“Every time I see a new world, it just makes me think how weird it is your dad doesn’t care about exploring,” Jennifer said, as a massive crystalline spire appeared through the opening, specks circling around it and glinting in the sunlight. If he had to guess, Alexander would say there was an actual civilization there. It wouldn’t be the first one, but very few liminal spaces had people.
“It is a bit of a shame,” Alexander said to his wife. “He’s practically the perfect explorer, but I guess if he did we wouldn’t be able to. We should be glad he’s the most boring archmage.” Despite his words, his voice was fond. Callum really was rather staid, even moreso than some archmages centuries older than him, but he’d pioneered half the enchantments the Jumper used and had supported Alex’s desire to explore.
“No, this is a lot of fun.” Jennifer’s hand hovered over the button that would send them through the portal. “Are we ready?”
“Looks like,” Alex said, glancing over the sensor readouts. The foci that created the inch-diameter dimensional portals were located in their own sealed chamber, chock full of both technological and magical sensors. More than once the destination on the far side had been unlivable, or even outright hostile. When it came to portal worlds, a hostile landscape could be far more literal than the term normally implied.
Jennifer hit the button, and the Jumper was wrapped in a teleportation matrix, a small thread going through the portal to unfold on the other side and shift the Jumper through. The vehicle was the size of a van on the outside, but was effectively far larger thanks to the spatial connection back to Earth’s moon. Most of that size was given over to armor and enchantments to make sure it could safely traverse all the environments they might find.
There was a spatial stabilization enchantment woven through the whole thing, to allow them to cross into the odder portal worlds, like Mictlān, while keeping the gravity the same as Earth’s. A separate enchantment allowed the Jumper to float and even fly, if not at the speeds of his father’s drones. The matte metal craft hovered over the exotic grasses of the alien world, and a brilliant sun shone in through the protective glass.
Alex sent out a vis pulse, amplified by the skin of the ship, using his own particular aspects to appraise the surroundings beyond what he could see. Gravity was straightforward enough, and he could tell that the portal world had something close to normal. There were enough mana anomalies within the closest few miles that he was pretty sure someone or something was doing a lot of magical manipulation, however.
His other aspect was more complicated. It wasn’t just light, it was electromagnetism. Electric and magnetic fields and charges. His mother had been fit to be tied over what that meant for his ability to compromise electronics, but mostly it was useful for spotting technology. Or even magitech. Civilization produced far different types and concentrations of energy than nature did, even if that civilization was strange by human standards.
Alex’s initial impression was proven right as the vis pulse picked up what felt like electrons moving through crystal in a set of parallel lines sweeping a half-mile under the ground. More complex energy patterns flowed through crystalline hulls in the air ten miles above their heads, showing that it was based on technology as much as magic. That only made sense, since most magic didn’t act like what human mages could do, and reproduce most of what physics allowed.
“A crystal based tech, or magitech, maybe?” Alex hazarded, as the vis pulse faded.
“Ooh. That sounds like it could be fun,” Jennifer said, as she started sending out messages. The dragons were the de-facto ambassadors, the ones that actually made contact with other civilizations. Not only did they have more experience, their avatars were expendable enough that a worst-case scenario simply wasn’t. “That big tower is very pretty. If it’s all like that, this place is going to be gorgeous.”
“Maybe we can get some pieces for our estate,” Alex said, considering the unbroken shimmering expanse of the megastructure. He’d found his own liminal world for his own home, even though he could have built on one of the other islands in his parents’ dimension. Partly for the symbolic distance, since with teleports it wasn’t like anyone was all that far away, but mostly because he liked having four seasons and not just the one.
“So long as they’re friendly,” Jennifer sighed. “Though I can always do some charity work,” she said, volunteering the use of her own healing aspect. Between enchantments and his own abilities, Alex could deal with most problems, but actually fixing people required something special. That wasn’t why he’d married her, but it came in quite useful during their travels.
