Nathalia’s face hovered just a few centitres over his. Repeated inhales flared her nostrils. Her nose crinkled in disappointnt, before she sunk back into her own seat in the cramped car.
“I did apply the cologne,” he said.
“It alone is not the proper scent.” The dragoness crossed her arms beneath her magnificent tits. Caral flesh pushed up against the gaps left by the unbuttoned halves of her deep red shirt. Seeing such a deep cleavage on a woman with a suit activated several neurons in his monkey brain.
Showing Nathalia the benefits of being stuck with the Creator Puppet had to wait. Not for a lack of ti, but for a lack of opportunity.
Fusion’s resources were incredibly vast, yes, but even they had their limits. Scarlett had pointed them to their first location to visit, a gate that had recently been spotted between Indianapolis and Chicago. Lee did not have a convenient jumping point to get them right next to it. Since she required Protected Spaces she had personally made as her exit point, her range was limited in this regard.
Part of the purpose of the mission was to have her drop more of them all over the country. There likely was so upper limit to how many of them she could be connected to. Finding that out was their side quest. Even if that number was lower than anticipated, the fact that she could do it at all would always up their movent capacity.
Her closest drop-off point had been southwest of Chicago, which had been close enough for their purposes. From there, they aid to organize a car. That was where the difficulties had co in. Getting a vehicle with their money was beyond simple in theory. In practice, reality had a couple of jokes to play at tis.
Any cars that Fusion had in the area were already in use or had been destroyed during the Lorylim invasion of the area. Because this was Emrik’s turf, John did not have any deep connections to call on either. He was owed fealty and the locals did not resist him whatsoever. He was basically as popular here as he was everywhere else and, for her part in killing of the facsimile of Abzu, Nathalia was regarded positively as well.
That did not help him much when he did not know who to go to. The old structures of the Lake Alliance were still in place in many places, be it through actual codification in the new, constitutional structure the Federation had demanded or through simple, informal habits that had been maintained. This made matters more opaque and allocation of funds different to what he was used to.
All of this was a long-winded analysis to say: there was no car ready for him in that part of the empire. The resources to get one existed, but had not been moved in the necessary ways. To be entirely fair to them, why would they have a car for 5 just standing about ready for him there? It wasn’t like he had announced himself in advance.
So, they had to move to a used car dealership on foot. That had cost them so ti. They then had to get a car that had what they needed. As fate would have it, there was no such car. For all the Arican love of large vehicles, there sohow was not one on display. They were, ultimately, stuck with a rather cramped four-seater.
John could imagine much worse places than to be stuck on a backbench between Nathalia and Lee. He could also imagine many better spaces. The previous owner of the car had been a chain smoker. The scent was so deep in the fabric of the seats that John could practically feel it on his skin when he made contact. The floor was mysteriously sticky. The heating only worked on one side of the car, though Nathalia solved that issue with her presence.
The engine, however, was running flawlessly.
John tried to shift. He failed. Never before had he been unappreciative of the width of his woman’s hips, but there was precious little space between them. Had this been his real body with the enchanted underwear, his balls would have been fine. As it sat, they were squished in. Even though these man-bits were entirely magical constructions, they were every bit as uncomfortable to have in this situation.
By the ti they arrived in the correct area, the sun had risen over the fields. This was a heavily developed rural area of the USA, which was to say that every bit of land had been claid and assigned so purpose. Almost everything was a field for so crops and what wasn’t existed to let the soil regenerate to eventually be turned into a field for so crops. The streets were grid lines, separating everything out into easily sorted plots of land.
From the looks of things, the area laid largely ignored for the winter. It was likely owned by so massive farming company on the mundane side. That was the explanation John had for why there were no people besides them around.
That was until they entered the Illusion Barrier.
The first thing they noted was the portal. It was massive. Beginning shortly above ground level, the oval gap in space went seven tres up and was more than three across. Its rim was a flicker of translucent blue and earthy brown, stretching light that its presence displaced. In the gap, they had a view of another set of plains, interrupted by stone arches that would have been more at ho in a sa than a grassland.
The second thing to note were the people. There were only three of them, none of them part of the military. Indeed, John was looking at a guy in his late teens and two won that were, in their slouchy gear and choice of hat wear, clearly of the tomboy persuasion. A quick Observe identified them as a trio that had grown up together in the area. They had turned their interest in getting into trouble into making money on Natural Barriers.
‘Lucky him,’ the Gar thought instinctively. Everyone knew having a tomboy childhood friend was THE male fantasy. Having two was just cheating. ‘Not that I have any room to talk.’
The trio stared at the arrivals slack-jawed. “M-mister President…?!” one of the tomboys stamred.
“Emperor,” tra corrected with a wide grin. “Relax, we’re just your rulers in the flesh.”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Tomboy 1 recovered with a shudder. “Are you going into our portal?”
“It isn’t your portal.” Nia’s sudden appearance by their side startled the trio enough that they jumped up like surprised cats. Putting her finger on sothing no other could see, she traced that invisible thing a few steps towards the portal. “Your mana does not match this phenonon.”
“Ya just found it,” tra said and strutted across the field. The eyes of the Abyssals remained glued to Nia, until the blank had stepped away enough that her alien presence no longer dominated their perception. When their eyes snapped to tra, the First of Wrath stood above them. She was taller than all of them.
“Y-yeah, we found it!” The guy of the group managed to take a confident step forward. “That’s worth sothing, isn’t it?”
John looked to Lee. As the Creator Puppet, he did not have access to his inventory, so it was on her to hand out a reward. “Let’s say 50 Tokens,” he said loud enough that the trio heard them.
The sum had the trio perk up imdiately. John quite enjoyed that he had introduced a currency that was impactful even at smaller numbers. Saying 50 was easier on the tongue than saying 500 million – not that that was an accurate conversion.
