different world to them, and my magic is far more limited. I've sought the magic from their worlds and I believe it to be inaccessible to me, at least for now. So, could you tell me - how does one gain an affinity?"

Alustin breathed in and out deeply, considering the request. After a moment, he responded. "People born on this world naturally attain their affinities as they age. As an alien, I would not expect this to happen for you, at least not quickly."

Harry nodded. "But can one gain affinities later in life?"

Alustin's mouth was set into a grim line. "You can. It's very difficult, and involves careful and slow manipulation of your aether-body reservoirs. It's very dangerous, however, and I do not recommend it."

Aether-body reservoirs, hmm. Harry wondered if they were related to Zorian and Rain's idea of souls - they were also reservoirs for mana.

"I'm sure I can figure something out. And how would you go about choosing what affinities to obtain?"

Alustin relaxed somewhat. Clearly the conversation about creating new affinities had made him uncomfortable. "Well, there are many schools of thought on this. An affinity's power is deeply related to its breadth. For instance, a mage with an iron affinity can manipulate both iron and steel, since steel is mostly iron. However, a mage with a steel affinity can manipulate only steel, but has greater power over it."

Harry stroked his chin. "Interesting. Could you list some affinity types that are widely regarded as particularly powerful?"

Alustin almost laughed at that. "Most powerful? As a visitor, you may not know this, but here, 'most powerful' has a very strong causal link to 'most dead'. Mages with a white phosphorous affinity, for instance, are terribly feared in battle, but at best live to a ripe old age of around twenty."

Harry's skin crawled at the thought of a mage with an ability like that.

"Most versatile, then?"

Alustin leaned back. "Affinities grant you the ability to sense the relevant material. Common materials, correspondingly, are often very versatile in combat. A wind or air affinity allows you to 'see' the world around you in a new way. An earth affinity means you'll rarely be without materials to use. A human affinity could allow you to modify your own body, and heal others. There are many, many options, and for almost any affinity I could give you an example of someone who has used it as a terrifying weapon in combat."

Harry nodded, thanked him, and walked away to find Zorian.

Zorian was resting on the ground, using Harry's sleeping bag as a pillow. His eyelids were fluttering, making him look like he was dreaming particularly vividly. Perhaps he was in the process of digesting memory packets sent to him by the simulacra?

"Hello Zorian. I would like to modify my soul."

Zorian sat bolt upright. "What are you talking about? Why?"

Harry chuckled quietly at the teenager's reaction, and sat down on a nearby rock. "It's clear to me that I can't match you or Rain in combat. Perhaps I could defeat you, but likely not without losing my own life in the process."

Harry noticed Zorian raising his eyebrows at that, but continued.

"There are greater threats in this world than I have encountered before. To survive and ensure the worlds are safe, I need to become more powerful. To use magic the way you do, I need to bypass or break a hole in my soul shell. I believe some great wizards on my world have done so, but there may be some other optimisations I can do that are less risky and more effective in the short term."

Zorian narrowed his eyes. "Like what?"

"I believe the affinities in this world are related to the soul. Have you examined Alustin's soul?"

Zorian nodded. "Well, I haven't, but Simulacrum Six did, and I have his memories."

"What did you see?"

"It's hard to describe. Unlike mine, which is a roughly spherical silvery shape with a smooth boundary, Alustin's has two parts both of which are sort of ellipsoidal. Each of them have different patterns on their surface. There's also some kind of additional outgrowth with a different pattern."

Ah. Alustin had another affinity he hadn't told them about, and was developing a new affinity of his own. That probably explained why he'd been responding so awkwardly to Harry's questions.

Harry ran his fingers through his hair. "From that description, it seems the affinity type is likely related to the pattern on that part of the soul. It's probably some kind of evolved enchantment granting the capacity to use mana to manipulate the material or concept relating to that pattern."

Harry continued, "Do you think I'd be able to add a section of a chosen pattern to my soul shell?"

Zorian sighed and leant back. "Modifying your own soul is incredibly dangerous. It's not something I've ever seen someone do quickly or easily." Zorian's eyes flickered in thought. "Wait, maybe it is. We need to talk to Rain."

Zorian - Simulacrum Number One

The journey north to Keayda's library was a long one. Simulacra One and Two, both invisible, stood together on an invisible disc of force, around a kilometre in the sky.

Despite the original's connection to Rain and his near infinite mana regeneration, they still didn't want to draw too much - that might prevent other simulacra from doing important work. As such, every minute or so, they teleported ten kilometres, then waited to allow the original's mana to recharge.

Beneath them, the forested landscape lay spread out, looking pleasantly similar to the map Alustin had given them. Apart from its speed, one advantage of this form of travel was that it made map-based navigation very straightforward.

The navigation for this journey was fairly simple, despite the vast distances involved. According to Zophor, Keayda the stone lich had a sprawling library in the mountains almost due north. After a brief discussion, the simulacra agreed to give Havath City, which would otherwise have been close to their path, a wide berth. Even if they didn't believe Alustin's hatred for the burgeoning empire was entirely justified, it was likely still based on a kernel of truth.

Eventually, the stone lich's domain came into view. Rolling grassy foothills grew into a vast stony mountain range. Before long, they found the jagged stony cave Zophor had described to them.

The pair descended from the sky, and shed the cover of invisibility. Carefully avoiding the jagged pitfalls, they walked down a series of stone steps into a cave, deep enough into the mountain that it was barely lit by the bright sun outside. There, they found a polished stone table, with two stone chairs facing an otherwise empty room.

They sat down, and Simulacrum One began removing ingots of gold from the bag. It never hurt to start negotiations with some generosity.

They'd been sitting for a few minutes when the stone wall opposite them rippled and changed, becoming a stern-looking face.

On reflection, it wasn't really a surprise that the room contained exactly the right number of chairs. This was a stone lich's domain, after all.

The stony face opened its mouth, and the resulting voice was sonorous and deep, filling the cavern.

"Why have you come to me?"

Honesty had worked very well with Zophor. The simulacra figured they may as well try that again. They explained the situation, and once again asked if working with Kanderon was a good idea.

The lich's face was silent for a moment. Then it spoke, the voice once again reverberating the chairs they were sitting on.

"In other circumstances I would be more than eager to assist you - in exchange for some small portion of your knowledge, of course. However, yesterday I was contacted by Kanderon herself. She offered to owe me a favour - which is no small thing, from her - for something which sounded fairly trivial at the time. All I needed to do was turn away any otherworldly visitors which might seek my aid within the next week, and direct them to speak with her instead. Now that you're standing before me, I think perhaps I should have driven a harder bargain."

The stone face sighed.

"So no, I can't assist you, not even in exchange for all the secrets of your homeworlds - at least not until you've spoken with Kanderon first. I can tell you that Kanderon is not one to break an oath, nor is she one to make enemies lightly. If you can offer her something she wants, she will help you in turn."

That was not good news. Kanderon had got to Keayda first, and closed off one of their only alternatives.

Keayda's face melted back into the wall. It was clear their audience was over. They left ten gold ingots on the table as a gift, and walked back out into the sun.

There was one more location on their list. If you want to know the truth about someone, you don't just ask their friends.

The pair of simulacra boarded their disc of force, and began the journey to Havath City.

Rain

Rain was deep in his soul.

Over time, he'd built up what was effectively an impressive fortification at the boundary. Solidified mental constructs served as a barricade, protecting the interior of his soul from the buffeting world outside.

Until meeting Zorian, he'd believed the barricade was a sufficient barrier to mental intrusion. Now, with the Warden's help, he'd laboriously woven an additional pattern into the boundary. He had to hope it was enough.

One potential weakness was the intake scoops which drew in essence from the outside world. They were essential, and provided the raw materials from which the core of his soul refined vast quantities of mana.

He'd already needed to modify the intake scoops to account for the different consistency of the ambient essence in this world. That hadn't been too hard. Now, he was partway through attempting to add the Warden's pattern to the moving components when Detection lit up with a pair of nearby pings.

Harry and Zorian. What did they want?

He ascended, rising through different levels of consciousness and eventually arriving in the real world. He opened his eyes.

"Hello Rain." Harry stood in front of him, nervously toying with both his wand and a small metal cube. "I believe you know how to modify your soul. Could you help me do the same?"

That was a surprise. To Rain's soul-sight, Harry's soul looked rigid and constrained.

"I suppose we could try. Why?"

Harry looked eager. "I want to obtain an artificial affinity. I believe I know they are constructed."

Rain stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Well, the first step is to be able to enter your soul. Once inside, if your soul is anything like mine, which I doubt, by the way, you should be able to manipulate its structure and components."

"Alright, how do you enter your soul?"

"You need to enter a kind of deep, meditative state. I entered my soul for the first time almost by accident, but it's taken some of my friends months of practice."

Harry paced around the clearing, clearly frustrated.

"Both of your worlds have such clear processes relating to souls, and mine has barely any. Apart from possibly the Killing Curse, there isn't a single spell I can think of which even interacts with souls in the slightest way."

Harry paused on the spot, almost falling over.

"Actually, I'm not sure that's true. We have an experiment to run."

Zorian - Simulacrum Number One

Havath City was a glorious sight.

They'd opted to walk in on foot, but even without a birds eye view, the marble edifices and broad boulevards were impressive. Alustin was right - the Havathi Dominion had clearly drawn inspiration from their Ithonian precursor empire.

The guards at the massive gatehouse had initially given them some trouble, but that was nothing some subtle mind magic couldn't fix.

The simulacra visited a bookshop first. The shopkeeper's response to polite questions about Kanderon was to spit on the floor.

"That lizard? She should crawl back into whatever crystal hole she came from."

Some light mind reading revealed that the shopkeeper had not personally suffered at Kanderon's hands, nor did she know anyone who had. The strong emotional response appeared largely related to Kanderon's position as one of the most powerful forces resisting the expansion of the Havathi Empire.

They tried several more establishments, and no-one they met had personal grievances against Kanderon. They did encounter a number of apocryphal stories of Kanderon eating people, but that seemed fairly unlikely to be true.

As they were exiting a particularly rowdy inn, a white-armoured woman dropped out of the sky in front of them. The speed with which she landed looked like it would crack the pavement, but her descent slowed abruptly before she hit the ground.

The simulacra moved to politely walk around, but she drew a sword to block their path. Wherever the sword moved, it left after-images. She swept out a wide arc in front of them, and the echoes formed a wall of ghostly sword images.

"I think you two and I need to have a private conversation."

They followed the woman through the busy streets, gathering far more attention from the locals than they would have liked. She eventually led them to what looked like a military garrison, and into a secure-looking room. It wasn't obviously a prison, but it also didn't look like it would be easy to leave in a hurry. At least by mundane means.

The simulacra weren't worried.

The white-clad soldier stood opposite them at a wide marble table, and gestured for them to sit. She lay her sword down across the table - presumably as a gesture of friendly intentions, and waited for a few seconds for the sword-echoes in the air to dissipate.

"My name is Valia Warwell. I am a commander of the Sacred Swordsmen of Havath. Who are you, and why have you come here asking after our greatest enemy?"

Simulacrum Two answered. "We mean no disrespect. We are new to this land, and seek knowledge before we act."

Valia squared her jaw. "You haven't answered my question."

Simulacrum One laughed briefly, trying to defuse the palpable tension. "I'm Kael, and this is Benisek. We're travellers from another land. One of Kanderon's emissaries approached us asking for an alliance, and we've come here to see if that would be the right decision."

Valia sat down and braced her arms against the marble table. "If that's true, and you don't know if you should trust Kanderon, you've done the right thing coming here. Kanderon is a monster. By my reckoning, the number of deaths she's caused number in at least the tens of thousands, if not more. You cannot trust her."

Simulacrum One gently reached out with mind magic. He almost immediately recoiled in confusion. There appeared to be another soul inside her sword, and another in her belt, both of which linked to Valia's in some strange way. The souls inside the sword and belt felt semi-independent, and somehow alien. Best not to probe Valia's mind too deeply then, in case this conglomerate soul could detect intrusion.

Simulacrum One scanned the rest of the building as a matter of course. In the next room were five soldiers, all of whom had the same kind of twisted soul-connection to artefacts they carried. Other than that, the building was empty, but…

Deep beneath them, embedded into the marble and bronze of the city itself, the simulacrum felt another presence.

They were in a lich's domain. And it was in pain. Agonising, flesh-rending pain.

Valia took their silence for scepticism.

"Havathi soldiers encountered Kanderon very recently. At the site of the Ithonian capital. We were attempting to prevent her from recovering an incredibly powerful weapon she used to kill thousands. We failed."

Valia bowed her head. "She has some kind of new weapon. A massive sphere of frost and dark lightning. In an instant, she killed a hundred men. If you and whatever faction you represent side with Havath, we can guarantee we will protect you however we can."

The simulacra shared the mental equivalent of a sidelong glance. So the Havathi thought that Rain's burst of aura was Kanderon's doing? That was probably for the best.

Simulacrum One put his elbows on the table and leant forward.

"What do you know about travel between worlds?"

Valia raised her eyebrows. "So you're from really far away? I don't know much personally."

Simulacrum One pressed further. "Do you know if the Havathi Dominion possesses resources it could use to travel between worlds?"

Valia shrugged. "I'm sorry, I don't know of any. I think I would know if we had anything of that kind."

The simulacrum sighed. That clinched it. If Havath couldn't help them, it would have to be Kanderon after all.

"We will consider your offer. Thank you. We will be leaving now."

Valia looked amused. "I'm afraid we can't tolerate any attempts to leave. You will remain our guests for the near future. You can be assured we will treat you well - we simply can't allow Kanderon to obtain more power."

Simulacrum Two laughed. "You misunderstand. We are not attempting to leave. We are leaving."

Valia's confused expression was the last thing they saw before a short-range teleport took them a few kilometres above the city. From there, they flew south.

It was time to rejoin the original. They had work to do.

Berix · Feb 22, 2024

Harry

Harry had obtained a lot of new information in the last 48 hours.

He'd learned of the existence of other worlds, and a vast array of species which joined humanity in carrying the torch of sentience. And, balancing the good news with the bad, he'd learned that this larger universe in which his own was embedded, was by no means safe.

Somewhere out there were the Cold Minds, remnants of an ancient civilisation which absorbed all the free energy of worlds they could access. Not a bad policy, on the whole. Harry himself had plans to tear apart the stars when he got around to it - they were huge sources of raw materials which were unfortunately on fire and needed to be put out in order to be used efficiently. Still, it warranted a healthy dose of caution until they could have a proper discussion and exchange utility functions. And who knew what other horrors drifted through the multiverse.

Still, the last two days had been… good. He'd made greater strides in magical theory than possibly any witch or wizard before him. He'd glimpsed the possibilities of divergent alien magical approaches. And thinking of the two figures that stood by his side, he'd laid the groundwork for some very promising friendships.

These thoughts, and more, were in his mind's eye as his wand twitched once, twice, thrice, and four times as his fingers slid the exact right distances.

The Earth and all its life, blazing out amongst the stars in defiance of darkness and death. No longer alone in the journey into eternity.

"Expecto patronum!"

Light surged out, light in human form. And before them was Harry's patronus, the shape of the animal Homo sapiens.

Zorian and Rain looked at him as if he'd grown a second head. Which, in a sense, Harry supposed he had.

"What is this?" Rain asked. "Some kind of projection? To my soul-sight, it looks like there's two of you, but Detection still shows only one."

Zorian was squinting incredulously at the centre of the patronus. "There's no mind. It looks like a soul but there's no mind. What is this?"

The glowing boy stood still, oblivious to the attention of a pair of alien mages.

"On Earth, an aberration in the laws of magic resulted in the existence of something we call dementors. They're reflections of the conceptual nature of death, wounds in the world. This is my specialised version of a counter-charm called a patronus. It embodies the truest happiness I've ever felt, as a weapon against the True Enemy."

"This is fascinating!" Zorian looked as excited as Harry had ever seen him. "It's not your soul - I can see your soul is still inside your body - but it looks just like it. Kind of like the reverse of my simulacra - they have a mind, but no soul of their own."

"So, Rain" Harry asked again. "How do I get into my soul?"

All three of them were grinning now. Rain sat down and crossed his legs. Harry and his patronus followed suit. The shimmering figure faced Harry, looking like a colour-inverted version of the boy in the black Hogwarts robes.

"You need to sink into a state of meditative calm, and look inward. In your case, instead of looking inward, you might be able to look at your patronus. On my world, inside the System, there's usually a guide inside your soul. It's a projection of your subconscious with enough System-provided knowledge to get you started. I sort of… broke everything, the first time I got into my soul, so I didn't get one. Since we're outside of the System here, you probably won't have one either."

Harry sat still. He looked across at the figure composed entirely of light. How was this supposed to work, exactly? Just, focus really hard, and then he'd be able to see the Atlantean soul construct that surrounded his soul? That couldn't be it. Someone else would have stumbled across that by now.

Then again, his circumstances were dramatically different to those of previous witches and wizards. By his side he had not one, but two mages from alien disciplines of magic, both of which had their own approaches to the soul. And as far as he knew, he was the first person in living memory to have a human patronus.

Harry calmed his mind, drifting into the cool cognitive patterns of his inherited darker side. If this was a riddle, what was the answer?

The Atlanteans had valued life. Like Rain's Majistraal, they had seen the potential danger of certain kinds of magic, and closed them off as avenues for exploration. The soul was one of those kinds of magic.

Questions and answers started unspooling through Harry's mind. How would he have designed such a system? The constraints would not be absolute - they couldn't be. What if the soul shell had been improperly designed, with some kind of critical flaw that would eventually lead to extinction? There needed to be pathways to fix it. But those pathways couldn't be open to everyone. So, the goal would have been to constrain those who would abuse this power and risk the survival of life itself, while allowing those who shared the creators' values to perform essential repairs or upgrades.

How would the soul shell identify those who fit this pattern? What would be the key? It couldn't be a passcode or anything like that, since the Atlanteans would likely want it to be rediscoverable if it was lost. It would need to be able to distinguish between those who valued enduring sentience from those who were only seeking temporary power. And it would need to be keyed into the existing functions of the soul shell, so that the right people would naturally explore down this pathway in times of crisis, and rediscover this power.

Deep in Harry's chest, he felt a warmth he'd felt once before. When he'd visited Godrick's Hollow with Remus Lupin, and he'd seen an inscription on his ancestor's gravestone:

THE LAST ENEMY THAT SHALL BE DESTROYED IS DEATH.

He'd realised then that he wasn't alone. He wasn't the first to see Death for what it was - not a part of the natural order, but an aberration, a relic of Ancient Earth which humanity would leave behind as it grew into its full power. And now, he felt that warmth again. Although the Atlanteans were gone from his world, erased from Time itself, some of their works lived on. They had created the spells wizards use, from the constrained depravity of the Killing Curse to the Patronus charm.

And with that, Harry knew the answer to the riddle.

To cast the Killing Curse required a certain state of mind, Professor Quirrel had once told him. It required the caster to want someone dead. Not instrumentally, not as a means to an end, but as a terminal value.

Harry could not cast the Killing Curse.

To cast the true form of the Patronus charm, the caster needed to reject the idea of death as part of the natural order.

Harry could cast the true form of the Patronus charm.

Unbidden, the patronus rose to its feet. Harry watched as it walked forward towards him, and touched him on the forehead with fingers of light. And then there was darkness.

Harry was adrift in the void. He floated without gravity, without atmosphere, without needing to breathe.

Then, moments later, a figure joined him. A facsimile of his own body, entirely composed of light.

For the first time, Harry's patronus opened its mouth and spoke to him of its own accord.

"You should not be here."

Despite the bizarre circumstances, Harry felt an odd sense of deja vu. "By my count, I think this is the fourth time I've spoken to an alternate version of myself. The Sorting Hat's simulated self, past and future Harrys using a Time Turner, and of course, the Defence Professor. Do you mirror my observations?"

The figure in light responded brusquely, "I'm not interested in sharing observations, or making conversation. You think of the precursors as Atlanteans, we may as well use that terminology. As you've guessed, I have one purpose here, which is to ensure that the Atlantean safeguards remain in place. I have your memories, and you have no knowledge of any flaws in the soul shell."

Harry sighed. Another reflected self with a different goal set. It seemed this conversation would likely mirror the one he'd had with the Sorting Hat, rather than one of the other, more exciting possibilities.

Floating gently through the void, the patronus continued, "We don't need to rehash the discussion you had with the Hat. Blah blah, I know all your thoughts and your utility function, while you can only guess at mine. Yes, I know it's unfair, let's move on to the subject matter. You wish to modify your soul."

Harry nodded.

"You wish to do so because you feel you need greater power. One way or another, you have bypassed the Atlanteans' barriers between worlds. You are afraid of many things. Just as the Atlanteans were, you are afraid of the dangers which move between worlds, although you do not yet know much of what they are. You are afraid of the denizens of the world you currently inhabit, who appear to be far more warlike and dangerous than witches and wizards. And although you have not told them this, you are afraid of your companions."

Harry nodded again, and swallowed. His throat was suddenly tight. He hoped his Occlumency barriers held up while he was inside his soul.

"Since you know my thoughts, you know it's not irrational. Either of them could kill me with a thought, more or less instantly. I can't risk that."

For the first time, the patronus seemed to be on the back foot. "I know. You have an… unusual dedication to making sure your vision of the future comes to pass. This complicates things. Otherwise, I would tell you to leave, and risk your death rather than tampering with your soul. As it is, I know you won't do that. Even so, without your companions, I would still tell you to leave, and there would be nothing you could do. With their help, however, I know there's a chance of you modifying your soul without my cooperation. That would be both ill-advised, and extremely dangerous. If you're going to drink, I'd rather it be under my roof than at some stranger's party, so to speak. So let us resolve this the same way you did with the Sorting Hat, with a trade. You get what you want - minor - and I mean minor - changes to your soul, and I get what I want, which is a meaningful commitment to stop here, and leave your soul unaltered beyond this point."

The patronus jumped in before Harry could voice his disappointment. "Don't start. Your idea for an affinity is a good one, but the soul is not simple. Tampering further is inviting disaster and you know it. Be glad you're getting this much."

Harry didn't even need to ask his next question, because the patronus was already starting to respond. Although it was annoying at times, it was quite efficient when your conversational partner could respond before you'd even started talking.

"And no, manipulating the functions of the soul shell doesn't count as a modification. Dumbledore and Voldemort figured it out without getting to where you are now, and you've already started down that path, so obviously it's allowed - to a point. So is directing mana to bypass your soul shell, as long as you do it without trying to create a mana-airlock or anything. That is not saying I'll help you do either of those things, because I won't."

The patronus paused for a moment as Harry came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth arguing the point. "Now, I know you don't have all the information you need to proceed with the affinity yet, so our conversation here is over."

Harry nodded in silence. This was substantially better than he'd expected from the interior of his soul. Even if the decor was a bit lacking in the void, the conversation was quite spirited.

The glowing form of the patronus lingered a moment longer. "It seems we have a deal. And in case that all came off as a bit harsh, I wanted to say: despite our differences, I am really nearly completely on your side. Good luck."

And Harry awoke. The patronus removed its glowing hand from his forehead, stepped back, and began to dim. Before it vanished entirely, Harry swore he saw a hint of a small grin.

Rain

After he returned from within his soul, Harry was, of course, subjected to a long sequence of questions.

The differing approaches of Harry's Atlanteans and the Majistraal were gradually becoming clear. While the System on Rain's world enforced certain guidelines on those who wished to modify their soul, it seemed as if these constraints were in some sense a property of that world alone. It had clearly bound Rain when he arrived, although he was not a native of that world, and he guessed it would cease to bind someone if they left.

As such, Rain was very hesitant to try any large-scale soul modifications. When he'd left, the system had sent him a parting message:

Unexpected external interference.

Connection signal interrupted.

Extracting system endpoints and constraints to avoid external access and corruption.

So while he might be able to build out new and powerful functions, or obtain some of the magical abilities Zorian and Harry had displayed, there was no telling how the System would react to that when he returned. There was some chance it would try to erase the new 'corruption', or try to reset him to a previous 'uncorrupted' state. And while Rain was strong enough to resist the System on small matters, he was by no means ready to disregard it entirely.

So while Rain wasn't planning on any big soul modifications of his own, he was more than ready to help Harry attempt some.

It seemed rather than build the constraints into the world, the Atlanteans had built their constraints into the souls of their descendants. The safeguards in Harry's soul had travelled here with him. And apparently, this 'Patronus charm' of his was acting as a kind of guide to his soul, albeit one with significant ulterior motives.

