Author's Note: There. The promised long update. This sits at 2000 words!

Enjoy. I can't think of anything else to say.

Oh, right! IN case you were wondering, experimental theology is the equivalent of physics. Just a different name.

Enjoy, and please review! If you like the story, suggest it to your friends! Have fun! Next update should be up soon!

UPDATE_ This is 7/20/2013. This is a double update; Make sure you read the chapter before this! Chapters 10 to 14 are ALL NEW. READ THEM ALL.

In this world, Chaplain means Scientist. Religion is heavily mixed with EVERYTHING.

A really corrupt world, in other words.

New update tomorrow. Have fun! Review!

LYRA

Lyra quietly shut the heavy wooden door behind her, her eyes intent upon the large accelerator, a pine marten that was Pantalaimon on her shoulder.

Several scholars surrounded the accelerator, among which was Dame Hannah. She waved at Lyra covertly and motioned for her to come over, all the while mouthing "Where were you?"

Lyra quickly arrived at her mentor's side.

"I was sleepy, right?" she whispered to her Headmistress. "Took me a while to get situated."

"Well, get situated faster," Dame Hannah scolded under her breath. "If you miss this, you'll be cursing your soul for the rest of your life. Now hush and watch.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Dame Hannah's voice rang clearly through the large, carpeted room lit by naphtha lamps. All conversations ceased as heads turned to look at her. "The accelerator will be powered up shortly. Chaplain, if you will start the Van de Graaff generator?"

A deep hum resonated around the room as the generator started. There was a tense silence as charges accumulated on the colossal metal sphere, generating hundreds of thousands of volts to power the accelerator. Lyra held her breath as she saw count-down timer on the far wall tick down, down, down, down, to the last ten seconds before the accelerator was turned on…

With a loud blast, the room shook as the accelerator jumped to life. Lyra could not see anything for the thick, metal plating that covered the accelerator, but she knew that a Dust collector was already attracting Dust, and an alpha particle was already being accelerated around the machine…

Then everything went wrong.

Everything turned a sudden shade of blue, then violet, then a deep, angry purple.

And Lyra knew no more.

Lyra slowly opened her eyes. Or, rather, she began to, but she found the full intensity of a blazing sun staring back at her. She raised her hand to shade her eyes out of reflex, and sat up from her sleeping position to look around.

But where was she? The last thing she remembered, she was in the accelerator room! What had happened since then? What happened to her?

Then something else hit her with the force of a hammer.

Everything was made out of cubes.

A desolate landscape stretched out before her. All she could conceive was an endless sea of sand, all grotesquely made of cubes. What she thought were cacti rose out of this lifeless sea, decorating sparsely with green. Other than that, there was not a thing in sight. A sharp outline surrounded everything. It was unreal.

Her breath began to quicken. She stood up, looking around desperately, not even noticing that she was sweating from wearing a coat in the hot desert sun –

There was nothing. Nothingness stretched out before, under, above, and behind her. A lone, square sun hung in noon position high above.

"What the bloody hell is going on!" she screamed to the sky.

"Hush, Lyra," Pantalaimon said in his little voice, his head whipping around to examine the landscape, though there really was nothing to examine. "If there's anything hostile here, you really don't want them to see you."

"Don't be silly," Lyra said, her voice filled with concern and panic. "If there's bloody anything out here at all, I want them to see me. Maybe we can actually find out where the hell we are."

"Fat chance," Pantalaimon said flatly, standing up on his hind legs and crossing his tiny pine marten arms.

"Well, no use in standing here, is there? Let's start moving."

"Like I could stay here without you."

And the two began moving across the endless desert.

Lyra eventually took off her coat and stowed it under her armpit to prevent herself from becoming too hot. They had traveled for nearly half a day, since it was noon when she arrived and it was nearly dusk already. Funnily enough, there seemed to be several ponds of water in this desert. She had been very thirsty when she saw the first. At first, she had thought it to be an illusion and had simply kept trekking. It was only at Pantalaimon's warning did she realize that the water pond was real, and she then proceeded to drink greedily and heartily from it. As such, water was not an issue.

But the time worried her. If night was falling, where would she sleep? She suspected that sleeping in an open desert was not such a good idea, but where else would she sleep?

She was silently pondering this question, Pantalaimon by her side, when she climbed over a sand dune and saw on the other side –

A village.

It was a small village, to be sure, and it was literally in the middle of nowhere. Sand stretched out endlessly on all four sides of it, but the buzz of life went on inside it. Lyra could see many people, thankfully not made of cubes, milling around, trading, arguing, doing everything else normal people did.

Thinking perhaps that she had finally found civilization, she jogged down the hill and headed for the nearest crowd, hoping that they would be able to answer some of her questions. Perhaps they would have some spare food as well, for she was rather famished from her long walk.

Thus she made her biggest mistake of the day.

Lyra approached a gruff-looking man that was arguing with a bearded man in a white apron. When it became apparent that the man was too absorbed in his conversation to notice Lyra, Lyra tapped the man on the shoulders and asked (with no hint of meekness, too):

"Excuse me, sir? But where is this?"

