“I will need to make the necessary preparations,” Elder Eru said, almost visibly salivating at the prospect of our deal, “my esteemed peer will introduce you to our aspirants.”

He walked away fast enough that it could hardly be called walking. I saw echoes of his magic in the ground beneath his feet, likely speeding him along somehow.

With our entire project no longer hanging in the balance, we now had to figure out what to do with the time we had left of tonight’s session. I wasn’t keen on wading through NPCs any more than strictly necessary to get out of here and back into the towers. I turned to the final remaining elder escorting us, who looked almost as flummoxed by her fellow elder’s rapid retreat as I was.

“Actually, could you show us to the gate?” I asked.

“You will not meet with our aspirants?” She seemed slightly confused, but also a little bit offended.

“The gate? You don’t want to look at the central tower?” Joe asked, ignoring the elder. She looked deeply aggrieved by that, and I was worried that she might soon demand to speak to our manager.

“We still have a job to do, I’m afraid. Our time is not our own,” I said to her, with what I hoped was a sufficiently apologetic tone. Ideally, that would avert any issues that might arise from continuing to offend the leadership of this settlement. I took a moment to think back over my reasoning, then turned to Joe.

“The NPCs reportedly hunt in the central tower, so we or someone else can probably collect a lot of data about it just asking them. I have seen signs that modern artifacts can be pulled from it, like some of the cloth, and mostly some of the storage bins I saw being carted around the poorer district, but I haven’t seen a single magic item anywhere.”

I looked up at the vast continent of green hanging above. I could see the enormous orb of light above the central tower, but from this distance I couldn’t see the glowing filaments connecting the tower to the orb to the inverted landmass above. Seemed like a pretty obvious hint at where we were intended to go eventually.

“I think that central tower is probably key to advancing past this area, but if there aren’t magic items to be found there, then we are probably meant to gather power other places and challenge it only when we are strong enough.”

“The distant towers contain spirit-touched devices?” Elder Erien interjected, interest overwhelming any lingering irritation at Joe’s snub.

I pointed to Lindsey’s silvery hoodie, and Joe held up his hand, showing off his Cursed Trapezohedron which glinted aggressively at us in the steady light. The elder looked at it, squinted her eyes for a moment, and then started blinking rapidly as she tore her gaze away, bringing a hand to her head. Good. We weren’t the only ones vexed by impossible geometry. She looked like she was on the verge of saying something more, so I spoke up first to avoid her further derailing us.

“Yes, these and more can be found in what you call the ‘distant towers’, which we intend to explore further. I am certain that your settlement will soon be doing brisk trade in these types of things.”

“But those are… aren’t those artificer-made?” she asked.

“We seem to be dealing with some differences in vocabulary and terminology,” I said, “something that we can work out in the coming days. For now though, our time here is limited and we really need to get moving.”

Then a thought struck me, and I preempted her reply once more.

“One of the guards at the gate is one of your aspirants, according to the guard who brought us to you. We will take him with us on our way out, show him our methods for the rest of the day, and you can show him to your council afterwards as proof of our good will. Everyone wins, and we stop wasting time.”

She stopped for a moment to consider what I had suggested, and nodded, “I’ll show you to the gate.”

Our trip back to the gate was somewhat less meandering, but not much faster. The settlement was obviously planned out ahead of time, with major streets running like spokes on a wheel, from the walls toward the tower at the center, and in concentric rings around the tower. The problems started to crop up in that there seemed to be all sorts of places where the inhabitants had decided that they knew better than whatever plan was in place, and had built over where a road would be. With all of the ground being perfectly homogenous glass or crystal, there weren't really any practical considerations stopping them from building wherever they pleased, original road planning be damned. Pure design or comprehensive simulation, this town was a well made set piece either way.

Our walk back was mostly occupied by small talk. Lacking her conversation partner, the diminutive elder was unwilling to let us walk in silence. She made several obvious mentions of this ‘great sorceress’, but none of us took the bait, thus avoiding triggering that particular infodump.

