Zenith of Sorcery-Chapter 22. Stable Corridor

Chapter 022

Stable Corridor

Marcus stared at the purple crystal in his hand for some time, lost in thought. He was pretty sure this was the crystal that Eleanor and her fellow adepts had spoken about when they visited him: the one that the founder of the Amethyst Academy had used to establish his faction and keep it going. Finding it here, in the tunnels under the tower, was interesting. It meant that either the Amethyst Academy’s founder had gotten trapped here just like Marcus and his students were, eventually being eaten by a slime… or that these mysterious caverns were the source of the amethyst crystal.

Which of these two options was correct was of critical importance. If the Amethyst Academy’s founder had met his end here, that would answer the question of where the stone had gone, but it would cement his perception that these caverns were extremely deadly and inescapable. The founder of the Amethyst Academy was said to have been able to fight spirit manifestation mages: such a person should have been able to flee the slimes, even if he couldn’t best them in battle. On the other hand, if the caverns were the source of the amethyst crystal, then that would imply that the founder of the Amethyst Academy went into this place and then managed to leave it too. That would imply that there was some way to exit this place, and Marcus simply hadn’t found it.

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His intuition was telling him the second option was more likely to be correct. For instance, there was no doubt in his mind now that the reason Amethyst Academy was originally situated here was due to the existence of the giant corpse in this secret underground space, and the natural caverns that led into it. Why would the founder make his tower here unless he knew there was something incredibly valuable in these caverns? If these tunnels were truly inescapable, then anyone he sent inside would never have returned, and the place would just be a death trap. Although Marcus had heard of various adept organizations using dangerous domains as execution tools, they usually didn’t place their headquarters right above them. No, the founder of the Amethyst Academy wanted to guard the entrance to this place… he knew there was something valuable down here.

Additionally, the crystal seemed like something that would fit the environment of the giant’s cave they saw. It had the same purple hue as the pools of dead giant’s blood, and while Marcus had no way how to use it at the moment, he knew from stories that it gave the founder of the Amethyst Academy powerful and mysterious abilities. Where else would such an object come from, if not here? Marcus suspected that the slime he killed had slowly formed this crystal by processing and purifying the dead giant’s blood it fed on.

Finally, people had told him that the Amethyst Academy’s founder had died in the Second Academy War, and that this stone went missing after that. They weren’t confused about what happened to him, they just didn’t know who killed him and took the stone. While it was possible this was just a story to hide the fact that he had descended into the tunnels beneath the Academy and never come back, Marcus was inclined to believe it. People liked a good mystery. If the founder had simply disappeared, that would be the preferred rumor.

If Marcus was right, then this place definitely had an exit… and he doubted that the founder of the Amethyst Academy had been any more qualified to find it than Marcus was. This meant it should be possible for Marcus to leave this place without opening any rifts to other worlds.

However, did that truly matter right now? Sure, there was probably an exit… but how long had it taken the Amethyst Academy’s founder to find it? For all Marcus knew, that man might have wandered these tunnels for months before finding an exit. And what if the exit only showed itself periodically, and getting out was more a matter of luck and patience than any kind of skill and perceptiveness? Marcus had no patience to wander around this place for months, hoping for an unexpected breakthrough… especially with three children in tow.

He nodded to himself, carefully putting the purple crystal back into his backpack for now. Yes, it was decided: he would be opening the rift to another world, and then opening a rift back to Tasloa from there. It seemed such a ridiculous thing to do, wasteful and dangerous, but he saw no real alternative.

“I will open the rift soon,” Marcus told his three students and Celer. “However, before I do that, I’d like to have another talk to Helvran and your fellow students back at the surface, so please guard me while I focus on that. Just wake me up if a slime wanders into range.”

He then used a spell to project a ghostly image of himself back at the tower, centered around one of the anchor sigils he scattered around the place. Apparently Helvran assigned one of the students to be close by in case Marcus did this, because he found Julia sitting on a chair nearby, reading a book.

