Chapter 367: The Teleportation Shuffle

It was snowing.

Alex Roth appeared in a meadow, standing on a low rise overlooking a crossroads twenty paces to the south. A damp chill filled the air, and with it came wet, white flakes drifting down from a sky of steel grey clouds. The wind was low, yet moist and brisk, and he wrapped his cloak tighter around his broad shoulders.

It wasn’t cold enough for the snow to stay, but there was little doubt about one thing:

“Winter's almost here,” Alex whispered as the air around him began to shimmer.

As one, the rest of the party appeared: the chancellor, the Heroes and Claygon. Cedric and Hart immediately checked their surroundings—their hands on their weapons—searching for signs of danger, but Drestra was looking at Alex.

“Did you get here…before us?” she asked.

Alex shrugged. “I guess so? Quirks of magic can be weird.”

“Aye?” Cedric raised an eyebrow, looking at the young Thameish wizard closely. “Have t’take yer word for it; don’t know much about teleportation magic.”

“Magic in general is variable.” Baelin surveyed the land with his hands on his hips. “For example, if one had need to codify the damage dealt by attack spells using pen and paper, I would imagine it would require some sort of complicated dice system to simulate.”

“I’ll take yer word for it.” Cedric shrugged and his shining spear melded back into a gauntlet over his arm. “For the most part, all I need t’ know about spells is how fast they make Ravener-spawn go boom.”

Baelin looked sharply at Cedric, his expression slightly hurt. “Oh, you will miss so much of the wonders of wizardry that way, Cedric. You cannot have such a plebian understanding of magic!” He stroked his beard-braids. “As a matter of fact, this is an excellent opportunity for a lesson in some higher forms of wizardry. Congratulations, almighty Chosen, wise Sage and mighty Champion: today, you will be honorary members of Generasi University. I shall teach you a lesson usually only offered in Tele-4500: a fourth year course dedicated entirely to the study of teleportation magic.”

“Ooooo!” Alex clapped excitedly, looking at his fellow Heroes. “You’re all in for a treat!”

“Uh…I’ll take your word for it,” Hart said, his large eyes darting back and forth. He looked out of his element. “Won’t be much good to me, unless I’ve got to explain to a wizard their own business. …then again, if I ever end up on a wizard-hunt after the war, I guess it’d do me some good to know more of their tricks.”

Cedric and Drestra shot him horrified looks. The Chosen subtly inclined his head toward Baelin, who was—of course—standing right there.

The Champion shrugged. “What? It’s a living. And a good one, at that.”

“He’s right! It is a living. And if I was offended by wizard-killers, I would be offended at myself! Young Hart, I hope you can use this knowledge for your economic gain in the future. As for Alex, Cedric and Drestra…” Baelin turned north. “I am going to show you a lovely little trick you can perform when you learn long-range teleportation magic. It will make travelling far quicker and pleasanter.”

“Uhhh, what tier’s this fancy teleportation stuff?” Cedric leaned toward Alex.

“Teleport’s fifth-tier,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together. “Only three tiers away for me.”

‘And maybe only two tiers away soon enough, if Operation Grand Summoning Ascension keeps going well,’ he thought.

“Fifth, y’say? Well, I don’t think I’ll be learnin’ any o’ that fancy high level magic any time soon, then,” Cedric said. “An’...d’we got time for this, y’think?” He looked at the dungeon core which was stuffed into a satchel slung over Baelin’s mail-covered shoulder. “Solvin’ a mystery o’ these cores seems a bit on the pressin’ side.”

Baelin looked at the Sage. “Drestra…regarding your friend whom we are about to visit, would you say she will likely disappear within the next ten minutes or so?”

Drestra raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“Excellent! Then I do believe we have ten minutes to spare for this little lesson,” the chancellor smiled at Cedric. “Remember, young man, the opportunity to gain knowledge does not come often, and once you have knowledge, you have it forever.”

“Right…bloody hell, you sound like my nan’,” Cedric said. “I still don’t think I’ll be learnin’ such magics any time soon.”

“So do it later, then! It will be a good lesson for you, whether you learn it in two days, two years, or twenty years. Now, pay attention, folk are usually willing to pay a lord’s ransom to learn such tricks.” The ancient wizard indicated a high hill far to the north with a nod of his head.

By Alex’s estimate, it might be a fifteen minute walk to its summit.

“When one is teleporting—” Baelin explained. “—one can only transport themselves and their passengers to one of two sorts of locations. The first is what most wizards use Teleport to reach: a place they have already personally visited. This has very obvious uses. For instance, I can do this!”

With a few words of power, the chancellor disappeared.

Heartbeats later, he was back and holding a porcelain cup of a steaming hot beverage, “See this?” He took a sip. “I retrieved it from my office in the university. And now—”

He vanished.

Cedric looked at Drestra. “Why can’t you do that?”

She glared at him. “Why can’t you?”

Baelin reappeared, empty handed. “—and now I have placed the cup in my office in the research building right here in Thameland. Learning Teleport, essentially means that you can wake up in the morning in your residence, go off to adventure somewhere in the wide world, and then be back home for supper! You can also use it to escape danger and accomplish a host of other tasks.”

Drestra’s eyes were very wide now, and she was hanging onto the chancellor’s every word. Alex, of course, was enraptured too. He imagined himself visiting Theresa’s parents for lunch and then teleporting back to Generasi in time for class.

“But of course,” Baelin continued. “The restriction of needing to visit a location before teleporting to it, is somewhat limiting. It means travelling to an area in the old fashioned way first. That is why I took some time to travel through Thameland some months ago, so that I could teleport within reasonably close distances to just about any location on this grand isle you call home.”

