"Miss Lia, what are these?"
"Hmm?"
Euthalia looked up from the thick, dusty tome on cursebreaking to see her new apprentice, an excitable young girl with bouncing orange pigtails and gleaming red eyes, unrolling a long leather pouch she was quite certain had been left safely on the back corner of her disorganized table. Inside was a series of silver prongs, each poking out from its own separate compartment.
"Those are tuning forks, Emma," she said simply.
"What are they used for?" the girl asked, pulling one out to examine it.
"Teleportation, primarily," Lia responded. "Each is attuned to the magical frequency of a specific plane, and they are all sorted in a precise order, so if you could please—"
Pong~
A low, clear tone rang out as Emma flicked the prong with her finger. Lia winced at the sudden sound.
"—put that back before they get out of order, I would appreciate it," she continued.
"What does being attuned to a magical frequency do?" Emma asked, returning the fork to its pouch and pulling out a different one.
Why did I agree to this again…?
"It provides a target for the teleportation spell to aim for, essentially," she explained. "Without something like this, you could end up teleporting to the wrong destination, directly into danger, or simply dying outright."
"Oh."
Bong~
"Teleportation sounds scary."
"Good," Lia nodded. "It isn't something to toy with unprepared."
"So where do these take you?"
"This one is for returning to the material plane." She pointed to the first fork on the left. "Our plane, in other words. Then are the four elemental planes, Air, Water, Earth, and Fire, which you are holding. The others beyond that theoretically should be attuned to the outer planes, but I've yet to test them."
"Can we test them now?" Emma asked, pulling out another fork. Lia snatched the one for the Fire plane from her other hand and quickly returned it to its spot.
"Absolutely not."
"Aww, why not?"
"I just finished explaining to you the dangers of unprepared teleportation."
"But Miss Lia, we're not unprepared!" Emma protested. "You have the fork and everything!"
"Yes, and it has yet to be tested, so it very well may shunt us directly into the pits of the Ten Hells," Lia said. "So until I know for sure, I won't be gambling either of our lives on day tripping.
"Isn't there only nine hells?" Emma corrected her.
Lia sighed. "Thank you, Emma. Go put those back, alright?"
"Fiiiine," she said, rolling her eyes.
As the girl scampered away with the precious silver artifacts, Lia returned to the book. Not that she was expecting to find anything of use in it. It was clear that the author had only a smattering of knowledge regarding cursebreaking. But she couldn't exactly afford to write it off as useless without reading more. Surely a tome this thick wouldn't be completely use—
"Miss Lia, what about these?" Emma called as she hurried back from the table, another leather pouch held in her hand. This one looked much, much older than the previous one.
"More tuning forks," she replied.
"Yeah, but where do they go?"
Reluctantly tearing her eyes from the book, she turned to look at the pouch. The forks in here all looked different from each other, as if made of slightly different metals, though most were close enough to be called silver. Several sections on the right end of the pouch were left empty. Lia pointed to the fork furthest to the right.
"This one is attuned to this world here. And the others…" She gestured indiscriminately towards the rest of the forks. "Lead to other worlds, though I can't quite remember which is which at the moment. It's been quite a while."
"Worlds?" Emma asked, cocking her head to the side. "Is that different from planes?"
"Yes," Lia said. "A plane is fundamentally part of this universe, and most are spatially tied to this planet, in fact, through naturally-occurring portals and such. A different world, however, is a place one can't reach in any natural way, where even the laws of nature and magic are different."
Emma's eyes sparkled with interest. "For real?"
"Of course."
"Wow, that sounds really cool!" she exclaimed. "Can we go to one?"
"I'm rather busy at the moment, so no, we cannot."
"Aww, come on, pleeease, Miss Lia?" Emma put on her best puppy dog eyes and looked up at her. "I promise I'll be good!"
"Unfortunately, we do not have the time regardless of your behaviour."
"You don't even look that busy," Emma pouted. "You're just sitting there talking to me."
"I'm supposed to be reading this book," Lia said, tapping it with her long finger. "If you like, I can get back to it and ignore you?"
"No, thank you!"
Lia nodded. "As expected. Perhaps once I've solved your conundrum, we can visit one to celebrate. Would you like that?"
Her face lit up. "Do you mean it, Miss Lia!?"
"I don't see why not," she shrugged. "You'll be safe so long as you don't leave my side."
