Waking up in her own bed should have been a familiar comfort.

It wasn’t.

She had figured it out. What had been bothering her.

The lack of familiarity wasn’t just because she had a hellhound curled up at the foot of her bed. Kasita sitting in the chair, playing a game on Clark’s old computer wasn’t the problem either. They were certainly differences to what she remembered, but they weren’t the real problem. Maybe contributors. But, in some strange way, they were actually the most familiar aspects of waking up.

It was the soft bed, the air conditioning, the blankets that didn’t scratch at her skin. Even after three days of using the house as some kind of vacation home, Alyssa still wasn’t reacclimated to all the comforts. Perhaps that was a good thing. Their vacation was over. It was time to head back to Lyria. Back to the hard and lumpy beds, the utter lack of taste in food, hot days and cold nights…

Maybe she was going to miss modern comforts.

Maybe Jason could switch away from farming equipment and start making advancements in the electricity and textile industries. With magic, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to get something up and running in only a year or two.

And wasn’t that a depressing thought. The last time Alyssa had been to her home… This home… She had thought that she would be back on Earth in months. A quick trip to Lyria, a look through their magic books, then back to her real home. Now it was quickly approaching a quarter of a year on this world and home was really no closer. In fact, it might even be further now than it ever had been. Tenebrael’s vanishing changed things.

That wasn’t perfectly true. With her connection to Tenebrael and the granted ability to use more divine magic than most people had access to, certain paths were open to her that couldn’t be found in the Observatorium’s books. The statue of Tenebrael down in Teneville was just one such example. She doubted that anyone in this world could have built it in seconds the way that she had. In fact, she wasn’t even sure that preparation would have helped much.

Alyssa had yet to witness a large-scale ritual in person—something along the lines of whatever spell put the dragon’s soul into Irulon’s head—but she knew that they required months of research and development. Even if Irulon wanted to put another dragon into her, or into someone else, she would have to start almost from scratch all over again. Large scale rituals were fickle, apparently. They interacted with far more variables than more standard spells used. The circles and Enochian used to describe the effect had to be reworked to fit with new environments and objects.

And Alyssa could cast those kind of rituals—those miracles—as easily as she could toss a fireball across the room, while connected to Tenebrael.

Well, not quite that easily. No matter how much Alyssa wanted, she couldn’t just wave her hands and conjure up a box of cereal or a hamburger. It seemed like something she should be able to do since Tenebrael had created all that food for her the first time she revisited Earth. But the words just didn’t come. Even trying to make up a prayer-like spell on her own did nothing.

It was probably the prayer breeds dependency thing again. Tenebrael didn’t like to answer prayers for that reason. Or so she had said. In reality, it was probably just that she was an extremely lazy angel.

As Alyssa showered and dressed for the day, she tried to think up similar things. Miracles that she might be able to cast. Or that Tenebrael would help her cast. Healing was a big one that she wanted to do, but also one she hadn’t been willing to try. No one was injured and, while Irulon might be willing to destroy a table to test Tenebrael’s magic, Alyssa wasn’t willing to chop off Tess’ arm in the hopes that she could get a finicky miracle to work.

For some reason, Alyssa just had this feeling that anything less wouldn’t be worth the bother. She couldn’t just give herself a paper cut then try to heal it.

After drying off her hair, Alyssa got back into her room with no new ideas. Or rather, she had tons of ideas, but none she thought Tenebrael would be willing to help with. The temple and the light had been revitalizing faith in her followers. Definitely something she would do. The table had been a bit more iffy, but she had probably allowed it to bolster Alyssa’s confidence enough to fix the statue. If Alyssa destroyed another table, Tenebrael probably wouldn’t care.

So she needed something large. Something important. Possibly something that would help her followers.

Sighing, she leaned on the back of Kasita’s chair, watching the girl play some game. It was Clark’s old computer. After he had left for college, Alyssa moved it into her room, though she didn’t often use it. Games really weren’t her thing. For a while, she had used it for her own essays and papers, but then she had stopped attending classes. It had collected dust ever since. “You’ve been playing this all night?”

“Not this specifically,” she said, blasting the… wall?

Oh, Alyssa thought, watching as a hole opened up to another section of the game world. Clark tried to get me to play this one.

Kasita jumped through, falling through the air only to shoot another few holes into the world. After passing through several, she wound up flying clear to the other side of the map far up high. That allowed her to shoot a portal against the wall there and walk back to the bottom, pick up a cube, and walk it through the portal.

She was saying something about how the games had given her more insight into Earth human culture, but Alyssa was hardly paying attention. The gears in her head were grinding together. Patting Kasita on the head, she turned and left. Irulon was down in the basement in a small guest room. Just a quick jaunt from Alyssa’s room.

