New Sigil

“How many bananas is that?”

Esla and Dr. Barrimore are standing next to me in a pure white room somewhere beneath Ixtham academy.

I’d returned from my journey in London less than a week ago, and now I am undergoing a series of trials to see exactly how powerful my ability is.

Right now I’ve got a stack of bananas in front of me the size of a building.

“More!” Dr. Barrimore is holding a camera and pointing it at the pile. “More bananas!”

I conjure banana after banana after banana. Soon the entire white room, with walls that are at least five stories high, is filled to the brim with bananas and my ability hasn’t even cooled down a bit.

“Okay.” Dr. Barrimore sighs. “You’re the most powerful conjurer we’ve ever recorded. The second best created less than a thousand bananas.”

“Conjurer?”

“You learned about this yesterday in my class, right?” Dr. Barrimore crosses his arms.

Conjurer. That’s the name of the superpower I have in me right now.

According to the NEN chart (NEN stands for Network Energy Notation), I am part of a school of magic known as conjuration. This means that I can conjure objects out of thin air, up to a point, and those objects are solid for as long as I exist. On the other hand, when I point my finger at something, I can’t shoot more than a tiny little energy bullet, as emission is a school that is antithetical to conjuration. Esla, by the way, is an emitter. Dr. Barrimore is a manipulator. Each school of magic carries its own laws and its own way of doing things.

I look again at the gigantic pile of fruit in front of me. “Who’s going to eat all this?”

Dr. Barrimore picks up a banana and peels it. “Tasty things. Too bad they go bad like that.” He munches the banana. Esla takes a banana and peels it as well.

Dr. Livers, the other professor who is adjudicating my test, comes out of her little office at the top of the room using a ladder. She approaches me. “This fruit is going to be donated to local food banks.” She picks up a banana and examines it. “We choose bananas as the test object because, for some odd reason, they are able to be conjured by almost all conjurers. Unlike you, most conjurers have limits on the objects that they can conjure.”

“Bananas? They’re magic like that?”

“And easily gradable.” Dr. Livers peels her banana. “Perfect ripeness. Great cellular structure. We’re going to have to analyze these later with more scrutiny.”

I shrug. “I guess. As long as it doesn’t all go to waste.”

Dr. Barrimore puts his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go up to my office and talk about something.”

I remember that Dr. Barrimore had erased his memory regarding the potion that gave me these powers. He hasn’t mentioned it yet at this point but I wonder if he will.

About ten minutes later we’re in his office. He takes a DVD from the wall of CDs in his office—most of which are music—and puts it in the player underneath his rather old television set. He motions to a chair next to him. “Sit.”

I watch the TV screen light up. A camera pans over a gigantic city that seems to be, to my untrained eyes, made of mega blocks.

“Mega blocks?” I am a bit surprised at this.

“This is footage from a special place, Markus.” Dr. Barrimore folds his arms. “A place you’re going to need to go soon.”

“What are you talking about?” I watch the camera move. “Where is this?”

“What you are looking at right now is the city of New Sigil.” Dr. Barrimore unfolds his arms and leans forward. “Us professors at Ixtham keep this place a secret. But I think you’re going to need to go there.”

“Here? But everything is made of mega blocks. Isn’t this a picture of a toy city or something?”

“No.” Dr. Barrimore shakes his head. “Do you know what an STC is? A standard template construct?”

I shake my head. “No. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Dr. Barrimore sighs. “Not much of a Warhammer fan, then.” He stands up and goes to a small cabinet at the back of his office. “Try this.” He takes a small mega block, about the size of a brick, and hands it to me. It’s light. It radiates color, as if it were made of pure light instead of something real. I lift it up and examine it.

“Ask it for a burger.” Dr. Barrimore folds his hands in front of his chin.

“Can I have a hamburger?”

The STC lights up with an incredible amount of noise and flashing colors. About two seconds later a hamburger, fully formed, comes out of nowhere and lands in my hand. The burger looks a bit strange, as if it had been generated by an AI algorithm to look like a burger without actually being one. I taste it. It’s normal. I cannot place exactly where the burger comes from. Not Wendy’s, not Burger King, not McDonalds. It’s just a random, almost perfectly realized, non-specific burger.

“So this block.” I hand it back to Dr. Barrimore. “That’s what those buildings are made of?”

“And you’re going there.” Dr. Barrimore stands up. “Time for me to show you something.”

The door to the office opens and two people walk in. I stand bolt upright, so fast that I knock down the chair. “Ari! And, uh, Ronald?”

Ari and Ronald walk into the room. Ronald grins at me. “Hello, boyo.”

Dr. Barrimore nods. “These two people have been hired by Ixtham to deliver a message. You need to go with them. The portal to Bytopia is in the basement. I’ll lead you there, you’ll need my key.”

I face Ronald. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Dr. Barrimore appears amused. “You know this man?” He tilts his head.

I grit my teeth. “Know him? He’s a mass murderer! He doesn’t belong here! He tried to kill me?”