"Okay!" Emma began examining the forks. "Can we go to…"
She trailed off as she pulled what was clearly a four-pronged dining fork from the pouch.
"Does this take us to a world, too…?"
"I… am not actually certain," Lia admitted. "But even if it did, we would not be going there."
"Why not?"
"Because getting back would be extraordinarily difficult."
"Can't you just cast the spell again?" Emma asked.
"I mentioned that the laws of magic are different, yes? In that world, it would perhaps be better to say they are 'nonexistent'."
"Wha—" Emma looked puzzled. "Like magic has no laws there?"
"No, there simply is no magic there at all."
Emma looked at her suspiciously. "…That's not true. You're lying to me."
"I am not lying to you," Lia said. "There is no such thing as magic in that world. Or elves, as it happens."
"No way, you're lying for sure," Emma argued. "Otherwise how did you leave?"
"With a lot of very hard work, effort, and misappropriation of government resources," Lia explained.
Emma narrowed her eyes, but didn't probe further. She ran her fingertip across the handle of the fork.
"What's this say, anyway?" she asked, holding it out to Lia.
The fork was engraved with several stylized characters in a language utterly foreign to this universe.
"'Plum Blossom Maid Tavern'," Lia said.
"They have a tavern just for maids?"
"No, no, it was a place where one goes to be served by maids," she explained.
Emma scrunched up her eyebrows in confusion as she tried to process this idea. "So… how is that different from like a regular tavern waitress?"
"It's a whole elaborate playing of roles, really. In that world, maids are a relic of a bygone era, mythologised over time to become an object of fantasy. The wait staff take on the garb and demeanor of the mythological maid, and patrons spend money to experience being served by one of them."
"Um, okay, that's weird," Emma said, looking a little uncomfortable. "Why would they mythologise maids instead of like, the king? Wouldn't people want to be served by the king? Or the queen?"
"Perhaps such things cannot be understood by those who have had maids for their entire lives," Lia mused.
"So why do you have a fork from the maid tavern in here?"
Lia shrugged. "I was rather fond of their extensive tea catalogue."
"But it's just a normal fork, right?"
"Correct."
"And you don't really plan on going back, either, right?" Emma asked. "So why not just leave this slot empty?"
"It simply doesn't feel right," Lia said. "And who knows? It might work."
"I guess?" Emma slid the fork back into the pouch. "You're from this world, right, Miss Lia?"
"No, this is in fact the most recent world I've visited," she said. "Though I've certainly been here the longest."
"Oh! Which one's yours, then?"
"The one on the far left." Lia pointed to a particularly aged tuning fork. Unlike all the others, this one was made from a dull, bronze-like material.
"Why's it a different colour?" Emma asked.
"My world was much less advanced than this one," she explained. "We lacked metallurgical knowledge of most metals commonplace here. Of course, both worlds pale in comparison to the world without magic, but that's neither here nor there."
"The maid world is better than mine!?"
"By leaps and bounds, frankly."
"That's… annoying." Emma shot a glare at the engraved maid tavern fork. "Do you go home a lot, then?"
"I've not been back since I left, actually."
"What!? Well, we should definitely go visit some time!"
"I wouldn't be opposed to taking you, once we've got time, but why there?" Lia asked. "There are other worlds that are much more interesting."
"I wanna meet your family!" Emma smiled. "I bet they miss you! Don't you wanna see them?"
"Ah, I was unclear," Lia said. "It's been over 900 years, Emma. Everyone who knew me there has long since passed."
Her smile froze in place as her eyes filled with horror. "Nine hundred—what!? And you never even went back to visit!?"
"It isn't as though we were particularly close," Lia said. "I expect my mothers were glad to see the last of me. And my sister… well, I suppose she might have liked to see me? But again, we weren't particularly—"
Well, we are definitely going back to your world to find their graves so you can apologize," Emma declared, folding her arms in front of her chest. "And we can go see all the interesting worlds after."
"It sounds to me as though you are just looking for an excuse to do a bit of world hopping."
"It can be both!" Emma argued.
"I see you've inherited your mother's wanderlust," Lia said wryly.
"My mother was an explorer?"
"Well, something like that," Lia said. She snatched the leather pouch and rolled it up. "But if it would make you happy, we can go spout empty platitudes at weathered graves before pressing on. Now go take this back where you found it, and leave me to my research, please."
"Okay, Miss Lia!" Emma accepted the leather pouch with a smile and skipped off into the halls.















