Chapter 4
I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw that reality was no longer in chaos. I found myself standing alone in the middle of a deserted, but otherwise ordinary looking drag-way somewhere in Dragon City. It was still dawn, and the early morning hour explained why the drag-way was empty. So even though the time-quake had changed reality, it apparently hadn't changed my position in time. It was still morning on the same day.
I wasn't sure where I was and so I looked around at my surroundings. After a few moments, I recognized a few of the buildings nearby. There were several newer buildings I didn't recognize, but the older buildings, the ones that had been there long before I had hatched, were very familiar: They were all buildings that had surrounded Penn Stables. In fact, judging by their position, Penn Stables should have been right where I was standing. But it was nowhere to be seen. In its place were several newer buildings and the drag-way I was standing on. As best I could figure, I was standing exactly where I was before the time-quake hit, except that Penn Stables wasn't here anymore. The time-quake had changed reality but had left me standing exactly where I was.
Connor had been right. Word had done something to eliminate him early in his life, before he had ever built Penn Stables. Not only was Penn Stables never built, but that meant that nothing he had done ever happened in this reality.
I suddenly felt very alone. The man who had cared for me and raised me from a hatchling, as well as Artha and Lance who were both like brothers to me, simply didn't exist here. No one in this reality would know anything about them. I was the only one who carried the memory of who they were and everything they had done. And the only reason I could remember them was that I was existing in my own little personal reality now, completely isolated from this new reality since I wasn't supposed to exist here either. I felt very alone.
Wait a minute. Completely isolated? This pocket of space was almost skin tight. How was I able to breath if I was isolated from the air outside the pocket!
A wave of panic spread over me, sending shivers down my spine. Was I about to suffocate?
No, wait. I've got to calm down. Certainly the gear designer would have thought of that. The gear wouldn't be terribly useful if the dragon using it died, now would it. Let's see... Yes, the air smells OK. Not stuffy or stale at all.
It appeared that the gear was recycling the air here in my pocket of space. It was taking in the carbon dioxide I was exhaling, stripping the carbon and returning the oxygen to the air for me to breath again. Whew. That was a relief. Very clever design.
I guess the reason the gear makes me invisible is because this pocket of space basically doesn't exist as part of the space around me. So light traveling through the normal space just keeps on going like I'm not here. To an outside observer, there's nothing here to block or reflect the light, so they see nothing. Interesting.
But since air couldn't get into this pocket of space from the outside, that means I couldn't get food or water either. And I couldn't shut the gear off while I ate or drank because I would cease to exist myself. It looked like I would have to go hungry until this was over. I sighed. It figured that this would all happen before I had my morning breakfast. Oh, well. I could go several days without food if necessary. My stomach would complain, but I'd just have to live with that.
There was another problem: Directing my mag energy into the gear required conscious thought just like walking or any other activity. I had to be awake to do it. That means I couldn't sleep and power the gear at the same time. I'd have to stay awake. I didn't think I could do that for more than two days, so that limited my time even more.
But I had an even more pressing problem: I was running the gear at full power at the moment and my draconium energy was dropping too fast. I couldn't keep this up for more than an hour or two at best. If I used up my energy, the gear would shutdown and I'd vanish into non-existence. The only way to replenish my energy was to eat and get some sleep and those options were out. I sighed. I'd be a lot more powerful if Artha was here with the amulet and Dragon Booster suit, but that wasn't going to happen. Artha didn't exist in this reality and who knows where the amulet and Dragon Booster gauntlet were right now. So I was going to have to find a way to deal with this just as my little old red and blue self.
Scales, my life was complicated. At times I wished I could just be an ordinary dragon whose human was a little old lady who only rode her dragon to church on Sundays. Things would be so much easier. Yes, easier. And, quite dull. And no one would be here to stop Word Paynn, which means the world would be in the same mess as it is now. Sigh. OK, that was enough self-pity for one day. Back to the task at hand.
I didn't think there was any way I could possibly stop Word Paynn within the next two hours. That left me with only one choice. I had to hope that the gear didn't need to be run at full power now that the time-quake had passed. I had to reduce the amount energy I was sending to the gear and hope that the field that was maintaining my pocket of space would hold up. However, if I mistakenly reduced the energy too much, the field could collapse and I'd be a goner.
I summoned my courage and began to slowly back off on the amount of energy I was sending into the gear.