When I woke up, I didn’t notice anything was wrong… which was good, because that was how it had been the last few times. I hadn’t realized how much the lack of a presence would break me. I wouldn’t have lasted long, as exemplified by my behavior.

  Not that things were good. I was fairly certain my magic was still broken. There were all sorts of other worries, like the crappy mana regeneration here. Did Spot have to deal with this? Based on Midnight having been taken to Bunvorix I had to assume he could get there as well. It wasn’t unreasonable for him to have picked up Gate or figured out some Bunvorixian method to do a long range teleport.

  And they were working with Flasher. That thought hit me again. I was going to try to kill him next time, because clearly I hadn’t tried hard enough previously.

  I felt a dull echo of my own worries, but surprisingly Midnight had very few. Relief, and confusion, but not much in the way of worry.

  “I have only a vague recollection of what happened,” Midnight commented, knowing I was awake.

  “Same here, and I was conscious for most of it.”

  I began to explain what I knew. His powers and our bond were suppressed by some combination of tech, magic, drugs, and overactive cyborg powers. I explained magic breaking and only slightly downplayed some of the stupid things I did.

  “Celmoth needs to know about some of this tech,” Midnight said. “So we can counteract it.”

  “Got mana?” I asked. “You might be able to do that. Or I might. But maybe your magic is broken with mine.”

  “... I do have mana,” Midnight said. “And now you’ve made me worried that I won’t be able to use Sending.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t be. You can use it. Just don't expect stability. Best guess, if you screw up your concentration you don’t get a return message. And maybe you give someone a headache. Shouldn’t be worse than that.”

  “I’m not sure if I can make the message succinct,” Midnight said. “And obviously there are no long range relays here. Not compatible or that I would trust, anyway. Me being here also might escalate the war.”

  I thought of what I had heard. “If you’re concerned about that, we should really talk to these Bunvorixians. Because there was some sort of planetary announcement of your capture. I assume Celmoth has enough surveillance to pick that out- or they just sent a message directly.”

  “Is that…” Midnight was now showing some worry. “Should I be using my mana on that, or trying to get us out of here?”

  “Well, like I said, getting to you was especially difficult. I don’t think that was all Brigade HQ. Getting out of here will either be easier or not something we can really accomplish right now. So probably send a message.”

  Midnight did, after we crafted a message that went something like “Please don’t bomb Bunvorix I’m being rescued and out in the city.”

  Which city, we actually had to ask Flopan- who was easy to pick out in the little pseudo-outside compound they had here. It translated to something like Grand Home. I guess it wasn’t that weird to name a planetary capital something big and fancy.

  Midnight hissed at the first few Bunvorixians who approached. “Sorry. Habits. I only know one of you that hasn’t tried to kill me.”

  I had a slight correction. “Technically, Zeb only stopped trying to kill you. She was on a war vessel.”

  “... right.”

  Fortunately, our new friends weren’t offended- they were well aware of the history between their peoples, after all. But knowing that not everyone was part of the military cult they’d set up was comforting. On the other hand, I had some plans to break them out of that.

  “We want an end to the dictators,” Flopan the basset hound shaped guy explained. “We want a break in the caste structure. We want peace. Think how much more we could have done if we were not at war with our closest neighbors. We might have even found a replacement for squirrels by now.”

  I could just tell them that Earth had squirrels but wouldn’t give them to Bunvorix with their current structure, and we might topple the dictatorship in a day.

  Or cause a terrible and bloody civil war. Which the Bunvorixians didn’t want.

  “The main blame lies at the top,” Flopan explained. “But even some of our small leaders had no choice, being moved along with the system. Either way, if they are to perish… it should be after a proper trial. You appear to have some measure of power, and we hoped you might aid us.”

  Ah. So we might not be going home today. “You sure you don’t want to settle things with violence?” I asked. “Because I’m pretty good at that.” I had already blown up a number of their vessels. I just didn’t want to mention that.

  “If anything, we would destroy every weapon and ship of war but harm no person at all. Since we can’t quite accomplish that… violence might be required, but it should not be the first option.” Flopan pondered for a few moments. “We spoke with your other companions and brought up a request. You humans have manual dexterity without the use of our technology, which might allow you to sabotage certain vessels without raising the alarm. Your companions mentioned you might be open to helping us… for a price.”

  We were mercenaries after all. And Kick could really use some upgrades. “We can talk about that,” I agreed. “At base, our priorities are to get people home.”

  “That will be quite difficult,” Flopan explained, “I don’t know quite how you arrived, but landing a ship is likely impossible. The same is true with teleporting off-planet.”

  “Why don’t we just steal a ship?” I asked. “We could fly it over to Celmoth.” I looked at Midnight to confirm it was viable. Clearly they had some methods, or the war wouldn’t be possible.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “I regret to inform you that even should you do so, you would likely be shot down,” Flopan said. “Our planets are at war. It is not unreasonable, from their perspective.”

  “We could contact them ahead of time,” I said. “Though… I don’t know if space has mana.”

  “Has what, precisely?” Flopan asked, likely due to the word not translating.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s something that I hadn’t had the opportunity to test now.”

  Different planets all had mana so far- even if it was kinda bad like here- but I’d never been away from planets at all. Or different planes entirely, but those were from my own world so obviously they had mana or they couldn’t be accessed.

  Midnight had some suggestions. “If you could confirm for us the location of any teleportation suppressors, as well as potentially providing other support, we might be able to help. We’re not planning to stay longer than we have to, but we might support this resistance better from the outside.”

