I watched Mary as she took the remaining seat next to me. The question in my mind was asked by the hero with blonde hair.

“What is the Languorous Winter?”

“To put it simply, it’s a snowstorm. The conjurer is the one known as Sloth. I don’t really know much about it. The only thing I know is that it’s a caster’s worst nightmare.”

One other meek hero sighed. “It’s one thing after the other. I want to go home.”

The axe hero shook his head. “Why? You want to continue being useless over there, too?”

“Useless? What about you?” The meek hero pointed at me next. “She’s the one who did everything. We barely made it through, and you practically fell on your a---”

“That’s enough!” Riri shouted. “We shouldn’t be fighting.”

“Oh yeah?” The timid hero asked. His hands smacked against the table, making Riri flinch.

“Please, this isn’t like you, Kenzo!”

“Well, can you really blame me? Just look what happened!” Kenzo’s arms shook, and tears filled his eyes. His voice grew quieter. “I want to go home to my family. I don’t want to fight in dungeons. I don’t want to die.”

Silence filled the room. The only sound was the light humming coming from the golems.

Sine broke the quiet. “Witch can send you back.”

Everyone in the room, including the teary eyed Kenzo stared at me. My heart pounded from this strange interrogation. No matter how you looked at it, sending someone to somewhere light years away with no coordinates spelled a disaster recipe.

I sighed and put Sine on the floor. Her grumblings evaded me as I walked to a bookshelf. I waved over one of the golems moving along. The cute floating amalgamation came to me.

“Is there a book on returning to Earth?” I asked it.

The Golem reacted with an almost imperceptible ping, and I knew that somehow meant “yes.”

“Can you get it for me?” I asked.

Once again the golem pinged and began its way up the shelves. It must have gone about 100 shelves before it stopped at a certain point and pulled out a book. Though, that was a strange phrasing to use when the hardcover hovered in front of it. Eventually, the golem arrived with the book.

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“Inter Dimensional Transportation: The Do’s and Don’ts of Stellar Teleportation,” I read.

I flipped through the book, absorbing it into my brain like a sponge. Memories floated in with it. I saw myself floating in a void one second, breathing in space. The next second I was on a rocky, dusty planet being chased around by what looked like a Carnotaurus.

Closing the book suspended the memories, but I had the knowledge of how to use it. I finally looked up towards the eight people surrounding me eagerly.

“Don’t just stare at me,” I said.

“Did you really read the book that fast?” Mary asked. “I could barely even see anything.”

“Yes, and I can do it. I can send anyone home if they want to.”

Kenzo’s eyes widened, but he smiled. “Thank you. Please, send me home.”

I nodded. “But first, I will test this on a rock in my inventory. Everyone please stand back.”

Once they were at a safe distance, I put the rock on an open space in the library. I cast a tracking spell on it first to see where it would go.

I stepped back and readied the transportation spell. A huge black circle spread out around it, and I felt the most noticeable pull on my magic in recent memory. Black spirals spread out over the rock, and eventually culminated in a huge obsidian spire of magic. In the next second, the rock had simply vanished.

The drain on my magic was palpable, but I was able to see where it landed. Overall, it was mission success. The rock had touched down in Manhattan, New York.

I smiled and looked at the heroes. “Anyone who wants to go stand where the rock was.”

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Riri asked.

Sine pouted. “It’s safe!”

After some deliberation, only three of the heroes moved over. Kenzo—the meek, Rogue boy, and Blonde hair man.

Kenzo looked at the remaining members. “Are you sure you don’t want to go back?”

It was the axe hero who answered. “No, I don’t have anything over there waiting for me anyway.”

Riri waved at them. “Please take care of yourselves!”

Once everyone said their goodbyes, I cast the same spell on them. The drain on my magic was even heftier this time, and there was a slight feeling of nausea when the spell concluded.

I peeked in on their location, ensuring they made it back to their homes. Good job, me.

///

“I am telling you, that’s how it happened,” Robert Frazier said. “I was walking on the street, and boom! A rock suddenly appeared there.”

The researcher in white nodded and wrote it on the clipboard. “Was there anything else unusual?”

Robert put a hand to his wrinkled chin. “Not anything I can think of, why?”

“Because this is no known element on the periodic table. No one has any idea what it is, and it randomly appeared in Manhattan of all places. This is a historical event, Mr. Frazier.”

“How crazy are we talkin’. You think aliens?” Frazier asked.

“It had to be. There is no other possibility I can think of, but I have to try and remain as unbiased as possible. If this was an alien probe, we must be careful. It’s also important that this be kept a secret from the public until further notice.”

“What do I get out of this whole thing? I’m the one who noticed it, and them youngsters were just walkin’ on their phones and talkin’ to whoever or using their tweeties.”

The researcher laughed before placing his gentle hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Mr. Frazier it’s possible that you’ll get a Nobel Prize. If this is some artifact...Your name will go down in history.”