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Siberian Taiga
–Damian Hawthorne–
"So, kid," Newt said conversationally, as if all his conversation skills had come out to play after a long time, something he could understand since his company all this time was Sev of all people, a stoic Eastern European wizard who would love nothing more than to remain mute for the rest of his life. Someone who viewed words far more valuable than they should be, "Why'd you do it? Azkaban, I mean."
Side eyeing the old wizard who had closed his eyes and was apparently enjoying the cold, dry, cutting air around them, he replied, "Do I need a reason to?"
"Just humor an old man, will you?" He replied, eyes still closed, as if enjoying the breeze on his face, which was not at all enjoyable for any normal wizard who did not have his enhanced resistance to environmental factors.
He deliberated on the reply for a minute, overlooking the white landscape in front of him, before replying, "I was always going to do that. Certain factors forced my hand, but the prison itself is an affront to basic human dignity, an Abomination fueled by magical Abominations."
Newt smiled gleefully at his reply, as if it was exactly the thing he wanted to hear. Newt didn't say anything for a while before a whispered, "Abominations, huh?" left his lips, something he heard even over the harsh winds around them, his enhanced senses helping him.
And suddenly, it made sense. Newt knew what was happening with him, or atleast was aware that his fixation with saving magical creatures was unhealthy or unnatural on some level, and he had just received confirmation that there was someone else with the same level of hatred, or maybe, somewhat less, but the point still stood.
After about 20 minutes of slow flying, they reached the area he remembered housing the portal to Elysium, as Newt called it. He did not know if the placed was named by Newt or not, but it certainly suited the entire natural paradise that the pocket dimension was.
Newt hopped off the forcefield, even before the forcefield gently landed on the ground. He had a whole thing planned around making the landing very graceful, by sinking the forcefield in the ground, but in a manner so that the forcefield became porous, and the top soil remained undisturbed, giving the illusion that the forcefield seamlessly lost its physical properties at the same time the shoes of Newt and Sev touched the ground.
It was something he had practiced to the point of perfection, fine tuning the feedback he got from the force fields, but he supposed that the old geezer's act of preemptively jumping was fine as well.
Internally grumbling, he looked up as he felt a veritable ocean of magic flood the area. Newt had done nothing but taken his walking stick and pointed it in front of him, the tip glowing a brilliant white that hurt to even look at. His light dampening enchantments kicked in immediately, but even then, all he could make out was a ball of light at the end of the walking stick, something that was sending out so much magic that it was a wonder this place was not listed on every decent magical organization's magical hotspot list.
Then again, this place did house a demon seal, or at least used to, to the point that most Ministries were under strict orders to ignore any magical flare-ups from this place. After only a couple of seconds of immense magic flooding the world, the white light from the tip of the walking stick separated and bobbed in place for a moment before suddenly becoming a giant white door. A doorway to Elysium, with the difference in magic and air immediately apparent to his senses, even when compared to the current location, which was already leagues better than the polluted air from cities and tainted magic around most wizard settlements.
All three of them walked through, with the door closing up behind them, cutting them off from the rest of the world. A real life pocket dimension, anchored to a living person. Something he would love to have one day, though he was certain that it was not all sunshine and rainbows. Beyond the obvious limits of being anchored to a pocket dimension, he was sure that there must be something that would most certainly shorten people's lifespan.
A fascinating experiment, if nothing else.
As he looked all around him, he found himself standing in front of the same cabin/wood shack on a clearing that was pretty short, but this came with a pretty breathtaking view. As far as his eyes could see, he could see not just greenery, but his enhanced sight and senses told him of the sheer amount of magic that suffused the entire place. Looking down, he could not see it, but he could feel them.
The root systems that had invaded every single inch of this clearing, criss crossing just a couple feet under the surface, exuded magic in a way that told him without a shadow of doubt that the tree was magic as well. It was as if even the grass in this pocket dimension was magical, which, was just another thing to experiment on.
Even the wood from the shack was magical, exuding faint traces of magic, a luxury that could only be afforded by the richest of magical houses outside this place, and even then, the magical effect would not last nearly as long as that cabin, for a number of reasons.
One, no noble lived in the middle of a magical forest. Two, there was no forest as magical as this place, as far as his knowledge went. He was sure that many spaces of plants, animals, and more were present here, alive and thriving, though he wondered about the nature of the pocket dimension.
So far, he hadn't had a lot of real life exposure to pocket dimensions, but from what limited he could read from Master Corven's personal library, there were multiple types of pocket dimensions.
There were artificial pocket dimensions, fueled by magic, requiring external stabilisation to exist. Most common type, but also very vulnerable as it had an anchor point that had to be external. Once that anchor point was popped, the entire pocket dimension collapsed on itself, erasing anything that was inside.
The second type was the far rarer and something that required either very high expertise or straight up a compatible magic or divinity, as this process involved creating an artificial pocket dimension and then anchoring it to the space between alternate dimensions, sustaining the pocket dimension from the energy found in that space.
The last type of pocket dimension was just an alternate dimension, something that was quite literally infinite in number but was equally as dangerous to keep stable and anchored. The most obvious benefit was the nature of the pocket dimension being an expanding one. Size would never be an issue for an alternate dimension, a common problem for just pocket dimensions.
The alternate dimension also, in theory, held the potential to become a world of its own, through an obscure process that was not documented in the book he read. Likely involved an absurd amount of magic, an amount that no single being could provide, which meant a literal civilization of magical creatures should be the prerequisite.
In that case, this place definitely fulfilled the criteria, though he wondered if the number was too small for—
His thoughts stuttered to a halt, as his neck snapped straight up, looking at the clearly artificial sun that was raining down strangely pleasant sunlight on all of them. The same sunlight that was currently blotted by a humongous creature with an equally humongous wingspan, headed straight to them. Well, more like slowing down using its wings, but the size of that dragon meant even a slower approach speed was still pretty scary.
"Voltrok." He whispered out loud, his mind going back to the esoteric ability the dragon had. Gravity manipulation. A supremely OP ability, if he ever heard of one, especially since the being who had the power, also had the physique of a, well, dragon, with all the associated benefits that came with it.
It was unlikely that Voltrok will ever get tired of manipulating gravity, and that, in the current iteration of this world, put Voltrok in the top percentile of power, potentially even above Pre Stormbreaker Thor, right next to Hela maybe. Not Odin or the Ancient One, these were esoteric beings who could use localised reality warping, a cheat really, but everyone else? Voltrok could handily defeat all of them.
He seamlessly floated back, sliding across the ground as he reached the cabin at the edge of the clearing, watching as Voltrok landed on the ground with nary a disturbance in the soil around it, showing just how profound its gravity manipulation was.
Voltrok then put his neck right next to Newt, who used his walking stick to rub on Voltrok's neck, an action the dragon seemed to love, judging by the purr like sound that came from Voltrok's throat, only infinitely more heavy and bassy than a normal cat's purr.
After a while of that, Newt seemed to remember that there was someone else at the clearing, as he beckoned him with his free hand, "Come. We have a lot to talk about."
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