Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny
Chapter 6: Return to Sender
Unknown Location
Through the Portal
Portal Entry + 5 Seconds
Louise came through the portal's far side almost two meters off the ground. She landed in a roll, surprisingly on wet grass, not dry lunar regolith or Hive floor plating. Definitely no longer on Luna then. No matter, she had no time to ponder hew new location. She barely came out of the roll and brought her weapon up as the first Taken thralls emerged through the portal behind her.
She emptied the cylinder at them, killing ten of the abominations with nine shots, the last due to a combination of lucky overpenetration and the Thorn's cursed projectiles. That tenth thrall withered and died with a menacing black spike protruding from its chest, the weapon of sorrow proving effective even against beings of pure darkness. As before, the unholy green orbs of their remnants floated toward her Thorn, replenishing itself and becoming temporarily more powerful. Just in time to engage the first Taken knight to emerge from the portal.
Louise kept firing, staying close enough to absorb the remnants as to avoid the need to reload. Just as before in the Hellmouth, the Taken kept coming, but this time they were funneled through a narrow choke point. She shaped her light into a vortex grenade and threw it right in front of the portal. The next dozen or so Taken creatures that emerged were ripped apart in the swirling energy.
The vortex gave her just enough time to charge another nova bomb. She pooled the light in her palm and threw a three pronged shattered blast, exploding around the portal like a nuclear shotgun and erasing the next batch of Taken to emerge. Louise's heart fluttered as she realized that the attack caused the portal to weaken. It was beginning to flicker as the connection strained against the powerful assault. The voidwalker drank deep from her light, unleashing one, two, then three more volleys of radiant explosive power.
When the blast faded and the dust settled enough to see again, the portal to the Hellmouth was gone, replaced by a series of craters that ironically enough reminded her of an impact pattern on Luna's surface.
"Well, that was something." Saito said, appearing just over her left shoulder. The ghost had wisely stayed hidden during the battle. Even though the Taken's weapons probably could not harm him, he had nothing to personally add to the fight.
"They've never done that before. Must be getting pretty desperate without their king." She observed.
"It's you they want. You killed Oryx, so you're the most worthy of replacing him, whether you want the job or not. It doesn't help that you've killed most of his ready made successors too."
"Louise the Taken Queen doesn't sound all that appealing to me. I think I'll pass." Louise quipped as she finally took a moment to compose herself and look around. With all immediate threats gone, she attention went to figuring out where exactly the mysterious green portal had dumped them. Sure, at the moment, anywhere had been better than being drowned by a Taken horde in the Hellmouth, but that was then.
"Uhh…" Saito began, his uncertainty triggering all sorts of alarms in Louise. "This is pretty strange."
"What kind of strange are we talking about? Having my peaceful trip to Luna interrupted by obnoxiously rude Taken in battalion strength is what you're measuring against." She told him.
"Way worse than that." Saito's serious undertone made Louise feel like a lump of ice was now stuck in her lower abdomen. She had a bad feeling about what was coming next.
"What is it, Saito? Where are we?" She asked quietly.
"I don't know." His answer stopped her cold. Saito was a ghost, an amazing being forged of the Traveler's light. He could hack into alien networks, open doors locked with Hive magic, guide his guardian through Cabal warships, simulations of alternate futures, and even variable reality in Vex strongholds. He never 'did not know' what to do.
"I'm not detecting any signals. None, at all, on any frequency. No City transmissions, Fallen or Cabal chatter, or Vex data links. Not even anything on Hive communication methods." He explained.
"Is there anything that could cut off all traffic that you know of?"
"No." He said bluntly, his shell spinning in frustration. "At least, not in a place like this." He motioned to the natural clearing they were in. "Not even in a Vex simulation of a place like this. Nothing I can think of that could block radiation that well would look like a grassy field under an open sky."
"Well, there has to be some explanation." Louise said.
"The only one that comes to mind is distance. There's no planetary surface in the Sol system this radio silent, even beyond Neptune. The only logical explanation is that we're really, really far away from… oh, that's not good." He muttered, half to himself.
"What is it?"
"We're in a stable, natural gravity field of 0.972g." Saito reported. They both shut up, because they both knew that there was no habitable world in the Sol system with that gravity measurement. They would know, they had visited them all repeatedly. That could only mean that they were well and truly lost. Even the Drifter hadn't gone this far off the map on his legendary troublemaking adventures.
"Saito, are there two moons in the sky?" She asked her ghost. Of all the broken shards of memories that she still had of her distant past, she never lost that detail. The world she came from was Earth-like, and had two moons. She had a feeling, a cold, sinking feeling, that she knew where she was, at least what planet it was.
"Scanning." He said, spinning around and running his sensors at the cloudy sky. "The clouds are too dense for optical imaging, but I am reading gravitational distortions that would be best explained by two orbiting moons, one smaller and one larger."
"Saito, remember how I always said that I'm from another world? Well, I think that's where we are. There were two moons where I came from, and this place just feels hauntingly familiar." She told the floating ball, worry in her voice.
"If that's true, the amount of energy necessary to generate that portal across interstellar distances must have been enormous. The Taken sure didn't do it."
"It was probably formed from this side. It had to have happened at least once for me to have ended up in the Hellmouth in the first pl..." She began.
"Movement on your seven." Saito chirped, interrupting. Louise spun around, Thorn raised and ready to extinguish whatever beings lurked in the shadows behind her green targeting reticle.
Instead of projecting spikes cursed death toward them, she slowly lowered the barrel toward the ground, but not quite at ease. Two humans had emerged from behind the cover of solid, mature trees. They weren't carrying weapons, or at least nothing she or Saito could identify as one, certainly no guns, although one did have a wooden staff. Instead of looking threatening, they seemed to be awestruck, probably having witnessed her devastate the Taken that pursued her through the portal.