Tess, who had been sleeping on an old couch downstairs, was already awake. Alyssa felt a bit bad about making her sleep on something so uncomfortable, but there wasn’t much choice unless she was going to share Irulon’s bed. The house was large, but not that large. Alyssa didn’t feel too bad, however. The couch was probably more comfortable than what she had at the palace. It was definitely more comfortable than taking a few pelts and sleeping in a tent in the backyard.

Brakkt had taken Clark’s old room.

Ignoring the protest from Tess, Alyssa barged right into the room. It was early in the morning. She well knew Irulon’s sleeping habits.

As such, Alyssa froze with her heart trying to jump from her throat when she found Irulon wide awake in the middle of getting dressed.

“You’re not asleep.”

Irulon, apparently not caring that she had no shirt on, grabbed her tome from the end table and flipped it open. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, um… nothing.” Alyssa turned away. She had seen Irulon nude before, but it was always something of a shock to barge in on someone getting dressed. For a moment, she thought to shut the door and simply wait, but Irulon didn’t seem overly bothered and Alyssa wanted information as soon as possible so that she might start planning a few things.

In turning away, she found Kasita—hand hiding a smile—had followed her down. Tess was glowering from the couch. Perhaps it would have been wise to listen to the latter’s warning. Oh well. Too late now.

“I just had a thought and wanted to ask you a few things. I didn’t think you would be awake already.”

Tossing a glance over her shoulder, Alyssa watched the tension bleed from Irulon’s shoulders. Setting the book back where she had gotten it, she grabbed one of Alyssa’s tees and slipped it on. “Your showers,” she said as she dressed. “They’re quite refreshing. I enjoy the heat and the constant pounding of the water against my skin. I’ll have to see if I can replicate the effect. Physical magics aren’t my specialty, but I doubt it will be that difficult.”

“Shame we don’t have a hot tub.”

“A… hot tub?”

“Basically a bath, but they often have little jets under the water. I’ll show you a video if you want to try copying that too. That’s not what I came to ask though.”

“Perhaps I’ll assemble a team from some Observatorium students,” Irulon mumbled as she did up the button on her shorts. Alyssa preferred pants over shorts even during the heat of summer, but she did own a few pairs that fit Irulon. “What did you want?”

“Is there any magic that you know of that will create… gates. Not like the palace gates, but like a hole in the world that connects two distant locations. Like, say, from here to the palace.”

“Portals.”

“Yes… How did you know the name of—”

“I’ve discussed the concept before with you, though that was in the context of traveling to another world using Kasita or another mimic as the actual portal.”

“Oh right. I do remember that.” Vaguely. It had been when Alyssa had asked Irulon to help fix Kasita’s constant uncontrollable shifting. That had been a while back relative to just about everything else and, at the time, she had been a bit more concerned with Kasita’s wellbeing than using her as a portal.

“From my occasional inspections of Kasita, I believe I have made significant progress on a theory that might lead to accessing the mimic reality, but I’m far from ready enough to actually try anything.”

“That’s okay,” Alyssa said, not at all sure that she wanted to visit a whole other world. Earth was big enough that she probably would never see everything on it even if she had actually been trying for her whole life. Nod was that all over again. A third world would just be superfluous at this point. “I mostly just want to know if there is any way to instantly travel between here and the palace.”

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Irulon shook her head slowly. “Not particularly. Nothing that everyone here would be able to use, anyway. We could set up Recall points, but those are single use, one-way, and temporally limited. There is a Time-Fractal spell that will create a tunnel of warped time between two points. My father uses it to travel between Lyria and the Fortress of Pandora in only a few weeks instead of the months it normally takes. But that has to be constantly maintained and, without a powerful enough will, has been known to collapse quite destructively on the tunnel occupants.”

“So, no one would have seen a portal before if I make one?” That fulfilled one of the possible criteria for Tenebrael to help out. Maybe. It would really be a lot easier if Alyssa could just talk to the angel, but she had already tried using Tenebrael’s magic to communicate. It hadn’t worked.

“I don’t know that no one has seen such a thing. There is evidence, mostly apocryphal, that the First City had a massive transportation network capable of moving people vast distances in the blink of an eye. It is speculated that portals like what you described were the method. No recreation has been successful. Are you saying you can do it?” she said with a tattooed eyebrow raised.

“Through Tenebrael all things are possible?”

Irulon crossed her arms, tapping a finger against her elbow over and over. She was probably disappointed in the lack of conviction in Alyssa’s tone. Still, she didn’t argue. She nodded instead. “Your other efforts have been fascinating and enlightening. I look forward to this attempt. Will you be starting soon?”

“I… wasn’t planning on it. But I suppose I should. If it fails, we’ll be taking the draken back to Lyria after all. I wouldn’t want to delay us trying to get this.”

