BOOK 11: CHAPTER 28: WORLD TO WORLD

28 – World to World

Victor shook the man’s hand, noting the pliable nature of his metallic flesh. “I’m Victor.” As their hands unclasped, he asked, “A djinn?” He knew enough about Earth’s mythology to recognize the term—something about Arabian legends and wishes granted.

“That’s right, sir. And you? Do I detect the blood of a titan under that sun-kissed flesh?”

Victor nodded. “That’s right. Are you… from Earth?”

“Me?” the djinn, Nanda Konna, chuckled, shaking his head. “No, but I’ve read books about the place. I have a relative with a library full of texts from Earth’s last epoch.”

“Last epoch?” Victor couldn’t stop his eyes from bugging out. He certainly hadn’t anticipated this conversation!

“The last period of greatness, before the currents of Energy were swept away and our ancestors fled to wider pastures.” He chuckled.

Victor looked the djinn up and down again. “I didn’t expect a djinn to be made of silver.”

“Would gold suit me better?” The djinn’s lustrous flesh shifted, and suddenly he was a man of gold, not silver. He laughed, reaching out to clap Victor on the shoulder. “Djinn don’t have flesh, per se. We’re creatures of air and smoke, but we can take on many aspects. I love the luster of precious metal, so I tend to favor that appearance.”

Victor nodded. “Interesting.”

“Might I inquire as to your travels? From whence do you hail and where do you go, wayward titan?”

Victor arched an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m wayward? Perhaps I’m right where I should be.”

Nanda Konna’s smile didn’t falter. “My mistake. We’re rather far removed from the great hubs of civilization here, so I assumed you had other places you wanted to be.”

Victor nodded. “Well, I’m helping some people in this corner of the universe. For the time being, though, I need to travel to a world called Sojourn. Are you familiar?”

The djinn’s golden eyes unfocused for a moment as he contemplated, then he nodded. “Yes. I’ve been there before, though it's been a century or so. Tall crystalline buildings, yes?”

“That’s right. What about you? Where are you headed?”

“I intend to travel coreward, toward the old sector, where I’ll visit the world of Gybrana. Have you heard of it?”

Victor shook his head.

“It’s a desert world, utterly covered in sand. Once every millennium, larval Energy mites migrate from the depths of the sand and craft cocoons. The cocoons are said to be beautiful things—delicate and colorful, each one distinct. They gather atop the dunes by the millions, and if you earn a pass, you can collect one for yourself after the mites emerge.

“That takes a month or so; the mites burst forth in a shower of Energy, having grown great wings that buzz with the speed of their movement. Once free of their cocoons, they fly forth into the desert sky, where they continue their migration to the planet’s moon, Asfrahlia. It’s said that they create a bridge of light between the two heavenly bodies, and all who witness it are guaranteed insights into the greater workings of the universe.”

Victor rubbed his chin, picturing the scene the djinn’s melodic voice evoked in his mind’s eye. “Sounds remarkable.”

“Indeed. I have a course mapped out with every world between here and Gybrana. I’d love the company if you’d like to join me in my pilgrimage.”

Victor smiled, shaking his head. “Kind of you to offer, but I have people counting on me. Maybe next millennium.” He chuckled at the thought, but Nanda Konna took him seriously.

“I don’t know if I’ll be in a position to make this journey next time, but if I’m able, I’ll look for you there.”

“Um, yeah.” The line had been moving along nicely while they spoke, and Victor’s turn with the System Stone rapidly approached. He gestured to it. “I’ll be off shortly, I guess. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“Indeed.” Nanda Konna held out his hand again. “Always a pleasure to meet a fellow heir of the diaspora’s legacy.”

Victor shook the djinn’s hand, then turned and walked over the smooth rose-colored marble to the System Stone. He had a lot more he’d like to talk to Nanda Konna about, but he also felt the urgency to keep moving. More than that, a small voice in the back of his head said that he ought to be careful about what he said to whom, and the idea applied especially aptly to creatures like djinn. Weren’t they kind of like the Fae—full of riddles and mysteries and double-speak? Whatever it was, that small voice was urging him to get moving, and Victor had long ago learned to listen to his gut; half the time it was one of his ancestors sending him a warning.

He pulled several large bags of beads from storage and set them at his feet before the stone, then reached his palm toward its surface. When his flesh met the System Stone, a menu appeared, and he navigated the limited “visitor” menu, selecting transport to Crosshaven. He wasn’t awarded with an immediate teleportation, but a System message appeared:

***Please make your way to a vacant teleportation platform. The platforms are located atop the nearby hills. Once you are on one of the platforms, your transit will commence.***

Victor picked up the remnants of his Energy beads and walked away from the stone, aiming for one of the nearby marble walkways that led up the side of the hill. He carefully avoided looking back toward the queue where he’d met Nanda Konna, not out of fear, but out of a sense of awkwardness; he didn’t want to explain or make excuses for why he was leaving immediately. One would think he might spend some time chatting or maybe even invite the guy to join him for a meal.