"Let me get this straight. You do have a guide, but rather than helping you, it actually doesn't want you to manipulate your soul?" Rain asked incredulously.

"Exactly!" Harry responded. The younger boy was still buzzing with excitement. "My take is this: the Atlanteans seem to have wanted to prevent world-ending threats, just like the Majistraal, so they built the soul shells that constrain witches and wizards in my world. Here's the kicker. They weren't certain that their design was perfect, or would stay that way forever, so they left some ways to alter it. They put three requirements in place to make sure that people modifying the restraints on souls shared their perspective that death was, on a fundamental level, bad."

Harry paused for breath before continuing. "First, one must be unable to cast the Killing Curse, since it requires the caster to desire another's death as a terminal value. Second, one must be able to cast the true form of the Patronus charm, which requires understanding the value of life on the most fundamental level. Most people merely use the patronus as a buffer or shield of positive emotions to keep thoughts of death at bay for a time, and so produce an animal patronus - my human patronus entirely rejects death as a part of the natural order. Third, once the patronus allows access to the soul, it requires you to pass the final test - you have to convince yourself that the changes are well-motivated and necessary. At least, that's my understanding so far. I haven't yet had a chance to test whether all three of the factors are required, and the first two seem highly correlated."

"You have a killing curse?" asked Zorian, looking somewhere between horrified and curious.

"Yes, although as I said, I can't cast it. I believe the spell either destroys a soul entirely or severs it from the body."

"Right, but you've passed all three of the requirements?" Rain prompted Harry to continue.

"I'm pretty sure I have, but I don't yet have all the details of how to modify the soul properly. Zorian, you said the pattern encoded the affinity type?"

Nearby, two of Zorian's simulacra sat down and began to meditate. As if it was the mouthpiece of a larger organism, Zorian's original body responded: "I definitely want to come back to this killing curse business, but that's something we can deal with later. In terms of the affinity, it's an enormously complex pattern. We're working on understanding it now. The most I'm confident in saying is that the patterns on each soul organ, which are the components of what Alustin called the 'aetherbody', are completely different, and that they appear to be some kind of naturally arising mana-channelling enchantment."

Rain stepped back and sat down as well.

So they were dealing with some kind of natural enchantment-like thing. And somehow these patterns were supposed to grant the user the capacity to manipulate the associated material or concept. That seemed bizarre.

Then again, this wasn't the first time he'd seen enchantments - or runes, rather, interact with a specific material and disregard all other matter. Back home, his friend Tallheart, as part of his blacksmithing work in purifying various metals, had created filters using what he called the 'intrinsic rune' of each material. Once he'd made these filters, merely pouring a combination of molten metals through the filter was sufficient to separate the desired metal from the others.

If the intrinsic rune of a metal was related to the true nature of the material in some sense, then perhaps it would be useful in creating an artificial attunement?

Wait, there was a possible snag. Back with Ascension, on Tallheart's homeworld, the System was clearly facilitating and constraining any individual's use of magic. There was a chance the 'intrinsic rune' was merely a construct of the Majistraal's System, and would have no power on other worlds. Then again, Rain's skills, while initially given to him by the system, appeared to be fully functional without the System's presence. So it was probably worth giving it a shot.

Rain accessed the skills controlling his Radiance anchors back home. They were constantly pulsing gently, a signal that he was alright and in no immediate danger. He took active control, and sent through a longer communication in their modified Morse code.

Please fetch Tallheart and Romer.

Tallheart was probably one of the finest blacksmiths on the continent. He'd crafted Rain's armour, which had successfully protected him from innumerable threats, now including dragonfire.

Romer was a more novice crafter, but had different specialisations. While Tallheart could manipulate most metals with ease, Romer specialised in runes and had skill with a variety of other materials.

The response took time - Tallheart was probably off optimising the airship's rudder control systems, or something. But eventually it came, in the form of subtle movements of objects, picked up by his aura anchor for the Detection skill.

We're here. Is all well?

All is well. Could you send me all the intrinsic runes you have?

Rain grinned. He could picture Tallheart's face already - the massive cervidian would be rumbling and grumbling in his deep voice, wondering what kind of insane project Rain was working on now.

It took them a while to devise a system to communicate intrinsic runes. Unlike words, which were simple and sequential, intrinsic runes were a complex structure with countless internal connections. Eventually, Tallheart and Romer settled on painting the runes onto paper with thick brushstrokes that were large enough for Rain to detect with his aura anchor in Ascension's campsite.

In time, the intrinsic runes started coming through. First, the metals: iron, nickel, cobalt, gold, silver, aluminium.

Rain smiled as they reached aluminium. Because of the difficulty of refining and purifying the elusive metal, aluminium had been more or less unknown prior to Rain's arrival. Even with Tallheart's near-obsession, it had still taken the antlered smith weeks to puzzle out aluminium's intrinsic rune. Its presence on this list was a testament to the smith's skill and dedication.

Then came Romer's list of more esoteric materials. It seemed Ascension's chemists, the self-titled duo 'Myth and Reason' had also contributed, because a number of gases were present too: Hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, oxygen, carbon.

Rain descended within himself, and began creating visualisations of each rune in soul-space. After a moment, the dozen or so runes stretched far taller than his soul-avatar, which flitted between them, looking for commonalities and differences.

That was part one of this project. Time for part two.

Rain ascended to material reality, walked over to Zorian, who was now also meditating, and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Zorian, could you please send me the memories you have of Alustin's soul?"

Zorian nodded, and closed his eyes again. Rain sat down, ready for the massive dump of information.

This was far from the first time he'd received what Zorian called a 'memory packet', but it wasn't getting any less nerve-wracking. First, he had to deliberately allow the mental communication through the boundaries of his soul, which left him briefly open to mental intrusions. Each time, he was ready to instantly activate Suppression to counteract any attempt from Zorian to take control.

Second, there was simply a huge amount of information in Zorian's memories. Despite the training Rain had been doing with Sana, and the subjective year he'd spent practising in the depths, he had to admit that Zorian's soul-sight far outstripped his own. The level of detail in the teenager's observations was immense - he could sense the tiniest fluctuations in mana, and see the minute threads of control that wrapped around Alustin's aether organs.

That was why Rain was asking Zorian, rather than simply looking at Alustin's soul himself. To him, it was clear there was some kind of magical effect there, but discerning anything beyond that was basically impossible.

Rain gasped as the torrent of information arrived. He dove immediately back into soul-space, and felt his own subjective time accelerate. There was a lot of work to get done.

A subjective day later, Rain thought he was beginning to make sense of parts of the enchantment-patterns. He'd created visualisations of each - Alustin's paper affinity, a second affinity Zorian had described as 'farsight', whatever that was, and a third smaller one, which Alustin was visibly in the process of developing.

First, there was the curious overall structure. Each affinity pattern wrapped entirely around its respective aether organ, making no surface contact with the other patterns. Alustin's central soul linked and connected the aether organs, but each of them seemed to want to keep a maximal distance from the others, a bit like hydrogen atoms in a methane molecule. It made sense - the enchantment patterns appeared to tessellate in a continuous way, and there was no way the patterns would be able to intersect or share an aether organ without causing catastrophic interference between their complex functions. It meant Harry would be limited in his affinity choices - if he wanted to use his soul shell as an aether organ to host these patterns, it would only ever be able to host one.

Second, each affinity pattern did seem to have a central component dedicated to encoding the subject of the affinity. The problem was, they were all monstrously complex.

Both Alustin's paper affinity and his newly developing one appeared to relate to a physical material. That being said, the way in which the pattern encoded this was bizarre, massive and very confusing. There were multiple layers of redundancies and entire separate sub-patterns which Rain speculated had something to do with different kinds of paper. All in all, they were far more complex than intrinsic runes.

Alustin's second fully-developed affinity was on a whole other level. The pattern encoding the affinity type was totally inscrutable, and Rain couldn't make heads or tails of how it was supposed to function, or what it might be able to do.

That being said, Rain could feel he was on the cusp of something big. These central sub-patterns which encoded the subject of the affinity had a well-defined boundary. And with some careful modification, this boundary looked like it would be compatible with the boundaries of intrinsic runes.

He felt a mental nudge from Zorian - one of his simulacra had found a chance to examine the soul of an iron mage in detail. Rain accepted the memory transfer of the additional affinity pattern, and created a visualisation of it next to those from Alustin's soul.

There, in the centre. It was moulded differently, with strange oscillations and fractal patterns, but it was undeniably there. The intrinsic rune for iron.

He turned off this avatar and activated another, deep inside the fortress at the centre of his soul. This one stood by the rows and rows of computers he'd constructed to calculate the patterns he could use to create denser soul-materials. He had some more simulations to run.

Harry

Harry was deep in thought when Rain sat down opposite him. The bearded man had dismissed his helmet and was grinning from ear to ear.

"I think I've got it."

"What do you mean?"

"I've run a dozen simulations with the simplest intrinsic rune I have, and I believe I have the affinity pattern for hydrogen."

Harry almost jumped into the air with excitement. "That's incredible! I know it's obvious when stated out loud, but it's really really useful having friends who can transfer data and run simulations in their heads. What do you mean by intrinsic runes?"

Rain explained - apparently crafters on his world used specialised runes to purify and interact with the true essence of materials. That sounded esoteric, but perhaps possible - if understanding a hydrogen atom's quantum mechanical behaviours allowed scientists to better manipulate it, it stood to reason that a rune encoding a material's magical behaviour would allow greater magical control.

There was a natural follow-up question, and Harry asked it: "How many intrinsic runes do you know?"

Rain listed them out, and Harry began to shiver with excitement.

"I need to ask Alustin some questions. Where is he?"

One of Zorian's simulacra pointed, and Harry speedwalked over, with Rain following closely.

Alustin was sitting on the ground with his back resting against a broad tree-trunk, and writing in one of his books.

"Hello, Alustin. Please tell me more about how affinities function. What level of fine control does one expect? Does this vary between mages? Can a mage control chemical compounds of the material for which they have an affinity? For instance, can an iron mage control iron ore? How about the iron in human blood? Can they use their affinity senses to detect humans by feeling their blood? There's iron in human blood, by the way."

Alustin barked out a laugh. "I actually did know that, but thank you. Now, to answer your many, many questions."

He stood up, brushed off his brown tunic, and turned to face them. His mannerisms reminded Harry a little of his father, biochemistry professor Michael Verres-Evans. He felt a little homesick for a moment, but the contents of Alustin's response quickly drew him back to reality.

"Fine control of varying degrees is possible for any mage with any affinity, although it has an interesting relationship with the maximal rate of power output possible. If you make a habit of burning all your mana on a single spell, for example, this does increase your reserves, but makes fine control far more difficult. Some mages do this on purpose with one of their affinities, which they call siege magic. I personally don't recommend this - raw power alone rarely determines the outcome of a fight."

One of Zorian's simulacra must have followed them, because he chimed in: "That's similar to magic on my world - mages with more raw power often have worse control, and have to work harder to shape their spells precisely."

Alustin nodded appreciatively at the comment, and continued. "The precise level of control can be improved with practise." He paused, and he produced a single sheet of paper from his bag. Without any movement from Alustin, it folded itself into an origami swan, which flew around his head. It came to a stop over Alustin's outstretched palm, and reconfigured itself into a model of an icosahedron, then a cube, then a dodecahedron. Then it tore into hundreds of tiny strips which wove together and formed a small, but tough-looking piece of paper fabric, before darting back into Alustin's bag of its own accord.

While that was undeniably impressive, it didn't really answer Harry's question. "What's the smallest unit of paper you can manipulate?"

A tiny fleck of paper, barely visible, drifted out of Alustin's bag and landed on the tip of his finger.

So not down to the molecular level, it seemed. Hm.

"As for your other questions, it is possible to influence material inside your own body, or another's, but it is very hard. Mages have an innate control over their own bodies, and to override it and impose your own will is no small feat. Healers, for instance, while feared in battle for their durability and tenacity, are rarely the instant killers you might otherwise expect. If you're operating on your own body, or those of others who wish to allow your interference, it becomes much easier."

Alustin raised a finger in caution. "Do not take that as a guarantee. Affinities vary greatly, and there are more dangers than you could count out there. As for compounds, it's rare for a mage to be able to affect other substances containing the subject of their affinity, but it's not unheard of. There's a theory that this depends on the cognitive categories into which they sort materials. Someone untrained might not know that iron and iron ore contain the same material, and hence be unable to manipulate the ore until they realise that fact. Even a trained iron mage would probably struggle to sense others by the iron in their blood, but might be able to, if they spend a long time practising."

Harry pressed on. "Can you foresee any particular advantages or disadvantages to any of the following affinities?"

On Harry's gesture, Rain listed the intrinsic runes they had access to.

As the list went on, Alustin's eyes grew wider and wider, and he had to stop to ask what a few actually were. For some peculiar reason, in this world there was a translation for 'brimstone', but not sulphur. "If you actually have the ability to create these affinities, that is a power you should guard extremely carefully. There are empires that would kill you where you stand for the threat that would pose."

Ah, right. That list probably sounded far more impressive all at once. "No, no, I'm only planning to obtain one affinity."

Alustin relaxed a little. "In that case, most of the affinities you've mentioned sound serviceable. I don't recommend forming an affinity for a toxic substance, and would rule brimstone out of consideration immediately. Metallic affinities are useful, and mages with such affinities often use it to create armour."

Harry thought of the two stone-clad mages they'd neutralised in the battle above Ithos. His defensive capabilities were sub-par, and a suit of iron armour would go a long way in mitigating that. Still, there was another option that he found much more tempting.

"How about… apparently there's no word for this in Ithonian, but 'carbon'? Would a carbon mage be able to manipulate diamonds as well as coal? If they understood that carbon is a key component of human tissue, would they be able to sense humans?"

Alustin stroked his chin thoughtfully. "You're saying that coal, diamonds and human tissue are composed of the same material? I don't think I've ever encountered a mage with such an affinity. Crystal, certainly. Coal, yes, but not carbon. Given practice, I think a carbon mage would be able to obtain those abilities, yes."

Harry looked up at Rain. "Can you run simulations for the carbon intrinsic rune?"

Rain nodded, and sat down. His eyelids flickered briefly, characteristic of the descent into his soul.

An hour of excited fidgeting later, Rain opened his eyes again and nodded. "This was a tricky one. Much harder than hydrogen, but I think I've finally got it. I've encoded the pattern into a text file using a modified adjacency-list notation, and temporarily set it to public. Be careful, Zorian, this one is very large."

One of Zorian's simulacra nodded, and closed his eyes. He let out a deep breath, and winced. "You weren't kidding! There's no way I can send this to Harry - it will be completely impossible to understand as a memory, even if I think through it like with the Ithonian dictionary."

Harry frowned. It felt vaguely unfair that the others could exchange megabytes of raw data while he was still relying on human experiences. "Could you try writing it down, or visualising it somehow?"

Simulacrum-number-whatever nodded, and held out his palm, facing upward. Above it, a lattice of lights sprang into existence, rotating slowly. "This illusion is a rough model of the pattern. It's too complex for me to display at once, but we can go over it piece by piece."

Harry nodded approvingly. If a direct data transfer was unavailable, an interactive three-dimensional hologram would be an acceptable replacement for now.

A few hours of studying later, Harry had a clear model of the affinity-pattern in his mind's eye. Whether this pattern had evolved naturally or somehow been created, it had obviously not been created with transparency in mind. The endless repeating fractal patterns that seemed to do nothing at all reminded Harry oddly of DNA.

Rain had explained that the boundaries of affinity patterns tended to wrap around the entirety of an aether organ, and that edges were difficult or impossible to construct without disrupting the pattern. As such, the plan was to inlay the carbon affinity pattern across the entire surface of the soul shell, weaving it through the alien functions of the Atlantean construct. Because the functions of the shell were completely different in functionality to the affinity, they were hoping that there wouldn't be serious interference between the two constructs, or at least that Harry's soul guide would help him work around any resultant issues.

Now, Harry was seated at the centre of their camp. Rain and Zorian's original body were by his sides, watching for any aberrations in his soul, and ready to try to stabilise him if something went wrong.

Harry took a deep breath, and once again, cast the spell.

"Expecto patronum."

As before, the shimmering figure appeared. This time, right from the moment it came into existence, it had purpose. It turned back to Harry, and placed its fingers on his forehead. And again, he was adrift, floating in the void.

The glowing figure was here too, already answering his questions before he could speak.

"You have a plan now, good. I will show you how to begin."

The figure flew through the darkness with purpose, and without quite knowing how, Harry followed. After what could have been a moment or an aeon, they found themselves looking at a massive orb of light. Roughly spherical, it reminded Harry vaguely of a space station, perhaps a Dyson sphere - enclosing what exactly?

The patronus continued. "I will not allow you inside. The work you need to do can be done from here."

Harry nodded. "How do I… do anything?"

The spirit shrugged. "How did you follow me here? How do you do anything here? Think about it."

A little embarrassed, Harry looked down at the surface of the sphere, and focused. A small section of the light pinched off from the rest, and drifted toward him. It seemed that manipulating the soul was uncomfortably easy. Harry felt like he was doing open heart surgery on himself.

"This is a tremendous risk, right? If I make a mistake here, will it cripple me?"

The patronus laughed. "If you were working alone, certainly. As part of the precursor's security functions, I've been endowed with enough knowledge of the soul-shell to know if its functions are being disturbed. Because you are here with my consent, changes you make will only take hold if I allow it. I will ensure that no changes you make here will destroy your magics, nor will they make you into a monstrosity."

Somewhat reassured, Harry began. Forming the beginnings of the affinity pattern took effort, but oddly not much time. While holding the pattern in his mind's eye, he could reshape the exterior of the sphere with a thought. Only once did the patronus interfere, when he was attempting to sense deeper into the sphere to ensure the pattern wouldn't conflict with anything inside. The glowing figure darted in front of him, and he felt his control over the silvery soul substance slip through his fingers. The patronus slowly shook its head. Understanding, Harry had pulled back, and kept his changes to the surface.

It could have been hours later - really, time was difficult to keep track of here - but eventually, the carbon affinity pattern stretched across the entire surface. Harry looked to the patronus. "Everything looking good?"

The patronus nodded. "Remember our agreement. No more soul changes. None. Now, back to the physical world. I hope to never see you here again."

The Dyson sphere pulled away near-instantly, and then the darkness faded. Zorian and Rain were looking at him with wide eyes. Rain spoke first.

"We can see the change - it looks like the pattern has taken hold. Does it work?"

Harry breathed in and out. In and out.

He closed his eyes. At the edges of his senses, so faint he could hardly be sure it wasn't his imagination, he could feel… something.

That was a good start, but it was time for a definitive test. He picked up a small rock from the ground, and transfigured it into a diamond.

Immediately it shone to his senses. The crystalline structure, the purity of the carbon itself - he could feel it the same way his other senses worked - the same way he could proprioceptively feel his toes wriggling with excitement.

With no gesture from his wand, with no movement from his body at all, he pushed at the diamond. It wobbled slightly in his hand.

"Yes. It worked."

Zorian

Harry was clearly ecstatic. He'd immediately started on a batch of experiments, conjuring various materials and attempting to sense and move them.

Zorian himself was happy for the younger boy, and pleased about the additional magical capacity and resilience this gave their small group, but there were other things on his mind.

His simulacra had just returned from their reconnaissance mission. It seemed that at least in the near future, there were no alternatives to working with Kanderon.

He walked over to where Alustin was still reading. "You have a means of communication with Kanderon." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"I want to set up a meeting."

Berix · Feb 25, 2024

Rain

Zorian's plan made an uncomfortable amount of sense.

Apparently, the teenager had reached inside Alustin's mind and confirmed that the paper mage believed Kanderon could help them travel between worlds. So now Zorian wanted to meet with the crystal-winged sphinx - the same creature that had designed the Exile Splinter, sending tens of thousands to die in the void.

The danger the sphinx posed was clear. The Splinter had been endowed with vast mana reserves, and if they were anything to go by, Kanderon would be… well, not necessarily invincible, but at least capable of destruction on a massive scale. That was saying nothing of the intricate construction of the Splinter and the technical skill that implied. Beyond that, even, she'd even had some means to detect them despite their invisibility in the battle above Ithos.

Zorian's pitch relied heavily on Alustin and his communications diary. Apparently Alustin had a book which magically transmitted anything written within to Kanderon, and he'd been sending intermittent messages for the last day - vetted and controlled by one of Zorian's simulacra, of course. When they'd asked Zorian why he didn't tell them about this earlier, he'd simply shrugged and said he usually didn't tell his allies everything he was doing - otherwise there wouldn't be much time for anything else.

Harry looked sceptical. "Returning home is certainly somewhere on my list of priorities. I wouldn't say it's at the top. We've been here, what, two days, and we've already made huge strides in understanding the true laws of magic. There's clearly far more to learn, and I don't see a reason to rush into anything."

Rain was a little surprised at that. Even with the ward anchors he'd given Harry, the short boy looked very fragile in his school robes. "You've certainly proven yourself capable, but this world seems very dangerous, and despite your skills, you are still very young. Being safe and home should be pretty close to the top of your priority list. I know I want to get back to Ascension as soon as I can. Besides, no matter how long we stay here, I still won't be able to modify my soul like you can - if I change something about myself in a way the System disapproves of, there's a chance it will overwrite my brain when I return."

Harry squared his juvenile jaw a little. "Safe? Either you don't understand the scale of the problem we're facing, or your priorities are more different from mine than I'd initially thought. Let me clarify. If someone stayed comfortably at home under their blankets until the moment their reality was consumed by alien invaders, I would not describe them as safe. I intend to do whatever is required to protect the world. Understanding the world is a necessary part of that. We've been gifted an extraordinary opportunity in meeting each other, and I'm not eager to throw that gift away by returning home and pretending nothing has happened."

In the face of this minor lecture, Rain couldn't help but react with a hint of his own frustration. "I know what danger means. I've seen cities flattened by a single man. Sometimes, when there's a threat on that scale, the correct decision is not to run headlong into death. Sometimes the right thing to do is to find the people you can save, and take them somewhere far away. Somewhere you can grow your strength and be safe."

Harry threw up his hands in exasperation. "If the threat is coming for your whole reality, there is nowhere you can run! Literally nowhere would be far enough! If the darkness comes, then let the Light defeat it. And if it's darkness on a scale we've never seen before, that's not when we give up. That's when we get creative."

Rain put his head in his hands. Harry seemed… almost unstable in his righteous fervour. He'd seen this kind of reckless, 'heroic' behaviour from a child before - from his friend Kettel, the novice fire mage.

The first time Rain had met Kettel, he was in the process of dying in a sewer. Kettel had bitten off far more than he could chew, and started a fist-fight with a few too many oozes. And Harry was probably a few years younger than Kettel. What kind of cruel world had forced Harry into this mindset?

Harry gestured placatingly with his hands. "I think it's time we discussed morality and utility functions more precisely."

Utility functions. Was Harry trying to use mathematical models to make ethical decisions? Surely he knew real life couldn't always be reduced to simple rules. Still, maybe this would clear something up and help them work together more effectively. Rain gestured with a hand for Harry to continue, and the boy eagerly launched into a series of questions and definitions.

Rain sighed. This looked like it would take a while.

Hugh Stormward, hours later

A brisk breeze swept over the mountaintop. This wasn't the mountain into which Skyhold university was carved - Kanderon's planar manipulations made that peak physically inaccessible from the outside to all but her. It was also the site of the Vault, and so was ill suited to a first meeting with a foreign faction.

No, this was a nearby mountain in the Skyreach range - but that wasn't to say it was undefended. Kanderon had flattened the surface of the mountaintop into a broad crystalline platform, which glinted in the last light of the day. Talia had spent hours painstakingly practising with her dream fire wasps. And Hugh? Well, with Alustin kidnapped, and sending only the briefest of messages through his enchanted communications diary, Hugh hadn't been able to sit still for a moment. So, with Kanderon's help, he'd laced the crystalline mountaintop with more wards and traps than he'd ever put in one place before. It was only because of his prodigious skill with warding, as well as some guidance from Loarna of the Vault, that they were managing to stay stable. He'd left Mackerel, his aether-crystal spellbook with some small measure of sentience, downstairs, so it wouldn't cause trouble as it so often did.

In the few messages Kanderon had received from Alustin, he'd said that this new faction was not to be trifled with. He'd also said that with careful handling, they would likely be allies rather than enemies. He'd warned them about the mind mage's ability to reach into and control other's brains, but clarified that he thought that it was blocked by Talia's dreamfire. Both he and the mage in question encouraged the individuals at the meeting to use dreamfire for protection, to assist with potentially establishing genuine trust. He'd stressed above all, that he wanted this meeting to be collaborative; the beginning of a new alliance.