“Hm. I’ve yet to eat,” she said with a glance over Alyssa’s shoulder. Tess made a small noise before rushing up the stairs, probably on her way to prepare something that she was supposed to have made before getting distracted with Alyssa. “So perhaps delay until after that?”

“I haven’t had breakfast either,” Alyssa said.

“Excellent. Let me tell Tess to prepare two portions and then we can discuss some specifics of this portal you want to create. Perhaps that will help make the attempt a success.”

Alyssa doubted it; the whole thing hinged on Tenebrael and whether she was feeling up to literally answering a prayer. The thought brought up old feelings on the matter, about how Alyssa shouldn’t rely on such a fickle angel. But she had gone a month without contact. At this point, she was going to take what she could get.

So Alyssa didn’t complain. She and Irulon headed upstairs and plopped themselves down around the dining table. Tess had taken to using most of the kitchen surprisingly well. Not so much the microwave, probably because she couldn’t stick her hand inside to feel the temperature like she did with the oven. Today’s breakfast was some kind of potato hash. There was an overabundance of ground beef, like everything she cooked for Irulon, but also potatoes and eggs along with some kind of fruit—it was a bit like a mango in taste but a rather interesting shade of green. With the exception of the meat, which had been down in the freezer until recently, it was all supplies that they had brought on the trip. Even refrigerated food items went bad after more than two months of sitting around.

While Tess prepared and served the meal, along with some extra for Brakkt, Fela, Lisa, and herself, the discussion with Irulon went… well. Most went over Alyssa’s head. Not quite so far over as Tenebrael’s mathematics lesson had gone, but it was a similar feeling. It wasn’t like Alyssa had learned nothing of magic, its uses and limitations, and spell construction in the past month. She had. She spent most afternoons at the Observatorium. But she rather imagined the conversation was somewhat similar to a high school student after their first health class trying to talk shop with an experienced neurosurgeon.

What she took away was that portals like what Alyssa wanted to create were theoretically possible. The biggest reason why nobody had truly bothered with them was a matter of permanence. The problem with a spell that required two distant stationary locations was that the locations were not stationary. Earthquakes, though Alyssa had yet to experience one on this planet, were not uncommon. Even smaller-scale shifting of the land would destroy such a spell, requiring recalculation of practically everything from scratch to recreate it. Taking months to create a portal that might destabilize in a week only to have to start all over again was just not worth it.

Alyssa was hoping that Tenebrael would be able to get around that. If she couldn’t… well, Jason was going to work on trains sooner or later. They wouldn’t be portals, but they would help. And they would probably be necessary anyway. If Alyssa really could wave her hands and make portals to anywhere in the world, it would be such a military strategic advantage that they would probably make attempts at keeping them secret from the general populace and potential enemies for as long as possible.

It might be prudent to come up with an excuse about why she couldn’t create too many. Assuming Tenebrael let her create any to begin with. Making one between Lyria and Pandora probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea, but she could already imagine the Pharaoh walking up to her and asking her to make one into the heart of the Juno Federation’s government headquarters. She had no love for them—they had tried to kill her personally a few times and the rest of Lyria several times more. At the same time, most of their citizens were probably just peasants no different from the farmers around Lyria. She would need several assurances that the Pharaoh and the rest of the nobles wouldn’t instigate genocide before she even thought about trying to open a portal there.

“Having second thoughts?” Irulon asked as she tried to pick out bits of fruit from her breakfast. With how finely Tess had chopped everything up and mixed it all together, Irulon wasn’t too successful. That was probably the whole reason Tess had done so in the first place.

Although she started with a shake of her head, Alyssa jerked to a stop and slowly nodded instead. “Just thinking about applications of permanent portals and whether or not they’re a good idea.”

“I believe I know exactly what you mean. But what other people might do is no reason to not do something yourself.”

Alyssa… wasn’t so sure about that. She was almost certain that she could remember a quote from the developers of the nuclear bomb regretting having ever worked on it—though that might have been her imagination; if she remembered, she would try looking it up on her phone later on. Of course, in their case, someone would have developed the nuclear bomb eventually. There were just too many people capable of research and development. In contrast, the Pharaoh was probably the only person truly capable of developing a time bomb—heheh—and, even if he did create a devastating spell, someone else recreating it would be nearly impossible. There were only four Rank Six arcanists in Lyria, if Alyssa included herself. There might be ten total in the entire world. Maybe more, but the vast majority wouldn’t have the magical education necessary to create even a Rank Zero Flame spell.

“But I’m probably getting way ahead of myself. Even if Tenebrael lets me create this one portal, who is to say that she’ll agree to more?”

“Personally,” Irulon said as she finally decided to simply bite the bullet and eat the hash without picking through to get the meat, “I’m less interested in shaving three days off our journey than I am about being able to analyze such a portal. It could lead to clues that might allow us to visit even your world.”

