It would be tempting to imagine that I was pushing a lever, but this wasn’t mechanical. As I touched it, I knew what I was really doing. I was providing power to open a portal, while simultaneously drawing power to replenish my strength from the life support systems, and equalizing pressure, momentum, temperature, and other factors through subsystems in the device.

  Why? Because a pressure difference could shoot you through a portal (or backwards from it). Similarly, if the different sides of the portal were traveling at different speeds or directions, it would be like jumping on or off a moving car.

  The crazy thing was that I could handle all of it at once. Kee had taught me how, something that I knew was no coincidence.

  Of course, she’d only taught me how to practice it. I couldn’t actually do it because I didn’t have the necessary energy on hand. Except now, for the first time, I did.

  More energy left me at once than ever in my life. I might have said the same on my trip through time to visit Govan, but this was more. Then I was trying to control the direction I flew, but here I was creating a portal from one reality to another on my own.

  You know how practicing and doing it aren’t the same? Creating a test portal that moved a few atoms into a nearby parallel universe wasn’t the same as this.

  The stream of energy I directed to bridge the gap wobbled and surged. It took a moment to make the energy level consistent. Only then could I set up the necessary buffers that allowed someone going through to avoid being torn apart by momentum, overheated, or frozen by the difference in gravitational potential energy.

  With all of that going on in my head, I wasn’t paying much attention to how it looked, but Prentkos was.

  I heard him gasp, and my implant gave me the instant replay.

  I’m sure that every living, full-grown Artificer now used their abilities with billions of years of skill. Someone like Lee, Kee, or Govan likely opened a portal to another place with a whisper of well-placed power.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  That’s not how I did it.

  A glowing ball of eye-searing white light appeared and then exploded, power surging in a roughly cylindrical blast both forward and backward from the ball, burning the transparent floor underneath it and leaving a line of soot. Prentkos dodged left, barely avoiding the explosion as it lanced toward him. Then it grew to become a glowing ring about ten feet high.

  Then, at the moment I appeared to have succeeded, it collapsed into itself, nearly disappearing, but then expanded again, stabilizing at around seven feet in diameter. I use the word “around” because I’m also using the word “stabilize” loosely.

  The ring gave off a burning white energy that waxed and waned, becoming two or three inches larger or smaller from one moment to the next, not unlike the flames around the edges. One of the few Johnny Cash songs I knew came to mind, and I considered playing it through the suit’s speakers, but decided not to.

  Prentkos eyed it. “Is it safe?”

  I held up my hands, “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever done this for real. Spark?”

  The faun clapped her hands, “Good job. That’s an excellent first try! Magnus killed several of his henchmen before he got that far, and he didn’t even connect to the Singularity until his 52nd attempt.”

  “So, it’s safe,” I said.

  She nodded, “For now, but the longer you wait, the less safe it becomes.”

  “If you want,” I told Prentkos, “I’ll go first.”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but Spark talked over him. “It will collapse after you go through.”

  “Okay,” I said, glancing at Prentkos, “You go first?”

  He sighed, looking over at the burning ring as it wobbled and threw off sparks.

  “Or, I don’t know,” I continued, “we could hold hands?”

  He shook his head and ran through in a red and white blur. I activated the rockets and followed, figuring that Spark would appear on the other side if the rules allowed her to.

  Shooting myself through the ring, I saw darkness ahead of me and used whatever senses Artificers used to navigate, feeling the structure of the portal around me, and trying to hold it together even as I traveled through it.

  Spark wasn’t wrong about the portal collapsing after I went through, either. I could feel it falling in behind me. I assumed that it collapsed as I got a certain distance away, but after a while, I began to wonder if the collapsing chaos behind might be gaining on me.

  Concentrating on moving forward, I aimed for an opening I sensed ahead of me, hoping that Prentkos and I would arrive at the same place.