The first thing Millie sees on the other side of the portal is a wide, open sky populated with clusters of fluffy clouds. The second is a large, sprawling space that at first looks like some rich person’s massive garden with all the lush grass and cherry blossom trees. But something about it isn’t quite right.

  It isn’t until Millie looks to her left, and sees the ground simply end, that she realises that the solid ground here is finite.

  Hurrying to the edge nearest to her, Millie looks down. It is so far that her mind instantly rebels from the possibility, even further than she imagines what it is to look down from the White Cliffs. Nothing but blue. Ocean? Endless, endless water. No sign of land as far as the eye can see.

  “Oh, fuck,” Millie says, and she stumbles back. “Evie... where the fuck are we?”

  This garden-like place at least has a path built into it, with trees and shrubs all around. Everything looks wonderful, so Millie trusts it all the less. As she walks on, a small river rolls past, and Millie stops to stare at it.

  “How...” Millie shakes her head and keeps going, spotting a small hut up ahead and making a beeline for it.

  It is a small, one room structure with shelves and workbenches lined with mostly empty jars and old alchemy tools. Or at least, what Millie would guess are alchemy tools, to her untrained eye.

  Something thumps in the distance. Then again. And again. Heavy footfalls?

  “Oh no,” Millie says, imagining an automaton with all four arms finding her and throwing her to a painful, watery death. Even with the ability to breathe underwater, it isn’t any good if she simply perishes of starvation and floats to the bottom of the ocean from exhaustion.

  It could be as simple as being in the middle of the ocean between mainland Feronia and East Feronia, where there are even islands to stop over in. Or....it could be a brand new ocean, somewhere else entirely. Or ocean north of the Shattered Isles, where falling in might mean an awful death in some sea monster’s stomach.

  “Go have a look, but be careful,” Millie whispers to Evie.

  Being a familiar, Evie’s physical body is transient at best, and her spirit of another realm entirely. Millie can bring her back with a longwinded spell, making her an ideal scout in dangerous situations, but the components are not cheap and she certainly doesn’t want Evie suffering any gruesome deaths regardless.

  Evie, ever brave and bright, licks her hand and trots out of the hut’s doorway. Millie crouches, keeping out of sight from the window, and letting her vision slide into Evie through their connection. It is always amusing to see the world through Evie’s eyes. Everything is close to the ground and all the more detailed for it. People let out some interesting things when they think only a dog is listening.

  The planks of the hut’s deck creak even under Evie’s mild weight, and the shrub’s flowers are brighter in Evie’s eyes than Millie’s. (Some claim that regular dogs do not see in colour, and Millie would have no idea, but a fey spirit in the shape of a dog sees colours better.)

  A metal leg comes into view. When Evie lifts her head, there is a construct walking up to the hut. It only has two arms, one each side of its body, and its face is more detailed with an approximation of mortal features. One of the arms holds something long and metal.

  It has orbs instead of eyes, and they flicker as it leans down to peer in Evie’s face.

  “Hello,” it says in old Elvish. “What are you doing here?” It tilts its head. “You look like you belong to someone.”

  Evie barks in greeting. The automaton reaches down with one large metal hand, and Millie tenses in anticipation of Evie getting crushed, but then the hand pats the top of Evie’s head in two staccato movements.

  Interesting.

  Millie wishes she had a better plan. She doesn’t. With a soft sigh, she drops her vision out of Evie and hauls herself to her feet so she can stick her head out of the doorframe.

  “She’s with me,” Millie says, hoping her old Elvish is approximate enough for comprehension.

  The automaton looks up at her, pats Evie once more, and straightens up. “Hello. Are you here to become the Caretaker?”

  Millie opens her mouth, fails to put a sentence together that will work, and closes it again. “...what?”

  “The Caretaker. I have maintained what I can, but it is no substitute,” the construct says. It gestures to the nearby shrubs, and Millie registers that what she’d assumed to be a weapon is in fact a long set of gardening shears. “Is that you? Have you come to manage the hub?”

  The hub. The hub?