As it was, Victor walked directly up the path and straight toward one of the marble-topped hillsides nearby. As soon as his foot touched the smooth surface, he felt a tingling in his gut, and when his other foot set down, the world went white before flashing in a kaleidoscope of colors. A second later, he stood in a much cooler climate on a wooden platform suspended from the boughs of enormous trees.

“Greetings, traveler,” a woman said. Victor turned to see a small, round-bodied woman with four arms gesturing for him to walk her way. “Please clear the platform for inbound travelers.” She wore a gem-studded, lacy green smock that picked up light shining from the strings of Energy lamps that hung between the trees. When she saw Victor looking, she smiled and self-consciously brushed her knuckles over the glittering gems.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Victor said, holding out a hand. “I’m Victor.”

She took his fingertips delicately and performed a small curtsey. “Welcome to Crosshaven, Victor. I am Libili.”

“Well, Libili, I wish I could say I was staying a while, but I intend to move on immediately. Can you direct me to the System Stone or whatever mechanism you have in place to sell transport?”

“Of course. If you follow that path between the trees, you’ll pass through our market. From there, you’ll find another path leading north, or from here, to your left. This path will take you to the Stone Square, where you will be able to make your travel purchase.” She smiled slyly. “Naturally, the elders thought it wise to direct traffic through the market, else you might miss the many opportunities for local bargains.”

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Victor chuckled. “Yes, that’s clever. I’ll keep it in mind for my own city planning.” He ducked his head, waved quickly, and started off down the suspended wooden walkway she’d indicated. Few people were out and about, and he wondered what the local time was. It was certainly very dark beyond the warm glow of the Energy lamps. He tried looking over the railing to see what the ground was like, but was met by nothing but a great chasm of yawning darkness. “Damn,” he grunted, wondering how high the trees grew.

In the end, his brief stay on Crosshaven was uneventful. He sampled some local street food as he passed through the market—tangy kebabs with a creamy, pepper-flavored sauce—and then purchased his transport to Wanderhold. Unlike Wildroad, Crosshaven’s System Stone teleported him immediately. Before he knew it, he was standing in a busy, noisy, odorous market with an atmosphere that was almost the polar opposite of Crosshaven’s tree-bough city.

Sweat began to bead on his forehead, no doubt because the air was so thick with humidity that it hung like a haze in the air. The people in the market were amphibious folk whose green flesh was brightly spotted or striped with yellows, oranges, and blues. The crowd was so dense that people pressed up against him as they walked, and Victor suddenly felt lucky that all of his belongings were safely tucked away in his spirit space.

Most everyone was short by his standards, but even so, he allowed his body to stretch a bit, pushing his height and mass upward until half his body towered over the smaller folk. This made it easier for him to both see where he was going and to push his way through the crowd. He stopped near a stage where an auctioneer rapidly extolled the virtues of the animals he had for sale, and when he’d caught the man’s eye, he gestured toward the busy city street.

“Which way to the System Stone?”

The frog-faced man frowned hugely, but he gestured with his three-fingered hand to Victor’s left.

Victor waved his thanks, summoning a small bag of beads from his spirit space and tossing it toward the guy. Then, he turned and pushed his way onto the busy, puddle-covered roadway. The buildings that loomed on either side of the road were made of a material that resembled bamboo, garishly painted in all manner of designs. Victor tried to make sense of the images, wondering if it was some sort of interpretive art, but all they did was confuse his human sensibilities.

Before long, he came to another wide square, and, sure enough, he saw the monolithic stone rising high above the many ramshackle merchant kiosks. Victor couldn’t breath deeply in that thick, muggy air; it was filled with the rank odor of fish left too long in the sun mixed with an earthy undertone of damp and mud. All he wanted to do was get to that stone, slap his hand on it, and pay whatever the System wanted to travel on.

It turned out his desire wasn’t so easily satisfied. There was an iron railing around the stone, and a dozen toad-like individuals wielding brass polearms guarded its approach. Victor walked up to one of the men—easily four times the size of the other frog-like amphibian people nearby—and nodded toward the dark black monolith, asking, “Can I use the stone?”

“Got yer pass?” the creature asked, chasing the words with a belch.

“Pass?”

“Huh.” He gestured with his polearm. “That way. Office of the Reeve.”

Victor looked down the congested, winding street. There had to be ten thousand beings pressing shoulder to shoulder, rubbing and sliding against each other as they strained to get where they were going. “Far?”

The big toad man shrugged, his brass chainmail vest jangling. “Maybe? Next square, then right.”

“Is the reeve in charge of this stone’s access, then?”

The toad shrugged again, licking its lips with a long, rubbery tongue. “In charge of us.”

Victor began to put things together. Naturally, fees could be adjusted directly through the stone’s interface by the people in control of it. However, if someone like this “reeve” wanted to earn a profit on top of that, he could deny physical access. Victor had no idea what sort of government ran a world like Wanderhold, but he doubted they would be pleased to know the Reeve was extorting people on top of the stone’s usage fees. Still, he didn’t know who they were or how to approach them.

