(POV Gerald)

The fortress devolves into chaos, with demons and imps fleeing in fear from their former leader. Most of them are leaving the fortress in its entirety, leaving only a few either locked in cages, hiding or not realising what’s going on.

Makes me wonder whether I should absorb a few in the confusion. I’ve already seen plenty of evidence that these are terrible people: violence at the drop of a hat, constant deception, no respect for their fellows, they were about to invade the Empire and potentially kill my friends…

So I pick one nearby that’s on his own, and lie in wait on the ground in the direction he’s running. When he moves over me, I’ll absorb his legs, he’ll fall down, I’ll absorb the rest of him…

He runs without changing direction, running directly over me. I start absorbing in every direction that’s not towards myself or downwards, expecting him to fall towards me.

His legs do get absorbed, but before he can fall, I get pulled upwards – at quite the speed, too. In less than a second, I’ve absorbed the demon clean in half and am hurtling into the air, whizzing in random directions.

 

I turn off absorb. My upward motion slows, and after a few seconds, reverses directions.

Why didn’t I realise this before!? Of course! Absorbing the air above myself results in a vacuum, which sucks everything in its surrounding to fill the gap – including me. Normally, with me using absorb in all directions, the net velocity is still towards the ground due to gravity, but with me only using it upwards, it results in me getting sucked upwards!

If I pair this with telekinesis, I’ll probably be able to get to absurd speeds without much effort at all. I gotta try this out… in a moment. I absorb the rest of the demon and check what I got from it.

Flattery and deception?

…I’m not going to absorb any more demons. Their skills are terrible. I feel embarrassed just by those skills existing on my status.

So, this new way of movement…

I start absorbing the air above me again, sending me flying into the air again. Like last time, I’m getting flipped constantly and moving in random directions. The influence of my irregular shape, no doubt. Maybe if I was a more regular shape… wait, with my mana regen decreased, can I sustain the cost of form manipulation anymore?

…After a few calculations I determine that while I can no longer stay in any form indefinitely, I can stay in another form for almost eight hours, so it barely matters anyway.

Forming myself into a small disc with a little bit of thickness – a shape I assume is best for omni-directional movement in an environment with gravity – I try again.

This time, there is only a little bit of wobble, something I believe I’ll have to learn to deal with until I can raise the proficiency of form manipulation to the point that I can make perfect shapes. I shoot almost directly upwards at great speeds.

I slowly tone down the speed of my absorption until I hang in the air, neither falling nor rising. As I sit there, the ground just visible far below me, I briefly consider going into space.

Without the need to breath, and having a body made out of quite a tough metal, I should be able to survive out there, right?

But then again, why should I? It’s space. There’d be nothing there for me to see or do, just… emptiness.

I suppose if I manage to regain proper sight someday, it might be an interesting thing to do.

But for today, I think I’ll stick to intra-planetary flight. For a while, I spend my time getting used to this new method of movement. Compared to telekinesis, movement via absorb-induced vacuums requires much more finesse.

Moving with telekinesis is like holding yourself up with an invisible hand; completely straightforward. On the other hand, this is controlling myself by creating pulls in various directions, and I have to carefully manage it so that the pull is neither many times greater than I need it to be, nor too small.

Still, after a few hours of practice I manage to get a hang of simple movement. You won’t be seeing me doing loop-de-loops, but I can at least change directions at will and somewhat reliably control my speed.

After I’ve determined that I have adequate control, I change back to my original form and resume using telekinesis to move. Using telekinesis allows for low to medium speeds indefinitely, while this new technique allows me to move at low to very high speeds for approximately eight hours.

I don’t have anywhere to go, so I’m in no rush, therefore telekinesis. Deciding to check on the fortress one last time, I descend to the ground and travel back towards it.

I find it nearly abandoned, with only the leader and a few frightined survivors still inhabiting it. The demon leader appears to have calmed down, as rather than killing his followers and destroying his fortress, he is sitting back in his room, head in hands.

The fortress itself paints a sorry picture: due to all the walls he destroyed, small sections of it have collapsed. He avoided only a few areas, judging by the trail of destruction: the fortress walls, his own room, and the treasury.

Looks like there are a few interesting things in there, but unforktunately I have no means of carrying or using them.

So, seeing that all is well and there’s nothing left to do, I leave the place for the last tine.

…Where did I come from, where do I go…

Hm. I pick a random direction – not the one I went in to run away from the magic – and start flying in it.

