Cisco
December 16, 2018
"What do you mean we're stuck here?" Iris asked, whirling towards Caitlin.
"I mean, I can't cast a transport spell and for some reason, Cisco can't breach," the spellcaster responded. "Ergo, we can't leave the Spellcaster Realm."
"Okay, but why can't I breach?" Cisco asked, his face scrunching up in confusion. Caitin shrugged.
"I can't think of a spell that would prevent you from breaching, it is oddly specific," she responded. "But the magical film looked odd, almost like the atmosphere was fighting against you."
"So it's not a spell?" Iris tried to clarify.
"I don't l know what it is honestly," Caitlin admitted. "Austin might but she's tied up at the castle."
"And we're tied up here," Iris grumbled.
"How long will the transport lock down last?" Cisco questioned.
"There's no way to know," Caitlin admitted. "They either have to decide that the threat is false or catch the people responsible."
"Which isn't likely any time soon," Iris added before pausing. "This isn't a coincidence is it? They know we're here."
"It's possible," Caitlin told her. "They may be trying to trap us away from the rest of our team. At the very least they want to make sure we don't have an out."
"Barry and the team will be worried if we don't contact them soon," Iris said. "Do you have something that will allow us temporary inter dimensional communication?"
"Not without using a breach or a transport spell," Caitlin said. "I mean, if one of them was a spellcaster too I could contact them through their wand but that's not exactly helpful right now. We'll just have to hope we figure out a plan soon."
"So what are we going to do?" Cisco asked. "We can't exactly go out on the town to do more recon during all this."
"No, but we are in the house of a master caster," Caitlin said, looking around. "I'm sure she has some texts that could help us figure out what is stopping your powers. Or atleast help us with our original mission until the transport spell block goes down."
"Uh, can we just look around her house like that?" Iris questioned, giving Caitlin an uncertain glance.
"Hey Austin," Caitlin said, activating her comm once again. "Can we look through your house? Something is going on with Cisco's powers and we're kind of stuck here for the time being." There was silence for a moment.
"She might not be able to respond right now," Cisco noted just before Austin's voice came across the comms.
"Yeah, my books are upstairs in the study," she said. "Find some way home quickly. The longer you're here, the easier it is for the Purists to get to you."
"Thanks," Caitlin told her.
"Just please don't go in the closet down the hall, I have my ceremonial cloak and things in there," Austin added quickly in a whisper. "I've got to go. Good luck."
"Ceremonial cloak?" Iris asked.
"Austin is both a master caster and a castle guard," Caitlin said. "There are important ceremonies in the Spellcaster Realm and dressing properly is important spiritually. Plus, she probably wears the cloak whenever she visits the schools or other places of high power, it's usually respectful. I have my school robes for ceremonies."
"Okay that makes sense I guess. Can't have the mortals touching sacred magical objects," Cisco joked before looking around with a confused look on his face. "Now, where is the study because I don't see an upstairs?" Austin's house actually did look remarkable similar to something you might see on Earth but in many of the walls there were gray cylinders that appeared to function as shelves for display cases. The lighting in the room was a series of small glowing something or others that were clearly magic. The kept on adjusting the brightness, based on what Cisco didn't know. There was also the hallway that Austin mentioned and Cisco could see the door at the end of it, there was one on the side of it too. They were standing in what appeared to be the living room, the furniture was somewhat similar to the normal stuff, chairs and couches and such. Some were floating and at least one was smaller when they popped in Cisco was sure of it. Next to them was the kitchen which was mostly just counterspace and some kind of box on the ground where you would expect a fridge to be. The door to the pantry was open so that actually looked pretty normal inside. But as far as Cisco could tell, there were only four doors visible in the room, one was the closet, one was a pantry, one was the front door, and one was in the hallway. The house essentially amounted to a T and it didn't appear as though there was anything on the other side of the T so Cisco was thoroughly confused.
"She probably has a switch door," Caitlin said, heading towards the mystery door.
"A what now?" Iris asked, following the other female. Caitlin pulled open the door to reveal a swirling purple and pink portal.
"What happened to no transport spells?" Cisco asked, the portal shared a strong resemblance to his breaches.
"It's a switch door," Caitlin said. "There are at least two other rooms in the house, probably more. This door is kind of like a portal to all of them so you can save space. But it's not a transportation spell. It's contained within the house and anchored to the door."
"Hu?" Iris said.
"It's a transport spell but it can only be used within the house and not modified t=so the ban doesn't affect it," Caitlin clarified.
