A sudden wrench brought Leo out of a pleasant dream, and he sat up in bed.

After the meeting had concluded, Leo had gone back to the beach, but the eggs had been intact to the wee hours of the morning. Leo had decided to get his two hours of sleep, and now this. Odds were about eight percent it would wake me at this time. I’ve been pretty lucky, I suppose I shouldn’t complain about this.

Lily sat up as well. “Is it happening?” she asked, then raised her hand to her mouth and yawned.

In any other situation, I’d be asking my pregnant wife that question.

Leo could sense the change within the tree. “It is. The gate is forming now—I sense the same build-up as I did before, but without the sense of reaching too far.”

She sat up, her nightdress briefly visible before she appeared dressed in fancy clothes again. “We should go!”

Leo nodded. “Get Neha please and then catch up. I think she’ll want to be here for this.”

There was a knock at the door. “Dad!”

Of course Neha felt it—she’s magically bonded to the tree, no different than I. And at least she’s finally learned not to just teleport into the room.

Leo pulled his breeches on and grabbed his shirt, lacing the toggles up the front and reflecting for the thousandth time that he liked most things about Toth but hated the clothing. He pulled his wooden-soled clogs on and opened the door.

“Hey Sprout.”

Neha ignored her nickname. “Let’s go!” she cried, pulling him toward the front door. Three giant foxes, each about six-feet long and three to four feet at the shoulder, waited behind her. One was all white and had six fluffy white tails in a near bush behind it. The other two—Juri and Sumoon, which had made Leo laugh when he heard the names for the first time—were normal but for their size and the fact their tails appeared to be covered in small twigs and a ton of leaves rather than normal fox tails, and were almost as large as the rest of the foxes put together. Neha was a budding ‘pet master’ or ‘familiar’ build, and all three of her familiars were now Level Thirteen creatures. Remy was a multi-tail curse fox, with powers over luck and fear, and the two others were sister familiars—leaf-tail den mothers. They were rare and usually unwanted familiars, as they gave buffs to other foxes and neture spirits. But since Neha was a dryad with only fox familiars, they fit her extremely well.

Neha—Nehalynia ap Evans, technically—was a tomboyish girl of twelve, with purplish wooden skin and green leaf hair currently done in a ponytail, dressed in the same breeches and shirt she always appeared dressed in. She was lean like an elf, and childish still, appearing as a human might at about eighty pounds.

“Dad, let’s go!” Neha said.

Leo nodded and rushed past his pseudo-daughter and out the front door. Once out, Lily mounted Remy and Neha teleported to the back of Juri, and the three of them raced toward the tree, along with all three foxes.

Even as he did, however, a second wrench came. The tree was connecting to another dimension. A collection of possible locations raced through Leo’s mind, not as concrete ideas but as vague collections of their most base and widespread natures.

He tried to find one that resonated with him. One that was warm, filled with spring winds, a bright sun, and beings familiar to his friends and loved ones.

After a moment, a suitable dimension became apparent to him. He couldn’t explain how he knew that. It was just a rightness, and Leo reached for it with his magic, molding the power of the tree in that ‘direction’ similar to how he molded his magic, although it was even harder to conceptualize exactly what he was doing.

He felt a third wrenching in his soul, and then a slight sense of completion.

“Whoa!” Neha said, and Leo glanced over at her. Her eyes were wide, and even as Leo watched, she grew a few inches, and aged to perhaps thirteen, almost immediately.

It’s been a year since she last ‘aged,’ and she just gained a year over night… but still, the time matches up. I’m glad.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Growth spurt, huh?” Leo asked.

“Yeah… but this time it felt amazing, and not horrible, like the last time you tried to force the tree to grow.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, sprout. Although it ended well. Shall we go see what we got this time?” Leo asked.

Lily, from Remy’s back, pointed back the way they came. “How about Neha goes and get’s Hugh and Zun, and at the same time, we go get Andul and Rez, and we can all meet platform where the gates are? I think you having the whole team will be better, overall.”

Leo nodded. “Of course my love, you’re totally right.”

***

Roughly thirty minutes later, they all stood on the ‘platform’ of Ygg’drasil. It was a flat space of wood on top of one giant branch, and on the left side was the Portal to Ice Pines, and on the right was the new portal. The three trees of the Ice Pines gate were, in fact, pine trees. The ones on the right were three miniature… normal trees. Leo didn’t know how else to say it. Normal leaves in a sort of chaotic pattern around a kinda light colored trunk.