He flooded the travel enchantments with vis, sending the Jumper forward toward the spire. After several minutes they approached a town, but the spire hadn’t seemed to get any smaller. Alex had to revise his estimate of how damn big it was — and how big the things circling it were.
“Taisen is going to have a fit,” Jennifer said, looking up at it. “If they built that, they’re not going to be too impressed with earth’s tech. Or ours, for that matter.”
“Maybe,” Alex cautioned. “There might be something about their magic that lets them make really big stuff, but doesn’t help with anything else,” he said, watching something very much like a train slide into a station on shining rails. It was obvious from the clean lines of the town, all built from various shades of crystal, that there wasn’t muscle-powered squalor sprawling everywhere.
The glamour should keep the Jumper invisible, and he pulsed his vis a couple times to make sure there was nothing active searching for them, but Alex knew not to rely on magical concealment. It wouldn’t have worked on his dad, for example, and Callum had been clear enough how too many assumptions could be lethal. There was a reason the Jumper had several failsafes to teleport them to a secure location, just in case. Fortunately, Shahey wasn’t long.
The avatar he sent was clearly meant to impress, in formal dress with medals and ribbons, over-tall to the point of having to hunch over in the Jumper. His wings threatened to bump into handles and buttons, but they never quite did as he peered out through the window. Jennifer looked like she was trying to strangle a smile at the oddly graceful clumsiness and not quite succeeding.
“If nothing else they have style,” Shahey concluded. “Let me out here and I’ll see what they’re like. I’d like you to hang around for a bit in case it seems worth it to ask your father to open a permanent portal.”
“No problem,” Jennifer said, and toggled the airlock door for Shahey. They watched his winged form swoop down toward the outskirts of town before it vanished. When they chose to use it, dragon invisibility was impressive. They could even fool Callum’s eyes, though not his other senses.
“What odds do you give?” Alex asked. One of the civilizations they’d found had been so early that writing hadn’t yet been discovered, and another had been so intensely xenophobic that the dragons had simply decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Neither species had been human-like either, but with all the jumping back and forth between regular universes and liminal spaces the Jumper had gotten quite far away from Earth in any direction that could be conceived.
“They have to be at least slightly friendly if they’ve built big,” Jennifer suggested. “Unless they’re ants, that means cooperation. But a portal world, I don’t know. There might not be a night sky and nothing to suggest there’s anything else in the universe.” Jennifer chewed her lip as she looked down at the town. “I’d like to hope they’re friendly, at least.”
“We can hope,” Alex agreed.
***
Alice trimmed her fruit trees with shears, physical and mundane instruments that she preferred to the foci other mages used. The few that gardened, anyway — most mages didn’t seem to have many hobbies that weren’t focused on their magic, which Alice thought was pretty stupid. Her parents certainly thought so, and they had made out pretty well.
A garden had absolutely nothing to do with her magic, though she did ply her specific talents to water the plants. Not to mention feeling out the hydration and nutrition, since she’d gone with internal reinforcement instead of a shell, and learned most of her craft from Uncle Huitzilin. At the time she hadn’t thought too much about it, but in hindsight it was obvious that she couldn’t have learned from House Harper, where she’d probably gotten the water aspect from in the first place.
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She stepped back and eyed her work, then reached out to adjust the enchantments she’d made to control the light of her home. Unlike her parents or her brother, she didn’t reside in the endless liminal spaces of the universe, but rather in the real world. Though admittedly, not on Earth.
There were still portals, of course, since the depths of space had no mana, but the habitat itself spun in the blackness all by itself, far away from any planet. It wasn’t even a supernatural effort as such, mostly using standard technology. The only real reliance was the gravity enchantment for very slow propulsion and the spatial gates for travel or shipping.
She felt a portal open in her house and turned to wander back inside. Even if she didn’t have the range of her dad, not quite yet, she could at least sense that much. It helped that she could detect the shape of the person who stepped through by the moisture they displaced. Since that particular portal led back to her parents’ house, she knew who it was right away.
