“So, the gang’s all together again, huh?” Penelope remarked, after everyone had somehow squeezed into Kimble’s office in the Volunteer headquarters building. “Tell me what you’ve been up to here.”

Larek stretched in his chair as he looked past the others, his mind focused on what he was going to work on later as his friends shared what they’d been up to over the last few years. He contributed a little bit here and there, but he’d already told Penelope and Vivienne most of what had happened to him since he’d seen them last during their trip to Thanesh; everyone else present already knew that information, so this was more for everyone else than him.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that everyone is all together again, but I’m itching to get working on these new Fusions. He knew it wasn’t fair to Penelope and Vivienne, who were still adjusting to what had happened back at Dreenwood and being brought to join the Volunteers, but he was getting impatient.

Fortunately, everyone else whom they had rescued from the rubble had been handed off to a few Volunteers shortly after arriving in the city, where they would find a place to live and something for the adults to do for work. There was always plenty to do, so he felt sure that they would quickly find their place in their new homes, even if the change was unexpectedly abrupt. All of them had their Illuminated Free Will Fusions implanted in their heads, at least, so there wasn’t a risk that they might accidentally end up with a bug or a Gergasi trying to control them.

“…and so we’ve been experiencing an increase in Faction activity, including the horrific attack yesterday,” Kimble was saying, which brought Larek’s attention back to the impromptu meeting. “We’ve had to step up our ongoing security plans because of it, with a few other things in the works to make it even more safe. Whether it works or not is going to be irrelevant if we don’t take care of the underlying problems, though.”

Larek abruptly nodded, levering himself out of his chair. “Which is exactly what I need to be working on. Unless you have something else for me, I need to start.”

The Fusionist ignored the ill-concealed smiles of his friends as they could see the impatience practically emanating from his body. “Yeah, sure, we’re done with you for now. Don’t be a stranger now, and don’t forget that you’ll be teaching your first class on Fusions… Well, it was supposed to be today, but we can push it until tomorrow. Does that work?” Larek nodded quickly at Kimble’s question, as he made his escape. Nedira stayed put, telling him that she’d be by later to check on him, and he fled outside the office. Seeing the stairs leading upwards nearby, he decided to take a shortcut and practically sprinted to the roof. When he arrived, he jumped off and used his Pattern Cohesion to make a platform under his feet, which took him back to his home he shared with Nedira. And Norde, probably, as he wasn’t sure if her brother had recovered enough to find his own place.

I’ll check in with him later, along with everyone else. For now though, I can’t concentrate until I get all of the thoughts on my recent discoveries out of my head and into a Fusion or two.

It felt like it had been weeks since he’d stepped foot in his home with all that had happened lately, even if it had only been a little over a day. So much had occurred that it seemed like much more should’ve passed, and it was a little shocking how familiar everything was inside the large, single room where he slept and made his Fusions.

That wasn’t to say that it was unchanged since he and Nedira had left the morning before. Where once there were empty shelves and bins that had held the materials used for the Fusions he’d made, some of those materials had been refilled, including stacks of steel plates, round and flat stones, a barrel of wooden staves, a number of cloth shirts and pants, a few leather chestpieces, and a variety of random metal bracelets, armlets, anklets, and rings. Added all up, it was only a fraction of what had been in there when he’d begun his Fusion-creating session a few days before, but it was enough for his purposes.

After grabbing an armful of materials he thought he might need, he sat down in his comfortable throne of pillows and placed his lapdesk over his lap, wiggling his body to find the most comfortable place he could.

And then he closed his eyes and brought everything that had been on his mind to the surface so he could review what he’d learned.

Larek’s visit to the Aperture had revealed to him the nature of how they were constructed as well as—mostly—how the monsters came into being, through the means of a conduit to the world of Corruption. He had been interrupted by the arrival of the Gergasi before he obtained a full understanding of its different mechanisms, such as exactly how the Aperture chose which monsters to spawn and the precise method of forming those monsters in the first place, but that was relatively small compared to what he did learn.

First, the structure of the Apertures was made of a combination of every type of energy he knew about, forming a new type of semi-malleable energy that was—as far as he could tell—indestructible, but could also expand and contract when needed. In addition, monsters were created when Pure Aetheric Force from the environment met with Corrupted Aetheric Force sent to this world through a conduit inside the Aperture connecting it to the world of the Corrupted. The combination of these two Forces allowed for the production of monsters, though exactly how that occurred was still shrouded a bit in mystery.

But everything else about the process was something he understood well enough. He’d observed the conduit of energy to the world of Corruption, how it interacted with this world, and the means by which the Apertures would eventually be able to grow and expand. Coupled with his recent discovery of moving around Mana and Aetheric Force to another location, he thought that he might be able to replicate the process. Why replicate it? Because he was hoping to create something that would transport monsters from one place to another instantly; if it worked with monsters with no ill effects, then it might even be able to work to transport people.