“Were you contemplating going in?” John asked, after money had exchanged hands.
“We already went in,” Tomboy 2 said. “We were debating if we’d get expeditionary gear.”
“I wouldn’t recomnd it. We’ve been looking into these gates and several people have been lost already. It might close in the next second or in a week. Either way, if you are on the other side when that happens, you will be lost – forever.”
The words had the intended impact. Exchanging glances, the trio silently decided that this was above their paygrade. “If we find any more of these, can we sell that intel to you?” the guy asked.
In the background, Nathalia clicked her tongue. “You ought to serve your sovereign for the pleasure of it, little ones.”
“We have to ea---eeeep!” Tomboy 1 had a brave face, right up until the goddess actually fixed her gaze on her. The brunette stumbled back several steps and would have fallen had it not been for the guy. “S-sorry!”
Nathalia’s incandescent gaze cooled back down. A second later, she sighed. “No… I should apologize. One ought to ask for compensation for work.”
“Excuse my dragoness, she can be temperantal,” the Gar apologized. “When you find another one of these portals, send a ssage to this address with evidence.” He had tra hand them a card. “Now, we’ll deal with this.”
The trio understood the implication of his secretive tone and left soon thereafter. A pleasantly simple and forgettable interaction, in the grand sche of things.
John, tra and Nathalia turned to the portal, where Lee and Nia were busy dragging their heels through the hard, cold dirt. With every backwards step, they added a little more to the circle they drew around the diater of the portal. Once they had finished, Lee crossed her arms. A neutral look dominated her fair features.
“Crunching numbers?” the Gar asked once he stood next to her.
“Yeah… I doubt I have to tell you that this shouldn’t exist.” Lee began to walk around the outer edge of the circle. John followed, watching the portal as he did. Fascinatingly, as he walked, the portal ‘turned’ to always face him. It was a three-dinsional object with a two-dinsional display. “Just like the portals in WoW.”
“Yeah, but for those there were just too many eventually, making the world feel very small,” John said. “How much should these not exist?”
“Portals in general are so high-level space manipulation,” Lee spoke in a factual tone. “Comrcial teleporters only connect two specific points and they require a ton of setup to be viable, mana wise, for people who don’t conjure it out of Gaia’s good will.”
“I’m pretty sure the Guild Hall is actually part of my mana production – or it will be,” John said. “Once the Gaia Dependency Factor drops further. It is just part of the mana that I don’t get access to, running my background systems and all of that.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re sooooo impressive,” Lee mocked him slightly, before returning to a serious tone. “No, but for real. When I open up a portal, that’s person-sized for a reason and I don’t keep them open longer than a minute at most. Space doesn’t like being stretched unnaturally, the pressure to collapse back into regular configuration increases over ti. By the known laws of magic, this should collapse every second it exists.”
‘By the known laws of magic’ did not have the sa level of impact as ‘physics’. Magic was fundantally enigmatic, that was what made it magic. Still, knowing that this fell outside the realm of the reproducible left them with a smaller number of options.
“So, possibility one,” John began to list, “we have a Latebloor on the loose. Possibility two, this is a freak natural phenonon. Possibility three, all of these gates actually point to the sa or connected worlds and there’s a civilization on the other side that’s trying to invade.”
“The Latebloor answer is by far the most likely,” Lee said.
“Alright, now that you verified what we all already guessed,” tra chid into their analysis, “what’s the next move?”
“The four of you wait here and I go inside,” John responded. “This body is replaceable, after all.”
“As you wish, my Emperor,” tra agreed with a nod.
Nia appeared amongst the three of them. “Is it king or emperor you call him?”
“I want to go with Emperor, but sotis King still sneaks in because of habit,” the First of Wrath responded. “It’s a whole thing.”
While they began a discussion on what titles sounded the coolest, the Creator Puppet marched up to the portal. He stopped shortly at the precipice, testing how his hand felt when he pushed it through. “There is a slight mbrane,” he inford Lee out loud. “Like a lesser version of the surface of water. The temperature on the other side is different, so it seems that air isn’t travelling in-between.”
“Noted,” Lee said.
The Gar raised one foot, taking the step upwards into the other Kingdom.
The chill of December was replaced with a slightly warr, autumn-appropriate variant. The first thing John did was take in his surroundings. The grasslands were what the snapshot through the portal had shown, complete with the odd rock formations that continued in every direction.
The Creator Puppet opened the Harem Comms and sent a DM to Lee.
John: Test, test.
tra added to groupchat.
tra: Lee told to send you this.
tra: [Lee Boobies (AI): scdn.imgchest/files/93364d23788e.png]
John tapped on the file and was imdiately treated to the sight of Lee, winter jacket parted, shirt raised, and breasts on full display. ‘God bless that naughty woman,’ he thought.
John: Nice.
John: Harem Comms work. That’s good to know. I’ll try my phone next.
John: Nope, no signal even. Alright then, I’ll start exploring.
For the next fifteen minutes, the Creator Puppet just walked in an increasing spiral. He kept the portal in view, always. Life was readily found. Obviously, there was the grass itself, but animals were also plentiful, hiding in great numbers below rocks. Predominantly, there were lizards and insects about, with the occasional… ferrety thing. A more accurate description would have been a shrunken honey badger.
John was still scanning the imdiate area when the portal suddenly shut down. It was every bit as rapid as the collapse of a damaged submarine. One mont it existed, the next it was reduced to nothing. Unlike the submarine, there was no wreckage to even hint that it had ever existed. There was no shockwave, not even a sound.
Lee: Test, test.
John: Fascinatingly, still works.
Three seconds after typing that, the connection with the Creator Puppet disappeared.
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