RINA ELAVENA

I pouted as I sat on the edge of my now much larger island. Numara was still angry at me even though it had been an hour. My storm had reached the first crawler and it was being hammered by the winds. I really didn’t want to kill anyone else, so I forced the cyclone to the other edge of my storm’s boundary.

Looking down, I saw that the sand was rushing in like water as it filled the massive hole that my tornado left behind. While I watched, I saw something moving as it skirted the edge of the hole.

“Numara! I’m sorry. Can you please come here?” I called for the little fox.

He huffed but made his way over to me. “What?”

“What is that?” I asked pointing at the still just barely visible side of the creature.

He pulled in a deep breath. “Sand worm! Oh, those poor fools.”

“What is it? And don’t tell me a worm that eats sand.”

“It’s one of the top predators on the planet. That thing must have been lured here by the Aserite waves you’re putting off. Not to mention the gallons of water that are seeping through the sand that hasn’t seen water in centuries!” I moved my hand before he could bite me again as the tone of his voice was suggesting he wanted.

“I’m sorry. I did have a, goddess knows, how long fall this morning. Maybe I hit my head,” I said pointing at the sky above us. “Not to mention, I’m pretty sure I was EATEN this morning.” Numara shrank back a little from my onslaught. I sighed and held my hand out for him. “None of which is your fault. I know you’re trying to look out for me.”

“It is all a little moot at this point. That thing is going to eat everything within a five-hundred-kilometer radius.”

“Don’t they have any defense against these creatures?”

“Yeah. Moving. The sand worms are large and destructive but relatively slow. Likely, this one was nearby or even already under us.”

“Is there no way to help? One death for today is already a bit much for my elven blood.”

“We’re in for a rough future if death bothers you.”

I waved my hand at that. “Death is a part of the cycle. We all must die. I just don’t want death that is wasteful. If people come challenging me then I will defend myself, but this and that are two different things.”

“I guess that’s not too bad an ideal to maintain.” Numara looked down at the Turtle. “Maybe if we created some monsters, we might be able to distract it, but they need to get their Crawler moving again.”

“Then let’s do it!”

“Let’s move to the top of the island.”

The island shook as it grew larger. The storm had to grow to contain it in its entirety. Thankfully, the tornado part was about over and only had a few more minutes left. The island looked like a small mountain island that might be found in the ocean. Sadly, it looked bare as a newborn’s bottom. I would need to find a way to fix that later.

Floating above a large flat section that made up the top of the mountain, I set Numara down. “Alright now what?”

“First we need to visualize what you want to defend you. Creatures that you are in sync with your mind. I’m not sure how this will go given that you’ve come from another world.”

“The voice in the sky did have trouble when finding a creature to work from my assistant, though I’m glad to have met you.”

“We’ll just have to see what happens then. Now I need you to think. “Begin Vortex Defense Program.”

I did as he instructed, and a large amount of information flooded into my head. Sadly, I could only focus on one thing at a time. Images of creatures that ranged from horrifying to only slightly disturbing rushed through my mind’s eye. None of the images stuck around for more than a millisecond, but it felt like longer as each creatures’ information was put in my head then pulled back out.

When I was sure several thousand images had flashed through my mind, I was suddenly blasted back from my connection. I whipped my hand across my face and found my nose was bleeding. “Numara, I think we have a problem,” I said as I sat up.

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He turned from, where I assumed, he was watching the situation under us. When he saw me, he ran over with worry written on his face. “What happened?”

“I don’t think any of the creatures synced with me,” I said with a shrug. “Most looked like they’d crawled out of my nightmares, and I don’t have nightmares often.”

“The life on this world has had to adapt to the conditions,” he said. “Hold on. Let me look through my memories.”

While he did that, I finished sitting up. Glancing at the sun, I got the urge to pray to my goddess. I knew it was probably futile since I couldn’t feel my link with her and the fact that she was a goddess on another planet, plane, or whatever. I kneeled and closed my eyes.

“Lady of the Grove. Goddess of Nature and Life. Your humble servant Rina Elavena misses you terribly. There is no green here. What should I do?”

I wasn’t sure how long I kneeled before I realized that all the sound had vanished from around me. Opening my eyes, everything appeared to have frozen while all the color had been drained to a dull gray. I looked over and found Numara was also frozen in place.

