"Fuck me running!" Were the only words that Rob could say at the sight before him.

"Excuse me?" The Spirit asked.

"No, I didn’t mean it that way." Rob elaborated. "Just…holy shit, it worked!"

The man in the brown robes looked down at the spell book upon Dave’s desk and showed a look of sudden comprehension.

"I see." He said to himself.

"You’re really a Spirit." Said Dave as if trying to convince himself that what he was seeing was real.

"Yes, I am. My name is Turoth. And you two are?"

Dave fumbled over his words for a second, not quite sure how to address the strange person.

"Dave, David Whitman. This is my friend, Robert Thompson."

"Good to meet both of you." Turoth nodded. There was a look of unease that showed that he might have felt equally awkward in the situation.

"Uh, likewise." Dave muttered, unsure of his tone. After all, how did one speak to a wizard from another world?

"Now I don’t want to sound rude," Turoth said. "But which one of you opened that portal and why?"

"I did." Dave took a step forward. "And to be honest, I only did it to play on a hunch. I thought it would get us in touch with the Spirits, though I wasn’t quite certain it would work."

"Well, it has. And I have to admit that I’m surprised that you were able to cast it myself."

"The written language certainly wasn’t easy to understand." Dave replied modestly.

"No," Turoth said. "What I mean is that I’m surprised anyone could cast that spell period. It was only tested briefly while the Realms were still close to each other."

"Say what?" Rob inquired. Up until now, about ten percent of what was going on made sense to him. The Spirit’s last words made that ten join the other ninety percent he had stored in his mental bin labeled "What the hell?".

"Then you don’t know, do you?" Turoth commented.

"Know what?" Dave asked. "Nobody here has a clue about why you all left. Much less how you came to Earth in the first place."

"But it’s all happening here." The robed man argued. "Surely you must have heard something about the Realms."

"Look," Rob said bluntly. "We don’t know anything about these realms yer’ bawlin’ about."

"Then they never told your public." Turoth realized.

"Hold on." Dave said. "Before we get things even more confused that they are now. Let’s get what we have straightened out. Who are ‘they’?"

"Your governments." Turoth answered.

"Okay, we got that out of the way." Dave said. "Not since the time shortly after you left, has there been more than one government. Right now, we have the World Management Committee. A lot of people just call it the WMC for short. Now, what are the Realms?"

"The Realms are the segments that make up Existence."

"Existence?" Said Rob. Yet another term to shove into his "What the hell?" bin.

"What you would call the universe." Turoth responded. "Give me a moment. I might have a way to put this into a better perspective."

Turoth turned to face the spot where the portal once stood. The robed man chanted briefly and lifted a hand. A field of yellow light surrounded his hand and a patch of darkness appeared in the air before him.

Rob and Dave watched attentively. It was first magical act by a Spirit they had ever personally witnessed.

"All right." Turoth said. "Let’s say this blank space is Existence."

Rob walked up to the black void.

"Pretty uninspiring for Existence." He said. The large man then reached out to touch the dark patch and was slightly surprised to see his hand go through it as if the spell were a hologram.

"Rob!" Dave chided his friend. "Quit messing around."

"Yeah, yeah. I hear ya’." Rob groaned as he let his arm drop to his side.

"As I was saying," Turoth went on. "We have this representation of Existence."

He pointed to a spot in the black field and a blotch of orange faded into view where he pointed.

"We’ll say this is your realm. And here," The wizard pointed to another area and a patch of green appeared there. "This will be my realm. Somewhere in that green is my world, Neddel."

He pointed to yet another spot, and he brought an area of light blue into existence.

"This blue area here is supposed to be a third realm. But nobody has been able to reach it yet."

"So you’re from more than just another planet." Dave realized. "But what makes your realm different from ours?"

"Magic." Turoth explained. "Our whole realm is practically charged by it. Where your people use technology to discover and explore, we’ve used spells to understand our surroundings. Magic is what has let us know there were realms to begin with."

"How long have you known about the realms?" Dave asked.

"Not long at all." Turoth admitted. "It wasn’t until we came to Earth that we started to get an understanding of what was beyond our own world."

"Then how did you get to Earth to begin with?" Rob asked the obvious question. He figured things were starting to clear up somewhat now that he had something to pull from the bin that he could use.

"Take a look." Instructed Turoth. He waved his hand at the enchanted map, and the green and yellow field drifted toward each other until their edges were touching.

