“Savia can teleport!”
When they were done eating, or rather when Gilliam was done eating, and they were going to see Irila about meeting her portal student, Savia was more than eager to be the transport to get them there.

Parts of Gilliam were a bit unsure about this. On the one side he didn’t doubt her, she wouldn’t do this unless she felt ready... The question was if her feelings of being ready were true or not for non-teleporters. Aeris did warn him about that earlier.
“Did Irila or Aeris say that you’re ready?” He ended up asking her directly, it felt easier than finding any of them and asking, besides; Savia weren’t the kind to lie, especially not when their shared bond made this somewhat problematic.

“Angrylady says Savia can teleport master!” She seemed super happy about this detail, more than just being able to teleport others, but the fact that she can teleport him.

Their shared bond supported this, she was honest and legitimately happy about this. “Well, if Irila thinks you’re ready, I suppose we’re fine.” He was a bit hesitant, mainly because it was his first time being teleported by Savia. He had been teleported a lot by Aeris so the teleporting itself was not the issue.

Since she was already sitting in his hand, the contact aspect was taken care of. He briefly wondered if everyone needed to be in contact with her, but based on earlier teleporting with Aeris it seemed that contact with each other was plenty.
Holding out his hand for the other two to grab, Savia got to work as soon as Angela and Petal had taken hold of his hand.
A buildup of energy later and they found themselves in Irila’s classroom. Though it worked as intended there were a few hiccups. The blinding light lasted longer, and the teleport itself was a bit shakier, it was a hard thing to explain but Gilliam mentally compared it to a rough drive instead of a smooth highway road.

Irila didn’t seem to react much to their arrival like this, though since it seemed that this was Aeris’ standard way to go anywhere, she was probably very used to it by now.
She did smile at them as they were able to see again.
“I’ll get right to it, Mr Gibson.” She got up from her desk and handed him an ink pen and paper. “Before we go and annoy Alyssa with this, let’s make sure we have the coordinates.” Her stern face was oddly broken up by an honest and warm smile.

She had a very, very good point. Going there, meeting her, explaining and all of that stuff, only to... not be able to give her the one thing she’d need to even do what they wanted... That would be not just a waste, but straight-up dumb.
Good thing they didn’t forget that in the haste at all...

Putting Savia in his hair before taking the paper and pen, he sat down and wondered what spot he should focus on. The underground area he made is without a doubt not there anymore. Anywhere in the Hand was not a good idea, and he didn’t spend too much time in any good spots in the Finger either.
The best spot felt like the rocky areas in the more outskirts’y zones on the Finger.
Focusing on the rocky terrain, he remembered the heat, the dry air, and the.. desert. He was running and hiding there before he found out he could dig... though bad times all around it was a good spot for this kind of thing.
Holding it in his mind he did as he tried before with the island when he tested this with Aeris. He just wrote down the symbols that felt right there and then.

This took longer than expected, much longer. Normal coordinate runes were about a paragraph or so; this was not done until Gilliam had filled an entire page of seemingly random runes.

When he finally stopped and put the pen away, Irila looked at the paper over his shoulder.
“This... doesn’t feel right. It’s not supposed to be that long.” She sounded unsure about it, but at the same time, there was a hint of certainty, after all, she was the teacher in the subject.

“I have no idea, it worked when I tried with Aeris before, for the island. But now this just happened.” He handed the paper to Irila. “Try reading it, if it works you’d know, right?”

She took the paper, and with much scepticism, she started reading it.

About a minute after she had a sudden weird look on her face before it faded, much like Aeris had when she tried to analyse the location Gilliam wrote down before. “A... desert... between lots of rocks?”
She looked confused, seemingly not at the location but that this page-long thing worked.
Following this up with a few seconds of focus she shook her head with a defeated sigh. “And it requires a tremendous amount of energy just to connect to it...”

Gilliam didn’t know that you could do that, feel out the needed energy, but it made things much easier for later. Though, since he could do something similar through the coat and spells stored in it, it made sense that an expert could do something similar.

“Well, good, so we’re ready to go?” She simply asked as she folded the paper, pocketing it, seeming to want to get this over with.

Gilliam nodded.

Irila walked over to her desk, closed some books and cleaned up a little before she walked back over to the group, holding out her hand.
Everyone in the group put their hand in hers and moments later, after the familiar blinding light, they found themselves at a very different location.