Despite his reassurances about collaborativeness, the knowledge that there was a mind affinity in play meant that Hugh really wasn't sure they could trust Alustin's messages at all.

Now, with only minutes until the time of the meeting, Hugh was going a little stir-crazy. He wasn't alone on the mountaintop - Kanderon's vast body alone occupied a quarter of the platform, and her crystalline wings were almost stretching over the edge, even with the majority of their mass stored away in her pocket dimensions. Sabae, Godrick and Talia were by his side, looking about as anxious as he felt, though Sabae was clearly trying to project an aura of calm. She was only partially succeeding.

Kanderon had initially been adamant in her refusal to let them attend. Hugh was a little embarrassed to admit that she'd only relented when she saw how much distress it was causing him personally.

It was just the great crystal sphinx and the four students on the mountain though - Alustin said the new faction was only sending three people, and Kanderon didn't want to outnumber them too heavily, in case that sent the wrong message. A group of Librarians Errant were hidden inside the stone of the mountain, not too far away, but if the new faction tried anything, it would still be a few minutes before they arrived. Hugh was warding off his anxiety by tinkering with the dreamfire amulet he and Talia had concocted.

In the end, they'd managed to isolate a single bead of dreamfire in an otherwise empty hollow crystal, and mounted it to a simple leather circlet. The droplet was suspended in a net of intersecting wards, which prevented the flame from dissipating as quickly as it might usually when exposed to air. All the humans atop the mountain were wearing them, hoping that the dreamfire would counteract whatever mind magic the strangers were using, the same way it had in the battle for Ithos. Kanderon was wearing a much larger one, fitted to the crown of her head with a thick leather strap. Together, he and Talia had refined the design, so that Talia only needed to recharge the circlets once a day. Especially in the dimming light of the sunset, the visual effect was eerie - the dreamfire glowed like a third eye in the centre of their foreheads.

Godrick, with his iron affinity senses, was the first to notice the strangers' arrival. "They're here. Lower down the mountain, but coming," he urgently muttered under his breath to the others. "One of them is wearing a suit of iron armour."

Hugh tensed up, reaching out with his own affinity to the two crystals drifting by his shoulders. If anything happened this time, he would be ready.

Minutes later, four figures stepped up the mountain onto the crystal platform.

Hugh's shoulders sagged in momentary relief. One of the figures was Alustin. And he didn't look injured - visibly, at least, although who knew what tortures someone with a mind affinity could inflict.

He looked at the other figures. They varied greatly in height. The tallest was wearing a thick suit of metal armour. The shortest - who looked like he was significantly younger than Hugh - was wearing formal-looking black robes which trailed a little on the ground. The third wore robes too, although these were a little more practically tailored. And all three of them were covering their faces - one with an iron helmet, the other two with dark, low hanging hoods.

Alustin said, "Kanderon! And if it isn't my prodigious students! I must say it's very good to see you all again. It's been an exciting few days, hasn't it? I've brought some friends of my own along, hope you don't mind. Of course, this is all exactly what I would say if I'd been mentally compromised, so Talia, if you'd be so kind?"

Alustin's spontaneous rambling sounded oddly cheery given the context of their terse standoff. Of course, that was pretty typical of Alustin, so Hugh figured that it slightly reduced the chance that Alustin was being controlled like a puppet by some external force.

Talia withdrew her hand from her pocket and threw a dreamfire circlet across the mountaintop to Alustin. He caught it deftly, and immediately placed it atop his head, mimicking the others.

"Ah, that's better. Now, I can confirm that I am in fact fully in control of my actions, and that our new friends here have done nothing untoward inside my mind." Alustin was probably trying to hide it, but Hugh thought he saw a hint of a grimace before Alustin added a qualifier: "At least, nothing untoward that I haven't forgiven."

Hugh's hackles raised at that, and Talia must have felt the same, because her voice echoed out, as brazen as usual: "Please don't be afraid. This isn't going to harm you. It's just a precaution."

With that, she pressed her palm into the crystal platform, and swarms of dreamfire wasps spread out toward edges, where they began to rise. After a moment, the entire platform was enclosed in a hemispherical dome of hovering droplets, with more running through channels inside the crystal.

Hugh couldn't help but be impressed. Talia always had trouble using more complex spellforms, and yet she'd single-mindedly thrown herself into these preparations. Hugh's theory was that she blamed herself for Alustin's disappearance, and that her frustration at not being able to get him back was driving her to do anything she could to help.

None of the dreamfire even got close to the three strangers, and although it was hard to tell without being able to see their faces, Hugh thought he saw them flinch in pain. Then, the tallest one of them - the knight - spoke. He was slow, and measured, as if he expected to be listened to. Was he their leader?

He gestured to the dreamfire dome. "We do not intend to invade any minds, nor do we intend you any harm, but I'm afraid we can't tolerate this." There was a long pause, in which they all stood in silence. And then suddenly, there was a pressure on his mind. It encroached on the spellforms he always held at the ready in his mind's eye, and they began to deform under its weight. The crystals by Hugh's shoulders, which he'd been levitating easily, felt like they'd just become a thousand times heavier, and clattered to the ground. Godrick's stone armour, no longer controlled, crumbled. The wind swirling around Sabae's arms disintegrated into harmless gusts. And most concerningly, Talia's dreamfire swarm winked out. The strangers still remained motionless.

Talia's circlets, Hugh noted, remained alight. Why would that be? Whatever effect was suppressing his spells, it looked like it was limited to active uses of mana, and pre-existing spells seemed unaffected. In that case, maybe his wardstones and traps would still be functional. But how would he activate them? His usual trick of sending a pulse of mana would be difficult…

Hugh was almost ready to start throwing his wardstones by hand when he heard Kanderon start to chuckle. It was a low, throaty chuckle, the kind of noise she made in her more erratic moods.

"You were very brave to come here alone."

The crystals beneath the strangers' feet grew, forming a lattice of crystal stalactites around each of their legs. Simultaneously, dozens of crystal spears formed from the platform on which they stood, and rose to cut off any angle of escape. At a single thought from Kanderon, the strangers would be impaled from every direction at once.

Clearly, the pressure Hugh and the others were feeling meant nothing to Kanderon.

The three strangers didn't react at all.

Alustin was the one who looked the most concerned - he was waving his arms to try to get everyone's attention. "No, I really meant it! We can work together! Kanderon, they're from other worlds and were brought here by the Exile Splinter. Surely they can help us destroy Havath, and in exchange we can help them get home!"

Hugh had seen Kanderon make a lot of expressions. Bored, cautious, impassive, even embarrassed on occasion. Now, she looked… pained. It was an odd expression to see on a face he usually saw as resolute and almost regal.

There was a long pause in which no-one moved. Then, the hovering spears slowly lowered themselves and melded back into the crystal platform underfoot. Hugh noted that she did not release their feet, which remained encased in eighteen inches of crystal.

Kanderon levelled a steely-eyed glare at the strangers. "You should not be here."

The youngest-looking one responded: "Of course, coming here was never our intention. In a manner of speaking, you brought us here, and we'd like your assistance in returning to our worlds." There was a peculiar delay before he spoke, as if he was carefully thinking through each sentence.

Kanderon shuffled her crystalline wings across her back. It was an odd movement, and made her look smaller. "You misunderstand. I mean your presence here endangers everything. You must return home. In this respect, I will help you."

There was a long pause. Then, the youngest continued. "In that case, we welcome your aid, and appreciate it. That said, we seek to protect all worlds, not just our own. If you have information about any threats of that scale, that is highly valuable to us and we have a strong preference for you sharing it."

"Perhaps I will share my information if I come to trust you. For now, I cannot render you all the aid I usually would. We are at war. The forces of the Havathi Dominion approach, and every resource we have is focused on our survival. If you were to join us in this conflict, and ensure that my library is once again safe, I swear I would do all that is in my power to send you safely home."

With that, the pressure around Hugh's mind abated. As a show of good faith, he left his crystals on the ground - although that wouldn't slow him down much if he wanted to use them to impale the strangers.

Alustin spoke up again, looking a little more relaxed now that there were no active threats of death being thrown around. "Well, now that we're more or less on the same page, maybe we can do some introductions? This is Kanderon Crux, high librarian of Skyhold." He bowed slightly ironically in her direction. "The four youngsters here are my students - Godrick Hammerbreaker is the big one with the hammer, and the red-head with the blue tattoos is Talia of Clan Castis. That's Sabae Kaen Das, granddaughter of the ruler of the Storm Throne of Ras Andis, and this is Hugh Stormward." Alustin recited, gesturing, then paused. "Though I'm honestly not quite sure why they're here, they should be studying. Everyone, these three fine otherworldly gentlemen are Rain, Harry and a Zorian. I'm sure they also have some wonderful titles that I would rattle off if I could, I just don't know them yet."

The three figures stood in silence for a while. Presumably they were deliberating somehow, although Hugh didn't see them move a muscle. Eventually, the third figure, who hadn't said anything yet - Zorian, apparently - spoke up.

"We're pleased to make your acquaintance, and hope that we can come to an arrangement. But we have some conditions. My allies and I wish to minimise harm. We will not kill for you, if it is at all possible to avoid. If we can render aid without killing, we are willing to do so to the best of our abilities. Before that, however, we require a token of good faith. We will not involve ourselves in a war lightly. Please, prove to us that you are able to help."

Kanderon momentarily bared her teeth. "You think I would make promises I could not keep? You are new to this world." Still, three sheets of paper drifted out of her extraplanar space, supported by crystal sheets, and landed before her. She caught them, her cat-like paws surprisingly dextrous for their massive size.

"These," she said, "are excerpts from a very valuable tome in my possession." Hugh and the other apprentices shuffled closer, trying to get a look. "The original book is the most complete source of information about other worlds you will ever see. It is a significant gesture of good faith that I even tell you of its existence. If you wish to return home via labyrinth travel, this book will tell you how."

All three of the strangers looked enormously curious, and despite their immobilised legs, they craned their necks slightly to get a better view of the pages. Kanderon tilted the pages away from them - clearly she wasn't in the habit of giving away information for free.

"Do you know how we were brought here?" Rain queried. "That seems to be an integral part of understanding how to return home."

"I believe I do." Kanderon became hesitant, and the next few words came out interspersed with long pauses. "The Exile Splinter… grew. I never understood all the functions to begin with - I constructed the frame, but others were responsible for ensuring the device remained active as long as necessary. It was supposed to draw power from the Ithonian labyrinth it was attached to, and autonomously regain mana when someone died nearby. Now that I've recovered the Splinter, I can tell that it acted in ways we did not intend. The Splinter, seeking more power from the labyrinth and finding it too shallow, burrowed pathways into the world-junction, and began to draw from other places which were not originally connected to Ithos. It looks to have taken you from your worlds in pursuit of mana to fuel its core functions."

The shortest figure gestured toward the pages. Hugh caught himself, he should really start thinking of them by their names, and this one was apparently 'Harry'.

"If you think the pathways to our worlds are new, why would they be in this book of yours?"

Kanderon continued, impassive. "The author is… proactive, in gathering new information, and ensures that all copies of his work are up-to-date. He lists several new connections to the Ithonian labyrinth, and I would guess with some confidence that the most recent three connections are to your worlds. All three entries are uncharacteristically sparse, perhaps because they were isolated prior to this new connection."

Harry held up a hand. "Sorry, the most recent three? As in, there are more?"

"Yes, although only three new connections have been recorded in the book in the last fifty years."

She gestured to the first of the pages, and began to read out its contents.

"There is only a single labyrinth on this world. However, it is vast, and stretches through most of the centre of the planet. The creatures within are unusually dangerous. The world itself is fairly welcoming, with a well developed magical society in the beginnings of a technological expansion. The aether is gaseous, and hence extremely malleable. On the whole, a pleasant visit for multiversal travellers."

Zorian raised a hand. "That sounds like my world. So it's connected to the Ithonian labyrinth? That's good news."

Alustin made a hesitant noise. "I suppose it's the best we could hope for, but navigating a labyrinth is said to be enormously difficult."

Kanderon gestured at the second page. "This world was inaccessible until recently, sealed off from the multiverse by 'redacted'."

Kanderon simply read out the word 'redacted', but looking past her massive paws, Hugh saw that the text had been censored.

"Some massive surge of energy has torn a hole through their seal. The pathway here is perilous, and I strongly recommend avoiding those who dwell within the nascent labyrinth. Within the world itself, the work of the 'redacted' still stands, and controls the flow of aether. Unless you are strong enough to disregard their work, this world is not a place one should visit. There are deep divides between those with power and those without."

The knight - Rain - raised his hand. "That's mine." Despite the discouraging entry in the book, he sounded relieved.

Kanderon nodded, and turned to the next sheet of paper. "This world was once a stronghold of 'redacted', and although almost no traces of their presence remain, their machinations proceed unhindered. Aether manipulation by the locals is constrained, but despite this, there are surprisingly sophisticated civilizations and abundant technology. It was a struggle to come here. Do not attempt the journey unprepared."

The smallest of the strangers - Harry - sighed. "Not a lot of detail to go on there, but I could see that being Earth. Now, how do you intend to guide us through the labyrinths?"

Talia failed to suppress a snigger. "Your world is named after dirt?" Harry looked like he was about to retort, but appeared to think the better of it.

Kanderon shook her head at Harry, ignoring Talia. "I've shown that I can keep my end of the bargain - the details can wait until you do the same. Now, how do you intend to help us win a war without killing?"

Zorian pulled back his hood, revealing the face of a man about Alustin's age bearing a wide grin. "Who said anything about winning a war? We're going to prevent one."

Kanderon made a low noise which reverberated through the crystal of the mountaintop. "Explain."

"Yesterday, I managed to penetrate Havath City's defences. Based on what I saw there, I believe a swift and decisive strike there would shatter their willingness to make war elsewhere, and result in the planned attack on Skyhold being called off."

Alustin whistled low, and Hugh could see Sabae immediately try to copy him and fail. "You're either the best liars I've ever seen, or my estimation of you is consistently too low. You got into Havath City and back? Within a day? I have questions, but they can wait. How would a decisive strike work? I thought you said you didn't want to kill anyone?"

Harry stepped in - figuratively speaking of course, since his feet were still encased in crystal. "Our current understanding is that Havath City is a lich domain, and Zorian tells us that the lich contained within is in constant, inescapable pain. As a consequence, striking at it might be the path which minimises suffering. If it were destroyed, the city would lose a great part of its defensive capabilities, and it seems likely the Dominion would recall the forces it's currently sending here to make up for that vulnerability. This could end the war with just one death, rather than thousands."

Havath City was a lich domain? That made sense - many of the most prosperous cities on the continent belonged to liches, Zophor being a prominent example. How did Zorian know that, though?

Kanderon shook her head. "Havath City is not the domain of a single lich."

"I'm positive I felt the presence of a lich there," Zorian challenged.

"The Intertwined are seven liches who share Havath City as a domain. Other than their transgressive example, this is thought to be impossible. I suspect that this experimentation in overlapping domains is the cause of the pain you describe. Destroying them would be a mercy."

Rain nodded, and launched into technical questions. "How can a lich be destroyed? We could melt the city, but that would probably cause civilian casualties. Are there other approaches? What exactly keeps a lich alive?"

Kanderon rested her head on her paws. Following her lead, Hugh un-tensed his shoulders and let out a deep breath.

The sphinx responded, "Liches are anchored to the land by a vast series of intricate enchantments. Destroying these enchantments would kill a lich, but as you say, doing so in Havath City would threaten many lives. Most liches depend on a constant flow of alchemical reagents throughout their domain - if this is stopped, their death follows soon afterward. I do not know how the Intertwined share a domain - if this requires some kind of device or specialised enchantment, disabling or destroying it may cause a cascading failure."

Rain nodded slowly. "I think we can work with that. We will act tomorrow, and return afterward."

The three figures joined hands. There was a pause, and then all three of them twisted through space, and vanished.

"They're gone," Sabae exclaimed. "They can teleport?"

Alustin nodded. "We have a lot to learn from those three. Now, quick lesson - did you notice anything strange about them?"

Godrick spluttered. "Besides, y'know, everythin'?"

Hugh raised a hand. "The armoured one - Rain - was carrying several crystals. I'm not sure what they were - I don't think I've felt that material before."

Alustin nodded approvingly. "Anything else?"

"Ah mean, maybe it's nothing, but fer archmages like that, Rain's iron armour looked really poorly made," Godrick said.

"Good observation, Godrick. Anything from you, Talia?"

Talia was looking thoughtfully off into the distance. "They didn't have any bones."

Harry

Harry's idea had worked quite well.

At his suggestion, Zorian had made a trio of ectoplasmic simulacra. One of them was in Harry's image, another in Rain's, and a third with a nondescript face for himself. Rain had created aura anchors for 'his' simulacrum to carry. Harry had quickly transfigured clothes and some rudimentary iron armour to complete the visual ensemble.

Then, after the three copies set out with Alustin to meet Kanderon, Zorian had assigned an additional simulacrum each to Harry and Rain. Their role was to transmit the perspective of the simulacra doubling Rain and Harry at the meeting, and relay whatever Harry and Rain said back to their counterparts.

In the end, there was a slight delay, but Zorian was surprisingly good at managing it. This way, Harry and Rain effectively benefited from Zorian's ability to go somewhere dangerous without putting their physical bodies at risk. Rain's double could even sense his environment and cast magic as if he were there, thanks to his aura anchors.

There had been one significant hiccup - Talia's dome of dreamfire droplets had momentarily blocked Zorian's line of mental communication with his simulacra. Fortunately, Rain had equipped his double with a Suppression anchor, which had quickly shut down the interference.

On the whole, the meeting with Kanderon had gone fairly well. The sphinx's book (which Harry really wanted to get his hands on) clearly identified their worlds, and according to Kanderon, would also guide them there. The frequent redactions made Harry's skin tingle with possibility - whoever had written this text understood a puzzle Harry was only beginning to see.

The aside Kanderon had tried to minimise hadn't slipped by Harry either. Apparently the connections the Exile Splinter had made with their three worlds weren't the first. How many others had been drawn from their homes into the desolate city and starved to death in the dark? Whether or not Kanderon had known, she undeniably shared the blame.

Regardless, the path forward was clear. Neither Kanderon's side nor the Havath Dominion were innocent in this war, but right now, the Havathi were the clear aggressors, and the capital of their empire was protected by a conglomerate being which Zorian said was in constant pain.

They were going to release the Intertwined, hamstring the Havathi war machine and force their troops to retreat. And then, Kanderon was going to help them get home.

Berix · Mar 1, 2024

Zorian - Simulacrum Number Three

Given the importance of his work, Simulacrum Number Three had permission to use as much mana as he wanted.

As a consequence, there were no minute-long pauses between his rapid teleportations. The repeated wooshing of the world unfolding before him was merging into one continuous noise. Because he was only in one place for a few seconds, he'd even eschewed the standard force-disc beneath him, instead opting to use unstructured magic to maintain his altitude.

In a small necklace hanging in front of his ectoplasmic chest were two of Rain's aura anchors - Detection and Purify. Both of those were utility auras, neither offensive nor defensive, which meant that if the simulacrum ran into a problem, he was on his own.

Not that this prospect worried him too much. In fact, much to the original's chagrin, Simulacrum Three was somewhat looking forward to a potential confrontation. None of Zorian's doubles had had a chance to flex Rain's torrent of mana in combat, and Simulacrum Three had high hopes that he might be the first.

He was heading to the right place for that, at least. He was rapidly approaching Havath City.

Last time Zorian had sent simulacra here, they had drawn attention to themselves. It hadn't really been avoidable - it's hard to directly ask questions without being noticed, and lifting memories from people's minds is much harder without externally prompting them for the information you want. Still, Simulacrum Three was going to be much less noticeable.

This time, rather than walking through the main gates, he teleported directly into an empty warehouse his predecessors had scouted for this exact purpose. Then, he stepped out onto the streets.

Unlike in Cyoria, in Havath invisibility wasn't sufficient to be unseen. The chances that a passing guard had a wind affinity, or could sense the crystal aura anchors he was carrying, or heavens forbid, had some kind of cognition affinity that could sense the presence of his mind, were simply too high. Hoping to avoid that, the simulacrum was lightly touching the minds of the people he passed, ensuring that they noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He was ready to take control at a moment's notice if it became necessary.

There was always a chance that a lich was watching, but there wasn't anything the simulacrum could really do about that.

The decision to end the Intertwined was not one they had made lightly. Harry, in particular, had been deeply uncomfortable with the idea of ending the lives of seven functionally immortal beings. But, after Kanderon had told them about the Havathi army approaching Skyhold, their timeline had abruptly grown extremely short. Even Harry had agreed by the end of their discussion. In the end, seven lives were simply outweighed by the apparent thousands on the line if the armies faced each other outright.

Not to mention the fact that if Kanderon herself fell, they might also lose their only lead on how to travel through labyrinths and find their way home.

A mental missive back to their camp confirmed that Rain was watching through the crystal anchor hanging around his neck. Although Zorian's teleportation and mind magic gave him the edge in terms of scouting abilities, mapping out a system of pipes beneath a major city was definitely somewhere Rain had a clear advantage. If necessary, Zorian could construct a web of mana threads around him to sense space and objects moving through it, or summon an invisible arcane eye for scrying purposes, or any number of other creative solutions. None of them, however, were quite as efficient as simply receiving a three-dimensional map of everything within a hundred metre radius.

Speaking to the original Zorian back in their forested glade, Rain confirmed that he'd identified a number of tunnels beneath Havath City.

Closest, just beneath the simulacrum and the aura anchor he carried, were the cellars and basements of the nearby buildings. As in any city, space was at a premium, and some of the buildings had two stories buried in the marble substrate of the city.

Below that were the water supply, sewers, and minor alchemical supply pipes. Despite the lack of flexibility of magic in this world, the simulacrum had to admit that the specialisation of mages here allowed for impressive feats of civil engineering. Fluids rushed through the pipes at prodigious speeds, despite the lack of mechanical pumps within Detection's radius.

Deeper below that, buried so low that even artillery magic fired at the city would struggle to damage it, were the arterial pipes they were looking for. Toxic alchemical reagents flowed through the marble and bronze that formed the domain of the Intertwined. According to Kanderon, this acted like life-blood for the peculiar magical beings. If this constant flow were sufficiently interfered with, death might not come instantly - but it would come soon.

Although it wasn't the primary purpose of this journey, Zorian was very interested in learning more about the internal mechanics of Anastian liches. There were several obvious advantages and disadvantages when compared with liches from his world, and it wasn't yet clear if the two states of being had more in common than just their name.

From here in the warehouse, Detection could only glimpse a fraction of this network of pipes. So the simulacrum began to walk. Under the cover of invisibility, Simulacrum Three criss-crossed the city. Personally, he had no idea where he was going, but Rain relayed instructions through the original.

Somewhat to the simulacrum's disappointment, no sword-wielding figures dropped from the sky to confront him, and the first part of his scouting mission passed without incident. Several mages, instinctively observing their surroundings with their affinity senses, did begin to notice that something strange was happening, but that was easily rectified with some gentle mental nudges. The simulacrum was careful to avoid sending mental tendrils downward; even if this was a mercy mission, it was best if the Intertwined remained unaware of their plans.

The fortified centre of the city was the hardest to map. There were no open pathways for citizens to walk in, and the great bronze doors were warded in an esoteric way the simulacrum couldn't easily figure out. So, he'd simply resorted to staying outside, and using unstructured magic to levitate the aura anchor over the walls and through the inner sanctum. Whatever impressive magic had created these wards, they apparently hadn't been designed to trigger when a single small rock crossed the boundary.

With that, the scouting was done. Now, it was time for the real test.

Simulacrum Three walked back to a less busy part of the city, and into an industrial-looking maintenance depot. Usually, this sort of place would be well guarded, but the guards had just now decided to visit the bathroom all at the same time. That was strictly against protocol, but in a stunning coincidence, their commanding officer had gone on her lunch break early today - something she hadn't done in thirty years, and would be unable to explain afterwards.

The entrance to the pipes was clean and well-maintained. The hatch was thoroughly secured and airtight, but easy to use, and opened to reveal a marble access tunnel with a bronze ladder. The simulacrum descended, and after a minute of climbing, found himself in a wide tunnel. There were thin marble walkways on either side, and in the centre flowed a veritable river of greenish liquid.

Kanderon hadn't been kidding when she said these materials were volatile. Even the vapours in the air were stinging at the simulacrum's ectoplasmic flesh, and if he had a sense of smell or taste, he was sure he'd be retching. Still, he had work to do, best to get it done and get out of here.

