Michael took unsteady steps down the gravel footpath, his head in a daze as he retread old ground.
Up ahead, the path lead to a street, with cars passing by now and then.
To the left, a power line cut through a prairie, buzzing with electricity.
With a deep breath, he scrunched up his sensitive nose at the smell of pollution.
Michael was shaking.
If it was all real… he was finally home.
The fantastical world he had been spirited away to had followed a very different cycle of time, and he had quickly lost track of how long he’d been away from home.
But by the tree’s memories, the passing of the seasons...
Ten years!
Michael took another deep breath.
He was getting carried away. He needed to make sure this wasn’t just an illusion.
First, he pulsed his mana through his body and surroundings, the magical energy an extension of his senses. He could sense the warmth of the sun in the air around him and the coolness of the earth beneath his feet. With even more focus, he could feel hints of mana in his surroundings: fire, wind, earthen, and even some notes of water.
But he failed to feel any hints of illusion mana around him, let alone any insidiously flowing within his own body.
However, he was no fool. The best illusions were meant to mess with even one’s perception of their own mana. He would have to test the illusion to its limits.
The more complicated the illusion, the more difficult it was for the illusionist to fabricate. The less familiar the object that was faked, the harder it was to make it feel real within the target’s senses.
Michael reached the street and smiled.
“Good luck fabricating this.”
A car was coming, its windows rolled down. Hip-hop music blared from its speakers. Michael winced at the volume but focused on the music, nonetheless.
The genre was familiar enough. But the song…
He closed his eyes, intently listening to the lyrics and the sound of the artist’s voice. He listened until the car had driven by and away, the music fading into the distance.
It would have been one thing to spin an illusion of a song he had heard before, one that he knew by heart and could be pulled from his memories. But to spin a new one altogether based on a style that he was only passingly familiar with? Without being a hip-hop artist themselves?
Even magic had its limits.
He took a shuddering breath.
“No… no! Carelessness kills. I need to make sure,” he growled.
Michael strode away from the road and placed his hand on the nearest tree.
“Show me the wind, earth, and water.”
Michael detached himself from his own senses and a grander sense of being overcame his own as he pulsed his mana through the tree and to the forest and the creatures beyond. Their senses were his own. Their limbs, bark, roots, leaves, eyes, ears, noses, skins, and tongues all his own.
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He pushed through all of it as fast as he could, stretching to his utmost limit.
He could feel the other foot trails in the forest, all very familiar. He found his old hideout deeper in the forest, a hollowed-out tree. He felt the fringes of the middle school he used to go to on the east side of the forest. He heard the chatter of school children on the soccer field there. He saw the park he’d frequented with his old friends on the south side. The train station. The bike path. The restaurant plaza. All of it old and familiar. All of it sharp and clear.
Yet among these things, there were new things as well. Things that were certainly not from his memories. The hollowed out-tree had fallen, lying on its side. The playground at the park had been redone, the old drab beige and green plastic replaced with new bright orange and yellow. The restaurant plaza still held his favorite fast-food restaurant, yet his favorite ice cream shop next door was gone, replaced with a frozen yogurt place.
Why the hell had they gotten rid of the ice cream shop?
But that was beside the point.
It was the perfect blend of familiarity and novelty. If this was an illusion, it was a godly one that was so close to a simulation of reality, he had no hope of ever breaking it.
Either a god of illusions had single-mindedly hunted him down in the middle of the deep wilderness he was in moments ago, or he was home.
Michael failed to muster the necessary paranoia to believe in the former.
“But how did I come back home?”
He had been camping in the deep wilderness before he had been spirited back. He had been hundreds of miles away from the nearest civilizations. The wilderness for miles around had been his eyes and ears and would have given him advance warning of any incoming threats or magic.
Yet one moment, he had been seated at camp, assured of his safety, and the next he had been whisked away.
And nothing in his current surroundings indicated that he had been summoned by a caster. No ritual circle in the soil, no mana users nearby, no residual spatial mana from a teleportation spell. Nothing.
Michael wasn’t sure what to make of it. Nor did he have the time to do so.
From a bird’s eyes in the tree, he spied a dog sprinting towards him and a woman chasing after it.
Michael kept his senses connected to the tree, but turned his focus away, letting them fall into a dull, background hum. He stared at the dog, a golden retriever, tongue lolling out as it closed the distance in great bounds.
“Charlie! Charlie!” the woman called out desperately.
Michael smiled at Charlie’s single-minded focus and joy.
The dog was seconds away from launching up at him.
“Peace to you,” Michael pulsed with nature mana.
The pulse washed over Charlie in a wave.
He froze, his eyes wide and ears perked up.
After a moment of stillness, he carefully loosened up and padded forward. When he reached Michael’s feet, he laid down on his back, exposing his tummy.
“I submit to you, Steward.”
Michael’s shoulders slumped and he sighed.
“I’m no Steward.”
He knelt and pet Charlie on the tummy.
The woman, presumably Charlie’s owner, stopped just short of them. However, she just stood there quietly in bafflement for a moment.
“He… how… how’d you do that?”
English. When was the last time he’d heard that language from someone other than himself?
“How’d I do what?” Michael asked hesitantly.
“You… Charlie jumps on everyone he meets, no exceptions! Like, you don’t understand. I’ve never seen him not jump on new people!”
Michael smiled.
“So how’d you do it? What’s the secret?” she implored.
“I… I don’t know what to tell you... I guess I just have that effect on animals?”
“Are… are you sure? Because I’ve gotta tell ya, Charlie gets me into such trouble sometimes! It’d be nice to know how you did… that.”
Michael hummed.
“Well, I was just relaxed and conveyed that with my mana.”
“Sorry, your what?”
“My mana.”
“Mana? What’s that?”
“Oh.”
Michael remembered where he was.
The woman gazed at him quizzically as he got his bearings.
“Sorry, I meant to say my energy. I just conveyed my peaceful… er… mood with my body language.”
“Oh, okay, I see. But how did you do that?”
Michael was about to speak but caught his tongue again.
How did one explain away magic?
“I… I really don’t know what to tell you. Just… be more relaxed I guess?”
The woman didn’t look like she bought it. Michael wouldn’t have bought it either. He was suddenly feeling very self-conscious. He gave Charlie a final rub before standing up.
“Well, I hope you and Charlie have a good day.”
With a nod, he disconnected his senses from the tree and started back on the footpath.
“Oh, Charlie! No! Stay! Come back!”
Michael stopped and turned around, finding the dog at his heels with an expectant look.
“Let me serve, Steward.”
Michael sighed.
“I have no needs right now. Be at peace Charlie.”
After a moment of looking at Michael, Charlie nodded and quietly padded back to the woman, whose jaw was hanging a little too low for Mike’s liking.
He quickly turned away and walked down the footpath.
The chances that this was an illusion were vanishingly low, which meant he had been teleported. Though the answers to how and why were not readily apparent.
For now, it was time to finally go home.