The Other Place

Matthijs was a cleverly moustached arc, a handsbreadth taller than three feet, and greeted the two boys with open arms. He was even more enthusiastic about the supplies they brought. The group's captain had died in the surprise assault, along with their baggage horses, and the group's tablet had been dropped and trampled. Taylor reported his success to Midway's legate, then gave up his tablet for the wardens to use. He wouldn't need it for the less urgent work of finding and closing a mana vent.

Cleaning up the monster deer roundup took the rest of the day. Kasper recalled Tristan, and Taylor put all the vegetation back to where it belonged, more or less. Some plants had their own ideas about where they'd like to be, and Taylor saw no reason to impose his will on them. Eighty-five deer had to be bled, gutted, and skinned. At least the skinning went quickly. Taylor knew a magic that caused the hide to remove itself from the animal. It was unsettling to watch the skins writhe and rip themselves away from the carcasses, then crawl themselves into a pile, but the resulting product was superior. Witnesses fled the scene, decrying masked dark lords and their necromantic ways.

The antlers would take a lot longer to process because they were a composite of normal bone, crystallized bone, and cartilage. For the moment, they went into a pile. Taylor kept a separate compartment in his magic satchel for monster parts, and that's where all the salable material ended up.

The next morning, Kasper and Taylor set out early, riding on Tristan. They followed the trail of the monstrified deer mob, primarily heading east to an area of rolling hills. They spent most of the day going up and down slopes. The hills themselves were no trouble for an enhanced Tristan, but the forest was choked with underbrush that Taylor had to slash away with Slice. It was the height of the dry season, and the area hadn't burned for a century. A few loose sparks could spell disaster.

They found the expected moot of ents on a ridge line. They were disappointingly young birch, recently monstrified, and weren't very useful as material. But, they made good practice for Kasper. Taylor handed the eager wolf an enhanced hatchet, gave him some basic advice and buffs, and turned him loose. At first, Kasper used his better mobility to good advantage, attacking one ent at a time. He either retreated or circled until one opponent separated from the herd, then hit the telltale bulge below the trunk's first branch where an ent's mana paths clustered. Partway through the task, the sheer fun of battling monsters overwhelmed the pup and he dove headlong into the moot, zoomed between the many enemies, striking out in all directions with hatchet and claws until the last ent fell in a mass of splintered wood and bark. He reached into the sky with his claws and howled his victory at the hills.

Taylor cut a stick from a felled ent, stripped it, and knocked Kasper on the helmet with it. "What's this?' he touched a section of gouged leather with his stick. The metal underneath was intact, but that wasn't the point. "And this? And this? And you have more on your back. And under this arm."

"That's what armor's for! You said so!"

"Armor takes hits when you need it to. You get acceptable marks for enthusiasm and weapon handling. But you fail on tactics, on situational awareness, and on reaching your goal."

"We're alive and they're dead." Kasper swatted the wooden pointer aside. "They can't hurt anyone, now."

"Do you remember our other goal?" He swished his stick at the first downed birches. "Those are clean kills. I can use them." He twirled the pointer at the devastation around them. Kasper's enhanced strength and weapon had split some of the trees in half or quarters. Valuable bark lay in shreds, a victim of Kasper's claws. Some of the trees were thrown downhill. "This is firewood."

Kasper's joy turned to a resentful glare at the ground. Taylor wished he had someone else to do this part for him. Watching Kasper fight was fun, but the lessons here were too important to let pass by.

"Winning means achieving your goals. You were fighting a weak enemy using borrowed power, yet somehow you managed to turn a simple harvest into a massacre. Real fights are a lot more dangerous. All of which is why you don't give up working tactics for … whatever that was."

Kasper moped while Taylor sucked two dozen ents into his satchel.

"Follow." Taylor led the wolfkin into the next valley and up the next slope, to where the mana vent lay. Kasper's tail nearly dragged on the ground, and Tristan followed behind with his neck bent. The pair were so woeful, they almost made Taylor laugh. They encountered a few lone ents along the way, trees that had somehow gotten separated from their moot, and Taylor let Kasper redeem himself on them.