She screamed in shock at his image suddenly materializing beside her without warning, but calmed down quickly when she realized it was him.

“Teacher! You scared me,” Julia said with a sigh of relief. She gave his image a curious look. “Umm… is everything alright? You’ve been down there for so long…”

He hesitated for a moment. His first instinct was to brush the whole things off as a minor inconvenience, the way he had the first time. However, while maintaining an image of strength and skill was important for a teacher, so was making sure they knew the severity of the situation and weren’t tempted to go down and search for him.

Plus, they would all eventually learn what happened anyway once he brought their fellow students back to the tower.

“Things have become a little complicated,” he admitted. “Go fetch Helvran and the rest of your fellows and bring them here. I will explain things as best as I can.”

It didn’t take long for her to bring everyone back with her. None of them had anything better to do, and Marcus’s unexpected absence had spooked most of them anyway. They didn’t dare move far from the tower.

“I take it things have gotten worse?” Helvran asked bluntly.

“Yes,” Marcus confirmed. “To make things short, we have become trapped in some kind of dimensional trap down here. Space warps inward towards some kind of giant corpse, preventing us from simply leaving or teleporting out. I will have to resort to extreme methods to get us out.”

“Giant corpse?” Helvran repeated with a frown.

“Yes, a literal giant. Like the ones from legends,” Marcus said. “It’s been dead for a long time, I think. Still, I dare not mess with it. It still bleeds.”

It occurred to him that Giant Thunder Hall claimed their academy had been built by literal giants in ancient past, hence the name. Marcus always took that to be empty boasting, attempting to glorify their ancestors and make them something more than mere humans… but maybe there was something to it. They did tend to be unusually tall, and their academy was unnecessarily huge.

“A corpse that still bleeds after being dead a long time? Yes, you definitely shouldn’t mess with something like that. If it is really a giant of old, they were often said to be able to fight against the gods themselves in stories, “Helvran said. Marcus had expected the priest to question him on the story he was telling them, but the priest looked somewhat intrigued instead. “Shame I don’t have the opportunity to examine it. So how do you intend to get out of this predicament, Master Marcus?”

“I will open a rift to another world,” Marcus told him. And the silent students standing behind Helvran, of course. “Once we pass through it, we should be outside of the influence of the dimensional trap we’ve found ourselves in. From there, I only have to open another rift, this one targeting our tower here, and we can return home safely.”

Helvran stared at him for a second.

“That doesn’t sound very safe,” Cricket whispered to Claudia.

“Extreme methods indeed,” Helvran loudly commented. “I must say, I’m most surprised that you can open a rift between worlds all by yourself, Master Marcus. I knew you were a powerful mage, but this is the sort of thing that usually requires a lengthy ritual and several casters working together.”

“That’s because usually mages need to spend a lot of power to lock onto the destination planet, pick the suitable destination, and so on,” Marcus told him. “As it happens, I am not flailing around blindly for a vague world to target. I already have a dimensional beacon in place at the destination… and I also have a similar beacon placed in my office at the top of the tower, so finding a way back shouldn’t be an issue either.”

Helvran raised his eyebrow at him. “Remarkable planning skills. Or perhaps you’ve long been planning an excursion into the wider universe using this method…?”

“A bit of both,” Marcus said. He actually had several dimensional beacons scattered across various places on Tasloa. Just in case.

He had never used them, but they should work.

“I would still be cautious, if I were in your place,” Helvran warned him. “There is no such thing as safe travel between worlds. The Abyss threatens everybody. Most worlds have some sort of defense against outside incursions, or they wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

“I know this is dangerous,” Marcus said. “I just see no other solution that will get me home in a reasonable amount of time.”

“Teacher, are you sure we can’t just call the Great Sea Academy for help?” Regulus asked. “They surely have their own dimensional experts.”

“I can’t risk it. They could decide to bury the entrance to make sure I’m trapped here for good and then silence you all,” Marcus said.

