"A book from the last age," the woman, Lady Tamara Daith, muttered, flipping through the pages with a delicate hand. Daith was a bird of a woman, with a narrow build and a sharp nose, her eyes piercing like a hawk's.

Cass sat across a cluttered desk in the crowded office of the mage. Tall shelves consumed the walls, filled from floor to ceiling with tomes. The books spilled out into piles on the floor, more than half of which were stuffed full with notes sticking from the pages.

"I'll admit, it's not every day such a tome wanders through our tower. This will be a welcome payment for my services, even at this less than ideal time."

"Glad to hear it," Cass said.

"Now, what was your request again?" the mage asked. "Interrealm traversal?"

Cass nodded. This was it. She'd finally have an answer. A clear path home. She tensed in her chair, leaning forward.

"Simple answer?" Daith snapped the book shut and set it on the pile of mana-glowing books on her desk. "It is impossible."

"Impossible?" Cass repeated. That couldn't be right. She'd gotten here after all. She was living proof that it could be done.

Was she being scammed?

No, this was Pellen's professor. Would this woman really take her payment and shove Cass out?

"Impossible if you are looking for a practical approach to travel." The woman leaned back in her chair dismissively. "As you aren't an academic, I can only assume that is your concern. You can't become a Traveler. Sorry to burst your dreams of heroics in other worlds."

Cass tensed, her entire body tightening with the mage's accusation. That was so not the point. "Then, from a non-practical point of view, what's your opinion?"

"Oh, it's very theoretically possible," Daith said with a wave of her hand. "Every model of realm (stability?) and spatial barrier (physics?) suggests this world as we understand it only works if there is an 'outside' for our realm to exist within. There must be a Void beyond. And simple probability suggests that it is more likely that there exists an infinite multitude of other realms in that Void than us existing alone in the infinity we believe the Void must be."

"That's all an argument for why other worlds exist," Cass said. There was a lot of technical garbage there and, for the first time in a while, Jothi Language Comprehension was struggling with the translation. But that sounded like none of it was an answer to Cass's question. Was she doing it intentionally?

The mage rolled her eyes. "If I must explain, teleportation, such as the spells my assistant Ioptes has been working on, only work by (piercing?) the spacial barrier of our world, forcing the target out into the Void and then back into this realm at a nearby location. Like a needle plunging through folded fabric."

Cass's patience was quickly running out. "Sewing is famous for connecting multiple disjoint pieces of fabric into a single whole."

There was a pitiful look in the professor's eyes and her voice dripped with condescension. "It does seem like it should be that simple, doesn't it? And it might be, if you were a single needle."

Cass clenched her hands in her lap. She needed this woman's expertise. She had to put up with it for now.

"Ioptes says she used her spell on you? You survived. No bits were left behind here or in the Void. All your bits ended up in the right orientation and at the correct coordinates?"

Cass's stomach turned as she remembered Pellen's warning about her spell's success chances. And the fatal consequences of failure.

"This is just the first obstacle. What is a single 'target' for this kind of spell? We are so used to spells targeting the entirety of an (aura?) body, it is easy to forget that a person is truly made up of an inordinate number of individual components. I speak of components smaller than what you are thinking. Not simply your heart and your lungs and your right hand. But—"

"Individual cells?" Cass interrupted. This might have been a revelation to a world with a medieval understanding of medicine, but not to a modern woman like Cass.

The mage's eyebrow lifted. "You are familiar with the concept? Interesting. I was made to understand you are a useless spellsword sorceress with no Academy backing to speak of."

"I'm educated in other fields."

"Interesting," the mage muttered, a new light in her eyes, suddenly looking at Cass like she were a strange animal, rather than a dull child.

Cass didn't love that much more. She coughed. "You were saying? The first issue is determining which cells, or perhaps even which molecules, to send over the barrier? I imagine if the entire body isn't being recognized by the spell as a single entity, then clothing and equipment need to be accounted for as well?"

"Exactly," Daith said. "Most spells and just about every skill take advantage of the System's understanding of 'entities'. This allows faster, safer, more reliable targeting in almost all cases. A person, the entirety of their body, their immediate effects are all scooped up in the system's (abstraction?) of reality."

That would explain why Cass's Wind Step allowed her to phase into the wind with her clothes and weapons but prevented her from bringing other people with her. Her clothes and weapons were part of 'her' from this abstraction. Another person could only be another 'entity'.

"But when you (shunt?) an entity out of this realm, you momentarily leave the (jurisdiction?) of our System," the mage continued.

"There is a system in the Void," Cass interrupted.

"Of course there is 'a' system in the Void. Just as there is a pull of the abyss and the breath of aether. It's just not our system."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Cass squinted at that explanation. 'Pull of the abyss?' She meant gravity, right? Right? And 'breath of aether?' Was that just the fact that people could breathe in the Void? She wasn't sure about that one.

There had been some sort of gravitational force orienting an up and a down when she'd been in the Void, and, even before turning herself into a slyphid, she hadn't had a problem breathing. She hadn't questioned the why of it. It just seemed like the kinds of things weird void places should have.

But obviously, if it was the pull of gravity, it wasn't the gravity of Earth holding her down. Was it a stretch to assume it also wasn't the system of this world rearranging her body over there?

"The shift between systems causes a (re-indexing?) of entity identities. From the spell's point of view, it is as if the entity simply stopped existing. So the target becomes lost in the Void and the caster experiences catastrophic spell failure as her spell (rebounds?) with nowhere to put the rest of the energies invested into the spell."

"And this is just the first problem?" Cass was beginning to see the difficulty, but this couldn't be the only problem. If it were, Pellen's teleportation spell could not exist.

