Chapter 4

(In this chapter: Ma/Fa, Consensual, Teacher/Student)

1 Lady Noctis

A shrill, insistent chirping woke April in the middle of the night. She flailed at her dresser, hitting her alarm clock, but the noise continued. It didn’t come from her clock, but from her black charm earrings. Only she could hear that alarm. It meant her master was calling for her.

That jolted her more awake, even though it was two in the morning. April grabbed her broomstick and scrambled to the window. At the last second, she remembered herself. She put her hat on. “Night, fall.” Lady Noctis slipped out the window. The night air and light rain blew in her face, keeping her awake on her way to that old townhouse complex. She touched down behind unit 13. By the time she reached the door, the owner pulled it open.

Mr Wizard looked at her, his brown eyes bleary. He was a tall, middle-aged man with thin glasses, a thin beard, a thin figure, and thick brown hair. Instead of his usual black suit, he wore a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts. “Ap—” He caught himself. “Noctis. Thank you for coming.”

She stepped past him, brushing casually close. It drew his usual slight blush. “Do you know what time it is, sir?”

He stared at her with bloodshot eyes. “I am painfully aware. It’s three hours since the wards woke me, and most of that was travel time. This is why I shouldn’t take vacations.”

She put her hand on his chest. “Hey. You two needed it. Where’s Melissa?”

Thinking about his daughter calmed him. “She’s still on the beach,” he said. “I don’t want to worry her about this.”

She kissed his cheek. “Then let’s get to work. What actually happened?”

He beckoned her to follow him. “The wards primed when a stranger came to the door last night.” He led her farther inside, to the third alchemy lab. “They put in the right password, so they stayed quiet. Until this.” He opened the door.

The smell hit Lady Noctis immediately: acrid, acidic fumes that made her shield her nose with one hand. The gargoyle guardian lay in a pile of rubble atop a puddle of slag, surrounded by shards of broken glass. The cauldron sat in the back, putting out an overcooked scent that tickled Lady Noctis’ nose.

Besides the gargoyle, the centre workbench was smashed, and one shelf hung loosely from the wall, its bottles spilled out onto the floor. Other than that, nothing had been disturbed. The fight hadn’t lasted long.

She looked into the cauldron. The fire was out, but still warm – Mr Wizard must have doused it himself. Inside, the black metal had something blue baked into it. The last remnants of the potion, left to boil for hours. The fumes tingled sourly in her nose, like the scent of sherbet. It didn’t take much to figure it out. “What potion did they take?”

“Magic,” he said. “Raw magic in liquid form. I’ve been condensing it from the atmosphere for years.”

“How much magic?” she asked.

He looked down at his sandals. “Enough to go from zero to talent with one bottle, and stay there.”

Or, in skilled hands, any number of other things. Pure magic wasn’t pre-flavoured like talent tears. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Shit. Do you know who took it?”

“I called you here to help me find out,” he said.

“Two heads are better than one, huh,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

Divination spells worked better with two people: one person to focus on casting the spell, and the other on interpreting it. Lady Noctis cast a spell to bring a glow to any lost hairs, while Mr Wizard searched; they only found something left over from his last at-home haircut. He chanted the Spirits’ Gossip spell while she listened to the voices that whispered in answer; they only mentioned the intruder’s hood and sweet moves while fighting the gargoyle. Their thief hadn’t spent enough time there to form any more impressions.

Lady Noctis cracked open one of the other potions in the lab, and the purple mist spread throughout the room. It turned a blend of colours near the workbench; Mr Wizard used a lot of different magic alongside his alchemy, leaving a lot of false trails: energy blue and life green predominated, with a hint of matter brown. But towards the door and the broken shelf, the mist turned thickly gold. Time magic, recent and potent.

As soon as they confirmed it, Mr Wizard raced to an office for pen and paper. He wrote and sealed the letter too quickly for Lady Noctis to even get a glance. Once he finished, the paper folded itself, over and over, taking on the shape of an origami bird. It hopped from his desk and took wing.

He answered her before she asked the question. “If time magic is our only lead, we need an expert. I know someone.”

2 Chekhov

Heisenberg sent out a summons for Chekhov: a disembodied whisper in her ear, such as his office could send anywhere in the Citadel. She went straight to his office, taking her fresh sandwich with her. Planck was already there and seated. Heisenberg had his back to them, going through one of his shelves of reference material.

