The wall had answered him. That was the part he did not understand. The markings... those were different. He understood those. Mostly. The young bard lifted the manuscript again. The same glyphs. The same strange spacing. But after watching them burn across the stone... he finally knew what he was looking at. A destination. Not a map. Not a song. The signature of a permanent teleportation circle. He had seen such markings before. Traveled through them. Studied them. Even drawn a few himself under the patient supervision of instructors who preferred their students not accidentally disappear. This should have been familiar. It wasn't. Because the glyphs on the manuscript had never been written in the right order. The wall had corrected them. One by one. Not like letters. Like beats. The page held the symbols. The wall... had given him the timing. thmm. Unfortunately, knowing where a teleportation circle went... was considerably cheaper than going there. Rare inks. Ground gemstones. Magical compounds sold in bottles far too small for the prices attached to them. By midday, the bard had counted his savings twice. By afternoon... three times. By evening, curiosity had won. Decisively. The merchant counted his coins once. Then again. Then looked at the bard. The bard looked at the coins. The coins had not improved. He was short. Not terribly short. Just enough to be irritating. The bard reached beneath his cloak and placed a small silver tuning charm on the counter. Well made. Useful. Carried long enough that his hand knew its weight without looking. The merchant turned it over between two fingers. Then told him, "You know these inks disappear when you use them." The bard said he was aware. The merchant looked at the charm. Then at the bard. Then back at the charm. The price came down. Curiosity remained expensive. By the time he left the shop, years of careful saving had become several tiny bottles of ink... and one empty place beneath his cloak. He chose an old practice chamber where no one was likely to disturb him. Stone floor. Thick walls. Enough room for the circle. And, importantly... very little furniture worth apologizing for. He worked carefully. Every line measured. Every glyph placed exactly where the wall had shown him. Every curve checked. Then checked again. This was not his first circle. He knew the spell. He knew the structure. He knew what came next. Light crawled through the ink. One glyph. Then another. Then another. The air above the circle tightened. So far... ordinary. thmm. The bard stopped. thmm... thmm. That... was not ordinary. The spell continued. The glyphs brightened. But beneath the magic he knew... something else had begun to move. A rhythm. Several rhythms. Overlapping. Falling against one another. Waiting for something. The bard listened. He hesitated. And the circle reached the moment when a doorway should have opened. Nothing opened. BOOM. The chamber rang like a bell. The bard left the floor. Crossed several feet of scholarly air... and met a wall with considerably less curiosity than his own. For several moments... he reconsidered higher education. Then he tasted blood. That seemed less philosophical. The circle was gone. The expensive ink was blackened. One chair had become several smaller chairs. And the bard... had learned something. The spell had not failed. He had missed something. thmm. He had heard it. He simply hadn't answered. There remained one problem. He had spent nearly everything he owned on the first attempt. The College of Lore, however... owned considerably more ink. The College maintained those supplies for supervised academic purposes. The bard knew this because he was an attentive student. What happened next was... less scholarly. The second circle took longer. His shoulder ached. One side of his ribs objected whenever he bent too far. A bruise was already spreading beneath his robes. And now... he knew what failure felt like. Still... he drew. Glyph by glyph. Line by line. The same destination. The same order. The same impossible timing. When he finished, he sat beside the circle for a long while. The first attempt had been curiosity. The second required something else. He began the spell. The glyphs awakened. One. Two. Three. Light ran around the circle. The air tightened. And then... thmm. thmm... thmm. There. He heard it now. Not noise. Not interference. Choices. One arrived too soon. Another dragged behind. One nearly matched... then slipped away. And beneath all of them... was something quieter. thmm. The same space between sounds. The same hidden step. The same rhythm the wall had shown him. The bard tapped two fingers against the stone. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. The circle answered. The competing rhythms collapsed. The glyphs aligned. Every mark around him ignited at once. This time... the air did not explode outward. It folded inward. Stone blurred. Light bent. The center of the circle became deeper than the room could possibly contain. The bard had traveled by circle before. There was always a moment of displacement. A pull. A flash. Then somewhere else. This... was not that. He stepped forward. For one impossible heartbeat... there was distance. Not beneath his feet. Not ahead of him. Everywhere. His stomach fell. Sound vanished. Then returned from somewhere too far away to have a direction. Purple light stretched into lines. The circle behind him became a point. The point became nothing. And somewhere in that impossible space... thmm. He did not know what planar travel felt like. He had never crossed a plane. But whatever this was... it was not ordinary teleportation. Stone beneath his feet. The bard looked up. Before him stood a vast structure of towers, courtyards, gardens, and old stone. A college. Of some kind. He knew what he was looking at. He had no idea where he was. Or when.
