She sighed. “Those idiot Aesir have finally started Ragnarok on a world a
few octaves down from this one, and my last living worshipper is in trouble. I
need someone to rescue the silly girl so she can grow up and make some
converts, and my divinations tell me you’re the best option I can reach in time.
Will you bargain with me? I need a yes or no on that one, please. Rules of
magic.”
“Um, sure. Yes. But why me? I’m not exactly a mighty-thewed warrior
here.”
“I despise warriors,” she sniffed. “Give me a wizard or a clever rogue
any day of the week. That’s why I’m looking here. There’s a quirk of the
relationship between worlds that will allow me to grant you sorcerous powers
during the journey if you agree, without any great cost to myself. So that’s my
first offer to you. Healing for your injuries, and as much magical power as you
can seize for yourself, in return for protecting my worshipper Cerise for as
long as she remains my only worshipper.”
This was so unreal. But as far as I could tell it was actually happening. I
tried to think. What do you ask for when a mysterious woman offers to pay you
for a mission to a fantasy world?
“What kind of magic are we talking about?” I asked cautiously. “And who
are you, anyway?”
“I am Hecate. But don’t be too quick to judge me by my reputation. The
victors write the histories, and what do you think the people of Afghanistan or
Ukraine will say about America in a hundred years? I’m a nightmare to my
enemies, but my own people have no cause to fear me.”
“As for the magic… damn, you have no magic at all on this world? But a
million speculations, so at least there’s something to work with. Right? A
‘sorcery’ is an instinctive command of any one thing that you can conceptualize
as an element. When I drag you through the interspace the energies there will
fill you and be channeled by your thoughts, giving you whatever sorcery you
focus on. Depending on how quick your wits are you should have time to grab
three or four elements at a much higher level than human sorcerers normally
get.”
“Now quickly, I need an answer. Cerise and her coven-mate are under
7
attack, and we’re running out of time.”
I hesitated. “Maybe. You said Ragnarok. How do we survive the end of
the world?”
“Hah! It’s the end of the Aesir, not the world. Flee the northlands and find
a hiding place in the south, retreat to the faerie realms, leave the world, hell
you could join Loki’s army if you want. A world in chaos is full of opportunity
for a man with power. But if you need another carrot, we can shorten the term
of your agreement. Protect Cerise for a year and a day, and we will bargain
again if she still needs your help. Do we have an agreement?”
I looked around at the hospital room, and thought about what I had to look
forward to in the life I was living now. Then I thought about a world full of
people in danger, and two witches I didn’t know who were probably about to
be eaten by orcs or something.
“What the hell. I’ll do it.”
She let out a sigh of relief. “Excellent! Thank you, Daniel. Do your work
well, and I may have other offers for you in the future. Now, let’s get this show
on the road before it’s too late. Just focus on the elements you want, one at a
time. No one has ever done this for someone from a world like yours, so I’m
counting on you to munchkin the hell out of it. But you’re dropping right into
combat, so don’t forget to take something you can fight with!”
I opened my mouth to ask for more details on that, but the room dissolved
around me before I could speak. Then I was tumbling through a roaring
technicolor maelstrom, and a shock like lightning jolted through me.
“Focus!” Hecate’s voice sounded urgently in my ear. “Now! You have to
give the power an outlet, or it’ll tear you apart.”
Fear is a great motivator. I gathered my wits and tried to concentrate. An
element. I needed an element. An easy one to start with. Earth.
Cold, solid stone and warm, fertile earth. The essence of endurance, but it
could be shaped in so many ways. Understanding blossomed from nowhere,
along with a power unlike anything I’d felt before. It was instinctive, as easy
as breathing, and it grew rapidly as I concentrated. Crystallizing around the
concept of ‘Earth’ as I understood it, manifesting new applications as they
flickered through my subconscious.
8
But a mighty earth mage with no other abilities would be a tad limited,
and I didn’t know how long I had to do this. I couldn’t even think about
anything else for more than a split second without risking diverting the process
to some other element that might prove useless. Fortunately I’ve played more
than my share of fantasy role-playing games, so I wasn't starting from scratch
figuring this out. If this was the character creation screen of a new computer
game, what would I look for?
Flesh.
Because I wasn’t about to get stuck in a fantasy world without some kind
of magical healing, and that was the best way I could see to conceptualize it as
an element. I was afraid for a moment that it wouldn’t work, but whatever
force was behind this process was happy to reduce the dizzying complexity of
living organisms to an elemental representation just as it had the quantum-
mechanical complexity of solid matter a moment ago. Viewed as an element
flesh could be created or shaped just like stone, but it was transformations I
was really after. Dying to healthy, poisoned to purified, diseased to... well,
minus one type of microorganism, since removing them all would be bad.
The fact that I know a bit about biology seemed to help the process along,
forming a scaffolding on which magic-born abilities and senses could anchor
themselves. There was no time to be methodical about it, so I frantically
wracked my brain for every type of physical affliction, enhancement or
transformation I’d ever heard of. A lot of the crazy stuff didn’t stick, but I
could feel all sorts of odd bits and pieces accreting here and there.
“Halfway there!” Hecate’s voice warned me.
No more of that, then. What next?
Force. A wonderfully flexible concept, if you think of it as a way of
controlling kinetic energy. Force fields and force blades. Telekinesis fields.
Levitation and flight. A solid basis for battle magic, with endless utility
applications.
Fire. Just for a moment, because I’ve read enough Norse mythology to
know that Ragnarok is supposed to be preceded by Fimbulwinter, and I’d feel
really stupid if I ended up freezing to death. Enough to ignite flammables and
conjure balls of fire, maybe a few other minor tricks. Good enough.
Then it was time for a real exploit.
9
My last element was mana. The stuff magic is made of. A fundamental
force of nature, obviously unknown to modern physics, but there must be some
relationship to the Standard Model there or I wouldn’t be able to exist in the
same universe as Hecate. Understanding blossomed as I focused on the
concept. The nature of magic, its relationship to the other fundamental forces,
how spells work, why they wear off, how to embed them permanently into