Something about the spells the Fair Folk had placed to keep me contained was going to keep pulling me back here. I don’t know if their magics somehow drew me back to this world in particular or if I was naturally drawn to this world and their spells simply ensured I always appeared here. Even though this was only my second time to this world I had to accept that I could be in for the long haul. Until I could escape from this room I had to keep my jailers thinking they had me contained.
Of course, based on how arrogant the one I had spoken to before was that wouldn’t be hard, but even they would get suspicious eventually if my beard didn’t grow, my clothing didn’t get dirty and the like. So before I left again I made sure to put on a bit of a show, I managed to shave using the straight razor without cutting myself, and used the provided basin to give myself a quick bath. This not only helped sell the idea that I was stuck but helped kill some time while I waited for time to tick down so I could trigger a jump.
Something I would eventually figure out, but didn’t know at this time, was that triggering jumps early isn’t a great idea. I don’t know the exact mechanics behind it even now but the earlier I trigger my travels the worse my landing is in the next world. Til now my landings haven’t exactly been comfortable but this next one would be the worst yet.
I appeared several feet in the air, almost completely upside down. Before I could take in what was happening my head banged on the rough metal floor, dazing me. It was because of that I didn’t notice that while my back also landed on the floor my hips and legs didn’t. They kept falling. The corner of what I landed on dug into my side as my body pivoted, throwing me off of the metal surface and into the air once more. I regained my senses just in time to see the metal thing pass out of arms reach.
And then I was in free fall.
I’m sure someone else might have been able to fall with grace, or at least some control, but I didn’t, I tumbled end over end. In my defense I was caught off guard and just hit my head. Regardless I was falling and didn’t know how far up I was.
My mind raced as I tried to think up a solution, my sensors wouldn’t help, nothing I was wearing would. My only hope was the quantum magic I’d gotten. As far as I knew there were no ‘slow fall’ spells, but there were spells that could create shields. I figured if I created a semi-solid shield large enough it would act like a parachute. Of course, thinking up the idea was one thing, but pulling it off was another.
Flipping end over end with air whipping past me while trying to shake off the last effects of hitting my head isn’t a good place to do any complex task. I fumbled with the threads of energy for what seems like long minutes that I didn’t have. Eventually I got a shield creating knot in a state of ‘good enough’ and began feeding a thread of the energy through it. The energy spread out, the thread breaking into smaller and smaller sections until even my quantum sensors had difficult picking up on them. But I could see it forming a barrier, and almost immediately it began pulling on me. This was good because it meant it was working.
It was bad because I was tumbling and the shield suddenly snapped me upright as the wind resistance built quickly. The shield was designed to fill out fast enough to stop an attack, not to catch air, and I nearly lost the spell as I was pulled around. But I managed to keep it linked and powered, and soon the wind was down from deafening to simply loud in my ears.
Once I was certain the spell would hold I finally looked around. This was much easier now that everything wasn’t a blur. And it quickly became clear I needn’t have rushed my spell, as I was still thousands of feet in the air. The object I had struck upon appearing here was a metallic leaf, now far above me, which was attached to a great tree of gleaming silver. It was beyond vast, the trunk had to be nearly a kilometer across at the base with little sign of tapering as it ascended into the heavens.
Massive branches of burnished metal split off from the trunk, sporting equally enormous leaves. The scale of the structure was hard to take in, it had to be kilometers tall, possibly more, with hundreds of leaves the size of city blocks. It was hard to tell but it seemed like there were smaller structures built atop each of the leaves, from where I was falling I didn’t have a great angle but I caught glimpses of wooden buildings.
Below me the sight was just as surprising, if less impressive, as a vast city stretched out around the base of the metal tree. The ground immediately around the tree was cleared and paved, beyond that were buildings, not unlike you might find in any city, which grew like grasses at the base of a great oak. I was still far above those, clinging to my haphazard magics, as the winds blew me further from the tree.
Slowly I drifted over smaller and smaller buildings, going from ten story blocks to five and then I drifted over a wall of some kind and suddenly I was looking at a shanty town of massive size. Ramshackle structures of old wood and corrugated metal stretched form miles, built upon one another with little regard for stability or building codes.
It was into these endless slums that I eventually hit the ground. Or rather, landed atop a shipping container, failed to catch myself and fell the last few feet to the ground. The landing was hard, despite my parachute spell, and it was all I could do to lie there and groan for a few moments.
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“Are you a Phariean?” a voice asked, an older man leaning over my prone form.
“What?” I asked, ears still ringing and blood still pumping from what I had just gone through. Instead of responding he looked up, his eyes grew wide and he rushed off as the sounds of boots surrounded me. I pushed myself up to see a dozen men and women in ragged clothing surrounding me. They were all armed, but not with guns. They had clubs, spears and knives, but that was it. Had I run afoul of a gang war or something?
“The Phariean’s think they can just drop their spies from the air now?” One man asked, brandishing a club at me.
“Easy,” another of the people said, “he doesn’t look like a Phariean.”
“Could still be on their side,” the first man countered, “you saw him falling without a parachute and yet he’s alive.”
“Let’s hear what he has to say,” a third said, this one an older woman, “who are you?”
“I’m… just a traveler,” I replied with what I hoped was a friendly smile.