"Somehow," The Spirit said. "Your realm and mine bumped into each other. Some force must have pulled them out of their respective places and brought them together. That caused a portal to form within our very library.

"None of us knew what the portal truly was until we organized a team of Spirits to go through and see what was on the other side. When they went through, they found Earth."

"But why didn’t anybody here know about the portal?" Rob asked.

"We used our spells to keep it hidden from prying eyes." Turoth said.

"You didn’t trust us." Remarked Dave.

"Did your people have much faith in us when the team went to the public?" Countered Turoth.

"No, we didn’t. I remember watching television and seeing the riots that started when the Spirits announced themselves. But this was a world that was still getting over the Millennium Theory fear from Two-Thousand. If your team had shown up maybe twenty years earlier, things might have ended even worse than they did."

"Precisely, my point." Turoth said. "Furthermore, we eventually learned that your people have a history of persecuting potential sorcerers."

"The Salem Witchhunts." Dave whispered. "Along with all the other executions of anyone accused of being involved with magic."

"If we knew about all that when the portal first opened on Neddel, we never would have sent anyone to Earth."

"Is that what made your team leave?" Rob asked. "They thought we’d burn them at the stake too?"

"No. We realized times and people change. Besides, magic isn’t very popular with humans on my world either." Turoth responded. "What really made us evacuate the team was that we were sensing our realms drifting apart. It wasn’t long until the portal started to close. We had to get everyone back before they were trapped on Earth. One member of the team was in the portal when it finally closed and we never saw him again."

"I’m sorry." Rob said. He then walked over to Dave’s desk and had a seat atop it. The sturdy wood creaked slightly at Rob’s considerable bulk.

"Me too." Dave added before going back to his chair behind the desk.

"Thank you." Turoth nodded to the condolences. "But Arkin’s work seems to have been the key to giving us back access between Earth and Neddel."

"You mean the book?" Dave questioned.

"Yes, I recognize it as his." Turoth said. "Arkin was doing research and experiments with the portal that was created by the bump. He theorized that he could create a spell that would allow him to open a portal of his own from Earth to Neddel and vice versa. We knew that he was near perfecting the spell, but never did any of us realize that he had succeeded to this extent. Even with our realms separated, it worked for you."

"Why is that?" Dave asked. "All the other spells needed some kind of mental focus."

"If Arkin was anything, it was practical." Turoth smiled at the memory of his past colleague. "Spells usually require a mage to concentrate, and that’s not always easy. Several of the spells he had managed to develop somehow bypassed that obstacle. It looks as though he was able to apply that to his final work."

Rob and Dave were able to make better sense of the Spirits’ motives now.

Already, Rob felt that his bin was just about empty. However, there was still one little scrap clinging to the bottom that he needed to pull out.

"So what’s this thing you said the WMC’s keepin’ from us?" Rob asked. "You looked about ready to piss your pants when you were talkin’ about it."

"We learned something just as the portal closed years ago." The Spirit’s voice took on a grim tone which sounded too serious to match his face. Turoth walked over to Dave’s bed and sat down as it there was a large weight upon his back. "The realms drifted together for a reason. Someone had cast a spell. One that went beyond any of our experience."

"So somebody on Neddel just decided to wiggle his fingers and say ‘Hocus pocus’, and poof; look where the Realms are now?" Rob demanded. The idea that any person could have that kind of power unsettled him.

Turoth raised an eyebrow at the muscular fellow. Rob’s bluntness was obviously starting to annoy the Spirit somewhat.

"No, we don’t just say ‘Hocus pocus’ to cast spells like that. Not that we could." Answered Turoth. "None of the Spirits are even close to being a fraction as powerful as whatever cast this spell or is casting it now."

"What?!" The two Chicago residents exclaimed in unison.

Rob took this fistful of information and heaved it into the bin.

"The same spell that brought our realms together is being cast again, and this time it’s far more powerful than the last time."

"Wait, wait." Dave said. "You say it’s more powerful. To what effect? I mean, is it going to cause this portal you mentioned to be opened longer than the last time, maybe permanently?"

"It’s worse than that." Turoth said gravely. "If what we believe is true, the collision will involve all three realms and it will utterly destroy all Exsistence."

"Bullshit!" Rob said. He practically jumped up from where he sat on the desk. His bin was now overflowing, and he was going to be damned if he was going to just believe whatever this alien had to say.