“They- They wouldn’t!” Regulus protested, shocked. However, despite his loud denial, he didn’t sound very convinced of what he was saying.

“It depends on who gets sent and which faction they belong to,” Marcus said. “It’s best if I solve this on my own.”

He also didn’t want Great Sea Academy to know about the dead giant.

“Listen,” he told his student. “Under no circumstances are you to go into the tunnels beneath the tower. Don’t say anything about this to anyone else, either: if anyone asks about my whereabouts, tell them I had to go on an unexpected trip. If everything goes the way I’m hoping, I will return soon, but… well, it’s like Helvran said. Things can always get complicated when attempting something like this.”

He glanced at Helvran.

“I know I’m asking a lot from you, but please make sure nobody threatens my students while I’m gone,” he told the priest. “Oh, and please seal away the entrance to the tunnels when you find the time.”

He wasn’t sure what magic spells death priests had for sealing away passages, but he was pretty sure they had something. Priests, he had found over the years, were all pretty good at sealing away things.

“No need to worry. I was not going to abandon them, even if you didn’t ask. They’re my students too, as far as I’m concerned,” Helvran said stoically. “However, I expect you to start paying me an actual monthly salary when you get back, and build me a better classroom to teach in. Considering the amount of work I’m doing for you, I think it’s time you started paying me.”

“Agreed,” Marcus said immediately.

Back when Helvran had arrived and claimed to have been sent by the Raven Temple to help him, asking for work, Marcus had not thought much of it, but he was starting to think that Helvran’s presence was actually indispensable. Not just because he was teaching his students academics, either: having Helvran at the tower meant there was an adult he could leave in charge when he left his home base, or in situations like this. If he didn’t have Helvran, he would have to find someone to replace him.

And frankly, he liked Helvran. He was dependable, took things in stride, and was fairly powerful. His connection to the Raven Temple was a bit concerning, but it wasn’t like other people he could hire wouldn’t have problematic connections of their own.

After exchanging a few more instructions with Helvran and the gathered students, he cut the connection and let his image fade. He soon found himself back in the cave with his three other students looking at him.

Celer was sitting on his head, whacking him with her antennae periodically.

He shook her off with his hand, causing her to take off and flutter away. He then got up from the floor of the cave and did a quick stretch to reawaken his body.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s open a passage to another world.”

* * * *

Despite what he had told Helvran, Marcus did not dare proceed casually with this. Opening a rift to another world was incredibly advanced magic, and while Marcus was capable of it, he was far from an expert. More of a dabbler, really. Therefore, he had to make sure to stack every advantage at his disposal to make sure things turned out alright.

First, Marcus spent an hour wandering the tunnels with his team in tow, until he found a spacious and defensible place to set up a rift opening ritual. He couldn’t afford to be interrupted during the casting, so Chompy and Celer would have to make sure no random slime wandered into the ritual site. His three students also stood by the entrance, clutching a staff in their hand, though in all honesty they wouldn’t be able to contribute meaningfully to his defense.

Once the ritual site was secured, Marcus laboriously carved a complicated magic circle into the floor, just like he had back in Elora’s royal palace when he tackled their unexpected reality rift. This time, the process went a little faster, because he had already done something similar back then, so the procedure was more familiar to him than it would usually be.

After this though, he decided to take additional measures. He created six stone pillars on the edge of the magic circle and started casting a complicated stabilization array that would prevent minor instabilities from occurring and ward them against backlash if the newly-formed rift interacted poorly with the spatial anomaly they were surrounded with. This part was not absolutely necessary, but given the terrible consequences of fumbling a rift creation ritual, Marcus didn’t want to take any chances.

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As his spell neared completion, he took a deep breath and placed five glittering blue gems on top of each stone pillar. They sank into the stone as if it was liquid, leaving no trace on the surface.

