The world shifted and suddenly they were within the calming embrace of darkness and stone. The slight undertones of sour waste and stone dust were entirely trounced by the smells of fire and smoke. Cooking fires and torches were still incredibly prevalent in Safeharbor due to their cheap cost after all. The city beneath them glowed dull oranges with little bits of white and red here and there from either the red stone dust tinting the light or magical glowing stones. The city was exactly the same as how they had left it.

Isaac staggered and Lenna tried to hold him up but went down with him instead. She had almost never felt so weak and he was reeling from the sudden disconnection and reconnection to the underlying power of existence.

"Are you both alright?" Karthen questioned the duo with a little bit of actual concern mixed in with the politeness.

Isaac groaned. "We'll be fine. Thank you though." Isaac told him.

"Thank you." Lenna said. "One smooth teleportation beats a dozen rough ones every time."

Karthen nodded to the two of them. "Well, if you are both fine, then I will take my leave." Karthen told them and gave the pair a slight bow.

Isaac and Lenna didn't bother putting forth the effort to reply verbally and just gave him a nod. Karthen soon teleported back to wherever he had come from and Isaac flopped his hand onto the rooftop. "Shamesh, tell Alexander that we are here." He told his retainer as the skeleton was rising from the shadows.

"Is it alright for me to use mana?" Shamesh wondered. "I have been trying to use as little as possible to avoid adversely affecting you."

"You should be fine." Isaac told him. "And get me some cold water, my head's still foggy."

Shamesh gave him a slight bow and pulled the Ocean in a Bottle out of Lenna's Bottomless Backpack and cast an ice arrow at the floor. While he was getting Isaac what he had asked for, Shamesh was also sending Alexander a telepathic message informing the Court Mage that they had arrived. Shamesh had just finished taking the top half of the ice arrow, the clean part of the ice structure that had embedded itself into the rooftop, and placing it into a glass of water that had been filled from the Ocean in a Bottle, when Alexander arrived.

Alexander immediately saw the duo, Lenna laying on her back with her backpack as a backrest and Isaac propped up on an elbow while he accepted a class from Shamesh, and furrowed his brows in worry. "What happened to you two?" He asked and hurried over to them.

Isaac took a drink of his water. "A lot." He unhelpfully replied. "Lenna and I are crippled for the next few days, take us to Aria."

"Please." Lenna added for him.

Isaac's request, stated as an order, was nothing new for Alexander so he paid no mind to Isaac's lack of manners. "I can do that, but is that a good idea?" He questioned Lenna.

"We can't really defend ourselves right now." Lenna informed him. "But Shamesh is fine. With you and Edward there, we'll be almost as safe as if we were still in the city."

Alexander nodded with a frown. "They still haven't arrived at where the caravan was hit." He informed them. "They should be there within the hour. For now, Shamesh, help me get them into one of the meeting rooms downstairs."

Shamesh nodded and moved to help Lenna to her feet while Alexander moved to do the same for Isaac. "Thanks." Isaac told the Court Mage and Lenna thanked Shamesh for the assistance as well.

"Please explain to me, who or what left the two of you in such a state." Alexander stated. He and Shamesh didn't hesitate and immediately started guiding the duo towards the stairs that went down to the top floor of the Guild Hall.

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"A Wish." Isaac informed him. "We just had a wish granted, the last wish ever, apparently." He told Alexander. "The Fatebreaker is out of wishes."

Alexander nodded slowly as a gesture from his free hand opened the door with Minor Telekinesis. "Alright, what kind of injury is this? How can we get you two back to normal?" Alexander didn't hesitate to ask. "If Contantis is really on the move again, we might need you in the coming days."

"Time." Isaac grumbled.

"We have soul soothing medicine, but it is basically just special pain killers, the injuries will remain until time and rest have been able to heal us." Lenna explained.

"If we fought anything right now, we would probably just kill over." Isaac added. "But Claus might not have days and we need to get Aria back. She should be able to find Claus with some kind of foresight or ritual or something."

"The other missing members will hopefully be with Claus son of Rock." Alexander added. "So far, no attempts at mental communication have worked with any of those missing in action."

"Protection from Divination and sleeping poisons." Lenna explained. "We likely won't be able to contact them until they are deep inside of Contantis, or wherever they are going."

