24 – Path to Ruins
[Kaleidus]
For the first time, I was returning to a plane that I'd already been in before. Many questions were on my mind as the spell activated. Would I return to the same point in time? Even the same reality? Or would I return to a completely different alternate universe, or a reset of all my progress in that plane?
But my apprehension soon turned into confusion.
Instead of the sudden, immediate arrival I experienced in my first shift, or bits and pieces of the Kaleidoscape I started to see in my last couple of shifts, I found myself somewhere almost pitch dark.
I tried to turn on my visor's night vision, only to find that it wasn't functioning.
Glimmers of light flashed in the distance, and my eyes seemed to adjust naturally. I began to perceive clouds of blue gas above my head.
"What the hell is going on?" I asked out loud, as I took in the eerie surroundings. "What is this place?"
More of the blue gas covered the ground as far as I could see, going up to my knees. I couldn't make out what I was standing on because the gas was too dense and the light was almost non-existent.
However, I felt my feet slowly sinking downwards as if stuck in quicksand.
'Agate? Are you there?'
Some kind of indiscernible noise responded in my mind, and I could still feel my connection to Agate but there was nothing comprehensible.
I drew Derflinger in a quick motion, eliciting a cry of surprise from him.
"Partner, I don't like the feel of this place. We better get out of here quick!"
I also felt the spirits of the water stone stirring with fear and confusion.
"You don't recognize where we are either?" I asked.
"Not a damn clue! Hell, I've half a mind to think this is just a dream of some kind! It doesn't feel like a real place. But I don't have dreams!"
Ominous roars and screeches echoed in the distance.
"Those don't sound friendly!"
'F—up–ow!' Agate's voice finally reached me, but it was broken like there was something wrong with the signal.
Her wand was not in my hand and I had no idea where she was.
I drew on the wind stones in my Armoriont and channeled the wind mana using my new blood magic circuits, specifically through the ones carrying Louise' Void affinity and cast a powerful Breeze spell to blow away the gas around me.
But all that it achieved was to reveal even more gas all around.
'…up!' Agate's voice reached me again and I finally made out the words.
On her instructions, I tried to flap my wings, but it was like wading through a thick liquid, and failed to generate any thrust.
I switched to Agate's flight spell despite the exorbitant mana cost and this time burst upwards into the gas.
As if waiting for me to do just that, reality shifted and I found myself suddenly hovering at the bottom of a valley.
Large mountains loomed in the distance, but what really took my attention was the set of floating platforms leading upwards like a staircase.
At the very end of it in the sky among clouds—blue clouds—there was an extra large platform with a gargantuan gate in the middle of some kind of metallic ring structure. More platforms led further into the blue clouds where I couldn't see.
As soon as I saw the gate though, along with the arcane symbols on it, I just somehow knew that this was the pathway to the Root.
The ground shook as I heard another angry roar, this time much closer than before. My eyes made out the shadow of something hurtling itself over a distant mountain top and coming this way.
'RUN! …Beast!' Agate screamed.
I flew as fast as I could toward the Gate, but for whatever reason the flight spell seemed sluggish and what was worse, the gate itself somehow got farther away the closer I flew to it.
Pinpricks of light began to appear in my vision, expanding into swirls of multicolored energy. They looked like cracks in space or reality.
Suddenly the scene shifted again, and the land disappeared. Although the gate, the platforms, the blue clouds and remained, everything else disappeared into the inky darkness of outer space. The swirling lights became stars and galaxies in the distance, though ones closer to me looked like pieces of glass.
Asteroids of all sizes floated all around,
Agate's wand form finally appeared in my hand, and her voice became clear.
'Do NOT open the Gate! We need to find a swirl just big enough to fit us and stable enough to jump in!'
I did as she instructed and flew around from asteroid to asteroid, looking for the 'cracks' in reality.
'What is this place? Why are we looking for a swirl?'
'This is the Ring of Deterrence. It's a place outside of space and time that protects the path to the Root. It's a conceptual space where technology doesn't work, and only magical forces have any power. None of what you see is real or physical here, it's being conjured by our minds and the other entities that reside here. Those swirls represent pieces of the raw and unformed Creation Mystery of this plane. We need to grab one that's big and stable enough to make the tunnel, but not so big that it overpowers us, trapping us for eternity until it gets absorbed by the Gate the next time it opens, at which point we'll probably cease to exist.'
'Did we do this every time we shifted planes before? Why don't I remember any of it?'
'Yes, but you didn't have enough mana to be conscious of it while I directed things, and there was no resistance so we finished quick. This time though the World doesn't want to let us leave and I'm being suppressed, so you've got to finish it by yourself.'
I continued looking for the swirls as we talked mentally at high speed. These things were quite difficult to find. Not only were they fairly far apart, after checking ten all of them had been too small, in some cases disappearing right after I got to them.
'Oh no! It's here!'
Hundreds of asteroids were annihilated in an instant by some kind of energy blast to my left. I knew without looking exactly what it was.
The Beast.
Just my luck. Why exactly were we being chased by this thing? I thought this wasn't supposed to happen unless I tried to bring other people along!
'All we had were conjectures before, I guess we were wrong! If you ask me, it's probably Derf or the water spirits' fault!'
