Perspective of the Pig Demon
"So, do you think you can figure something out?"
"I just got here. Can you cool it for a bit?" The witch from Mexico was rather annoyed by my question, but I had difficulty containing my anxiety. Something happened to my friends here and I've been waiting for a while for this witch to get here.
"Well, it does look like a magic circle like we use, at least. You know, if you just sent me a picture of this, I could've studied it without having to come all of the way here. You only gave me an address using physical mail, no contact number or email so I didn't have a choice but to come here."
"Ah, sorry, I'm still not very used to some of this new technology stuff." I admitted. Some of us can adapt quicker than others; I belong in the 'others' category.
"Well, it's fine. As long as you're paying."
Laura, the witch, spent the next while comparing the circle with her notes on her phone while Sora, Mizuki, and I waited. As anxious as I was, I didn't want to break her concentration, although Sora was less patient. "You figured anything out yet?"
Laura gave him a bit of an eye. "The style of the magic circle is a bit different from what I'm used to, but it's similar enough that I can make comparisons. From what I can tell, this is a nested teleportation circle; there's a second circle inside this one."
"And? Does that have any meaning?"
"Well, uh, for a teleportation circle to work, you need both the location of where you're teleporting from and where you're teleporting to. Whoever designed this circle replaced the 'to' with another teleportation circle. Well, there's more to it than that, but that's the basics of it."
"If that's not normal, why would someone do that?"
"This is just a conjuncture, but I think someone managed to teleport here first. Now, uh, the 'from' codes and the 'to' codes are done differently, you can't just swap them to do the opposite teleportation. It can also cause issues if you try to reuse a 'to' code with a different 'from' code. Teleportation is complicated. Anyways, someone teleported here first without a proper 'to' code to get back to where they came from, so they tried to rework it by connecting the teleportation circle they used to get here in order to get back."
I'm not sure if I quite got all of that, but let's focus on what's important. "Where does this lead to then?"
"I don't know."
"C-can you figure it out?"
"Well, there is a bit of work to decoding the 'to' code here, which I've already partially done, but to be honest, that wasn't really helpful. What I can say about the code is… it's unlike any code I've seen before."
"Quit talking in nonsense and just tell me what that means in plain words." Sora doesn't really like it when he doesn't understand something.
"The destination probably isn't on Earth. My knowledge of places outside of Earth is pretty limited, so it's basically impossible for me to know where the destination is." She shrugged.
I started to formulate a plan. "How is the circle activated?"
"It activates on touch, as long as you have enough mana."
"So if you don't have enough mana, you can't use it?"
"You can get multiple people to touch it at once, as long as the total amount is enough between everybody."
So I don't have enough on my own, but Emily did… "There's someone here!" Sora suddenly shouted.
I quickly got ready for battle, but a strong wind blew towards us, knocking us all down. Before I could see who assailed us, the circle activated, teleporting us all away.
"What was that?" I yelled out instinctively. Looking around, we were near a path that ran parallel to a forest.
"It was likely that fuujin child." Mizuki was cleaning herself up.
"That brat doesn't know how to let go of a grudge."
Well, we made it to the other side at least. "Sora, could you go look around to see what's around here please?"
"Don't go ordering me around. I was about to do that anyways." He went full tengu form and flew up.
I looked towards the other two. Mizuki was looking as composed as ever but Laura was… not. "Laura, are you okay?"
"Ye-yeah, I'm fine. Just… the mana here feels weird. The flow is a bit different here; it explains why the 'to' code was so weird. The mana feels like there's a spell just weaving itself over and over again. This is a…"
"We should follow the path that way, there's a town in that direction." Laura was still talking when Sora came back down and pointed in a direction.
As we walked, I noticed Sora was staying in his tengu form. "You're not going to change back?"
"Lady, this is my true form. If folks are more tolerant here, we might as well use it."
I thought about it for a moment. "True enough." I changed into my human pig form and Mizuki soon followed into her kappa form.
As we neared the town, the guards at the gate saw us and started talking to each other, then one ran into town. That… seemed like a bad sign. The remaining guard soon called out to us. "Greetings!"
Odd, I don't recognise the word or its language but the meaning came clear to me. Mizuki soon replied in the same language. "Good afternoon good sir. We are here looking for a short, black or white-haired girl who goes by Yuri-Ann or Ann-Yuri and a large, muscular woman named Emily."
"Ah, yes, we thought you were related to those two. He went to get the adventurer's guild's head who should know more about them. She should be here soon."
At that point, we saw a human woman effortlessly moving quicker than I've seen a human move on their own. I readied myself for combat, short of drawing my weapon.
"I am Xedne of the Astoi house. May I assume you're friends of Yuri-Ann and Emily?" I nodded. "Good. Please come with me, we have much to talk about."
