“Theo?” the voice on the other end of the phone call said, seeming somewhat surprised, “we thought you would be in the air still, or did you land early?”

“I chose not to take the first plane out,” Theo replied, “all the cell tower workers filled it, and it was going to Florida anyways. Second plane is heading further north.”

“And you didn’t inform us?”

“Until a few hours ago the cell tower wasn’t fully functional, couldn’t call out.”

“Did you try email?”

“I consider myself lucky I can dial on this damned thing,” Theo grumbled, “anyways, got some time, so any updates on the Orlan thing?”

“I sent you an email the other day, but…” the staffer on the phone trailed off, as if he could hear Theo’s glare through the line, “but I’ll summarize it for you. China is insisting Orlan is some kind of international threat, word is they’re planning to introduce something to the UN about it soon. Beyond that, not much out of China.”

“So as we expected,” Theo nodded, scribbling down a note on a pad. Since the rifts first appeared China has been constantly antagonistic, claiming the US and other western powers were incapable of handling the issue while also saying they were doing fine. The firewall had slammed closed hard, travel in and out of the nation was restricted to the point that even trade had been temporarily disrupted. Based on intelligence Theo had seen China wasn’t handling the rifts any better than anyone else, satellite imagery showed chaos and mass destruction, but China insisted they were doctored images. To find them being hostile towards Orlan wasn’t a surprise either, perhaps they were afraid Orlan would side with the US, or they just didn’t like having another powerful player on the board, but as they were currently on the other side of the planet they couldn’t do much more than hiss.

“Russia has been oddly quiet on Orlan, at least publicly,” the staffer continued, “they have no official stance. But myself and a bunch of other staff here have been getting emails, supposedly from other government offices, asking for his phone number. Cybersecurity traced the emails to Russia.”

“So they’re trying to get into contact with him,” Theo muttered to himself, “maybe they want to recruit him? Secure his assistance? I take it no one has given the number out?”

“Don’t think so, we’ve warned the private groups who have his number to keep it to themselves as well. The news will probably do as they’re told, harder to say with Rob and his podcast. Though we don’t know if they even have his number,” the man said, “unfortunately the first to know if they get his number will likely be Orlan himself.”

“Right, anything else?”

“Nothing of note, EU is still squabbling, panicking over the monsters that appeared in Germany the other week.”

“Beasts,” Theo corrected, “apparently monsters are born in this world, beasts come out of the rifts.”

“I’ll inform the staff,” the guy said dryly, “most interestingly has been England, I’ve tried calling some contacts of yours in the English parliament, but they’ve refused to comment on Orlan’s actions in Bermuda beyond ‘the crown is conducting an investigation’ and that kind of thing.”

“I’ll make some calls on my end, they might be more willing to speak to me.”

“Might want to wait till you’re back in DC, the chances that cell tower is tapped is basically one hundred percent.”

“Wish I could say I was surprised,” Theo groaned, “anything else?”

“Not on our end, you doing already sir?”

“Other than a rather acute case of culture shock, I’m fine, now that the tower thing is up, call me if anything important happens,” Theo replied before hanging up. He’d thought he’d been immunized to culture shock in his years as a congressman, while the job didn’t technically require travel, in practice he often flew across the world on various tasks. Of course, most of his time was spent in DC, but he still considered himself a well-traveled individual.

Which made the culture shock something of a surprise, part of him wanted to attribute it to the strangeness of seeing people dressed like they’re headed to a renaissance fair and living in a castle that somehow had running water. The odd dichotomy of modern amenities combined with the ancient surroundings. But that wasn’t it, he’d spent a week in an old Japanese castle that had been retrofitted with running water once, and the shock hadn’t been this bad. And here everyone spoke English.

No, he suspected it was the odd way in which Orlan ran his little island. Theo’s mind insisted Orlan was some king or provincial leader of a small island, but he ran it more like a military operation. There was no red tape, no bureaucracy or anything like that, when Orlan wanted something done, he simply got it done. He’d had an entire magic academy built in under a month, and it wasn’t some cheap prefab structure. Theo had been to the campus and it was well built with a mix of stone and wood, runic murals covered the walls giving the buildings an odd feel, but other then that it looked like any small local college across the nation. To build something similar in the US would take nearly a year, and most of that would be trying to secure the land rights for a school or educational facility. Then he’d have to find contractors willing to do the work, and wait till blueprints were drawn and checked to ensure they complied with all local building codes.

