The tunnel ended a few feet behind where Jemma stood. Dante slipped out from the tunnel, dismissed his Chimera, and snuck up behind his dear friend to pat her on the shoulder.
Jemma whipped around with surprise and anger on her face, but the expression quickly was replaced by excited familiarity.
"Dante! You scared the crap outta me!" Jemma clutched her chest in overdramatized shock and then grinned and punched Dante playfully in the arm. "I ran into some weird man who said he took you away from here and said you were a noble. And here I almost believed him!"
"Garrick was by?" Dante asked. He rubbed at where Jemma had hit him, but it didn't hurt as much as her punches usually did.
"Wait, what? You know him? Was he telling the truth?"
"Yeah. He even gave me a Chimera." Dante grinned.
"No way! Liar!" Jemma said.
Dante summoned his Chimera. "Nope, truth."
Jemma's eyes widened. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah. Turns out I'm his long-lost nephew or something, so he let me have a Chimera. I'm supposed to be back in the weird castle he brought me to so I can be shown around by his blind daughter, but I wanted to rub this in your face first." Dante made a motion like he was literally going to rub the Chimera against Jemma's face, and Jemma ducked and laughed.
"So, how does it feel being a prince?" Jemma asked.
"Not much different, really," Dante said. "I feel freer, though. Kinda like I don't need to bother with Tobias or anyone like that ever again. It's nice."
"The whole point of running away this morning was so you'd never have to deal with him again!" Jemma pointed out with a sharp elbowing to Dante's side. "Anyway, let's see what that thing can do! Let's go to another world!"
"You can use a Chime to go to another world," Dante pointed out. "It's not anything special." Even as he said that, he knew it was false. The Chime could only ever take one person, and they could only travel one world at a time. Dante had just traveled through dozens of worlds all at once, and it seemed possible that he could take someone with him.
"Yeah, ya know what? I'll use my Chime and you use your Chimera, and we'll race to an adjacent world," Jemma said. "That'll be a fun test of how different it is."
"And then I'll see if I can bring both of us back here with my Chimera so you can see how it works firsthand," Dante said.
"Perfect! So it's a race!" Jemma pulled out her Chime, using one hand to keep it muted until she was ready. "Last one to the world three worlds over in this direction loses!" She pointed one finger in the direction she was facing.
Dante sighed and reoriented himself so he stood beside her facing the same direction. "A race," Dante agreed. He only then realized that he didn't know how to travel through worlds if he didn't have a goal. He had no idea if he could go only a couple worlds adjacent. For all he knew, that might be the main difference between the Chimera and the Chime, but it was worth it to try to figure it out now and start learning some of the weaknesses of his new abilities.
"Okay, go!" As Jemma said that, she let go of her Chime and ran her fingers through the metal pipes so they clinked together. Their musical clattering soon manifested in front of her, causing the air to ripple like waves of heat off of sun-baked stone. "What, you not gunna go?" Jemma asked teasingly.
"I'm giving you a head start," Dante said with a grin and a shrug. "Then my inevitable win will be even more impressive."
Jemma scoffed. "Sure," she said. "And we're racing to three worlds over in a straight line, okay?"
"Three worlds over," Dante replied to confirm, "straight line."
"Don't wait around here for too long, or I'm gunna beat ya!" And with that, Jemma strolled through the patch of shimmering air and vanished.
Dante frowned down at his Chimera. He still had no clue how it even worked. He had made it this far purely by the graces of some lucky guesswork.
But if he lost to Jemma, he would never hear the end of it.
Dante opened up the menu that gave him the option to type in his desire and stared at the blank screen.
The Chime worked by facing a certain way and creating a musical note that weakened the fabric between worlds. The same worlds could always be reached as long as the person with the Chime faced the same direction. Travelling south by southwest with a Chime always led to the same world whether you were at home or down the street or halfway across the ocean. You just ended up in a different area of the other world.
A large number of known worlds had been mapped out by cartographers, but Dante didn't have the sort of money to spend on books like that. He had learned by exploring. He and Jemma had found a wonderful beach three worlds north and two worlds east, and one of the best fishing spots was one world west and two worlds north by north east. He was pretty sure he'd never explored what was three worlds in the direction Jemma had headed in, however. A quick squint at the sun suggested he was going mostly south, but a touch to the east. So that meant he had no idea where he was going or what he was about to walk into. But that wasn't about to stop him.
Without typing anything into his Chimera, Dante pressed the button to confirm his unspecified desire.
