[WP] Write a short story about a place without magic where the author comes from a place filled with magic

...

Gillian watched as the complicated contraptions of metal and refined elements slowed on their flight, then froze completely still in the air, their colors fading beneath the lagging influence of time itself. How long that effect might last was a point of interest he'd normally have considered studying with careful observations and experiments, but his own time was not something he possessed in abundance.

That was a statement he couldn't have made even once for the last several centuries, yet there it was. Should he fail in this task, Gillian: The Great Immortal might find himself ended. Snuffed out like all the rest.

This world, whatever and where ever it was, drank magic like a man dying of thirst. For every second he used his powers, there was a notable cost associated: The world stole its essences away as the magics burned, wisped off like heat of a fire into the night. There was no more of the material to draw on, no flow back even if Gillian focused on searching for the source he'd taken for granted. Truly, if there was any of the substance at all still residing in this strange world, it collected temporarily; held inside living forms.

Sustaining what he himself still possessed, took great effort.

With a fierce buffet against frozen winds, his black robes seemed to ghost behind him as Gillain continued to rise. Already below, the buildings and peoples of the foreign city were turning into small and distant things as his powers raised up higher into the sky, specks of light rising along their roads into the distance. If Gillian reached out to sense the world, he found it never seemed to stop.

For a place so starved of magic, the people of this world had somehow found their way to flourish without, endless living souls like tiny candles flickering beside their strange creations for as far as his mind's eye could reach.

If there was any magic at all in this world, it held in each of those. A faint essence of life mostly unable to grow, and used with varying efficiency, mostly in ignorance. It was more than possible that many of those failed to realize their potential existed at all, taking the tiny glow of their existence as a for-granted normality of natural law instead of the strange twist of chance it truly was. For certain: Below there was only one other brightly glowing example, a brilliant torch that scorched the air around the body housing the flame, as it burned away a flood of stolen magic to the barest nothingness it originally possessed.

A single being of potential floating alone in a massive ocean of unenlightened. It was a more than just a shame to leave such a promising young servant behind in such a place as this. Without the capacity to take on more than the barest trickle of magic at a time, their gifts were wasted here. Absolutely wasted, especially considering how difficult it was to teach those unfamiliar to manipulate time: Affinity for the subject might as well be more or less decided at birth.

As he continued his ascent, watching the still shapes of machines held still in their own frozen pockets of passing reality, however it pained him to admit Gillian knew that the mere girl below was far more effective at such magic's use than even he might ever be. Her anomaly of an existence perhaps trained to utmost efficiency by the conditions of this world.

He let his hand pass along the metal plates of one such object in his path as he approached his destination, letting his palm soak in the knowledge while his eyes eyes focused on the distant open portal looming like a doorway to nowhere in the clouds above. As his fingers trailed over the cold surface, Gillian felt the peculiar logic that nestled in it, soaked into its every piece. He felt the generations of thought, practice, failure and tinkering with the laws of this reality as they built atop one another for hundreds of generations.

It stretched back thousands of years: Refining metals, shaping them, forcing them into intricate portions and variations, crafting tools to craft further tools, repeating for more precision, more, and more, and more... Onwards it went, almost overwhelming his thoughts of escape with curiosity. The power of men set about to nothing but their own hands a minds: Not a single drop of magic, yet the strange devices could fly.

Most fascinating.

For the cruel nature of this world, he was unmistakably drawn to its creations. If the people of this place weren't dead-set on trying to purge him from existence (perhaps rightfully so on their part) he would be keen to piece together the details of how and why they made such things. For the time being though, Gillian knew that his questions would have to wait.

The air seemed to afix itself to him now, clutching at his clothes and skin as he rose upwards through cold breeze and gusts not held in place by the dwindling powers far below. The chill racked his flesh, ice and crystal forming, but Gillian breathed in deeply at the fresh scents that awaited him. Like a warm glow that healed the soul and not the body, the radiance of magic poured down on him as the poetal came to reach. The radiance of one world pouring itself to a far off equilibrium in another.

Looking down, he could see the machines of metal, logic and thought, finally breaking free of the last which clutched at them. On the distant horizons he could sense even more approaching, tiny little souls pointing themselves like arrows in his direction, and far below he saw a swarm of them descend on his one chosen servant.

Carefully, he pulled along the tiny thread that linked him; quietly loosing it from the confines that held it in place beside his own. With the barest separation of his fingers, he watched it manifest to his eyes alone, infinitely small line taunt and holding down a distance gods might only know.

A promise had been made, and though Gillian thought little of promises or honor, he would respect the bargain for his escape. With a single sigh, his fingers pulled apart to release the thread, letting it plummet back to its rightful place below. She could hold it in her possession for now, certainly that was the deal; but he would return in time.

As he stepped through the portal, powers surging in the flood of magic that awaited him, Gillian's laughter echoed off into the sky of two worlds at once.

He would return.