“Beech Trees,” Neha said, stepping up and running her fingers across it. “Averian beech. Very wind resistant.”

They all glanced through the gate. Stone walls rose high around them, but as Leo peered upward through the gate, he could see the sky above.

A tower without a ceiling?

“Shall we?” Leo asked.

Everyone nodded, including Lily. Who was standing among the group as if she meant to go through the gate.

Leo grabbed her hands and stared into her beautiful, pale-blue eyes. “Please hon, let us go first, okay? For me.”

Lily exhaled heavily, but then shook her hand free, stepped back, and motioned them in with a sweep of her arm.

“Thank you.”

Leo turned back toward the gate, about to head in. Before he could, an elf dropped to the ground inside the tower on the other side of the portal, landing in a crouch, massive white-feathered wings spread. Leo’s eyes widened at the wings, and it took him half a second to take in the rest of the elf. The elf was dressed in a complicated silk robe, somewhere between a toga and a kimono, and wearing soft-appearing sandals strapped to his feet. He had metallic golden hair and elf ears, and the usual thinner elf frame. As he came up from his crouch, he peered through at them, then spoke—but the sound didn’t come through, even though the light did.

Leo touched the gate and willed it to admit atmosphere—including the air that carried sound. He then briefly fingered his ‘tongues’ ring, hoping the Mind magic that fueled it worked on this new dimension. “Hello?”

The elf’s eyes widened a bit, and he stared down at the ring on Leo’s finger. “Who are you, and what possessed you to build a… Travel gate, I assume… here?” he asked.

“I’m Leo—never Leonard, that’s my dad—Evans, um, ap Stardew.”

A strangled snort came from Neha, and an unmitigated laugh from Hugh.

Leo ignored his companions. “Uh, sorry about the locale, I didn’t necessarily intend for it to show up wherever it is.”

“Ignorance isn’t a defense when an action was carried out with knowing negligence,” the elf commented. “So say all the treatises.”

Leo blinked, briefly nonplussed by the sense he was dealing with a far more advanced culture than he had expected. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but after Ice Pines, he was. “That’s true. I do genuinely apologize. If it helps, this will connect you to a vast trade network, so I think it’ll be worthwhile—if you want, however, I can shut the gate off forever, and no one will use it.”

The elf smiled and rubbed his chin with two fingers. “Well, you seem cultured and ethical, which would be expected of a society that could sue Travel magic. I would ask, however, if you can get rid of the tree that just showed up on the slope of our city? Not, mind you, that I think I wish it remove from the side, as the possibilities of this are fascinating, but I am curious. It has drained a considerable amount of the magic of our node, which has left a few of our rituals without support.”

Ah, crap, I hadn’t thought about the drain to a node. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“Well, for the moment let’s pass on that. Were you intending on coming through the portal? I will permit it under the authority temporarily granted me to deal with the situation, and assure that no harm comes to you.”

“So prissy,” Hugh commented sotto voice.

“What’s your name?” Leo asked.

“Liu Vellin, use name El, Cloud Bourn researcher of the Dragon Claw Tower, named one of the Five Golden Scrolls of The True Kingdom by Emperor Ro.

That’s a mouth full. “How were you picked to deal with us?”

El smiled. “Well, as the Cloud Bourn ranked researcher, I was of course the head to deal with new magical phenomena. Since you appeared in First Government District, naturally the head of Dragon Claw tower was picked. Now, I’ll admit, Azure Blade Wa Shueng, use name Eng, claimed that it was a disturbance of the peace for First Government, but since we didn’t know sentient beings were involved, the honor fell to me.”

That seems like a really dumb—

“And, of course, I’m Level Thirty-Three, so that weighed in favor of Li Zhao’s determination of the proper mandate of authority as well.”

Well, maybe some common sense here as well.

“And Wa Shueng, his soldiers, and my adepts are all on the walls as well, of course.”

Yup, not completely idiotic. Just form and honor obsessed, most likely.

“Well, do you care to join me on this side? The emperor is awaiting news, and I think it would be most glorious if I could take you directly to meet him.”

Leo smiled. “Take me to your leader.”