Bella had been trying for weeks to develop a Teleportation spell that didn't rely on a Sling Ring—and she was nearly there. Just one final piece missing.
The Ancient One didn't retreat an inch. She put a hand on Bella's back and walked her toward the portal.
"Wait! Fine, I'll go—just at least tell me where that is!"
"Jotunheim."
The Ancient One said the strange-sounding name, then pushed firmly, and Bella went through.
She'd been close to working out her own Teleportation technique. Theory and practical application were both solid, and her real understanding of the underlying spatial mechanics far exceeded those Kamar-Taj sorcerers who knew how it worked, but not why. The moment she stepped in, she noticed something was wrong. This wasn't a Sling Ring portal—the structure was unstable, and two key spell arrays were missing. She spun to look back just as the Ancient One gave a cheerful wave, and then the roiling spatial current swept her in.
A normal Sling Ring portal was like a doorway: open it, step through, step out the other side. Clean. Effortless.
This portal was a tumble dryer. Someone had grabbed her by the hair and spun her seventeen or eighteen times in rapid succession, then let go—
"Ow—" The ground materialized. She hit it without grace, landing hard on her backside. She sat there dizzy, the world doubling and tripling around her. Three or four minutes passed before her head cleared.
That was a brutal teaching method.
She braced a hand on a nearby rock and got to her feet. She looked left. She looked right.
White. Endless white. A world of ice and snow in every direction, the air carrying a cold that cut straight to the bone. A savage north wind that could freeze a person solid from the inside out. The sky was packed with heavy clouds—a blizzard building.
The cold didn't particularly bother her. For temperatures to genuinely affect her, she needed something around minus seventy or eighty degrees Celsius (roughly -100°F). This was close, but not quite there yet.
Jotunheim? Why had the Ancient One sent her here?
She knew what Jotunheim was—an extraplanar realm within the Asgardian cosmology, a world of eternal ice and snow, the domain of Laufey, King of the Frost Giants. She'd known this from her previous life, and in this one she'd read extensively about it in Kamar-Taj's library.
"Teleportation? That's all this is?" She gave herself a mental pep talk. "She's trying to force my potential to the surface. Classic method. Old trick. Fine—watch me."
She steadied herself and carefully traced back through the experience—studying the mana structure of that portal, following the lines of mana connection she'd felt as she was swept through. Going through that chaotic channel had been illuminating. Many things she hadn't quite grasped suddenly clicked into place. Her understanding of Teleportation crystallized—naturally, organically, like water finding its level.
Deep within her mindscape, a rune took shape: simple strokes, profound resonance. Her own psionic Teleportation spell, uniquely hers. A Fifth-Circle spell—now fully mastered.
But returning to the material plane still required one more step: finding the material plane's coordinates.
Bella had no interest in lingering in Jotunheim, and even less in picking a fight with any Frost Giants. She murmured an incantation, tracing a complex rune in the air—Planar Sense, the Fifth-Circle spell she'd mastered ten minutes ago.
She was standing in Jotunheim. From here, the material plane was the "other plane." First she needed to locate it amid the vast expanse of dimensional space; then she could build a teleportation framework around those coordinates.
The spell activated. A world of thick roiling mud lurched into view—she snapped the vision shut immediately. Malevolent energy saturated every inch of it. Definitely not the material plane.
Second cast. A desolate ruin, not a living thing in sight. Also not it.
Four consecutive casts of Planar Sense. The spell wasn't fluent yet, burning through her psionic energy at a steep rate. When her reserves had dropped by nearly half, she forced herself to stop.
In this environment, she had to keep something in reserve. Dumping everything in one cast wasn't smart.
She considered summoning the Flying Dutchman, but the ground around her was all permafrost and frozen tundra—no rivers, no streams, not even a trickle of water. She could force the summoning in a pinch, but a sailing vessel wouldn't exactly function well here.
Bella scanned the terrain. She needed a safe cave to rest in, recover her psionic energy, and restart her search for the material plane's coordinates.
Leaning into the wind, she moved across the frozen ground, each step punching through the crust of ice. Jotunheim was vast and largely empty—in every direction, as far as her eyes could reach, there was nothing but a profound, pervasive cold.
The snowstorm intensified. Bella squinted against the flurry. She wanted to find some sign of habitation—enemies would do at this point. Her Divination kept misfiring here, wildly inaccurate. She wandered back and forth and couldn't even find a cave.
"Damn," she muttered, fighting through the drifts.
She thought about how the Ancient One had once dropped Doctor Strange on top of a Himalayan peak to force him to learn Teleportation, then looked at her own situation. Essentially the same thing—except her version came with Jotunheim instead of the Himalayas, which added distance, cold, and a certain degree of existential bleakness.
Was this a Kamar-Taj tradition?
"Ancient One, you—" She stopped herself. What if the old woman was eavesdropping somewhere? She wasn't about to find out.
"Someone? Who's there?!" A sudden feeling of being watched had flooded her—she snapped her gaze sharply to the left.
Nothing. Just an expanse of unbroken white. The sky dim and lifeless, no sign of movement.
The snow kept falling. Bella stood completely still, watching, ice crystals collecting in her hair and on her brows.
"Impressive concealment," she said aloud. "But I can see you. You don't seem hostile. Come out."
No response. She moved toward the position her Hawkeye Vision had marked.
"Let me see what's hiding here..."
A beaver waddled out of the snow. Her steps checked involuntarily.
Fat. Fluffy. Her first thought was: that would make a very nice hat.
The beaver looked up at her with an expression of pure, endearing stupidity, mouth hanging open, two large front teeth on full display.
The creature felt no hostile intent toward her. She trusted her Hawkeye Vision—and honestly, even if it were hostile: a beaver?
"Hi," she said, keeping her voice friendly.
The beaver started hopping and twisting, its round body wiggling back and forth, clearly saying something. Unfortunately, her language repertoire had apparently neglected Beaverish. She quickly cast Comprehend Languages on herself.
"Sorry—I missed that. The snow's coming down too hard. Could you say it again?"