48. Through the wormhole (Patreon)

Tercius eyes followed the cloaked form of his uncle, as the man stepped back into the shadow of a brick house. The cloak that covered his uncle from head to toe shimmered with each backwards step, up until Tercius only saw a vague outline.

"Don’t linger, Tercius. Go," his uncle’s voice said, flat as ever. With a small nod and a brief smile, Tercius turned away.

This… is more difficult than I thought it would be, Tercius said internally. A bit over a month ago Tercius and Lux started their journey in Nurium, and now their journey has come to an end here, in Lissea.

The Library stood tall, proud, imposing, and… alone among the low houses and shops that surrounded it. Its many, many stairs lead to the large edifice that today kept its front doors wide open. Tercius crossed the wide street, one of those rare few clear of all snow, the cobbled stones below his feet guiding him forward.

At the first step, Tercius turned back, his eyes going for that shadow where just a minute ago he last saw Lux. His eyes now saw no one, yet still he waved a final goodbye. Taking in a large breath of the cold winter air, he made his way up the stairs.

Around him men and women made their way up and down the stairs, some in groups, some in pairs, and even a few solitary figures. Judging by their coats and cloaks, and the materials used in their make, these folks were rather well-off. Almost everyone carried a bag or a box, behind others crates floated, as if carried by the wind itself.

The whole alien setting and behavior eased his mind, his curiosity billowing out, his eyes wide open making very brief observations of the way the Mana moved where the spells were visible. At the top of the stairs, he made a stop as one particularly large crate had to be floated into the Library. A small granny threw him a smile and a nod when he moved out of the way. On her way forward, she waved one arm in front of her as if conducting an invisible orchestra, the Mana of the spell tied to her fingers.

"I am really doing this," Tercius mutter to himself, as his eyes followed the giant wooden crate, his heart palpitating with glee and wonder.

His first step over the doorway caught the attention of one older man, a gruff, no-nonsense look on his face. With a gaze so sharp, the man must rarely use knives. Tercius thought.

"Now is not a good time to seek knowledge, child, come back sometime in the afternoon." the man said, his thumbs holding onto a leather belt that supported his prodigious belly.

"I am not here for that, Master," Tercius said as his hand caught onto the string around his neck that held the amulet given to him. Pulling it out he showed it to the older man. "I joined your Academy, and Master Belior told me that the transport is scheduled for today."

The man observed Tercius with a narrowed eye and then said, "Then you may proceed. Just go straight down the hallway to the Grand Hall,"

"Thank you, Master," Tercius said.

Tercius left the man near the front door and moved into the Library proper. The hallway leading further in was massive, easily two floors in height, wide and spacious enough for three carriages to drive side by side. The arched ceiling, Tercius noted, was seemingly made just a few years ago. On the walls were paintings, the theme mainly of nature and animals, but here and there a solitary portrait found its place. Lifelike statues dotted the empty space between those paintings, filling a void in-between the paintings. There was this feeling that this hallway lead to something… grand. Aesthetics in his mind were always a secondary concern, to be promptly ignored if something practical came to mind. The Library’s interior made Tercius rethink about that.

The hallway ended abruptly with no obstacle at all. The space expanded left, right and up, into the aptly named Grand Hall.

Tall and wide as the Library itself, the Grand Hall was a good third of the whole building. Every single wall, from the floor to the four-story tall ceiling, was covered with shelves, where wide walkways allowed easy access to the books stored there. Books, scrolls, and some things Tercius never saw before dotted every visible vertical surface, hiding the walls behind. The colored windows broke a bit of that pattern, but they redeemed themselves by letting in the light in perfect quantities for a pleasant read.

Libraries, usually, had an air of peace and tranquility, but here, today, that was not the case. Loud conversations joined the banging and clanging of large quantities of boxes and crates, as people shuffled to and fro with clear purpose.

His curiosity about the impending method of travel the Academy meant to employ. A brief memory of Peridinar's trick with the falling coin box crossed his mind, and the simmering emotions tried to erupt. With great anticipation Tercius observed the proceedings in the Grand Hall, his eyes fighting a losing battle to observe everything at once.

A voice soon brought him out of his musings.

"Tercius! Over here." the bubbly voice of Penelope reached him through the clamor. Jumping up and down, she waved him over. Tercius evaded the moving throng of people and made his way to his new schoolmate's side. Is Academy-mate more appropriate in this case? he mulled over it, and somehow the first seemed more natural. The second was certainly a mouthful.

"Hey Penelope," His eyes searched for the second familiar human, but she was nowhere to be seen. "Where’s your mother?"

Penelope pointed a finger up and shouted, "Upstairs, I just came to watch a bit,"

"Amber?"

"She’s with mother, don’t worry," Penelope said, then turned her head to the center of the Grand Hall.

From where Tercius previously stood, he could not observe what was happening there, but now he saw more. Yet it did not seem enough.

"Penelope," Tercius raised his voice while, pointing his finger to the walkway above them. "Do you know how to go up there?"