“Such strange talk.” Dr. Barrimore shrugged. “Did you dream too hard or something? Ixtham has given Stephen a serious background check.”

“Stephen?” I grit my teeth. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Stephen.”

--Stephen—grins. “Sure thing, boss.” He licks his lips. “But for now, boy, we’re working together against an enemy that is far worse than anything you can imagine me being.”

We take the elevator down to the lowest floor. When the doors open, we walk out into a small hallway that has more elevators in it. Dr. Barrimore leads us to the last elevator in the row.

“Where are we?”

“Floor Z.” Dr. Barrimore uses a key card to activate the elevator. “This is where we’re going to go deeper. Far deeper than any of you have ever been.”

We take the elevator. It’s rather large, as if it has been designed for something big. About five minutes pass in complete silence. Then the doors open onto a cave, natural looking, with stalagmites and stalactites. I hear a dripping somewhere in the distance.

Ronald whistles. “Whew. This place is a bit warm.”

It is warm. We walk for about another minute or so until we reach the cave’s end. A portal opens. Through it, I can see a city made of mega blocks. Like Dr. Barrimore said, this place really exists.

We step through. The portal sucks us in, and then we are standing in a street made of mega blocks. Everything is made of mega blocks. There are a number of people walking past us. Only, they’re different. For one, they possess a staggering amount of different skin tones. Red, blue, purple, green. They’re surely our species. That much is obvious. But holy hell, they sure look different. Then there’s the fact that half of them are crawling around on all fours with their heads facing forward, perpendicular to the orientation of their bodies. I have no idea where I am. Where am I?

Ronald hands me a small yellow mega block the size of a matchbox car. “Put this on your cheek.” He has one on his cheek as well. I place it on my cheek and the block latches to my skin.

“Hey.”

Borda.

The block speaks in a different language after I finish.

“Where are we?”

The block repeats.

Ronald shakes his head. “New Sigil. The city of doors. Keep your wits about you. We’re in the clerk’s ward right now, but when night falls, you do not want to be outside.”

We start walking. I have to jog a bit to keep up with Ari and Ronald. “Why are you here? I didn’t know you were helping Ixtham.”

“We go everywhere.” Ari waves her fan as she walks. “We’re just normal travelers when we’re not playing our role as Silverbones.”

“Normal? You are nothing like normal!” I grimace. “Especially you, Ronald. Or should I say Stephen? Where the hell did you come from?”

“Believe it or not,” Ronald scratches the back of his head, “I’m not really that bad of a guy.”

“You killed over a dozen people when you chaingunned that restaurant.”

“People shmeapole.” Ronald shrugs. “You should see what a real bad guy looks like.”

I am really angry right now. I don’t know why I’ve been forced to work with Ronald, but I don’t like it one bit.

We continue on across the street.

I watch one person, a green-haired, yellow-faced individual, inch their way along the ground with their chin touching the street. They’re moving impressively fast.

“What happened to them?”

“Born in a place with a higher gravity.” Ronald shrugs. “That reminds me.” He gets down on his knees. “Much better.”

I just now notice that gravity here is a bit heavier than what I’m used to. I’m a bit tottery when I walk because of that. Just like Ronald, I get down on my knees.

“Walk like this when you’re in New Sigil.” Ronald waves his hand.

Ari gets down on her knees as well. “New Sigil has a gravity of twelve-point-five-two meters per second. Approximately one-point-three gees.”

“Oh.” I look around. “Where are we headed, again?”

“To meet our contact.”

“And who’s that?” I look around me.

“Athena. Surely you’ve heard of her before?” Ronald grins at me.

“Wow. We’re really going to meet a, huh?” I am a bit confused. “But I thought Greek myths were just that. Myths.”

“Athena’s real.” Ronald shakes his head. “But things are a little bit different than you remember.”

“Mount Olympus?”

“Back on Planet Earth’s territory. You’ll soon learn why we’re here in the first place. Come on!”

We travel for about half an hour. Because of the higher gravity, our walking is a bit slow. About ten minutes after arriving we enter a store that sells shoes. Or, at least, “Shoes.” Ronald pats me on the back.

“Hurts the knees, doesn’t it?”

We buy a set of knee shoes for each of us. They are almost like foot shoes, except a bit longer, a bit thicker, and felted. Ronald passes over some currency that, frankly, looks like monopoly money.

“What kind of money is that?” I look at the bills Ronald is handing the store worker.

“This is called a universal voucher.” Ronald packs the rest of the bills into his pocket. “Translated to –mint-- by the people who do that kind of thing.”

“Who issues this money?”

“The triptefelexians. You’ll meet one eventually. I’m sure about that. But you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff while I’m here.”

We leave the shop wearing our knee shoes, and walk for about five miles. When I look up, I see more city, upside-down. New Sigil appears to be the inside of a large torus. There doesn’t appear to be a source to the light that suffuses everything.

After a while, it starts to get dark. Ronald turns us towards a building. “Better get a room before nightfall.”

***