She also commented on some of the linguistic differences she noted in our use of English. Apparently they used some of our familiar time units here out of ‘tradition’, despite the fact that they lacked a day/night cycle, but not others. Weeks were five days long, and the year was divided into five seasons instead of twelve months. Weird that it was day and year, the two time units that depended most heavily on the physical characteristics of Earth, that they decided would be the same. Though if the aliens wanted to make timekeeping somewhat easier for us, at least in these early areas, I wasn’t about to complain.

Our guide was also quite interested to learn that we had come from an actual planet. There weren’t any near here, according to her, but they were out there. Maybe there was some magitech space adventure zone out there for us to find. A guy could dream.

They also had apparently set out to reach this place more than a hundred years ago, arriving around two decades ago. They had set out from ‘deeper realms’ and reached this place by forging a path through the ‘deep chaos’, and after explaining this she ranted for the remainder of our trip to the gate about English (and the other Earth languages she knew) lacking adequate vocabulary to describe higher dimensional arrangement and conditions with any precision. None of us could really disagree there.

Once we reached the gate, Elder Erien barked out something in what was probably German. The guard…

[Kyber]

Thank you. Kyber responded with a salute that involved pressing a closed fist to his chest and bowing both of his heads, then moved to stand with Lindsey, Joe, and me. Then she surprised us by going to the other guard and ordering him to accompany us for the remainder of his shift. She gave us all a look, one which neither I nor Nico could figure out, and then strode purposefully back through the gate, in the direction of a large nearby building.

“Why are you coming with?” Joe asked, as the other guard walked over.

“Someone needs to make certain that this one does not become distracted and lost on his return journey,” he said, indicating the sorcerous snakeman.

“Makes sense,” I said, “let’s get moving. You know how to navigate this space out here, right?”

“It is an Impermanent Templated Moderately Permissive Space,” Kyber answered.

“Right,” I said, pretending to understand, “let’s get moving then.”

Once we had more personnel in town, it would be trivial to have someone study all the technical terminology. If we could be certain that it was actually important to know, rather than just lore, I might very well do it myself, once we have the basic areas and mechanics more fully mapped.

We set out onto the plane of glass. Our NPC followers kept their eyes up without being told, and I assumed that just being with us would be enough to bring them back to the outer towers. Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case.

With every step we took towards our destination, the NPCs fell behind. The first time it happened, they had to shout for us as we advanced hundreds of feet beyond them in the space of a few steps. After that we tried to have them walk in front of us, which only gave us a better look at how rapidly we left them behind. We tried instructing them to focus all their thoughts on reaching the distant tower, but they apparently did understand how this place works already. We even tried not focusing so much on the tower, trying to make our way there gradually so we didn’t lose our followers.

“Can you store them with your power?” Joe asked, once we called a halt to assess the issue.

“I don’t think that will work,” I said, “Not without asserting some sort of metaphysical ownership and control, at least. I’m really not comfortable with that idea.”

Their eyes widened comically, then they seemed to relax a bit when I made it clear that I didn’t plan to steal their souls. Wasn’t there a simpler solution anyway?

“Can’t we just carry them? No need to complicate things.”

Joe facepalmed, then scooped up Kyber, the larger of the two. He became very still at first, then seemed to accept his fate, shifting himself to be easier to carry.

Having not thought this through, I looked at the remaining NPC. He was looking back with a raised eyebrow. Damn it, why could everyone do that but me? Lindsey saved me from any further awkwardness by brushing past me with a wink and an elfin grin.

“I will take care of this one,” she said, sweeping the unsuspecting guard off his feet and into a princess carry. His snow white skin made his blush all the more obvious.

“Worry not, my small friend, I have no designs on your chastity,” she assured him, barely holding back laughter.

“Chastity?!” he spat, “I haven’t got- You can’t just-”

“All for the sake of completing your mission, my little friend,” she said, and indeed, he made no move to escape. He did bury his face in his hands though.

We set off for the tower, Lindsey laughing like a madwoman all the way. Despite my discomfort, I had to admit that it was at least a little bit funny.

