At first, Nate wondered if he was dead. Was this all his life was going to amount to? A few pieces of art before dying shortly after he turned eighteen? These thoughts plagued his mind for an unknown amount of time before feeling and sight returned to him. As they did, his jaw dropped in awe, and he sucked in a breath.
He was inside something like a bubble, suspended in the middle. The reason sight was returning to him was obvious now. The bubble itself was slowly becoming translucent, revealing the bubble’s surroundings. And what a vision that was. It was like an artist had decided to paint the universe in all its glory in every colour of the spectrum. A rainbow of planets and misty swirls that somehow seemed to connect everything with a backdrop of space and the stars.
Nate could barely breathe, but slowly, he felt a prickling on his arms. He glanced down, expecting to see some substance stuck to his skin causing the irritation, but found nothing there. Looking himself over repeatedly, he kept expecting something to change, but as the minutes ticked by, the prickling remained, and he could see no reaction from his skin anywhere. It was uncomfortable but not truly painful. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
The feeling held his attention so long that he almost didn’t notice the white light approaching. At the last moment, he looked up as it appeared in his peripheral vision and realised he was hurtling toward one of the white stars. Nate had a moment of realisation right before his bubble reached the fast-approaching white light. Despite the speed at which he was obviously moving, he didn’t feel any pressure. That was his last thought before his bubble collided with what he thought might be a star, unceremoniously catapulting him into its blinding light.
Flying out of the other side of the white light, Nate landed badly on his forearms, the impact sending a blast of electricity up his arms and to his shoulders as his nerves screamed. He rolled onto his back, letting out a pained moan. Blinking through tears from the pain, Nate glanced around and took in his surroundings.
The only thing he could compare it to was the interior of a spaceship, though that wasn’t quite right. Smooth, curved metallic walls encircled the room. However, the walls were covered in weird symbols instead of computers and electronics. The symbols looked like geometric shapes crossed with hieroglyphs, and interspersed between them were brightly glowing gems in every colour of the rainbow. Through the haze of pain, Nate had thought that he’d somehow survived the black hole only to land on a spaceship disco rave. That made him laugh, which helped the pain fade a little faster.
Sitting up, he prepared to take in his surroundings, but he felt the prickling on his skin again, only this time much worse. He looked down at his arms, trying to find the cause as the prickling grew stronger, becoming painful. As he was about to scream, a creature entered the room through a side door. He tried to take in its appearance, but he couldn’t think of anything else as the pain became more intense until his body felt like it was burning, and he began to scream.
His skin looked fine, but he felt like his whole body was on fire, cooking him from the inside out. Rolling back and forth, he knew he was dying. Whatever this was, his body couldn’t handle it. He kept thrashing back and forth for what was probably a minute or two, but felt like hours before the burning sensation began to subside. As the pain decreased, all he could do was cry from relief until he finally stopped sobbing and lay still on the metallic floor, drenched in sweat.
“Vic darr unte gor misc xeralla voif?”
Nate, groaning, had no idea what the noise was before it came again.
The second time, he could hear the forcefulness in the voice. The tone had changed. Gotten deeper.
“Vic darr unte gor misc xeralla voif?”
Nate sat up slowly and responded, “I don’t know what you’re saying.” His voice sounded worn and small to his own ears. Tired, scared, and hurting.
The pause gave him a moment to take in the creature. It was bipedal, like him. That was where the similarities ended. It was pale purple and must have stood almost three metres tall, towering over Nate. Where Nate had two arms, this creature had four, evenly spaced, with what looked like three fingers on each hand, though one was opposable, so he supposed it had two fingers and a thumb per hand. It also had four eyes, two in front, like a human, and two sitting slightly higher on its head and to the sides, closer to that of a bird. That thought gave Nate pause. Bird, this thing was not a bird. It looked built like a mountain, rippling with muscle. The creature’s head was bereft of hair, and while it looked like it had a mouth and lips similar to a human's, it had no nose to speak of. Instead, it had a couple of slits, like those bad movies with humanoid snakes.
Nate was still staring at the creature in a mix of shock, fear, and awe when it held its hand out toward him. He was leaning back, expecting the worst, but his panic spiked as a series of golden symbols appeared between them and shot into his face before he could react. Nate reached up to touch his face, expecting to feel melted skin, but oddly enough, he felt just fine.