---

Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m in the middle of nowhere, without a clue if there’s even anything in the direction I’m going, hoping that, against all odds, there’s a clue on how to get back to Odwia somewhere.

…Huh. Almost feels like I’m 18 again, scrabbling to get a job and with no clue what the fork I was doing with my life. I often wondered if the people who designed the Australian education system are stupid, because it puts so much emphasis on skills that you never use again, but never teaches you how to do things THAT YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO DO TO CONTINUE LIVING ON THE CONTINENT.

You know, things that you’re legally obligated to do? Writing a resume? Finding a job? Taxes? Voting? Nope, knowing how to write essays about terribly boring books is obviously more important than all that.

It feels like… You turn eighteen, and then everyone just assumes you know all these things. How to manage a bank account. How to iron clothes, how to shave… little but important things that people somehow think you already know, presumably by some form of psycho-osmosis.

…Why am I getting so emotional? I don’t even need to worry about any of that anymore. I suppose this bleak landscape just brings out the worst in me.

It’s not all empty, you know. There are occasional buildings, although most of them are ruins. Plants too, although they are sparse and often hidden in cracks and the like. I’ve even seen a plant growing at the bottom of a pool of liquid I’m now certain is lava: I saw a tiny, creepy insect fly over it and have its wings instantly disintegrate.

How a plant can grow in the doubly impossible conditions of extreme heat and extremely heavy liquid rock suffocating it is beyond me, but it’s there, so it must be possible. Somehow.

---

The first thing I see are the fields. Growing in them are strange plants… I’ve seen their like a few times as I travelled, but never paid much attention to them. Most of the fields are dedicated to growing a single type of plant – it has a long, thick stalk that widens at about waist height and forms a sort of inverted bell shape.

That bell is hollow and filled with some sort of liquid; not lava this time, I don’t think. Demons roam these fields with ladles and buckets, collecting the liquid from these plants. In true Hell fashion, however, even these plants seem to be out to kill. Hidden under the upper lip of the bell are wickedly sharp teeth, and boy are they effective.

I see one demon get just a little bit lax as he dips in the ladle, and next thing he knows, he’s holding onto a worthless handle as the plant swallows the fragments of its head.

The ladles are made of metal; I can tell by the smoothness.

Having lost his ladle, the demon curses and kicks the plant, which just lightly sways. Spitting into it, he trudges off towards the storehouse to fetch another ladle.

The demons refer to these as Jawbulbs and share a sort of love/hate relationship with them. They collect the liquid from the bulbs and drink it, but clearly nobody wants to be on collection duty.

…It also tastes terrible, apparently.

As I get close enough to see the city itself, I breathe a mental sigh of disappointment. I had hoped that this place might have some hint of civility, but no. No, it doesn’t. It’s exactly the same as the fortress, just on a larger scale.

Oh, there are guards, shops, houses… But instead of being disciplined upholders of the law, the guards taunt the workers as they pass by and demand payment every time they go through the gates, seemingly basing the amount solely on how much they dislike the worker in question.

Rather than bargaining at shops, demons threaten, cajole, bribe or blackmail their way into cheaper deals. Guards often pop by to collect ‘taxes’ (read: bribes) and mess up the shop if the reply isn’t to their liking.

I watch as a demon breaks into someone’s home, murders the occupant, steals everything and then casually slips a pouch of gold to a passing guard as he walks out. The guard accepts the money and continues on his way.

The reigning group is no better; talk among the town tells me that daggers in the night and poisoned food are so common that someone gets replaced every other day.

It’s hard to figure out the exacts, though; the people seem to switch freely between English and another language I’m not at all familiar with.

Nevertheless, without any better alternative I set myself down outside the walls of the city to watch and listen.

This world is actually called Hell, by the way. I’ve seen it referred to as such by several demons.

Talk about Odwia is scarce. The demons talk about it in a similar way to how people back on Earth talk about Antarctica: on one hand we know it exists, but on the other hand we know we’re probably never going to go there. Still, from their words they seem to view Odwia as a paradise that they wish they could take for themselves.

Well, seeing this Hell, who could blame them for thinking so highly of Odwia?

Perhaps the strangest thing, though, is this one guy standing near the entrance to the city. ‘Hello, would you like to become one with our lord and saviour?’ He asks to every passing demon, imp and creature. The line, and even the way he says it, is eerily similar to that man that was near the entrance of Port Acktown.

