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The Gate, I thought even as my body tensed, like I hadn’t had enough to deal with. Fucking old council fogies. If it wasn’t for their overwhelming enthusiasm to punish me, I would have no need to visit that horrible place. 

My first destination wasn’t the Gate, however. No, I first went to my apartment to make some preparation. You start by preparing for the trip extensively, making sure everything was in order. 

My preparation started with preparing a good meal before I started picking up my weapons. I pulled a steak from the freezer, magic dancing on the surface. Thigh meat of a colossal chimera, one of the rare magical luxuries I was able to get in my home dimension. 

Ironically, acquired in the Gate. 

The Gate was a curious location. It was a place, but only in a very loose definition of a palace. A more accurate definition was that it was a wound. A penetrative, rough wound on the soul of the Earth, a remnant of an old war three thousand years ago, the same war that had resulted in the collapse of the great magical civilization of Earth. Hittites, Mycenaeans, Assyrians, and great independent Mesopotamian cities with their Sorcerer-Kings. Only Egypt survived among the great magical kingdoms, but with most of their great priests fallen, and the providence of their Pharaohs depleted. 

Ironically, trying to cure the great wound consumed those kingdoms more than the battle itself. But compared to leaving a gaping entrance to the Beyond, the collapse was the preferable alternative. 

The Gate was the result of closing the wound, one of the greatest band-aids that were ever designed. 

The band-aid reference was deliberate. Like a band-aid, it didn’t cure the wound, nor did it isolate the wound perfectly. It just added a layer of protection, preventing simple incursions from the Beyond from happening. However, unlike an ordinary band-aid, the Gate existed in multiple dimensions, stitching every existence of the wound simultaneously. 

And as a side effect, it created conceptual thinness on Earth, allowing magic-sensitive people to step through the weak spots to the Gate. The magical equivalent of a global transportation hub.

Unfortunately, that hub was built a wound leading to the Beyond, meaning while it was fast, it was hardly the safest location. Therefore, only the most desperate of the magical creatures and the most helpless of the magic users used the Gate for the purposes of travel, both between different locations on Earth, and to the different dimensions. 

Unfortunately, one trait of human civilization was shared across every single sentient life form, both natural and unnatural. Once the desperate gathered to one place, the parasites trying to abuse them were not too far away. 

According to the historical records, it took almost no time for the Gate to transform from a desperate travel method to the single biggest illegal magical market of Earth. From there, its transformation into an extremely dangerous magical ghetto where a wrong turn or a wrong word could cost its participants more than their life, was a natural evolution. 

It didn’t burst into total chaos, only because some of the more infamous creatures decided that the existence of a natural market might be beneficial for their operations. While the Council officially disapproved of the existence of such marketplaces with a standing order for their extermination, I personally knew three members unofficially getting very substantial bribes from such ‘illegal’ locations in exchange for protection. 

I didn’t know the Gate had a similar arrangement, but I had no reason to believe otherwise. 

However, the illegal links didn’t mean that I, as an official council sorcerer — albeit one with the status of an exile — had any kind of preferential treatment. On the contrary, it might very well be the opposite, depending on the identity of the theoretical supporter of the market. Though, that was a pointless gesture, because I wouldn’t dare to visit that place under my real identity. 

My presence there was enough for instant execution, for violating the terms of my exile. I could only visit there under disguise. 

However, before I went to my wardrobe, I stayed in my kitchen, cooking the Chimera steak to medium-well. Unfortunately, my cooking was hardly a match for a dedicated magical chef, nor I did have some of the traditional side dishes. A can of diet coke was hardly a replacement for a thousand-year-old magical wine, after all. I enjoyed the unique texture of the steak nonetheless, savoring each bite. 

A magical steak, even a low-quality one that I cooked myself, was a rare pleasure, the one I intended to enjoy, especially before a dangerous trip.  