“Don’t say that too loudly or that stu— that angel will never let us try.”

“I’ll keep my expectations low. The portal Kasita creates naturally still needs some studying anyway. Where has that mimic gone anyway?”

Alyssa glanced around. Her mother had come out and was… napping on the couch. Really, if she was that tired, she should have just stayed in bed for another hour. Brakkt had taken a seat at the table as well, facing them and obviously listening in, but he hadn’t said anything aside from a greeting. He was capable of moderately ranked magic, but Alyssa was willing to bet that most of Irulon’s explanation had gone over his head just as much as it had gone over hers.

Kasita was nowhere to be seen. She had been sitting around, but… well, if she had heard Irulon’s comment just now, she probably wouldn’t appear again for a while. Although she liked Irulon, Kasita really did not enjoy being poked and prodded.

“Regardless,” Irulon said. “Shall we try?”

“Might as well. We’ll do it in the backyard, that way the draken will be able to get through if it does work. Oh!” Alyssa perked up, throwing a glance to Brakkt. “If the portal goes straight to the palace stables, they’ll be able to run around out here at any time without worrying the citizens of Lyria!”

He thought for a moment, scratching at his goatee. “It is a security flaw.”

“People can’t approach my house. You and Irulon were trying and failing until I invited you in.”

“Besides,” Irulon chimed in, “I pity the army that marches into the den of a dozen draken.”

Brakkt grumbled a noise that Alyssa was almost positive he had picked up from the draken, but the noise relented soon enough. He gave a nod of his head, waved his hand in dismissal, and went back to his breakfast hash.

“Perfect,” Irulon said as she followed Alyssa outside. “Having it in the palace will provide ample opportunity to study it at my leisure.”

Deciding not to comment on Irulon introducing a security issue to the palace out of laziness—especially because she was complicit too—Alyssa simply took up a stance on the back porch. The portal needed to be close enough to the house that it fell under Tenebrael’s protections, but far enough away that the draken could all maneuver into it without smacking tails through windows.

Stretching a hand out just as she did for the statue, Alyssa felt it. The magic churned inside her, like heating water from lukewarm to a boil. The nails on her fingers turned as black as the space between stars. But no words came to her. The other times when she had tried doing something with angelic magic, the connection between her and Tenebrael had remained in its low-level inert state.

So what did it mean? What she wanted to do was valid, probably. But Tenebrael’s voice wasn’t layering on top of hers to craft a prayer?

Alyssa spent twenty minutes trying various modes of thought. During that time, the others had come and gone. Brakkt stopped by to watch for a few minutes only to wander off to get the draken ready. Tess, after cleaning the kitchen, sat down on the back porch’s swing with Irulon. Lisa came out, shook her head in disappointment a few times, and then wandered back in.

Lowering her arm turned the boil down to a simmer. It was still there, still wanting to be used, but simply less active without her intentions trying to focus it into a miracle. “No words are coming to me,” Alyssa said, wondering if Irulon had any insight.

Irulon hummed, thinking with her eyes a normal violet rather than connected to the dragon. “The other times,” she said after a few minutes of silence. “When you created the light, fixed the table, and created Her statue… Those were the first three times you had asked for her help, correct?”

Alyssa wasn’t sure that she would phrase it like that, but for the sake of continuing Irulon’s line of thought, she nodded.

“They were training you. Teaching you what you need to do to successfully plead for intervention in the future. Administrators at the Observatorium do a similar thing to young and inexperienced students.”

“Teaching me? Teaching me what?”

“Perhaps it is time to craft a prayer to Tenebrael of your own volition, rather than having Tenebrael speak a prayer to Herself.”

Alyssa pressed her lips together into a frown. It… made sense. Tenebrael had talked about baby steps, first showing off one small aspect, such as connecting together, before expanding onto something larger. Or before allowing Alyssa to try for herself. So showing her how to say a prayer before making her do it herself was right up Tenebrael’s alley.

At first, Alyssa scowled at the thought. Even though Alyssa was connected to the angel and wanted to use her to do something, she didn’t actually like the idea of doing it herself. Before, she could have just excused it as Tenebrael forcing her to say something. However, thinking about it a moment longer, Alyssa started nodding.

If she could say whatever she wanted, she would probably have more control over what got done. She doubted that she would be able to conjure up a portal to Earth, but having her own will drive the words had to be better than having Tenebrael do it all for her.

With one final firm nod of her head, Alyssa raised her hand. Her fingernails turned black again, this time, gleaming with that strange black light that Tenebrael’s magic emitted.

“Tenebrael,” Alyssa said, speaking completely on her own. “Please grant… me a boon. A gateway between this home and the Lyrian palace draken stables. A permanent portal so that your servants might traverse the land swiftly and safely.”

Light blossomed from her extended hand.

A mystic circle.