Instantaneous travel between one place and another? That would change the world and would make defending against incursions of monsters so much easier. It wouldn’t make the current Transports that the Volunteers used obsolete, of course, but it would be another tool in the arsenal against not only Apertures but also the Calamities that currently existed or may exist in the future.

But for more immediate purposes, it would allow them to move monsters from an Aperture to places near the towns and cities of the Factions that were currently threatening them. Once they were too busy with safeguarding their own people, then Larek would see about stopping the attacks at the source.

Taking a steel plate from the stack he’d placed nearby, Larek set it on his lapdesk and thought about what he wanted to create. While he hadn’t been able to observe a Scission from up close with his Magical Detection Skill high enough to see what was occurring, he thought that the vertical, circular opening was a better model to replicate than an Aperture’s spherical appearance. It seemed more logical to him to push monsters through a large, circular portal, rather than try and throw them into a sphere.

Before he got too far, he realized he probably needed to have two of these portals linked together, so he grabbed a second steel plate and put it next to the one on his lapdesk. Now, with his supplies in hand, he got to work theorycrafting his new Fusion.

His initial obstacle was the fact that in order to create a stable conduit linking one place to another, at least based on what he’d learned from the Aperture, he needed to employ every energy he knew about together to construct something strong enough to handle the sheer power involved in the process. It was this energy that he needed to be able to replicate in order for it to work, which meant that he had to figure out how to combine Mana, Stama, Pattern Cohesion, Corrupted Aetheric Force, and Pure Aetheric Force together – which seemed impossible. Fortunately, he was able to observe enough of the substance and process in which it was created in the Aperture, and he was fairly certain that he could artificially recreate it with a Fusion.

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All of his different Fusions he’d made in the past, as well as his recent discoveries, would be necessary to get this to work.

Ideally, he would love to be able to take all of those different energies and throw them all into a Fusion and hope that it would work, but that wasn’t possible. Sure, he had Mana, Stama, Pattern Cohesion, and even a bit of Pure Aetheric Force to spare, but Larek didn’t have any Corrupted Aetheric Force available; anything that his internal core absorbed from monsters was purified fairly quickly, and it wasn’t something that he could pluck out of the air and throw into a formation.

At least, it wasn’t something that he could pluck out of the air. A Fusion, though, he thought would be more than capable of doing that.

Therefore, he designed his new formation by abandoning the old grid format that he typically started with for most of his Fusions and went for a circular formation, with an empty space in the middle, mimicking the portal shape he wanted to form. In equidistant sections of the circular formation, he placed what he was going to call “Cost” sections, which included two separate Mana Costs, as well as singular Stama Cost, Pattern Cohesion Cost, Pure Aetheric Force, and Corrupted Aetheric Force sections. The only one that he deliberately routed through the entire formation was one of the Mana Costs, as it was going to be needed to actually empower the initial Fusion, ensuring that it didn’t fall apart – as well as some secondary Effects that were necessary.

From there, he added a number of Stabilizers and Equalizers that linked all but one of the different Cost sections together, which would help to stabilize the intake of the different energies, ensuring that they were all equal when they were applied to the sections that would enable the Effect he wanted. This was important because, from what he’d seen in the Aperture, the combination of the different energies had to be equal in order to maintain its stability, and these sections would absolutely make sure that happened. The other Mana Cost, as previously indicated, would be responsible for keeping the actual formation and auxiliary Effects sufficiently powered.

There were two Reactive Activation Methods, one which required a relatively simple mental phrasing of “Activate Portal” to initially activate all the Effects; but to turn them off, a second Reactive Activation Method would require a much more complicated string of mental phrases to deactivate them, as he didn’t want someone to accidentally shut the whole Fusion down. For this first, experimental Fusion, it was relatively short and easy at “Larek, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” but future ones would be a bit longer.

For Magnitude, at least for the main Effect, he kept this initial experiment at 1, as he wasn’t sure how expensive it would be to create it. If it was a success, he would have to work his way up to a much larger Magnitude once he saw the requirements. There were other Magnitudes he was going to include that would be linked to the different auxiliary Effects, but they were relatively negligible compared to the main Effect.

Once all of that was handled, he dug into the auxiliary Effects he wanted. First, because once one of these portals was placed somewhere, he didn’t want the Fusion to be destroyed, he was going to add a Strengthen Effect with a Magnitude of 15 in the final version. It was a bit expensive, but when steel was strengthened by such an amount, there was very, very little in this world that could even bend it, let alone break it – which he hoped meant even an attack by a Gergasi, though he couldn’t be absolutely sure. For now, though, he only added a Magnitude 1 Strengthen Effect, which was plenty for his current experiment.