By the time I was done eating, I could feel the additional magic flowing in my veins. The reason I decided to eat such a rare delicacy in a relative hurry in the middle of the day. The extra magic was hardly a considerable upgrade compared to my reserves, of course, but that didn’t change the biggest benefit of it. It was magic, coming from a foreign source. 

Exactly what I needed to properly conceal my identity. 

I closed my eyes, focusing on the steak that was being digested, extracting every single scrap of magic from it, gathering it to a little ball, concealed by my own magic. 

It was not the time to use it yet. 

I went to my wardrobe, trying to decide what kind of disguise to wear, which, admittedly, was a more difficult question than it might first seem. The Gate was not a monolithic entity, but an ever-changing dominion of different species, sometimes daily. 

However, there were some constants. 

Vampires, for example, were one of the constants of the Gate. Never the strongest, nor the most expanded one, but with a relatively stable holding. Unfortunately, they were less the misunderstood pitiful creatures cursed to unlife by an accidental bite, and more monsters who decided to deliberately transform themselves into a fleshy monstrosity through long, painful, and most importantly, very deliberate rituals. Oh, they were charismatic enough to fulfill their misunderstood victim role, but there were only two endings for their poor gullible victims. Death, or becoming a mindless thrall.

Vampires were dangerous, because they were true vermins, and it was hard to guess just how far their power extended. True vampires were not only rare, but also they lacked the power to truly match the top-tier hitters of the other factions. But their ability to use their rapidly-created thralls for their disgusting aims made them a dangerous enemy to anger. More than one magical organization learned that the hard way. 

Shifters were another strong group, though their reputation was even less accurate than the vampires. First of all, unlike their modern reputations, their status was definitely not transmissible. I had no idea that part of their myth had even come from. At least, vampires created their thralls by biting. 

No, most shifters were relatively accomplished nature casters, rain-callers of the Native Americans, Druids of the old Gaul and Celts, paganistic witches of the North, dervishes of the old Anatolia, and other monastic cults. Unfortunately, unlike the vampires, their footprint on Earth was almost completely eradicated. Rome dealt the first true blow to their strongest incarnation, Druids, while rain-callers had been exterminated by the Spanish expansion to the new world. Crusades had cleaned up the rest. 

It was a pity, but their ending was to be expected. Trying to protect the nature against ever-growing strength of human-centric empires was a helpless task. 

Shifters, popularized by their strongest combative wolf shifters, also known as the werewolves, was one of the strongest among the groups that battled to dominate the Gate in terms of total combat power, connecting with nature strongly enough that their soul had aligned with their totem beast, enough that the connection bled back to their physical bodies, transforming them into an idealized version of their totem animal at will. Their transformed state was a dangerous foe, especially with their famous magical immunity. Their long ages, some easily reaching thousand years without a significant strain, made them even more dangerous. 

Unfortunately, their power sphere was far smaller than their power might have implied. The reason, their roots. After all, despite their shared skill set, a druid from old Britannia and a spirit-caller from India had nothing in common other than the nature of their magic. 

Ironically, their long lives were their biggest problem in establishing their faction. Without their leaders being replaced by the younger ones, they were focused on their tradition, to a point that every single group under their faction had impossible-to-mend grudges against each other. 

Of course, shifters and vampires were two of the dozens of significant powers, some eclipsing both greatly. I focused on them, because I knew that Monica had active contacts with both factions. Without a doubt, she had other contacts with those factions, of course, but they were her most prominent connections. And since she mentioned the Gate but didn’t mention anything else, there was a very high chance it was one of them. Otherwise, she would have given me another clue. 

I only hoped that they weren’t involved together. 

Oh, god, please, don’t let both of them be involved at the same time. 

“Of course,” I murmured with a sudden realization as I pulled a black cloak and a unique staff from a secret compartment of my wardrobe. With my luck, of course, both factions were involved at the same time. Why else Monica would have warned me to stay away so emphatically. And here I was, going to put my nose where it didn’t belong, in a condition where I could only use a fraction of my powers to make sure I stayed concealed.

Sometimes, I really, really hated the old fogies of the council…