She prowled in, her soft-soled shoes moving as quietly as she could. It felt like sneaking into a classroom. Once she sat down next to Planck, she opened her mouth to whisper a question.

Before the first word got out, Heisenberg stepped back. Without looking, he slid an empty plate onto the desk, in front of her.

She pouted. How did he always do that? She set the sandwich down. “What’s this about?”

He put a letter in front of her. The paper’s creases showed it had been folded and unfolded far more than being shoved in an envelope. It told her about a heist, the theft of some concentrated magic potions, and asked for the Realmwalkers’ help in finding the culprit.

By the time she finished, Heisenberg had turned, and he stared halfway through her skull. “Is this significant?” he asked.

The stare made her flinch. She glanced aside to Planck, but he stayed quiet. “Er. Significant to what?”

Heisenberg just narrowed his eyes.

She rubbed her face. If he was asking her, he could only mean one thing. She stared down at the page, letting it fill her focus. Yet, it was a diffuse kind of focus, on the watch for any particular hook – like listening for odd inflection in an actor’s voice, or strange word choice in a narrative, not knowing exactly what to look for. One hand strayed to her gun, and she thought she felt a slight tug, like she’d always imagined a dowsing rod would be.

She dropped her focus. Her eyes burned as she closed them; she’d had them open and staring for longer than was comfortable. “That last line, about talent thresholds. It’s foreshadowing something, but I don’t know what.”

Heisenberg nodded gravely, taking his intense eyes off Chekhov’s face. “Suit up. We have a crime scene to investigate.” He turned his back.

Planck stood. “Me too, sir?”

“I didn’t show you that letter as a literature assignment,” Heisenberg said. “It’s a chance to get you into the field and see for myself how ready you are. Dismissed.” He must have been a schoolteacher before he became a Realmwalker.

Chekhov would have hung back, just for the principle of the thing, but Planck was already leaving. Taking her sandwich with her, she fell into step next to him. “Where’d that letter even come from? The Citadel isn’t exactly on any postal routes.”

“Did you see the creases?” Planck asked. “That was an origami fold. It must have come in by the Messenger Pigeon spell. It’s pretty popular among arcanists – write a message, and it finds its way right to your intended recipient.” He grinned. “So you could say...”

She shot him a look. “Don’t.”

“A little birdie told him,” he said.

She sighed. The pun produced a little pang of pain, like a thin needle poking into the middle of her chest. “That Messenger Pigeon thing isn’t even real, is it?”

“Oh, it is,” he said. “Which makes it even better. Though it can get a little weird with time travellers.”

She gave him a shove on the shoulder. Next, they rounded the corner into a hall lined with suites. She split off from him, heading for the door with her name on its plaque. “No peeking.”

3 Planck

Planck was the first ready to go. He waited outside, sat hunched over at the central island’s edge.

He had a mission shadowing Heisenberg, his mentor, the man who’d brought him into the Fellowship to begin with. The performance anxiety kicked his mind into higher gear, and he had trouble turning his talent off. It was like a tense muscle he couldn’t relax. He stayed that tiny bit faster than he should be, making the wait even less tolerable.

Chekhov came out next. She’d freshened up and changed into a different costume, one with a more angular pattern in its colours. Several pouches had joined the gun on her belt, in lieu of pockets. They just wouldn’t fit on a distractingly tight outfit like hers. She carried a small backpack strapped to her shoulders.

She stopped when she saw him. “Wait, wait, wait, are you all suited up?” She turned her back to him before she got more than a glance. “Tell me you are.”

“Believe it or not, I didn’t walk out here naked,” he said. “You can turn around.”

“Planck, I haven’t seen you all suited up in over a year, and that was when I made you go put on the newest suit for fun,” Chekhov said. “This is you kitted out for an actual mission. I’m not going to waste that view on you just sitting around waiting for Heisenberg. Stand up! Strike a pose, man! You still have your ... it’s a staff, right?”

He took the compact thing from one of his cloak’s pockets. With a flick of his wrist, it telescoped out into a full-length, metallic quarterstaff. He stood and got into combat stance – the only pose he could think of on such short notice. “Uh, look now?”

