Whoever yawned first was unclear, but ultimately all of Tylissa, Jerome, myself, and Midnight all caught it from whoever started it. It was late, afterI had spent all day in Mossley and then getting the ball rolling on the additional problems we found about. At least I was able to keep track of time even though the days were slightly desynchronized between New Bay and Mossley, since I brought my phone along. Otherwise I might have been up even later.

“You really made it back,” Jerome said.

I shrugged. “Of course. You should have been in the loop along the way.”

“Yeah, well…” Jerome shook his head. “It turns out that even having powers for a while doesn’t make you able to accept that someone can just arbitrarily come back from some weird dimension they got trapped in.”

“It’s true,” I admitted. “I should really have to be a little higher level before it was possible. Though that assumes working alone, which might not be the best way to do things.”

Jerome nodded, “Do you think I should get a familiar?”

I looked at his mother, who shrugged. “Well, I suppose you aren’t limited by your living arrangements as much.” For example, the living room we were seated in was almost the size of the entire apartment they’d previously lived in. At the very least it had a similar amount of open floor space, considering how the kitchen had been cramped with tables and the bedrooms barely fit the titular devices. “I doubt you’ll get a familiar as good as Midnight, though. You’d probably have to settle for an animal.”

“...are there other options?” Jerome asked. “Besides semi-psychic animal formed individuals like Celmothians and just… animals.”

“You could make a homunculus, I guess?” I shook my head. “A little clay construct. Not any of the other things that go by the same name trying to replicate humans or whatever.”

“Artificial creatures work?” Jerome raised an eyebrow. “How does that make sense?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted honestly. “It wasn’t something I had the opportunity to study in depth, and I imagine the information wouldn’t have been fully available. Given how things were run there.”

Jerome pondered for a few moments, then grimaced. “I just remembered that an animal might be difficult. Since their reactions are more… varied now.”

“Speaking of which, how’s the lycanthropy business going?” I asked. “I don’t have any points right now but if the side effects have gotten too much I can get something to try to deal with it next level.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I’m getting pretty decent at controlling it. And the enhanced senses can be useful too.”

“And he likes being stronger,” Tylissa noted.

“Well… who wouldn’t?” Jerome smiled shyly.

“So what about what happened with you?” Tylissa asked. “Tell us.”

I nodded, beginning by explaining Ceira’s rescue. Then the huge jungle on the… backup material plane? I still wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be. Meeting a couple ancient elves, and then some orcs. Then all of the training to finally make it back here.

“Oh right. And then there were some mercs from Yew-Kay in my hometown!” I spoke indignantly. “So we kicked their butts and tossed them out of there, obviously. The consequences of all that are still ongoing, though.” Their local government had to balance the danger of mercs turning villain against the accusations of a foreign mercenary group. We had some proof, but governments were slow to handle things. Though I heard that the turnaround time for super related matters being limited to just days instead of weeks or months was quite a bit faster than other things. “And now they’re making me go talk to people and start up diplomacy and stuff.”

Tylissa snickered. “You make that sound like such a terrible job, being able to use magic and travel between dimensions.”

“I barely even fought anyone today!” I complained. “Just some sparring this morning and like one guy in Mossley.”

“... Did more mercenaries sneak back in?” Jerome asked.

“Nah it was the knight captain guy I was supposed to find. Hopefully he won’t suddenly turn boring tomorrow.”

After that, Jerome went over what he had been learning. He was well beyond the point of my education being able to help him, as upper level mathematics and of course this world’s history and politics hadn’t come into play in my studies. Though perhaps such mathematics would matter for some magic, and that was yet more hidden knowledge. Maybe there was a way to make Gate more efficient, for example. Did exact orientation matter? It might. I hadn’t really had the option to experiment, just doing my best to scrape by and actually make it function.

I looked at Jerome. “School really wasn’t great for you, huh?” His grades hadn’t been much to look at when we first met, and now he was learning so much more. He was clearly intelligent, but that hadn’t been enough.

“Well, it didn’t help to live in that other apartment,” Jerome pointed out. He would have had to cram himself into one of the chairs and sprawl his homework out on the kitchen table. And there were other issues with staying out to wait for his mom to get home from her previous work.

We could have probably continued to talk for a few more hours, but it was already late when we met up, so we didn’t last much longer after that. I went home to flop into bed, exhausted once more.

Maybe there was magic so I didn’t have to sleep. Wouldn’t that be nice.

-----

Returning to Mossley the next day, I realized that the lack of cars was a huge factor in the ability to gather physical things quickly. And technology like phones was so convenient, with anyone able to contact anyone else at pretty much any time instead of spending 10 whole mana on Sending. It was not only slower and more information, but not a whole lot of information. Sure, Sending was a thousand times better than sending a horse with a short message across a country, but still at least a few times worse than just sending a text.

In short, Sir Kalman was away dealing with that stuff and wouldn’t be back for a while. There was someone else waiting when I got back. A tiny guy covered in wrinkles.

“Hello,” he said in a faint voice. “I’m Zenfer.”

I looked down at him. Zenfer was a halfling, so it was a long way down. His hunch didn’t help his height, either. “Hi. I’m Turlough.”

“It is so nice to meet you, young man,” the old fellow said slowly. “They sent me out here just for that, you know?”

“Why?” I tilted my head. Just to meet me didn’t make any sense. I was just a guy.

“Oh, well you see. I’m your magical contact. For the Sending spell, you understand. I am a mage myself, after all. So I can transmit important information from you to others I’ve met, if it’s important.”

“Ohhhh,” I nodded. “That’s a very important job,” I said. “But wouldn’t you run out of mana pretty quickly? I mean, I can’t be the only person you’re relaying messages from.”