  “I’ll help if I can,” Millie says, slowly. “But I’ve found this place by...accident. I’ll need you to explain what it is.”

  “Oh! Of course! I am Axel,” the automaton says. While its voice delivers each word separately, without a natural ebb and flow, there is a variance to the space between the words that gives it an air of cheerfulness. “I am the maintenance automaton for the Telsvera transport hub.”

  “Transport hub,” Millie says, under her breath, and her gaze wrenches back the way she and Evie came, where a huge arch with swirling light stands at the edge of the ground. She looks around, and sure enough, to her right, there is another arch with the same light.

  Other arches are spaced around this odd space, but lack the light of the other two.

  The word Axel said before transport hub, Telsvera, is unfamiliar to Millie, but if this place is of the old empire, then it might well be an old name for Feronia in general. Or at least, Millie hopes.

  “So...these are doorways,” Millie says. “To places around...Axel, do you know how long you’ve been here?”

  Axel pauses in their stride across the cobbled path, having almost reached a small bridge over the river. “No. I was not created with the ability to track time beyond day cycles. I am only required to track tasks and environments.”

  “Do you…understand what I’m saying? Because your language is...very old, to me,” Millie says slowly. She doesn’t want to alarm them. “I’m using a spell to better understand you, but my words are clumsy, I’m sure.”

  Axel’s eye orbs flicker again. “I understand. You simply sound...like a peasant.”

  Millie nearly chokes on a laugh. “Right. Well, I am a peasant, so I suppose that’s fair. Do you have a map of the portal locations? It might help me compare. I think we have different names for the same places.”

  Axel nods, and they continue walking until they reach a central space with a small spire that points towards the sky. Opening a panel in the side of the spire’s body, Axel withdraws a paper with a map that looks mostly familiar.

  Feronia Mainland, and East Feronia. The shapes she knows. But all of the names are foreign to Millie, and there are some other stark differences.

  “Right,” Millie breathes. “Um. Has anyone been to see you, in here? Since...the people in charge of this place left?”

  Axel shakes their head once.

  Millie swallows. “Axel...there’s no easy way to say this. I think you’ve been here for about six hundred years. The Old Elves have been gone about that long. Everything here is different, now.”

  “...oh,” Axel says. “That is...a long time. Could you...update my knowledge, then?”

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  “I can try,” Millie says. She considers the map. Remembers sitting in her father’s history class, taking in everything he said with rapt attention. “Um. If you have another piece, I can trace over top. So I don’t ruin a piece of history.”

  Axel reaches into the spire again and pulls out a new, but dusty, piece of paper. Millie begins tracing the familiar outlines of the mainland.

  “These places are now called Shun, Limeia, Hertarisia, and Kosta,” she says, drawing the rough country borders as best as she knows them by sight. “That’s Enzkia, here. And up there... um. There’s no easy way to say this, but that country just isn’t there anymore.”

  Axel tilts their head. “Explain.”

  “Do you know anything about...fuck, what were they called? Big magic things. Runes? Primal runes,” Millie says. “I don’t know when the first one was made. I don’t know if you have any idea what what I—”

  “I know we had one,” Axel says. “There was more than one?”

  Millie nods. “I’d need a history book to say who had which, but...eventually there was a war. This place here...” Millie points to the right side of the shape of East Feronia, the place across the sea, to the only geographical thing she knows about there. “Turned to desert, with shards of glass that fly through the air. A storm that never ends.”

  “Oh.” Axel looks at where she’s marked on the paper, then up at the glowing arch Millie hadn’t come through. “That’s where the only other open portal goes to. About here.” Axel points to a spot on the furthest edge of East Feronia, and Millie marks it down.

  Staring at the paper, then the arch, Millie tries to wrap her head around the idea she could walk through the arch and be on the other side of the world, weeks of travel and a thousand treacherous things away from Hertaris.

  “I see,” she lies. “Well. That would be very dangerous to use, until I have some way to not get torn to shreds in the Glass Desert. But good to know.”

  “And this place is...gone?” Axel asks, pointing to where Millie has etched a smattering of islands over what was a large and solid landmass on the original map.