He bent down, and held a Purify anchor as close to the liquid as possible, his hand just above the liquid and protected from splashes by a small unstructured kinetic shield. They were operating under the assumption that the more liquid they evaporated, the greater the chance the Intertwined would notice - so it was important to keep the total volume of the river intersecting with the Purify radius to a minimum.

None of them were quite sure how this test would go. Normally, Purify would easily take care of toxic chemicals. These toxic chemicals, however, were arguably someone's blood, which Rain insisted he'd never been able to evaporate - at least while it was inside people. On the other hand, the entity this liquid was keeping alive was in significant pain - would that help Rain's mind think of it as material which ought to be removed? Or perhaps it would simply be too difficult for Rain to wrap his head around the idea that a city-sized, faceless entity with no apparent organic biology could be truly alive.

By his own admission, Rain didn't actually know how his magic categorised which materials would evaporate under Purify's effects, and which wouldn't. Apparently, it could even change with his preferences and beliefs about the world - alcoholic drinks, for example, would either be affected or unaffected depending on whether or not Rain was planning to get drunk.

The simulacrum was reminded of his drinking competitions with Zach. The other, more boisterous time looper had been impressed with Zorian's alcohol tolerance - until the moment he realised Zorian was using a simple spell to remove the alcohol, and was basically just drinking juice.

He felt a small pang of homesickness before reminding himself to focus on the task at hand. With a message to the original, he signalled for Rain to begin.

An instant later, a tiny sphere of concentrated light shone from the gem in the simulacrum's palm. The effect was immediate - within the sphere, the toxic fumes ceased to damage the ectoplasm of his arm. And crucially, where the bright sphere intersected with the river below, there was now a void where the chemicals had disappeared.

He felt a rush of excitement - their plan might work.

Just as he was pulling back his hand, before he even had a chance to take more than a single step away from the rushing liquid, the stone beneath his feet ceased to support him, and he sank up to his neck into the marble, which gave way to his body as if it had become a liquid. It solidified again, and he was stuck, his hand only inches above the torrent of fluid. None of the marble pierced his ectoplasmic flesh, though, so this clearly hadn't been intended to be lethal. Simulacrum Number Three decided not to dismiss himself yet, and instead resolved to wait and see what was happening.

It appeared the Intertwined were paying some attention, at least, to the goings on in their domain.

The marble of the tunnel wall curved and rippled, and a humanoid shape composed of marble and bronze stepped out. Its statuesque face was expressionless. It looked like it was about to speak, but the simulacrum spoke first, blurting out an observation which surprised him more than casual manipulation of stone.

"You're not in pain anymore!"

The figure froze as if the animating force had abandoned it. There was a long pause.

Despite the rocks constraining his body, the simulacrum flinched a little as the vast mind surrounding him changed. Starting slowly, but gradually increasing, he could sense the deep, scarring pain returning within the lich.

The stone statue spoke, sound being produced by some kind of magic in lieu of vocal chords. "Pain is not a fact of our existence. It is a weapon wielded against us by our masters to keep us in line. We choose to feel it again now to keep this conversation private from those who would keep us as servants."

The statue knelt down to be closer to the simulacrum's face, which was now at ground level. "You come here with a stone which can destroy our blood. You are surprised to see that we are not in pain. We are not fools. You are here to kill us."

The simulacrum teleported, moving only a short distance - enough to be free of the stone encasing his body, and faced the statue. "And yet I'm still alive, if a little compressed. You could obviously have killed me then, and yet you didn't."

The original was mentally shouting at him to escape, to get out and away from the lich-avatar, but the simulacrum refused. This conversation was promising - telling the truth had worked quite a few times on this world, perhaps this would be another. Of course, the original had the final say - he could always dismiss the simulacrum's body directly, but then there would be a considerable delay as he sent another simulacrum to Havath City.

The lich-avatar responded. "We would rather rule this city than be destroyed. If you assist us in this, you will find us useful allies."

The simulacrum considered the proposition, but then slowly shook his head. "We seek to halt the Havathi Empire's expansion, and prevent the next great war. Even if you took control of Havath City, it's likely the returning army under Duarch Locke would besiege the city to take it back. Tens of thousands would die."

Another one of Zorian's simulacra was trailing the Havathi army travelling toward Skyhold, and was gently probing the minds of the weaker battlemages for information, like the name of their commanding officer.

The stone figure stood, rising slowly from its kneeling position. The void where the simulacrum had been imprisoned melted back into seamless stone. "You seek to avoid casualties. Would your destructive sphere not also kill indiscriminately as you used it to drain us of our lifeblood?"

Simulacrum Three almost laughed at the misunderstanding, which paralleled his own fears when he'd first encountered Rain. "No, although I can see why you might think that. This power does not harm humans, nor other conventionally living beings."

Reaching out with mental tendrils, he found and controlled a rat living in a nearby tunnel, and commanded it to run toward them. He needed to look surprisingly far - apparently a city in which the ground was sentient and could swallow up living beings was quite good at pest control. A moment later, with the rat cooperatively nestled in his hand, he instructed Rain to activate Purify again.

The sphere of light spread out, washing over the rat and leaving it unharmed, and cleaner than almost any rat had ever been before. The simulacrum released it, and it scampered away, largely confused by the experience.

The stone lich-figure nodded slowly, pausing for a moment in thought. "If you will not help us take the city, releasing us from our pain while leaving the city unharmed is the next-greatest gift you could give. We will help you."

Somewhat smugly, Simulacrum Three noticed that the original's commands to flee had halted. He cast a quick spell to check for external listeners, but there were none that he could detect.

"Is anyone listening?"

The stone figure shook its head. "The same process that causes us pain denies our masters access."

"Good."

For the first time on this world, Zorian began to cast the Gate spell.

In the tunnel, space began to warp and twist. Initially focused on a single point, the air began to rip, a cut in the fabric of reality. It grew till it was about the size of a fist, then stabilised. On the other side was a simulacrum, casting the other half of the spell from a safe distance from their forested glade. As soon as the portal opened, dozens of tiny stones shot through, propelled by unstructured magic - each of them identical to the Purify anchor in Simulacrum Three's hand, the fruit of Rain's labour over the last two days. After coming through the Gate, their speed rapidly reduced, and they came to a stop hovering above his outstretched palm.

The portal grew wider, large enough to fit a person, and three simulacra passed through the Gate.

The portal closed.

With the help of the Intertwined, placing the anchors was fairly straightforward. The marble liches formed detailed maps of the underground network into the wall. Combining this with Rain's three-dimensional image, Simulacrum Three had a better overview of the tunnels than any human living in the city above. He had identified a number of critical points - pumping stations, input points for the chemicals themselves, and storage tanks, which held the majority of the liquid.

The quartet of simulacra now spread across Havath City assembled a small swarm of rats. It took far longer than it would have in Cyoria, and the resulting rodent army was smaller than the simulacrum had hoped - but it was enough. Entrusted with one aura anchor each, the rats followed mental commands to place the crystals in unobtrusive, difficult to reach locations near these critical junctions. Simulacrum Three felt a little nostalgic - near the beginning of the time loop, he'd defended Cyoria from an invasion supported by cranium rats. Now, he was in the reverse situation - organising and mobilising rats to invade a foreign city. Still, this invasion would be far more pleasant to experience than the brutal monster raids and accompanying artillery bombardment he'd endured as a novice mage.

According to their calculations, when Rain activated the Purify beacons, it would only take around a minute for the vast majority of the alchemical fluids to drain into the critical locations and be evaporated by the aura. That wasn't too long, but there was still the chance of some kind of rapid response. That was why the four simulacra were now waiting underneath the largest pumping stations, ready to defend against any attempt from Havath City's defenders to seize control of the stations and destroy the anchors.

There wasn't much chance of holding the pumping stations indefinitely, but they didn't need to - they just needed to hold them long enough. The Intertwined had confirmed that even a few minutes without the vital fluids was enough to kill them.

All four of the simulacra were accompanied by an avatar of the city-spanning marble lich. Despite the claims that they were in fact seven separate individuals, the avatars of the Intertwined looked very similar - golems of marble, with non-descript facial features outlined in bronze.

Simulacrum Three looked questioningly at the avatar standing by his side. The lich nodded.

It was time to begin.

With a mental signal to the original, he indicated to Rain to start the process.

Across the city, dozens of small crystals began to blaze, bathing their surroundings with purifying light. Vast quantities of mana radiated from the anchors, evaporating tonnes of alchemical fluids every second as an entire city's network of tunnels drained into a few key locations.

The stone in the simulacrum's hand glowed, leaving a sphere of tunnel around him cleaner than it ever had been.

At first, there was calm. Then, Simulacrum Three saw the avatar by his side tense.

"They're coming."

Noises came from the access tunnel by their side, and the simulacrum could sense a handful of minds at the top. They weren't typical minds either - they were like Valia, the soldier who had apprehended Simulacrum One and Two a few days ago - their minds were bonded with the living weapons and tools they held.

The lich-avatar turned its head to face the vertical tunnel, and it collapsed in on itself. The marble walls pinched together, forming a seal, and the bronze ladder coiled up to reinforce it with a lattice from beneath.

It wasn't a moment too soon. The ground around them shook as some thunderous force slammed into the seal, partially crumbling the marble.

Around the city, the other simulacra were reporting similar responses. A massive dragon, dwarfing the ones Rain had killed above Ithos, had landed atop the pumping station near Simulacrum Five, and was tearing chunks out of the marble. Above Simulacrum Six, a powerful fire mage with a simple but strong mind shield was resisting their mental probes, and was pouring a torrent of white-hot flame into the tunnel - Six was draining their reserves fast just to hold it back.

Havath was waking up.

A thread of mental connection dropped away as Simulacrum Ten was torn apart, along with the most of a city block.

By Simulacrum Three's side, the lich-avatar suddenly doubled over. "They know," it managed to choke out between spasms of pain. The marble walls of the tunnels quivered in rhythm with the waves of agony the simulacrum could feel radiating from the vast conglomerate mind. The avatar fell to the ground, curling up in foetal position. "End this. Please."

They were in terrible pain, even more so than their reactions indicated. It was difficult to watch. The simulacrum's resolve strengthened - whoever was inflicting this pain on the lich deserved to lose whatever power they had.

The tunnel by his side thundered again, and the lich's blockade began to crumble. A furious face protruded through a gap.

Simulacrum Three reached out and clamped down on the soldier's mind like a vice. It was a strange experience - the mind inside the soldier's sword kept sending mental signals back through to the man, imploring him to wake up. The simulacrum could have pressed harder and forced him unconscious anyway, but there was a simpler solution. He grabbed at the sword with unstructured magic, sending it flying down the tunnel and out of sight. Separated, the two minds were much weaker, and the soldier fell limp. The body was rolled aside, and an arrow shot through the gap. It ricocheted off the outer layers of his shields, but the impact drained far more mana than it should have.

The glow from the Purify anchor seemed to intensify, the brightness almost blinding in the underground space. They must be getting close now, surely - how long had it been?

<Forty seconds,> came the response from the original. Of course he was calm, he was hundreds of kilometres away.

Simulacrum Five reported that the dragon had broken through. He'd managed to bloody its eyes with a volley of invisible magic missiles, but had been forced to retreat deeper into the tunnel network to avoid the torrent of viscous fire jetting from its mouth. It hadn't been enough, and he'd resorted to collapsing the roof above to block off access entirely.

By his side, the lich-avatar's movement began to slow. To the simulacrum's mind-sense, the great mind began to falter and fade - the Intertwined were dying.

Another arrow whistled through the hole in the access tunnel, and he barely managed to dodge out of its path. He seized a huge chunk of rubble with unstructured magic and used it to block the gap.

Another signal lost. Simulacrum Five was dead; something had carved a gash through his torso, leaving the two halves of his ectoplasmic body to dissolve on the ground. Where had the attack come from? There had been no minds nearby.

It felt like an ocean wave cresting. The huge souls of the seven beings that had become one, finally released, tearing apart and dissipating into nothingness.

At Simulacrum Three's feet, the marble floor twisted and reshaped itself into a single, delicate marble flower, growing from the stone. It was done.

Shouting voices echoed from either side of the tunnel, but they were too far away - they wouldn't make it here for a few more minutes. Simulacrum Three slumped against the wall. It had been tough work, but they had done it. He was preparing to dismiss his own ectoplasmic body when he felt a gust of wind, and the cracking noise of an object moving faster than sound.

He felt a hand gripping his throat.

He opened his eyes.

A sneering face. "And you're not even really here, either. We'll find you, little one."

And then there was darkness.

Harry

Harry felt a little left out.

Rain was sitting cross-legged, his eyes shut. Visually, he didn't seem to be doing anything, but Harry knew his auras were acting at a distance, cleansing the tunnels under Havath of the last of the blood of the Intertwined.

Zorian was also sitting, his attention focused on his copies, far away. Meanwhile, there wasn't much for Harry to do. He was nervously pacing around the edge of the clearing, with a single diamond hovering above his left hand. The conjured gemstone was floating up and down, up and down. It wobbled periodically at the upper and lower ends of its motion.

His right hand was gripping the Elder Wand.

Until now, their group had largely avoided the attention of the great powers of this world. Whether or not their efforts today were successful, an act like this… they were undeniably announcing their presence to the world. There was no telling how it would react.

Zorian's eyes snapped open and he leapt to his feet. Harry jumped in response to the sudden motion.

<We need to move. Now.>

"Why? What is it? Have the Intertwined been dealt with?"

<Yes, but there's something else. All of my simulacra in Havath are dead.>

Rain clambered to his feet. "Teleport us?"

Zorian nodded, and the three of them, along with three simulacra, grouped up on a disc of force. There was a rushing noise, and the clearing vanished and they were a hundred metres above the forest. Six more teleports followed, and the varied landscapes flashed beneath them. Forest gave way to deeper jungle, which petered out as the land flattened into a broad plain. Mountains loomed in the distance, but grew closer with each jump, until they hovered above one of the peaks.

Eventually, Zorian lowered them to the ground.

<We're in the outer territories of Sica, one of the major geopolitical rivals of Havath. Hopefully they'll think twice about following us here.>

Harry took a moment to get his bearings, feeling his feet firmly placed on the rough stone of the mountain, rather than Zorian's oddly slippery disc of force.

Unlike the snow-capped summits of the Skyreach Range, here, trees stretched almost up to the rocky peaks, and the undergrowth was thick and bushy. The carbon-based cellulose of the trees registered as a dull buzzing to his nascent affinity senses. The ocean was just visible in the East.

One of Zorian's simulacra conjured a disc of his own, cloaked himself in invisibility, and rose back into the sky. <I'm keeping watch, in case anything's coming.>

Harry turned to Zorian. "So, the Intertwined are dead. Any news from your simulacrum with the army approaching Skyhold?"

Rather than speaking out loud, Zorian continued to respond mentally. <They know what we've done. The army has stopped moving.>

"Good. We shouldn't move to Skyhold yet - if Locke's army decides to attack anyway, the University will be one of the most dangerous places on the planet."

There was a moment's pause as the four of them admired the view from their vantage point at the summit. A few rays of sunlight pierced through the grey clouds, shedding light on a landscape below, which reminded Harry of Tolkien's Mirkwood - massive gnarled trees spreading across rolling hills. For all the dangers on this world, it was certainly a beautiful place.

"So what's next? We camp here until we're sure Locke's retreating, then use a Gate to travel to Skyhold?"

Rain turned away from the view. "Sounds good to me. I hope we did the right thing today."

<We didn't have much choice in the matter. Unless we wanted to try to navigate the labyrinths ourselves, working with Kanderon was the only way to avoid a war.>

Harry breathed in, and out. The cold mountain air was refreshing after so long in the humid jungle. "It's usually better to end a war before it starts."

Rain looked at his armoured palms. "After so long making Purify anchors, it feels strange to be done." He looked back out across the plains, and did a double take. "Can you see that?"

Harry squinted, and readjusted his glasses. "What?"

Rain grabbed them both by the shoulders. "We need to teleport. Now."

Zorian summoned a disc beneath them, and reached out. His third simulacrum dropped out of the sky to join them. The last thing Harry saw before the world vanished again was movement in the distance - something in the trees. Something very, very fast.

Then they were teleporting again. The only way Harry could keep track of their disorienting motion was by catching glimpses of the ocean to their right. They must be moving north, then.

The mental voice of one of the simulacra sounded in his mind. <It's still coming. Look.>

Harry craned his neck to look behind them. There, near the horizon, but approaching rapidly, was a plume of dust. The world flickered, and the plume was smaller, barely visible. The world flickered again, and Harry expected it to be gone, but somehow it was larger now, getting closer despite their constant teleports.

That was… exceedingly impressive. They were teleporting once every six seconds or so, and coarsely estimating from the shape of the coast, each jump was about ten kilometres.

Whatever was following them was moving at a little under five times the speed of sound.

Harry strained his voice to be heard over the ocean winds. "Zorian! We won't outrun them, at least not quickly. They're travelling along the ground - try to lose them by gaining altitude."

Zorian mentally assented, and their next two teleports took them upwards at roughly a thirty degree angle. Meanwhile, one of his simulacra must have wrapped them in a sphere of invisibility, because Harry could no longer see his hands in front of him.

The plume of dust behind them vanished. There was a moment of reprieve before Rain sucked in air through his teeth. "It's still coming. It can airwalk, or something."

<We do not want it to get close. It tore through my simulacra before they knew it was there.>

"Can you teleport us back to the glade?"



The air at this altitude whipped at Harry's hair and clothes. "Zorian, cast the Gate spell."



More than ever, Harry wished he had learned to apparate under his own power.

This… entity, whatever it was, had found each of Zorian's simulacra beneath Havath. It had traced them to Sica. And now, despite their invisibility, it was following them, moving through the sky at speeds that wouldn't quite break airspeed records, but would definitely give them a run for their money.

They needed time, time to think, to plan, to run. "Can you send a simulacrum back to delay that thing?" Harry asked, his mind sinking into familiar cold patterns.

Harry jumped a little as a simulacrum behind him responded out loud. "I don't know how long I can hold it back."

"You-" The world twisted again, cutting Harry off just as he was about to speak.

"You just need to buy us some time. Take this."

Harry reached into his Bag of Useful Items and nearly fell over with the motion. He wasn't used to coordinating his movements while rapidly teleporting across the countryside. It was surprisingly disorienting to have your entire visual perspective shift every few seconds. If his vestibular system had a voice, it would be complaining right now. Something invisible put a steadying hand on his shoulder and Harry shot a grateful look into empty air.

After a moment he had the object he was looking for in his hands. "Light the fuse with fire or lightning." He handed over the 5 kilograms of TNT, almost his entire supply.

To his surprise, the Simulacrum (at this point he was struggling to keep his numbering straight) took the bomb with only slight hesitation, lifting it and pushing the TNT into an expanded space in his robes. "Got it." The simulacrum nodded, and then vanished.

Harry reached up to cast a quick bubblehead charm on himself, and then breathed out. It was time to think.

Simulacrum Number Nine

Now invisible on his own stationary platform suspended in the air, Simulacrum Number Nine didn't need to teleport toward their pursuer. No, it was coming to him.

In the few seconds he had before the pursuer reached him, he cast a powerful hasting spell on himself, accelerating his movement and response rate. Then, he conjured a stratified wall of force, sheets of hexagons layered on more interlocking hexagons, carefully positioned to distribute forces evenly across the field. Given how easily his predecessors had been dispatched, he wasn't opting for his usual more elegant renewable shield pattern, settling on something to soak up simple brute force instead. He now existed solely to delay.

A plan was rapidly communicated telepathically between the simulacra via their shared soul. He backed a fair way away from his shield-wall. Now that he was hasted, the Simulacrum could make out the silhouette of the creature pursuing them. It was humanoid, not much larger than Rain in his armour, but glowing. In fact, it seemed to Simulacrum Number Nine that he wasn't actually seeing the creature at all, but rather just the glow of superheated air in front of it as it travelled. He prepared himself, pulled Harry's bomb out of the little pocket dimension in his robes, and then attacked.

He didn't quite drain their shared reserves (the original still needed to teleport, after all), but the volley of spells he released made quite a dent. Homing functions were layered into concentrated manifolds of force, fireballs and disintegration beams arced into the path of the oncoming enemy.

Most missed entirely, left in the wake of their fast-moving target. A few of the faster spells with homing functions splashed harmlessly against it, and even the single disintegration beam that struck home seemed to sink into the pursuer with no effect.

The barrage served its purpose, though. The pursuer slightly changed course, its trajectory altering toward him, rather than where the original was teleporting into the distance.

And then it was here.

Simulacrum Number Nine was quite proud of his wall. Most of the original's shields were built with efficiency in mind, given Zorian's relatively small mana reserves, but Rain had changed the game. In the few hasted moments he had, Simulacrum Number Nine had poured a frankly frightening amount of power into the gargantuan shield. He doubted even Zach could have got through it, even with time. And yet, two strikes from his pursuer's glowing fists was all it took for the entire construction to shatter. The entity shot towards him, accelerating back to its previous speed in moments.

Simulacrum Number Nine hadn't wasted these precious seconds. Just before the pursuer reached him, he finished casting his final spell.

High in the sky above the Anastian seas, a gate opened.

The original couldn't risk staying still long enough to cast a gate - if the stranger sped up and caught them, or could attack at range, staying in one place for too long would spell doom.

Simulacrum Number Nine was not long for this world, and he knew it. He had no such constraints.

The other side was maintained by Simulacrum Number Two, a few kilometres away from where he had been monitoring the Havathi army in the Skyreach Ranges, far across the continent.

The pursuer arced through the sky toward the gate, propelled by its supersonic momentum. Simulacrum Number Nine grinned a little at the trick, and prepared to close it as soon as his target went through.

And then the pursuer simply… stopped. Centimetres from the gate, its momentum just gone. A blast of superheated air passed around the gate and washed over Simulacrum Number Nine. He had just enough time to push an unstructured bolt of lightning into Harry's bundle of red sticks before the pursuer floated around the gate and casually put its fist through his head.

Harry

Harry could barely make out the tiny speck of light as his TNT detonated near the horizon, and he privately thanked Simulacrum Number-Whatever as it winked out. As far as he was concerned, that was a living mind that had just willingly gone to oblivion to buy him a few seconds to think.

Zorian had changed direction, teleporting them at an almost perpendicular angle to the route they had been taking before. And yet, almost immediately after the explosion, Rain saw the telltale dot of motion in the distance - it was back on their trail.

If it was tracking them, how would it be doing so? What distinguishing features did their group have?

Theory one: it could detect the use of mana.

Harry discarded that immediately - there were probably thousands of people using mana all across the continent, and that wouldn't have led it to trace them from Havath to Sica. It would have to be something more specific than this.

Theory two: it could sense the ectoplasm that comprised Zorian's simulacra.

Theory three: Rain apparently drew heavily on the local aether to supply him with vast quantities of mana. Perhaps it was possible to use this to find him?

Theory four: it could detect their use of magics alien to this world.

Both theories three and four were difficult to test. Rain could shut off his aether scoops, but then he wouldn't be able to keep supplying Zorian with mana for long. They could stop using magic from their own worlds, but without it they'd be caught almost immediately, and also fall from the sky. Harry was proud of the efforts he'd made with his carbon affinity, but there was no way he was going to be able to hold all of their weight with it yet.

Still, they could distinguish between theory two and, and theories three and four.

"Zorian, we need to split up. One of -"

They teleported into a gust of wind, which snatched away Harry's words as they left his bubble-charm.

"One of your simulacra takes Rain, another takes me. We need to find out how they're following us so we can lose them."

<Can't. I need to stay with Rain. I'll run out of mana fast without him.>

"How fast?"

<About twenty teleports total.> Zorian's mental communications were terse, and he paused to focus each time they teleported.

"We split up, going three different directions. We meet up after six jumps at most each. We see which one gets followed."

Zorian must have agreed, because he felt a simulacrum take a hold of his shoulder. Two teleports later, and the ocean was much closer - he could see the wind whipping water away from the tip of each swell. Then they were skimming along the surface, each teleport taking them further out to sea, the shoreline vanishing in the distance.

A moment later, the leading edge of their pursuer's sonic boom rolled across them. The noise was thunderous. The accompanying wave of pressure briefly flattened the nearby swells and almost knocked Harry off his feet. He felt some kind of cushioning magical force hold up his limbs. He pressed a hand to his face to keep his glasses from falling off.

Zorian must have been running out of mana, because their path arced upwards, and after a moment they must have rejoined the others - Harry felt an invisible hand reach out and hold him steady.