Alexander nodded. "Maybe both, scrying attempts have failed as well." He was glad that she had confirmed his suspicions but he had really hoped that she had given him some kind of hope. As it stood, the missing adventurers and guards were worse off than the dead. They had no hope of rescue or revival if they were actually inside of Contantis.

"Aria will know what's going on." Isaac told them. "As soon as Edward gets there, yeah?" He gave Alexander a questioning look.

"We will have to take two jumps, I can't bring anyone else with my long range teleportation." He explained. "And even so, I fear we might call Tunnel Horror's to our location when we teleport."

"Haven't we killed enough of them?" Isaac wondered. "Where the hells to they keep coming from?"

"They don't have any natural predators. They just go deeper and keep growing." Alexander replied as they arrived at the conference room with a pair of couches inside.

"So there is probably a mile long Tunnel Horror living deep inside of Primatia?" Isaac wondered. He was getting sidetracked but his brain was not exactly functioning linearly at the moment. Between his fever, trying to process that Aria had died, and trying to think of a way to find and save Claus, Isaac's brain was bouncing thoughts around like a cat with a ball of yarn.

"Please, no existential horrors while there are tangible things going on that need our attention." Alexander told Isaac as he helped the dark mage sit on the couch. "I've been keeping my Lord and Lady apprised of the situation but this is not an incident that should be receiving their direct attention, yet. This is an Adventurers' Guild problem that I just happen to be assisting with, as a double platinum adventurer."

"You hit level sixteen, congratulations." Lenna told him.

"I skipped fifteen entirely." He told her. "My knowledge far exceeds my casting abilities at the moment, so as long as I can get ninth level spells down and can compress my mana properly, I should skip straight to eighteen or even nineteen next."

"How long do you think that will take you?" Lenna wondered.

"If I dedicated myself to that, six months to a year, I think." He told her something that was completely insane if it had been from any other wizard. "With my duties, I'll be lucky to get it done within the decade." He sighed. "But back to you, tell me about your wish until I receive word that the group has arrived on site."

Isaac absently answered all of Alexander's questions, without even thinking about what should or should not have been said, while Lenna gave Alexander the abridged version. It only took another three quarters of an hour before Alexander got a far off look in his eyes as his mind was elsewhere. Lenna and Isaac felt the faint whispers of a spell having settled onto Alexander and both assumed that it was the telepathy magic that he had been waiting for. After a moment, Alexander frowned and nodded. "The area is clear." He told Isaac and Lenna. "I can take you there now, I've already planned out where I'll need to stop, but are you really sure that you should be doing this right now?"

Lenna looked over at Isaac with some concern. She could feel how he was feeling and it wasn't great. She knew that he was stable enough and, even though teleporting was downright awful, he'd be safe to travel. The fact that they were nearly as weak as when Isaac had been brought back from the dead, again, wasn't helping her nerves at all.

"Yes." Isaac told Alexander without any hesitation. He could tell that Lenna would be fine. She was whole and neither of them were actively leaking mana anymore. The soul damage that they had received from the wish must've been a bit different than what they had gone through with his resurrection. They both also knew that the healing time would be much shorter as they healed together.

Lenna sighed. "We need to be there when they contact her soul and we can be moved fine enough." She explained to Alexander. "Please, do it."

Alexander nodded with a frown. "Okay, but I feel like I should have you sign a waiver first." He shook his head. "We need to stand close to each other." He informed them and enlisted Shamesh to help bring the duo towards the open space in the room. Alexander had an arm from each of them draped over his shoulders when Shamesh was sent to return to his shadowy resting place. "Ready?" He asked the duo once Shamesh was gone.

"Ready." Isaac and Lenna both replied.

Alexander took a deep breath. "Heed my command, magic and space, take us to this imagined place." His chant only differed slightly but the spell was an entire level higher. Even so, Isaac and Lenna felt how the spell barely encompassed a larger area than the three of them huddled together. It was probably possible to bring another person along, with the amount of volume that they had, but it would've been a tight fit. Everything blinked in and out of their perception as they themselves blinked in and out of existence across tens of miles in an instant. This was the true nature of magic, to do something that no amount of physics or alchemy could do. This is why Alexander was a Court Mage and not just some alchemist hiding away in a lab somewhere. Even so, Alexander just hoped that he would not come to regret his ability to teleport in the near future.

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