As he'd hoped, the world split open around him. However, unlike the first time where the worlds lined up to guide him to his destination like a road, they split all around him in 360 degrees like a strange kaleidoscope or the eyes of a fly, making his head spin. There were even worlds above him, and up was a direction he'd never even considered traveling in before.
He blinked in surprise and then shook his head to clear it before starting in the direction he'd watched Jemma wander off toward. He walked slowly, trying to keep track of where one world ended and another began, but it was hard when there were so many options fighting for space.
At one point, he looked up and saw a glimmer of Jemma in the same world that he was in. She had rung her chime and was waiting for the fabric between worlds to soften into a portal. Dante quickly stepped over the line to the next world, and then into the final world and dismissed his Chimera, causing all the other worlds to fade away so he was safely within the one world.
Dante had arrived in a city that was much larger than his hometown. The buildings looked newer, and the streets were packed with people. He breathed in deep through his nose, and the air was fresh and smelled faintly of salt and seaweed. While waiting for Jemma to arrive, Dante crossed his arms over his chest and whistled a little tune to himself.
The market square that Dante had found himself in the middle of was crowded, but it was still and had very little noise, somehow growing quieter by the second. Soon, Dante's whistling was the only sound above hushed whispers, and he stopped as his noise began to feel awkward. Dante felt countless eyes on him. He wasn't sure if it was his sudden arrival that had captured this unwanted attention or his silver hair. Either way, he wasn't sure how he felt about being held in everyone's focus like this.
A faint hum, like from a tuning fork, filled the air, followed by a visual rippling off to Dante's left. Jemma had finally caught up to him. But as the ripples became more pronounced, the whispers raised in volume and agitation. A baby started crying, and the mother clutched it to her chest and sprinted away from the market. Those in the crowd who were armed reached for their weapons, most drawing their blades just enough to threaten Dante with bare steel, but a few unsheathed their weapons completely and started forward.
Dante glanced from the armed men to the shimmering portal, his heart racing and panic rising in his throat. He wanted nothing more than to run, but he couldn't abandon Jemma in this situation. He willed her portal to hurry up so he could snag her and run.
"I'm harmless," he insisted to the people approaching. "I don't know why you're so angry, but we weren't even gunna stay here long. We were just leaving." He summoned his Chimera to his hand so that he could have the desire of "home" typed out and ready to go the second Jemma stepped through the portal.
But before he could lift the Chimera and type, the sound of steel on scabbard came from behind him followed by a cold, thin pressure against the side of his throat. "Drop it," snarled a woman's voice.
Dante was sure that the Chimera gave him way more abilities that he knew, but he wasn't about to use this moment to test if "hardened skin" was one of them. Reluctantly, he let go of his mental focus on the Chimera at the same time that he opened his hand, and the Chimera vanished before it could hit the ground.
"Dante, what did you do?" Jemma asked from beside him. Dante didn't dare turn his head, worried that even the slightest movement would encourage the woman pointing a sword at him to use lethal force.
"Bind them both!" the woman who held Dante at sword point barked. "Bind the bringers of the pox!"
"What?" Jemma snapped. "What pox? Dante! Seriously, what did you do?!"
"I didn't do anything!" Dante insisted. "I don't know why they're mad!"
The people who had been approaching with blades bare had sheathed their weapons again. Others raced forward with steel manacles attached to lengths of chain, and the clacks of their locks snapping shut off to Dante's left told him that Jemma was being restrained. There was a tinging sound followed by a muted clatter as Jemma's chime was taken from her.
Dante took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. He need to stay calm and try to think rationally. Even if chained, they still had a shot at escaping if he could get close enough to Jemma and had enough time to get his Chimera set to take them home. The obvious next step was that they would be locked in a cell, and from there, the way home would be a walk in the park.
A coldness surrounding Dante's hands snapped him out of his thoughts, and he looked down to see that his hands had been encased entirely in metal, the restraint binding his hands together in front of him. He stammered in confusion as terror tightened his chest.
"That'll keep you from using your cursed magic," snarled the man who had latched the restraint into place. A loose chain dangled down from the cuff encasing his hands, and connected to his legs, connecting them so he would have trouble moving faster than a shuffling walk.
The woman behind him kept her blade intimidatingly intimate with Dante's jugular. "March," she ordered, and Dante numbly put one foot in front of the other.
There would be no summoning of his Chimera, nor would there be any tunnels made. He and Jemma were utterly at their mercy.