A moment later, Louise froze as her mind processed the image. These two weren't complete unknowns. She recognized them both, the sight screaming familiarity at her, yet her memory failed to recall any useful information about them. They were from her previous life, her time before the Light. That right there was all the confirmation she needed, but it only raised even more questions.
Tristain, Halkeginia
Near the Tristain Academy of Magic
Moments after Portal Opening
Colbert and Osmond took cover almost as soon as the portal opened. The strange, terrifying creatures that poured out of it were unlike anything either of the two men had ever seen in over a century of combined experience. So too, was the first figure that emerged from the portal only moments before. Obviously human, unlike the monstrosities she was fighting, and rather easily killing, if the spell worked correctly, then that should have been Louise. The problem was, they had both seen plenty of Louise in the last year, and she could neither move and fight with such violence, nor cast anything like what they had just witnessed. She still had a wand, gun, something of some sort, but nothing they could recognize.
What the hell had happened on the other side of that portal? It had only been a few hours since the original summoning ritual. If that truly was Louise, something very strange had undoubtedly occurred.
They both underwent a visible sigh of relief as the small woman obliterated the last of the monsters, and destroyed the portal with her unknown magic. Then, a small floating creature appeared, and she began to converse with it, although neither of the Tristanians could understand the language the pair were speaking. Osmond, not quite so accustomed to being out in the field in his old age, stepped on a twig. Immediately, the figure whipped around, strange wand raised straight at Colbert. Like a pistol, the Flame Serpent realized after a split second. She lowered it slightly as he opened his palms, thought not quite dropping his staff.
"Louise? Is that you?" Colbert asked hesitantly. The figure stared at them for a few moments, and then the black helmet she was wearing just...disappeared into a mist of light. Beneath was a face and abundance of pink hair that they recognized immediately. But not the look on that face, or in her eyes. Colbert immediately hardened his resolve. Those were the eyes of one that had seen death and did not blink.
"How?" She asked disbelievingly after remembering to switch back to a language long since disused. "How are either of you still alive?"
"What do you mean? What was supposed to have killed us?" He could not help but ask, confused as he was.
"Time, of course. Either you're immortal, or you've found a way to reverse time. Which is it?" She asked, in a completely serious tone, as if either were actually possible.
"I'm sorry, Louise, but I'm afraid we have no idea what you're talking about. It's been half a day since you cast the summoning ritual, and were...taken through that portal." Osmond interjected, just as confused as either of them.
"Half a day?" She laughed. "It's been one hundred and seventeen years, four months, and nine days since I 'left' this world."
Louise then realized almost as soon as the words left her mouth that she didn't actually know that. That was the official time count according to Saito, and she had no idea how long it had been between her death and Saito resurrecting her. Probably hours or days, but a few decades at most. Still, that did nothing to change the utterly impossible fact that these two men were claiming that she had been teleported back to the same day that she had left this world. Even the Vex would be challenged by attempting such a feat of time manipulation across light years. If they could do that, they would have already won.
"A hundred years? That's…" Colbert began to comment.
"Just as impossible as me being here, in this time." She looked around, finally spotting the academy's towers above some of the trees. "What did you do?"
"We cast a...spell forbidden by the church, one that we believed would summon you back. It was risk, but worth it to rescue a student in peril. At least it seems to have worked." Osmond told her. He left out the bit about doing it because he was terrified of what Louise's mother would do when she found out about this mess.
"Maybe it was forbidden for a good reason. I've known about this spell for all of a few seconds, and I'm already thinking of ways to abuse it." Louise countered.
"Fortunately, we were successful on the first try. I'm sure we can keep quiet about it being used once." Osmond went on.
"Twice." Louise corrected him.
"We only cast the spell one time." Colbert said, wondering what she meant.
"That's right. Now, do it again and send me back. I have places to be, monsters to kill, and things to learn, none of which involves me staying on this underdeveloped rock any longer than necessary." Louise told them, crossing her arms over her chest plate.
"I'm afraid that's not possible." Osmond told her.
"You just did it." She pointed out the obvious to them.
"You misunderstand, Louise. This is not a transportation spell. Its only purpose is to summon a person to the location of the magic circle used in the casting. It only works in one direction. There is no known magic that can return you to the location you were summoned from."
"I've done this trip both ways now, and you're telling me that it's impossible to do, even though I've already experienced it? How is that supposed to make sense?"
"The summoning ritual you cast earlier today works much the same way. It opened a portal to a creature, with the intent of bringing that creature to the circle. The target of the spell is not controllable. There is no way to make it send you back that we know of." Colbert explained.
"Besides, aren't you happy to be home?" Osmond asked her.
"Home?" She laughed at them, looking around the forested clearing. "Home is a feeling, not a place, and I'm not particularly feeling it, stranded an incomprehensible distance away from everything I know and love." Louise grumbled. "Thanks for giving me an escape from the Taken, but I'd rather still be in the right star system."
"Well, some rest in your own bed may help. Let us return to the academy. It's been a harrowing day." Osmond commented, glad that the night's events were seemingly at a close. Louise tried to think of some reason to say no, or to not just do what he said, but could not. If she were to reverse, or reverse engineer, whatever strange magic they had used to bring her here, she would need to first understand what it was. An academy would be a good start. She began to walk toward the towers in the distance, having no other objective.
"What's a star system?" Jean Colbert asked her with genuine curiosity. Louise struggled to avoid burying her face in her hand.
"Saito." She said flatly, motioning toward the bald man. On que, the ghost appeared, floated over, and began explaining the concepts of orbital mechanics to the fire mage. At least she didn't have to teach Saito a language first. She reformed her helmet around her head and sighed, taking comfort in being fully buttoned up. This was not the kind of adventure she wanted right now.