I focusedon a spot about twenty yards ahead, between two massive tree trunks.
“Remember,” Phoenix said beside me. “Don’t force it. Feel the axis points and let your magic flow naturally between them.”
I pinned him with a look. “You know I’ve made plenty of successful portals in my day, right? I’m not exactly a rookie.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, but we’re going for distance now. What’s the furthest you’ve ever portaled?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe like twenty feet?”
“Exactly. We need you portaling multiplekilometers.”
I nodded, taking a deep breath as I centered myself. A week had passed since I’d felt the Nightfall Shield retreat, heading back across the ocean. Headmistress Winters had informed me yesterday that they’d been called back to Dominion officially. The Assembly had apparently threatened to strip them of their rank officially, and with my parting goodbye, they successfully fucked off.
“You’ve got this,” Theo said from my other side. “Start small and slowly work your way up, you don’t want to burn out too quickly.”
I tried to focus, but it was hard. Starlight eventually gathered at my fingertips as I reached out, searching for the natural weak points in the fabric of space. I tried to remember those equations we learned in Portal Theory, but honestly, gun to my head right now, I couldn’t tell you a damn one of them. Instead, I just felt for it.
“That’s it,” Phoenix murmured. “Can you feel it?”
I could. The axis points glimmered just on the edge of my awareness like silver threads, connecting everything. I grasped two of them and pulled, watching as reality bent and folded. A small oval of shimmering light formed between the trees, no larger than a dinner plate. I’d made larger portals before, of course, but those had been maneuvers. I’d portal from one side of a person, or a bane, to their other side, usually only feet away. This was distance portaling, which wasnotas easy as I thought it would be.
“Good,” Theo said. “Now stabilize it before you try to expand it.”
Stability wasn’t my strong suit lately. Three nights ago, I’d fallen off the obstacle course during training. The impact had been so jarring that my mental walls had temporarily crashed down, opening me up to a flood of emotions from the Nightfall Shield. Their grief and regret had been staggering. They missed me, needed me, ached for me with a hunger that had left me breathless.
I’d slammed my walls back into place so hard it gave me a migraine, blocking them out completely. I grimaced at the memory, my concentration wavering. The portal flickered dangerously.
“Stay with me,” Phoenix said. “Don’t let your mind wander or it’ll collapse. If you had to bring people through a portal with you, you’d need to keep it completely stable or they could get trapped in between.”
I shuddered at the mental image.
But it was hard to keep my mind from wandering. Every night since the incursion, I’d been spending hours in the dreamscape with Jamie. He didn’t talk much, but he listened,reallylistened. We didn’t even have to talk about much. Just random stuff, things about our day, or even boring class stuff. I realized I felt incredibly safe in those dreams, like I could breathe properly. There was no pressure with Jamie, no expectations, just quiet isolation under dream stars.
“Focus,” Theo reminded me gently for the umpteenth time. I was actually surprised they’d indulged me this long.
The portal expanded slowly until it was about three four feet in diameter, large enough to step through if I ducked down.
“Perfect,” Phoenix said. “Can you hold it?”
I’d trained my stamina more than I ever had over the last several days, so I should be able to hold it for a while. I’d been training every morning with the guys at 5am, and then we’d have breakfast together before going to our respective classes. The routine was exactly what I needed, giving me structure and most of all distraction.
I’d also gotten to know some of the Scorpios living in my tower, and had even sat down to play a board game with them last night. They were fascinated with my American accent, telling me I sounded like a movie star. I’d laughed, telling them they sounded like they were from Hogwarts.
All in all, I really liked Imperium.
“Actually it’s not as hard to hold the shape. It usually takes all of my focus, but I think I could hold this for a few minutes.”
“The magic here is older,” Theo explained. “Your magic is probably responding to it, making it stronger.”
“Is that possible?” I looked at Theo.
He shrugged. “The same way you draw power from a shield, you can draw power from the things around you if there’s enough magic there. Imperium is saturated in it.”
Hmm, maybe I could actually do this for real then…
I called Lydia and Tye yesterday, telling them about my idea to try portaling across large distances. They thought it was a good idea for me to start with smaller trips first, working my way up to potentially visiting them at Dominion. Tye had been particularly excited about the possibility, already planning all the things we could do during my visit.
“Ready to try stepping through?” Phoenix asked, moving closer to me.