He looked down the road again, contemplating using his ability to fly or teleport to make the journey easier. It wouldn’t be so bad if he did. Still… Victor cleared his throat and said, “How much is the Reeve paying you?”

That got the toad’s attention, and one of his big, yellow eyes swiveled to stare more directly at Victor.

Victor nodded and reached into his spirit space, pulling out a dimensional container. “I could maybe pay you directly. Might save us all a little time. Of course, if you thought the reeve needed a cut, that would be up to you.”

The toad nodded and held up its three-fingered hand, spreading the digits wide from the “thumb.” Victor smiled. “Four hundred?” The toad chortled, its big bulbous neck bulging. Victor sighed and shrugged. “Had to try. Four thousand, then?” The toad’s moist-looking lips spread into a huge smile. Victor dug through his ring, looking for a bag that seemed about right, and then pulled it out, handing it to the creature. “Good?”

“Good,” the toad burbled, moving to the side and clearing the path to the stone.

Victor hurried down before something else came along to interrupt his imminent escape from the unpleasant city. As he brought out enough beads to pay for transit, then put his hand on the stone to navigate the menu, he thought about whether he ought to have simply killed the damn toads who were trying to block him from the stone. He supposed the reason he hadn’t had something to do with reasonable caution; he didn’t know who they represented. He had no idea how powerful the “lords” of that city were or how they’d look upon a stranger resorting to violence in their market square.

In the grand scheme of things, a few thousand beads were nothing to him. The press of bodies, the susurration of flesh rubbing on flesh, weighed heavily against him as he hurriedly selected Vagabond’s Reach. The System drained his beads away and sent him a message:

***Please make your way to a vacant teleportation platform. The platforms are located in the chamber beneath this System Stone. Once you are on one of the platforms, your transit will commence.***

Victor scowled, looking around the stone for a subterranean entrance. After a while, he realized he couldn’t see it clearly because people were swarming around it; the traffic from the roadway had spilled over onto the sidewalk, and frog-people were crawling all over the short flight of stairs leading down to an oval, tarnished bronze doorway. Scowling, Victor moved around the System Stone, stepped over the metal railing, and pushed his way through the crowd to the steps.

The people moved, though they croaked and cursed, and Victor descended to the door where he depressed the lever and pushed it open. Blessed coolness and an escape from the rank odors above welcomed him as he slipped through into a stone-lined subterranean passage. He reduced his size a bit to keep from scraping his head on the damp stones above, and then continued down the dimly lit corridor.

An occasional frog-person passed by as he descended, but the stark contrast to the crowds above made Victor wonder just how much the reeve was charging for access to the stone and its services; clearly, the number of travelers, or potential travelers like him, didn’t properly reflect the teeming populace above.

Eventually, the corridor opened onto a vast underground chamber with several feet of water covering its stone floor. Thankfully, the water was fairly clear, and with the cool temperature of the space, it didn’t smell of anything much at all. Stone platforms dotted the surface of the pool, and each one was covered in concentric rings of tarnished bronze. “Teleport platforms,” Victor guessed.

His theory was proved true when a hirsute individual suddenly appeared on one of the platforms. He was large, covered in thick brown hair, and wore a sword on a baldric over his shoulder. He looked Victor’s way with angry red eyes, then turned and trudged away through the water, exiting via a different corridor.

Victor had seen enough. He focused on a nearby platform and cast Tactical Reposition. As soon as he appeared, feet solidly planted on the bronze ring, his vision blacked out, and the pit of his stomach fell away. A few seconds later, he blinked his eyes, exposed to yet another strange world.

The air was dry and warm, and he had to squint against the bright glare of a yellow sun in a pale blue sky. As his eyes adjusted, Victor saw that he stood atop a stone platform surrounded by miles and miles of golden grass that undulated with the passing breezes. He turned in a slow circle, wondering where the other travelers were, or the city that housed the System Stone. All he saw, though, was more of that golden, foot-tall grass.

There were some hills in the distance, but they were featureless, and the grass grew up and over them, too. He didn’t see a single tree, nor any structure of any kind other than the platform on which he’d arrived. With nothing else to focus on, he studied the platform. It was made of mortared gray stones, uniform in shape and size. Other than the fact that it was something built and not a natural formation, he couldn’t see anything else remarkable about it.

Groaning in frustration, he turned again, in an even slower circle, studying the horizon in every direction. There had to be some clue about where he was or where he should go. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t see any sign of a road or anything else. After several minutes, he grew frustrated enough that he decided to risk starting a brush fire; he summoned his magma wings and launched himself into the sky.

Finally, with the improved perspective, he saw something: a ribbon of red cobbles passing through the sea of grass. He poured Energy into his wings, streaking toward the distant road, and he was halfway there when he saw movement off to his left. He turned that way and continued, focusing on the figures he saw down there on the roadway. There were two people—one much larger than the other—and they were locked in battle, the brilliant gleam of their weapons flashing with sunlight as they fought.