  “Yes,” Millie says, staring at the Shattered Isles. “No one knows what happened. Something to do with the primal runes, surely, but...no one knows what. Or where any of them are now. Maybe important people do know, and they tell us peasants they don’t know so that we think everything will be fine. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Axel lifts their head and their orbs glow brighter. “That’s alright. Thank you for the lesson, Millie. Would you like to be the Caretaker of this place?”

  Millie cranes her neck up at the spire, taken with how it crackles with magic.

  She isn’t qualified for caring for a succulent, let alone something as impossible as this... but the idea that she could step from one side of the world to the other in moments is enough to set butterflies through her stomach.

  “What would being Caretaker mean?” Millie asks.

  “Restoring the connection to the other portals,” Axel says. “And restoring the communication tower.” They point near the Glass Desert portal, to a tower Millie hadn’t seen before, trees blocking it from her original direction of approach. “There. Only the Caretaker is permitted to enter, so I have not been able to maintain it.”

  “Oh.”

  Communication tower. Communicating with who, though? The possibilities are too much, and yet now she knows she may not rest entirely until she knows. And she can’t just forget this place exists.

  “Can you mark the other portals?”

  Axel does so, marking an island south of the Shun capital, the north of Limeia Island, a spot in the Kosta costal desert, the Hertarisian one she entered through, and one right where the East Feronia capital sits on the opposite coast.

  What could be done, if the other portals could be repaired? She could walk through five countries, and over an entire stretch of ocean, in a day. What an absurd thought.

  Millie’s head snaps back to Axel. “Alright. You have a deal. I’ll be your Caretaker.”

  Axel’s orbs flash again and they extend a hand for a handshake, a gleaming circle of teal magic shining in their palm. Millie takes it, clasping the rigid metal fingers, the magic burning as it etches itself into her. She bites the inside of her cheek to avoid crying out, and the pain fades quickly.

  When Millie withdraws her hand and turns it up to inspect her palm, the teal sigil glows for one final moment before vanishing entirely. Upon closer inspection, the sigil is still there against her skin, but so faint she can only make it out because she knows it is there.

  “Now that I’m the Caretaker, do you have any medical abilities?” Millie asks, pulling up her shirt to reveal her bandaged wound. “This hurts.”

  “I have simple magical healing,” Axel says. “Would you like some?”

  “Yes please,” Millie says, and undoes the bandages to give Axel access.

  The automaton extends their hand, plants it on Millie’s chest, and the light of their orbs flares until Millie has to squeeze her eyes shut. Warmth, tingly and leaving a strange static on her tongue, spreads through Millie’s body.

  The pain in her side lessens, and when Millie glances down, the gash is a newly pink, mostly sealed line. The equivalent of a week’s natural healing at least.

  “Thank you,” Millie says. She’s only been assisted by healing magic a small number of times, and it never fails to amaze her. “I’ll…check the tower, then. Thank you. For trusting me with this.”

  “After six hundred years of waiting, I would have trusted anyone with this,” Axel says, still monotone. “It is overdue.”

  Millie cannot contain her laughter, but nods through it. “Fuck, you know…me too.”

  She walks towards the Communication Tower and stands before it.

  Where everything else in this strange place is immaculately cared for, the structure screams neglect. Petals from the trees are littered across the entry stair in various levels of decomposition, and as soon as she pushes the door open, the mustiness of the air makes her cough.

  The ground floor has little to it but some basic facilities that might once have been classrooms or arcanist workrooms, but the blackboards are empty. The next floor has a storeroom with a small drawstring bag of chalk that leaves a sparkling trace on her fingers.

  Millie takes the bag and slides it into her satchel to examine more closely later.

  Back to the spiral staircase that runs through the tower’s core, and climbing to the top level. She comes out into a room as dusty as the rest, entirely centered around a strange chair in the centre. It could almost be an armchair, but has cushions of leather instead of fabric, and armrests of metal. All around it, in an intricate array almost like an extravagant infant’s mobile, are twisted shapes of metal.

  About half of them are runes for teleportation magic, but all are arranged in a configuration Millie doesn’t recognise.