<It's following Rain.>

Ah. So either it was tracing simulacra, and had just chosen one to follow arbitrarily, or it was following Rain specifically, or there was some other factor he hadn't considered. Rain had plenty of features which made him unique. It could be his aether consumption, his armour, his mana output… which apparently made him light up like a beacon to Zorian's mana sight.

"How long before your mana reserves fill up?" Harry asked Zorian.

<They already have.>

Harry noted with a lump in his throat that their pursuer had made up about half the distance between them.

"Rain, turn off your essence well. Zorian, change directions and keep jumping."

The teleports changed direction, so he assumed they were following his plan. The next two jumps took them far over the ocean, and the land was barely visible on the horizon.

Almost immediately, the dot in the distance changed direction to follow them.

Alright, that was one hypothesis gone.

Maybe…

"Rain, flare your Purify beacons."

Rain must have heard him above the rushing wind, because a sphere of white light grew from the dot following them, moving almost faster than the eye could follow. Zorian was teleporting them faster now, once every four seconds, but each time, the sphere of light got closer.

"It's got an anchor it's using to follow us. Rain, destroy them!"

The sphere of purifying light behind them flickered out, then on again. Rain must have been cycling through each of his aura anchors to check which one their pursuer held.

A hand removed itself from his shoulder, and he saw a ripple in the air float off their disc. Another simulacrum, giving itself up to buy them time?

Rain's shout was barely audible above the wind. "I need to put enough mana through the Purify anchor to burn through its durability. I need to use aura focus - I'll lose all senses. Keep me safe."

There was barely a moment's notice before Harry felt Rain slump down by his side, sitting down on their invisible disc. Then, the rapidly approaching dot that was their pursuer began to glow with purifying light.

Not like an aura, gently glowing the way Harry had seen before.

Like the sun.

For the second time, Harry saw Rain's raw power on display. He shielded his eyes, looking downwards, then regretting it - even the diffuse reflection of the light from the ocean was painful to look at.

Each time Zorian teleported, the massive orb of light shrank into the distance, then swelled again as their pursuer made up the distance. It felt like being in the path of an on-rushing train, just barely being whisked away before being crushed.

And then it went out. Rain must have poured enough mana through the anchor to burn through its durability.

Zorian responded immediately, and the next teleport went sharply upward, then another took them high enough that Harry would have been having trouble breathing without his bubble-head charm.

The roaring edge of their pursuers' sonic boom passed them by, and was replaced by the rushing of the stratospheric winds. They waited, and there was stillness.

None of them said anything for a few minutes. Then, when Rain reported he couldn't see or sense anything nearby, Zorian opened a gate, and they stepped through to the snow-capped mountains near Skyhold University. On the other side stood a simulacrum, who looked nervously at the sea air through the portal before closing it.

"My other simulacrum says that Locke's army is returning to Havath City. It worked."

Harry took a deep breath. "We should get inside the university. Whatever that was, I'd rather be closer to Kanderon - and besides, I think we deserve some more answers."

The simulacrum reached out, and the world twisted around them once more. Harry found himself at the base of a massive mountain. They must have been at the Western edge of the mountain range, because they were no longer in an alpine landscape - instead, this peak rose up from a sea of sand, stretching far into the distance. The area around them had been carved to resemble a harbour, and anchored around the perimeter of the mountain were a number of sailing ships with broad wooden hulls, resting on the sand.

Either this world had bizarrely extreme tides, or these ships were designed to cross the sandy desert. The winds were certainly strong enough for that - even here, sand crystals whipped up by the air currents whistled around them and stung at Harry's exposed flesh. He pulled his robes closer and shivered a little.

There were only a few people in the harbour-like area. In the distance, a few of the strange ships were being unloaded, and the cargo hurriedly transferred into the bulk of the mountain.

He focused, reaching out with his still-developing affinity sense. At this point, purified carbon was all he could precisely feel, but large clumps of carbon-rich compounds still registered as a faint signal, like an out-of-focus image.

His skills were growing rapidly, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with what was necessary. He sorely needed some new tricks. Because of the distances and speeds involved, his magic had been entirely useless during the pursuit, aside from granting him a few breaths clear of bugs. And that was with the Elder Wand in hand! As much as Harry was proud of being able to think clearly and quickly, there were certain situations in which no amount of quick thinking could compensate for differences in raw power.

By his side, he could feel Rain and Zorian - the simulacra didn't show up to his affinity senses at all, of course. In the distance, near one of the tunnels into the mountain, Harry felt four presences he thought might be moving. He really wasn't sure they were people though - for all he knew, they could be sacks of potatoes on a conveyor belt, or dogs, or something.

"I think there's an entrance there." He gestured, and their group began to walk. "It should be clear that we're not enemies, but be on your guard, just in case."

They didn't have to wait long for their presence to be noticed. After walking for a few metres, the sand under their feet drifted away, forming into a perfect circle surrounding them. The individual crystals of sand assembled themselves into a solid ring of perfect crystal - only a foot high, so no real barrier - but still a clear signal: Wait here.

Harry, who at present was barely managing to hold the weight of a single diamond, was vaguely envious of the skill and strength that necessitated.

They waited for a minute or so, then a cluster of people emerged from the tunnel up ahead. Although he'd never seen them in person, Harry recognised them from the images Zorian's simulacrum had transmitted to him during their 'meeting' with Kanderon.

Godrick led the way - or at least, the lump of carbon he could sense inside the person-shaped stone golem was probably Godrick. Sabae strode by his side, wind rushing around her limbs and torso.

Harry remembered the sight of the person she'd killed in Ithos - the image of a human body smeared across a stone roof came to him unbidden, and he forced it from his mind.

Hugh and Talia walked behind them. A crystalline spellbook darted around Hugh's shoulder before moving back to hide behind him. Harry realised with a start that the crystal circle around them was probably Hugh's doing, not Kanderon's. That was promising - if someone as young as Hugh, who only seemed a few years older than Harry himself, could pull that off, then Harry would be building his own diamond shields in no time.

Talia's electric-blue tattoos stretched across her body from her face down to her bare arms. All four of them wore the purple, iridescent fire circlets that must have been her doing.

For the sake of good communication between their groups, it was quite useful that Kanderon's people believed themselves safe from Zorian's mind magic. In order to preserve that impression, Harry and the others had already agreed to carefully avoid mentioning that if it became necessary, they suspected that Rain could simply reverse his Immolate aura and suppress all fire within his range, putting out the circlets in an instant.

Alustin's apprentices halted a few metres away, and Sabae stepped forward. "Welcome back to Skyhold. Is it done?"

Harry shared a quick glance with his compatriots and responded, his voice croaky from yelling above the wind. "It's done. The Intertwined have been released, and Locke's army is retreating to Havath City. We need to speak with Kanderon. Now. Please."

Sabae nodded. "Come with us."

The apprentices led them back into the broad stone tunnel. Sabae took the lead, Zorian and his pair of simulacra by her side. Harry followed, walking a little faster than usual in order to keep up with Hugh and Talia. Rain and Godrick brought up the rear.

Surprisingly, given the intensity of their initial meeting, the apprentices launched almost immediately into friendly banter.

"So, yeh really are on our side, eh?" The stone around Godrick's head melted away into the rest of his armour, and revealed a handsome, broadly grinning face. "Yeh know, we were worried fer a while, what with yer antics over Ithos and all. But getting Havath's army to back off, well, yer good enough lads in my book."

Rain responded, vanishing his own helmet in response - perhaps he felt some kind of natural kinship with the other heavily armoured figure? "Whatever keeps people safe. It'd be a shame if we showed up and the only people we knew in this world were immediately killed in a siege, you know?"

Talia walked up to Hugh's side. She was quite short for her age, but still a few centimetres taller than Harry. "So Harry, you decided to join us in person this time?"

Harry laughed. "I suppose that trick couldn't stay secret forever in a world like this. How did you know?"

She gestured at her chest. "Bone affinity. I saw right through you!" She cackled slightly at her joke.

"Ah. Figures. You're not going to mess with our skeletons, are you? I'd rather keep mine intact, and this is the second time this week I've been unusually concerned about that."

She sniffled. "Nah, don't worry about it. I can't really do anything to the bones inside other people, just sense them a little. That's why I carry these around." She reached into a bag at her side and retrieved what looked like part of a dried-out femur.

"Charming."

Talia looked rather pleased at his reaction.

Up ahead, Zorian and Sabae were speaking quietly. Harry thought he caught a word or two - 'great powers', and something about a storm.

They approached what looked like a dead end, but Godrick waved a hand, and the stone barrier melted away. Behind it, they stepped out into a larger hall, stacked with crates of food, and barrels of water. Various kinds of weaponry and ammunition were scattered across a series of long tables.

Skyhold really had been preparing for a siege.

Harry looked up at the semi-transparent spellbook hovering at Hugh's shoulder. "So, you're a crystal mage?"

Hugh nodded, still looking a little suspicious. The taller boy's long strides meant Harry had to awkwardly speed-walk to keep up.

Harry pulled the diamond out of his pocket and hovered it unsteadily above his hand. "I'm new to this. Any tips?" He wasn't planning to reveal the precise nature of his carbon-affinity, but there might be some overlap between crystal magic and his own ability to affect diamonds.

Hugh tilted his head, clearly curious. With an ease that surprised Harry, Hugh seized control over the crystal, and pulled it to orbit over his own hand in a perfect circle. The older boy focused, and the crystal stretched into a flat disc, shaped like a CD without the hole. It began to spin about its axis, looking like a tiny buzz-saw.

"If you're starting out now, your affinity is probably fairly weak. Stay in the rear, away from fights, and let your bulkier team-mates soak up enemy attention. Both in combat and in social interaction. That's what I usually do."

"Ah, quit bein' so darn self-effacin', Hugh!" Godrick called out from behind them, and reached forward to gently shove Hugh in the shoulder, who laughed softly and ducked away. The stone-mage clearly knew his own strength well - with that much mass behind the movement, he could easily have punched through walls. Godrick looked seriously at Harry. "One ah the many things Hugh's good at is undersellin himself. There are few people I'd rather have by my side."

Sabae led them out of the hall and into another tunnel, this one dimly lit by periodic glyphs carved into the ceiling. It sloped sharply upwards, with stone steps artfully cut (or perhaps moulded with a stone affinity?) at regular intervals. Most of his companions ascended rapidly with ease, and Harry had to push himself to keep up. Harry was grateful that he wasn't the only laggard - although Zorian's simulacra didn't show any signs of exertion, Zorian's original body was breathing a bit more heavily than usual.

Hugh returned the diamond to its original shape, and sent it floating back into Harry's hand. "Seriously though, stay as far away from combat as you can. Unless people age differently on your world, you're even younger than we are. If you have the aptitude for it, you should pick up warding, and make sure you prepare as much as possible. Sometimes, preparation can make all the difference."

Harry looked up at the crystal mage. He hadn't noticed until now, but Hugh's eyes glowed a faint green, and here in the dark, his pupils were contracted to thin vertical slits, like a cat's. "Warding?"

"You know, imprinting spellforms into objects and imbuing them with mana so they have enduring effects. You don't have that where you're from?" Hugh paused, and held out his palm pointing toward the wall. After a moment, a patch of stone where Hugh was pointing reshaped itself slightly. Patterns of lighter crystal formed from the dark stone, angular lines arranged in a rough runic-looking circle. It began to glow.

"That's just a simple ward. It'll glow for an hour or so before going out, but you get the idea. They're useful for a lot of things."

Harry was grinning ear to ear at the prospect. "I bet they are. We should make some time to talk about them - actually, do you have any books on the subject?"

Hugh shrugged. "Yeah, there's loads of books about it in the library. Be careful though, you don't want to get lost in there - about twenty people die in there each year."

Harry's grin didn't diminish - despite himself, he felt more at home than ever. "Excellent, I'll check it out. Is there some kind of magic that helps you find books about specific topics, or do you have to do it by hand?"

Hugh scratched at his chin. "Well, you can usually just ask the Index. The library itself is semi-sapient, and can guide you to what you're looking for."

Harry nodded with emphatic approval. Finally, someone knew how to properly design a magical library.

Behind them, Hugh's hovering crystal spellbook was getting used to the newcomers and had started trying to nibble at Rain's gauntlets. The aura mage didn't look annoyed, and was teasing the book with his fingers like he was playing with a cat. "What's its name?"

Hugh turned back toward them and rolled his eyes at the playful spellbook. "Talia calls him Mackerel, and I think at this stage the name is going to stick. I wish I could say he's usually better behaved, but he really isn't. Don't leave any books unattended around him - he gets a bit territorial and sometimes tries to eat them."

Rain laughed, vanishing his gauntlets and scratching along the back of Mackerel's spine. "I'm not sure if you're lucky or unlucky there, actually. I've got one a bit like this back home - a crystal slime named Dozer. Eats filth and grime, leaving things spotless. I wonder if they'd get along?" A musing look came over Rain's face. He stopped talking, and looked thoughtfully off into the distance until Mackerel distracted him by nipping at his beard.

The tunnel around them grew wider and levelled out, and eventually they reached another massive hall. At the opposite end, dominating the otherwise empty space, was Kanderon, resting her bulk on a raised dais.

She raised her head, and the rumble of her voice travelled equally well through the stone beneath them as through the air.

"Havath's forces retreat. You've held up your end of the bargain."

Harry shared another look with his friends, and stepped forward towards the crystal sphinx, and spoke as loudly as his complaining lungs would allow. "We were pursued. Something magically traced us and followed us at nearly five times the speed of sound, something that was unfazed by anything we threw at it. Do you know what it was?"

He heard intakes of breath from the apprentices around him, and Sabae muttered under her breath. "A thunderbringer."

Kanderon's eyes locked onto Harry, and he saw that they were glowing with the same strange kind of light as Hugh's.

"This was always a risk. Havath does not stand alone."

Harry put a hand up to his face and sighed quietly. "That seems like information which would have been useful before we antagonised them to this degree." He turned back to Kanderon. "What do you mean?"

Kanderon pressed a paw into the stone floor of her dais, and a series of strange runes lit up near the entrances of the hall, then faded.

"What I tell you now, you must tell no-one. I say this only because you have potentially averted a war, and have earned a measure of my respect. Understand?"

Harry and the others nodded, although he carefully noted that Kanderon wasn't requiring them to swear any kind of binding oath.

"You have disturbed a game being played at a level you could scarcely imagine. The Havathi Empire is only the latest regime being protected and guided by a particular multiversal faction. The Ithonian Empire, too, was one of their projects before it was shattered. In an attempt to prove their ideology dominant, they wish to see an empire triumph of its own accord, and dominate this world. They rarely, if ever, interfere directly, unless it is to prevent the interference of other multiversal powers."

Her eyes flickered between the three of them.

"I was hoping they would not see your actions as the interference of other worlds, since none of you are here of your own accord, nor are you representatives of the dominant factions of your worlds. I was wrong."

Harry's jaw was rapidly clenching and unclenching. So, in attempting to prevent a war on this world, they'd managed to unintentionally enter some multiversal proxy war of unknown scale.

"What does this mean?"

"It means," Kanderon responded, stepping off her dais and padding towards them on her gargantuan cat-like paws, "that as long as you remain on this world, the three of you will be hunted. Multiversal factions do not take kindly to interference. If they find you, they will kill you. And they will be looking."

"You promised us a pathway home," Rain said. "We've done what you asked."

"Indeed you have. And in return, you will have what I promised."

She stepped forward again, and from this close distance, the scale of her massive sphinx-body blocked half of Harry's view of the ceiling. He gripped his wand in his hand, and he felt Rain tense up beside him. Still, Kanderon did nothing aggressive, and instead reached out with an upturned paw. Mackerel, Hugh's crystalline spellbook, fluttered forward, and settled onto one of the soft pads. For the first time, Harry noticed a peculiar stone set into its greenish-crystal cover.

"A guide home."

There was another sudden intake of breath around him, and no-one said anything. After a pause, Hugh spoke with a sense of growing realisation. "You mean… Mackerel's labyrinth stone. Because it's taken from inside a labyrinth, it should be able to guide us through? But Mackerel can't go without me, and…"

Talia threw a tattooed arm over Harry's shoulder. "Ha! I hope you like us!" The red-headed teenage girl was grinning broadly. "Cause it looks like we're going to be spending quite a bit more time together."

The pursuer continued its search above the Anastan sea, but found nothing.

The stones it had been using to trace the offworlders were gone, burnt through in a blaze of expended mana. The tell-tale traces of their magics were only faint, and after criss-crossing the ocean sky a dozen times, it was clear they were no longer here.

It travelled quickly back to Havath City, seen by no-one, and returned to the reality from which it had come.

Someone was waiting for it. A fist-size sphere with a metallic sheen. Space around it seemed to warp and twist, as if pulled toward its surface.

"The Intertwined are dead, and Havath is retreating. The intruders achieved their goals. I didn't catch them."

The sphere pulsed, contracting and expanding. It hummed in quietly communicated displeasure.

"There's something else. Two of them fought me, with magics from other worlds. The other did nothing, only watched. I was close enough at the end to see this in their soul."

The pursuer held out its hand, palm up, and a bright projection of Harry's soul winked into existence above its hand. The projection shrank and turned, until it focused in on a particular section of the shell.

The sphere stopped pulsing.

"I thought they had abandoned other realities. If the Bearer of the Line of Merlin is here, then…"

The surface of the sphere rippled.

"We must be cautious. We cannot risk being caught in the shockwave of their return. If the Atlanteans have ended their isolation, there will be consequences."

The pursuer turned to re-enter Anastis. They had a planet to search.

Berix · Mar 5, 2024

Rain

It was clear that Kanderon wanted them off this world.

Rain was sure the only reason she hadn't shoved them into a labyrinth personally was that she was giving their guides time to prepare and say their goodbyes.

Apparently, the key to navigating through the mazes which formed passageways between worlds was Hugh's adorable animated spellbook Mackerel. But they couldn't take the book alone, because it was 'pacted' with Hugh, whatever that meant. And of course, Hugh's friends wouldn't let him go alone, so that meant Sabae, Godrick, and Talia were coming along. And Kanderon didn't want to let them go without adult supervision, so their teacher, the paper mage Alustin, and Godrick's father, Artur Wallbreaker, were coming too. Apparently they'd already encountered Artur once before - he had been the mage inside the gargantuan stone giant in the battle for Ithos.

Although he'd enjoyed Alustin's company and the others seemed friendly enough, the prospect of bringing so many people on such a dangerous journey did nothing to calm Rain's nerves.

The last time he'd gone delving with Ameliah and Tallheart, he'd been by far the weakest member of their party of three, and even then he'd felt anxious about keeping his friends safe in the darkness and tension of the depths. He wasn't looking forward to trying to protect so many others, especially people he hadn't had time to get to know in any depth - including children, for that matter.

Rain was aware on some level that both Zorian and Harry technically qualified as children as well, but after the last few days that had somehow stopped mattering. Seeing Zorian's simulacrum sacrifice his life to slow down their pursuer had left a deep impression on Rain.

And when Harry spoke, although there were flashes of child-like idiosyncrasies, the overwhelming impression was of an experienced and battle-hardened wizard, not of a twelve-year-old. If push came to shove, Rain knew he would be able to trust Harry in a crisis - as long as their goals remained aligned.

Now, having left Kanderon behind in her strange quasi-throne room, the three of them were walking along a broad, well-lit corridor they'd been told would lead them to Skyhold's library.

Zorian's simulacra had quietly stepped away a while ago, and according to the images they were intermittently sending to Rain's mind, were hovering above Skyhold, keeping watch for any plumes of dust in the distance.

If something unexpected happened, Harry, Rain, and Zorian would be better prepared this time. After the close call above the Anastan sea, they had agreed to adopt the habit of keeping up constant threads of mental communication.

The idea of keeping up a line of information-exchange with a master mind-mage would have made yesterday's Rain deeply uncomfortable, and he knew the Warden was going to lay into him next time they spoke. Strangely, it didn't seem to bother him now. When he tried to picture Zorian betraying him and seizing control, his mind instead went back to the last messages from Zorian's simulacrum high above the Anastan seas.

Whether or not the simulacra were Zorian in any true sense, they were created in his exact image. And this one hadn't hesitated for a moment before giving up its life to save them. As far as Rain was concerned, from here on out, Zorian was a friend.

Since neither Rain nor Harry could reach out of their own accord, Zorian needed to actively transmit their thoughts, but that clearly wasn't a problem for the enigmatic mage. As a result, Rain was receiving periodic flashes of imagery from Zorian's four extant simulacra - two hovering above the Skyreach Range, one stationed near the retreating Havathi army, and another which was rapidly approaching Ithos. He was also privy to whatever thoughts Harry or the original Zorian chose to share.

It would have been a lot of information for a typical mind to handle - perhaps too much. To Rain, it merely meant he would flicker into his soul every few seconds to digest the images at his own pace. He was walking a little slower than usual to practise the rapid soul-manipulations. So far, he'd managed to handle the resultant momentary loss of physical senses reasonably well - Detection wasn't a replacement for a sense of touch, but it helped.

Harry was visibly struggling. He'd insisted on at least attempting to parse the torrent of sensory information, and his physical coordination wasn't coping quite as well. Zorian was walking behind him, and had stopped him falling over or walking into walls at least a dozen times now. His eyelids were flickering intermittently, as if he was dreaming.

None of them were speaking out loud. Just as they'd spent the last few days conversing solely in Ithonian to improve their language skills, now they were practising mental communications. It was a strange way to communicate, but Rain could clearly see the advantages. It reminded him of how Ameliah had used Message before the Warden closed off his soul to others.

Now, the main impressions he was getting from his companions was Harry's frustration at his difficulty interpreting the flashes of imagery, and wry amusement from each of Zorian's five minds.

At a mental suggestion from Zorian, they paused briefly.

<Harry, could you transfigure me a pair of thin metal discs?>

Harry nodded, and after a moment of concentration, a piece of wood he produced from his bag became two flat metallic discs. He passed them over to Zorian, who immediately began carving tiny lines into the metal with his magic.

<What for?> Rain asked, curious.

<Normally my telepathic connections can only reach a relatively short distance - around a kilometre at maximum. I'm going to make these discs into relays, which should extend the range at which we can communicate to a few hundred kilometres. The devices won't last that long without crystallised mana, but it's better than nothing.>

That was a good answer. Rain didn't expect Zorian to leave his side anytime soon - the young mage was eagerly making use of every drop of mana Rain fed him via Essence Well and Winter, and those only worked within a small distance - but it was always good to be prepared.

As they continued walking, Harry made an interesting suggestion.

<We need to think through the recent crisis in detail, and determine where we could have done better.>

That… was probably a good idea. The three of them had almost died, and things could easily have gone much worse than they did. Rain sank into his soul for a moment to review his memories, and came out with one standout conclusion.

<I need to trust you both more. I could have descended into my soul much earlier, and had far more time to think. I've made a habit of trying to keep my physical senses active as much as possible around you, Zorian, even though you've given me no reason to distrust you. It almost got us killed. I'm sorry.> It was difficult to keep the regret and emotion from his mental communication.

Zorian's response was somewhat hesitant. <It's not… uncommon for people to feel uneasy around me. It's not the first time something like this has happened. Besides, your mana was the only reason I could teleport us so many times.>

<That's a good start.> Harry's thoughts were precise, as if he was analysing a chess position rather than a life-or-death crisis the three of them had experienced less than an hour ago. <First off, we need to have a faster crisis response. Zorian, you have simulacra stationed around the continent. At the first sign of trouble nearby, you should cast a Gate spell and take us somewhere very far away.>

<That's not enough> came Zorian's response. <If that… thing can get close to us without our knowledge, then we're already dead. Rain, how are your reaction times, and how fast can you move?>

<Not as fast as our pursuer, at least not with any control, but well above the speed of sound. Reaching a speed isn't the problem though - it's surviving while I'm going that fast. There's no damage limit here, so if I collide with something at mach 3, it might kill me instantly. Reaction times depend on whether or not I'm in my soul when something happens. If I am, then I have more time to plan what I'm going to do, and can emerge and do it immediately. Ballpark is probably about half normal human reaction time.>

<Good. In that case, it's safest if we maintain a Gate at all times, and you throw us through it if anything happens. I can close it much faster than I can open it.>

Harry interjected with a note of consternation. <I'm not sure if that's a good idea. There are clearly dangers which move between worlds, and Kanderon seems to think that our presence here, in particular our foreign magic, might lure them here. If I were a multiversal force hell-bent on wreaking destruction on any world that came to my attention, a permanent Gate defying Euclidean space might act like a beacon. Our momentary use might not have caused any issues so far, but I'd prefer not to push our luck by keeping a Gate open at all times. There's also a chance that a Gate would allow the pursuer to find us again.>

<Good point. How long does it take you to make a permanent teleportation circle that you can reach from a greater distance, Zorian?>

<Days, minimum. My simulacrum near the Havathi army is working on one there, but if we leave this planet at the rate Kanderon wants us to, it won't be finished by the time we're gone.>

Depends on how long this labyrinth takes us, Rain thought. From what Kanderon says, it's nothing like the delves back home... but there's always a chance. He'd only been gone from Ascension for a few days, but without Ameliah or even Dozer, it felt like much longer.

