***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Astra***

When we returned to Mount Aerie, we encountered a pleasant surprise at the clan mansion.

Mary and Gunnar had been released from the hospital, and they seemed to be fine, considering the circumstances. They were not in perfect health, but at least their doctors did not expect them to keel over dead if left to their own devices.

Mary was almost back to her old self. On the other hand, Gunnar had experienced a drastic metamorphosis. The starfish mutation had begun the process of rebuilding his body to a younger version, which clashed with all his cybernetic implants. It had been touch and go for several days as the doctors had to consider when to remove an implant which was in the process of being rejected by the body.

Without some of the organisation's life support systems, there would have been no chance of getting him through the process.

Gunnar still looked like he had been through hell, but the doctors were confident he would make a full recovery.

As expected, the kittens were a total success with the kids. Except for having to teach the children how to handle cats, I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself with some time on my hands only three days after our return. The cats were sleeping, and the kids were at the crib to socialise.

Sitting alone on the couch in our living room, I realised that Magnus had made himself scarce since our return, leaving everything to be handled by me.

Grumbling, I got up and searched for my parents, who I found in the mansion's common room.

"Have you seen Magnus around?" I asked.

Etan didn't look up from the book he was reading, but he provided an answer. "My spies are telling me that he visited Gilbert's estate over the last three days. Some project involving his armour or equipment. I did not look into the details yet."

The room was silent for several seconds until Etan realised that both Teresa and I were staring at him.

"What?"

"You still have some of our spies trailing Magnus?" Teresa asked.

"Of course! That guy is important. Not to mention that he is a loose cannon. I want to know what kind of trouble he is going to cause next before it knocks on our door." He returned to reading his book.

Teresa looked at me and shrugged.

Not knowing how to react, I sighed and left. In a way, Etan was right – and at the same time, he was not. As a member of the family, Magnus deserved more trust.

And yet, it was Magnus!

"Aaah!" I ruffled my hair and decided to pretend I didn't know how I got to know about my partner's whereabouts.

As soon as I left the mansion, I began flash-stepping, forgoing the lengthy carriage ride which would have been my second choice of transportation.

When I arrived at the Kline's estate, I was informed that Magnus had hijacked Gilbert's workshop, including the assistants – thankfully with the old artisan's blessing. It didn't take long for one of the servants to bring me there.

Magnus was at a table with several men and women surrounding him as he gave some explanations on space mechanics and physics while assembling a small device.

I reached them and looked over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Ah!" Magnus twitched and dropped a little gear he had been trying to set into a contraption which was the size and shape of a small tablet. It looked like it was foldable to be easily held in one hand, yet its purpose was not obvious. The insides looked like they involved lots of magnets and clockwork-like machinery.

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"Astra, you gave me a fright," he complained while he fished with a pair of tweezers for the dropped gear.

"Sorry, but what have you been doing here? And where is Gilbert?" I asked and scanned the workshop for the missing elder.

"Gilbert has been called to the moonbase. Apparently, they found some more or less important gizmo there, for which they need his expertise," Magnus explained while he finished assembling the device. "Meanwhile, he was so nice to lend me the expertise of his crew to make this! Thanks, by the way! I am certain I couldn't have made this without offloading the hands-on stuff on you people. I am more of a theory guy."

The gathering around us gave nods and words of appreciation. But judging by their behaviour, they were more interested in whether this device would perform its intended purpose.

I couldn't take it any longer. "So, what is it? It looks like a small, handheld tablet, but it doesn't have a screen."

He cleaned the device's insides with a compressed-air gun to make sure that there was as little dust as possible. Then Magnus covered the delicate machinery with a piece of glass which he press-fitted into place.

"This is something I was thinking about ever since I saw the alien teleporter, the spatial drill. It was so simple in its design, and yet it worked with so little power! What humanity has been doing with the wormholes is akin to hammering a nail through a metal plate with brute force. The spatial drill takes more time, but it needs a lot less energy."

He opened and closed the device several times, adjusting small sliders on the inside, which apparently controlled the gear system. Then he carefully placed his thumb and index finger on two golden contacts in the opposing upper corners of the device.

"Do you remember your experiment with the spatial distortion? The one where you blew us up?"

I wet my lips, simultaneously taking a step backwards. "Unfortunately."

Seeing my reaction, the tight circle of interested onlookers quickly thinned out.

"Well, the problem with your approach is that even if you do everything correctly, you can never allow your attention to stray, or bad things will happen. With this, controlling the effect should be much easier. And even if it runs out of energy, it should do so in a controlled shutdown," Magnus explained as he activated the device.

The gears began to spin, and with them, I could see the build-up of a magnetic field with my second sight. "I still don't get it."

"Be patient! It should take some time to get going. In its final form, it should be the solution to all of our energy problems. The perfect battery, if you want to call it such."

The more power Magnus injected, the more the magnetic field spun, reminding me of my own experiment. At the same time, the device seemed to distort in Magnus's hand, and he let out a grunt. "I need more power to get it going. The spin-up is a little more energy-intensive than I anticipated."

One of the assistants stepped forward and ripped a power cord out of one of the machines on the workbench. Within seconds, she had rigged up an easily accessible connection to the workshop's power grid – one that surely violated several safety regulations.

Magnus tapped into the power line with his free hand while he kept controlling the device with the other. Then it happened, the device warped, literally shrunk in his hand, until all that was left was a small ring of glass and metal which still showed bent gearing spinning within. The effect was mind-boggling to look at.

Magnus laughed like a maniac and raised the ring above his head.

"One ring! One ring to-"

I slapped the back of his head. "No!"

He huffed.

"You are not going to say it!" I threatened.

"You don't even-"

"You were going to quote Lord of the Rings!" I raised a warning finger. "I watched that one."

"Hmpf. You are such a bore." Magnus grunted and concentrated on the ring. Within his fingers, it suddenly widened several times in diameter, and what I could only call a miniature wormhole formed within.

He grabbed the tweezers from earlier and dropped them inside. Then he returned the device to its ring form, and the wormhole disappeared. He put it on his ring finger and studied it carefully from all sides as if he wasn't sure whether it would snip off his finger at any moment.

"What is going on?" I asked, trying to process what I had just seen. Somehow, Magnus had applied Gaia's teachings about spacetime mechanics and my little experiment to the alien technology and created… a miniature wormhole generator? No. This wasn't a wormhole per se. It was just warping space. Could it take any shape?

"Aside from storing energy in the form of electromagnetic movement, the device can manipulate the space around it. Or rather, the space it inhabits. Yes, that would be more accurate. It is still the tablet from earlier, but to us it now looks like a ring. And when I dropped the tweezers through that 'portal', I dropped them into a space-pocket on the device's surface."

Magnus took off the ring and returned it to its larger form, reactivating the portal. Then he turned it around, and the tweezers dropped onto the table as if he had poured them out of a glass. "Now, the only question that remains is how much power we can store in this prototype – and how much space it can warp while remaining stable. Oh, and how many shapes we could pre-program into it. There are so many possibilities! I just chose a ring for the prototype because it is a very simple form and it seemed perfect for the storage function."

Then he turned around and grinned at his audience. "Admit it!"

"Admit what?" I asked, still too baffled by his invention to keep up.

"That I am a genius!"

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