He resented having to use those. Unlike the cheap, mundane gems he was throwing around when he used his usual crystal spells, these ones were rare, magical materials that were hard to come by.

He didn’t dwell on it for long, however. What was wealth, if one dared not use it? And what better use for it than to escape a desperate situation? He finished casting the spell, attaching the stabilization array to the stone pillars to strengthen its effects.

“Alright,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “The first part is done. Let me rest for a bit and then I’ll start opening the rift.”

“Hey teacher… are those sky sapphires?” Renatus asked.

Marcus gave the boy a strange look.

“How do you even know that?” he asked, baffled.

“I read a bunch of books about magical gems, minerals, and other valuable materials when we were in Adria,” Renatus told him. “You need to be able to recognize the good stuff when you see it out there in the wild, right?”

“Right…” said Marcus with an internal sigh. Everything around this boy revolved around treasure, didn’t it? “Is everyone ready to go?”

His three students immediately answered him with a chorus of agreement. In addition to their regular belongings, all three of them were also carrying bags full of glowing moss harvested from these tunnels. It was something that Renatus talked the entire group into doing, in order to feed them to the caterpillars later.

“Actually, I wondering…” Celer suddenly said. “Is the world you’re opening the rift to the one you had me hide that cylinder in?”

“Of course,” Marcus said. “What other world could it be? I need a dimensional beacon in order to open a world rift on my own. That’s what that cylinder was.”

Of course, originally he didn’t intend to just immediately open a rift to that world. He had intended to use the beacon in order to cast a lot of divinations: something that was much more difficult to detect than outright rift creation: and then eventually create an ectoplasmic puppet to project himself into. He would have only stepped into an unfamiliar, alien world if all these things suggested it was safe out there and there were interesting things to examine in person.

Unfortunately, things didn’t play out that way.

“Uhh, so, I just remembered that you ripped me away from a really interesting gossip session with my butterfly buddies so I should really get back to Dreamwood,” Celer said suddenly. “You don’t really need me anymore, do you?”

“Celer… where did you put the beacon?” Marcus demanded warningly.

“If isn’t anything life-threatening!” she said defensively. “It’s actually a really pretty location. Very majestic. You know, I also realized that I left my teapot boiling when you summoned me here and that’s really not safe. I should totally go back to Dreamwood and check up on things…”

‘Did Celer even have a teapot?’ Marcus thought to himself. He never heard her talk about having a traditional house the way humans would understand it, with furniture and other small items. ‘No, wait, don’t let her distract you!’

“And you’re sure I won’t die the moment I step out of the rift?” Marcus demanded.

Fairies sometimes had really odd ideas of what was harmless.

“It’s fine, it’s fine… no way would this pose a problem for someone like you,” Celer said dismissively. She turned to take a long look at his three students. “But, uh, maybe you should keep an eye on your students as they step out of the rift. They might need to watch their step.”

Marcus sighed. Yeah, that’s what he thought…

“Out with it,” Marcus told her. “What’s out there?”

“But that would ruin the surprise!” she protested. “I worked really hard to get the beacon thingy where it is. You need to experience it first-hand without being spoiled!”

“Celer,” Marcus said warningly.

“No!” She said petulantly.

Marcus folded his arms over his chest and stared at her severely. She stared back at him, and though most would have trouble interpreting the body language of a giant butterfly, he was pretty sure she trying to be just as serious-looking.

The stand-off lasted for about five seconds before it was broken by Diocles.

“Teacher, it’s okay,” Diocles said. “I’m sure Miss Celer knows what she’s doing. I have full faith a celestial creature like her wouldn’t needlessly lead us to danger.”

“Especially since our fates are inextricably tied to that of her children,” Agron noted.

There was another moment of silence after that, but Celer was suddenly looking a lot less defiant in her posture and a lot more awkward, as if at war with herself.

“That… That’s right!” she eventually said. “See Marcus, your students are more sensible than you are. Shame on you! Anyway, let’s just get this over with. I’ve decided I’ll stay a little while still. I’ll cross over with you and… uh, catch any of them before they accidentally stumble into the water.”