They reached a broad hilltop covered in wild grass and shallow pits where the birches used to grow. A long gap had opened up in the hill's crown, eight yards long and one yard wide. Kasper couldn't tell, but Taylor felt concentrated mana streaming out of it. Vents appeared pretty often in the world of Aarden. They weren't a problem if they were caught at an early stage, like this one, but they could breed awful monsters if they were left open for too long. As mana streamed through the narrow opening, it tended to reform the surrounding rock into crystal with high-density mana packed into the crystalline structure.

Imperial policy dictated finding and closing vents as soon as possible to keep inhabited areas free of monsters. Taylor had other ideas for this one. He started by suspending several disks of stone into the crevice by thin ropes. Each disk was engraved with a detailed magic circle filled with silver wire. They would absorb most of the mana leaving the vent and compress it into the silver wire, creating tempered silver. Taylor didn't know how anyone else made the treasured substance, but his preferred method was to use wild mana.

Taylor dug out all of the crystallized mana he could reach. It was a potent source of power, and the Empire claimed ownership of all vent crystals, so the only legal option was to sell it to the province. Midway's revenue would receive a nice bump, and Taylor would receive twenty percent. The vent didn't yield large crystals because it was so new, but he still managed to recover a pound of the precious stuff.

During all this time, Kasper made camp and practiced with a wooden sword, but he made even that favored activity seem sullen. Taylor sent the boy and his horse downhill to fetch water, reminding them not to be too busy feeling sorry for themselves to keep their guard up. There could be monsters roaming the area. It was meant as a warning, but it raised a spark of hope in Kasper's eyes.

Taylor's final task for the day was to plant a tree. He had seeds that he'd enchanted with help from Prater's Pith. He planted one, sped its growth with the aid of the massive green gem, then tore the sapling from the ground and destroyed it when he wasn't satisfied. He planted another and repeated the process. Finally, after a fistful of failures, when the last of the sunset colors were fading, he had a promising sapling. He watered it thoroughly and joined Kasper for dinner by the magical camp stove. They would not be using an open fire tonight, given the dry conditions.

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"What are you doing with the tree?"

"I might show you tomorrow. It depends."

"You could just tell me, you know. Why do you have to be so cryptic?"

"Your Orlut is coming along well. Cryptic is a big word."

"I learned it to describe you." Little Brother was still mad at him. "And that's not an answer."

"It's easier to show than it is to tell. That's all. Are you still mad about earlier?"

"Some." Kasper switched to his native Arcaic. "I'm not a weak human. Beastkin are tough."

"I know that. But that doesn't mean you should be careless. What do you think the average lifespan is for beastkin?"

"Four hundred fifty. We learned that in school."

"That's if they die of old age. The real life expectancy of a beastkin is more like three hundred years. You know why?" Kasper shook his head. "Because half of them die before they reach two hundred. Half."

Taylor looked at the stars. "Now me, I plan to live a very long time for a human. A magician with access to healing magic and other techniques? I can hit three hundred, easy." He looked at Kasper in the light of Aarden's only moon. "It's a long time to be lonely, if I have to bury you."

Throughout the next day, Taylor kept the tree watered and gently encouraged it to grow with help from Prater's Pith. With Kasper's help, he pulled his magic circles out of the vent, retrieved the tempered silver wire from the engravings, and reloaded them with spent wire. When that was done, he taught the boy how to repair his armor.

Soon after gear maintenance was finished, Kasper announced his boredom, a state that he insisted was life-threatening. Taylor had no choice but to produce a distraction: a disk of lightweight wood, curved slightly at the edges for stability and easy throwing. When he showed Kasper how it could fly, the wolfkin crouched on all fours, tantalized by the soaring object. As it reached its zenith and started to descend, he flew like an arrow to where he thought it would land. The disk tipped and changed direction, forcing the boy to run. He leaped into the air to catch it and ran the disc back to Taylor.

"Throw it again!" He ran along the hilltop, with the occasional flip or cartwheel for variety.