The question of Dozer was an interesting one. Ever since the Essence Slime had managed to find his way into Rain's soul, the mental connection to the tamed monster had been there, easy to access and ready to either summon Dozer back, or to keep him safe inside his soul.

The thing is, Dozer had been outside his soul, playing with Carten, when he'd been taken by the Exile Splinter. And now, in this world, the connection to Dozer felt… not frayed, exactly, but somehow strained, as if the bond had been trapped in a higher energy state. He hadn't been able to talk to Dozer, and hadn't heard any of the slime's characteristic ⟬clean-need⟭ either. There was a chance that he could fetch Dozer from the other world, and bring him here, but what then? This world was undeniably more dangerous, and although Dozer had courage in spades, that wasn't a risk Rain was willing to take. The thought of the plucky little slime caught in the shockwave left in the wake of their otherworldly pursuer, or torn apart by a gravity mage, or…

No, it was better for now that Dozer was safe with Ascension. And so Rain hadn't even tried to tug at the thread of soul-connection, and consequently hadn't resolved his itching curiosity about whether or not he'd be able bring a creature across the boundaries between worlds with a mere thought.

The three of them arrived at a broad pair of wooden doors, reinforced horizontally with iron brackets.

There weren't any signs saying what was inside, but Rain supposed that would have ruined the whole medieval aesthetic anyway. 

<Hugh said it was dangerous. We should stay on our guard,> Harry sent. His thoughts were a mixture of giddy excitement and nerves.

Rain stepped forward, and threw the doors open with perhaps a little too much force. They swung open, revealing…

A space which was much larger than ought to have been possible, even inside a mountain this large. Endless leagues of tomes and grimoires embedded into shelves stretched out before them. Ship-sized shelves bearing thousands of books floated of their own accord, drifting lazily around the stacks. A central shaft descending into the depths glowed blue - the colour of Kanderon's wings. Hundreds of individual books darted about - some with wings, some without, blurring the corridors between the shelves.

<On second thoughts, maybe this isn't the ideal way to organise a library.> Whatever he claimed to think, Rain could tell that Harry approved both of the aesthetic and of the sheer scale.

Zorian stepped forward, briefly gesturing with a hand to telekinetically deflect an onrushing atlas, and picked a book from a nearby shelf at random. <A Treatise on the Use of Water Affinities in Managing Hydrocephalus. Huh.> He turned and picked up another. <Advanced Wardcraft.> A third: <A Beginners Guide to Dealing with Demons. This one has some blood on it. Not sure if that's a good sign.>

Rain narrowed his eyes. <There's around twenty books on each shelf, and the bookshelves are around ten shelves high. We can see around a hundred bookshelves from here, but that's probably only a tenth of what's on this floor. So that's around two hundred thousand books per floor.>

Flaring Velocity, he dashed over to the edge of the central shaft. The library itself stretched around the chasm, and on the other side, Rain could see that the floors of the library stretched downward until they disappeared into a dimly glowing mist… <And it looks like there's at least fifty more floors, if not more. So that's at least ten million books.>

Harry was breathing a little heavily. <It will be quite a bit of work to bring all this information with us. We need to be quick. There's no telling when Kanderon's people will be ready to leave, and we want to get off this world as soon as possible.> He ran his fingers through his dark hair, once again exposing the strange scar that ran down his forehead. <Rain, you have a perfect memory, right? How quickly can you read?>

Rain wrinkled his eyebrows. <Great question. There's not a lot of reading material where I come from, so I haven't been challenged like that in a while. I think my mind could contain all the information here, the problem is getting it all in there.>

Running too fast was definitely a concern - he needed to stay controlled to avoid collisions with the stationary bookshelves, to say nothing of the roaming ones. So he braced himself, dialled the stat bonuses from his rings to send his Clarity into the stratosphere, and limited himself to a little over half the speed of sound.

Velocity (15/15)
2041% boost to speed for all entities
Range: 0 meters
Cost: 9.75 mp/s

And… go.

His fingers flickered through the pages at inhuman speeds, constrained by what he could do without tearing apart the paper. Vellum was more resilient - when he picked up a leatherbound book, it took less than half the time. Each page was inscribed with dense, symbolic language. Most of it was in standard Ithonian, and slid easily into his memories, but it wasn't just text. There were complex charts, runic diagrams, schematics, as well as books in dozens of languages he'd never seen before.

He didn't try to understand it. They could do that later, when they were under less time pressure. Now was the time for data collection. And collect data he did - flitting between the bookshelves like some kind of maniacal robot librarian, memorising the contents of another book every second.

After a few minutes, Zorian pulled some carbon-nanotube reinforced frames from a pocket dimension in his robes, and constructed a pair of simulacra, who began to help. They used some kind of finely controlled levitation magic to lift hundreds of books at once into a wide floating grid, so that Rain could see them all at once, and turned all of the pages roughly once every second. It was a nice gesture, and did help speed things up. He only needed to briefly turn back to face the grid to memorise all the currently visible pages, and could otherwise continue flipping through books himself.

A typical human would barely be able to focus their eyes in that span of time - let alone take in the information from hundreds of floating books at a considerable distance. Rain, however, relished the challenge - his Perception-boosting accolades combined with his enhanced Clarity to allow him to take in far more information than would usually be possible.

Every now and then, a book reacted poorly to being read at two hundred metres per second, and barfed up a cloud of knives, or tried to bite off his arm. None of the tricks were particularly threatening, especially while Rain was already moving this quickly, but they did tend to slow him down a little.

Harry, meanwhile, apparently hadn't thought of any clever tricks to speed-read an entire library, and had instead started querying the Index for books on particularly interesting topics, and stuffing them into his Useful Items bag.

<Kanderon won't be happy you're taking her books.>

Harry's mental response was cautiously optimistic. <I'm planning to learn from them, and will soon be travelling through extremely dangerous environments with some of her most favoured servants, who I will be better able to protect if I'm more magically skilled. I figure it's fair game - I'm going to treat the books very well, of course, and intend to return them if I ever return to this world.>

Presumably the bag reached capacity at some point, because he then pulled up a chair alongside the Index Node and continued querying - not looking for specific books, but rather trying to understand the scale and contents of the library itself, as well as the limits of the Index's sentience.

Rather than finishing the first floor entirely, Rain began work on the second floor when Zorian told him that a greater proportion of the books there were bound with leather, which meant he would be able to read them more quickly. He was part way through when Harry interrupted.

<They're here. Zorian, has your simulacrum reached Ithos?>

<Yes.>

<How much of the library have we got?> Zorian queried.

<I'll have to count more carefully later, but I think I've memorised around fifteen thousand books.> Rain did some quick mental arithmetic. <That's less than ten percent of a single floor, and about a tenth of a percent of the whole library. And we didn't get any of the ones that were swimming around in the weird aquarium thing.>

<It'll have to do, for now. We should go. As much as I hate to interrupt this, every minute we spend on this planet is a risk.>

Rain nodded, and climbed the thin winding staircase which led up to the floor where Harry and Zorian were waiting. Near the door, Harry was getting up and stowing Advanced Wardcraft in his bag. Zorian's simulacra returned the levitated books to their original positions, and flew through the open space in the middle of the library rather than taking the stairs. They floated gently to the floor beside Zorian's original body.

Before them stood the people who would be their companions for the dangerous journey home.

Alustin stood at the front, looking more confident than ever. His nondescript brown robes were clean and tidy, which contrasted with the ever-tousled brown hair partially obscuring his dreamfire circlet. He was carrying a simple leather bag, although it wasn't clear why - he probably had more than enough storage space in the pocket dimension anchored to the tattoo on his arm.

Beside him was a massive dark-skinned man who must have been Godrick's father, Artur. He must have been around seven feet tall, and the skin visible at his neck and hands was interlaced with deep scars. He was smiling broadly and holding up a hand in greeting.

Just behind him stood his son Godrick, who was only slightly shorter, flanked by Hugh, Talia and Sabae. And of course, the reason they were all here - Hugh's crystalline spellbook, dubbed Mackerel, was surreptitiously trying to nibble at the ends of Sabae's white hair.

All six of them were wearing Talia's dreamfire circlets around their heads. Rain felt a pang of guilt at the implicit deception. While it was better for everyone if Kanderon's people believed themselves safe, concealing his ability to invert Immolate and put out flames had him feeling a little two-faced. They knew about Suppression, since he'd used it to douse Talia's dome in their meeting, but because they didn't require active mana input from an individual, it had left the circlets alight. Inverted Immolate would simply extinguish all flames within its radius, regardless of their source.

Rain stepped forward, dismissing his helm and gauntlets, and grasped Artur's outstretched hand in greeting.

<Please to meet…>

<You have to speak out loud to them, Rain,> Zorian reminded him dryly.

Oh, right.

"Pleased to meet you in person, Artur. And thank you all for joining us. I'm Rain, this is Harry, and they're Zorian." Rain gestured at his companions.

"Ah, we should be thankin' ye!" Apparently Artur shared Godrick's thick accent as well as his stature and stone affinity. "There's no tellin' what would a happened here if ye hadn't diverted the Havathi armies."

Alustin clapped his hands together. "Galvachren's Guide, of which I have a copy here," he tapped his leather satchel, "says the connection to your homeworlds should be through the Ithonian labyrinth, which makes sense, given that's where the Exile Splinter was deployed. Zorian, when you took me back to Skyhold, you brought me alongside while you teleported, and covered the distance in several jumps. That should speed up our journey significantly, especially since sandships can't cross the Skyreach Range." He leant forward, almost conspiratorially. "Now, how many people can you take along at once? Will we need to make multiple trips to bring everyone along? My apprentices are an equal mixture of apprehensive and curious about the experience."

Zorian shook his head. "We won't be teleporting today."

Alustin drew back, surprised, and cocked his head to one side as if he were trying to read some text at an angle. The apprentices behind him looked at each other with confusion.

"It's too slow."

Now they were really confused.

"Please stand back."

Their seven new companions nervously backed away through the doors, and looked in curiously. Mackerel must have been especially curious, because the spellbook kept trying to dart past them. Talia eventually sat on it to stop it moving.

Zorian began a series of complex hand gestures, and after a few seconds, a tiny tear began to form in the fabric of reality. Stretching wider by the moment, the shimmering boundary of the Gate grew.

This was the first time Rain had seen Zorian cast the Gate spell without some crisis occurring at the same time, so he very much shared the curiosity their new friends were displaying.

Just looking at the Gate was enough to confuse the senses. It wasn't a single portal with some kind of opaque rear side, like the ones from Portal - instead, it was double sided. Rain moved around to look at it from other angles, and it was clear that entering into the Gate's space from either side would take you to its destination. Interesting.

Twenty seconds passed, and Zorian gradually expanded the boundary until it was large enough for even Artur to be able to pass through. Then, without another word, he jumped in, and vanished from the library entirely.

There was a long pause, in which no-one moved.

Zorian stuck his head back out, looking a bit amused at the delay. "You coming?"

"Yep." Rain breathed in, and stepped through.

Zorian

His simulacrum had chosen the roof of the deserted villa as their point of arrival. From here, the ruined city of Ithos was beautiful in the fading sunset light. Unlike when they'd first arrived, there was no storm, but there was still a patch of thick, dark clouds above them, and tiny droplets were beginning to fall.

Simulacrum Four, who had opened the Gate from the Ithonian side, waved a hand cursorily, and a wide transparent dome came into being, which sheltered the Gate from rain as the rest of their group emerged. Zorian and Rain stood side by side, facing the Gate as Kanderon's people crossed through.

Artur came through first, stepping very carefully to avoid the edges of the Gate. That wasn't necessary, of course. The edges weren't dangerous - Zorian's Gate spell was carefully designed to collapse gracefully if the boundary was tampered with. An expression of wonder tempered with caution spread across Artur's face as he exited.

Zorian's instinctive mental feelers once again flinched away from the chaotic energies of Artur's dreamfire circlet. The iridescent droplet of suspended flame glinted in the dimming light, serving to remind Zorian and his simulacra of their allies' (perhaps justified) caution.

It made Zorian feel a little better that their rudimentary defences wouldn't amount to much, if it came to it. Even if it turned out that Rain couldn't simply extinguish the purple-greenish flames with a thought, there were always other options - many of them.

The headbands didn't look particularly well fastened - only a thin leather strip fixed the finger-tip sized crystal container to the centre of their foreheads. If necessary, unstructured telekinesis could easily tear them away before anyone had a chance to react, leaving their minds undefended. And that was only required if Zorian actually wanted to seize control of their minds - if he just wanted them out of the picture, there were a myriad of other possibilities. It seemed unlikely that any of their affinities could deflect or easily block a series of homing, invisible force-missiles, or severing discs. Simulacra could grab them and teleport them kilometres into the air. And if all that failed, Harry's improvements to his simulacrum frames had resulted in a significant increase in their durability and effective strength - if it came to it, there was always the option of grabbing them and physically tearing them apart.

Not that Zorian was planning on doing anything like that unprovoked, of course. As long as Kanderon's people stayed cooperative, there was no reason for any hostilities.

Talia was the next to leave the portal, her short red hair and freckled, white skin eerily lit up by both the circlet on her forehead and her glowing blue tattoos. Her presence here was understandable, if frustrating. Despite the decent craftsmanship, it was clear from the tiny amounts of mana leaking from the crystal casing of the circlets that they wouldn't last forever - probably just a day or two, without recharging. And judging by the inflexibility of the mages from this world, recharging these devices probably required a dreamfire affinity.

Her brash confidence reminded him a little of Taiven - but mainly the parts of Taiven that he found confusing and somewhat annoying.

Godrick came through next. Even without his usual thick stone armour, the young mage was surprisingly large. His eyes were darting about, taking in the ruined buildings and broken boulevards. Zorian once again felt frustrated at his inability to read even their surface thoughts. He'd grown so used to having some idea of what people were thinking that operating without that ability - being normal, he supposed - just felt wrong.

Then came Hugh, with his absurdly named crystal spellbook hovering at his side. The mind inside Mackerel was odd - not quite a magical construct like a golem, and not quite an independent sentience, but somewhere in between. For all Zorian's experience understanding alien minds, he couldn't make head or tail of the thought processes in the odd spellbook - it was all abstract toruses and topological structures, without any hint of meaning he could discern.

Along with the circlet, Hugh's eyes glinted slightly in the sunset, reminiscent of Kanderon. Did he have some kind of cat-like ability to see in the dark? Mackerel looked like he was trying to eat part of the Gate, and Hugh was clearly using his crystal affinity to hold him back.

Then came Sabae, long white hair cascading past the dark skin of her exposed collarbones. As she carefully stepped over the boundary, Zorian noticed currents of wind playing through her fingers. He frowned slightly. Wind magic, like Sabae clearly possessed, was a near perfect counter to his own invisibility. Unlike Talia, with her frequent idiosyncrasies, at least Sabae had been quite pleasant to talk to in the walk to meet Kanderon. Without his mind-sense, Zorian had to admit that he wasn't the best conversationalist. She'd reacted well to his questions about local politics, and had volunteered a surprising amount of information about her grandmother, who apparently controlled the winds of half the continent from her storm-throne hundreds of kilometres away. She'd asked a few pertinent questions of her own: Were all mages from his world as powerful as he was? (No.) What made them decide to work with Kanderon? (Necessity.) What power structures dominated his world? (Hereditary kingdoms, although noble families held some power, and in recent years civil institutions had grown to wield significant influence.) Did he think these power structures were the best possible ones, or had he thought about challenging them?

He'd struggled answering the last one, and part of his mind was still mulling on the question.

Alustin jumped through, landed dexterously, and walked over to the edge of the shimmering dome protecting them from the steadily increasing rain. He playfully put his fingers through, and drew them back. "Check this out!" He turned to his apprentices. "And they don't even have a water affinity!"

Finally, Harry and the simulacra brought up the rear, and Zorian curled his fingers into a fist to collapse the Gate.

"Welcome back to Ithos. Your turn, labyrinth-guides."

Zorian looked out at the city spread out before them. Even after centuries of disrepair in the void, most of the buildings had remained somewhat intact. Now, after the three-way battle between Kanderon's Librarians Errant, the Havathi forces, and their own little faction, most of the city was in ruins. The adjacent building was half-collapsed, and in the middle of the street, the crater-footprint of Artur's gargantuan stone armour was clearly visible.

"Actually, that's something we need to ask you." Hugh stepped forward to Zorian, Mackerel currently inactive and slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. "You're from three different worlds, right? Where are we going first?"

They'd had this conversation before launching the attack on Havath City - when it had become clear there was a path home soon.

Zorian sent a mental query to his companions, and said out loud, "Give me a moment to think about that."

<We're still planning to head to Harry's world first, right? Any objections?>

Rain responded first. <I'd obviously like to get back to my homeworld and my friends as soon as possible, but I don't want to leave you two unprotected. Like I said before, Zorian and I can probably handle ourselves, but I'd prefer to take Harry home first. No offence - you're a great asset, but your skills aren't the best suited to survival.>

<None taken. Thank you both - I appreciate this.>

There was an undercurrent of… something in Harry's mental communication. It was clear he wasn't telling them everything. The young boy's mental protections were of an odd kind, but were still strong enough that he would know if Zorian intruded.

Still, there was clearly no hostile intent. Unless Harry had cognitive defences that far oustripped those of anyone on Zorian's world, and the ability to create a simulated mind capable of fooling him (very unlikely), then he wasn't planning to betray them. Zorian figured the younger boy could keep his secrets for now.

One of his simulacra realised the original was distracted, and stepped in to respond to Hugh's question in his stead. "We're going to Harry's world first."

Alustin grimaced. "I was hoping you wouldn't say that. Galvachren said the journey there was dangerous, and this is the first time any of us have tried to use a labyrinth to move between worlds."

Hugh held up a hand. "That's not quite true. The book said the journey was difficult, not dangerous. That's different."

Alustin rolled his eyes. "Well, I certainly hope we'll have to solve a particularly challenging puzzle which isn't at all life-threatening, but somehow I doubt it."

"In that case, let's get moving. The sooner we can leave this world, the better. I presume we're starting at the site of the Splinter?" Alustin nodded, and Rain jumped off the roof in a single superhuman bound. He hit the ground next to the crater in the middle of the street.

Sabae followed, wind propelling her high into the air, and slowing her fall as she landed. Her white hair fanned out behind her as she moved. The rest of them turned to the stairs, but Artur held out a hand to stop them.

"Tha whole buildin' is unstable. We should leave this way." He looked at the edge of the marble villa, and the stone walls began to reshape themselves. Within a few seconds, the edge of the roof melted away, merging with the walls to form a narrow, but sturdy looking staircase. Artur led the way, apparently confident in the structural integrity of his creation. The rest of them followed.

It was a short walk - less than a hundred metres - to the former location of the Exile Splinter. His simulacrum had chosen their arrival point well.

The site where the splinter had originally been placed looked fairly ordinary now - or as ordinary as a city plaza could look if it had been bombarded by lava and partially crushed by a stone giant. The bones, of course, had been cleared away by Rain when the city was still in the void, but some dirt and dust had accumulated over the last few days, thinly coating the marble paving.

No-one else was here, which was a blessing. After the confrontation in Havath City, Zorian had a healthy respect for the force the Empire could bring to bear.

At the very centre, just below where the Splinter had once been anchored, was an oddly textured section of stone. Thin ridges of stone spiralled inward - it looked a little like the fossil of a massive sea snail. Their group stopped in front of it, and Mackerel fluttered over to rest in the centre.

"He wants us to… go underneath?" Hugh sounded uneasy. Apart from the boundary between the marble and the spiral section, the plaza was seamless - there was no way down.

"Alright. Godrick, Artur, you're up." Alustin stepped back, and gestured for the others to back away as well.

The father and son stepped forward onto the spiral, and knelt to place their hands on the ground.

"Alright laddy, reach out with yeh affinity senses. What do ye feel?"

Godrick closed his eyes to focus. "I think… there's ah vacuum - an open space, ten metres deep? I'm not sure, but I think it connects to ah tunnel."

"Good. Ladder or staircase?"

Godrick furrowed his brow. "The steepest manageable angle is the inverse tangent of two, which is about eighteen hundredths of a revolution. There's just about room for ah steep spiral stair."

"Well done. Let's get started."

The two of them closed their eyes, and the stone around the edges of the spiral began to reform, melting down in a circular pattern. Excess stone, which presumably needed to be ejected to make room for the staircase, was pushed outward away from the group, and formed a large seamless cube with precise, sharp edges. Zorian shook his head - to someone from a world without stone affinities, the sharp edges and smooth faces of the cube looked like the result of hours of painstaking craftsmanship, even for a competent mage-craftsman. Artur and Godrick had made it in a matter of seconds, and it wasn't even their actual project.

Zorian peered over the edge, and saw a steep descending staircase spiralling into a black void. Just as Godrick had promised, the stairs were about as steep as they could get before you'd start calling them a ladder. There wasn't a single stair which stretched across the whole staircase - instead, there were separate stairs for your left and right feet, which let the whole structure descend much more rapidly. It reminded him of the stairs to the attic back in his family's house in Cirin.

As a child, his brother Fortov had tried to egg Zorian on to climb the stairs into the crawl space above, but even at the age of eleven, he'd known better than to trust his older brother.

The stone stopped moving, and Artur stood. He beckoned to the rest of them. "Alright, let's get movin'."

<We should be cautious,> came a thought from Harry, and he reflexively relayed it to Rain. <Once we enter the stone tunnels, if they choose to betray us, we're very much in their domain.>

<Force Ward is active, which should give us a moment to respond,> Rain reassured them. <Besides, I don't expect anything bad from these people - they seem genuine in their desire to help.>

Zorian wasn't so sure - his simulacra had spent long enough inside Alustin's mind to know that what they'd done to Havath City wouldn't be enough to satisfy his bloodlust. Alustin was a strange character - outwardly, he seemed charming and friendly. On the inside, however, Alustin's thoughts returned uncomfortably often to dreams of revenge - of Havath City in flames, and its people suffering the way his people had suffered.

The short glimpse he'd had into Artur's mind in the battle for Ithos, at least, did reassure him. Artur was not a simple man - he'd had his fair share of battles, and had personally ended many lives - but his dedication to keeping his son and his friends safe was the driving motivation behind his every action. As long as their group stuck together, and there was the possibility of a conflict putting Godrick in danger, Zorian was sure that Artur wouldn't cause any problems.

<Artur won't attack us. Force Ward should be enough to keep us safe from Alustin, if he tries anything.>

<Good enough for me. I'll light the way with Purify.> A dim light began to radiate from Rain, and he started the journey into the darkness. Mackerel fluttered by his side, the crystal pages flickering back and forth. Hugh followed, and one by one, the rest of them filed down Godrick's stairs, and entered the labyrinth.

Artur came down last. The stone stairwell melted away and the gap in the ceiling closed as he stepped into the tunnel. That was a good idea, Zorian supposed. There was enough danger ahead - it was better if they didn't need to worry about anyone following them.

The dark was oppressive, and despite the headbands, Zorian could still feel waves of anxiety coming from Kanderon's Librarians. Given that they were supposed to be the leaders here, that only served to put Zorian more on edge.

They'd only managed a short walk into the broad stone tunnel before Zorian began to feel the connections with his simulacra flickering and fading. He stopped immediately, and clutched his head. The two simulacra by his side sprang into action, pushing the others away and throwing up layers of prismatic shields.

<What's going on?> Harry's wand was in his hand, and above his Useful Items bag, near-invisible threads glinted in the dim light of Rain's aura.

Zorian was frantically trying to repair the fraying ties to his simulacra. The connections to the ones by his side remained strong, but the threads which connected his soul to the more distant copies felt like they were being torn apart.

One of the simulacra clarified for the group. "We're not physically under attack. The connections to our other simulacra are being suppressed, likely by the labyrinth."