  “You couldn’t have asked Axel oh hey, what does that communication tower do anyway?” Millie mutters to herself. “No, that would only have been common sense.”

  Instead, Millie sits near the chair and takes her spellbook from the satchel, flipping to the often used page of her identifying spell. Every step of it is so familiar, but she cannot afford to get comfortable when casting it.

  That’s the fun of Disciplined magic. You can’t just mess with the raw power of the universe and expect it not to mess with you back. Shortcuts lead to headaches…or worse.

  While one hand rests on the chair itself, keeping the connection, Millie’s wand traces the lines and equations in the air in front of her. Then, it connects each part together, making it glow with soft amber.

  “Explain,” she says to finish it off. Arcane words are strange things, known but not exactly understood, often a mixture of old Elvish and old Draconic, no doubt because the old elves and dragons were the first to learn how to perform this kind of magic.

  Clarity comes in a rush. Not words, not exactly images, but an innate understanding. Communication. This chair is one of several, each one connected to the others, and sitting in it can allow for direct conversation with someone in one of the other chairs.

  But if this hub is for the entirely of Feronia…and this chair is just for here…where are the other chairs? What could be further than East Feronia?

  Millie’s head swims, but she cannot resist climbing into the chair.

  Everything goes dark in an instant, even though she never closed her eyes. It’s more suffocating than standing in a room of pure pitch, Millie swallows to calm her nerves.

  “Hello?” she calls out. “Is anyone there?”

  Her words bounce around the space, like a huge warehouse she can’t see. Nothing comes back but her own echo.

  “Worth a try,” Millie murmurs, getting out of the chair and letting reality come back to her.

  It is a quick march down the tower and back into the hub’s main space, and Axel’s tall form is visible across the distance, near some shrubs on the opposite side to the central spire. But before she can make it any further, a voice rings out.

  “Hello?”

  Hertarisian common tongue. Coming from the way Millie had come in.

  No. Surely not.

  Shit.

  Millie runs for Axel at top speed. As she glances back, there is most definitely a figure making their way up the path, closer and closer to the bridge over the river.

  “Axel, someone else is here,” Millie says. “I’m going to pretend to be an elf who’s been here for a while. Just go along with it, alright?”

  Axel’s orbs flicker. “I will assist you however is required, Caretaker.”

  “Great,” Millie says, and it comes out sounding entirely insincere, but perhaps the automaton cannot tell.

  She sends Evie away to her pocket plane with a click of her fingers, then conjures a new disguise. An elven woman in her forties with long flowing brown hair and several braids running through it. Millie has no idea what the old elves wore, so for clothing, she tries to go for as simplistic as possible—a simple white tunic, long enough to be worn alone with just a belt at the waist. Leather sandals instead of boots.

  “Oh! People!”

  The newcomer hurries up to them, a little out of breath. She looks to be Millie’s age, a young woman with light brown skin and small dark horns coming out of the side of her head which curl inward and up. Her hair, a pleasant sky blue, is pulled back with something intricate holding it in place behind her head.

  It takes Millie’s best poker face to not laugh outright at her clothes. The white blouse and u-cut waistcoat would be fine, and there’s nothing wrong with a nice pair of white gloves other than the impracticality of keeping them clean. But a ruffled necktie? Ruffles on wristcuffs? And on her skirt?

  How can anyone make dark blue look bad?

  The last detail is the most important. Light blue lines, like birthmarks, run from the corner of each eye, across the edges of her face, and into her hairline. The magical mark of the Tempete family.

  “Well met,” the woman says, smiling widely. “I’m Zoe. You haven’t seen anyone else around here, have you?”

  And now, the most agonising of slow burns begins! I cannot wait for you to properly meet Zoe next chapter in a favourite meet-hate I have ever written.

  If you enjoyed this, please leave me a comment and let me know!

  Aimee D xx

  p.s. I do have advance chapters available on my Patreon, which is 5 chapters/week ahead of the free postings! Check out my profile if at any point in your reading you feel yourself craving more and/or you'd like to support me in any small way.