It had taken us no more than a dozen steps to reach the town around the central tower, once we had learned the trick to it. It was looking like it would take hundreds or more to return to the tower we had come from. Or to any arbitrary one of the outer towers. I wasn’t entirely clear how this space mapped to the areas outside it, or even if it did in the way that humans thought about space. Though any elevator should let us get to any outer tower, so it was ultimately a distinction without a difference. Our slow approach was almost certainly the consequence of bringing along the NPCs. The tower had visibly grown closer each time we tried to approach, back when we had nearly left the NPCs behind by accident.

After an irritatingly long march, focusing on our destination the entire way, we finally arrived at the access door to the tower. And also a blank surface, made entirely from gleaming panels of tinted glass set into steel grids. I rested my hand on the door. I pushed the bar to unlatch it and pushed it open, and turned back to the NPCs. Both had been set down, and Lindsey was trying to apologize through her remaining giggles, assuring him that she would never have forced herself on him and that she got swept up in the joke. It was good to see that she wasn’t totally shameless, but did little to settle my irritation at this new barrier.

“You probably can’t see the door?” I asked the NPCs.

“Layered space here. I see mirror wall only.”

“I also see only the wall.”

“Damn it! I just want to kill a bunch of meaningless monsters and maybe find some interesting magical item! Is that so much to ask today? You!” I said, pointing to Kyber, “come here.”

I moved over to the door, Kyber standing next to me. I stepped through the door, and reached out for him, but I could already tell that this wouldn’t work. He wasn’t in the same layer of space as I was. And if I moved to be in the same layer as him, then I wouldn’t be able to reach the door.

I wanted to throw something. I wanted to lash out with my power, turn the mirrored glass surface to slag with solar fury. Maybe get a grip on the layered space and somehow use my power to rip them apart. Or could I find a weak point between the two spaces and ask Lindsey to sever them. I took a deep breath, and decided that these were probably all unwise potential solutions. We might just end up cutting ourselves off from the entrance. What did we have to use on this?

“What are your powers?” I asked the two guards.

“Numbers,” Kyber replied instantly. That sounded underwhelming, but I guess if sorcery required any calculations it could be a huge boon. And who was I to judge someone else’s power? Mine started out as ‘inventory’ after all.

“Ah, it is something to do with honor, or oaths, or bindings,” said the other guard, who’s name I should probably try to remember.

[Erien Alco]

Right, so I guess not everyone is so single-minded as to make their power obvious right away. And nothing usable from either of them. There was no magic barrier here for me to try to grab with my power, so using that plan here was a nonstarter. There was no magical barrier this time.

“Joe! Can you take people with you with your fire teleport?”

He seemed surprised by my question, but took a moment to consider it. Or to read the skill’s description. With my power’s recent expansion in scope and utility, I was no longer sure if I should be envious of his interface.

“It doesn’t say. It’s an augment, not part of the base skill. I can test it.”

I set to work scattering wads of paper on the glass surface under our feet. I didn’t have any wooden furniture that I was willing to sacrifice, but thankfully I had enough excess paper that we could try this a few times. I stepped into the elevator vestibule, and closed the door to the outside. It made me a little uneasy to separate entirely from the others, given all the space bullshit that was going on, but I also didn’t want to potentially blind anyone. Secure in the knowledge that I could let loose, I picked the corner farthest from the entrance and the elevator both, and focused.

I thought back on how I had arranged things when threatening that elf. I arranged my bubble of solar energy so that it sat just beneath the surface, and slowly brought it closer to the space around me, nearest the point in front of my outstretched hand. Space bullshit was so much less annoying when it was under my control.

At first, points of light flared up around my hand, yellow, red, and white, followed by a steady glow as the spaces converged, then all at once a torrent of rose gold energy rushed outward, bathing the concrete corner I was targeting in so much light that I couldn’t see clearly what was happening. The world was just a uniform wash of pure reddish gold.

Dimly, in my also overwhelmed mystic senses, I could tell that the torrent rushing out was bending and twisting as if under the influence of magical magnetic fields. I separated the spaces, cutting off the flow of power, and was nearly overwhelmed by the heat in the small room.

