“Yes!” Pip wriggled his hind end, still in rat terrier form. “Did Kii get here? Her sorcerer died and she wanted to come back but she couldn’t figure out how and so we went through a portal gate and on the other side she could and she should have been ahead of us. Did she make it? And hey, I’m still a dog. Look, Darien, I still have a tail.” He wagged his whip of a tail hard.
The rainbow dough-boy stretched and elongated, taller and thinner, seeming to loom over Pip. “As for you, youngster—”
Lyyll interrupted whatever lecture had been about to rain down on Pip. “Can you help me get home, do you think? I’m grateful for being here, of course, but I can’t wait to see my clan mother and the mates and the elvers, who’ll have nearly grown while I was away. It’s been far too long.”
The dough-boy held up its… hands? Appendages? It had three arms, but they elongated as they were raised and there were only three pincers or tentacles at the end. It waved those hands around, and a spool of magic like cotton wool spun between them and then vanished. “You will all follow me,” the person said. “It seems we have a lot to discuss.”
“Who are you?” Magda asked bluntly, to Darien’s satisfaction because he wouldn’t have to.
“You may call me Boris. That was the name I wore when I was last in your world.” Boris turned, his shape changing again, legs longer, arms shorter. “Come this way. We need to clean your energy out of this circle.”
“This is the return space,” Grim murmured. “Familiars who’ve lost their sorcerers return here. It’s supposed to be a place of calm and healing. I’m afraid the demise of our gate didn’t quite add to that experience.”
“I apologize,” Silas said to Boris. “We needed a target, and this was the only one we had.”
Boris elongated his neck in order to nod to Silas. “We will all go to a conference space and discover what must be done next.”
Boris led them across the domed room to a door on the far side. There he stopped, for the first time looking uncertain. The door was… small. Darien could’ve made it through on his knees, no doubt, but Lyyll would be a very tight fit.
“Perhaps this way. We can speak in the storage bay.” Boris turned and brought them to a bigger door farther down the wall. At a touch, the door rose up into the ceiling, opening a space big enough that only Lyyll had to duck to pass through. The rest of them followed her. As Darien brought up the rear, he turned to look back. Behind them, several rainbow guys in a variety of sizes had begun sweeping the floor with handfuls of cotton-candy magic. One looked up, waved a couple of eyestalks at him, and went back to its task.
All righty, then. Darien moved on through the doorway and the panel rumbled down into place behind him.
The new space was a large warehouse, maybe— an echoing structure with tall racks in rows, loaded with hexagonal somethings, probably containers. Boris gestured, and the lighting brightened. At the end of an aisle, he turned and tapped a spot on the wall. “I need a portal expert in storage bay two of the transits building.”
“Ask for Professor Xsing,” Grim said. “I have a problem to lay at his feet.”
One of Boris’s eyestalks swiveled, but he said, “See if Professor Xsing can join us. Tell him I have an enthralling problem for him.”
When he turned back to face them, Silas began, “What we’re facing is—”
Boris held up all three hands. “Wait until the others get here. There is no point in telling a long story twice. And Xsing will not forgive me if he doesn’t hear every detail.”
Darien thought maybe that was humor on Boris’s face. Or maybe not. Eyes on stalks still made him boggle a bit, but he was getting used to the idea of people who could look that odd. No doubt, meeting a variety of familiars had helped ease him into it. He murmured to Pip, who leaned against his shin, still looking like his canine self, “Did you look like Boris? Before you crossed over to Earth, I mean.”
“Not exactly. I’m much smaller.”
“But rainbow-shiny and so… flexible?”
Grim said dryly, “We’re all polymorphous, yes.”
Pip sat up on his haunches, eyes shining. “It can be so much fun. When we’re studying to become familiars, one of the classes is learning to walk on four legs or two legs like a bird and so on. So when we merge into our Earth or Yyygrdii form, we don’t have to rely on the body’s instincts for everything. It’s hard though. Three legs are so much more natural. And we can’t really fly, but we learn to make glider wings and do landings—”
Grim nudged Pip, tipping him off-balance so he had to land on all fours. “You’re babbling, puppy.”
Boris angled two of his three eyes their way. “It’s so odd to see the two of you in those forms. Clearly, the gate you crossed to get here was different from what our voyagers normally experience.” He walked around Grim and Pip, looking them up and down. “Do you think you could shift form now, if you tried?”
“I don’t feel like I want to,” Pip said.
Grim’s tail tip twitched. “It’s not an experiment I choose to make at this time. If— when I return to Earth with Silas, I’ll need to have kept my cat shape.”
The door they’d come in opened, and another shimmery figure hurried through, this one a fraction the size of Boris. It rushed toward them. “Grim, Pip, you made it. I was worried.”
“Kii,” Grim said. “I was also concerned about you. That was impressive precision flying, taking your gate Home right up to the cliff wall.”
Kii’s shiny figure raised two arms in an odd gesture, then gave a sound like a chime. “It’ll take me a few days to get used to not having wings. But it’s good to be back.”
A rumbling behind Boris marked the opening of a different door. This time, three people entered, one larger than Boris, two smaller. The mid-sized one waved an arm as it entered. “This had better be good. I was in the middle of an extremely concerning—” Its eye stalks suddenly swung together to stare at Darien’s group of travelers. “Well,” it said in a very different tone. “This is interesting.”
“Everyone.” Grim’s voice sounded bone-dry. “May I introduce you to Professor Xsing of the Transitional Dynamics Laboratories.” He then gestured at the smallest of the figures. “Also Jojo, his assistant.” And at the largest. “And Coordinator Shen, of the Voyagers’ Institute.” Grim pivoted between the two groups. “Silas, necromancer; Darien, sorcerer and Weaver; Magda, sorcerer with a scrying talent; Lyyll, sorcerer with an interest in gating; and Pip of course. And Kii, returned voyager.”
Xsing’s eyestalks waved independently as if he was trying to take in everything at once, but Shen focused in on Pip. “Young student! Where have you been? What did you do?”
Pip’s ears and tail drooped. Darien bent to scoop him up, cradling his familiar against his chest. “He’s been with me. Saving my life, more than once.”
“He hadn’t graduated!” Shen’s loud words were followed by a sound like a faint foghorn. “The crossing was improper.”
“Irrelevant. We have far more pressing things to focus on!” Xsing interjected. “We have two voyagers still in Earth forms, four humans, and a Yyygrdiil standing in our storage bay. This hasn’t happened in all of recorded history.” He bent his legs, suddenly longer and thinner, and propelled himself upward to the top of a nearby shelf, putting his face at Lyyll’s level. “How did you manage this transit gating? Why are you here? I must have all the details.” His three eyes flicked back and forth staring at them all. “Grim. You still go by Grim? You will begin, and leave nothing out.”