Planck wore a full-body suit of modern combat armour. It fit tightly to keep out of his way, but its protective layers padded out his physique; it wasn’t immodestly skin-tight like what some superheroes wore. Mostly black and dark grey, it had touches of gold and trimmings of red. On top he wore a cloud cloak. On the outside, it was black with the edge decorated in Celtic knotwork, done in gold. The inner lining shone silver and vaguely reflective. He kept the hood up high enough to hide his hair, but not his face. In both hands, he held a steel, telescoping quarterstaff.

Chekhov turned, and hid a grin behind both hands. “Aww, you look so grown up!”

“I’m fifteen, you know,” he said.

“Not sure you’re agreeing with me,” she said.

“If you’re done teasing him,” Heisenberg called from the door, “let’s get underway.” He wore his own standard: a modern suit in black and blue, under a voluminous robe. He stood with them at the island’s edge and held the letter out to Planck. “Take us there.”

He’d almost forgotten. Heisenberg’s idea of ‘observe Planck’s skills’ translated to ‘make Planck do everything so I can watch’.

“And remember to say what you’re doing,” Heisenberg said.

That part, Planck had forgotten. Make Planck do everything and narrate the whole time. The magical equivalent of ‘showing your work’.

He held the letter closer. “First, get a feel for the anchor. This letter knows which world it came from. Listening to that resonance, I can tell which direction to go, to find that world in fifth-dimensional space.” He turned in a slow circle, until he found a facing that felt right. He tucked the letter away, freeing his hands. “Now I open the bridge.”

“Wait,” Heisenberg said. “Elaborate.”

Planck winced, but took a deep breath. “As we all already know...” If Heisenberg could ask for first-grade-level magic theory, Planck could snark about it. “ ... the realmwalking tehcnique is what gives the Fellowship of Realmwalkers our name.” The older Realmwalker didn’t even respond; he just kept watching, his face flat.

Planck flexed his hands and held them in front of himself, as if holding the knobs of a set of double doors. “The founders, Einstein and Rosen, developed similar techniques for both space and time magic. Personally, I prefer doing it with space.”

Heisenberg huffed. “You’re also the only one faced with such a choice. “Demonstrate.”

Planck focused his magic. “Fundamentally, the technique twists dimensions. I send my magic out through my fingers, grasping at space, and I give it a good turn...” He twisted his wrists and pulled, as if opening those doors.

The air before him shimmered and opened up like a free-standing doorway. Beyond, the space showed a shining, silver bridge reaching out into a night sky, even though it was still morning in the Citadel. Rather than points of light, the stars drew lines across the black; some pointed straight, but most curved and branched, many lines splitting from the same bases. Their colours made a kaleidoscope across the black. Each base line was a different colour, and the branches shifted in shade, gradually deviating further in both direction and hue.

The grand hall had a map of time, but it was a flat, two-dimensional simplification. That bridge extended into the real thing.

Planck stepped forwards, leading them on. “The realmwalking technique twists space into time and time into space. It folds the higher, conceptual dimensions into the ones we can see around us. Now, travelling forwards doesn’t move us in length or width. It moves us in time and chance. With this technique, a space talent can travel in time and vice versa, and either one can travel among the worlds.”

He pointed straight ahead. Some space away, a vivid blue line crossed above their bridge. “Like that one there. The world which sent the letter. And now, to get there...” He strode ahead. “ ... we simply walk.” He looked over his shoulder at Heisenberg.

The older Realmwalker just nodded. Adequate performance, his expression said.

Chekhov fell into step beside him. “Since you can teleport anyway, couldn’t you just teleport us right to it?”

Planck shook his head. “It’s taking all my talent just to keep this bridge up. Not enough left for teleporting.”

“Well, what about teleporting without making a bridge?” she asked. “It’s all just dimensions to you, right?”

He gave his head a more violent shake. “That would be a good way to get the distances wrong. To fall short or overshoot, and end up falling into the Void.” He tore off a strip of the letter and let it fall off the bridge, into the black between worlds. Seconds later, it simply vanished into nothingness.

Heisenberg added, “Let’s do our best not to end up like Spengler.”

They thought about that one marker stone in the map, the one that lost its glow. Dead, or as good as dead. Sobered, they walked in silence.

