Garin sat on a boat that sailed towards Essos. He had said goodbye to Nymeria and her family and claimed that he would go on a journey to study his magic more and develop.
And in a way, that was the truth.
What he hadn't told her was that he would leave this world. In his quest to improve himself and find ways to improve his personal magic and the versatility of his spell pool, he had found a particular 'thread' of magic, entirely different from what he was used to in this world.
He called it a world, but he thought about calling it differently. Maybe that was the afterlife, the 'other side', as the different religions called it. The place where gods resided?
Garin wasn't sure, but he wanted to see it and to learn from it. So he created a spell that used his water magic as a medium to find a way through to the other side. After years of experimenting, he found a way to do it.
Water was more than a substance to be used to water plants and drink. It carried reflections and connected distant shores. Garin had taken inspiration from those qualities and turned them into the foundation of his spell.
He used water as a means of transportation.
Garin turned towards the sea and raised one hand. Water rose silently beside the ship, following his command. It gathered in the air, forming a circle several feet taller than Garin. Its surface became smooth until not the slightest ripple remained.
When the water became perfectly smooth, it reflected Garin. Then the reflection changed, and a broad grey river replaced his face. It was like a window, and through it, great stone buildings stood along that grey river bank, unlike anything Garin had ever seen. An arched bridge crossed the water, but it was unlike any bridge Garin had ever seen. It was made with more iron than some kingdoms possessed.
Lights burned along its length without torches, braziers or any magic that he could sense. Garin stared through the watery mirror with wonder.
"I did it," he whispered.
He had prepared as carefully as he could. The spell was bound to him, and the path back to his own world had been woven into his memory. He had placed a special beacon made of his magical signature so that he would find it again. Unless something destroyed the connection entirely, he would be able to find his way home.
That was the theory, at least. Some things could not be tested without taking the final step.
Garin reached forward. His fingers touched cold water, but instead of passing through it, they vanished beyond the surface, and he could feel foreign magic run across his skin. It was faint, but the sensation was evident.
He smiled excitedly and stepped through the mirror.
For a moment, he felt as though he were being drawn underwater, through a space far too narrow that squeezed him tightly. Light flashed around him. His stomach lurched, and every part of his body seemed to be pulled in a different direction.
Then the sensation ended, and he found himself submerged in the river he had seen through the mirror. Once again, he woke up inside water, as he had after awakening his magic.
Garin opened his eyes. The water was rather dark and unpleasantly filthy. Patches of some fatty substance drifted across its surface, while other substances floated through it that Garin preferred not to identify.
The river was relatively big, although nothing compared to the Rhoyne. Stone walls confined it on both sides, forcing it through the heart of a vast settlement. Iron pipes emptied waste into it. Heavy vessels moved along its surface, their hulls cutting through the water.
The river had been contained, as in restrained and thoroughly mistreated.
Garin drew a layer of clean water around his body before the filth could touch more than his clothes. Then he controlled the river to carry him upwards.
His head broke the surface, and as soon as it did, noise assaulted his senses immediately.
A great metal vessel passed nearby, belching black smoke into the air. There were no oars and no sail, yet it moved against the current with ease. A deep horn sounded from somewhere aboard it. Men shouted to one another on its deck.
Garin understood none of their words.
Beyond the vessel stood the biggest city he had seen through the mirror. It was enormous. Constructs of pale stone stretched along both banks of the river, rising into the air like trees. Bridges crossed the water in both directions. Towers, domes and monuments rose above countless rooftops. Lights shone everywhere, more than Garin had ever seen in one place, and not one was created by fire, and what surprised him was that they also weren't using magic.
Garin moved towards a set of stone steps descending into the river. The instant his boots touched the lowest step, he pulled the water from his clothes. It gathered around him in a wavering sphere before he returned it to the river, leaving himself completely dry.
Two men standing farther up the steps stopped speaking and stared at him.
Both wore dark trousers, short coats and strange hats. One of them held a small roll of burning leaves between his fingers and had been drawing smoke into his mouth.
The man said something. Garin recognised the question in his tone but couldn't understand the words.
"I do not understand you," Garin replied.
The men exchanged a look.
One pointed towards the river and then at Garin. He suspected that they wanted to know something he wouldn't reveal anyway, so he simply smiled and continued walking.
The men did not follow him, thankfully.
The streets were crowded despite the late hour. Men and women walked beneath the bright lamps, most of them dressed in dark and unusually close-fitting clothing. Garin had taken only a few steps when an awful screech erupted to his left.
A black metal carriage rushed towards him. There were no horses in front; the block moved on wheels on its own.
Garin reacted before he had time to consider what he was seeing. He moved and took a step to the right before the carriage ran him over. The thing came to a halt, and the driver looked out and started shouting at him.
Garin ignored the angry man and studied the peculiar carriage.
Heat came from beneath its front covering. He could smell oil, metal and some kind of... he didn't have a word for it. Garin could feel small, controlled explosions occurring within the metal in rapid succession, transferring shocks through metal parts which turned and then made their way to the wheels.
There was no magic in it. None, whatsoever. The carriage seemed to have been created through craftsmanship alone.
More of the machines travelled along the street behind it. Some were small and elegant, while others were large enough to carry dozens of people.
"Putain!" the driver shouted, made an angry gesture and then continued down the street.
This was not the realm of the gods. Garin was becoming increasingly certain of that.
The people around him were too ordinary. Too faulty, normal, like he knew them. They laughed, complained, argued and hurried about their lives. A woman scolded a small boy for stepping into a puddle. Two men nearly came to blows outside of what smelled like a drinking house. A tired-looking worker sat against a wall and ate bread from a piece of paper.