“Hi, mom!” She said cheerfully, and enfolded the much smaller woman in a smothering hug. Some trick of genetics, or possibly something to do with the internal reinforcement, had made Alice tower over both her parents by a full head. Something she found endlessly amusing.
“Hi, sweetie,” Lucy said in a muffled voice, and waggled the pot Alice had pinned against Lucy’s side with her embrace. “Alex sent over another plant for you.”
“And you wanted an excuse to come out to the space station.”
“And I wanted an excuse to come out to the space station,” Lucy agreed happily as Alice let her go. “Callum still gets people complaining that you’re out here rather than doing whatever it is that mages are supposed to do.” She rolled her eyes as Alice took the pot. It looked ordinary enough, but there was a small portal in the bottom to let the plant’s native magic leak through, which was how they’d ended up dealing with plants from other realities.
“Can’t he just do his death stare thing at them?” Alice asked, examining the pot. The sapling inside had tiny crystalline leaves, like it was made out of quartz, but she could feel the sap running through it.
“Only if they actually dare to ask in person, which they don’t,” Lucy said with a laugh. “The Ghost is still a bit of a legend, even if he hasn’t had to do anything for a couple years now.”
“For the best,” Alice said. Her dad was often times boringly normal and sometimes a little goofy, but when he had to be The Ghost he was a totally different person and very much not himself.
“I would’ve had him come but he’s out with Alex and Shahey.” Lucy told her, following her outside. Both of them stopped for a moment to look at the great transparent wall at the end of the habitat, too big to be called a window, that looked out on stars and the tiny specks of distant planets. “You know, I really love this view.”
“It is pretty good,” Alice said modestly. The habitat was an enormous rotating cylinder – far cheaper than trying to create a gravity enchantment large and powerful enough for that – and the interior was mostly greenery, but the far wall always showed the stars.
Her garden of unique plants stretched out behind her house, far enough to the left and right that they actually climbed up the curve of the cylinder, all of them from different liminal worlds and universes. Most of them were unremarkable, save for the colors and shapes, but some of them were predatory, poisonous, or held more subtle magical dangers. Some of them made miracles.
She put the pot into the space reserved for incoming plants, not worried at the moment about the climate. Alex had been sending her plants for years and he’d never failed to provide the information she needed. Instead she handed Lucy a basket and the two of them went out to pick some impossible fruit, things that even the fae would envy. There were glowing spheres, hovering grapelike clusters that seemed connected by invisible stems, even long red spirals that played soft, chiming music.
Alice had by far the largest plot of land on the station, which could be considered nepotism, but the entire habitat was owned by House Wells. It wasn’t really cheating if it was her family’s to begin with. The produce of her garden was mostly just for her family, especially some of the more potent things that had real value. Nobody needed to know about the seeds that could permanently increase vis capacity, or the fruit that provided a few minutes of near-invulnerability.
Some things were just too dangerous to offer on the open market, even for The Ghost.
Lucy took a hearty bite of her favorite fruit, which looked like a purple strawberry, tasted like sour mangosteen, and probably added a few years to her life. Alice had tried them herself and, while her mother and brother loved them, she couldn’t stand the sour things.
“Your garden is great,” Lucy said, as she always did. “I’ve got to come here more often,” she added, as she always did.
“You can come over anytime, mom,” Alice said, giving her mother a sideways hug.
“I know, sweetie, but I don’t want to crowd you,” she said, taking another bite of strawberry-mangosteen-life-extension. “Though maybe you’ll want to think about getting more people here,” she added with a sly grin. “You’re never going to meet any men in the depths of space.”
“Mom,” Alice complained.
“Or women?”
“Mom!”
“What?” Lucy asked innocently.
Alice just sighed and shook her head.
***
Gloran Golarn, the best assassin on three worlds, shrouded himself as he approached the portal. It was different from the Crystal Span, which connected the three worlds of reality — Soria, Loreth, and Gendarn. This was some sort of strange magic, but clearly crude and poorly made. There was nothing sleek or smooth to the design, a mere protected circle with a ramp through the middle.
