Multiverse of Magic & Mistakes (Completed)

1.2.16 Chapter 16

The Mages College of Verdyn, Verdyn, September 2019.

Vi was continuing to make excellent progress in her Teleportation and Telekinesis lessons with Mistress Antonetta. She had moved on from teleporting objects around the school grounds, to be ready to try teleporting living things. She was terrified when Toni brought a cage containing a little fluffy white rabbit with adorable floppy ears into the classroom. Her first thought had been horror and fear of accidentally hurting the poor creature. It seemed cruel to subject an animal to her magical attempts. Especially as Stryder portals were supposed to be stronger than those cast by non-Stryders.

Somewhere at the back of her head, the rabbit was also a weird reminder of the conversation by Mallory's bedside earlier that week, that of the sabotaging dog. She thought of the missing pets on Earth, that made no sense. Mallory was still recovering in the Healers Clinic, and she and Rho had been along every evening after dinner to visit him. The three of them had continued to discuss the events of Mallory's trip and speculate but had made no progress. Rho, frustrated by not remembering what he had read previously about unusual animal behaviour, had taken to re-reading all the recent Earth travel reports in the Grand Library. Vi joined him when she could; she was supposed to be reading as many travel reports as possible anyway for her Stryder lessons. They spent many companionable hours reading in silence, but so far, had not come across anything of note in the reports.

Mistress Antonetta instructed Vi to make a portal, large enough for the rabbit across the other side of the room. Unlike when she worked on moving objects by teleporting them, the object itself moving through space, this was a different sort of magic that required the creation of an entry and an exit portal, two separate but connected entities that one could step through to instantly travel across vast distances. Or travel from one side of a room to the other in a single hop if you were a rabbit.

Vi focused on the now very familiar First Rune on her necklace, then upon the Fourth Portal Rune that she had stretched on a piece of parchment. It only took her a few seconds now to reach down and draw up her power, then to use it to activate another Rune. Even Healer Eliza had remarked that Vi's speed had greatly improved over the last few weeks. She focused on both the location where she wanted to create the entry portal and the location where she wanted to create the exit portal. Then she simultaneously willed them both into existence. That was the tricky part. Both the entry and exit portal needed to be created at the same time, and with an equal amount of force. She had to learn to split her attention and power equally. An unevenly created portal was very unstable, and at risk of collapse. She jolted at the sudden drain on her power that occurred. Making portals took a fair amount of magical energy, Toni had warned. The greater the distance, the more power it required.

Vi tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, as with a slight pop, two perfectly identical portals appeared in the room. Both were oval, about a meter in diameter, hovering just off the floor, and both were perfect pure black voids with a glowing white outline. Vi had expected portals to appear clear, to be like a window that you could see what was on the other side, but Toni had explained that it did not work that way. Something about how magic affected the light and so all portals appeared as voids, areas of pure black.

Both the entry and the exit portals were in the exact spots that she had willed them to appear in! Vi walked slowly around the entry portal marvelling how that as she viewed it from the side it looked like a black line in the air about the thickness of a sheet of paper. As she continued round to the other side the shape of the circular portal was again viable. She picked up a small stone from a table and threw it gently into the pure blackness of the entry portal. Instantly it came flying straight out of the exit portal and clattered to the floor. She suppressed a smug grin, she had done it!