Another earth-shattering roar hit me and literally shattered the asteroid I was on, blowing me into another one quite a distance away.
Although we appeared to be in "space" this obviously wasn't a vacuum.
"Partner, that is most definitely out of my league, please don't try swinging me at that thing!" Derflinger warned.
I removed myself from the indentation my body made in the rock and turned to look at the Beast but found it a blurry shadow with a red outline as if my mind couldn't comprehend the image.
All I saw were numerous sharp appendages, and an open maw lined with teeth the size of my body. The air around it was warped as if its very presence was destroying anything that got near.
I cursed aloud and flew away as the Beast came hurtling towards me.
Another flash of light and I was overwhelmed with pain. Unable to dodge completely, both my legs had been disintegrated by the strike.
'Fuck! Do something! Help me or we're all going to die!' I mentally screamed at the spirits of the water stone.
The Armoriont quickly regenerated flesh at the ends of my legs, but I didn't bother with the legs themselves. I didn't need my legs to move right now, as I was flying with magecraft. Perversely, the loss of my legs meant a reduction in mass, so I could fly faster.
The water spirits sent a feeling of both agreement and confusion at me. They would help, but didn't know how.
'Hide us!' I sent back an image of what Cromwell had done to block Agate from spying on him, and superimposed that on the current situation with the Beast taking Agate's position. 'Hide us from the Beast's senses!'
Another barely dodged energy blast from the Beast and now I only had one arm and the right side of my chest left.
Could I even survive this much damage? The pain would've been more than enough to disable any normal person but the Bionanite Swarm kept my brain functional.
'This isn't your real body! The damage you're taking will probably be gone once we get back to reality,' Agate answered. 'But if you die here then it's all over.'
Finally the water spirits cast their spell erecting a bubble of sorts around me.
I glanced at the Beast and saw that it had stopped moving. It seemed to turn its head all over, before jumping off an asteroid in a different direction.
It worked!
The Beast roared again and the bubble around me started cracking.
Then the Beast turned its head toward this direction again and sniffed.
No time to waste! Before the bubble could pop, I resumed the search for the swirling energies.
'There!' Agate pointed one out to me.
By sheer luck, we'd found one fairly close. But could I make it in time?
I charged towards it at full speed without a second thought, sinking every last drop of mana I had into the flight spell.
The bubble popped after another roar, and the Beast moved immediately. In an instant, the gap between us was closed.
'Come on! So fucking close!'
A shadow fell over me as the Beast arrived, its jaw open and ready to devour me.
"Eat this!" Derflinger yelled as he took over my arm then released all of the energy he had stored up in a single attack.
The slash of light smashed into the Beast to no effect but managed to push me backwards via Newton's Third Law into the swirl just before its jaw clamped down.
Within the swirl I felt my consciousness slip away peacefully as the pain receded.
Then I remembered that we weren't supposed to let the swirl overpower us, or it'd trap us for eternity.
'Sorry…I'm out of mana! It's up to you now…the spell is already active, you just need to hold on until we jump…!' Agate prompt shut down after that message.
Fuck. I strained to keep myself awake and started draining the rest of the wind stones I had on me to circulate more mana, as if Magic Resistance might help.
When that wasn't enough, I realized there was only one option left to me. Reinforce my brain. Using wind mana…hahaha.
Damage to my physical body wouldn't be permanent right?
Agate couldn't answer.
Ah…well, I guess I had a good run.
O O O
I re-emerged from Kaleidoscape in outer space above the moon of Earth M2, the same place where we'd left on the AAPV, as the closest interplanar Waypoint outside of Scion's barrier.
I breathed a sigh of relief as all my body parts were in tact, despite having a terrible pounding headache.
In the vacuum of space, I could not survive long without the AAPV, so I had to get to a base quickly.
Agate still wasn't responding, but I knew how to cast the Wormvoid portal spell myself. Unfortunately, I was quite literally running on fumes at this point, and was forced to drain energy from the Armoriont to cast it.
I had only a few wind stones left in reserve, and I wanted to keep them for future emergencies like what I had just experienced, as I could only get more by going by to Halkegenia, and that was going to be rather dangerous.
Before I cast it though, I noticed something…odd. Contrary to popular belief, the dark side of the moon wasn't actually dark as in lacking light. The word referred to how it wasn't visible from the Earth and was unknown to humans. In reality, it did receive sunlight, though at night time it was much darker than the near side because the near side also receives Earthshine, light reflected off the Earth.
Right now the dark side was illuminated by sufficient light that I could see the surface well enough from my position in space.
Offensive Bias came back online once we were in physical reality, and I switched my visor to telescopic vision and honed in on where the M2 dark side moon base was supposed to be.
To my surprise, the base appeared to be nothing more than ruins.
What the fuck happened? I did not have the mental energy to be dealing with any more crises at the moment.
Now I couldn't see the Earth from this angle, but I guessed that if the moon base had been destroyed somehow and not rebuilt, the main base on the surface must be destroyed too.
I therefore quickly cast the portal to the intraplanar Waypoint on the Earth Refuge moon base's vacuum chamber instead.
To my relief, this base was still standing. A few buttons pressed and the repressurization process began.
Soon I made my way to the command room and the voice of Enduring Witness greeted me.
"Get me to a bed, I'm…about to collapse," I said, then I did just that.
O O O