“Not to worry,” the old man said. “I have some upgrades to Sending. And most of the time, I’ll be in the capital. So there will be plenty of others I can just pass a written message to.”

I nodded. “Yeah that sounds a lot more efficient. Thanks, Zenfer.”

“Not a problem,” he nodded. “It is my job, after all.” He extended his hand. I took it, of course. It was effort not to throw him to the ground, but I doubted he would appreciate me doing that so I resisted.

“I suppose we should shake as well?” Midnight said from my shoulder.

Zenfer recoiled. “Oh! The familiar speaks…? And it’s Translation, not some sort of Speak With Humanoids magic…” He leaned closer. “Are you capable of independent casting?”

“That’s right,” Midnight confirmed. “I’m not a cat, by the way. To explain most simply… I’m one of the people native to the dimension Turlough is from.”

“Fascinating. It is a pleasure to meet you as well…?” he extended his hand, shaking Midnight’s paw.

“Midnight Deathstalker,” Midnight said.

“A fine name,” he replied. “I’m Zenfer Cloudfound.”

I raised an eyebrow. This guy had a surname? No, I guess that wasn’t that weird, for an old mage. Or a good portion of people with parents. Or pretty much anyone from Earth. Even Master Uvithar had… another name. Probably.

“Well now,” the old man said. “We should be able to contact each other. Though that depends on whether the Sending gets lost on the border of dimensions, hmm?”

“It’s pretty reliable,” I said. “There’s a strong connection for some reason. Probably no more than a five percent loss rate.”

“That’s hardly different from an adjacent plane. Fascinating,” Zenfer stroked his chin as he looked up at the both of us. “Say, can we go somewhere to sit down? Preferably with me sitting on a raised chair.”

“Can we use the building the Order’s occupying?” I asked.

“Oh yes, that should be fine,” Zenfer nodded, wobbling off. “It will be easier to talk. I heard you had questions about Master Uvithar.”

“I do. Do you know him?”

Zenfer didn’t answer until we were sitting down. Himself on a raised chair, Midnight sitting on the table between us, and myself in a lower chair so we were at a similar enough eyeline. “I did know the man, yes.” I didn’t like that wording at all. “He studied in Granbold City, in fact. So we saw each other there as fellow mages. A lot of talent in that one, but he came all the way out here and picked apprentices as he pleased. But at least one of them seems to have turned out well.” I didn’t honestly get along with the other apprentices that well, so I didn’t know who he meant. “Not many people can cast Gate at your age, you know.”

Oh. It was me. Probably. Could also be another one of those my age, though. “Well, it was kind of a matter of necessity,” I admitted. “And it takes teamwork still.” Should I be telling him that? Were magic things supposed to be secret? Was he part of the people keeping secrets or part of those having secrets kept from him?

“I assume you have some upgrades to manage it?” he asked. “Unless you’re level thirty-five already.”

“Oh, I wish. No, it took two point upgrades to barely cast it.” Was it even okay to tell him what plane I was on? Well, I had the feeling I could tell Zenfer. But I would have to think about it with others. I didn’t mind sharing information with the Power Brigade, but they hadn’t been hiding information about how my abilities worked from me. Or they were extremely good at pretending otherwise, but it seemed like it would be a lot of expense going into having me develop my powers with them if they already knew everything. And they would have had to be really good at faking surprised and confusion at random abilities, because half of the things they seemed confused about weren’t even that hard.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll reach that level eventually,” Zenfer shrugged. “Just keep studying.”

“Oh, well…” I shook my head. “I have Curse of the Barbarian.”

“And you became a mage?” he raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating.”

“It was before I could read… though knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t make a different choice.”

“It’s good to keep to your convictions,” the old man said. “Now, we were talking about Uvithar. I knew him back in the day. And I know he was too clever to die easily. That rubble that was his tower might have been bombarded with magic, but it’s unlikely he was in there at the time.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “There weren’t any remains of books. Or anything else but furniture, really. Also some of the damage was caused by the people who took over this town. For fun, maybe?”

“Perhaps,” Zenfer said. “But you never really know with such things. I’d keep your eyes and ears open. You never know what you might find. You already said that other world and ours are connected, right?”

“It does seem rather unlikely they could develop the technology for a portal like that all on their own, or in secret.” Unless they had a tech super, but Calculator had fed me some additional profiles of their members and we didn’t know of anyone like that. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“Develop the tec what?” Zenfer looked actually confused.

“Basically ever more complex machines. Things a lot more useful than wagons and drawbridges.” Ugh, I didn’t even know how much I could say about that. Not that I could give anyone the secrets to anything anyway. I could hand over a whole smartphone and it would just be a confusing mess of wires and weird plastic to people. And by weird plastic I meant… any plastic.

“Like those weapons they had?” Zenfer asked. “I heard the occupying people had loud weapons.”

“Yeah, guns. They use explosions to propel little bits of metal,” I said. Were there guns in this world? On Earth they’d been around for a long time in various forms, apparently pretty early. Though perhaps they were less interesting here when you could just be a mage.

“Seems dangerous,” Zenfer said.

“That’s the point of weapons,” I shrugged. “Anyway, if you ever get in contact with Master Uvithar, let me know alright? Or at least let him know that I’m looking.”

“Certainly,” Zenfer said. “If he pops up I will pass on your words.”

The old mage and I chatted a little bit more, Midnight mostly listening. At least now we didn’t have to come to this world to share a quick bit of information with them. I still wanted to get someone that wasn’t me to stay here long term doing the diplomacy thing though.