So when I last left off, I’d just made a deal of sorts with my local witch to figure out what was happening with her garden that was impacting, at a minimum, her golems.

But just to get an oh by the way out there - I still keep in touch with some of my baseline friends, but since they can’t exactly come around and have a beer with me and I’m not into hitting on everything vaguely feminine, it’s not exactly like I’m missing them either.

Back to the garden…

I’d just gotten Miss Skuld to agree to give me what would probably be a lifetime supply of saffron (not really, but close enough to it) for work as to be determined. And it being of magical potency, that’d mean that I could use an even smaller amount on bigger batches of food.

Hey just because I’m a bachelor doesn’t mean I can’t cook. It just means I cook less frequently. Besides, I do try and share some meals with Lucy and Warren on a rotating basis, so it’s not all ‘once-a-month cooking’.

Ack I keep getting distracted. It’s what I get for writing on an empty stomach. I keep thinking about my next curry with garlic naan.

Back in the garden, I had just seen the impact of something errant that Miss Skuld didn’t know how to combat or even particularly identify. Which is why she brought me in.

Having worked in the private sector for a long enough time as what amounts to being a professional consultant/troubleshooter, it helps to know what I’m dealing with, and since this was all new, I decided to start from the beginning.

“You said that this place is disconnected. How do you mean?” I started with.

She gave me an appraising look, but then decided on something.

“This is an extraplanar… bubble. In theory, infinite, but restricted by my control of it,” she said.

“Extraplanar…” I repeated, remembering having heard that term before.

“It’s connected to my shop via the portal that we passed through,” she continued.

“Permanently or does it take energy to maintain the bubble and the portal?” I jumped a bit ahead in my thinking, continuing to try to remember when I’d heard the term extraplanar before.

“The bubble has been formed and so it would take energy to… uh… pop it as I believe you would ask next. So the shop and the bubble are permanent fixtures, but you are correct that the portal requires a slow constant connection,” she explained, gesturing around and the sky seemed to shimmer slightly as she did so.

“What kind of magic is this? I know I’ve heard the term before but I can’t remember where,” I prompted.

“A neophyte like yourself would probably know it as ‘torquay’,” she seemed to stop herself from scoffing.

My mind ran back to when the Wizard Police first visited me, thinking I was an unregistered magician.

“That’s right. Extraplanar magics that doesn’t follow elemental, scrolls, or enchanting categorization.”

“A gross oversimplification, but that’s long since a subject of debate,” she waved a hand dismissively.

“Wait, why is it a gross oversimplification?” I saw a thread of a possibility there.

Her face screwed up a bit, showing more emotion in one moment than I’d have thought her capable of showing.

“Do you know why witches and warlocks are so rare, even in non-baseline terms?” she asked in response.

“Bad publicity associated with the titles in both baseline and non-baseline worlds along with various cases of such people being ostracized because they simply wanted control over their own lives?” I guessed, albeit a bit wordily.

She smirked.

“Well, yes, but also because witches and warlocks tend to be users of specific torquay magics that even in non-baseline community are considered abominations or unforgivable uses,” her prim and proper form seeming to slouch slightly with this revelation.

“Such as?” I prompted, having a guess where this was going, but asking anyway.

“Summoning sentients from another plane to do our bidding, claiming a territory and its resources for ourselves exclusively, even necromancy,” she elaborated.

“Ok, I can kind of get the first one and the last one, but I’m not sure I get the middle one,” it was my turn for my face to squish in thought.

“Magic is about a give and take, ebb and flow. It moves around naturally. The same for resources, although depending on what kind of resource you’re talking about, the movement may need to be aided along by willing hands. So when someone takes a section of that and carves it out for themselves and only themselves, people get fussy,” she straightened, having noticed her fading posture.

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“A bit like someone holding up a stream to use it all for themselves and impacting the folks downstream?” I suggested.

“Something like that. Very oversimplified again, but yes,” she nodded.

“Would that apply to an extraplanar case?” I asked, gesturing around us.

“Not in the same way. As I said, witches and warlocks are fairly rare, so extraplanar space is pretty unbothered and unregulated,” she gestured to a picnic table that I’d swear hadn’t been there a moment ago.

As we moved to sit, my thoughts kept thrumming in my head that there was something obvious here, but it’d have to wait until I knew more about what I was dealing with. After all, it’s never as simple as… that… right?

“Any chance this would be the work of another witch or warlock?” I asked.

“Without knowing what’s wrong, it’s hard to say. It would be… unlikely. Not impossible though,” she cocked her head to one side.

“So you said you made this bubble. Does that mean you made everything in here too?” I decided to pivot, trying to find a more obvious root cause.

“I made the bubble, but everything contained within is from an elemental plane or grown here,” she said, sitting up and making this seem more like an audit than troubleshooting.