Nor were the people themselves very impressive, lumpen and dull and probably stupid as well. Surely they’d simply taken the magic to cross worlds from someone else. He didn’t imagine they really knew what they had, since they were so careless as to make the portal actually go to a proper city.
He flitted through the portal into the room beyond, which was lit with crude electrical lighting so unlike the illumination that civilized folk used. Gloran had already seen the use of electricity start to spread through Loreth, where the otherworldly visitors had appeared, and he hated it. No wonder his masters sent him to remove the foreigners.
Gloran wasn’t the only anthren on the other side, as wealthy merchants and wealthier tourists flowed through the small passage. He breezed past them all, invisible and ineffable, out through the trade facility and into the open air of the place they called Earth. Some rubes gawked at what was on the other side, but Gloran just saw ugly towers jutting from the ground, a mockery of the grandeur of the Crystal Span.
At least the towers made it obvious where the important targets were. Gloran had intelligence from other agents on what to look for and where, the names and locations. Clearly the so-called humans were incredibly foolish to allow such easy access, but he wasn’t going to complain about something that made his life easier.
He scaled up the side of the tower that housed the portal, past flat planes of glass, heading to the uppermost floor. It was a common wisdom that was true for as long as anthren history had persisted. All you had to do was kill the king.
The top of the tower housed the head of the enterprise that controlled the portal into the three worlds, even humans realizing that the lofty heights were meant for those of great prowess. Though Gloran wasn’t all that impressed with those he saw through the windows, all of them weak and small. They seemed to be doing paperwork, even.
It was only when he reached the top that he saw the quality of furnishings and decorations that he would have expected from a proper leader. Less impressive than even a moderately powerful lord from the three worlds, but at least approximating the correct trappings of power. The man behind the desk wasn’t any stronger than the rest, though. The foreign magic these humans used wasn’t as easy to discern, but just looking at the person’s stance and bearing it was obvious the man had no physical ability.
That made it boring, but at least it’d be fast and he could move on to other targets. There were a number of leaders on Earth, almost as if it were dozens of worlds rather than one, not to mention some stranger forces. The human mages, the bizarre shifters, and something known as fae. Getting to those leaders would be harder, but he was sure that agents would be drawn to the initial deaths and it would be easy enough to follow them back.
He ghosted straight through the windowpane, exercising his own special technique, and dropped silently onto the carpet of the floor. Gloran’s blades made no sound as he withdrew them from their special sheaths, his body still invisible as he took two steps forward. Just as he was about to pounce, there was a faint noise.
He whipped around to deal with the ambusher, surprised and impressed that someone had been able to bypasses his senses, when a wave of weakness crashed over him. His stealth failed, and even his weapons crumbled from the blast of something, though all he could see was a tiny hole in space.
Gloran crumpled to the ground, all the strength gone from his limbs. He was still struggling to rise again when a stream of water poured from a glass on the bemused man’s desk. Gloran’s target didn’t seem at all surprised as the water came down next to Gloran, building a doorway that a man and a woman stepped through. The woman captured his attention, as she didn’t look like a human, and unlike everyone else he’d run into she did seem powerful. Part of him was satisfied that he had been right, that he could draw out the true rulers of Earth with their pawns, but the rest of him was frozen in horror from having all his powers drained. The man snapped his fingers and Gloran found himself lifted by an invisible force, looking into two pairs of cold eyes.
“You were right,” she said, clearly not to either him or her partner. “He stinks of death. I’ll take him back and question him.”
“You,” Gloran managed to croak, wondering how exactly she spoke his language. “How did you take my magic?”
“I didn’t,” the woman said dismissively. “The Ghost did.”
Worlds away, Callum stopped paying attention to the drama. He’d spotted the assassin and taken care of it, and that was where it ended for him. Most of the time, he was just Callum Wells, and that was fine. When someone needed him, The Ghost was there.
END OF PARANOID MAGE