  Right now, our options were to try to Gate away, potentially using most of the mana I’d recovered overnight for nothing- depending on whether the suppressors were more powerful against local movements or foreign intrusions- or to try to leverage this opportunity to its fullest.

  -----

  When we learned what they actually wanted in the near future, I checked my points. “I can learn Meteor Swarm,” I suggested to Midnight.

  “Is that a good idea?” he asked.

  “Would sneaking up to ships and manually breaking things be a good idea?” I countered. “It’s long range and very destructive.”

  Midnight spent some time coming up with a good counter. “I don’t feel that would properly leverage the skills of our other team members.”

  “Sometimes, you take what you can get. Also, they can go on other missions. There’s no way this resistance only has one target they’re looking at.”

  “But the collateral damage-”

  “This place is either as described with no people or we can’t get close enough to do any of the other options. Of course, we will confirm with… I guess they probably don’t have binoculars, but some equivalent.”

  “It’s not a great investment for a single use,” Midnight finally said. “You know you won’t really be able to use it anywhere else.”

  “What if I take Spatial Rift?” I asked. “I’m trying to improve my understanding of Spatial Magic anyway.”

  “That’s not really… much better…”

  “Or,” I said. “We get much closer and hope that Blizzard works. But as we saw before, it mostly just caused problems because the ships were in flight.”

  “Aren’t there more precision spells?”

  “Not that would be efficient here. I could Disintegrate maybe two ships- or part of two ships- for the same mana cost. And we can’t really eat that cost here.”

  Midnight sighed. “The mana is all screwed up. Isn’t this less than average?”

  “Less than minimum, I’d say.”

  Relatedly, we’d semi-confirmed that Midnight’s magic was acting normally. Or maybe he was just more cautious, but he didn’t think it felt different. So me screwing up magic didn’t directly break him. Maybe it was more of a level of insight rather than actually breaking things… but I didn’t think people should cause so many problems with better understanding.

  I was pretty sure I nearly killed myself the last two times I went through a Gate- or anyone passing through. They were so unstable and the edges weren’t even close to smooth. They could have easily collapsed on someone partway through, and I’m sure there were other similarly terrible results.

  “For the options,” I commented. “We could get an actual chunk of meteor, probably. But no component for a Spatial Rift… that I can think of.”

  “You’d seriously try empowering a new combat spell with unstable magic and a material component?” I just looked at Midnight. “Of course you would, to find out what happened. Well… I suggest reading up on Spatial Rift. At least you can do that. Maybe you’ll figure out a way to make it safe. Try to work with the other two. I think I already need a nap.”

  He was tired. And recovering from having a bunch of tubes and drugs in him. “You do that,” I confirmed. “I’ll read up on it.”

  We didn’t have to rush into whatever we were doing. Assuming nobody was coming to get us. But we hadn’t been found so far, a couple more hours wouldn’t make any difference.

  -----

  “Connection is important for all spatial magic to function. Some might argue that Spatial Rift is the antithesis to that as it demonstrates a sort of disconnection… but I would argue that it is even more true. Connecting poorly to a chaotic space is something anyone can do. Nobody sane truly wants an uncontrolled Spatial Rift… and those with less control might find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. Extremely briefly.”

  Less control… did she mean my broken magic? No, not likely. Perhaps a lack of upgrades. Or just poor judgment.

  I did determine that it had enough range to be a viable option. Gate required being vaguely nearby for stability, but if instability was the purpose it wasn’t quite the same. Yet Spatial Rift wasn’t true chaos. It was only a semblance of it.

  “Additional effects are applied via the connection to a chosen plane of origin. The hellish cold of Stygia or the flames of the Plane of Fire might reach through. The wise mage does not misjudge which planes are appropriate.”

  So I did have to pick something. Which was a problem, since I might not have access to any appropriate planes. I needed a connection of some sort, and the extramaterial planes of my old world were further sealed off.

  Cross referencing with mentions of sealed planes throughout the tome, I confirmed my thoughts- though the book didn’t mention anything on the scale of every plane being sealed, there was some precedent. Usually temporary. Perhaps this was too, since I couldn’t imagine it was without cost to maintain something of the sort.

  The most chaotic place I knew of that wasn’t sealed off I didn’t want to inflict on Bunvorix. Though they could probably handle The Scouring, if they couldn’t it would be quite the problem. The locals didn’t want their people to die- and even the soldiers were still their people.

  So my options were Meteor Swarm, or boring, unflavored Spatial Rift. I needed to get connected with other Type F worlds even more now. Since they weren’t being as constantly bombarded by Doomsday and others, they might be more accommodating for a short visit.

  I wondered if Meteor Swarm could be spatial magic. If I just opened up a Gate into the middle of the asteroid belt I’d get… a huge amount of vacuum. The stupid drawings really didn’t get the scale of separation right. The chances of getting a single asteroid nearby, let alone one or several of the proper size, was miniscule.

  And they wouldn’t hit a target anyway. It would be a terrible idea.

  I really wanted Meteor Swarm, but that’s because it had been the big spell everyone knew about. Focusing on mastery of a field of magic would be good. I supposed nothing would stop me from learning the other spell on another level anyway… though I didn’t know if the destruction of inanimate objects would count for Curse of the Barbarian.

  They were dangerous things, and I’d never gotten the opportunity to cause massive damage of the sort before. Certainly not intentionally.

  I was convinced about the Spatial Rift play. Now I just had to convince myself not to learn a spell after that which I’d never have an opportunity to use.