She nodded, then marched with a steady step to the wall where the hallway connected to the Grand Hall. In the corner, a small wooden door opened up to a spiral staircase, made of the same stone as the rest of the building. They made their way up, and Penelope used the minute of the ascent to ask him about how his time passed. He told her a very short and vague story, that was true enough, only sorely lacking in details, ending it with his uncle’s farewells at the stairs.

"So he left?" Penelope asked when she heard what Tercius said. "I thought he would come and see us off."

Tercius tried to think up something to say in his uncle’s defense as Penelope seemed to take it even harder than him, but then he thought better than mentioning anything about his uncle between these walls and merely shrugged while saying, "He had urgent business he had to attend to, so he told me to say goodbyes to you two in his name,"

The staircase went further up, but they took the first door they stumbled upon and it lead them to the walkway. The view of the whole room was much more clear, as now the milling people were not an obstacle to their smaller height.

The center of the Grand Hall once more took their full attention, the sights there glued their eyes.

While the rest of the Grand Hall was a beehive of chaos, the center was the exact opposite. In a great circle, twelve figures stood equidistant to each other, each occupying an engraved drawing on the stone floor. One of these figures was familiar to Tercius. Master Belior, his face dignified and eyes closed. His left arm raised, palm vertical, in the direction of the person left of him, his right hand pointing right.

The scene before his eyes, while a bit unusual, surely had more to it than just that. Tercius decided to use Mana Sight to observe and his decision did not disappoint. While the Masters stood still, the same could not be said for their Mana. It kept circling from man to man, woman to woman, racing at great speed, passing from hand to hand. At times, one old lady would send a shaped Mana construct to join something that stood in the center of their circle. It would meld slowly into the whole, like a puzzle piece that had only one spot that fitted it perfectly. What this something was, Tercius could only guess its purpose, but it was made of Mana of the metamorphic kind, he was sure of that.

Observing the Mana this lady sent, Tercius noted how different it looked compared to the Mana he saw from that ice mage. It was difficult to explain, but he likened it to the different variants of the same animal. Take a horse for example. There were white ones, black ones, brown ones and so on. Tall ones, small ones, and so forth. All of them had four legs, the same general body shape, tail, and mane. So similar, yet at the same time so different.

Mana here was not different by color, but rather… something else. Tercius did not know what exactly. Something very difficult to observe, as the difference was very subtle. Maybe when my Mana Sight levels up a bit, I'll be able to observe it, he thought. Tercius attributed this difference to the skill Mana Metamorphosis. The name itself told everything. His excitement surged forth, his want for the skill skyrocketing.

Not knowing what something was, did not prevent observation, oh no. Instead, the unknown encouraged observation, inflaming the bonfires of curiosity. Knowledge was collected and the unknown slowly moved towards familiar, crossing a gap once thought insurmountable. The process that Tercius had every hope to one day employ and finally figure out this conundrum.

Ten minutes passed, and the Masters still stood like statues, their eyes closed.

"How long has this been going on?" Tercius asked Penelope.

Penelope still kept her eyes on the lower floor, but turned her head a bit to him, as she said, "Some half an hour before you arrived. Someone said that this can take up to two hours..."

Tercius nodded his mind in a spin. Do they stay that way for two hours? That's... too long, for people their age. he thought. Tercius and Penelope leaned their elbows on the banister, and he turned his attention from the center point of what he assumed was the ritual Master Belior mentioned the other day, and instead observed the Masters themselves. With the amount of Mana that circled them, it was difficult to tell if they used some kind of spell to stay still like statues. Tercius saw one older man looking easily 20 years older than his grandfather, and he concluded that this must be the case.

At one point, they heard a rumbling sound that overpowered the sounds of the busy room. Inside the ring made of mages, on the stone floor, four holes opened up and from each of them, a pillar rose slowly. One for each cardinal direction, the straight pillars seemed made of some kind of diamond-like crystal. Going up and up, they rose to two meters in height before they made a stop.

Tercius saw one mage carry around a ball the size of your average head, to his eye it seemed made of the same material as the diamond pillars. This mage went from Master to Master, placing the ball near them, and only when he made the whole circle around them did he stop.

Then he threw the crystal ball high above.

Tercius's heart leaped to his throat as the ball started to reach its zenith and when it went into a fall, he almost jumped over the banister in a silly attempt to catch it. The head-sized ball fell only for a moment when as if an invisible hand caught it and held it up, the ball hovered right above the center point of the ring.

"Everyone shut up! I can't even hear myself think," the old lady, the one Tercius saw send Mana constructs to the center point, shouted, her croaking voice sweeping away all chatter and clatter. The silence was so strange after the constant din of noise, and the Master who just shouted gave a loud snort.

From that point on, no one dared to breathe too loudly, for fear of offending the powerful Master.

Penelope nudged him, and with her head, she conveyed her intentions.

They left for the staircase, and once the solid door closed behind them Penelope said, "Let's go get out stuff, it's over an hour since they started,"

Tercius was torn. On one side he wanted to go and get Amber, but the ritual that was going on in the Grand Hall was a rare opportunity to see how these rituals were done in a practical manner.

Still, he would never leave this Library without Amber and his backpack. "Lead the way,"

Tercius followed Penelope up the stairway, and through a door. This door lead to one small hallway, and Penelope opened the first door to the right.