4 Lady Noctis (content advisory: Ma/Fa, Consensual, teacher/student)

Lady Noctis leaned against one of the pillars in Mr Wizard’s entry hall. He really needed to put chairs in there. On the other hand, if she had anything more comfortable than a marble pillar, she’d fall asleep.

Mr Wizard had no such risk. He was strung too high, pacing back and forth with his hands in his shorts pockets.

“So this expert of—” Lady Noctis interrupted herself with a yawn. “This expert of yours. You’ve sent the letter. How long do we have until he’s here?”

“No way of knowing,” Mr Wizard said. “Sometimes it’s minutes, sometimes hours. Once, he showed up before I finished sending the letter.”

“Meaning you’ve done all you can, and all that’s left to do is wait.” Lady Noctis pushed off the pillar and intercepted Mr Wizard in his pacing. “All you’re doing now is stressing yourself out and undoing all that hard vacation work.” She placed her hands on his chest, holding him still. “You need to relax, sir.”

His cheeks set to blazing. Uncertain whether to lean into or away from her touch, he simply froze. “You don’t mean...”

She showed him just what she meant. When she kissed him, he didn’t back away, though it took him a few seconds to respond. He was sluggish from a mix of tiredness and reluctance, but the latter soon melted away. An arm slid around her waist and pulled her in closer to his tall, thin frame. It wasn’t often Lady Noctis met a man taller than her, and she relished the feeling while she had it.

The kiss broke, and she grinned at him. “Honestly. I’d thought you’d stop being so bashful once I hit my twenties.” She pushed his shoulders, urging him back. If she remembered the layout right, a guest bedroom would be just two doors away.

“You’re still my student,” he grumbled between kisses. Yet he still didn’t resist her. He let her walk him backward, pushing through that door—

—and into a linen closet.

They both just stood for a second. Her hands braced against his chest, leaning him back against the shelves. Eventually, he coughed. “Your old room is just across the hall,” he said, pointing.

She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him along with her to the correct door.

That room had been her home away from home when she was in high school. A bookshelf – small by Mr Wizard’s standards, huge by normal ones – held the first books she’d used to study magic, and stood right next to a plain desk and rigid, straight-backed chair. It was a place for hard work, not for relaxation.

All except for the four-poster, queen-sized bed, wreathed in silk curtains and sheets. It didn’t look as big as when she’d been a teen, but it still had more than enough room for them both.

She twisted around and swung him onto the bed. While he was still letting out his ‘oof’ of impact, she launched onto and sat astride him, pinning him down while she took another kiss.

And he gave it to her. Face still hot with scandal, he sat up and met her lips with his. He stayed timid, and she had to tease his reluctant tongue to get it to come forward and explore her mouth. She’d almost forgotten how fun it was to draw her teacher out of his shell.

His hands grew more adventurous. They roamed her, exploring curves that had grown fuller, more womanly, since the last time they’d shared a bed. With her guidance, he found the zipper that held the dress so tightly to her body. The straps fell along her arms, and the whole dress gathered about her waist, leaving her bare from there upwards.

Hands on his chest, she shoved him back down to lie flat. “Take a good look, sir.” She sat up straight. As Lady Noctis, her skin was paler, and her nipples were so light a pink they almost blended in with her breasts. “All grown up.” She pressed her hips down, feeling the hard lump in his shorts. “And I can tell you like it.”

She opened up his Hawaiian shirt, exposing his thin chest to her wandering fingers. At the same time, he took more shy hold of her breasts. They made a rhythm to their dance, bodies moving together: their hands on each other’s chests, their hips rocking. Neither made a move for those last pieces of clothing. It became a game of chicken. How long could they stand that last bit of denial? His rod pulsed against her, as hot as her own volcanic mound. She wanted him, and wanted him more with each brush of fingers and stroke of hips, but knew how much sweeter it would be for the waiting.

He broke first. His hands dropped from her chest and stripped them both: first his shorts, then hiking up her dress to grab for her panties. The dress itself remained, kept about her hips like a rumpled, lacy belt.

She could have teased one more time. She could have held back and made him come to her – essentially proving how much he wanted her in spite of himself. But she couldn’t keep denying herself. Once she felt the air against her skin, she dropped, taking him inside.