Unlike everyone else in the city, that particular demon is never bothered by anyone. In fact, others seem to give him a wide berth…

---

Several days pass, by my reckoning, without so much as a peep about portals or any other form of instant transportation between worlds. And to say that I’m sick of watching these demons is an understatement. A severe understatement.

It’s like they simply don’t understand how to be kind, or even have common courtesy.

…Maybe they don’t.

Apart from the watching, I’ve spent my days laying inconspicuously on the ground, practicing either form manipulation or telekinesis in endless cycles of drain, meditate repeat. That, of course, has also been training meditation at the same time.

Due to the location, I didn’t want to do anything too showy with telekinesis, so I either tested the limits of my control my lifting motes of dust from the ground, or the limits of my psychic brawn by pushing against the city walls. Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t made so much as a mark on the walls.

None of them have advanced a proficiency level, but they’re increasing. Slowly.

I wonder if I should wander around some more, try and find a different city. Maybe I’ll have better luck somewhere else.

After another day of looking at the city, I quickly decide that I’ve had enough. I need a break from witnessing rampant murder, theft, slavery and any other crime you could care to name.

So I lift myself off the ground and leave, without anyone knowing I was there in the first place.

---

As I’m leisurely flying across the surface of Hell, I come across a rather massive pool of lava. It’s so large, in fact, that when I’m floating above the middle of it, I can’t see land in any direction.

Just to be safe, I’m flying at a considerable height over this thing. I’m not going to risk it when I know neither the melting point of mithril nor the current temperature of the lava to compare. I highly doubt that I wouldn’t melt if I fell into that stuff.

The surface of this lava lake suddenly starts to distort and bulge upwards.

Seeing this, I increase my altitude.

It continues to bulge upwards, in what would probably look like a massive bubble of lava from the outside. Except unlike a bubble, it’s completely filled with lava.

I increase my altitude.

It continues to expand until it’s upwards of 100m tall, and about 20m wide.

I increase my altitude by quiiiiite a bit.

Arms split off from the main trunk and reach down towards the lava, grabbing a molten gob of it…

That’s it, vacuum movement engaged!

A gob of mana flies through the air behind me as I speed up, quickly leaving the lake of lava – and its inhabitant – far behind.

This place… Is not tourist-friendly.

---

Later, after I’ve calmed down from the giant lava monster encounter, I am again flying slowly through the air.

This would be pleasant… If the landscape below me wasn’t cracked, desolate and filled with innumerable ways to die.

From thin air, mana appears and encapsulates me. Before I can react, it has already dissipated.

And I’m in another place. In someone’s hands.

How who where why?

‘Oh! This one looks just fine. Clean…’ It raises me to its nose and sniffs. ‘No stench of blood, either. Finally, I get something that isn’t a weapon. I should have known using ‘fork’ as the condition was a bad idea. Especially in Hell.’

I say ‘it’ not because it’s an object or non-gendered being, but because it’s so… poofy. It’s a little difficult to see. But that’s… Yeah, ok, should be male.

His bushy tail twitches, and then he suddenly stands tall. ‘Food! I’m not going to be able to get any good food here! I’ll have to summon it from another world again…’ The human-sized squirrel mutters to himself sadly.

…He’s talking like he’s not from Hell. And if he knows how to get here, maybe he knows how to leave, too.

Here we go again.

I initiate a telepathic link with the squirrel. “Hello.”

“Wah!”  Dropping me, a long dagger appears in the squirrel’s hand from nowhere. “Someone’s in my head… Who are you!? Where are you!? Since I’m asking, what are you!?”

Wow. Um. “Calm down, please. I’m friendly.”

“If you’re friendly, then where are you!?” Accuses the squirrel.

“Well, nobody else I’ve seen in Hell has been friendly, so I’m just… taking precautions.” I lie. I’m actually right next to his foot… But he doesn’t need to know that yet.

“Oh… Is it that bad? I’ve heard about it, but then again, I’ve never met anyone who’s actually been here before, so…” He trails off. “Then, why take the risk with me?”

“You don’t look like you’re from around here. Neither am I, but I don’t have a way to get back. I heard you talking and thought you might.” I explain, seeing that he seems to be reasonable.

“Yes-no-kinda?” He says uncertainly. “If I’ve been to the world before, I can go back, but otherwise it’s up to luck. Which world are you from?”

“Odwia.” I hold my metaphorical breath.

“Odwia? Heard of it, heard of it. Who hasn’t heard of it?” He says rhetorically. “Haven’t been there, unfortunately. Still, we can try our luck.”