Shaking his head, Marcus turned around towards the magic circle in the middle of the ritual ground and started casting the rift opening spell.

Marcus immediately realized something was wrong.

He decided to power through it anyway.

As he feared, the spatial anomaly that was keeping them trapped here was warping his spell, drawing the forming transit corridor back into itself and destabilizing itself. Marcus struggled to right the spell, burning though his internal mana reserves at an alarming rate, aided by the stabilization array he set up beforehand, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

The stone pillars around him started to crack, brilliant blue light seeping out from the cracks.

A ghostly oak manifested in the air behind him as he employed his unstructured shaping skills. Although he wasn’t very good at unstructured magic in general, one thing his wide, extremely solid logos base was very good at was stabilization. As the Soul Tree Technique chant said… “its roots stabilize the earth”. Trees were inherently good at holding things together, and having a wide logos base that covered many things made that aspect of their magic all the more effective.

It was a somewhat esoteric type of magic, one that Marcus didn’t get to showcase often. However in this particular situation, it was an absolute life-saver.

The ghostly tree extended its roots into the ritual circle and the stone pillar, into the rapidly forming transit corridor between worlds, and into Marcus himself. Even the onlookers could see the ghostly roots seeping into everything in sight, threading themselves with the essence of all things, though none of his students said anything. Even Celer seemed to be stunned into silence.

An oval hole in the fabric of reality suddenly opened up in the air, right in front of Marcus. It was pitch black and ominous, its edges distorting and wavering in a way that made one’s eyes water and blur.

The rift was open, but it wouldn’t last long.

“Everyone, get into the rift now!” Marcus ordered loudly.

Celer was the first to react, immediately diving through the rift. His three students hesitated for a second, but ultimately didn’t question the wisdom of plunging head-first into the mysterious black object.

Agron was the first to make a move, striding confidently through the rift, followed closely by Renatus and Diocles.

Marcus had to stay last to keep the tunnel stable, but he didn’t waste any time either. The moment everyone went through the rift, he also dived through it.

Despite the immense distances the reality rift was bridging, the journey was over in an instant. It felt like Marcus had taken but one step, and then he was already on the other side.

The rift immediately collapsed behind him, destroyed by the strange space he had left once he stopped using all his might to keep it stable. The collapse created a burst of air that sent Marcus stumbling forward, barely catching himself before he… fell… into rushing water…

Hm.

He was on a tiny island, in the middle of an underground river. The water around him was rushing at great speeds, producing a thundering sound and spraying small droplets of water all over him. Not far into the distance, there was a sharp drop as all the water fell off a cliff.

He was standing on a small rocky island on the edge of an underground waterfall. A quick glance told him that all three of his students were safe and sound, though Diocles and Renatus were staring at the raging waters that surrounded them in obvious fear. He also spotted his cylinder wedged firmly between two large rocks, right in the middle of the small island.

Celer was making lazy circles above them, looking unconcerned. Marcus gave her an annoyed look. He wanted to say something, but realized that the sound of rushing waters was drowning out everything.

He ran his hand through his hair, taking a deep breath and sighing. Well… all things considered, it could be worse.

He had indeed told Celer she could place the cylinder anywhere she wanted, so this ultimately really was his fault.

He created a bubble of force around the island to block out the sounds and make sure a rogue wave didn’t wash away one of his students into the raging river before either he or Celer could react, and then waved Celer over to get her into the bubble.

She fluttered over, passing through the force bubble as if it wasn’t there. Due to having a spirit, Marcus’s spells had a will of their own, and he could easily make his defenses permeable to those he considered friendly. Lesser mages would have a much harder time pulling off something like this, and would have to drop the shield and then re-apply it to get Celer inside.

“What did I tell you?” Celer said. “The view is absolutely majestic!”

“No wonder it took you literal hours to hide the cylinder,” Marcus remarked.