Alex raised his hand, and the ancient wizard gave him an amused look. “Yes, Alex?”

“Is there a way to get around that limitation?” he asked. “Some, I don’t know, ninth-tier spell that lets you teleport to anywhere you can think of?”

“Possibly,” Baelin said. “The Plane Shift spell, for example, lets one travel to another plane despite never having visited it before, but unfortunately that spell simply transports you to anywhere on that plane. Most inconvenient. However, there is a graduate research team hard at work trying to develop a sort of ‘Greater Teleport’ spell of perhaps sixth or even seventh tier. In theory, it would be able to transport you to any location in the world—regardless of distance—as long as you could visualise it, even if you only had a mere passing description, or even a painting of the location to go by. But, unfortunately, such a spell does not exist yet.”

He spread his arms over the landscape. “However, Teleport is not always used to reach places that you have already visited. There is a second type of destination that it is not often used to reach.”

He pointed at his eye. “Teleport can also take you anywhere that you can see at present, as long as you can see the exact location where you will be arriving. So, no teleporting deep into a thick forest, where you cannot see where you will appear. Now, most do not use Teleport for such purposes: there are lower tier spells more often used for short-range travel. But—if you have enough mana—you can chain these teleports together in a nifty little method of travel that we archwizards like to call: The Teleportation Shuffle.”

“Cute name,” Drestra said.

“Kinda like a dance,” Alex added.

“A dance of the cosmic power, perhaps,” the ancient wizard chuckled. “So let us say that you wish to go somewhere, but! Gasp! You have not been there before! Whatever shall you do? Well, for most wizards, they would be forced to use flight spells, mounts, or their own feet to journey there first. But what if I told you there was a faster way? A way that has the advantage of utter expediency! To demonstrate…I will cast a spell on you, so keep all limbs inside the wagon, so to speak.”

Baelin spoke an incantation.

“Wait wha—” Hart started.

The world vanished in a flash and—a heartbeat later—Alex was standing on the high hill to the north. The others materialised around him.

Cedric looked around. “Well, y’saved us a little bit of a walk. About five or ten minutes by my reckonin’.”

“Indeed! But this is where the lesson truly begins.” Baelin gazed over the landscape below. From the hill, they could see for miles and miles. Forests and wild meadows blended together across the land, and in the far distance, farmers' fallow fields and cottages lay empty.

Seeing them touched Alex. In happier times, cottage chimneys would be puffing smoke, and folk would be out gathering wood and other bounties of the land for winter. He spotted a windmill in the distance, bringing back his last adventure in Greymoor.

‘Hopefully, this trip to the Crymlyn’ll be a bit less eventful,” he thought, patting Claygon’s arm.

“So, we have a good vantage point from here,” Baelin said. “And this is where the Teleportation Shuffle truly shows its worth. We can see far more of the countryside from this hill, which allows us to teleport much further than we could from the crossroads.”

“That makes sense,” Drestra said. “You can see farther into the horizon.”

“Yeah.” Alex frowned, deep in thought.

Memories returned to him: of seeing Mt. Tai through a portal in the Cave of the Traveller and of the four elemental peaks in the Rhinean Empire.

“If I were doing this,” he said. “The first place I’d teleport to is the top of a tall mountain. Then I could see dozens of miles—maybe even farther—and be able to teleport a much greater distance.”

“Indeed, now you are getting it, but hold onto that thought of your mountain,” Baelin said. “There are additional complications to consider. For instance, let us say we wanted to teleport, oooooh…over there.” He pointed to a copse of trees to the north; it looked to be at least two miles away. “What complications could occur when we got there?”

“Why do I feel like I’m bein’ lectured by a clan elder?” Cedric muttered.

“Well,” Alex jumped in eagerly. “First of all, just because we can see it, doesn’t mean we know it’s safe to teleport there. For example, we could teleport in front of those trees and find an army of angry bears waiting. Or that the ground’s unstable, and as soon as we get there, we fall into a sinkhole. Or find that there’s gas leaking from the ground somewhere. Basically, the farther you’re teleporting to without knowing the place, the less information you’ll have about what you’ll find when you get there.”

“Exactly,” Baelin said. “Just because one can see it from a distance, does not mean we have the full picture of all threats that might be there. And that is why I told you to keep your mountain idea in mind, Alex.”

He cleared his throat. “Let me tell you a story. There was once a very arrogant archwizard by the name of Yem the Invincible. He lived in the early days of wizardry, so there is an argument to be made that he was the most powerful mortal wizard of his day. So powerful, in fact, that he went wherever he pleased and whenever he pleased using the Teleportation Shuffle; he felt that his defensive magics could handle any threat. So one day, he decided to teleport to the top of an extraordinarily tall mountain. Tens of thousands of feet up to the peak. But there was an issue.”

Baelin chuckled. “He was diving at the time in a pool of utterly clear water, and he’d spied the mountain from about one hundred feet below the surface. So he teleported from deep within this body of water to abruptly ascend to a high summit. The shock of the sudden pressure changes combined with altitude sickness destroyed him in an instant. So, one could say that he wasn’t so Invincible, was he?”

He roared with laughter at that.

“I…don’t find that too funny,” Cedric looked uncomfortable.

Alex gave him a knowing look and shrugged, while the chancellor laughed. “You get used to it, though it can take most people some time before—”

He paused, realising that two people were laughing.

Alex glanced over to find Hart Redfletcher doubled at the waist, slapping his knee. He and Baelin pointed at each other, then laughed harder.

“That’s amazing!” the Champion said. “I got a story just like that!”

Alex looked at Cedric again. “Some people get used to it really fast.”