"Rein yourself in, Rob." Dave shot out of the side of his mouth.

"Oh, come on!" The large man began pointing accusingly at Turoth. "This guy comes waltzin’ out of mowhere, and you’re ready to swallow whatever’s on the plate he’s servin’."

"What do we really know about magic?" Argued Dave. "Up until the Spirits first came here, the only references we had were a bunch of stories that probably started gettin’ told around campfires."

"But those aren’t half as tall as the tale he’s suggestin’." Rob said.

"Please!" Turoth yelled. It was the first time Rob and Dave had heard the Spirit raise his voice so far. Something about that tone absolutely demanded to be heard, and the two men of Earth were compelled to listen.

"What I’m telling you is the truth." The Spirit said taking his voice back down few decibels. "It’s bigger than you, me, even both our worlds."

"Let’s say you are on the level, just for the sake of argument." Rob reasoned. "You said that this spell is bein’ cast. And by the way you kept referrin’ to our government, you seem to think is’s all happening here on Earth."

"Yes." Turoth responded. "We’ve been able to use magic to sense the disturbances in Existence to be coming from here."

"Can you be a little more specific than just Earth then?" Suggested Dave. "Maybe narrow it down to one country?"

"I can narrow it down to one city. The same place where the portal opened on this world. New York."

"Oh, shit. God damn shit." Rob swore softly at first before going into a whole string of curses. Dave fell back into his chair speechlessly.

"It means something to you, I see." Turoth deduced.

"You’re damn right it means somethin’." Rob said after breaking off from his marathon of profanity. "You just named the world’s capital city."

"They never stopped." Dave said to no one in particular. "They started searching for the books and other stuff, but it wasn’t enough for them. The WMC took the next step and started putting it to use."

"So you believe me now?" Asked the Spirit.

"I believed that the WMC’s up to somethin’ they shouldn’t be." Rob said. "Though I’m not sure I believe it’s what you say."

"It’s a start then." Turoth admitted.

The shock was starting to wear off on Dave. He leaned forward in his seat and laid his arms across the desk.

"But the real question is where to go from that start." Dave reasoned. "You’re talking about the most powerful people on Earth. They’ve got millions of people under their command, and all of them are professionals. You can’t just take them head on."

"You’re right, we can’t. "The Spirit said. "Could we get the Spirits into New York somehow? Keep us hidden until we can set a plan in motion?"

"Are you kiddin’?" Rob snorted at the notion. "You’re talkin’ about hidin’ X number of people in New York with no money, no form of identification, and hardly a clue of the current culture. Each Spirit would be floatin’ dead in the water, waitin’ for a squad of Enforcers to come passin’ by."

"Point taken." Said Turoth. "I need to get back to Neddel and tell the others what’s going on here."

Dave looked back down at the spellbook on the desk.

"I think I can open another portal." He said.

"Good." Turoth said. "I need you to keep the book. I’m starting to come up with a plan, though I doubt the other Spirits will be happy with it. Can you open a portal tomorrow? We might have something worked out by then."

"Yes, I should be able to."

"Everything is riding on this, and I mean that in the most extreme sense." Said the wizard.

Dave scanned the page and began the strange task of reading the incantation. As before, a portal opened in the same space where the last one had.

Turoth looked over his shoulder at the other two men before walking through. Once the mage had gone what appeared to be a fair distance, the portal vanished.

"It’s over." Rob stated.

"Until tomorrow." Dave said.

"Don’t tell me you actually plan to go through with that spell again."

"You heard what Turoth said." Dave looked up to his friend from his chair. "The pieces are all falling together now. Just check outside. The WMC moved onto Manhattan right after Fredericks got elected. The economy’s going down the tubes along with the environment. It’s like the whole government doesn’t care anymore. You know there’s got to be some merit to what he said. I’m no going to stand by any longer. If you want to, I can’t blame you for that. But you know where I stand on this."

Rob glanced down at the book then at the space where the portal had once stood.

"We’ve been through a lot together." Rob sighed. "And I’m not gonna let you jump into something like this alone."

"Thanks, Rob." Dave responded in appreciation.

"I just wish I knew what the hell we’re getting’ ourselves into." Rob said evenly.

Dave stared down at the spell book in silence. Rob’s question soon became one that Dave began asking himself.

Back to Chapters Menu Home Bios History and Terminology