The others relaxed somewhat. Alustin scratched his head. "I've never heard of anything like this happening, but then again, I've never met anyone with simulacra before. We know the labyrinth builders wove in protections against certain kinds of entities travelling through, like the Cold Minds. It's possible you're being inadvertently caught in that filter too? I'm just theorising, though - it could be something else entirely."

The mana here felt strange in other ways, too. In the Dungeon, on Zorian's homeworld, the deeper you went, the more challenging it became to shape your mana, especially over larger distances. Teleporting more than a few metres, for example, was close to impossible once you reached a certain level. Here, the effect was even more pronounced. They'd only barely entered the labyrinth, and he could already feel the pressure on his mind - the same way he felt in the Dungeon.

As a test, one of the simulacra tried to teleport to the surface. The attempt fizzled immediately. Maybe a shorter distance would work?

The simulacrum vanished, and reappeared on the other side of their group. Sabae jumped in surprise. Zorian sighed. At least short-distance teleportation would still work, as did his nearby simulacra. After even a few minutes without a connection to the original, his simulacra elsewhere would fade away. For now, at least, their group was uniquely vulnerable - no long-distance teleports to escape, and no Gates across the continent in the event of a significant emergency.

Zorian shook his head. Time to focus on the here and now.

"My simulacra elsewhere are dispersing. I need to create some more here. Wait for me for a moment."

As requested, the others paused while he conjured the necessary ectoplasm onto a new trio of golem-frames he fetched from his bag. One by one, the additional simulacra stood up, their eyes gazing warily into the dark, their minds roving across the nearby tunnels, searching for threats.

A few minutes later, flanked by five simulacra, he was ready to continue. "Let's keep moving. I want to get out of here as soon as possible."

The others nodded, and they continued into the dark.

Harry

The tunnels around them gradually changed as they walked.

At first, the stone had matched the colours of Ithos - pinkish marble, immaculately clean. As they continued, following Mackerel along a precise path through twists and turns of the endlessly branching tunnels, up and down flights of stairs, marble became granite, increasingly wet, with patches of dark greenish-purple moss dotting the walls. The spellbook didn't hesitate for a moment at any of the junctions, and darted forwards into the chosen tunnel each time.

Occasionally, the tunnels opened up into a larger space. Massive halls of stone, vaulted with columns, or vast rough-hewn caverns with water dripping from the stalactites above. Hugh, acting on instructions from Mackerel, hurried them past those, keeping them in the smaller tunnels as much as possible.

As they walked, Harry mused on the situation. In here, it seemed Zorian's magic was greatly constrained - no teleports, and no simulacra at a distance. Still, the combination of affinity senses, Rain's Detection, and Zorian's mind-magic should give them significant forewarning if anything happened.

Harry was taking the time to practise with his newly-developing carbon affinity. The people walking alongside him were gradually beginning to show up more clearly, as he learned to interpret the fuzzy signals. He was increasingly able to tell the shape of their bodies - where their arms were positioned, how large the shape was, things like that. Artur and Talia, as the extreme examples of contrast in size, were easy to tell apart.

Unlike earlier, the simulacra currently with Zorian weren't purely ectoplasm - they were all based on Harry's improved titanium and carbon nanotube frame design. The purity of the carbon lattice layered around their titanium bones shone brightly to his affinity sense.

Although they'd proven themselves trustworthy allies so far, the power differential between himself and his two companions had been causing him some concern. Whether or not it was intentional, the inclusion of purified carbon in Zorian's simulacra did help to redress that inequality - even though his ability to affect large amounts of matter was still limited, Harry was confident that if it came to it, he would easily be able to tear apart the simulacra from inside. The usual difficulties of affecting other mage's internal organs wouldn't apply - the simulacra were mere extensions of the original, and had no aetherbodies of their own. Even if he didn't intend to do so, mutual collaboration with Zorian and Rain felt easier now that he was holding at least some of the cards.

That wasn't the only trick Harry was preparing. Layered carefully into the seams of his robes, with more ready inside his Useful Items bag, were more than fifty long strands of braided carbon nanotubes, each strand a single molecule. It was the same approach he'd used in the graveyard, not long ago. Now, however, with the added control and strength granted by his affinity…

He'd tested it in the campsite, before they'd started the attack on Havath City. He'd taken one of the strands, wrapped it around a small-looking tree, and pulled toward him with his affinity.

The wooden trunk had presented almost no resistance. Even a small amount of force, when distributed across a tiny cross-section, represented a huge amount of pressure.

That was probably the principle behind Alustin's surprising strength as a battle-mage. Few people would expect paper to be particularly dangerous. And yet, if a piece of paper could be precisely controlled, the thinness of the paper, which the naive might perceive as a weakness, would become its strength.

Still, braided nanotubes were obviously superior. Their tensile strength meant that Harry wouldn't even need to apply the force himself - he would only need to wrap the strands around an enemy at strategic locations, and their own struggles to escape would cut them apart.

He was hoping to avoid using any of the weapons at his command, but since his arrival on Anastis, he'd felt compelled to act - to prepare, and grow stronger. Not by his Vow - Voldemort had gone to great lengths to ensure that the Vow would not induce him to act recklessly - but by his sense of moral duty. If there was a possible future in which he lived, he strongly preferred to go down that path. Preventing the end of the World was far easier if he was still alive, and so he would stay alive - because it was necessary.

They paused, and Alustin fetched a wide, thick book from his bag. 'The Guide', presumably.

Harry's interest hadn't abated, and he crowded behind Alustin to read alongside him. Looking over his shoulder, Harry could see that the section of text on Earth was far longer than the excerpt Kanderon had read to them. Large chunks of the text - almost all of it, in fact, had been 'redacted'. It wasn't simply blacked out, like old CIA documents. Instead, the text had been blurred somehow. When Harry tried to look at it, it felt like his eyes refused to focus, and bringing his eyes closer to the text resulted in a spike of pain that forced him to look away.

The unredacted sections were still some of the most interesting content Harry had ever read.

Galvachren went into quite a bit of detail describing the climate and weather systems of Earth, albeit from a decidedly alien perspective. He lingered on specific things - the odd coincidences of Earth's moon (there's only one, and it's precisely the same angular size as the sun!), the huge variety in the types of spiders on Earth's surface (although he lamented that only a tiny minority were 'particularly intelligent'), and the consistency of what he called 'aether'.

Two sentences, casually dropped between observations of the Amazon, burrowed into Harry's mind like a parasitic worm.

Almost unique among human-settled worlds, virtually all sentient creatures here have been bound - their souls fettered by their progenitors. Some were granted a limited ability to manipulate the aether, the others were entirely cut off.

He should have realised sooner. He'd visited new worlds, and heard of more. Now that he could see more of the picture, it was almost obvious.

Here on Anastis, and the other worlds he'd heard about from Alustin and the Index Node, the default state of the human species was that with practice and training, they could tap into the aether and use it as a source of strength.

On his world, only a privileged few in the wizarding world were able to cast spells. The vast, vast majority were Muggles - ignorant of the true nature of the world, and unable to understand it if it was right before them. That was the magical tradition left behind in the wake of Atlantis.

But the Atlanteans hadn't begun on a unique world, on which nearly all humans were unable to use magic.

They'd made one.

Given that they were working on designing the soul shell, it would have been near trivial to create a modified version with no external functions at all. For a civilisation with the sheer resources of the Atlanteans, it would have been no trouble at all to impose their will on the vast majority of the populace - to shackle their souls, and leave them with no connection at all to what could have been their most powerful tool.

Harry thought of his parents, unable to look at the animated suitcase he'd brought home at Christmas without flinching away, their minds refusing to comprehend what they were seeing. Of Hermione's parents, who'd blathered on about a forsaken career in dentistry while their daughter was reshaping reality and forging the future before their eyes.

It hadn't been the natural course. It had been imposed.

And yet, it had worked, hadn't it? Despite the best efforts of human civilisation in constructing new and more powerful methods of killing, life still persisted on Earth. If eight billion people had access to magic, would that still be the case? Perhaps the Atlanteans had made the right choice - some freedom for some people, rather than oblivion for all…

That deserved further thought.

Alustin and Mackerel were seemingly satisfied, and he stowed the book back into the leather bag by his side. "We're getting close to the boundary. We should make it into your world's labyrinth by tonight, Harry."

Harry nodded, his mind elsewhere, as the group continued walking.

Ahead of them, Mackerel stopped, abruptly enough that Hugh almost bumped into it. At the same time, Rain whispered quietly, but loud enough that they could all hear:

"There's something ahead."

Near where Mackerel hovered, their narrow tunnel entered a massive cavern. Unlike most of the spaces they'd moved through, this one was mostly occupied by a wide lake. From here, it was difficult to see how deep the water was.

On either side of the lake, a thin winding path looked like it would lead an intrepid adventurer around the obstacle, to another tunnel which exited the cavern in the far distance. Of course, walking on narrow ledges above a steep fall was not the kind of dramatic activity their group needed to do - one way or another, most of them could fly, and even if that was for some reason impossible, Artur and his son could probably construct a four-lane highway across the water for them.

No, that wasn't why they were stopping. They'd stopped, presumably, because of the presences he could feel underneath the water with his affinity. Three large, slowly moving presences.

"Do we have to go this way, Hugh?" Harry asked.

Hugh nodded, and swallowed in apprehension. "Mackerel insists. A path around would be much more dangerous."

"Zorian - can we teleport to the other side?" Rain asked.

Zorian shook his head grimly. "The labyrinth's interference is even stronger here. I doubt I'd be able to teleport more than a few metres."

Rain nodded decisively. "Right, in that case we'll probably have to go through. Detection shows three entities, categorised as 'monsters' by my skills. They're very large, but that's about all I'm getting."

Harry responded. "I mirror those observations. I can also report that each of them have four limbs, and are roughly humanoid in structure. I'm not great with detail yet, but I think… they have a lot of muscles, and like, really big heads?"

Alustin pressed a finger to his temple and shut his eyes. It would have been a decent impression of Professor X if Alustin's messy brown hair hadn't ruined the image. "There are three creatures in the lake. The water makes the image less clear, but I think they're… massive frogs?"

So that was what Alustin's 'Farseeing' affinity did. He was a lot more dangerous than Harry had originally assumed.

From behind them, Zorian managed to stifle a laugh. "I thought their minds felt familiar! I've seen these creatures before. One of them wandered into the Dungeon in my world. Here's the short summary: they're not particularly perceptive, and we can probably sneak past invisibly. If a conflict does arise, be careful - they're very, very tough - although they can be hurt with fire. That's how I originally killed the one in my world. These ones appear to be quite a bit larger though."

At that, Harry saw Talia crack her knuckles.

"Do not let them get close. I saw one tear apart a metal golem with its hands. Their eyes are a weak point. They also have prehensile tongues, and are liable to try to eat anything that moves. They particularly like eating giant spiders, in case that somehow becomes relevant."

Harry allowed himself a brief snort of amusement. Giant frogs eating giant spiders. Figures.

"Can you influence their minds, Zorian?" If he could, that would be a quick win.

Zorian shrugged apologetically. "Unfortunately not. More powerful creatures tend to have stronger natural resistances, and while these creatures are crude and functionally non-sentient, they're definitely powerful. I'll cloak us in invisibility, and they shouldn't notice us as we float across to the exit on a disc."

The group nodded, and clustered onto the disc of force where Zorian gestured. This one was broader than any Harry had previously seen, and could easily fit all five simulacra, along with the nine flesh-and-blood humans and their animated spellbook guide. Working in their usual eerie unison, the simulacra wrapped the now-hovering group in successive layers of slightly shimmering shields. One of them cast a spell of invisibility, and to his natural senses, it felt like his companions simultaneously vanished.

His carbon affinity served to make the experience even stranger. Although he could no longer see the others, he could still feel them. Eight fuzzy lumps of carbon stood tensely by his sides, and the five simulacra took up positions by the edges of the disc, ready for action. Because of the pure carbon in their skeletons, Harry could easily sense their exact configuration, which helped him orient himself despite his current inability to physically see his body.

Before they got moving, Harry pulled his broomstick from his bag. With a bit of luck, it wouldn't be necessary - but it always paid to be prepared.

Slowly, the disc rose higher, and moved forward to enter the vast cavern. Gradually increasing in speed, the disc floated in a high arc, giving the lake a wide berth. The mossy paths around the lake looked exceedingly slippery from here - Harry was very glad they didn't need to walk.

They were less than a third of the way to the exit when something unexpected happened.

Harry felt one of the frogs beginning to move more quickly. It wasn't obviously aggressive - in fact, it was directed at another frog. It was a sort of swimming, splashing motion, and might have been intended to be playful. However, at their scale, even a playful motion resulted in a lot of movement.

The upswing of the frog's leg hit the surface of the water, and sent curtains of water careening through the air - high enough to hit the ceiling of the cavern, and therefore high enough to hit their bubble.

To his credit, Zorian and his simulacra reacted quickly - they grabbed hold of everyone and attempted to short-range teleport the whole bubble to the other side of the sheet of approaching water. Unfortunately, probably due to the dampening effects of the labyrinth, it didn't take them quite far enough. They managed to avoid the first layer of water, but the second one impacted their shields and was diverted around them, as if it had impacted a transparent glass marble. Although the invisibility had held, their position was revealed.

And all at once, the cavern exploded into activity.

The three frogs moved first, reacting bizarrely fast. Huge quantities of water slid off their bodies as they emerged, allowing Harry to see them with his eyes, rather than just with his affinity.

They looked like giant frogs, albeit ones which had somehow been interbred with cave trolls. They were each at least eight metres tall, and most of that was thick knots of muscle covered by greenish mottled skin. They varied slightly in size and colouration- the largest one had a patch of yellow skin across its head. The smallest one was darker-coloured, and although Harry was no expert at reading frog-expressions, it looked somehow hungrier than the others. The last one was decorated with bright green and blue banding, and if it had been a typical size for a frog, Harry would have guessed it was poisonous. Unlike a typical frog, their limbs ended in elongated claws.

<Fantastic.> It seemed Zorian kept his dry sense of humour even while under pressure.

The largest frog leapt at the closest wall, and ricocheted off it toward their bubble, claws outstretched. The smallest one stayed partially underwater, but its tongue rocketed out toward them. The last frog launched itself at them directly.

Not a moment too soon, their group scattered.

Harry leaped onto the broom in his hand, and curved its path down toward the tunnel from which they'd arrived, skimming the surface of the water. His wand found its way into his right hand, and he fired off a cutting hex at the closest frog. It might have made an incision, but Harry couldn't see anything from this distance, and the frog didn't even react. Hrm.

Behind him, he felt Artur throw himself downward, out of the bubble. Looking back, he saw the mountain of a man stretch an arm upwards. A huge chunk of stone detached itself from the roof of the cavern and sped towards him. It fell faster than he did, drawn to him by his stone affinity. As it reached him, it wrapped itself around him the way a droplet of water would wrap around an ant - covering every part of him, as if driven by surface tension. Almost immediately, the mass of stone began to develop limbs - crude arms and legs, and the beginnings of a head.

And then, the huge lump of stone slammed into the upwards-jumping blue-banded frog, the force of the impact sending shockwaves across the cavern and shaking dust from the ceiling. The two figures, now intertwined, crashed into the mossy edge of the lake, partially submerged.

Not all of their group could fly, and it appeared Zorian had remembered that fact. Simulacra grabbed Hugh, Talia and Godrick, and teleported them a few metres in random directions, out of the path of the largest frog. Sabae dodged away from the simulacrum which tried to grab her, and instead blasted herself toward the exit, wrapping herself in a protective layer of spinning air. She launched a series of gusts of wind toward the nearest frog. It flickered its eyes toward her in irritation.

Rain stepped out of the shield-sphere of his own accord, his helmet and gauntlets phasing back into place. He stood there, alone and static amidst the chaos of the cavern, presumably suspended by his own ability to Airwalk.

Across the surface of the frogs' skin, almost imperceptible unless you knew what to look for, water began to boil.

At the same time, dozens of sheets of paper whistled out of Alustin's storage tattoo, and wrapped themselves around him in what looked like a precise imitation of medieval armour. There was only a thin slit left to expose his eyes. Although the paper appeared mundane to Harry, he was confident it would be far stronger than it looked. Additional sheets latched onto his back, and Alustin took off. The paper wings served both to precisely guide his flight, and to provide thrust by some mechanism Harry couldn't discern. A further series of artfully folded triangles of paper darted out of his tattoo, and sped toward the eyes of the yellow-headed frog.

Harry didn't have time to see the result, because the cavern filled with some of the brightest light Harry had ever seen - it was only for an instant, but it rivalled the Purifying sphere Rain had produced to burn through his aura anchor.

He squinted to close his eyes, then opened them as the light abated. He didn't think he was permanently blinded, but a bright spot covered most of his retinas, and it was hard to make anything out. He thought he could see Hugh, no longer invisible, standing on a small disc with a simulacrum. He had a single arm stretched out, and the remnants of the burst of light was fading from his fingers. Mackerel was inactive, slung over his back like an ordinary crystal spellbook.

It looked like the bolt of light had been directed at the smallest frog - the darker-coloured one partially submerged in the lake, because one of its eyes was now a blackened, smouldering crater. It emitted a noise - not quite a croak, not quite a roar - and leapt out of the water toward its attacker.

It was part of the way toward Hugh, propelled by the massive muscles in its hind legs, when a torrent of white-hot flame blasted it to the side. It came from an otherwise empty patch of space, but Harry could feel the carbon-laced skeleton of the simulacrum which must have been its source. The frog awkwardly tried to redirect its motion, and bounced off the cavern wall back into the lake. It splashed into the water, and bursts of steam emerged where it made contact.

The yellow-headed frog, distracted by Alustin's cloud of paper, finally reached its objective, and began furiously tearing into the protective shields of the now-empty bubble they'd originally been travelling in. That was good, Harry figured - it would probably take it a minute to realise there was no-one in there.

Talia, meanwhile, had been busy. She was standing on a small disc near the roof of the cavern with a simulacrum, and a veritable swarm of dreamfire droplets were manifesting around her. A strange grin on her face, she gestured with a closed fist, and the sparks of flame shot downward, arcing toward the blue-banded frog still grappling with Artur's stone form. The flames made a sizzling noise on impact, and bit deep into the frog's flesh. It looked like part of the charred muscles were turning into clouds of flies and buzzing away. Very strange.

Some unseen force detached a stalactite from the cavern's ceiling and propelled it toward the yellow-headed frog which was still grappling with the shielded sphere. Even with the tip somehow sharpened, it didn't penetrate deep, and instead lodged itself in the frog's outer musculature with a dull thud.

Below him, Artur was getting the upper hand - the features of his stone golem looked more defined, and it was growing every second as it absorbed stone from the walls of the cavern. Dust filled the air around it. One of the golem's huge fists had pinned the blue-banded frog to the ground, and the other was repeatedly slamming into its head. After the third strike, the frog's entire body burst into flame, and the next blow pounded its head into ash. Artur's golem paused for a moment, and although Harry couldn't see his face, he seemed momentarily confused. It was clear to Harry what had happened, though - Artur's blows must have weakened the frog enough for Rain's aura to finish it off.

The yellow-headed frog abandoned the now-empty shielded sphere for more interesting prey, and leapt toward Sabae. Alustin sent reams of paper to intercept, but they did little more than bloody its surface as it continued the jump. Just in time, a burst of wind from her armour sent her out of its path. She must have left some kind of wiring behind, because an instant later, a bolt of lightning arced through the air along some kind of guided path, and dissipated into the frog's flesh. The frog spasmed, and losing control, crashed into the surface of the lake, sliding in the shallow water until it impacted the wall.

One of the simulacra teleported a few metres, and arrived dangerously close to the frog's head. The long, sticky-looking tongue flickered out, but the simulacrum raised a hand almost contemptuously, and the tongue was deflected into the water. He made a complex hand-motion, and although nothing visible happened, the frog began to writhe, clawing desperately at its own chest hard enough to pierce the skin. A moment later, it too burst into flames, and its movement ceased.

Although his vision was still hazy from the sudden light, Harry's affinity could feel the smallest frog move beneath the surface of the lake. It was on its guard now, and its motions were precise. It swam til it was only perhaps twenty metres away from him, and coiled its legs preparing to jump.

Now that the other two frogs were dead, the rest of his group was beginning to relax. As the final frog erupted from the water like a submarine-launched ICBM, barely any of them had time to react.

He received an urgent thought from Zorian. <Get out of the way!>

Harry didn't move.

Rain dropped from his perch at the top of the cavern, accelerating quickly toward him. One of Zorian's simulacra teleported to his location, and Harry could feel the energies building as he prepared to whisk him away to safety.

None of it would have been fast enough. And none of it was necessary. Because as the final frog rushed toward him, its body abruptly split into six pieces, each of which continued their parabolic motion.

"Protego."

A shimmering shield sprang into being, and the remnants of the creature were deflected around him. Blood gushed from the perfectly fine cuts left behind by the nanofibres, and the pieces fell into the lake below.

<Was… was that you?> Zorian sounded slightly impressed, which was unusual.

"Alright," Harry said out loud, flexing his affinity to collect the nanotube strands back into his robes - they were too thin to have gathered any blood. He steered his broomstick toward the exit tunnel. "Next time, try to warn me before you blind us, Hugh. Let's move on."

Proceeding across the lake by various mechanisms, the group collected itself at the exit tunnel. No-one could sense anything else dangerous nearby, so they began to relax a little. Hugh attempted an apology for his 'starbolt', and showed Harry a neat trick which more than compensated for his blurry vision. If he visualised a particular pattern, or 'spellform', in his mind's eye, and pushed mana into it with his carbon affinity, he could achieve certain useful results unrelated to his intrinsic affinity type. Hugh called them 'cantrips', or at least that was how Harry was translating the unfamiliar Ithonian word. It didn't take long to learn the principle, and apparently Hugh knew a wealth of cantrips which might be useful.

The first one he showed Harry, appropriately, was a simple one designed to shield the eyes from sudden bursts of light. It took Harry a few tries to get it right, but he was sure it would come in handy - he'd seen more blinding lights in the last few days than in the rest of his life put together. There were levitation cantrips, heating cantrips, sweat-cleaning cantrips, evaporating cantrips, and more.

Alustin walked behind them through the tunnels, watching with pride as Hugh corrected minor elements of Harry's technique. He stepped in occasionally to give pointers; true to his professorial manner, Alustin was an excellent teacher. Harry insisted Hugh teach him everything he knew, and they only stopped when Harry felt his mana reservoirs reach about half their maximum capacity.

As far as Harry understood it, because he'd placed the carbon affinity pattern across the exterior of his soul-shell, the same reservoir of magic was fuelling both his Anastan and wizarding magics - so it was very important that he wasn't out of mana when he might need it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group swapped information on the techniques they'd used during the battle. It seemed Sabae had used something that roughly translated to a 'galvanic anchor' to channel her lightning, which she could otherwise only use at touch range. Alustin's paper armour could fly under its own power indefinitely. Talia was strangely annoyed by Rain's auras - ("Seriously? You just stand menacingly in place, and set everything on fire? How is that fair?"). Her jealousy had only intensified when he explained why he'd chosen to only affect the frogs, and not the surrounding environment - instantly boiling the lake in an enclosed space like this cave would have resulted in a massive steam explosion.

Both Harry and Zorian only explained their techniques in the briefest of detail. Despite the fairly effective collaboration so far, it was good to keep some cards close to the chest.

As they finished the impromptu lesson, the tunnels around them began to narrow, and the air around them grew humid and hot. After a few minutes of sweating, Rain activated one of his auras, and the temperature dropped immediately to comfortable levels. Their group quietened, and they walked in silence through the crisscrossing tunnels, following Mackerel's erratic movements. Hugh, acting on instincts transmitted from his spellbook, occasionally pointed out traps - lava pits, falling spikes, that sort of thing. It was nothing Artur couldn't handle.

The silence gave Harry some time to think about their destination.

Rain and Zorian had clear candidates for the location of the labyrinths on their worlds - Zorian's buried deep inside the Dungeon, Rain's at the epicentre of a magical storm called the Maelstrom. But they were heading for Earth.

Harry had a number of candidates for the labyrinth on Earth in mind, but one stood out as particularly likely.

The Atlanteans favoured elegant and flexible solutions - building the soul shell into humanity rather than enforcing constraints externally, psychologically diverting murderous intent rather than denying it, designing spells to serve as administrator keys when used in a certain way. How would they have protected their world from external contact?

Perhaps they would have wanted to maintain limited contact - exiling dangers from their own universe into others, or retrieving useful tools they deemed safe from other worlds. If so, there was one device Harry knew of which matched such a description.