When my eyes finally adjusted, I could see that the corner of the room was just gone. There was a hole about five feet across that was open to the sky. Thankfully, from in here it was just lavender below, not rolling clouds with some undefinable horror beneath. I could feel attention from… somewhere. It didn’t feel like below though, so I was willing to let it go for now, and just try to get on with what we were trying to do. I tried to pull out a page, to crumple and start making a pile, but it burst into flames instantly. In moments it was ash. I suppose I may have overdone it… but then how was I not roasting?

I looked at my hand, and there wasn’t anything mundane that stood out to me, so I focused my mystic sense on my hand and arm. Using these senses on people always seemed disproportionately harder than on any other target, and I hadn’t yet seen a solid clue as to why. This time, however, I could definitely see something. On and in my arm was a sort of… residue. It felt like a coating composed of my solar essence, except ‘spent’ somehow. I wonder if I could exploit this to become resistant to blindness and fire from other sources, or if this was purely a mechanism to prevent self-damage. Everywhere I looked, my limbs, my clothes, everything was soaked in spent essence, so I guess that was why I hadn’t evaporated myself. Good to know.

I pushed open the door, and there was a sudden rush of wind, knocking me to the ground, and eliciting cries from everyone outside. Good, at least they were still there. Also, even in weird intersections of space, physics still at least put in a token effort.

I stepped out to find my companions getting to their feet. I had scattered the papers for the fire on this side, so I dropped another pile. I was going to need to stock back up on office supplies, as I was halfway through the remaining unused sheets.

“What the hell did you do in there?” Joe asked.

“Ah, blowing off some steam, and testing out my new power,” I said, “you may have been right about the sun lasers. See if you can teleport into the room, I’m pretty sure the concrete is still on fire in a few places.”

Joe took one look and shook his head, “Nope, I can’t teleport to pools of lava. We’ll need to set up a proper normal fire.”

So we did. The rush of air had lowered the temperature in the room to bearable levels, if one didn’t wander too close to the corner I had opened up. I piled up crumpled balls of paper and Joe set them on fire, quickly lighting up the pile assembled outside as well.

With a quick [Stoke Flames], he picked Lindsey up and dashed through the brightened blaze. He dashed back out of the door, grabbed an NPC in either arm, cast [Stoke Flames] again and dove in once more. The second casting totally consumed the paper we had been using for fuel, but somehow this plan had actually worked.

I walked back through the door, closing it behind me. No one looked burnt, not even clothes or other gear. I focused my senses again, and I noticed that everyone that Joe had taken through the fire had a fine layer of spent essence residue. It wasn’t anywhere near the prodigious layer I had caked onto myself after my stunt, but it was clearly functional.

“Everyone and everything you take through with that skill gains fire resistance. Not sure how much or for how long, but it does.”

He nodded. You never knew when the little mechanical details would come in handy.

We piled into the elevator, hit ‘11’, and waited. Awkwardly. The NPCs got the worst of it, as they probably had no prior experience that could prepare them for being crushed in with a bunch of strangers in a tiny space with no exit, and nothing to do but wait. Take that, fantasy world inhabitants! Feel the wrath of awkward modern social situations!

We arrived, piled out of the elevator, and started up the stairs. The NPCs followed without question, holding their crossbows at the ready. By silent agreement, we skipped the 20th floor, and continued up to the 19th.

We pushed the door open, and were greeted with yet another office floor. Like the first floor, this one had desks scattered about, though the floor was larger and the equipment slightly less antiquated-looking. Unlike the first floor, the desks were separated by cheap dividers, and the windows were floor to ceiling, occupying the entirety of the three sides we hadn’t entered from. There was definitely a sense of energy here. There was a whiteboard with arrows and blobs of information stashed in an area with a conference table and a bunch of chairs, the desks had blurry pictures in frames or taped to the sides of the divider walls, the whole place just felt less boring and dismal.

There was also an enormous column of light blue crystal in the middle of the floor, running from ceiling to floor and probably three feet across. It was irregular, looking more like how I imagined a natural crystal growth than like a sculpture. Suspended within were numerous loot boxes, both the glittery gold kind and a few of the glass ones that had better stuff. Near the bottom, was one of the glass loot boxes, but the size of a small suitcase.

Yeah, this was definitely where I preferred to be.