To see him just say ‘get it done’ and for it to get done was something he more closely associated with the military. Yet his mind told him that Orlan wasn’t military, he didn’t march around, his knights didn’t salute when he passed, nothing like that.

With a sigh, Theo took a long drink from the beverage one of the castle servants had gotten for him, it was refreshingly cool as he sat on a balcony overlooking the island. Orlan had gone to pick up the contact from the Sons of Kayeen, he’d asked if Theo wanted to come but Theo had taken one look at the small sky-cutter and said no.

Instead he chose to sit out under the hot tropical sun, overlooking what seemed to be a European castle village while drinking what he was sure was some kind of cool tea. Nodding to himself, he decided he’d made the right decision. For the next half hour he simply sat there, enjoying the view, sun and drink, only standing from the comfortable chair when he saw the sky-cutter cresting the island’s edge.

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“Theo! Wasn’t sure if you’d still be here when I got here!” a lanky man in a hawiian shirt and khaki shorts shouted, waving as Theo met him by the castle entrance.

“Figured I’d stick around for the introduction,” Theo shrugged, greeting the younger man who he’d spoken to a week or so ago, “didn’t think it would be you though Tom, thought they’d send someone else.”

“We thought this would make things easier,” Tom shrugged in reply and grinned

“Get much of a chance to speak with Orlan?” Theo asked, glancing at the imposing Protector Lord who had been just behind Tom, speaking with some of his knights.

“Not really, hard to talk on that flying ship, so we didn’t get much beyond introductions.”

“This way,” Orlan said, interrupting the two and nodding to a side room that lead into a small sitting room, “so I take it this is the guy you met Theo?”

“Ya, though I thought they’d send someone else,” Theo replied as they all took seats around the room. Both Tom and Theo were on their own, sitting on opposite sides of the coffee table while Lailra and Nallia joined Orlan on one of the long sides.

“Alright then, first things first, we recovered the Eye of Providence,” Orlan said, looking at Tom.

“Oh, really? That’s good,” Tom nodded.

“Not going to ask for it back?”

“If I thought it would be safer in our hands I might, but…”

“Right, then did you bring any more information on the missing items?”

“Not really, as I’m sure Theo told you, most of our records were lost so I already told him what we know,” Tom shrugged, “I’ve contacted some of the other sons to see if they have any copies but I’m not confident.”

“So you aren’t here to get the Eye back, and you don’t have any information for us,” Orlan said slowly, looking Tom over, “why are you here?”

“To speak with you, specifically about how you intend to teach people magic,” Tom replied.

“What about it?”

“We’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Tom said, pausing while the others stared at him before holding his hands up as if in surrender, “not forever, of course, just until we track down whoever has the other items.”

“And your reasoning?” Orlan asked sharply.

“To put it simply, we suspect our rivals aren’t very skilled with magic, likely being only slightly better than us Sons of Kayeen,” explained the lanky man, “but if you start spreading knowledge of how to use magic, that information will reach them. That could make it much harder for us to recover the items.”

“Just how much magic do you know?” Orlan asked suspiciously, leaning forward and all but glaring at Tom.

“Myself? Not much…” Tom said slowly, Orlan’s glare hardening, “alright, I don’t know any. To be honest, until about a year ago I didn’t even think magic was real.”

“Are there any mages in your group?”

“Not that I know of.”

“None at all?” Orlan asked in disbelief.

“That I know of,” Tom corrected, “we’re a secretive group, other than the odd meeting it hasn’t been till the last year that we’ve really done anything.”

“How many people are in your group.”

“I don’t think that’s important.”

“How many!” Orlan shouted.

“A couple dozen,” Tom admitted softly.

“A couple dozen non-mages, are all that’s been protecting some of the most powerful items on this side?” Orlan demanded.

“We were much larger a century ago, but since the wars our numbers have dwindled,” Tom explained slowly, “like I said, many of us were unsure magic was real, if any of the stories or records we had were true until recently.”

“Wait, do you think…” Theo asked, sitting up suddenly to look at Orlan.

“As trash as the design of that spell was, the usage was masterful,” the Protector Lord sighed, “the Eye of Providence, do you know what it does Tom?”