Looking around it seemed that they were still in V’ida, mainly due to the amount of magic being freely used. They were in a city made mainly of stone, but there was also a massive dock to one side, leading out into the open ocean. The docks were mainly of stone as well but anything hanging over the water was made out of wood. There were several huge ships, sails rolled up and either being loaded or unloaded. There was quite a density of people walking about, horses were pulling carriages filled with boxes and seemingly random things. The air was filled with the salty smell of the sea, Gilliam was a bit surprised at how perfectly this fit the image that many games were using as a fantasy dock city. The main difference was the number of soldiers and the guard force.

Irila broke them out of their reactions. “Welcome to Aestu. V’ida’s main eastern dock.”
Gilliam didn’t pay that much attention if she said anything else, he was just somewhat in awe at this place. Everything was so much larger and wider than he would expect, from having been in the older part of his home, and during vacations, not everything was that large back in those times. So this felt a bit odd.

“This way.” Irila commanded with a ‘follow me’ wave. The group did as told as they were taking in the sights.

At this point, as soon as they started moving, Gilliam noticed something he should have seen coming, something he didn’t even consider in the slightest.
Petal.

People were leaving at great speed, not exactly running but leaving, picking up their kids and speed-walking away. Others were holding their tools in their hands with a much stronger and aggressive nature, if stares could kill then the party would be one person shorter already.
Gilliam felt horrible, he should have seen this coming, he didn’t want to expose Petal to this nor to put her in danger. Though, he became more confused as he saw that she didn’t seem to care. She noticed the looks, she was looking back at people, after all, but even as they ran or stared at her with resentment in their eyes; she straight up didn’t care, still sporting her strange satisfied smile.

Considering this for a moment, Gilliam couldn’t have it make proper sense. She might not be afraid of people, with her newfound power and training, given how often she had died at the hands of Kintas... This training alone as well as her ‘empowerment’ could perhaps make her more dangerous in a fight than Gilliam was aware of. But she didn’t seem to care and proceeded after Irila, taking in the sights and perhaps a weird-looking place in her eyes. This was extremely different from the Fractured Lands, after all; she might not even have seen that much water before.

As expected it didn’t take long before three guards came over, one was standing a bit back with a crossbow in his hands, at least pointed at the ground for now. The two others came closer with a hand on their swords.
“Halt, what are you doing here?” One of them commanded and asked.

“We’re here on official business.” Irila took out a document from her robe pocket and handed it to him. After a few seconds of reading, he returned it to her.

“I... See... But why is it with you?” He put an aggressively insulting tone on the word ‘it’.
Something Gilliam understood, since there had been other gates opening, then she was probably the poster child of the enemy

“She-” Irila put heavy pressure on the genderization of Petal, strongly suggesting they didn’t consider her an ‘it’, all with a single sentence start. “-Is the slave of Mr Gibson here.” She gestured towards Gilliam.

The guard looked at Petal, then at Gilliam once he was introduced. He started with the facial expression of someone looking at a peasant without value until he saw the student badge, his face changed into confusion for a moment as he seemed to be trying to decode it before it turned to straight-up fear.
Suddenly kneeling in panic his commanding tone changed to an almost pleading one. “I... I’m sorry, I didn’t know we had the Heptagon Mage with us. Please forgive me!”

The other guards looked confused for a few seconds before they followed his kneeling. The tone instantly changed and it all hit Gilliam.
He was used to being the student at the Academy, people not reacting as he’d guess when they heard of the super-mage he was supposed to be. To be honest, the reaction they showed here was more akin to what he expected originally, but he never found out why they didn’t do this at the Academy. He had several theories but he didn’t care enough to find out.
The guard was almost sweating, staring at the ground as he practically vibrated in terror.

This caught Gilliam quite off guard, enough that Angela stepped in and seemed to want to clear it up a bit.
“Mages in V’ida are treated almost as nobles, remember? The more powerful a mage, the more social power he gets as well.” She smiled as she simplified it down, hinting at the introduction course she gave him once he landed in the jungle not that long ago.

Things fell in place again, it was the first time he had an honest and proper reaction like this, so he forgot the whole better-than-thou thing that V’ida had going just for having magic. And since he was a super-mage... things made a lot of sense.
Though he would never just do it because he could, with the little he knew, and their reactions, he felt that he could probably just explode one of them and not even get in trouble. It was somewhat horrible for non-mages to live in that kind of fear, so he understood their reactions, but if nothing else it should make things a bit easier.
“Don’t worry about it. Just leave her, and us, alone, and we’re fine.” He felt a bit awkward, which in a weird paradoxical sense made him feel more awkward. All in all, he should be used to this by now but he wasn’t.

Irila and Angela seemed to have noticed and chuckled between themselves, Petal was just a bit confused and Savia didn’t seem to care about anything, rather looking around in awe.
The teacher started walking and the rest of the party moved on.