“I didn’t think you would use it to drag a bunch of kids into another world,” Celer said defensively. “You have to admit this would just be a harmless prank if it was just you.”

Marcus glanced at the river around him, and the waterfall towards which it was flowing. Given that Marcus could fly very easily… yes, this was basically a non-issue for him. Besides, he originally intended to start with extensive divinations of this world and his landing place, which was why he had not particularly cared where Celer placed the cylinder. The exact location had only become important due to unplanned circumstances.

It was nevertheless a lesson on what not to do.

“I can’t cast a rift opening spell here,” Marcus commented. Granted, the ritual would should be way easier to perform from this side, but even so. This was too volatile of a location. “How far did you travel to reach this place and how quickly can we reach more solid ground?”

“Pretty far,” Celer admitted. “It would take an hour of flight to get away from the river.”

Marcus clacked his tongue in dissatisfaction. He didn’t want to linger on this world for long. If this place was anything like Tasloa, it was likely someone had already noticed the opening of a new rift. According to Helvran, Tasloa was unusual in the number of rifts it had, so this was likely a very rare occurrence here and unlikely to be ignored. It was likely that a response to his incursion was already being organized.

Well, if nothing else, this place seemed pretty inaccessible. Hopefully this meant it would take a while for local adepts to arrive.

After some quick discussion, Celer gave Marcus the instructions on how to return to the more familiar caves he had seen in his first exploration of this world, and then disappeared into a puff of smoke. An entity from the outer planes like her would make them easier to track if she remained here, and he didn’t think he really needed her from this point on.

He then tapped his Orb of Flight and lifted off from the little river island, his three students in tow.

It took him longer than an hour to go back to find the point where the river opened up and they found some dry land to stand on, but on the bright side, there were no strange cave monsters trying to snatch them up as they flew. Additionally, Marcus had been subtly testing things while they flew, trying to discern if the rules of magic were the same here.

As far as he knew, every planet had different rules of magic. Most tended to be broadly similar, with a few exceptions and peculiarities here and there, but some were massively different. There were even a few feared planets that were complete dead magic zones where no spell seemed to function. Thankfully, Marcus found through his testing that things were pretty familiar. The ambient mana was not toxic to absorb directly, though it felt very different from Tasloa’s ambient mana. The various logos at his disposal also seemed to work just fine, and the number of simple spells he cast worked completely fine.

That was a relief. The initial period of adjustment when an adept stepped into a new world was the most dangerous, as they could potentially be killed by a vastly inferior opponent simply because they didn’t understand the peculiarities of the local magic. He shouldn’t be any weaker here, thankfully.

He was just about to start setting up a return ritual when a glowing portal started to open not far from him and his three students.

So soon!?

Marcus swore heavily and loudly. Diocles gave him a shocked look.

“Everyone behind me! Now!” Marcus ordered. The three of them quickly positioned themselves behind him, clutching their staffs in front of them, as if those were going to do something to an incursion response team.

He immediately switched his usual staff for his combat one, and started casting defensive spells.

He really hoped this could be solved in a peaceful manner. There really wasn’t any reason to fight, given that he simply wanted to open a rift home and be gone from here. But would the other side listen? Would he listen if he were in their shoes?

Maybe? He was kind of confident of his abilities, and would probably give a strange mage from another world the chance to explain…

A person stepped out of the portal, after which it immediately closed down.

One person. Huh. Marcus’s perception of how this would go immediately improved. He was pretty sure he could beat one person.

Said person was a man in odd cream-colored clothes decorated with gold patterns. He wore a heavy metal contraption on one of his wrists, and held no staff of other magical focus… Marcus supposed the wrist contraption was the focusing tool, then? The man looked around the area, soon spotting Marcus and his three students, who were peering at him from behind their teacher.