“It allows people to see the truth, according to what records we have.”

“It links to a symbol, and any magic cast on it propagates through to all instances of that symbol,” Orlan explained slowly, “when we examined it, we found a spell on it that whispers in the back of people’s minds that magic isn’t real.”

“Using Brisingamen?” Tom asked, cocking his head.

“That could be where they got the knowledge to cast the spell,” Orlan nodded, “I’d imagine that, if Brisingamen is on the same level as the Eye then it’s actual effects would be much more potent.”

“So, you think that they used the Eye to try and convince us, the organization tasked with keeping the history of magic, that magic wasn’t real?”

“Of other uses,” Orlan replied, “it would also help conceal their actions, make it hard for people to accept magic when they did see it.”

“What about the other missing items?” Tom asked after a moment’s thought, “if they used the Eye to hide themselves and weaken us, and they got the magic for it from Brisingamen, what are they using the others for?”

“Honestly, I was hoping you’d have more information about the items for us,” Orlan said dryly.

“All I can do is ask the others again, see if they have anything.”

“I’m also going to ask you to turn over all other relics,” Orlan said, it wasn’t a request at this point and his tone of voice made that much clear, “clearly you are unable to either protect or utilize them.”

“That… might be difficult,” Tom said slowly, refusing to make eye contact with Orlan.

“Why is that?” Orlan asked through ground teeth.

“We, well, don’t have access to them… you see while we know about where the vaults are, they’re in places we can’t access them easily. The largest vault is in the Vatican, for example. But it’s been decades since the Sons have had anyone there.”

“So you don’t even know if those vaults are still intact,” Orlan growled.

“That… would be a fair assessment, yes sir,” Tom nodded quickly.

“Then I want a full list of every vault you know of, and what you think it contains. Then you’re going to contact the others and…” Orlan started but trailed off, his eyes growing unfocused, “Shit.”

Without a word Nallia stood and rushed out of the room, Orlan standing as well.

“Theo, keep an eye on our guest,” Orlan barked, turning to walk out.

“What’s going on?” Theo asked, hurrying to follow the man.

“A rift just opened in Florida,” Orlan replied, “the mages just reported it.”

“Shit,” Theo agreed, pulling out his phone just as it started ringing.

“There’s a rift thing near Orlando!” the staffer nearly shouted over the phone as soon as Theo answered it.

“Ya, where exactly?”

“Orlando internation airport.”

“Can you make it there?” Theo asked, looking up at the Protector Lord,

“No, our sky cutters have a max range of around eight hundred miles,” Orlan growled, “Florida is over a thousand away. Even if we could reach, the cutters are too slow to make it in time.”

“But… wait… isn’t the aircraft with all the cell tower crew landing there soon?”

“Yes,” Orlan nodded, “including my sister.”

“And you’re just going to sit here?”

“The cutters can’t make it in time, and it’s not like we have a…” Orlan froze mid-sentence before taking a step and vanishing into thin air.

\-\-\-\-\-

“I mean, preflight would take at least an hour,” the pilot of the second cargo aircraft said slowly, “if we did it properly anyways.”

“And if you rushed it?” Orlan asked.

“Ten minutes? Corporate would get angry at us.”

“Good thing we inexplicably started preflight an hour ago for no particular reason,” the co-pilot said with a slight smirk, glancing at the other man, “unless you have an issue with that?”

“If we do this, will you be able to help?” the senior pilot asked, looking Orlan in the eye.

“Yes,” Orlan replied immediately.

“Great, then if anyone asks us, we’ll tell them you threatened us,” the man said before looking around, “I mean, honestly, I’m not sure that’s even a lie.”

“I don’t want to waste any time,” Orlan shrugged as the magical spell holding the three of them in the air brought them to a stop right next to the parked aircraft and set them down.

“The hard part will be turning the plane around,” the senior pilot said as the co-pilot took off to begin a walk around of the aircraft, “Your people are suppose to be strong, right? Think you could push it back so…”

The pilot trailed off as the ground under his aircraft lit up and, seemingly of its own accord, began to turn. Stone ground on stone and the aircraft slowly turned around to face the makeshift runway.

“Or you could do that,” the senior pilot said.

“I’m going to grab my knights,” Orlan replied, taking a step and vanishing.