Chapter 25: Tripping

My spirit warned me the time was approaching.

We did a final clean-up, and I checked the spells in the room. I altered them subtly while the others went to the ring cavern. I didn’t want all and sundry invading my little refuge. They might be able to get in and out of the other caverns but not into my home unless they were family.

I’d left a lot of the stuff I’d wanted to take with the knowledge that I had a good chance of coming back to get it if I needed to. We stepped into the area surrounded by the metal ring and hugged each other to make sure we were entirely inside the ring.

I then thought of my missing partner and my desire to go to her. Seriously, it is the weirdest feeling to be transported. I’d thought I had experienced a lot of weird since becoming a mage, but this was on a level all of its own.

It was kinda like blinking, but then it wasn’t either. You got this sort of funny pulled apart feeling and then it felt like being put back together, but it didn’t hurt. Sorry, I just can’t tell you what it feels like any better than that. You’d just have to experience it for yourself one day.

We found ourselves in a cavern, similar to the one we had left. It was bigger, and the lava pits were set up differently. They were, to my chagrin, also not working properly. I’d have to fix them for us to use the cavern again anytime soon.

I was amused when the stone lectern appeared beside the ring with a book on it. Travis and I both looked at it to see what was different. We turned to the index and were a little confused when it said its star was called Sol.

I had noted many of the entries were mostly labelled depending on the place the Ring was located. “I think it uses Sol if it doesn’t have a name for the star,” I said to Travis.

He’d spent a lot of time that day studying his book. He nodded in agreement. “I had noted that,” he said to me. “Please show this star system,” he said to the book.

The pages flipped, and we looked at the arrangement of planets displayed. It appeared the one we were on was labelled Haven. There were only three other planets. A smaller closer one to the sun than the one we were on and further out were two larger ones labelled as a gas giant and an ice giant.

“Show us the relationship to the last portal used?” Travis said.

The page flipped over, and we read that it was located in a specific quadrant and some hundred and eighty light years from our Sol. The book stated that this star was smaller and older than ours was but provided sufficient light on this planet and it was in a spectrum that we would find acceptable.

Haven was an iron core planet like ours with a mobile crust. It was larger by a few percentile points and had a slightly larger axial tilt. It had three moons, the larger moon was closest, and the smaller two moons were further out and had less of an effect on Haven.

Haven had indigenous and non-indigenous flora and fauna. It had a population of humanoid peoples that were the descendants of the Keltrian races of approximately forty million. Most lived in small communities that were spread across the seas and islands.

I wondered aloud what it looked like from space. The book flashed up a revolving 3D view of the planet about 40cm in diameter, above itself. We all stood there, stunned. I hadn’t even realised the book had this capability.

Travis grinned at me. “Oh boy, am I going to have some fun,” he said.

We chuckled as we had all realised, he had a massive desire to see new places. In the five years he had been missing, he had been wandering the continents and islands of Earth. It would take him a while to do this planet alone, I surmised.

We decided that the planet had more usable land than Earth even though it less land above the oceans. None of the islands that we observed was bigger than Australian in total area. There were a dozen large clusters of islands and twice as many again of smaller groups.

The Polar Regions were small, and we decided that if they had another Ice Age, then many of the islands would join to become larger land masses. The multitude of smaller areas of land also meant few large desert regions. Some of the mountains were enormous, and it had slightly lower gravity than Earth.

I asked for a closer look at where we were located. The view changed to an overhead shot of an island in the southern hemisphere. It was the largest of a cluster of about eighty islands and one of the groups we had observed.

It was close to half the size of Australia and looked like a bear sitting on its arse. Mitch joking called it Bundy Rum Island. Beth smacked him for it and told him not to give me ideas.

Over the mountain that we guessed we were inside of, a red dot appeared. Several other dots appeared sporadically in green around the coastline and on other islands. We noticed they were of different sizes. One of the largest dots was close to our location.

“People?” Beth asked.

The book must have assumed she wanted to see them, and the view narrowed down to the city located closest to us. It wasn’t that different from any large city you’d see on Earth. We were fascinated.

“They look like the spirits that came to me,” I told the others excitedly.

Mitch said, “I wonder if they have the same level of technology as we left behind.”

We all jumped when a male voice said, “Not exactly. I estimate they may be advanced in some areas but not significantly that you would have difficulties assimilating.”

It took us a moment to realise it was the book that had spoken. ‘Far out!’ I thought. ‘Did those damn spirits like me so much that they invaded everything I touched magically?’

I heard a soft chuckle. ‘You are a very special Mage Tristan. I can see why my brethren wanted you here.’ I guessed it was the book talking to me in my head. I had to ask, ‘Why?’

He replied cryptically that I would see in time.

Over the initial excitement of the book, we went to explore the cavern.

It was set out very differently to mine. It was a lot bigger to start with. We selected one of the six large bedrooms off the main area that was set up like an open plan combo of a kitchen, dining room and lounging area.

Travis picked the room next to ours. We unpacked the food supplies and made ourselves at home. We three seriously needed a fuck-fix. “Shit,” I said to Beth and Mitch as we were about to strip. “If we’re horny, Travis is sure to be. Plus, he only just got his new box.”

It was a dilemma, and we all knew how he’d be feeling. My problem was that I didn’t want to screw my grandfather. It just felt icky to even contemplate it. Mitch sighed, “I’ll do it.” Then he grinned that wicked smile at us and said, “I have wondered if he was as hung as well as you, Tris.”

Beth and I could only shake our heads at him. We went to talk to Travis. He was sitting in the lounge area, and I approached the problem I had discovered. Travis grinned at us, “How about you start with Beth, and then we swap?” He then wiggled his eyebrows at us.

I was just about to answer when a high-pitched scream echoed through the room. We all spun to the wall that it had seemed to come through, and I jumped up and headed to it. I touched the wall, and a passage appeared. We ran through into a large craven that was of natural formation.

Five men were grappling with a man and two women. My thought was that they had come upon the trio when they were asleep. A low fire was burning in the middle of the cavern, and little light shone in through the opening to outside, suggesting it was nighttime.

Two of the men had one woman and were busily laughing and trying to strip the loose shift from her body. One of them half lay over her and held her hands over her head. He was trying to kiss her and feel her tits up at the same time. His friend was doing the ripping, but she wasn’t cooperating and was trying to kick him as she snarled and snapped at the first man.

Two of the other men were grappling with the man. One was trying to hold onto him by kneeling on his shoulders. He was trying to stop the prone man from hitting him by holding his hands. The fourth man was busy trying to remove the prone man’s pants while not getting kicked.

The fifth man had the second woman on her knees with her shift flipped over her head. He was busily trying to get his cock into her, but she wasn’t cooperating with him either. She kept trying to squirm and twist away as she kicked back at him.

I was closest to the first woman, so I went for the two men holding her. Beth and Mitch went for the other two men and Travis, the fifth man. It was a rout. They were so intent on their raping they never even heard us coming.