These were people - humans. The world around them, however, was unlike anything Garin knew. He thought of the word he was looking for until it eventually came to him automatically.
Advanced.
It was far more advanced than either Essos or Westeros had been. Even the Valyrians, with all their sorcery, had never built anything like this. They used their blood magic and slaves to achieve what they had, but they had never demonstrated mastery over metals and fire like this.
These people had learned to accomplish wonders without magic.
Garin wanted to understand how. First, however, he needed to understand them and their language. That was the most immediate obstacle. He walked through the city and simply listened.
His mind captured every sound perfectly. He paid attention to which words were repeated, what objects people indicated when they spoke and how their expressions changed. Greetings were the easiest to identify, and numbers soon followed when he found a row of merchants selling food late into the evening.
A customer pointed at a loaf of bread, asked something and the merchant named a price. The customer gave him several small coins.
Garin watched the exchange and then approached the stall. The merchant looked at Garin's clothes weirdly and then at his face. Garin pointed to a loaf.
"Pourrais-je avoir un morceau de pain, s'il vous plaît?" he asked, repeating the words he knew were rather formal by now.
The merchant nodded.
"Deux francs."
Garin did not have a franc, but he understood that two were required and that he most likely had something better. He placed a silver coin on the counter, hoping its value would be enough to pay for the loaf of bread.
The merchant picked it up and examined both sides. His suspicion seemed to change to curiosity. He bit the coin, which Garin found rather strange, and then weighed it in his hand.
After a moment, the man gave Garin the bread along with a collection of coins and nodded.
"Merci," Garin said and walked away.
His pronunciation didn't make the merchant wince, which was a bonus. Garin's mind had improved so unimaginable degrees, ever since he became the Archmage. His beyond-genius intelligence allowed him to learn French in a matter of 20 minutes as he walked along the streets of Paris.
That's where he was, in Paris, and as he found out, he was in the year 1927 AD. Garin wasn't certain who D. was, but he assumed that he was the one who conquered this land. After the conquest of D. or something like that.
That would require more investigation.
Garin spent the next several hours walking from one crowded place to another. By midnight, he understood French and could read and write in it as well.
The river from which he had emerged was called the Seine. The land was France, although Garin had no idea where France was in relation to any other country. No one recognised the names Rhoyne, Dorne, Westeros or Essos when he cautiously mentioned them.
That removed what little doubt he still possessed. He had truly passed through to another world. There was, of course, a chance that he merely travelled to a land that was very far away from Essos and Westeros, but Garin doubted that. If there were such a country, why hadn't it heard of the Dragonlords and why hadn't it defeated them already?
No, he was somewhere entirely new.
Once the shops began to open the next morning, Garin dealt with his next problem. His Rhoynish clothing attracted too much attention.
The long white robe and high leather boots marked him as strange even in a city filled with travellers and merchants. Several people had assumed he belonged to some distant country. One man had asked whether he was part of a circus, which Garin learned was a place where special people performed acts to entertain the masses.
Garin found a shop displaying men's clothing in its window and entered.
A thin older man appeared from behind a curtain and looked Garin up and down.
"You need new clothes," the man said in French.
Garin considered the rather forward and relatively unfriendly way of addressing a new customer. He had learned that this was part of this Parisian culture. They didn't like him, as they saw him as a foreigner. The fact that he already mastered French and their particular way of talking made this less of a problem.
He pointed at the clothing worn by a wooden figure near the window.
"I require clothes like those," he said carefully. "The problem is I don't have any Francs on me. I do, however, have these."
The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows at Garin as he showed him several silver coins. Garin was not going to show any of the gold he possessed, as that would only raise more questions than it solved.
The man looked at the silver, performed a similar ritual as the merchant had and then nodded his head. From that alone, Garin understood that the clothes he would buy were worth far less than what he had just placed on the table.
He wouldn't argue with the man. It was fine for now.
The man spent the next half-hour selecting garments and making small adjustments. Garin was given a white shirt, a grey suit and a long coat. The shoes were less comfortable than his boots, and the stiff strip of cloth fastened around his neck seemed entirely unnecessary.
He retained it because appearances were very important.
Eventually, they were finished, and the old clothes went into the leather pack which he gifted the old shopkeeper.
When Garin looked into the shop's mirror, he barely recognised himself. The stranger in the reflection had olive skin, black hair, bright blue eyes and the clothes of this new world. He still looked foreign, but he no longer appeared to have walked out of a circus.
It would do.
More than anything, he now wanted to find this world's magic and the people who used it. Because they hid themselves, from what he had deduced. But Garin knew it was there. He could sense it, and now that he was searching carefully, he found traces everywhere.
The magic here was different from the one he possessed and what it was back home. Here it was a bit more subtle.
Small knots of magical energy clung to certain buildings and objects. Very few of the people in the crowd carried magic within them, while most others possessed none at all.
The magic-less group didn't seem to be aware of the magical one. And Garin realised that this was deliberate. Subtle spells covered parts of the city. They encouraged ordinary people to look elsewhere, forget what they had noticed or decide that a particular street was not worth entering.
And one of those, he found in Montmartre. As soon as he reached there, he saw a woman in a black trench coat walk down a set of steps, towards a bronze statue.
Garin stopped walking. The woman possessed magic; he could feel it, and she seemed to be wary of being seen.
She turned around, glancing around warily, making sure that no one was looking at her. As she approached the statue, it started to move on its own! The bronze statue moved its hand and lifted its skirt.
Just then, the woman discreetly ducked and disappeared into the stone, as the statue pushed her skirt back into place and took her previous position, as if nothing had happened.
...
Garin smiled. He had found them.