The room was small, two small one-person beds placed opposite each other, with a small strip in the middle left for access to the small window that was opposite to the door.

"There you are," Seliana said, as she sent a smile his way. "And not a moment too soon. Come, grab your things,"

In the space between the beds, on the floor were three small cages, each one with a small animal inside. As soon as Tercius appeared at the door, Amber went into a frenzy of movement and sound making. With haste, Tercius moved to her cage and let out the fidgety river lion, who jumped to his arms as soon as the door was out of the way. Running up his arms, she made her way up, her intentions clear. Tercius adjusted his arms for her to move over and she jumped to lick his face, as a wide smile spread on his face. He took her with one hand, careful of his strength and her durability, or rather the lack thereof.

"Thank you Seliana, for taking care of my pet and my belongings," Seliana said in mock imitation of his voice. The woman snorted, a gust of wind exiting her nostrils.

Tercius repeated the line, word for word, all the while little Amber kept using her sandpaper tongue to lick his nose, mouth, and cheeks. "I've missed you too," Tercius whispered to the small reptilian lioness.

With the reunion over, he grabbed his backpack and took another bag from Penelope. The backpack went to its intended place, while the bag he carried with his right hand. Amber snuggled up to him, taking her usual place under the cloak in the crook of his left arm.

Penelope and Seliana took their travel bags, with an additional small animal cage per person. Penelope's pets were still uninterested in playing the role of a pet, the Salamander snapping its jaws anytime someone came near, threatening to bite off whatever came near him, while the little bird merely ignored everyone, seemingly uninterested in associating with plebeians. Penelope was envious of the bond Tercius and Amber shared, and hoped to share a similar one with Draco, the Salamander, and Zel, the Vrasta. Both animals would likely escape as soon as they left the cage, so seeing how Amber reacted to Tercius's return stung Penelope.

They went down, using the main stairway that led to the hallway, right near the front door. From there the three of them headed for the Grand Hall, accompanied by a few guests that, like Seliana and Penelope, took the offer of the Library's staff to use the provided lodgings. Tercius began to wonder why they called the building a Library when it was so much more.

They moved forward, stepping into the silent Hall, only a slow thrum heard in the air as the Masters did their work. Tercius took to observing their work, but he understood little of what they did. Still, he memorized as much as he could, as one never knew when something might come in handy. His skill Visualization would help with recollection, if or rather when the time came for this knowledge to be of use.

The old woman, who in Tercius's eyes was the leader of this ritual, opened her eyes and said, "Power the shield, the time is right."

From the diamond pillars, a shield wove itself, looking like something one would see in a hive of bees, a grid of hexagons spreading from one pillar to the other, enclosing the center point of the ritual completely. Up, down, and on all four sides, the shield was a cube, the Masters standing just around its outer edges.

"Now," the old lady croaked the order, and suddenly Tercius felt Mana exit the statuesque mages, the air itself shuddering from the quantity that passed through, the Mana visible without any skill needed. Some of this Mana headed for the shield, while the other part went through the shield to the center of the Mana construct that the old lady carefully made during the ritual.

Once there the Mana seemed to give the much-needed fuel to the spell, and a muffled boom echoed when the construct absorbed the offered Mana.

"You can take down the shield," came another order, and a few mages jumped to obey, putting their hands on the diamond pillars. A moment later the hexagons started to sink back into the pillars, leaving a strange mass of ever-changing black goop, roiling in the middle of the air, right where Tercius saw the Mana constructs go.

The Masters moved for the first time since Tercius came to observe them, and they came closer to that mass, sending Mana into it, while the old lady moved her hands as is she tried to stretch an invisible rope. One hand pulled left, the other right, and as her hands moved further away from each other, so did the mass expand. The edges of the mass were still a chaotic mess, but there in the center, Tercius saw a glass surface.

A vision of another space greeted his eyes.

Tercius swallowed his saliva, his eyes wide open, as his mind went into overdrive. Are they... Did they... Is that a... A wormhole? How? How is this possible? Tercius was simultaneously covered in a cold sweat and... excited. A tantalizing, sexual kind of excitement, a promise of pleasure and an overwhelming desire for more. Tercius knew deep down he needed to learn this.

In a few moments, the black roiling mass was spread out to the same dimensions of the front door of the Library.

A few of the Masters that were there for the ritual immediately went to the glass surface, sinking into it with nary a ripple. Tercius saw them moving away on the other side. They went on their way as others came to this side. Only when these people were out of the way did Master Belior raise his voice and stated to everyone present that the new students and the support staff are to be the first to cross over.

There were a dozen of students, besides Penelope and Tercius, while Seliana joined the so-called support staff.

"In pairs, line up. Just walk forward, and don't stop," Master Belior said and chuckled at some of the expressions he saw.

The first pair went in, and then another, then one more.

It was Tercius's and Penelope's turn finally, and as the glass surface neared, his insides churned. Whether from excitement or fear he did not know. He closed his eyes firmly, letting his feet carry him forward.

The only sign of crossing over, that he felt, was a brief sensation of cold that washed over him.