Chapter 2: Chapter 2 A new system

Nathan shared a grin with Taeol, excitement flooding through every part of him. He’d wanted to do magic ever since he was little, reading fantasy stories first with his parents and then on his own. Every birthday when he blew out the candles, his wish had been the same.

I wish I could do magic.

Then - nothing fantastic had happened to him. So, Nathan had turned to the closest thing available - Science. If you couldn’t discover arcane secrets and bend reality around you with magic words, then at least you could discover secrets of the natural world and bend it around you with normal tools.

That motivation had gotten harder to rely on as Nathan had bogged down in his research in recent years. It was hard to convince yourself that understanding the signaling pathways of stem cell differentiation was plumbing the deep secrets of reality. Especially if your last few experiments had failed to even let you know if you were on the right track.

But none of that mattered now! Magic was real, and Nathan could learn it!

Taeol leaned back in his chair, adjusting his bulk and steepling his fingers. “I am glad you will be a willing helper in this. It is easier than if you were unwilling, and presents fewer knots to slice. But ah, here, food and clothes have arrived. I will allow you some time to dress and eat, soon I shall return to discuss what you will tell me.”

As he spoke, the door opened and the golem of pale stone walked through, holding a steaming bowl. It placed the bowl in front of Nathan on the table, then put a spoon next to it and laid a folded robe of gray cloth and a pair of slippers on the bed. Taeol pushed himself up from the table and followed the golem out of the door. Then there came the thud of a bar being placed across the door.

Nathan just sat in the chair for a moment, too many thoughts crowding his mind, warring with his excitement.

What are my priorities? Figure that out. Clothes first, I’m cold.

He picked up the robe and put it on with only a bit of fumbling. It seemed to consist of a sort of t-shirt that fell past Nathan’s hips, attached around the neck, back and sleeves to a robe that touched the floor. There was separate underwear, like thick boxers with a drawstring. All of the material was soft and warm against his bare skin. Had his body changed at all? Nothing obvious. Pale, tall, a bit pudgy. He eyed a lock of lanky brown hair.

Wish I’d gotten that cut last week. Hard to plan for portal shenanigans.

Then he put on the slippers and looked at the bowl. He was about due for dinner, but food was at the bottom of his list after the events of the last… hour? Half hour? Nathan had no idea how long it had been.

It’s possible to eat and think. You don’t want to be distracted by hunger when it’s time to learn magic.

So, Nathan sat and started to mechanically eat. It was bland, but that was ok. He was excited about magic, obviously. But he couldn’t let that overwhelm everything else. And he was being overwhelmed. He took a minute to just sit, close his eyes and breathe, blanking his mind for a moment so he could focus on one thing at a time.

What had happened, and what did it mean? Taeol had summoned him here intentionally… what had he said? He probably wanted science and technology. But where was here? Another reality? A parallel dimension or universe? Another world in the same universe as Earth, but far away and with magic? It probably didn’t matter - likely the only way to get back would be magic, the same way he’d arrived.

But did Nathan want to go back? Definitely not immediately. There were opportunities here he’d only dreamed of. And he didn’t have people waiting for him that trumped that - he definitely didn’t want to see his ex-girlfriend again. His parents were distant and divorced, and he’d drifted apart from most of his friends over the last few years of research. He wondered if his labmates would notice he had stopped coming in before his few friends noticed he hadn’t scheduled the next D&D session.

I should reconsider this eventually, but I definitely want to learn more about this place first. Is the world called Davrar?

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Why were the people here humans? At least Taeol seemed to be. That suggested either a parallel universe or… maybe there was mental magic that made everybody appear to be like him, to put him at ease. Nathan had read a sci-fi short story like that. He grimaced. Taeol had mental magic, didn’t he? Whatever spell that gave him another language certainly seemed to qualify. And if you could add something to a brain, you could probably take something away.

Would Taeol use mental magic on somebody without their consent? He kind of already had, and hadn’t made a good first impression on Nathan. Taeol reminded Nathan of some really arrogant professors he’d met, the ones who thought their positions and authority made them unquestionable beacons of knowledge and god help the poor grad student who disagreed with their ideas. Taeol had also implied that he had ways to make Nathan cooperate even if he was unwilling. That did not bode well at all.

Nathan had finished the porridge and he looked down at the empty bowl, and the metal spoon he was holding. With a flash of inspiration, he looked around the room, for somewhere inconspicuous. The corner of the room with a trough of running water looked best. On closer inspection, the chair was almost exactly like a toilet seat, with waste intended to fall into the shallow trough of running water. It also seemed intended as a source of drinking water - there was an empty stone cup next to the seat. Mixing sewage and drinking water was a terrible idea, but maybe they relied on the water to sweep away everything? Or maybe healing magic worked against diseases. Still seemed like tempting fate, maybe bacteria could evolve magic resistance.

Regardless, it was perfect. An inconspicuous part of the room that he would often return to, even if he got his mind messed with. Using the base of the spoon, Nathan scratched a symbol into the stone wall next to the toilet. It was something he was confident he would recognize as coming from himself - nobody else here should know the chemical structure of caffeine. Then, after another moment of thought, he added a single tick mark next to it.

Ok. Maybe if he got mind-wiped this would help him realize what had happened. What was next? That weird blue box?

As if summoned by the thought, a large blue box popped up.

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