Chapter 54: A Key to Other Worlds

Perspective: Jennifer


Jennifer jogged down the hallway, dodging between people and supplies. It was finally the day.

The portal had started operating the previous night, and Steve had volunteered to go through first. Jennifer would have joined him but had already committed to leading a gathering mission and so stayed behind. It almost killed her not to go, but now he was scheduled to get back.

She narrowly avoided ploughing into Urist and apologised between excited giggles. The dwarf smiled though, he understood this was a big day.

It had only been a few months, but she had missed their friends so much. The familiar grounds of Brine Manor too, and even further off her own home, but that could wait. The people were more important.

She came to the heavy iron doors and came to a halt, panting slightly. After composing herself she pressed her palm against the button and strode through.

The portal room was large and octagonal, with a series of redstone consoles around the room humming with activity and flashing out numbers. On the opposite wall to Jennifer, the portal itself lay dormant.

For the moment, it was just an empty obsidian ring, but soon it would flash back into life. That said, it was an impressive obsidian ring. Jennifer and Steve had gathered the obsidian themselves, and it was at least five times the size of your average Nether Portal. Pressed against the side was a surprisingly small console into which you could program dimensional coordinates.

It worked by locking onto a dimension, then identifying any extant portals or suitable dimensional rifts. The console allowed the user to filter between them and decide on the optimal entry point. Naturally, this meant you had to work with whatever entry points existed within the dimension, so the size was mostly for show, at least until they found an ally who could build a matching portal of similar size, or a Tower portal they could hijack. However, they'd all felt the aesthetic and deployment potential was worth the extra resource commitment.

It wasn't like they were being stingy with the obsidian. Beneath the stone walls and woolen floor were about three layers of the stuff. The entire portal room was a lockbox.

And at the heart of this lockbox stood its overseer, Tyron Dragoknight. He wasn't a natural fit for this rather technical process, but he was pretty much the only option. The obvious choice would have been Shadow and her mages, but they were keeping to themselves, and Kay seemed happy enough to keep them away from this. Astro would then be the logical second choice, but he was always running some errand or in Kay's entourage. Lucy was already rushed off her feet. And Tyron wasn't not busy, but there were people who could be reshuffled to handle things like his training duties. Everyone else was either too important to specific sectors - like herself and Steve with gathering - a literal child, or kept disappearing off on their own, like Destiny.

She walked up beside the second-in-command as he read over some readings and scratched his furry head. She probably should have said something empathetic, but her excitement overtook her.

"So, when is Steve arriving?"

"Just a few minutes…" said Tyron. "Sorry, these numbers are hard to wrap my head around."

"Maths… so much maths," lamented Kir.

"Oh, what's the issue?"

"So, thanks to the notes Fire took when he worked on the Ender's atlas, we had some idea of what worlds there are. We can also use this little thingumajig," he pulled out a metal device with a small glass tube on the end, "to figure out where individual people are from and roughly where they exited their world from. The problem is it becomes less obvious over time, so we have to do more work to reconstruct the signature. So, our scientists are - they do the - they triangulate the… This really isn't my field."

The two laughed. Tyron put his sheaf of papers into the glowing void on his back.

"Long story short," Tyron concluded. "We're trying to distinguish between the different openings. An active portal suggests civilisation has at least been there once. A rift could be anywhere. But… maths. It's hard."

"Numbers everywhere," chirped Kir, traumatised.

"Anyhow, excited?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's just been so long. I'm not expecting a full reunion of the Alliance or anything, but it'll be nice to have some familiar faces around the place. Not that I don't like you guys or anything, it's just, I've known them longer."

"It's a more natural fit."

"Yeah."

"The difference between work friends and the people you actually seek out."

They settled into an uncomfortable silence.

"I don't know, some of us have gotten pretty close. You and Astro, for example. You seem to spend a lot of time together."

"Yes," he said. "We do."

He said it in a way that withered and rotted away the idea of their friendship Jennifer had built up in her head. Suddenly it was no longer private confidence and companionable laughing, it was mostly uncomfortable silences and grim solidarity. It was an alliance of convenience, or necessity, to Tyron that could never compare to the real thing.

"How are you feeling about seeing your friends again?" Jennifer asked with a sympathetic smile.

Tyron gave a nervous smile.

"Maybe a little more than friends?"

"Drop it," said Tyron definitively.