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Naturally that wasn’t a great answer, and it took bare moments for them to throw a bag over my head and drag me off. When they removed the bag I found myself in a crude room in the dark, a few battery powered lamps hung from the ceiling. The only door to the room was blocked by a large man with a club. I was seated and facing me was another chair, this one with the old woman from earlier watching me carefully.
“A Traveler?” She asked.
“Yup,” I nodded. They’d searched me earlier, only finding my traveler’s pouch. I wasn’t too worried about that, one coin wasn’t worth much.
“Are you a Phariean spy?”
“What’s a Phariean?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she scowled.
“I’m not,” I said earnestly, “I’m not from around here. Never heard of a Phariean.”
“Everyone knows of the Pharieans.”
“Not me.”
“They live on the Great Tree.”
“That the great metal tree thing? Saw that while I was falling, they build it?”
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” she seemed surprised by that realization. Apparently Pharieans were a big deal. It took a bit more questioning and some time for her to consult with others before they agreed to untie me. I was allowed to leave the small dark room they’d had me in, so long as I had an escort, the large club armed man from earlier.
I wasn’t sure what to do, and my large friend wasn’t very talkative, so I simply waited where they told me to until I was asked to meet with someone. They lead me into what was likely the best kept room, it had an actual carpet that was in decent shape, a proper desk, chairs and even a standing lamp that provided a passible amount of light. An older balding man sat behind the desk, hand steepled before him, watching me carefully I was led in.
“So, you’re the man who fell from the sky and lived,” the man stated, “and you claim to know nothing about Pharieans.”
“That about sums it up,” I nodded, wondering where he was going with this.
“let’s assume, for a moment, that you are telling the truth. How did you get in the air if not from the Great Tree?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I sighed.
“Try me.”
I met his gaze and, after a moment, sighed and told my story. How I traveled between worlds, unable to control where I appeared or when I would leave again. I glossed over some of the past worlds I’d been in, leaving out the rest stops entirely as I barely understood them. It also felt like the rest stops were a ‘for traveler’s only’ thing that I was reluctant to share. It was our place to escape, and I felt oddly possessive of them.
“That’s quite the story,” the man said simply as I finished.
“Said you wouldn’t believe me,” I pointed out.
“Seems like there is a way to test it though, you said you can use this… magic?” he asked, motioning with one hand for me to demonstrate. I pulled a thread of energy from the generator on my wrist and quickly spun a simple light spell. A small glowing ball flickered into existence over my hand. Its appearance seemed to surprise him, leaning forward on the desk to get a closer look. I held it out as he reached for it. Oddly his hand simply passed through the threads of energy that made up the spell, not disturbing them in the slightest as mine would have. I figured this was because he had never been to the world where I learned magic.
“Fascinating,” he said, sitting back in his chair. I allowed the light spell to fade.
“I’m not sure even the Pharieans can do that,” he admitted.
“Considering it’s a power from another world they shouldn’t be able to manipulate, or even really interact with, the quantum field this energy is part of,” I explained, “your hand just now passed through it as though it wasn’t there, which is odd because living beings should be able to manipulate the threads of energy but-.”
He held up his hand to silence me, I hadn’t really had time to relax yet, and while my heart rate had slowed and adrenaline faded somewhat I was still on edge. And I enjoy talking shop, apparently.
“If the Pharieans learn of your existence they’ll do everything they can to kill you,” the man said simply, “so if you want to survive it seems like you need to help us out.”
“Before I decide on anything, can someone please explain what a Phariean is?”
“They’re an alien race that invaded our planet centuries ago,” the man explained, “At first they were peaceful, but it was all a front. They used their technology to worm their ways into the good graces of our governments, slowly taking them over from within. A great war was eventually fought and they emerged victorious. They claim we started the war, us humans, our records of that time were methodically destroyed so we don’t know for sure, but either way they took over.
“Now they rule over us from their Great Tree,” the man continued, “the tree makes them and their human servants strong, somehow, and disarmed as we are they are unassailable. We’re the resistance, or part of it anyways, but, if I’m being honest, all we do is watch over the slums and do our best to make the human servants of the Pharieans lives difficult.”
“What do the Phareans look like?” I asked.
“Not unlike us, taller, with large eyes and pale skin,” he replied, and I shuttered as that sounded awfully close to the Fair Folk from the other world, “that’s what our documents say in any case. It’s been generations since one has descended from the top of their tree. Their human servants manage everything down here, taking what they want from us and our world so they can live it up.”
Aside from the lack of magic that sounded very close to the Fair Folk, arrogant, powerful and demanding. These Pharieans were more hedonistic, it seemed, but was that because they lacked magic? Without the mystic to distract them they turned to more physical pleasures. I suppose that made some kind of sense, but it was based on many assumptions. Was I seeing two different outcomes of the same basic events, altered by the slight differences in the universes and rules of nature? If humans existed in many different worlds, then why couldn’t the Pharieans, or Fair Folk? Does that mean that the Harmony also existed elsewhere? The parasitic beetles?
I shook off that thought and looked at the man across from me. The humans of this world hadn’t yet be reduced to a pre-industrial state, and if these Pharieans didn’t have magic then they might ever be, but it was clear the aliens had ill intent. I wanted to make the worlds I went to better places, I wanted to live up to the desires of the Priestess from that first world. I was the Traveler. There was only one thing I could say.
“How can I help?”