Stumbling towards the rift, being pushed along by Turrel, Jack tried to watch his surroundings. All around him, the other people who had stuffed themselves onto the platform with them were going about their business. As if standing on some isolated platform in space, underneath a swirling vortex of ice and magic, was a common occurrence.

  He dodged to the side as a metal plate fell off a crate that it had been precariously stacked on. He jumped back and knocked into a man carrying a container, who dropped it as they collided. The crash and clatter of metal on metal and the grunts of men filled the air around him.

  Jack stood up and looked around him to make sure everyone was okay. Seeing all the eyes on him, he quickly put his head down and said sorry while racing through the chaos towards Turrel. He did think that it wasn't really his fault; he didn't stack the first metal plate, so... actually... it was pretty close to where he was standing. Did he stack it?

  Turrel shook his head as Jack approached, and then the two of them managed to escape the platform and continue towards the rift in front of them. Austra was waiting near the platform that passed into the rift. He had a scowl on his face and shook his head at Jack as they arrived.

  “Careful. Break stuff bad. No time fix,” he said, with more words in a row than Jack had heard him speak so far.

  “Sorry, I swear that plate just fell on its own,” Jack replied, more defensively than he had expected.

  Austra held his gaze unblinking for a moment and then motioned towards the portal.

  “Go. Blocking way,” Austra said, turning as he picked up what looked like a small toolbox.

  Jack, feeling very much like he was a rudderless boat being pulled along by the current, was swept towards the rift by Turrel. Despite all of the action around them, as they approached the roiling mass of energy in front of them, sounds faded away.

  A thin line of slightly differently coloured metal marked the spot where they stopped before Turrel patted him on the shoulder and stepped into the rift. Knowing it was much too late to back out now, Jack took a deep breath and walked forward himself.

  The sensation was different from the portal; it felt less like he was falling and more like he was being pulled. He had no sense of direction, no up or down, left or right. He was simply being pulled forward as his foot fell through where the floor was meant to be.

  With a slight stumble, he felt solid ground under his heel and grunted as he fell into Turrel's back.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Jack sputtered as he straightened and looked around.

  They were standing on a large circular platform that was slightly raised so the bottom was in line with the rift. It seemed like metal as the familiar metallic tang sounded out as they walked forward and down the short set of stairs before them.

  The courtyard they were in was a big space; from the large area he could see that was cleared of snow, it looked to be paved stone mostly. The walls surrounding them seemed almost castle-like, if you pictured a castle with no buildings and an empty interior.

  There were obvious signs of battle on the structure that he could see even from as far away as he was. The walls were scratched and chipped while part of the upper ring was crumbling in one corner. Out in front of him, he saw Axel and Monty standing before a large pyramid-like structure.

  Axel was kneeling at the base while Monty paced an arc in front of it, slowly moving outward. It only clicked as he saw the device, but there was a strange dome that seemed to be reducing most of the snowstorm to little more than a drizzle.

  It was as if there was some slightly transparent greenhouse dome around them; he could see through it, but it was keeping the worst of the weather at bay. Some people had started to unload a cart that was pulled through off to one side of the platform. Jack and Turrel headed in that direction.

  As they arrived, Austra strolled through the rift followed by two more trolleys and moved directly towards them. Monty and Axel seemed busy doing whatever it was they were doing, so Jack kept his attention on Austra and Turrel for the moment.

  “You. Come. Organise,” Austra said as he pointed not at Jack but Turrel, handing the man a tablet as he walked over.

  “Understand?” Austra said as he pointed between the tablet and Turrel.

  “Yes, you can leave this with us. Thank you,” Turrel replied.

  Austra nodded and turned back to the rift, leaving them behind.

  “Okay Jack, looks like we are on sorting duty.” He motioned at all the parts being unloaded around them.

  “Think of it like a puzzle. We need to get them in the right order so Austra can begin constructing the Turtle. Here, we want to find any crates or parts with either of these two symbols first.” Turrel showed Jack a diagram and pointed at the symbols.

  Jack noted them and nodded—this he could do. Head down with a goal in mind, he could help, and hopefully it would keep his mind off the helpless feeling that was starting to creep up on him again. He walked over to the closest pile and started looking for anything that had the little half-dome symbol on it.

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  It didn't take him long; it looked like there were only five symbols he could see so far. He reached in and pulled out a bundle of long metal poles held together with some sort of elastic band. At the tip of each was a matching symbol. He hoisted them onto his shoulder, surprised at how light they were. Either that or his glow-up body wasn't solely just for looks.

  He looked around and saw Turrel marking a large circle in the light snow to the left of the platform with his foot. Jack watched as he felt the man pull in a small amount of mana from the environment around them; the air was practically humming with ice mana. A symbol spawned into existence outside the circle and fell to the stone pavement below. As it touched down, there was a sizzle as it seemed to burn into the stone. Seconds later, the water was gone, but the stone was bleached a much brighter colour in the shape of the half-dome.

