“Ready to leave?” Antal asked.
Ready to greet Cardigan with a not-so-fond reunion. Fi grasped Antal’s hand. Boden eyed the other with understandable hesitation.
“Hold your breath,” she warned.
After the first teleport, Fi caught herself on staggered boots. Boden wheezed.
She had a split second to register snow, shiverpines, still the Winter Plane, a Curtain directly in front of them.
“Hold on,” Boden gasped. “I—”
Antal yanked them through the Curtain.
Out the other side, Boden dropped to his knees, hissing curses at his first daeyari teleport.
“It’s like that every time?” he rasped.
Antal cast a tarnished look upon Nyskya’s mayor. “Would you prefer walking to the Spring Plane, Mayor Kolbeck? Gather yourself. Our journey isn’t finished.”
“Sure. Just. Shit, give me a second…”
Fi patted his back. Not everyone had the constitution for cross-world travel.
Around them, salt flats sprawled around shallow pools, reflecting a starless Void sky and pink aurora. Pale coral colonies branched out of the water, bleached trunks with blue frills, leaching energy from minerals instead of sunlight.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Boden muttered. “Don’t know how you spend so much time on Shards.”
Not just a Shard. Fi recognized this Bridge, the splinter of reality connecting Winter to Spring.
While Boden caught his breath, Fi joined Antal beside a pool. The daeyari stood stunningly still in this quiet landscape, his eyes as depthless black as their native Void, sharp as Fi approached, gauging the space between them more noticeably than he had a week ago.
“At least I wasn’t that bad my first time,” Fi huffed, too low for Boden to overhear.
Antal softened swifter than he would have a week ago, too, a smirk lighting his mouth.
“You weren’t.” At his rumble of approval, Fi had to look away. She’d sooner throw herself into the Void than let him see her blush again.
She scowled at the Bridge instead. “I thought you’d take us straight to Spring?”
“Daeyari can teleport within a Plane, within a Shard. Not between. I need Curtains to cross, same as you.”
Despite Fi’s best play at indifference, curiosity sank its claws into her. “When you teleport, it feels cold and black, like…” She looked up into the Void.
So did Antal. “Distance doesn’t exist in the Void. When daeyari teleport, we step off reality briefly, then back on at our destination.”
“But you said teleportation isn’t the same as Voidwalking?”
“It isn’t. It’s…” Antal frowned. Then held an arm horizontal. “Teleporting is a dip into the Void.” He moved his finger from over his arm, briefly below, back up again, a shallow dive beneath water. “Then Voidwalking is…” He dropped his finger below his arm and sank, sank. “A full plunge. But if done properly, you can re-emerge anywhere in the Planeverse.”
As Fi stared into the endless black above them, she shuddered. “Can you do it?”
“I’d rather not,” Antal muttered. “Teleporting is faster. Safer. Just more limitations.”
Humbling, to see even immortals intimidated by the Void they came from.
Once Boden stopped grumbling, Antal grasped their hands again. Daeyari might not be able to teleport between Planes, but the jumps cut travel time, even after he and Fi wasted several minutes heckling over which exit Curtain would bring them closest to Cardigan’s villa.
She’d never had anyone to argue Curtains with. Fi knew no one else who could see them.
