Excerpt: Breach

The city breathed a life of its own. While some might mistake that as a fancy of words, an exaggeration of beauty, in this city it rang true. The scent of magic permeated the entire city – you couldn't look anywhere and not see mythical forces at work. Ignoring any modern understanding of physics or causality, magic was a staple of this city. It couldn't live without it.
However, in one building, near the center of the city, work was going on. The building was no more strange than the others. It was a spire, and the various offices were spinning around the center column. Every once in a while, an office would descend to the ground, letting its occupant out or picking someone up. The spire itself seemed to be controlling everything, proud of its little room children.
The office was a mess, by any meaning of the word. Various devices littered the entire room, haphazardly scattered on the floor, on the desks, even on the ceiling in some places. Some devices seemed to hold a purpose, but the majority were broken – reminding a viewer of various technological marvels – none actually existing in this world of magic, and none actually resembling anything mundane after a first glance.
There is a cube of colors on the floor, the colors changing as someone looks at them. It seems to resemble a Rubix cube, but nobody can solve it, as nothing is right. And there are paintings. Many various paintings, each showing a vision that world should have never seen before. The paintings show technologies beyond the magic that created them. There is a painting that resembles a bird, but seems to be hand made. The canvas stretches between the wooden supports, and if one looks at it, it seems to be a way of piercing the heavens, a way for a human to fly without a spell. A bit useless, when you remember all the flight magics one has.
The only action that one can see in this cluttered office is the action of a researcher. The name tag on the desk reads Nathan Telis, and he is the owner of the office. While the office itself is a mess, the owner is anything but, and keeps a meticulous order of whatever he does. He is working on a small model of an invention, which anybody from our world would recognize as a light bulb. One of his hands is stretched over the model, casting an eerie glow from nothing, while his other hand is flicking quickly through the book at his side, trying to figure out something about the thing.
Magic. That is the one thing that separates the world we are living in from the world that's described, and Magic is just the one thing that completely changes a world. Nathan has powerful magic, but he does not feel like he is satisfied with it. He doesn't know what he can do with this magic, and he is trying to replicate the things he sees in his dreams. Dreams of another world – dreams that affect his entire life.