Even on the first stroke, their pleasure magnified a hundredfold, until they couldn’t help but cry out. They did what came naturally, their bodies moving on autopilot. It started with her bouncing atop him, his hands worshipping her jiggling breasts. Somewhere along the way, he turned it around. It ended with her on her back, legs tight around him as he emptied his load into her trembling depths.

“See, sir? Relaxing is ... so good for you...” Her early-morning wakeup call caught up with her as the adrenaline of passion faded. Her limbs went slack, sinking into the bed, releasing the man above her. Her eyelids felt heavy. As they closed, she drifted asleep entirely. Her old bed felt far more comfortable than any old pillar.

5 Planck

It was impossible to tell how long the Realmwalkers walked. On that bridge, time was a foreign concept at best. He didn’t get hungry. His legs grew tired, but it passed quickly. The worst was the constant drain on his mind and magic. For as long as they walked, he had to keep the bridge stable.

Eventually, they stood by that blue line. It crossed their bridge like a thick pillar fallen across a carpet, as wide as Planck was tall. He laid his hand on it and felt sparking warmth against his fingers. Again, he gestured as if to pull open a door – this time opening a way into a new world.

Together, they emerged onto battered pavement. Planck closed his eyes and relaxed his mind, the bridge vanishing behind them.

He took deep breaths. Modern, suburban air greeted him: petrichor and asphalt with a hint of morning dew on grass, plus the ubiquitous scent of internal-combustion cars. The air felt moderate, leaning towards chill. Early morning, in either early spring or late autumn. He opened his eyes, and saw a bright orange sunrise over disrepaired townhouses.

“Universe Royal,” he said – each world named for the colour seen from outside, like this world’s royal blue. “Divergence number...” He flicked out his tongue, as if to taste his place in fifth-dimensional space. “Twenty-eight?”

“Royal 27,” Heisenberg corrected. “Continue.”

Planck nodded. “It’s a modern earth, I’d say early twenty-first century. Though there’s more magic in the air than you usually find in a world like that.” He gave Heisenberg a questioning look.

“That’s nothing to do with us,” Heisenberg said. “Accurate summary. This way.” He led them to a plain-looking townhouse with a well-manicured lawn, near the middle of the complex. Number 13.

He knocked and received no answer. He knocked again. Still nothing. After one more solid knock, he waited.

Planck coughed. “Maybe we could come back—”

The door swung open. Behind was a tall, thin man, with the tired-eyed and dishevelled look of someone who had just been woken and dressed in a hurry. He wore a purple-trimmed, black robe, tied tight around his waist. “Heisenberg,” he said. “Sorry, I was just—”

Heisenberg stepped past. “Are we expecting anyone else?”

The thin man blinked. “Oh. No, my apprentice is asleep.”

“Good,” Heisenberg said. “We can get the introductions out of the way all at once. The woman is Chekhov; the young one is Planck, our junior member. This is Mr Wizard. Now, if you’ll show us to—”

“Wait,” Chekhov said. “Your name is Mr Wizard?”

Mr Wizard squinted at her. It was probably meant to be a glare, but he just looked like he needed glasses. “Is your name really Chekhov? You’re not the only ones who use code names. Or, in your case, masks.”

Chekhov said, “And in a world of superheroes, where you can have any name you want, you picked ‘Mr Wizard’?”

Heisenberg cleared his throat before Mr Wizard could answer. “Planck? Investigate.”

Planck had been expecting it, but nervousness still shortened his breath. Performance anxiety. “Right. She would have had to pass through here, right, Mr Wizard?”

Mr Wizard nodded. “I know she came in through the front door. My wards alerted me when she approached, even with the right password. You know wards, protective spells? I have them laced through—”

“Yes, I know wards,” Planck said. “No need to explain them. Now, the first step is to try to take a look at what happened. Postcognition can be tricky and unreliable, but it’s always worth a shot.” Facing the door, he spread his hands like he was framing a picture. To everyone else, that was it. Even Planck only saw it with his left eye: a window, like a ring of gold hanging in the air. “Your letter was a little light on details. When did your wards wake you?”

Mr Wizard checked a pocket watch. “It was around eight. No, wait, ten locally.”

