24 – Something is wrong

Ishrin was the one to stay behind, to prepare the room for the ritual. As he drew lines on the floor and on the walls all the way up to the ceiling, the girls went out hunting. Liù also joined them, to provide some extra firepower to the team. They were going to need at least three cores, Ishrin told them, to have enough power to punch through the dimensional barrier and join the multiversal stream.

Their plan was simple: they couldn’t venture far out of the cave opening because there were dozens of beasts waiting for them in the plains and on the frozen lake below, agitated and in a state of panic, but what they could do was bait the monsters and have one of them follow them around the mountain until they could isolate it from the rest of the herd. The beasts knew what was happening to the astral realm perhaps even better than the adventurers did, thanks to the crystals embedded in their skin that could sense magic, but unlike the adventurers they couldn’t do anything to prevent their incoming death. Like any living creature, and monsters were the same as every other living creature in this particular regard, they didn’t want to die. And so they panicked, making them much more dangerous but also much more vulnerable to the exploits of an experienced adventurer.

The first beast was killed with almost no effort. As soon as the team managed to lure it on the other side of a rocky cliff, Liù unleashed her deadly beam attack and killed the monster instantly, boring a hole in its body all the way through. Its core was the only thing that the beam didn’t turn to ash, and it fell to the ground right at Melina’s feet. The second and third monsters required a bit more effort since Liù was too tired to attack again, but with good coordination the two girls managed to take them down quickly. They learned very soon that the crystal on the beast’s horn was its weak point and, once damaged or destroyed, the monster was left almost completely blind. It thrashed and spasmed, with the mad strength of fear and panic, but avoiding its attacks became easier than it was when it could still see. Regardless, it was a Tier 12 monster, not to be handled lightly or it could very well kill Lisette and gravely wound Melina.

Ishrin watched the girls leave the room through the corridor, and Melina placed the large slab of stone back where it was to bar the entrance. The monsters could not fit inside the tunnel, and the tunnel was too long for them to even sense Ishrin’s presence here, but still, he had to admit that he did feel safer in the enclosed space of the room. So much so that, even though he still didn’t need to, he closed off the other opening that led to the monolith room with a thick layer of ice and enjoyed the protected and calm atmosphere of the room. He couldn’t feel the realm shrinking anymore. The ticking clock was still ticking, but its sound was muted and distant.

One of the first things he did when the party stopped here was take out a device that blocked the seismic waves of the collapsing mountain from shaking up the room. He initially did so out of safety concerns, but it also helped greatly to stave off the sense of panic and impending doom that was assailing him. And yet, he knew very well that what they were about to do was suicide. Normally, getting out of an astral realm to emerge back in the prime material using anything but the intended portal was hard, but not impossible. It required a lot of power, concentration, and skill. However, doing it at a mere Tier 11, with limited power, with three passengers - one of which was a summon from an elemental plane - while the realm they were in was collapsing… not good. Add to this the fact that they were using his still very much unknown inventory skill to bootleg the process…

Exiting to the prime material was going to be impossible. Thankfully, he didn’t have to. There were other destinations to choose from, relatively close to where they were in the astral.

He sat down cross legged and checked the map of the closest astral points available to him. Above him, a field of stars and glittering streams of matter and energy sprang to life, flowing and lighting the deep blue room of ice with gold and red. Two bright yellow spots glowed in the vicinity, lonely specks of light. The other closest point of exit that he could see was as far as being halfway across the room from him.

He sighed and got up. Taking out a chunk of wood from his inventory, he kindled the fire burning in a corner of the room and looked at the dancing flames, enjoying the silence. The room was dead quiet, only the occasional sound of dripping water from the slowly melting ice right on top of the fire sometimes echoing against the smooth walls of crystallized water.

With methodical, slow movements Ishrin took out a chisel and approached one of the walls. He began to sculpt, whistling a tune while grooves and lines appeared in the ice, snaking around the wall first, then spreading across the rest of the room, its walls, its floor, its ceiling. At the center of the space, he set up a pedestal with three empty sockets for the crystal cores the girls were retrieving as he built, and then he drew the lines that will conduct the power from the pedestal into the grooves in the walls. He felt at peace, calm and relaxed as he added the last touches to the searchlight part of the ritual circle, then to the propeller and the steering wheel. He felt connected, in touch, in a flow state he felt could last forever.

It didn’t.