As they moved on, Gilliam was aware of the guards tailing them, but that seemed to be something that handled itself. It didn’t take long at all until they stopped in front of a surprisingly small building. It was a single-floor rectangular building made entirely out of wood. On the side they were on there was only a single door, but there were three windows, hinting at three rooms.

Above the door, there was a simple sign reading Door to Door Transport.
Irila didn’t stop and simply opened the door and entered the building.

Gilliam and co followed, coming into a semi-large room with several chairs, a desk with a young woman sitting behind and what looked like a large file cabinet. It was not exactly underfurnished as far as it seemed planned to have just what was needed.
The young woman behind the desk seemed to be between 17 and 20 years old, she wore a simple dress and had her blonde hair up in a ponytail.
She reacted quite harshly as soon as Petal came into the room, for a moment it seemed like she wondered if she should run or not, but she suddenly calmed down a lot once she had a moment to look at Petal more. Perhaps she saw the slave brand?
“G-Good day, do you have an appointment?” Her question was very smooth and practised.

“No, we do not, but please tell her that Irila would like to speak with her.” Irila seemed certain about this being enough, and Gilliam didn’t see any reason to get involved.

The receptionist seemed to not exactly be convinced but nodded at the request nonetheless. She got up and went into the second door in the room, into the next one. She closed the door behind her and the group was left alone for not more than a few seconds.
She came back out and nodded. “She will see you now.” Sitting back down at her desk afterwards.

Irila walked in first, the group following. As Gilliam entered it seemed that they had already hugged, they barely left their embrace in the short moment he used to get in.
Alyssa was a relatively short and slender girl, she had long blonde hair and currently seemed to wear a silken dress of sorts. Her hair was hanging loose but somewhat maintained by a ribbon fastened in her hair somehow.
“It’s been a while-” She commented to Irila. “-Though it seems you need me for something specific.” She eyed the group that was following her into the room.

As soon as Petal came in she didn’t react that much, to Gilliam’s positive surprise.

“Yes, I’m afraid this is purely a business meeting.” Irila looked a bit sad, she might have enjoyed the meeting more had it been more casual and not as ‘an invasion into the demon realm’ focused.

Irila made a move for Gilliam to take the word.
He was taken a bit off guard, as he somewhat expected her to take the word for this, but he supposed that Irila just being here was enough.
“Well... I’m Gilliam Gibson, and we need your help...”

He proceeded to explain in vague detail what they needed help with, and how it would benefit them to go in on their own rather than waiting for another gate. Alyssa had heard of Gilliam and already knew the gist of the gates as they were opening up elsewhere at times as well.

“Normally I would charge quite the fee for this, but it is quite the special case, given that you can fuel me with enough mana to not... die... I’ll do this one for free, as long as I’m mentioned, of course. Some extra advertisement can’t hurt.”  She had a cheeky smile and, based on what Alleyan said it made a lot of sense...

She was given the coordinate runes and a moment to read through them. She stood still and focused for a moment.
“Yeah, this is going to take a tremendous amount of mana...” She seemed a bit worried.

“Do you know how many? I can produce these.” Gilliam asked as he took one of the aether spheres from the ring.

Alyssa seemed a bit surprised at the speed he took the gem out but seemed to be fine with it afterwards. The storage bags or something might not be that uncommon when you go higher in the mage hierarchy.
She took the gem from him, held it and focused. “Oh wow... this is a lot of mana... I will need about... ten of these to open the portal properly.” She stopped focusing in the end and hesitantly handed the crystal back, almost seeming like she wanted to keep it.

Gilliam received the gem and put it back in the ring. “Oh, that’s good, less than I expected so that shouldn’t be a problem. So this means we can just show up with the needed gems and you can send us there?”
Gilliam was not one for formalities, but he did need to know how this would work when the time came.

“Pretty much, yes. Given the importance of this, I’ll prioritize it. Just come find me and we’ll get it done. Just remember my name when possible.” She was quick to agree but also hard to remind about the advertisement. Which made a lot of sense.
It was also a very cheap price to pay.

There wasn’t much more to discuss here, they got their transport and she said it was very possible, they just needed to properly prepare for their voyage and stock up on things.

The next thing they needed to do was to get back to the academy, prepare and test some things and they could be ready to go in not that long! Gilliam just needed to confirm the mana cost of sharing flying spells between people, find out if this was something he could handle and make the mana crystals. Once all of this was prepared they could be done in only a few days.

Even though the portals opening around the world were closed with surprising ease, now that they found out good ways to close them, there was still the possibility of life lost, so there was no time to be lost.