18 - Space!

Posted on Thu May 16th, 2024 @ 5:52am by Dungeon Master Sue Donym
Edited on on Thu May 16th, 2024 @ 5:57am

1,501 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Chapter 5 - Travel
Location: New New York
Timeline: 2090

A few days later, Ember and Eldrin had finished it. With a wide grin, the elfin young man held up the prototype - a belt filled with electronics and covered in battery packs. “If everything goes well, this should be the world’s first self-contained flying belt. We just need someone brave enough to strap it on and test it.”

Hearing them as she passed by their workshop, Aurelia decided to check on them. “So you need a victim.”

The two looked a bit shocked and taken aback that she would put it so bluntly, but eventually Eldrin shook his head. “Yeah, I mean, everything checks out right, but there’s really no other way to test it.”

“Then meet me on the roof in ten minutes. I need to go to my room and get something.” With a grin and a wink, she headed out, leaving them dumbstruck.

She didn’t take the full ten minutes - she was up there as soon as she had gotten the lightweight flight suit and helmet on. SHe figured the roof was the safest place to do it though - even if it was only a small test. They were already up there though - and with several scanners Becca, and a fire extinguisher for good measure.

“Ok, how do the controls work?” She asked as they strapped the belt around her and tightened it around her waist.

Eldrin pointed out the control box on the front of the belt. “It’s simple enough. It works just like the broach you made, except that instead of mental control, you use this little control pad on the belt. You have the cardinal directions, up and down. Power switch is here. Beyond that… Well, good luck.”

Ember was a bit more confident. “You’ve got this. How many times now have you survived death? This is just a simple test flight. Couldn’t be simpler.”

“Alright. Well, here goes nothing.” With a grin, Aurelia flipped the power switch which caused the belt to hum slightly and a few bits glowed. Then with a deep breath, she pressed on the up button.

What happened next surprised even her. Rather than rising through the air gently like she expected, like with the broach of flight she had created, it felt like her whole being had been ripped through space, time, and something ELSE and shoved THROUGH reality. She saw lights streak past her and in the brief moment she had her finger on the control, it felt like the universe had spiraled out of control around her and was trying to turn her inside out. When she came to her senses, she realized she was so far above the surface of the red planet that she could blot out the whole of Mars with one hand.

But that wasn’t her most pressing concern.
Her suit wasn’t made for the environment she now found herself in.

Ice was already forming inside of her helmet and she could feel the cold quickly creeping in. She needed to get back, and fast. She figured she only had a few more seconds before she froze to death so she started weaving what survival spells she could into the suit. Heat, air, and a shield so the air wouldn’t escape. It wasn’t perfect, but it would hopefully buy her enough time.

Once they were done and she had a few inches of at least breathable air and wasn’t at risk of freezing to death immediately, she began working on figuring out how to get home. “Ok, I’m probably ok for a few hours. Let’s talk our way through this. We’ve got this. We can get home.”

But she wasn’t entirely ok. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a metallic glint like giant golden wings spread across space. As she slowly turned to see what it was, her eyes widened. She had no idea what it was, but it looked like a giant phoenix, shining brightly in the sun as it glided silently through space directly towards her.

“Maybe I don’t have a few hours.” Without even thinking about it, she pressed one of the random controls on her still active belt, sending her in a random direction.

Once more she felt like she was being pushed through reality, but this time it felt more like reality was being pushed through her. As if she was being split apart through the whole of the universe and the entirety of the universe was trying to fit inside of her at the same time.

As her finger slipped off of the control once more, her eyes rolled back in her head as she nearly passed out. It took an extreme effort of will to stay awake as she once more looked around. This time she couldn’t pick out Mars at all. What she was able to pick out was a small brown and blue orb. It looked like it had some sort of cloud around it. Was that the Mother Earth she’d seen in the histories of this world?

Only one way to find out. Steeling herself, Aurelia tapped the control that she guessed would take her closer for just the barest of moments. For just a blink of a moment, she was in that other space and back in outer space. This time, she was a lot closer. She could see the outline of continents and the moon. Once more she tapped the control. Once more she blinked in and out of that other space.

She must have been lucky because somehow she had gotten it just right to where she was only a few hundred feet above the surface of the planet. Quickly, she flipped the belt's power off and enchanted the flight suit with the flight spell she knew she could control so she could at least get to the surface.

What she didn’t account for was the higher gravity.

She could fly just fine - but only in a generally downward motion. Apparently, her new body in this world having been born and raised on Mars was not exactly made for the Earth gravity that humans had been originally meant for, so for her it was like being under constant pressure. She weighed almost two and a half times as much, and with all the extra gear, she was not in good shape as she did her best to control her crash into the roof of a building in the middle of an all but demolished city.

Thankfully, she was able to slow herself enough that the dust and debris didn’t hurt too much on impact. It just bruised the hell out of her as she rolled halfway across the bombed out building.

Aurelia layed there for a moment just breathing as she felt thankful she was alive. Her survival spells were still running as well, which was a blessing. She’d never imagined being able to travel to another world and now she had not only resurrected to a whole new reality, she was on another planet in that reality.

This prototype was way beyond what they had hoped to create. It was way beyond anything they had even dreamed. They needed to make sure they handled it carefully and correctly.

But first, she needed to figure out how to get home.

Aurelia tried to sit up and failed, flopping back on the rooftop. “Ugh… Stupid gravity. Alright. Let’s see if I can remember that spell matrix we were working on…”

Rather than exhausting herself by trying to get up, She decided to just close her eyes and work on the magic circles within her. Specifically, she was working on that teleportation spell she’d been working on. Eldrin had been trying to explain quantum theory and spatial folding and all this other stuff to her, but a lot of it hadn’t really made much sense yet.

However, after what she just experienced, some of it was starting to make a bit of sense. She was thinking in four dimensions. If she applied some upper dimensional circles, she could align some particles across a flat plane so that two places were one via a higher dimensional conduit.

As she lay there, it took a few tries, but eventually she got something to start to work. Sparks of a teleportation gate started to form. Getting tired, she decided to just brute force the rest of it and went from trying to cast it eighth dimensionally to eleventh dimensionally.

Suddenly, a large square gateway snapped into existence next to her and through it she could see the rooftop she was on not too long ago. Without even bothering to get up, she grunted and rolled through the portal, letting it snap closed once she had passed through it.

As she passed out, she could hear Ember, Eldrin, and Becca scrambling to help her.

 

RSS Feed