  Jack pursed his lips and smiled as he walked over and placed the bundle inside the newly designated circle. He wasn't surprised anymore when Turrel did things like that; his simple mind made the connection easily enough. He thought he could probably have done it if he could use the water frequency. Water was a liquid; you used liquid to wash things; acid wash bleached stone. Simple really.

  This whole purpose and understanding thing was interesting to him; he had been spending more and more time pondering how his understanding could shape what he could and couldn't do. He had some ideas he wanted to try when he had an opportunity, but things had been moving too quickly for him to work it out.

  Dedicating his mind to the task at hand, he fell into a simple rhythm as he navigated around people dropping off materials. He walked to the nearest pile, found the safest marked piece to extract from the Jenga-like stacks, and moved it to the respective circle.

  At some point Jack noticed Austra walk past and start rummaging through the piles, extracting pieces and moving them away. Turrel tapped him on the shoulder not long after and motioned at two other circles and symbols: a full circle and a curved line.

  Nodding, he fell back into the calm simplicity of search and move. The central piles started to shrink rapidly as the unloading finished, and other people moved to help sort. He placed down a heavy plate of metal and looked back to see nothing left to sort.

  The majority of people were either on the portal platform or had already left; taking a quick count, Jack counted fourteen people. Excluding the people he already knew, there were about eight he had only passingly met.

  Austra had started to assemble something, and in front of him was a large rectangular platform of metal plates. Jack approached to get a closer look while the engineer used some handheld tool shaped like a microphone to weld or join the pieces of metal together. Austra stared at the joins after he finished and tenderly ran his hands across the surface of the material, tracing engravings in the metal.

  Before he knew it, Jack was standing beside Austra and staring intently at the plates.

  “Do you know how they work? What do they do? Can you teach me about these engravings?” Jack asked, once again letting his mouth fire the questions off as soon they came into his mind.

  Austra stared up at Jack while he crouched over the plates and stroked his face for a moment.

  “Yes. Lots. Later,” he replied with a smile as he immediately turned back to his work.

  Jack smiled as he felt a slight excitement begin to rise in his chest; he might be able to learn how these etchings and engravings worked. At this point, a real teacher, even one that barely talked, was better than words he could barely read.

  “How can I help?” Jack asked, eager to set a good impression.

  “Dome pile. Beam next,” Jack heard as Austra didn't even stop to turn to look at him. Stopping and processing what he wanted, Jack walked to the half-dome pile and looked for one of the bundles of beams. He found one and grabbed it, heading back to where Austra was standing. On his way back, he saw Turrel and Monty off near the pyramid device talking, while most other people were just taking in the environment; no one else was helping Austra, which Jack thought was strange.

  He laid the bundle down right next to the stack of plates Austra was looking through and the man momentarily stopped and looked at them before continuing to lift each plate, looking for something specific.

  “Thanks,” Jack heard. This was a strange man, he thought to himself, but then again Turrel had said he was some sort of prodigy. As far as he knew, they were normally pretty weird people. He saw Austra decide on the piece he wanted and moved it to the side. He grabbed one of the metal beams out of the pile Jack had brought over and walked over to his constructed rectangle.

  He leaned down and placed the bottom of the beam into what Jack could now see was a tiny indent that must have been specifically for that purpose. Austra held it in place while he got the strange welding tool in his other hand. He pointed one end of it at the bottom of the beam, and Jack saw a flash of light.

  As soon as the light cleared, Jack's eyebrows raised slightly. He lived rural, so he had seen a lot of welding—both good and bad—in his day. This, however, was something different. There was no join, no filler or bead. It was as if the two pieces of metal had simply merged into each other, like they had always been that way. He resisted the urge to test how strong it was by bending the beam.

  “Another beam please,” he heard, and he grabbed another beam and held it out to Austra's outstretched hand, eager to see the welding process again.

  This beam went into the opposing diagonal corner. Jack watched closely as Austra held it in place with one hand. Squinting his eyes slightly, he managed to see through the flash slightly as the man made a quick circular motion around the base of the beam.

  A perfect join; one more. Jack watched in silence as he walked over and picked up the metal plate he had put to the side. He inspected it, rotating it a few times, and then held it up to the first beam he had attached. Then he looked at Jack.

  “Come, hold steady,” Austra said.

  Jack happily approached, feeling that thrill of learning, of seeing something new, of being a part of something being built. He held the top of the plate steady while Austra aligned it with a groove in the bottom one, then he got his welding tool out and with another flash, it joined to the beam.

  This was different, though; this was a flat surface joining to a circular one and there should have been something to attach the two. As Jack stared at the join, however, it was like a slit had been formed in the beam and the plate had slid directly into it. He was holding it already and no amount of willpower could stop him from giving it a little tug to see how sturdy it was.

  It didn't budge at all; in fact, he was pretty certain he could put his entire strength into it and it wouldn't move at all. Austra noticed and patted him on the shoulder as he turned back to the pile of materials.

  “Strong join. Curiosity good. You help, I teach,” Austra said.

  Jack had to admit, he was almost as excited to learn about this as he was to work on his magic. Hopefully this would be a quick and quiet trip so he would have lots of time to do both.