I leaned back, shaking my head. “I’m plenty fun. But if your interest is now solely on the portal? What do you want to know? I set down to work on a spell, and as I started to cast, the air looked like water before me. I touched it and before I knew it, here I was.”
"Were you summoning a portal? What kind of spell were you trying to perform?" I now had his full attention once again, even more than my body had.
The intensity of his voice made me worry that if I could call upon and make portals myself, then I might be seen as a threat to his kingdom. I couldn’t of course, but I didn’t want him thinking that I could. “No. I was actually just cleaning my crystals I had sitting out. I’d recently had some uninvited company, and I wanted their energy gone. It was a simple cleansing spell.”
He growled quietly. "Okay that's helpful to know. You most likely fell into a rare offshoot portal. Possibly from the hub world that typically connects them all," he explained. “But I do not understand why or how considering the current situation.”
I quirked an eyebrow, confused. “A what from where?” I chuckled. “So, a random accident? Of course. That’s just my luck. But what do you mean current situation?”
The room had cooled. Despite the temperature not being a factor for him, he still took note and motioned for one of the women to add wood to the fireplace. "It's extremely rare but not unheard of." He stood and paced near the fire. "The power behind a portal is mostly the same whether you’re traveling from world to world or within a distance on the same planet. However, the origin of that portal is what varies. The portals that connect the worlds I have traveled between comes from a crystal that was bestowed with a magic from within the core of a world called Aejynys. I just call it a hub world. That crystal was spelled by a dragon there that was helping bridge the gaps between worlds to connect them and is extremely large, placed on a fault line near the planet’s capital city. He served Drevuvek, one of the seven elder gods. Together, they wanted to bring peace and prosperity to the races since Aejynis has been at war within itself for centuries.
Recently, there was a god on that world who wanted to invade this one. Their goal was to wipe out everyone and expand their own empire, and they fooled Drevuvek into thinking he was on the same side. However, the dragon, Fubrik, discovered Brialjhorn’s intentions. In that war, the portals stopped working. So, the fact that you are here now throws a wrench in everyone thinking this is true… that they do not work at all." He rubbed his chin.
The wood of my chair creaked against the stone floor as I adjusted to see him. “But if the portals do not work, how did we take them to get here?”
“Good catch, little one.” A small grin formed momentarily on Kane’s lips, showing his amusement in my ability to keep up with details. “As I said, portals all come from similar power. But the source of wielding that power is different. The portals Fubrik gave to us was because of how powerful dragons are as well as that he derived the energies from that planet’s core. There are very few races that can withstands a planet’s core heat, let alone be strong enough to contain its power. On Naelyra, the Voirechoes use nature as a source and endow smaller crystals. These have been entrusted to each of those that have been deemed keepers with maintaining the portals in Naelyra. Small groups that stand watch. You saw some as we passed through.”
“Kind of like border patrols from my planet.”
“Like what?”
I chuckled. “Never mind. I just meant that I think I understood.”
“Oh. Yes.” His forehead was still pinched in confusion, but he continued. “So, the portals that are still active only work between the points their crystals keep open. Those crystals only work on this world since they have to continue to draw from the nature here. But the large crystal that was the source for the ones between worlds has gone dark and sits, dead, on its dais. Nobody has been able to revive it, not even the dragons. People are searching for Fubrik, but he has not been seen since the war.”
I pushed my plate away. “Dragons? Gods? Wars? This sounds like a whole lot of drama I want nothing to do with.” I stood and went to him by the fireplace. “People are going to want to ask me a lot of questions, aren’t they?”
"No one knows about you other than me. Right now, you are my guest, and everyone knows better than to ask anything more than that. That is for the best. Trust me." He took me by the hand and walked me out of the room and down a long hall.
Occasionally, I looked up at him, but he was focused on the hall in front of us each time. Eventually, we entered a massive, four-story library with another huge fireplace that had been freshly lit. I gasped. The center of the room had models of planets hovering. He points to a larger planet in the center. Without strings or ropes, it hung midair and had lines drawn from it to a number of other worlds. Earth was off to the side of the room -