But there was also the possibility that someone might get it into their head to move the steel plate from where it was placed, which would basically negate its purpose for being where it was in the first place. To prevent this, he took the Effect that was used in the Transports and The Hopper to reduce its weight in the Buoyant Sphere Fusion, and he created the inverse of it. In essence, instead of reducing the weight of the material it was attached to, he was increasing the weight. Again, he was only going to have a Magnitude of 1 for this experiment, but later versions would have a Magnitude of 10 or more, to the point where even the strongest Gergasi would have no chance to pick it up or shift it. Ideally, he would like it to weigh as much as a mountain, but anything just short of that would also work.

Hmm… that could be an interesting method of attacking someone or placed in a trap of sorts; making someone weigh 100 times their weight or more might be difficult to recover from.

Pushing that thought into the back of his mind until a later time, the Fusionist then came to the primary Effect: the portal itself. This one took him nearly an hour of contemplation to put together, but in the end he thought it should work.

Using the five other Cost sections – which weren’t connected to the auxiliary Effects – he fed them all into an Effect that would project the combined, equal energies above the surface of the steel plate to form a thin circle suspended in the air. This circle would be, he hoped, the same indestructible but malleable energy that the Aperture’s structure was composed of. Initially, this circle would be relatively small, as it was more of an outline of what it would eventually be.

The problem he had been running into with his creation of this Fusion was that he wouldn’t be able to activate the Fusion and have the portal spring into place instantly. Why? Because he was doing something a bit different with the gathering of the energy needed to produce the ultimate Effect. While the separate Mana Cost section would be used to stabilize and finalize the overall Fusion, as well as powering the auxiliary Effects, the other Cost sections would gradually build up energy absorbed from the environment, which would in turn strengthen and expand the portal until it was at its largest size. He took the idea from how he recognized the Apertures expanded, but he put his own twist on it.

In order to accomplish this gradual process, sets of Amplifiers, Equalizers, and Limiters worked in conjunction with the Cost sections to ramp up the overall output of energy going into the Effect, to the point where there were four stages. The first stage would be the initial formation of the floating ring made of indestructible energy. The second stage would be the expansion stage, as more energy was absorbed and fed into the ring, growing it until it hit its max size, which was the third stage. The fourth stage was the most important, as it then converted the combined energy into what was essentially the same “glue” substance keeping the Aperture’s structure together, which was permeable and would allow objects to pass through it. This “glue” would then coat the inside of the ring in a flat plane, which would theoretically look very similar to the outer appearance of an Aperture, completing the portal.

At least, that was the theory.

Once that was done, he realized he needed a secondary Effect that would be triggered via an Input and Variable set that would perform something that he had just recently learned about. In short, it would treat itself as one and the same. Just like one of his Fusions absorbing ambient Mana from a distance because the Mana Cost section and the area of ambience were one and the same, this Effect would treat anything touching the plane of permeable energy inside the circle as being in the same place. In other words, if he focused on the Effect correctly, sticking one’s hand through one plane would allow it to come out the other side of the portal at a distant location.

Theoretically, this should work.

Now it was time to test it.

After double- and triple-checking the formation in his mind, Larek got to work. Creating the circular formation with his Pattern Cohesion, he made the depth twice as thick as necessary and took meticulous care to ensure it was perfect as it rapidly constructed itself from his mind’s eye. It took approximately a minute for it to fully form, if only because he deliberately slowed down the process while he checked everything over.

When everything seemed as perfect as he could make it, he started to funnel Mana into the specific Mana Cost section that would stabilize the formation and power the auxiliary Effects. The area of ambience for it was, as he’d played with the Illuminate Fusion earlier that morning, located approximately 3 feet above the surface of the Fusion that he held suspended in the air, though it took much more Mana than the Illuminate Fusion to fully power it. He estimated that he fed nearly 50,000 Mana into it before he felt it stop absorbing any more. With it fully powered and ready to be placed on a steel plate, he used his Focused Division Skill to split it in two, creating two identical copies that were paired together, which he was hoping meant that the portals they created would be linked, making them one and the same.

Taking care to place them on the steel plates, he made sure they were perfectly aligned before he let them *click* with the inaudible sounds of complete Fusions.

First, Larek was relieved to see that he was successful in the fact that the Fusions didn’t fall apart halfway through the process, and that they didn’t appear to be in any danger of exploding in their inactive state. He hadn’t truly thought something might go wrong with his process, but when he was experimenting with something completely new like this, it was always a possibility.

Second, and most importantly, as he started to reach for the steel plates so that he could take them outside of the city to actually test them, he froze for a second before he was knocked backwards in his pillow throne, as he was subsequently bombarded with notifications he couldn’t ignore.