"This is the primary difficulty in teleportation. It's a theoretically, if not practically, solved problem. However, you were not asking about teleportation." She pointed accusingly at Cass. "You want interrealm travel, which adds a whole host of other issues. Primarily, where do you send your subject?

"We know where this realm is. We have done the experiments to map the movement of realm boundaries to physical distance. It's a steadily improving science, but a science that can be experimented on and explored.

"But what do we do about other realms? We assume, with reason, they exist. There have been times in ages past when we may have even pulled entities from a small subset of realms with a little help from the gods and summoning magic.

"But where are they specifically? How far apart are we? The Void is infinite. Even if we knew the exact location, could we generate enough potential to send an object across the distance?"

How far was Earth from this world? The gods had yanked her over, but Perception had implied it had only been feasible because they'd worked together to do it. Was this something mortals could replicate?

Her chest tightened as the enormity of her goal took shape around her.

"Even if we could, who is to say that realm supports life? There are stories of summoned beasts that come from realms swallowed by abyss or perpetually aflame. Entire worlds without the breath of aether. Realms that are nothing but a vast emptiness of space."

This wasn't her problem. No, her problem was worse. Not just any life-supporting world would do. She needed her specific world. How would she be able to tell from outside it was the right one? How would they find it among the probably infinite realms?

"And even if we found a realm that would not immediately kill our would-be traveler," Daith continued, jumping on the increasingly hopeless look on Cass's face to twist the dagger, "how confident am I that we could get them across the realm's barrier? Our realm has a malleable barrier. There are thin sections; there are thick sections. There are areas that can be made one or the other. There are days these change and moments where the barrier all but disappears on its own. We have carefully mapped these (fluctuations?). Our teleportation spell has (contingency?) cases for nearly every barrier state both on exit and on reentry and still experiences an unacceptably high failure rate.

"But what to do if the target barrier is drastically different? Our theoretical models have a large space of unobserved potential barrier states. Are these simply flaws in our model? Are they examples of states vanishingly rare? Or are they far more common in realm barriers not our own? How do we handle them? Would you be comfortable stepping through a spell with no real-world testing on 80% of the use conditions?"

Could Cass risk her life on such a small chance of making out the other side alive? Would Kaye or Robin want her to die trying to get back to them?

"And then, even if we found a world that was reachable, supporting compatible life, with a barrier we understand and can breach, what then? We have no way to guarantee where in that realm our spell would drop you.

"Assume it is like our Fractured Skies. The vast majority of unique coordinates would place you in the infinite skies with nothing but abyss below. You would fall until you died.

"Even assuming we could target over a land mass, there is only a narrow band of survivable space over land masses. Too high, and the subject falls to their death. Too low, and they materialize inside the solid ground. Our tests in teleportation suggest that it would at least be a quick death."

How narrow was the band she was targeting? Not just a 'survivable space' but specifically a survivable space on Earth. Ideally, in the United States. Appearing on a habitable planet light-years from Earth wouldn't do her any good whatsoever.

How small was that bullseye on a target the size of the infinite universe?

The mage shook her head. "No. We are at least thirty years off stable teleportation. Interrealm travel is a fantasy of the distant future. Maybe the work of gods."

Cass shook her head. Was that it? Was this a dead end?

What about summoning? Salos asked.

Cass repeated the question for the mage.

"Summoning?" Daith snorted. "What about it?"

"Isn't what I want to do the opposite of summoning?" She was grasping at straws. She could see it on the mage's face even as she voiced the question. "Couldn't there be answers in what summoners do?"

"Summoning is god-granted sorcery." The mage grimaced at the suggestion. "And one of the rarer god-granted boons. There are only a handful of summoners in all of the Fractured Skies. If you can get one to show you their magic and you become an expert in transcribing Skill effects into spell forms, maybe you could duplicate the effect. You'll likely be smote for your efforts, but…" She shrugged like that wasn't her problem.

Summoning is that rare these days? Salos muttered. Incredible. In my age, it was hardly something so guarded. But then, perhaps my mistress wanted her specialty to be special to her.

You started in her service as a summoned familiar, right? Cass asked.

Yes, Nyxdra are not natives of this realm. We come from the Abyssal Seas of Azorth. Her face was the first light that graced my eyes. Her service is where I went from nebulous idea of an entity to individual.

It was common in those days for noble children to summon familiars to protect them. That was my calling. His thoughts drifted off, dark and melancholic.

Cass let him. Where did this leave her?

Was this impossible? No. She pushed the rising hopelessness back. She could solve this. Start by restating the problems. "There are 3 problems with using teleportation as a means of interrealm travel.

"1. Defining the traveling entity." Mostly solved. Pellen had at least three successful teleportations in the field. Either luck had been on the little mage's side, or she was much closer to an answer than anyone gave her credit for.

"2. Locating the target realm and safe coordinates within." Where did she start with that? Could some sort of 'reverse summoning' like Salos suggested find Earth from her existence? Should she find a summoner?

"3. Safely crossing the realm boundaries of a foreign realm." More big question marks. Would a summoner know more? Did she need to let mages like Daith and Pellen do more tests? "Do I have that right?"

The mage shook her head. "Sure, if you want to condense the multitude of layered and nuanced problems into three. Sure. Those are them. Simple enough when you arrange it like that, but no more solvable than it was before."

Maybe she would need Perception's help to get home. She grimaced at the thought. Perception could be trusted to the letter of their word and not an implication further. The deal as they'd left it all those days ago in the temple in Hervet had been indefinite servitude for 'a wish'. Not something to stake any plans on.

Not something to consider seriously.

No. If she considered Perception's offer, it would only be after she'd found out what the god was really after. She would need real leverage, not blind desperation.

For now, it wasn't an option either.

Better hope the Scholar's Spire had better answers.

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