The man suddenly turned to squint at her, his lopsided green eyes staring at her, sizing her up.

"Wha da ya want?" he huffed after a while.

"I was just wondering where this is," Lyra said, rather taken aback.

"Well, hear, hear!" the man motioned with his arms to gather everyone's attention. All conversations ceased as heads turned to glare at the man, each one of them gruff and rough. "This doll here ain't got no idear where she is! A noob!"

As he said this, the eyes that were gathered on him began to shift to Lyra, glaring her down, taunting her silently. In spite of this uncomfortable attention, she stood a bit taller and glared at the man defiantly, with contempt, refusing to feel afraid. After all, she was Lyra Belacqua.

"I don't know what I've done to earn your enmity, but I was merely asking where this is," she said, her voice cold and unforgiving as steel. "You needn't make such a big fuss about it."

The man threw his bald head backwards and gave a harsh, short laugh, his forked mustache twitching as a result.

"'Enmity'? 'Needn't'? Well, boys and girls, looks like we've got ourselves a little aristocrat here!"

The man walked forward, throwing forth his powerful shoulders, bearing down over Lyra. Instead of shrinking, Lyra stood taller and threw the man a nasty look. The man, in response, shoved Lyra hard against the wooden wall behind her. She felt her feet leave the gravel ground as the man held her up against the wall with one hand, his other hand pulled back in a fist a poised to strike.

"Well, ya'll find out, we here don't no get pushed around by stupi' aristocrats. Ya'll find out real goo'."

Then he thrust his fist forward and buried it Lyra's stomach. Lyra expected to feel her gut dissolve in pain, and braced herself, closed her eyes, screwing her face up in pain –

But it never came. She opened her eyes and saw the man before her equally confused as her. She caught the faint blaze of – the only word to describe it would be runes – burning in the air, floating, glowing an eerie blue, before it faded away into oblivion.

The man turned his head, a scowl on his face that was screwed up with hatred.

"You," he gritted through his teeth, and dropped Lyra to the ground.

Lyra rubbed her sore shoulder where the man had held her in his vice grip, trying to free it of its pain. It was enough to make any girl cry. That is, if Lyra Belacqua had been the type of girl that cried.

She turned her head to look at who the man was addressing. It was a tall, sleek, skinny black creature, with a small body but slender, long limbs. A deep, furious purple pair of eyes blazed from the cube, black head. Lyra noted that this creature, too, was made of cubes.

"Leave her alone," the creature intoned. Its voice was curious – it was as if it didn't talk at all, but its voice resonated within Lyra's mind, echoed within the confines of her mind.

"I ain't gonna take no orders from a damn mob. I don' care if ya've earned some 'spontaneous sentience', to me, ya're still just a mob." With that, the man spat at the creature's feet. The creature, however, paid it no attention.

"Leave her alone."

The man charged at the creature, pulling a shiny, silver sword out from nowhere. He raised his sword arm and brought it down hard on the black creature –

But it was gone. All that remained in its place was a cloud of purple particles. Lyra noted that those, too, were made of cubes.

The man scowled. He straightened himself, readied his sword, and turned to face the creature, who was then behind him.

"You do realize you can't land a hit on me with that sword," the creature mused, its voice echoing eerily in her mind.

"Stupi' thing! If ya got the guts, stay still an' let me run ya through! See how tough ya are then!"

Jeering went up through the crowd, taunting the creature, booing it. The man stood in the midst of it all, a maniacal grin on his face, his sword in both hands before him, ready to strike…

The creature lashed out with one long arm. Yet another set of runes blazed to life, floating in mid-air right in front of the man's sword.

The man's sword was blasted out of his hand in a flash of blue light, flying behind and over him in a long, graceful arc, before finally hitting the earth with a dull thud. There was only the brief look of shock on the man's face before he was launched into the air by yet another set of shimmering blue runes accompanied by purple particles. There was an almost comical look of terror on the man's face as he hung in the air for that split second when he reached the maximum height of his flight; he then unceremoniously came crashing down.

He landed with a soft "oof". The crowd visibly winced as the man struggled to get back up. He succeeded in getting into a push-up position, but then his arms gave away and he collapsed to the ground. He did not rise again.

"Someone carry him away," the creature said in a monotone, its voice almost bored. "And leave the girl alone."

Lyra slowly stood up, shaking as the crowd parted around her, losing interest rapidly. She gave a silent look to the creature, conveying one meaning with it:

My thanks.

The creature's unfathomably deep purple eyes locked in with Lyra's pale blue ones. Something exchanged between them as the creature gave a minute, barely noticeable nod to Lyra. Lyra nodded back courteously. It was only then did Lyra notice with a chill down her spine that the creature did not have a mouth.

But too late.

The creature disappeared with a curious sucking sound, as if someone rapidly let loose a drain, and exploded into a shower of purple sparks, leaving Lyra alone in this crowded village.