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The Core was trying to explain again, but it was also remaking the lights at the same time, perhaps in an attempt to simplify or otherwise clarify the visual representations, which only served to confuse the matter further. Now there were colors and lines and arrows everywhere.

Agh. This seemed like it was going to be a huge time sink, and they were burning daylight here while everyone else was standing around, waiting on him. He decided that he would figure this part out later.

Hopefully.

He returned to the main four spheres, then proceeded to grab the second one.

The world around him shifted again, and while there were lights this time, too, there was something much more noticeable now. Panels. Translucent and luminous. Some were the size of a standard notebook, while others were taller and wider than most doorways. Some had faint images within them, while others were simply blank.

Could this be the teleportation feature, he wondered?

Yes. The Core soon affirmed as much.

The panels were different sizes, because the destination points varied in receptive levels of power. And the ones that had images in them were active, while the blank ones were dormant, sealed off, or otherwise in need of repair. And moreover--

The Core told him to look up, and he did.

There were many, many more panels than he’d realized. What was that? Twenty stories tall? More?

Holy fuck.

The Core advised him to wave his hand with intent and bring those higher panels down to him.

He did so, and then the illusion reacted just as the Core said it would. The panels zoomed down to his level, while the ones that had previously been there vanished into the ground.

Some of these higher ones looked even more peculiar. They weren’t just small. They were tiny. Barely enough to poke a hand through. And they weren’t just blank, either. They were fuzzy and dark. A couple of them were even pitch black.

The Core had no explanation for those, apparently. They were theoretical points of connection, it said. But it had no idea how or even if they could ever be opened.

A little unsettling.

Hector tried to stay on task, though. Did any of these windows lead to Intar? And if so, how could he tell?

And again, he encountered difficulty. Determining exact locations wasn’t so simple, the Core told him, because the relative positions of the World, the Heavens, and the Self had to be accounted for at all times.

What the fuck?