By the time Jack started assembling the last piece of furniture, Monty had already managed to single-handedly move and load all of the other pieces. He sat on the edge of the platform and alternated between watching Jack and squinting out into the distance with a worried look on his face.

  When he finally attached the last leg to the chair he was putting together, he caught sight of the now fully constructed Turtle out of the corner of his eye. He watched as Monty picked up the chair with one hand and patted him on his shoulder, and then covered the distance in one little hop to land at the base of the construction.

  Jack saw Monty approach Austra, who placed one hand on the wall in front of him and a small section slid away to reveal an entrance just big enough for a man to fit through. Manoeuvring the chair like a skilled removalist, Monty managed to step through the door while tilting it to the side and then disappeared somewhere he couldn't see.

  Wandering over, Jack felt a slightly familiar tingle from the Turtle. It was faint and reminded him of falling, but he couldn't place exactly what it was. Austra saw him and nodded in his direction, and Jack walked over and handed him the reassembler.

  “Thanks for letting me help. That was quite fun all things considered. I have a lot of questions, but I can wait a little while,” Jack said.

  “Good. Slow but good. Questions later. Watch Turtle wake up,” Austra said, and Jack nodded at the number of words he had managed to get out of the man.

  Monty stepped outside and Austra moved forward to enter in his place, moving eagerly as his steps clanged and echoed while he raced through the interior.

  “You will find that there is something universal about the pleasure a man can take in operating a powerful piece of machinery,” Monty said as he took up the space that Austra had been standing in.

  The hum and tickle of that unknown mana sensation increased and the Turtle started to vibrate slightly. A strong pulse of air pulsed out from beneath the vehicle, both physical and mana. The massive vehicle started to rise off the ground, slowly hovering as a loud but steady hiss of air could be heard.

  Jack had wondered how it would move without wheels, but with everyone calling it a Turtle he assumed it would be some sort of automaton or crawler that had legs it walked on. Instead, it looked like it was a giant turtle-shaped hovercraft.

  Staring while the Turtle rose higher and higher into the sky, he felt the air being shot out from beneath it buffet his face and billow out his coat. It was about three metres off the ground at this point and Jack got a good look at the underside.

  There were no holes on it to push air out of, but as he watched, he saw a flash of grey light race across the pathways in the plates and collect into a number of distinct circular shapes. These pulses happened multiple times a second and he assumed it was what was powering the air. His excitement to learn from Austra increased.

  “How is it able to lift into the air? I couldn't even move a cabinet, it was that heavy. That thing has to be too heavy to be flying with just air,” Jack asked Monty. He had no idea if Monty would know or not but he had to voice the question out loud.

  Monty laughed beside him and leaned in to talk over the constant sound of air.

  “Austra has dual frequencies so is uniquely suited for this sort of work. He has Air and Gravity. He wrote a whole detailed description of it for me at some point, something about converting Air to Gravity mana and letting it reduce the weight of the vehicle but only in the direction the air was moving. It was all a bit technical for me, Jack. Turrel might be able to make sense of it though. Ask Austra later, he seems to have taken a liking to you.”

  Jack took that in while the Turtle started to rotate. It shot little pulses of air out of the different overlapping plates and then moved in a strange shape. It reminded him of how a helicopter would tilt as it turned or moved, which when looking at a hovercraft was strange.

  It became apparent that Austra must have been running through a list of calibration or safety checks. The huge floating vehicle spun and leaned, stopped abruptly and then dropped almost to the ground. It lifted high into the air and then repeated all of the same motions.

  Jack watched in awe as he saw it all move. He tried to pick up what was happening when the air was pulsed to turn it. He could just faintly feel two distinct sensations at the same time but he couldn't work out where or what they were doing. He guessed one was Gravity mana and the other was Air based on what Monty had told him.

  This whole thing was assembled from modular pieces in what could only be a few hours. It was powered, as far as he could tell, almost entirely by mana and by the way it was moving, it was going to be relatively fast as well.

  Ideas and questions swirled through his mind. Could this thing actually fly? Could he actually make the hoverboard from Back to the Future? What about a flying motorbike? A pod racer?

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The Turtle lowered slightly but maintained a hover about half a metre off the ground. The side of it opened and a ramp slid out to connect to the ground. Austra hopped down the ramp with a smile on his face as he held out a thumbs up to Monty.

  Nodding back to Austra, Monty placed an arm around Jack's shoulder and directed him towards the centre of the little clearing. Jack for the first time in a long while noticed the other members of the crew. Most were milling around supplies or talking near the safety of the device that was keeping the worst of the storm at bay.

  Amira and two other people he did not recognise stood out a little more. Amira was standing off to the side, summoning large globs of water in different shapes. She would hold her arms out to the side and as they came together in the middle of her body a shape would appear: cubes, circles and even a diamond. Then she would shake her head and let the water splash down to the ground below, stepping to the side and repeating the process.