“Wait, you’re still willing to help me? Don’t you have something you wanted to do here?” I ask in disbelief.

“Here? No. It’s like I said before, it’s up to luck which world I go to. With my luck, it’s a wonder that I haven’t wound up in Hell before now.” He muses. “This place is hot, I doubt there’s any good food or water, and the residents have a reputation of being violent and evil. Who would want to go here?”

“I will have to wait until my mana regenerates, however.” He continues glumly. “We’re both stuck here until then. So, are you going to show yourself, or are we just going to keep talking awkwardly like this until we’re ready to go?”

“Yes-no-kinda. Seems my luck is a little better than yours, see. I’m Gerald. The only living fork in existence.” I say dryly.

“Living fork? Wait… fork? OH!” He exclaims, looking down at me.

“Yep. That’s me.” I lift myself off the ground and onto the table in front of us.

He shakes his head in amazement. “I knew that took way too much mana for it to just be because of the mithril. Right, right. Introductions. I’m Dreyer, a Squirrel Beastman space-based randomising summoning mage.”

“That is… A considerably long title.” I note.

“It is, but I rarely use it. It’s not a good idea to tell every person you meet your specialities, so I normally just go by Dreyer.” Dreyer shrugs. “Rather than that, I’m more interested in you. How do you see, hear… do anything?”

“Unconventional skills.” I explain. “Mana sight lets me see to a certain degree, lip-reading allows me to follow conversations, telepathy allows me to talk – as I’m doing right now – as well as a few others for movement and so on.”

Dreyer shudders slightly. “That sounds…”

“Pretty horrible compared to normal people, yes. I’ve been hoping to learn magic at some point that I can use to replace the missing senses, but so far I’ve had no such luck.” I sigh. “Don’t suppose you’d be able to teach me?”

Shaking his head, Dreyer replies, “I don’t know the sort of magic that could help you with that. I could look through my spell books, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful.”

“Could you at least teach me some basics? Common knowledge sort of stuff?” I ask pleadingly.

Pulling out the chair, he sits down. “I can do that much. What do you know about magic already?”

“Magic is split up into creation, destruction, restoration, alteration, summoning and illusion?” I reply hesitantly.

“I’ll take it you know next to nothing, then.” Dreyer leans back in his chair.

“What you said is… Partially correct. Any spell can be split into three parts: let’s call them method, execution and objective. Or, how you are casting the spell, what type of spell you are casting and what you are trying to do with the spell. The objective part can be split up into those six categories you mentioned earlier - although there are countless sub-categories as well. They speak for themselves, I think.” He begins.

Scratching his head, he continues. “There are significantly fewer methods, although there is still some. The most common ones are chanting, formations and imagination, although I wouldn’t recommend the last.”

“Why?” I ask, surprised. “It sounds quite useful.”

“It’s incredibly versatile, yes.” Dreyer answers, putting his feet up onto the table. “But it’s also incredibly mana inefficient, and spells can easily be disrupted if the caster is distracted even slightly.”

“I see.” I say, taken aback. “That is a major disadvantage.”

Dreyer begins rocking back and forth on his chair’s back legs. “Chanting… Well, you could probably consider it to be a subcategory of imagination, if you wanted to. The chant helps you focus, and since most magicians have a different chant for each spell, recanting it also helps you to recall how you did it the last times, which can both speed up the spell casting and make it more effic- WAH!”

Dreyer’s chair falls over, and he falls onto the ground. Rubbing his back, he gets back up, sets the chair back in place and sits back down on it. “Formations,” He continues, as if nothing had happened, “Are the quickest, most mana-efficient and reliable method you can use… After you’ve set them up, that is. While you’re making them, they’re the most complicated, unforgiving of mistakes and difficult to invent on the fly.”

“Right… And they’re what you use?” I guess.

His reply is half happiness, half sigh. “Yep.”

“So what about execution?”

He shrugs. “Can be pretty much anything. One of the elements, something abstract like space, motion –”

“Time?” I interrupt.

Dreyer’s tail whips nervously. “No! If you value your life, stay away from time magic. Nobody has ever come out of an attempt without something terribly, terribly wrong with them.”

Dreyer shivers, then gets up from the chair. “I think that’s enough for now.” He walks over to a cupboard and selects a plate. A complex formation briefly flashes on the plate, and when he sets it down it’s heavily laden with an assortment of nuts. “Want some?” He asks.

“Can’t eat.” I remind him.

“Oh.” His cheeks are already bulging.

---