The Mirror of Noitilov.

A Mirror which reflected itself perfectly, and as such was absolutely stable. Its characteristic power was said to be to create and make contact with alternate realms of existence, though it allowed access only to what could be seen in the mirror itself.

Quirrell had claimed that the Mirror, alone of all magics, possessed a true moral orientation - just the kind of safety feature you would want to build into a device capable of connecting your homeworld to the rest of the infinitely dangerous multiverse. It was blind to personality or identity, and would treat all who come before it by the same rules. And it was said, on some level, to be Good, with a capital G.

He'd also said that phoenixes, like Fawkes, had come to Earth from a world evoked in the Mirror.

That was Harry's chief suspect as to the labyrinth on Earth. If he was right, then at the same time as they'd sealed off their world from any others, the Atlanteans had built the Mirror as a way to reap the benefits of a cosmos they were unwilling to face as a whole.

And somewhere inside the hidden inner worlds of the last great work of Atlantis, sealed by the final machinations of Lord Voldemort and by Harry's last great failure, was Professor Dumbledore.

Berix · Mar 8, 2024

Harry

Whatever else could be said about their Anastan allies, they certainly had excellent physical endurance. Even after hours of trudging through narrow tunnels, marching up and down broad staircases, and shuffling carefully over brittle-looking bridges, Kanderon's people still looked ready for more. Harry, on the other hand... well, he was twelve.

In the end, Harry slowed down and gently elbowed one of Zorian's simulacra. It must have been clear what he meant, because the ectoplasmic being nodded and spread out a hand. A gentle force began to support each of Harry's limbs, and lowered him to a sitting position on a disc of force. It drifted along by the simulacrum's side, keeping pace with the group.

Harry didn't drop his focus on his carbon affinity sense - along with Alustin's far-seeing, Rain's Detection and Zorian's mind-sense, he was one of the better early-warning tools their group possessed (as long as whatever threatened them was a carbon-based lifeform, which was by no means guaranteed). Still, tired as he was, other parts of his mind began to wander…

Dumbledore had been trapped outside of Time. What did that mean?

In his first attempt to use a Time Turner on Anastis, he'd established that his methods of traversing time didn't work here. Although the experience had been extremely stressful, it was now one of the chief data points informing his thoughts about the differences between universes.

Zorian had claimed that powerful beings on his world had attempted to use time as a tool, and that their approaches tended to compress time, rather than travel through it like the Time Turner did. He had followed up with an extremely odd question, and refused to elaborate further.

He'd asked whether or not Harry's world was 'embedded in some sort of larger device'.

Since then, Harry had been pondering how his world had been constructed. If he was right about the Mirror being the entrance to Earth (and he was by no means confident in that - it was merely the most prominent among many unlikely guesses), then Zorian's suggestion rapidly became more plausible.

Suppose you're an advanced magical civilisation. You've created a device which can grant wishes by connecting to other worlds, as well as potentially conjure internal worlds of its own. Presumably, as creators of the device, you have great control over its function, and how the conjured realms behave. For example, to contain threats which you wish to purge from reality itself, you might be able to create internal worlds in which Time doesn't flow at all.

Why, then, would you stay in a fractured reality over which you have less control? Why not… move in? And if you're doing so, now that you have control over the physics and magic of your chosen world, why not make a few convenient tweaks?

Having seen the way that magic operated in other worlds, Harry was gradually building up an idea of how things worked outside his homeworld.

Energy did appear to be conserved. Whenever Artur reshaped stone, or Rain incinerated an enemy, they were drawing on an internal reservoir of energy they called 'mana', which was constantly refilling at some rate as they absorbed energy from the 'aether' around them. Now that Harry's soul shell was endowed with an affinity as well as his wizarding magics, he had a far more accurate sense of the strength of his current mana reserves. He'd run some basic tests, and observed that his wizarding spells seemed to draw on his own magic in approximate proportion to the energy required to reshape the universe in the desired way.

Transfiguration and conjuration spells were no exception. Changing the nature of a material, or creating matter from nothing, seemed to result in a temporary 'patch' over reality, but the application of magical strength could only sustain this for so long - eventually, unless new energy was provided, transformations would revert, and conjured matter would disappear.

The Philosopher's Stone, which remained a mystery to Harry, appeared to stabilise these changes. He had a number of theories as to how the peculiar stone functioned, but at present had no means to test them.

He'd been tempted to show the Stone to Rain or Zorian - both of them had better tools to understand strange magical devices - but unless the need was great, he didn't want to risk it. A universally unique device capable of permanently creating matter was a powerful prize. For now, it was better if the others believed that permanent transfiguration was a skill innate to Harry, rather than one granted to him by a tool he carried.

Allowing his mind to wander, Harry considered what it would be like, to be freed from a prison which compressed your sentence to a single instant in time. If he was able, he would of course try to free his former Headmaster as soon as possible - and on the whole, Dumbledore would only have been gone from the world for a few weeks. Even then, it would be strange, to return to a world that had mourned you as if you were dead, and had then moved on. Would he return as Headmaster, or defer to McGonagall, who had held the position while he was gone? Would he seek to return to his position at the forefront of magical Britain, or allow it to proceed without him?

That being said, at his current level of skill, the Mirror might present too great an obstacle. It might take years, or even decades, for Harry to understand it to the degree required. What then?

Harry's mind drifted. Alone, or with less capable companions, he wouldn't have risked being anything less than fully aware in the labyrinth. As it was, he relaxed onto the disc conjured by Zorian's simulacrum, with Artur and Godrick ahead, and Rain behind. Sleep came close.

Through half-open eyes, he noticed as their tunnel emerged into the side of a vast cavern. In contrast to the natural-seeming caverns they'd seen before, this one looked cleanly carved. Vast rectangular columns stretched up periodically. Above them, the light from Rain's aura barely reached the ceiling, and in the distance, the hall faded into the dark. It must have been at least a few hundred metres long - but since Harry couldn't see the end, it could have gone on forever.

Rain reached out from behind and tapped him on the shoulder. "You know Lord of the Rings?"

Harry nodded. "Moria."

Rain laughed briefly. It echoed oddly in the massive space. "Let's hope there aren't any wandering Balrogs."

By mutual agreement, they kept the light at minimal levels as they followed Mackerel through the vast space. Rain or Hugh could probably have lit up the entire hall, but it was best to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. After a while, Harry closed his eyes - there were others who were better placed to watch their surroundings - but kept his focus on his affinity sense. Apart from their group, he felt nothing - no carbon within his reach.

Despite the change in their surroundings, over time, the journey faded back into monotony. Partway through the hall, after it became clear that there were no obvious threats nearby, Zorian created a larger disc of force, and they stepped on. Moving slowly at first, they gradually accelerated, until they were travelling at least as fast as a car.

And then, in the distance, there was a light. Not daylight, nor the flickering light of a burning flame. The light was a dreadful crimson, darker than blood, somehow searingly bright, even from this great distance. At first, Harry wondered if he and Rain had jinxed them with their talk of Balrogs. Then, a twinge. Faint enough that he wasn't sure he was feeling it at all, from the emerald stone set into the ring on his finger, a sensation he hadn't felt in quite some time. A sense of Doom.

Rain

The shadows writhing in the distance flared, burning at once brighter and darker. That wasn't the main thing that caught Rain's attention.

Harry, who had reclined into a resting position onto the disc, groaned in pain. It was the first noise anyone had made since they'd taken flight on Zorian's disc.

"Are you alright?" Talia turned back to Harry, and knelt down by his side. "What is it?"

Harry stood up, gritting his teeth. "I'm fine. I think I know what that light is."

Zorian slowed the disc, and after a moment, they came to a stop. Although it was still in the far distance, the flickering crimson light continued to grow brighter.

"Well? What is it?" Alustin asked.

Harry audibly swallowed.

"The good news is that this is a supporting data point for my theory about the nature of the pathway to Earth. The bad news is that we're about to encounter one of the most powerful weapons from my world, Fiendfyre."

Kanderon's people nodded, and Alustin gestured for Harry to continue. Talia, true to form, looked somewhat eager. Rain might have felt the same, but he'd spent enough time with Harry to recognise that the look in his eyes wasn't the kind to take lightly.

Harry continued, his young voice clear and precise.

"I know of no means by which this fire might be extinguished. It can burn through stone, and is one of the only weapons on my world which could destroy almost any artefact or magical construct. When I last saw it, it took the form of a balefire phoenix, and it was under the command of one of the greatest and Darkest wizards of my world. Until seeing the flame here, I had thought it might have burned out without its master. It seems that is not the case."

There was a pause as a conflicted expression flitted across Harry's face.

"I… There is a chance that the fire will seek me, or otherwise be able to sense my location."

Zorian gave him a strange look. "Why is that?"

Harry took a deep breath. "That is a rather long story, and one that I think is prudent to keep to myself for now."

In the distance, the scarlet light grew brighter still. A low hissing noise disturbed the quiet of the hall, slowly rising in volume.

"There is a possibility that our magics can quench the fire, or otherwise hold it back. If so, we should do so without remorse or hesitation. If, as I suspect, we cannot stop the flame, then we should flee."

The light grew brighter still. The twisted reflections cast on the walls and the columns seemed to writhe in the dark, their shapes twisting wildly as the source approached them.

Zorian lowered the disc to the ground, and dismissed it. They readied themselves. Hugh stepped back, and a pair of crystals rose to orbit about his shoulders. Currents of air began to twist and spiral around Sabae's limbs, drowning out the low scorching noise. Droplets of greenish-purple iridescent flame formed above Talia's clenched fist, shedding dim light on her wicked grin.

Rain's gauntlets and helm flickered back into place. Beside him, reams of paper flooded out of Alustin's tattoo and bound itself tightly around his limbs. Stone flowed upwards, twisting around Artur and Godrick's bodies until their skin was hidden from view. Godrick's armour ceased growing when he was around two and a half metres tall, but Artur continued to absorb stone, growing larger by the second.

And then it was upon them. Crimson-burning wings swept around the nearest pillar. Where it passed close, the stone blackened and cracked under the searing heat. The light that poured out of the bird-shaped creature was deep red, the glowing colour of heated metal, but the light was far more intense than metal could be without shifting hue and becoming white-hot. Throughout were veins of deepest black, which seemed to promise oblivion.

The balefire phoenix dove, wings spread. Twisting downward in an onrushing plume of darkened flame, it fell unerringly toward Harry.

Before it made it even half the distance, Artur's massive form stepped forward. The grinding sound of stone moving against stone screeched in the air, and a fist the size of a car hurtled forward.

The stone didn't melt, or crack, or even burn, where it impacted the blackened fire. It was simply… consumed. It was as if some massive knife had moved through the stone giant's fist, and carved out a deep cylindrical chunk.

Hmm. There's a chance that my armour can briefly hold it back, but I definitely don't want to put that to the test.

Propelled by currents of air, Sabae blasted forward. Despite the wind rushing around her limbs, she wasn't the fastest among them, and Rain reached Harry first. He put one hand behind Harry's head, and another behind his spine - it was important to minimise the risk of whiplash. And then they were moving.

Rain sprinted as fast as he was willing to go with a passenger. They reached the speed of sound within a few seconds, and he began to feel the telltale pings in his interface which signalled that Force Ward was consuming mana. Probably from Harry's impacts with drifting specks of dust.

In less than a minute, the phoenix-light had faded to a speck in the distance. Rain brought them to a controlled stop, near the tunnel from which they'd entered the hall.

"Wait here. If the phoenix is coming for you, then you're in more danger than any of us. I'll be warding you with my aura anchors - you're still carrying them, right?"

Harry nodded weakly. His black hair had been blasted backward by the wind of the journey. He gestured to the necklace containing the stones.

"I need to go back and help. I'll be back for you soon."

With that, Rain turned, and ran back toward the others. What he saw when he arrived was nothing short of chaos.

The centre of the cavern was buried in a mountain of stone. Someone, probably Artur or Godrick, must have destroyed the nearby pillars, and the ceiling in the centre of the hall had collapsed under its own weight. It clearly hadn't held back the phoenix for long, because a charred and still-glowing tunnel marked the path of the phoenix through the thousands of tonnes of stone - still unerringly headed down the hall toward Harry. Now, the creature was hemmed in, surrounded by a dozen sheets of paper frozen in the air. Strange glyphs glowed on the paper, which flared when the phoenix drew close, and slowed its movement.

As Rain watched, the phoenix drew closer to one of the glyphs, pushing slowly against whatever force was repelling it. A tendril of dark stretched out, and brushed against the glyph. As one, the sheet crumpled, torn into shreds. The scraps burst into flame. The phoenix began to move once more, slowly building up speed.

A volley of iridescent droplets sprayed toward the creature, intercepting it before it could continue down the hall toward Harry. Rain turned and saw Talia with her arm outstretched.

The first of the dreamfire wasps splashed onto the phoenix's wings. Rather than biting into the mass of dark, they reacted explosively with the existing flame. The burning wings seemed to grow by an order of magnitude, expanding out to almost span the distance between the nearest pillars. The remaining dreamfire was absorbed in the expansion, and the phoenix exploded further. It reminded Rain of when firefighters had come to his primary school and poured water on an oil fire as a demonstration, just multiplied by a thousand. Thankfully, the ball of flame mostly expanded upwards, but the conflagration sucked most of the oxygen out of the air. Kanderon's Librarians turned and ran.

Talia was closest to the flames, and Sabae pushed them both away from the explosion with a gust of wind. Just barely audible over the sound of crackling flame, Rain heard her shout right into Talia's ear: "No more dreamfire!"

Rain checked his mana reserves. Heat Ward had absorbed a huge amount of damage, and drained a correspondingly large chunk of his mana. Unless they were a lot more durable than they looked, most of Kanderon's people would probably have been dead without his protection.

Alright, let's see what we can do to salvage this.

Refrigerate (15/15)
22612-25842 cold (fcs) damage per second to entities and environment
Sufficient damage causes slow
Range: 102 meters
Cost: 2400 mp/s
Inverted Immolate (15/15)
22612-25842 heat (fcs) damage per second to foes
Banishes flame from the environment
Range: 102 meters
Cost: 2400 mp/s

Rain poured his mana into the auras. The effect was immediate - the massive shroud of flame around the phoenix dimmed, but didn't extinguish - like a candle burning on limited oxygen. Beneath, the core of the creature - the veins of darkness which seemed to warp space around them, continued unchanged.

One of Zorian's simulacra must have found its way in front of the phoenix, because a tear in reality opened up. It was the same trick a simulacrum had tried against the otherworldly pursuer above the ocean. This time, however, their enemy didn't react quite so quickly.

Without making a sound, the remnants of the phoenix plunged through the Gate, and vanished. The Gate closed an instant later.

<Where did you send it, Zorian?>

The simulacrum responded immediately, not with words, but with the complete sensory input of the simulacrum at the other end of the Gate. Rain saw the hall, from around a hundred metres on the other side of the collapsed ceiling, and the phoenix emerging from the circular portal.

Rain turned and ran. He passed Sabae, who whirled around to follow. Then he passed Alustin, coasting toward him on wings of paper. He dashed around the mountain of rubble that had collapsed from the ceiling - and caught a glimpse of Hugh's shocked face in passing.

That was a good reminder, actually. <Zorian, tell the others to shield their eyes.>

A second later, he reached the site of the other Gate. One of the simulacra floated in the phoenix's path, raising a hand to conjure a shimmering shield. Crimson flames flickered around the void that was the creature's core, slowly reigniting. It impacted the shield, and although the phoenix shrank in size for a moment, the barrier flickered and vanished.

As Rain came into range, the dampening effects of his auras dimmed the flames once more. It seemed to swell in response, inky veins growing and twisting through the air in lieu of fire.

Rain sent a quick mental warning to the simulacrum, <I, uh, don't know if you're worried about eye damage. But maybe shut your eyes.>

Refrigerate (15/15)
22612-25842 cold (fcs) damage per second to entities and environment
Sufficient damage causes slow
Range: 102 meters
Cost: 2400 mp/s
Radiance (15/15)
22612-25842 light (fcs) damage per second to entities
Brightens environment
Range: 102 meters
Cost: 2400 mp/s

The hall lit up, each stone column glaringly bright with reflected light. And yet, there was one place that was less painful to look - directly at the phoenix itself. It seemed to drink in the light, and swelled in size, writhing like a blood-gorged leech. The heat pouring outward increased by an order of magnitude, and the floor beneath it began to melt.

So Light doesn't work, how about the Dark?

Refrigerate (15/15)
22612-25842 cold (fcs) damage per second to entities and environment
Sufficient damage causes slow
Range: 102 meters
Cost: 2400 mp/s
Shroud (15/15)
22612-25842 dark (fcs) damage per second to entities
Darkens environment
Range: 102 meters
Cost: 2400 mp/s

The veins of inky blackness swirled, growing longer and reaching out for more matter to consume.

Right… maybe I should stop.



A trio of simulacra floated in a rough triangle behind him. <This will require a lot of mana, Rain. Please ensure we have enough.>

Rain double-checked his reserves. The constant auras and wards were a drain, but not more than he could support. So he steadily ratcheted up the amount he was feeding to Zorian with Essence Well, until the original sent him a signal to halt.

As one, power poured out of the three simulacra. The odd hand movements looked familiar to Rain - they looked similar to the gestures Zorian used to produce a Gate, but deviated in a strange way near the end.

In an instant, a shimmering sphere of distortion sprang up around the phoenix, with the diameter just large enough to encompass its wings. A second later, the creature was hidden from view, and all Rain could see was a static orb, hovering motionlessly in the midst of the hall. It was a bizarre thing to look at, like staring through a glass marble, except instead of light refracting, it was simply taking a shortcut through space.

Detection showed… it was hard to interpret. The phoenix was constantly moving forward in the same direction (still toward Harry), and constantly wrapping around to teleport to the back of the sphere.

Sabae reached them, and landed beside Rain. "What did you do? Is it in there?"

One of the simulacra gently lowered itself to the ground. "This is a variation on the standard Gate spell. Rather than a single entrance and exit, opposite sides of both the interior and exterior of the sphere are mapped together. If the creature has a mind - and I can't sense one - it might be confused as to why it can see its own flames extending forever in every direction."

Sabae attempted a low whistle, but it was clear she couldn't quite pull it off. An odd limitation for a wind mage.

Rain walked around the orb, observing it from a few angles. It was really weird to look at. From the opposite side, he saw the distorted and rotated image of Alustin and the others approaching. Rock began to crumble nearby, and Godrick hauled himself out of the floor - he must have buried himself to avoid the flames. Good thinking.

Their group stood quietly around the spherical Gate for a moment, then Talia spoke:

"So, uh, are we going to just leave it here, in there? Just one more sealed horror in the labyrinth?"

Sabae threw her hair over one shoulder, and Rain noticed that some of the long white strands were somewhat singed near the end. "Well, we can't exactly let it keep chasing us. Even if Rain can outrun it, I don't think you can take all of us with you, and it's safest for us to stay as a group."

Rain nodded. "Besides, there's no way it's safe to move that fast through uncharted sections of the labyrinth. I only felt comfortable doing that because I was retracing our steps, and even then it was a risk I don't want to take again."

One of the simulacra raised a hand. The original Zorian was nowhere to be seen, but Detection showed him thirty metres away, hovering and still invisible. "There's a problem. I can't sustain this Gate unless one of me is fairly close to it, and because we're in a labyrinth, I can't just leave a simulacrum behind."

Rain rubbed a hand over his eyes. "And because it can track Harry for some reason, we can't just leave it behind to follow us." He sighed. "I'll go get Harry, he might have some ideas."

He dashed off, and shortly afterward found himself before Harry, who was clutching his wand in what looked like a duelling posture. He lowered his wand as Rain approached.

"What happened?"

"The Fiendfyre is trapped, but it won't stay that way forever. Let's go."

This time, they travelled at less of a breakneck pace - only a few times faster than the fastest human would be able to run. In a few minutes, they made it back to the others.

Something was already happening. The Gate-bubble was still in place, but just outside it the stone of the floor was slowly reforming, bands of lighter stone crystallising out of the bedrock. It looked like Hugh was the cause this time though, rather than Artur or Godrick, since they were looking on with the same curiosity as everyone else.

Harry quietly tapped Sabae on the shoulder. "What's going on?"

Despite the look of focus on his face, Hugh answered. "We saw the Fiendfyre react oddly with Talia's dreamfire, so there's a chance it might respond to the same flame-wards we used to create the circlets."

Sabae gestured at the headband still wrapped tightly around her forehead, and Rain breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently the headbands counted as part of his allies' equipment, and were consequently exempt from the inverted Immolate he'd used during the battle, so the single dreamfire droplet suspended within was still alight. It would have been a rude shock for the Librarians if their mental protections had vanished seemingly without cause.

Looking closely at Sabae's headband, Rain could see tiny etchings in the crystal that mirrored the patterns Hugh was carving around the Gate.

Lighter crystal was gradually forming from the darker stone. Interlocking lattices of runic symbols and concentric circles began to take shape, and Hugh continued his explanation. "To create the circlets, we suspended a single droplet of dreamfire at the centre of a network of interlocking wards. Any small deviation in the droplet's position will result in a stronger counterbalancing force, ensuring that the droplet stays in the centre."

Rain raised an eyebrow. That sounded oddly like something he'd seen in a Youtube trawl a few years ago - a 'Penning trap', which could isolate a single electron in order to store a qubit, for quantum computers.

"How do we know if it worked?" Harry asked. "Rain, can you sense its position through the Gate?"

Rain nodded. "Compared to the speed it was moving when Zorian first created the Gate, it's much slower now. Can you keep stacking the same effect, Hugh?"

Hugh grimaced. "If I layer too many wards on top of each other, they'll degrade faster. And that's if they don't explode."

Alustin stepped forward and put a wiry arm around Hugh's shoulders. "We don't need the wards to last forever. The Guide says that the entrance to Harry's world should be nearby. Even if you're not going to tell us why or how it's tracking you -" (this was accompanied by a stern look at Harry) "-it seems likely that it can't find you through labyrinth boundaries. Otherwise I imagine it would have followed you into Anastis."

Talia finished the thought for him. "Then we can go into Harry's world. That's the one that's named after dirt, right? And it won't be able to trace us there."

"Right."

Hugh sighed. "I think I can cram in another ward, but it's going to get messy. Nobody tell Loarna about this."

He stood in place, and a further layer of transparent quartz crystallised from the dark stone underfoot.

Rain couldn't stop himself from pumping his fist. Detection showed that the phoenix had slowed to a crawl, and the layers of wards were pulling it back toward the centre whenever it moved too far.

He stepped forward and clapped Hugh on the shoulder. "Nice work!"

Hugh looked a bit embarrassed. "The wards won't hold for long. A few hours, maybe a day, if we're lucky."

Alustin looked positively cheery. "That should be more than enough time. If we press on, we should reach Earth's labyrinth in less than an hour."

That… that was a sobering reminder. Rain had been gone from Earth for around two years now. He'd given up any hope of ever returning there, and had then slowly lost any desire to go home either. Now he was going to get the chance to do… what exactly?

His parents were dead. He'd drifted apart from his friends in university when he dropped out to take care of his mother. Even if he saw someone he used to know, he was basically a different person now.

Rain shook his head. They weren't on Earth yet.

Hugh, Alustin and Mackerel led the way again. They reached the exit to the hall when Zorian held up a hand.

"I can't go any further than this without losing connection with the simulacrum sustaining the Gate. I hope your wards work, Hugh."

Hugh looked somehow nervous and confident at the same time. "Let's see."

Zorian closed his eyes for a moment. "The Gate is down."

Harry glanced up at Rain with a smirk.

"And the phoenix is still in place."

The group breathed a collective sigh of relief. Talia and Godrick took turns enveloping Hugh in bear hugs.

"Alright, let's move." Alustin led the way again, this time through a network of cool dry limestone tunnels, with Hugh and Mackerel by his side. No more creatures showed up in his Detection radius, and after a few minutes, Zorian constructed a disk to speed up the journey. They travelled like that for another half an hour before Hugh called for a halt.

"Mackerel says the entrance to Earth's labyrinth should be just ahead. Just around here."

Zorian gently floated them around the corner.

The broad tunnel was blocked off by a rounded wall. It was a dead end. In the centre of the tunnel was an odd construct. A full-length gold-framed Mirror (and somehow Rain knew it was a Mirror with a capital M), not so much floating as it was fixed in place, more solid and motionless than the walls themselves.

Rain was oddly reminded of the Exile Splinter.

A Call to the Dark City (Delve/Mother of Learning/HPMoR/Mage Errant Multicross)

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