“About seven hours now,” Planck said. He held his right hand over the window and rolled his wrist, turning the window back in time. He caught a brief glimpse of his own arrival, and a tall woman who must have been the apprentice, but it was otherwise smooth sailing. Within his window, hours of time rolled back within seconds.

Near the six-hour mark, he hit a barrier. The air resisted his hand when he tried to turn it. “Interference,” he said. “I can push past, but this image won’t come out clear.” Though it felt like pushing his hand through hot sand, he finished that last turn.

The doorway itself showed bright and crisp, its image sharpened by the window. The image standing there was quite the opposite: blurred by golden mist, until he could only make out a hood. He couldn’t even tell how they were standing.

He put his hands back to the window’s frame. As he stepped backwards, he carried the window and watched its image animate.

The blur got worse. It was like having a different image in front of each eye, but multiplied a dozen times and still only visible through the left. He closed the right to help his focus, and followed one of the images to a hallway.

Mr Wizard coughed. “She went this way.”

Planck’s hands tensed to hold the window. That distraction almost broke his spell. He sighed. “Like I said, postcognition can be unreliable.”

“Usually not that unreliable,” Heisenberg said.

“And usually, the interference isn’t close to this bad,” Planck said. “Whoever this was, they didn’t want us seeing them, and knew how to prevent it. They’re clouding the past, plus whatever tricks they used to get in. This takes serious time magic.”

Though the images went in all directions, Planck followed Mr Wizard through to the scene of the actual crime. Once he got there...

... he sighed and dropped his hands, letting the window fade. “I can’t see a damn thing, it’s just a big golden blur. I’m getting a headache just looking at it.”

Mr Wizard frowned. “So you can’t find out who did this. If it’s that hard to look back in time, can’t you just jump back for a better look?”

Planck rubbed his temples. Holding that window open had taken some strain. “Yes, actually travelling back in time is easier than just looking. But you mean jump back in time, into your established history, and risk clashing with an opposing force that has an unknown kind and considerable amount of time magic? That’s a recipe for a bad time even without paradox.” He sifted through the pockets in his cloak’s inner lining. “Besides, I’m not out of tricks yet. Ah, here it is.” He pulled out a small charm: a crystalline hourglass that hung from a chain. “My temporal etheroscope. Whatever trick this thief has, they used it a lot right here in this room. That would have left a clear signature, and this will pick it up.”

Mr Wizard shook his head. “My apprentice and I already checked. We found traces of time magic – that’s why we called you – but nothing we could tie to a single magician. They just weren’t here for long enough.”

“For long enough time?” Heisenberg asked. “You called us for a reason. Planck, go ahead.”

Oh, great. Now Planck had expectation crouching on his shoulder. His fingers fumbled as he twisted the top and started the charm’s magic. Immediately, both bulbs lit up with a swirl of silver and gold sparkles. “Oh, that’s me. It always picks up my signature first. Hang on a sec.”

“Take all the time you need,” Mr Wizard said, shooting another squint at Heisenberg.

With some fiddling, Planck cleared his own signature from the charm. “It’s sort of like if I had a bloodhound puppy in my cloak pocket,” he said. “It’d get used to my scent, and it’d hang on it for a bit after I took it out. But now, after waking up a bit more...” The hourglass changed, showing a violet mist with a vein of deep blue. “Ah, that’s Heisenberg. Hold on...” He turned away from his senior and toward the broken shelf.

Planck wasn’t a generalist wizard. That temporal etheroscope could only detect time magic; any others were invisible. Thus, the background magic of Mr Wizard’s alchemy lab offered no interference at all, and the three Realmwalkers hadn’t been there long. With some tuning, he finally locked onto the signature he needed.

“There.” He held it up for the others to see. The hourglass shone with a sepia yellow mist, like an old book that had been thumbed through hundreds of times. “Our thief’s ‘scent’.”

“Huh.” Mr Wizard leaned in close. “We couldn’t even get a whiff of her, and you’ve got it clear as day. Not bad. So now you have that—”

“—we hit the pavement.” Chekhov pushed off the wall where she’d been leaning. She stretched herself out, showing a supple bendiness that Planck tried to ignore, and joints popped back into place. “I swear, I was starting to cramp up. Boss-man, are you coming?”

“I’ll stay,” Heisenberg said. “With more focus and refinement, I should be able to get a clear image of our burglar.”