Following the instructions I’d been given, I scanned the Doorways to the right. That’s when I noticed they had names labeled on top of them. The third one on the right was labeled “Oxenraith”. Standing in front of each Doorway were more of those uniformed Porters with their slick white suits and polished copper buttons.

I walked over to my Doorway, then turned to approach. That gave me a moment of disorientation, as it appeared I was looking into a mirror. But no, not a mirror. The chamber I stood in appeared to be reflected, but I didn’t appear in that reflection. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing: it wasn’t a mirror, but beyond the doorway there appeared to be another chamber of equal size and dimensions as the one I was currently standing in. That was impossible, of course, since beyond the tree should have been a wall, then beyond that the open square of people outside. “Right,” I said to myself. “Magic.”

A group of younger-looking rissians with colored streaks in their hair walked up to the Oxenraith Doorway, talking animatedly between them. I waited and watched them to see how it was supposed to be done. As they approached, the Porter asked to inspect their tickets, looked through the tunnel, then waved them through one at a time. I got in line behind the last of them, ticket in hand. A short minute later, they were all through and it was my turn.

“Ticket please, kid,” the uniformed man said. I handed it to him and he gave it a quick glance before handing it back and waving me through. “Go ahead.”

I took my first step into the Doorway. When standing just a few feet away, it had looked like I’d be able to pass through in one or two steps, but as soon as I crossed the threshold, it stretched out before me like a tunnel.

“Hurry up, clod!” the person in line behind me yelled out. I flinched, then forced myself to walk forward with at least a semblance of confidence. The sounds of the bustling station behind me fell away as I entered the tunnel. With each step, the tunnel seemed to stretch longer, then just as suddenly, it shrank again when I reached a halfway point. I shuddered to think what would happen to me if I got stuck. As I reached the other side, I was hit in the face with a warm bank of air. The sounds of random conversation returned.

I exited the tunnel to find I was in a chamber that was just different enough to confirm I’d arrived somewhere other than where I’d started. Beyond the slightly uncomfortable heat, the mural painted on the ceiling of the dome was different—a jungle vista with beaches of bright yellow sand—and it was dark outside. I could see the dark sky through the windows high on the walls, though there seemed to be enough artificial light that the chamber itself wasn’t noticeably darker.

A man roughly shoved past me, making a nasty comment about “kids these day”. I realized I was gawking, so I moved out of the way while I tried to figure out where I was meant to go. I didn’t see anyone holding a sign with my name on it when I studied the crowd, but I did notice a stark difference in the general attire. Here, most rissians were showing off their hairless gray legs, wearing shorts and loose fitting t-shirts. They also seemed a lot more laid back. Many of them wore streaks of artificial color in their black hair: reds, blues, and yellows.

I asked a Porter where I should go to find someone I was meeting and was directed to make for the exit. Again, I had to head down a hallway guarded by what looked like soldiers, though rather than bulky cloth armor, they wore hardened leather chest pieces over mail skirts that hung to their knees. Midway down the hall, another desk manned by Porters was stopping people going in and out to check their tickets. I filed to the left. This time when I handed a bored-looking man my ticket, he barely glanced at it before dropping it in a box. He nodded for me to continue on my way. At the end of the hall, I found the ticket counter far less busy than Haemir’s had been, with only three employees processing customers.

Nobody was waiting for me. I hesitated, then made for a bench set up along the wall. It seemed as good a place as any to wait. I didn’t even have time to get insecure about being abandoned before a woman approached me; the heels of her shoes click, click, clicking on the stone floor. She wore a knee-length black skirt and white blouse, which she had buttoned up to her neck. A small black satchel was slung over one shoulder, resting on her hip. Her face was set with a serious expression. The only concession she’d seemed to make to the local culture was a single thin streak of blue in the hair she kept tied in a tight bun. She stuck out like a sore thumb.

She stopped in front of me, piercing me with a serious gaze. “Vincent?” she asked. “Vincent Koutz?”

I popped out of my seat and offered her my hand. “That’s me,” I confirmed. “Are you Clarice?”

She looked down at my hand, blinked, then touched her middle finger to the middle of her forehead, hand splayed. After touching, she pulled her hand a few inches from her face in a deliberate gesture. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Koutz,” she said. “Yes. I am Associate Professor Clarice Finkman, a Skill Scholar at the local university. This is the traditional gesture of greeting on most of the islands in the FSR.”

“I see,” I said, even though I had no idea what “FSR” meant. I brought my hand up to my face and mimicked the gesture. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“Did Mr. Gaze take you to get a translator?”

“Yes. That’s, uh, how we’re talking right now.”

Clarice nodded. A single controlled downward motion. Precise. Measured. “Good. Are you ready to come with me? It is late here. I’d like to get you settled in for the night.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just let me get my luggage first.” I smiled.

“I can wait for you here while you do that,” Clarice said.

“No. It was a joke! All I have are the clothes on my back!”

That earned me another precise nod from Clarice, with not even the ghost of a smile on her lips. “Of course. I understand. Does that mean you are ready to come with me, Mr. Koutz?”

I let out a disappointed huff of breath. “Yeah. Let’s go.” I wasn’t sure how well she and I were going to get along if she was going to be so stiff.

I followed Clarice out into a dark night where the magnificent disc of Heaven’s Bridge was visible in the sky. Just like in Haemir, it seemed a square had been formed around Oxenraith’s Porter’s Guild. It was far less busy than the one I’d just left, which made sense considering the late hour. The architecture of this new city was also markedly different. The street Clarice led me down was much wider than the widest one in Haemir and paved in smooth concrete, rather than cobblestone. Interspersed at regular intervals were metal torches raised a good ten feet off the ground, which let out a pure white light. We passed from shadow to shadow, mostly having the street to ourselves. The storefronts on either side of us had massive glass display windows compared to Haemir, and were constructed of wood rather than stone. Most were buttoned up for the night, so I couldn’t see inside, but we passed one with a crowd of people outside. It seemed to be a bar, and I could hear the rat-tat-tat of a drum beat filtering out onto the street.

Clarice didn’t stop or slow down even once to let me take in the sights. After passing the bar, I hurried up so I could walk beside her. “So, what do you study at the university, Professor?” I asked. She seemed like she would appreciate the formal title.

“I told you. I am a Skill Scholar.”