“Can you understand me now?”
Nate looked back up in shock at the creature, “You can speak English?”
“I am not speaking whatever English is, mortal. I am speaking High Valli. The spell is translating for you,” snorted the creature, its voice a deep baritone. “Now, answer my question. How did you get into my portal room?”
“Portal room? What? Where am I?” he replied, swallowing the rising fear.
Kneeling down, the creature eyed Nate curiously. “How does a mortal end up passing through a portal without knowing what a portal is? Are you from a wild realm?” The creature continued, not waiting for a response. “No, you could not be from a wild realm. You wouldn’t have started suffering from the mana density differential if you were. No, it is more likely you are from a Dead Realm. Am I right, mortal? Are you from a dead universe?”
“What is a dead universe?” Nate couldn’t help leaning into the hope that this creature didn’t actually mean him harm. Though, it did have an odd way of referring to him. Mortal? Did that mean it viewed itself as a God? Was that a thing?
“A universe that lacks a mana density necessary to employ magic,” responded the creature.
“I think…I think it’s probably a dead universe. I’ve never seen anything I would describe as magic.”
“I see. I see. That helps me to understand your reaction to the environment of my research facility. It does not explain how you got into my portal room. Tell me about the events that led to you arriving here.”
The creature’s four eyes focused on Nate, and he felt a pressure descending on him that convinced him that lying would be the worst thing he could do. Up until now, he had led a life of self-sufficiency, and the greatest lesson he had taken from that life was to roll with the punches. While this situation was so far out of his comfort zone, he knew that if he wanted to get out of the other side, all he could do was attempt to adapt. Taking his time, Nate explained his artwork and the black hole, then the travel through the galactic rainbow before he arrived in this room. The creature listened to him without moving until he had finished.
The purple giant held up his hand in front of Nate. “This artwork you speak of, did it look like this?” An image appeared in front of its held-up hand, geometric and arcane, but it wasn’t quite the same, so Nate shook his head. As he did so, the creature changed the image it had projected. Another shake of his head. The image kept changing until the sixth image was shown, and Nate blanched. It was the exact same as his artwork, and he nodded apprehensively.
The creature sighed, “The chances of you replicating this are so remote that it beggars belief. But your being here proves that even the implausible is possible. It seems you created the connection rune used by one of my Heralds. You’re either the luckiest or unluckiest being I have encountered in a very long time.”
“Umm, why is that unlucky? Can’t you just use it to open it back up and send me back?” Nate looked at the purple giant, hopefully.
“Obviously not. Oh, I suppose it's not obvious to you. A simple explanation, then. It’s been so long since I conversed with a mortal. Give me a moment so that I can phrase it in a way that you can hopefully understand.”
Nate felt a little condescended to. But then he also realised he probably knew nothing about portals, or magic, for that matter.
The creature nodded as if to itself and launched into its explanation. “A portal is two points connected across space. To do that, the two points need to be defined. We call these anchors. That rune you drew was an anchor with a matching anchor in this room.
“Normally, that wouldn’t cause any problems. But you are from a dead universe. And dead universes lack mana. That means when you created the connection, my portal room powered the entire connection. That mana, crossing into a dead universe, would have destroyed the anchor on your side, as dead universe materials do not tolerate mana at the concentrations required to power a portal over such a distance. Your anchor is gone. And as it is a dead universe, we have no way to find the way back to it except by random chance. Like searching for a single grain of sand on a planetary body. Are you understanding this?”
“So, you’re saying I am stuck here. That there is nothing you can do?” he pleaded.
“Yes, mortal. You could spend multiple lifetimes trying to find your dead universe and then send a message for someone to create an anchor and still fail. You are ‘stuck’ here, as you put it.” The creature looked at him, and though it was hard to tell, he thought it felt sorry for him.
Nate lay back down on the floor and stared at the ceiling. It was covered in hieroglyphs that he now realised were the runes the purple giant spoke of. He realised he could almost make sense of them, but he was distracted by his distress. He was stuck here. His life as he knew it was over. This was definitely not what he had been expecting. He had a few friends from school that would miss him, definitely Michael and Jung, but, at that moment, he realised that he had been alone most of his life. Never like this, though. He was truly alone now. He had no one anymore. The thought brought tears to his eyes. It was like when he had lost his parents, only this time, he had lost everything and everyone. Nate didn’t know what to do.