The man was almost certainly a mage in Marcus’s estimation, and he seemed to be around Marcus’s age… assuming he was actually human. Marcus wasn’t sure he was. His eyes were glowing orange, though such minor traits could be caused by a variety of things such as spells, bloodlines, chaos mutations, or various enhancement rituals.

He spoke something incomprehensible to them.

Marcus winced. A language barrier too. Great.

However, the man didn’t make any aggressive moves, and the tone of his voice wasn’t demanding and hostile, so he still had some hope for peaceful resolution.

“We cannot understand you,” Marcus told him. He didn’t expect to be understood, but he didn’t want the man to get an impression they were staying silent to snub him. “If, by some miracle, you can understand us, we come in peace, alright? I just want to get us home.”

The orange-eyed man stared at him for a second, and then started pressing things on that wrist contraption of his. A weak pulse of golden light spread out from it, but Marcus did not respond with violence. It did not seem hostile and he heard some worlds had-

“Is this better?” the man suddenly said, speaking in perfectly understandable language. “The translation spell seemed to be working, but it can be unpredictable when encountering completely new languages.”

Yes, a translation spell. Just like that.

Marcus never managed to acquire one of those. Apparently there was something odd about how they functioned that meant they were quite rare.

“I can understand you now, yes,” Marcus said. “My name is Marcus, and these are my students. I understand that the rift I opened recently may have alarmed you, but I assure you I only want to return to my home planet as soon as possible. This was an act of desperation, not invasion.”

“Greetings, Brother Marcus,” the man said politely. “I am Darayaush of the city of Behis. It is true that I am here to see who has made their way to our planet. We don’t get many visitors here. Rest assured, though, that I am not here to start a fight. If you do not attack, I will not either.”

Surprisingly polite.

“I would like to hear how you were even able to make your way here,” Darayush said. “I am serious when I say we don’t get many visitors. Our planet is very isolated and hard to connect to, and we haven’t had a visitor in centuries.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow at that. The world didn’t seem that hard to connect to, but admittedly he did have a dimensional beacon guiding his way.

He told the man in front of him about the initial rift that his own world had opened to Tasloa, and about the strange corpse and extensive machinery he had seen in his first scouting on this world. Since the man seemed relatively friendly, he felt it was fine to show some good will. He spoke nothing of the spatial anomaly they had come from, of course, or the circumstances that had driven them to do this.

“This… how can this be?” Darayush seemed shocked at the story. “Someone from our side found a way to open a rift to another world? Is there something special about your world to allow such a thing?”

Well yes, Tasloa was apparently really easy to connect to… not that Marcus would just tell him something like that.

“I don’t know,” he lied. “Look, I’m not asking for much. I really just want to get back home. You can monitor us to make sure we don’t do anything suspicious. Here, I’ll even give you the dimensional beacon I used to home in on this world so you can destroy it at your leisure. That way I won’t be able to return ever again.”

Darayush accepted the cylinder from Marcus, but instead of immediately destroying it, he kept turning it over in his hand, thoughtfully rubbing his chin with his other hand.

He finally glanced up from the cylinder and gave Marcus a thoughtful look.

“We could do as you say, Brother Marcus,” Darayush said. “But I have a rather bold suggestion for you. Why don’t you follow me to Behis and we can have a little bit of… cultural exchange. I am very curious about your world, and I have a feeling you are equally curious about mine. Otherwise you would not have planted the dimensional beacon here. On my honor, I promise that no harm will come to you or your students there.”

Marcus paused. The smart thing would be to say no… but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted.

He glanced at his students. They were whispering to themselves about how exciting it would be to explore a whole different world, so they seemed to share his sentiments.

Ah, to hell with it! You only live once! They could surely spare a few days, right?

“Alright, Brother Darayaush,” Marcus told him. “We can’t stay for long, but I guess we will be your guests for the next couple of days.”

The man smiled at him, his orange eyes glowing brighter.

“I knew no world-hopper could be a coward!” he smiled at him. “Welcome to the Sixth Manifold, Brother Marcus.”