The cafe had been closed for days now, and the "Under Renovations" sign wasn't really doing anything to quell the whispers of the locals in Terra-0008 about the buzzing and whirring that I hoped wasn't too audible outside. The tables had been accumulating dust inside the dimly-lit dining area, and the only thing used in the kitchen was the espresso machine that Master told me to keep running maintenance on. It’s too big and heavy to lift by myself, but I also needed some moving around outside, so this was a good enough excuse. 

The break room looked even worse. Not that we should care much how the place looked, so long as the cafe itself looked fine enough to keep suspicions off our backs. The tools were lying around scattered, and bundles of wires were all tangled up like a plate of spaghetti. They were all hooked up to the large mess of magitech assembled out of parts so brightly colored one could mistake them as toys, sitting in the middle of the room. All this mess made the back alleys look like a more hospitable place.

Honestly, call it a miracle that I was even able to build the entire portal by myself, given wizardry and technology mix about as well as oil and water. Not gonna go into the particular details of how it worked or how it was made, but for now what I had was some doodads Master had left behind that I studied, all put together with some magic and a prayer, all hooked up to a circular viewframe for seeing what lied beyond -- the Afterdark -- as the voice on Master’s arm computer would call it. 

I didn't really need to build all this, but Master's current mission had been going on for far too long and I had grown worried that something might have happened. Neither had any of Master's associates had come in to check up which did not help my anxieties about it. But I pressed the button, and there it was. A field of purple and black weaving in and out of my own vision. This is something different than the scrying arts I was used to. But all this strange technology could prove its use yet for now.

The tests with the portal so far have proven uneventful. So far what I had seen were the following: a realm with a curse where the residents turned into water, a realm showing a group of young friends about to start an adventure standing atop a wide grassy field, and lastly, and the strangest of all, the room of a person who was sorting out french fries by length for gods-know-what reason. Realm after realm, and so far no sign of Master. 

BACK TO SECTION SELECT BACK TO CHAPTER SELECT