After a moment of pure darkness, we were somewhere else. I couldn’t see anything.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came, even when I desperately tried to speak. I frowned, and a shiver of terror wormed its way down my spine as I realized that I couldn’t make a sound. My throat was working just fine - but no sound came out no matter what I tried.

Were we in a vacuum? Did vacuums even exist in this dimension? I started to hyperventilate as I imagined suffocating to death in space, only to realize that I was breathing just fine.

So we weren’t in space, even though this place sure looked like it. Or this dimension’s version of space had a handy supply of oxygen. I took a few calming breaths, and restarted my analysis of our situation from the beginning. The initial panic was starting to fade as I noticed that nothing was immediately killing us, so I carefully probed our surroundings with my senses.

I didn’t feel like the laws of reality here were shattering my body apart, or anything like that. Sure, the stillness, lack of sound, and total lack of light was uncomfortable - but nothing was actively threatening me right now. I felt like I was standing on solid ground, even though I couldn’t see anything below me. In other words, the floor was invisible, but present. As I had already checked, it was possible to breathe here, although making sound was impossible, and I still couldn’t see anything at all.

At least, not with my regular eyes.

I swapped to my soulsight, and confirmed that the rest of our group was also here.

Came Anise’s mental voice. She sounded shaken, but otherwise unharmed.

I said. Then, I realized we had a solution for the lack of light.

Anise obediently jumped up and down a few times, and I quickly located her.

After a few rounds of trial and error, we got another working magical lantern.

Which was fortunate, because it looked like Anise’s mother had been about to start panicking and wandering off, and most of the other adults looked panicked and confused. The four of us looked notably calmer, because we could talk to each other using the friendship bracelets, but the adults were just confused right now. Once Anise’s mother saw the rest of us she seemed to relax, and immediately returned to Anise’s side to start checking up on her.

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, as if she were trying to speak, but was foiled by the strange lack of sound in this pocket dimension.

Anise held up her finger, and then started trying to convey… something by playing charades with her mother. But I had no idea what Anise was trying to convey, and her mother seemed just as confused.

Meanwhile, Sallia’s parents had also started to group up around her, and Old Mo was carefully studying me as well. Unlike the other adults, Old Mo wasn’t carefully examining me to make sure I was all right. Now that he knew we were from the Market, he probably trusted me to assess my own health. But he still looked worried.

Felix rolled his eyes, and a moment later, his endless origami paper kit appeared in his hands. He started handing people pieces of paper, as well as a few writing utensils.

Even though we couldn’t make sound, since we had light and writing utensils all of us should be able to communicate with each other.

I grinned at Felix.

I sent him.

Sallia was the first one to write a message to her parents.

I’m okay. Nothing hurts. I think the reason we can’t talk here is somehow related to the laws of this pocket dimension, wrote Sallia. A few moments later, Anise just wrote that she was okay, before hugging her parents.

Sallia’s mother seemed to relax even more as she read the first part… only to look completely and utterly confused as she read the second half of Sallia’s statement.

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Perhaps mentioning conflicting laws of reality wasn’t the best way to talk to the parents about the situation. That would probably just confuse them.

Anise’s parents were writing back to her, but I concentrated on Old Mo, who seemed to be waiting for me to communicate with him.

I only hesitated for a few moments, before I wrote my own message to him.

I’m okay. I don’t detect any major issues with my physical body, and luckily, reality itself isn’t tearing us apart or anything like that. This pocket dimension’s laws of reality seem pretty similar to the rest of the world. Are you hurt? I wrote before passing the message to Old Mo.

I’m okay, little Miria.

I nodded to myself, before I made the lantern brighter to get everyone’s attention. Then I wrote a quick message in large letters, to make sure everyone could read it.

Can everyone here read and write? And does anyone have any pains or unusual problems? If you hurt somewhere, raise your hand so I can heal you.

After a few moments of hesitation, Anise’s father raised his hand. I checked him over, and confirmed that he had fallen badly on his ankle and twisted it. It wasn’t a severe injury, and it would probably heal naturally in a day or two on its own - but it would hinder his movement.

I healed it up. I was running a bit low on alteration essence, but letting someone wander around on a hurt ankle would make it that much harder for him to respond to an emergency.

Nobody else seemed to have any real injuries, so I went back to inspecting the pocket dimension we had fallen into.

There was darkness in every direction, and every single direction seemed to stretch on for all eternity. It was also filled with manifestation essence, and nothing else. Even the usually-present binding essence wasn’t here. Which would eventually pose a problem for us - Anise’s mother and Sallia’s father both had metal limbs that required essence to keep working, and unlike us, the natives of this world seemed to absorb binding essence from the air to replenish their reserves. In a few days they would just lose the ability to maneuver their mechanical limbs entirely, which meant we were on a time limit. Even if we had plenty of food and water squirreled away in my dimensional pack, after a few days we would still start running into major logistical issues.

I also realized that the place we were in wasn’t uniform.

Interspersed throughout the endless darkness were large clumps of rock, dirt, and various other things stuck in random piles around the area. Every so often, I also noticed a new pile of dirt, stone, and random plants as it was thrown into the area by a new portal. The problem was that those portals weren’t very good ways to exit this pocket dimension - we would probably get killed by the stones that each portal vomited into the area if we even got too close to them. Having hundreds of thousands of kilograms of stone suddenly smash into someone was no joke, and might not even leave me with anything to heal.

I said.

I also asked the non-Market members of the group the same question in writing. Everyone stood in a circle and stared at the endless nothing around us for several moments, as we all searched for some way out of this mess.

Except for my mother, who wasn’t mentally present, as usual.

Said Felix.

said Anise.

I winced.

We had a good amount of food, but definitely not enough for several weeks or months.

How about we look for a natural exit? I’m sure that the Zelyrians who designed this pocket dimension must have had something in mind to work as an exit to this place, wrote Old Mo. We just need to find it and figure out how it works. Maybe Anise can get that started?

Why would my daughter be able to do anything with old Zelyrian essence machinery? wrote Anise’s father.

Anise has a great deal of interest in old Zelyrian stuff, especially spellcasting, I wrote. She seems really interested in getting it to work in the present day. I don’t know if she’ll succeed, but anytime we hang out she does talk about new stuff that she learned.

That would at least give Anise an excuse to start pulling guesses and ideas out if we ran into something. Even though she said that she hadn’t translated much yet, I also knew that if Anise learned something valuable from her translation efforts, it would be good to have a groundwork for her to interject ideas into the group.

Anise’s father glanced at Anise for a few seconds, before he ruffled her hair and nodded.

So the plan right now is to explore and hope to find something useful in the darkness? I wrote.

Old Mo hesitated, and then nodded, and most of the other parents followed suit. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was the best idea we had right now.

And so we started wandering through the darkness.