"You're supposed to throw it back to me!" Taylor sailed the disk as far as he could and let Kasper dive for it. The wolfkin brought it back again and ran away to receive another long throw. It had long been established that Kasper was not a "ball-dogkin". But apparently, he was very much a "disk-wolfkin".

"This is amazing!" he shouted. "What is it?"

"Something I made." He tossed a banking shot that sailed away from the hilltop, only to plunge in Kasper's general direction. "You like it?"

Kasper tumbled as he caught the disk, and sprang to his feet covered in dry grass and burrs. "Everyone will like this!" He tried to throw it, only to have it veer away from the hilltop, over the forest, and plunge into the trees. Kasper held his head in anguish as the disk faded into the canopy below. "No-o-o-o!"

An entire world of entertainment had just disappeared into the forest.

"I have more!" Taylor had ten of them, of slightly different designs, enough to keep Kasper entertained for most of the day while Tristan watched. If the horse had any thoughts on the matter, he didn't share them with Taylor.

By lunch, the tree had grown twenty feet tall, with white bark and pale green leaves. Most importantly, it sent out runners. Several sapling clones lined one side of the open vent. Taylor sent Kasper and Tristan to get more water from the spring downhill. While they were gone, he closed the vent – but only the surface of it. Normally, he would have reached as far into the earth as he could to seal the source of raw mana, but not here. With Prater's help, he encouraged the trees to stretch their roots into the subterranean space to feed from the vent.

By evening, and after two more water runs, he had a small colony of white-barked trees growing where the vent used to be.

"Now will you tell me what this is about?"

"When autumn comes, the leaves will turn bright yellow and flutter in the breeze. They'll be beautiful."

Kasper looked at him, offended. "We spent a whole day planting a tree because it'll be pretty later? Is that it?"

Taylor smiled mysteriously, but it was wasted behind his mask. He bowed with a flourish while stepping backwards into the copse of golden poplar — and vanished. He was inside a tiny space, just a patch of ground twenty feet across with some grass and a couple of saplings pushing up through the thin layer of soil. It was bordered by the same void-mist that surrounded him when visiting with the gods. The light seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

He parted space and emerged onto the hilltop, where Kasper was busy looking for him.

"Where did you go?"

"Come here." Taylor pulled the boy into his embrace and folded them both into the Other Place.

"Where are we?" The astonishment on his wolfen face was adorable and gratifying.

"A pocket dimension."

"Like, we're in a magic bag?"

"Sort of. Magic bags warp and extend space that already exists. This is a brand-new space. Look at the edge of it."

"It's growing!" The void-mist was slowly receding, to be replaced by rocky soil covered in a thin growth of lichen and grass. "How big will it get?"

"I don't know. I have theories, of course, but we'll see if any of them hold up."

"This is amazing." Instead of being happy or excited, his mood turned sad. His tail was the giveaway. It was only recently restored to its usual waggy state, but now it hung limp again. "It's no wonder you're leaving. You have way better things to do than hang around in dumb old Midway with us."

"We'll be together sooner than you think. In Winter, you're going for a train ride. You're joining me for a month."

"Really?" His tail was off the ground and waving cautiously. "Do you mean it?"

"I'm teaching a special class in Blaxland, and I want you there. It'll be hard work, but it'll make you stronger. A lot stronger. And I have something else for you, too."

He tossed a wooden clamshell to Kasper, who opened it up to reveal a small round mirror. Taylor's face looked back at him from the glass and spoke. "We'll be able to talk to each other."

Kasper was so startled that he dropped the magic mirror and jumped backward as if it tried to bite him. Taylor held a matching device and was laughing at him. "Don't lose it. The materials are expensive."

By dawn, both the poplar grove and the pocket dimension had tripled in size. Trees in the Other Place were only saplings, while a few in Aarden were almost forty feet tall. Before leaving the area, Taylor cut several runners that hadn't yet produced clones and stashed them in a box enchanted with preservation magic.

As soon as he settled his business with Midway's legate, he could start the adventure he had always wanted.

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