"So, we just walk in and hope we get the right room?" Iris asked.
"It kind of just knows where you want to go," Caitlin said. "It's like walking through any door at your own house and expecting to come into a certain room. Watch." She then proceeded to walk through the portal. A moment later she walked back out holding a book.
"I take it you found the study," Cisco said. Caitlin nodded and motioned for them to follow. Luckily, both Cisco and Iris were used to jumping through portals so it was probably the least strange experience they'd had since coming to the Spellcaster Realm.
"This place is bigger than the living room!" Iris exclaimed.
"Yeah, I imagined a Spellcaster study to be small and stock full of books," Cisco said looking around.
"Wait, where are the books?" Iris asked. Caitlin silently pointed upwards. Both Cisco and
Iris looked up.
"Holy Harry Potter," Cisco exclaimed. The books were literally flying around the room like they were birds.
"Do they all do that?" Iris asked.
"Not normally, Austin must have used an animation spell one them," Caitlin admitted.
"It's like something out of a Disney movie," she thought out loud.
"Yeah, magic is like that," Caitlin said softly, her eyes shining as she looked up at the books. Watching Caitlin around magic was something else. It was clear that she had missed the Realm. Cisco couldn't imagine growing up in a world like this and then just having to give it all up one day and pretend like it never happened. His eyes searched the books, wondering if any of them would be helpful. Then he wondered how they were going to get them down.
"Uh, Cait?" Cisco asked, disappointed to have to interrupt Caitlin's moment. Caitlin blinked and turned heer head towards him. "How, do we get them down?" She smirked, then she her hand up into the air and a book flew right into it. She pulled it down and handed it to him.
"A lot of magic is intuitive," Caitlin said with a little laugh.
"So we've noticed" Iris said. "Are any of these books actually going to help us?"
"She has a surprising amount of books on the mortal world in here," Caitlin said, her brows furrowed. "Most of them actually written by spellcaster researchers. Those might say something about what's going on, though I doubt any of them have taken metahuman powers into account."
"Is that Ender's Game?" Cisco asked, noticing a familiar cover fly past him.
"Yeah, she has a few mortal books too," Caitlin said. "That might be why she seemed a little bit more comfortable on Earth than I would have expected. Not sure where she got them though, they don't sell them here."
"What, so she's a closet Earth lover?" Cisco joked.
"My mom was, she heavily studied Earth when I was a kid, that's why we moved there eventually," Caitlin answered passively. "I think they also offer elective classes but it's almost the equivalent of studying history or geography, or something, of another country. It's just not a super popular one."
"Well, thank goodness Austin loves to learn," Iris said. "That's probably why she had a soft spot for us." As they were talking, something on Cisco's desk caught her eye. It was a purple school binder, like one you get from Target. It was made of plastic and full of notebook paper. He walked over to it. Cisco had no idea what it said though because it looked like it was written in Milic. He flipped it open anyway and recognized the setup as one of someone taking notes. Cisco didn't really know Milic but he recognized the time notation from some of Austin's books back on Earth. He could clearly see times on the left with other writing next to them on the right. It was like she was running an experiment of some kind. She didn't always have a lot written down but there were a few times when there would be a page or two with no time notation but a whole lot of words.
"What are you looking at?" Iris asked over his shoulder.
"I think Austin's personal notebook," Cisco said. "But it's in Milic, I have no idea what it says."
"Stop reading her personal stuff!" Caitlin exclaimed appearing next to Cisco and pulling the binder out of his hand.
"Come on, it's not like her diary," Cisco said and then paused. "I think."
"It doesn't-" Caitlin started but cut off as her eyes caught the page.
"What is it?" Iris asked, eyeing the scientist. No response.
"Caitlin?" Cisco asked.
"Hm?" she murmured noncommittally. Then after a moment she blinked and looked up as if realizing that she wasn't alone. "I'm uh- I'm going to go downstairs for a bit. You guys keep searching for information here." Then she hurried out of the room, flipping through the pages of Austin's notebook, and disappeared through the switch door.
"What happened to not reading her personal stuff?" Cisco asked.
"Maybe it wasn't so personal after all," Iris said. "Let's just look through some of Austin's history texts, I think I saw one in English somewhere." Both Cisco left his internal thoughts unsaid but the look in Iris' eyes said she had the same ones. There was something in that book that Caitlin wasn't telling them about. Something Austin had been keeping from them. And Cisco had a feeling that it would bring around more questions than answers.