  The other two people must have been doing something similar as well. Jack could feel mana being drawn in around them almost constantly as they stared off into the distance away from the group.

  “What’s going on there?” Jack asked Monty as they walked.

  “Ahh, well not everyone has your benefit so for compatible users, being in a rift like this is the best opportunity they have to practise skills and progress them,” Monty replied.

  “Oh, fair, that makes sense. Is that like something people pay for? This looks like it was built here, yeah? Like this whole facility, are there training facilities in rifts for people to rent?” Jack spoke as the thoughts came to his mind.

  Monty patted him on the shoulder and gave a half-hearted chuckle.

  “It is a big universe, Jack. If you can imagine it, then it has likely been done or is being done. There is a whole economy and ecosystem to rifts and how people use them, this one here was essentially a mana mine. For all of their preparation and building, look around you and tell me. What good did it do them in the end?” Monty asked, the jovial nature gone from his voice by the time he finished speaking.

  “There are many different thoughts on rifts, Jack. Some people think they are holy and spawned by the Origin for a hundred different reasons. Others think they are just part of the universe and would happen with or without the Origin or anyone else here.” Monty glanced over towards Austra as they paused on the outskirts of the rest of the group.

  “There are certain groups of people that lived near the Centre that have tracked their history and knowledge from what they believe is a time before the Origin. Not just a time before the Origin wave hit their world but a time before the Origin wave occurred.” Monty looked at Jack very seriously for a moment as he pursed his lips and looked to be thinking.

  “I have traded many things and made deals to get the power I have now. So there are things I can’t share. What I can say is that my views on rifts align with some of these people's lore. Rifts are a plague, they are unnatural and we should do everything in our power to close them.” Monty held Jack's eyes for a moment before he shook his head and put on a fake smile again.

  “Ahem, enough of that, it is time we got set up and moving,” Monty said as he let go of Jack's shoulder and walked into the middle of the group, grabbing everyone's attention as he did so.

  Jack was still working through what Monty said. He knew the man had strong feelings about the rifts and Jack could understand after seeing what was happening on Zerra. He guessed that he had some sort of agreement with someone to not speak about the stories he was talking about, something Origin enforced.

  Jack sighed to himself. He could see what Monty was trying to hint at. The glance at Austra obviously implied that the man or his people were who he was referring to and while Jack was intrigued, he felt he barely knew enough about the Origin itself to start looking into conspiracy theories and potentially forbidden knowledge. He ummed and ahhed about adding it to his mental list for investigating at a later date but decided if it ended up being important it would probably turn up naturally or he would remember it surely.

  Monty was a complex man with complex goals and desires; Jack was a simple man with simple desires. He doubted he would be taking up Monty's crusade himself anytime soon. He was happy to help for now while he was finding his feet, but he did not see himself doing that forever.

  Jack walked over to the group in time to hear the end of Monty directing everyone to move their supplies to the Turtle and to listen to Austra. He pulled aside another man Jack had not seen before and had a separate chat with him, and then the man picked up a very intricate briefcase and headed over to the Turtle as well.

  Looking around, he noticed he couldn't see Turrel anywhere, which seemed strange as he had been so insistent on only coming to keep him safe. How could he do that if Jack couldn't see him? He tried something he had been wanting to do for a while but the situation had never presented itself.

  He closed his eyes and focused entirely on his mana sense. He felt the vibrations all around him. He could feel the ice mana all around him as it washed over him. It moved but it was predictable, it was compact and orderly.

  When he focused in the direction he knew Amira was, he could feel that order fluctuate as she absorbed the mana from around her. It wasn’t like he was Daredevil; he couldn't “see” mana and he had no idea of the outline of Amira.

  It was more like he could feel a slight vacuum, as if someone had opened a window and a light breeze raced past. That feeling was what he associated with someone “using mana.” So he focused on that feeling. He felt it in the direction he knew the other two were in but their pull was much fainter. He ignored it and kept searching.

  There, he felt a very light touch so faint he almost missed it. While he focused in that direction he could slowly make out a little more, like focusing on a repetitive sound and zoning everything else out to hear it better. It felt far away, yes, but it also felt… constant. The others were quick and sharp; this was a small constant drag.

  Chances are that was something that was hard to do, and if it was hard to do it was probably Turrel. He faced his body in that direction and slowly let go of his focus and opened his eyes. He was facing a wall of the compound they were inside, but there was a crack in the wall. Outside that crack, however, he couldn't see anything else. Whatever range this device they were using to keep the weather away had, it didn't extend that far.

  He shook his head as he started to walk in that direction to get a closer look and felt an itch on the back of his head. He reached back to scratch at it and realised it wasn't that sort of an itch. He smiled as he acknowledged the tickle at the back of his mind.