Jennifer's smile faded and she turned to look at the portal. Silence washed over and over them until it became unbearable, until she thought she might drown in it. Then, a merciful scientist called over to them.

"One minute to scheduled reopening. Are we good to go sir?"

"Absolutely, get it ready guys," said Tyron.

He clapped his hands, and the room became ablaze with activity.

And with that, the awkwardness was gone, and excitement replaced it. Levers flipped, buttons were pressed, and Jennifer fought the urge to move frantically in response to each new development, as though the levers and buttons controlled her own body. She clenched her fists, heard the chugging of pistons beneath them, and it could have been her own heartbeat.

Finally, Tyron grinned widely and handed her a pair of protective goggles. She finished putting them on just in time to see the Dragoknight walk up to the portal console, fiddle with a few buttons, and pull the lever.

There was a flash. A blue, pulsing light rushed across the space within the portal frame, overlapping and binding until it formed a strange, gel-like film across the air. And within the gel were shadows, vague blurry shapes like mountains and trees and… people maybe? Wind rushed through the portal and threw her red hair right back, then calmed to a gentle breeze. It was open.

The shadows started to move, growing larger and more looming, until finally they passed through.

The first figure appeared, green eyes and athletic form blooming into view immediately. Ozen, Steve's older brother, stepped forward with a sword in one hand and a picnic basket in the other.

"Wow," he laughed and called over his shoulder. "You weren't kidding, those portals show you some weird stuff."

He staggered and fell to his knees, still laughing away. It took all Jennifer's strength not to run up and hug him immediately.

Wolfric stepped through, armour over his black robes and a brewing stand in each hand, and also staggered a little but did not fall.

"Yes, I have seen horrors and beauties beyond my comprehension," he muttered absent-mindedly. Then, to Tyron: "Sorry, could you hold these?"

He handed over the brewing stands.

"I have more in my inventory, but thought some extra wouldn't hurt, given the circumstances."

His tone was flat and disengaged. As ever, the machinations going on behind his dark blue eyes were a complete mystery to Jennifer, as he barely acknowledged the big, green wall of fur standing over him. Then, his eyes fell on her.

"Hello Jen. How are you doing?"

"Really? I haven't seen you since the Ocean Monument and that's the best you can do?"

She hugged the wizard and beckoned for Ozen to join them. Startled, the mysterious wizard just smiled stupidly, and then had the wind knocked out of him as Ozen slammed into him from behind and bear-hugged them both.

"I've missed you guys so much!" Jennifer shouted.

Then, finally, the last shadow moved up to the portal, and out came Steve, riding atop Drake Junior, their pet enderdragon. Several scientists gasped and backed away at the sight of the creature, but Jennifer couldn't stop beaming. The creature had chests strapped to its flanks, no doubt containing all manner of useful resources, and it panted happily and swung its head around in curiosity.

"Honey, I'm home!" smiled Steve as he hopped down from the creature's back. He and Jennifer embraced, and Tyron ran up to stroke the young enderdragon under the chin.

"Look at you, you are a beauty," said Tyron with reverence.

"Like what you see?" Steve asked. "I thought you spent a lot of time with dragons?"

"Yeah, but the enderdragon in my world was a one-off. A tool of Herobrine. I destroyed it but look at this thing! It's here, it's alive, it's not evil! It's cute!"

The dragon licked his face, and he laughed heartily.

Ozen and Wolfric joined Jennifer and Steve.

"So, is it just you guys?" Jennifer asked. "How is everyone?"

"Mom's doing well," said Steve. "Dad's recovering. Mark's busy helping the villagers rebuild, same with David - y'know Morbrook David not... Couldn't get hold of Alex, she was off on an adventure. Nothing from Deodate either."

"I mean what did you expect?" said Ozen. "He's an angel, he's not exactly alive."

"Yeah, but he's the reason we have the dumb crystals that got us into this mess, I was hoping maybe he'd turn up."

"I'm surprised you were available," said Jennifer to Wolfric. "You're always off doing mysterious magicking wizard stuff."

"I was, but then I heard you guys had disappeared. I came back to help Ozen look."

"Aw, you big softie!"

Jennifer punched him in the arm.

"Well, we have the gang back together," said Steve contentedly. "So, plan for Dungeons and Enderdragons over spleef?"

No one had any objections. They left Tyron with Drake and went off to the officer's lounge.

"Okay," said Tyron as the dragon was led off to be fed and lodged. "My turn."