“My dear child. What a cruel fate the universe has placed on you.” A voice I knew every well said from above me. Jerking my head up, the forests from home grew before my eyes over the island. The green and brown instantly made me happy though it was tinged with a bit of homesick as I knew I would never see them again.

“Lady Kura! You have answered me!”

“When you failed to appear in my realm after your death, I feared something more sinister had transpired, though, given the truth of the matter, it might be crueler where you’ve ended up.”

“Can I come home?”

“I’m sorry child. Four hundred years have already passed since your death. Souls that are picked such as yours are forced into that coil. There is nothing I can do.”

“I see.”

“I cannot bring you back to me, but I can give you a gift.” There was a flash of green light then a seed floated down into my hand. The amount of life energy I felt from it was no joke. This one seed would have been an elf nation treasure. Lady Kura’s voice returned only much weaker. “There are no gods where you are and I have essentially broken the rules to talk to you, but I felt you had earned it from your deeds to me in your last life. This time I will pray for you.”

Large cracks started to appear all around me. I could feel time returning to normal. “Lady Kura! You were a mother to me. Thank you for all the guidance you gave me! I will never forget you!” I shouted before the link vanished.

“And you were… like a child… to me. I will… miss you greatly.” The gray world around me vanished but it would stay with me forever. I carefully whipped the tears from my eyes and held the seed that was barely larger than the tip of one of my fingers to my chest.

“I got it!” Numara shouted bringing me back to the world.

I sniffed clearing my nose. “What is it?”

“You can make some of the airplanes from earlier. Just embed consciousness in them.”

“Make a golem. Sure, I can do that, but it will require me to use Aserite,” I said. I figured he’d be against, so I hadn’t suggested it earlier.

“As long as the sun shines, you’ll never run out of Aserite. You just have to be careful the humanoids don’t pull too much at one time. Same with your spells and anything else you do, just be careful not to use too much at one time.”

“The sun gives me Aserite?” That was the first thing that was different from mana back home.

“That’s right. The sunlight is pulled into your storm much like the sand is. From there it goes through a process that uses some chemicals in the air to produce water and oxygen. Aserite is a by-product, but people long ago began to focus on it rather than the main thing of water.”

I nodded a few times. “I see.” Though I wasn’t sure what he meant by chemicals, I felt I got the general idea.

Numara saw through me though, “Sure you do, but enough on that for now. Let’s make an Aserite Driver.”

“Aserite Driver?”

Numara put a paw on his face. “The engine, or heart of the… golem.” I held back my chuckle at the fact he changed mid-sentence for me.

“That? That’s easy, if I had some metal it would be better, but stone will work.”

I moved my hand and a few chunks of the island flew towards me. I formed it into the shape of a man with large wings. I thought about making into the shape of the things that flew through my storm earlier but didn’t want to cause any confusion. In the chest, I created an engine that was much the same as I saw earlier. I made a few improvements just to let the Aserite flow easier.

Placing my hand on the golem’s heart, I thought about what sort of personality I wanted ti to take. A defender. The golem shuddered as the stone smoothed itself out a bit. It saluted me with a hand to its heart. I looked at Numara. “What kind of weapons do they use on this planet?”

He closed his eyes. “The main weapons are guns. Do you know what that is?”

I nodded. A tribe of dwarves used them back on my world. They were loud and deadly. Though suffered from a slow firing rate. I didn’t know how to make them, instead, I created a magic sigil on the golem’s hand that would allow it to shoot fireballs. It would need to pull ambient Aserite from the air to fuel it, but it could still fire one every thirty seconds or so.

I was in the middle of making another one when there was a loud explosion. Numara and I rushed to the edge of the island to see the Sand worm had surfaced and was surrounding the turtle that had stopped moving. Glancing to the other side of my storm, the other turtle was still moving towards me seemingly unable to see the sand worm.

The loudest sound I had ever heard sounded out prompting me to look back to the stopped turtle. The large tubes that were extended all around it had all fired as soon as they saw the sand worm. Large chunks had been blown off but there was still plenty of worm where that came from.

The shiny golem… plane that had been circling it tilted to one side and fired its own weapon. This was completely different from the other weapons. What looked like a beam of light sliced through the air and made a large gash that extended through the worm nearly completely. I could tell it hurt it more than the other weapons as it started to thrash and the whole desert around the crawler lifted and crashed down. The sand worm had to be at least two kilometers long.

“I’m not sure how much help you’ll be, but go assist them,” I ordered my golem then turned to get to work on more of them.