“I am sorry for your loss, mortal. But you cannot stay here.” The creature's words brought Nate out of his reverie, and he sat back up slowly, looking up at the purple giant.
“Oh. Yeah. Your portal room. I guess I am kind of in the way, aren’t I? Where will I go?” Nate asked absently. He was so lost he wasn’t sure the answer mattered anyway.
“You misunderstand me, mortal. I would let you stay if you could. But the only thing preventing the mana density of my research facility from burning you out is me. I am actively blocking the mana from reaching you. I cannot do that and manage my research. So, you cannot stay here. I will send you down to the planetary body we are orbiting. It has mortals like you. Humans, among other things.”
Nate blinked in shock. “Wait, the planet has humans on it?”
“Oh yes. It’s not that surprising. You are one of the most common races in the multiverse. The mana density of the planet will likely be a little uncomfortable for you initially, but it won’t burn you out. I will make you an offer. I sense something interesting in your pocket. If you give it to me, I will give you a few things to help you survive on the world below. I will also make the translation spell I cast on you permanent so you can communicate with the native mortals. What do you say, mortal?”
Nate reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Something interesting? Do you mean this?”
The creature nodded to him and held out its hand for his phone. Nate couldn’t see a reason not to. The phone was fine for now but would become useless quickly without a way to charge it. Besides, he was about to be kicked out into the unknown. Whatever this creature was, it had the means to create portals that crossed the multiverse, as it put it. Hopefully, whatever it gave him would help keep Nate alive in this new world. Because, for all the loneliness he felt, disconnected from everything he had ever known, Nate still wanted to live.
Nate nodded back and handed his phone to the creature. It looked tiny in the creature’s three-fingered hand.
The creature made a face that made Nate think it was pleased. “Fascinating little invention. Very well. Wait here while I collect a few things. Do not touch anything, mortal. For your safety. I doubt you could damage anything in this room, but I assure you, some of those runes or the mana in those crystals is more than capable of frying you from the inside out.”
“Umm, yes, sir, I understand. I just realised; I never asked your name,” he said, his voice smaller than he would’ve liked.
The god, as Nate was starting to believe, smiled down at him, “I have many names. But in this universe, for the mortals that live in the world below, most know me as Arikanvil the Wanderer. I would not mention me to other mortals, though. They can get particular about gods.”
With those parting words, the purple giant left through the door it had come, and Nate lay back down on the cold metallic floor. Staring at the ceiling as he tried to piece together his thoughts, he began noticing that he could make sense of the runes if he focused on them.
Staring at one, it evoked multiple words in his mind. Trying to parse what his brain was telling him he slowly drew out the individual words. The rune was geometric and arcane. Much like his artwork. With circles, whorls, and clean lines interspersed with little pictures that could’ve been runes or hieroglyphs. He realised it was these images that evoked his concept of language.
The one that looked like a round shield with a slice of pie in it, that meant Barrier. And the one that looked like layered pyramids with a circle on top, that meant Strength. Wait, that was wrong. It meant more than just strength. It meant Strongest. The apex of strength. Another had two little arrows pointing away from each other with a line in between them. Nate could tell that it meant Both Directions.
After he had committed that one rune to memory, he glanced at others. Power was concentric circles with a sunburst at the centre. Fitting, if anything was power, it was a star after all. Apparently, there were multiple ways to define connection as he saw it written in at least eight different ways, always using wavy lines. Sometimes, when it hinted it was connecting multiple runes, the wavy lines would be overlapped horizontally and vertically. It was beautiful to Nate. And it was enough to distract him from the fact that bubbled deep down. That he was now more alone than he ever had been. He wondered how long it would be before his friends, Michael and Jung, began to suspect he’d gone missing.
Nate tried to keep himself distracted, but now that the thought had overtaken him, he couldn’t let it go. He lay there on the floor, wallowing in his grief for what could’ve been a minute or an hour before he heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. It was almost time for him to leave, it seemed.