“Ok, so unless something got siphoned off here that shouldn’t have been in that elemental plane, we’re looking for something that got in unwanted,” I summed up.

She nodded wordlessly.

“Unless it’s something simpler,” I added, the caveat never hurting to add.

She seemed to frown at this.

“Such as?” she prompted.

“What shields this place from external elements getting in? I don’t pretend to understand extraplanar magic or how extraplanar interactions happen, but say a bit of lightning leaks into the extraplanar and heads this way,” I suggested, trying to lead her a bit.

She gave this a few moment’s thought, appearing to compare it against an internal spellbook or use cases.

“The bubble is supposed to be as close to an absolute shield as it’s possible to make. At least by myself,” she admitted.

“Why isn’t it an absolute shield, then?” I pressed, seeing another thread worth pulling.

“No such thing exists. Even among the greatest magicians, a shield against absolutely everything doesn’t exist. Or if it did, it would require so much essentia and other materials as to be undesirable to maintain for any length of time,” she waved a hand over the table and the illusion of wizards shoveling piles of essentia crystals into a kind of engine played out on the wood.

“So what doesn’t it protect against?” I asked, smiling at the illusion.

“Sufficient elemental energy could momentarily breach it, but I made it to be self-closing even if that were to happen,” she said, waving the hand again and the illusion faded.

“This still sounds like an awful lot of power being needed to maintain this bubble,” I said.

She froze for a solid moment, appearing to recognize what I had just deduced. After that moment, she sighed heavily and sagged, putting her elbows on the table and leaning forward.

“I know I shouldn’t admit this, but you’re under contract so I am duty-bound to tell you,” she started.

I simply nodded.

“Torquay magics don’t always… require an energy source. Or rather, don’t rely on a fixed kind of energy source the same way that more conventional magic works. It’s part of why we’re not liked,” she explained.

I nodded again, needing to know more.

“Conventional magic practitioners are more like batteries. They can only do so much before they run out of energy. Torquay practitioners don’t have that problem,” she continued.

“They draw the energy from other sources,” I guessed.

She didn’t bother looking surprised, but there was a moment’s hesitation.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” she nodded.

“So where did you get the energy to make this place?” I pressed.

“All around. Extraplanar areas are… well, they’re not exactly empty, but they’re not exactly full either,” she tried explaining.

I distinctly got the impression she was not used to needing to explain all of this to anyone, let alone someone like me.

“So essentially there’s a lot of… free energy around and you used that to establish and power your bubble,” I stated, seemingly more fact than opinion.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“How long ago was that and when did this issue start happening?” I continued.

“I first made the bubble 20 years ago. This has happened intermittently over the last 15, but has been getting worse of late. I can tolerate an errant plant now and again, but my gardeners are a different matter entirely,” she said.

“Is there any chance that you’re that person blocking the stream and using all of it to the detriment of the folks downstream?” I asked.

She took a full minute to consider this.

“I don’t know,” she finally admitted.

“And what would happen without the bubble?” I asked.

“My garden would cease to be. It would be like asking what would happen to Earth without atmosphere,” she said a bit more haughtily than I believe she meant to.

I gathered my thoughts for a few moments and put on my best client-facing ‘I’ve got news that you won’t like’ face.

“So far, I can see it being one of three things: first, it could be some kind of errant discharge from your portal. Some kind of incompatibility between the energies maybe. Next, it may be a build-up of some kind of energy on your bubble that’s reaching a kind of critical mass more and more regularly. This bubble acting as a kind of ‘rock in the stream’. And lastly, it might be something from the metaphorical downstream reaching out to get the flow going again.”

She considered these thoughts, apparently giving this more directed thought than she’d prefer to have to give it.

“The first is not impossible, but unlikely. The last is possible, but there’s not a good way of countering it or them without knowing more. For the middle, let’s argue that it is that. How do we deal with it then?” she decided.

“That depends on what we’re prepared to and what we can plan for,” I said. “Moving the stone will only do so much. It won’t stop it from happening, but it might make it less of an issue, if my hunch is right and the little that I’ve picked up about extraplanar mechanics today is confirmed.”

“That would be acceptable, but what would a more permanent solution entail?” she prompted, determined to get her saffron’s worth out of me.

“That will depend on if moving the stone does anything. If it does, then we know and can prompt change. If it doesn’t, then we know what didn’t work,” I admitted, trial and error being common enough place in even the best troubleshooting.

“So what would you have me do?” she asked.

“You said you created this bubble permanently, but you never said if you tethered it in place,” I gestured slightly vaguely at our surroundings.

“Well, I didn’t,” she said, her face showing her confusion.

“Except you did,” and pointed my finger at her portal.