The sound of a boulder being moved told him that the time was almost up. Lisette appeared first, the pixie Liù nested in her clothes, then Melina. She was carrying the cores and set them down on the ground next to the fire before going back to seal the room back again. She moved carefully as not to disturb the fine lines on the ground that were drawn with what seemed to be sand and dust, etched finely and frail on the ice.

“How did the hunting go?” Ishrin asked, not raising his head from his carving. He was making the last section of the ritual, the most crucial.

“It went okay. A couple of hiccups, but we weren’t hurt.” Melina said.

Ishrin nodded. “That’s good.” He said distractedly.

“We have three Tier 12 cores, as you requested.” Lisette said.

“Perfect.” Ishrin said. “You know what to do with them.” He pointed at the pedestal with his chisel while he sprinkled some yellow dust in a small mound.

Lisette got up and went to slot the cores.

“This ritual,” Melina said. “It looks different than the other.”

“It is.” Ishrin said. “It needs to be much more efficient, much more precise. Luckily, I learned much after our last attempt.”

Melina laughed. It was a strange, nervous kind of laugh, like she was on the verge of tears.

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“So… we can get out of here!” she exclaimed.

Ishrin shrugged. “I hope so.”

“I was almost starting to think that… I could see the edges of the realm swallow the land, the monsters, everything! Ishrin, they are so close. So close. In a matter of minutes there won’t be anything left here. Are you sure you have enough time?”

“I do. Stop talking. I need to focus.” He said coldly.

Melina did so.

Barely a few minutes passed, and now they could hear the sounds of the frenzied monsters banging against the rock of the mountain, desperately trying to escape. Ishrin told the others that he was ready and had Melina and Liù wait at the center of the room, Melina sitting with her eyes close and Liù hugged tight in her arms. He and Lisette went to the pedestal and each grabbed one of the handles of the steering wheel, a mechanism of magic and sculpted jade that looked more like lever than a wheel.

“Ready?” he asked Lisette.

She nodded. “I am.”

“You know where to go?” he asked.

“I do.”

“You know what to do if we encounter turbulence?”

“Redirect it to the aft and bottom shields if possible, engage protocols 13 and Tetra-4 in case of failure. In extremis, pull the emergency stop.”

Ishrin nodded. “That’s good.” He inhaled. He looked at the room long and hard, trying to spot errors in his work, problems, things he needed to fix. In truth, he was wasting time, and he was doing so because he knew the price he was going to have to pay and didn’t want to pay it, and yet he also knew that he had to or nobody was going to get out of here alive. He wasted one second too many.

With horror in his eyes he saw the far end of the room begin to disappear, and in a panic he pushed the central button of the pedestal to initiate the sequence, closing his eyes and summoning his inventory, with Lisette putting her hands in unison with his on the steering circuit and…

An explosion rocked the cavern. He saw, right before the currents of space and time sucked it all away the far end of the room explode as the excess power was routed through broken circuits, devoured by the collapsing of the realm because he waited too long. He tried to scream, to warn Lisette not to use the shields as he told her earlier because they had no aft shields now, but he was already alone. A mind, information racing through the multiversal stream in a raft made of salvaged materials, and when the turbulence came, he thought that all was going to be over.

Lisette didn’t know about the damage that the ritual circle had sustained before vanishing from the snowy realm of the mountain, and thus directed the extra energy of the turbulence, just a fluctuation in the quantum stream of reality, to the aft shield with mechanical precision. She could sense Ishrin, vaguely, and for a moment wondered why he was not doing the same. If he didn’t act within 0.122 seconds of the turbulence, then it was going to go from bad to disastrous. Still, Lisette didn’t panic, nor did she doubt Ishrin. Instead, as she waited for him, she marveled at the strange world that was unfolding before her eyes. Something she had already seen once, but that she found so fascinating and amazing that not even spending an eternity here would satisfy her.

From reading about it in a scroll to actually seeing it… the quantum world, a concept so strange and alien… but she could see it. She could see the strings that held the worlds together. She could see the vibrations of those strings, just like Ishrin said she would, and could sense the power of magic flowing through them and propagating like waves made of something intangible yet so, so powerful.

It was all over in a matter of moments. Something was wrong. Ishrin had eventually activated the shielding but for some reason it didn’t hold as it should have. By all calculations Lisette knew it should have yet it didn’t. Something was wrong. It took her but a moment before her mind reached the one logical conclusion to explain what was going on: part of the ritual was damaged.