“You find anything?”

I looked over to see my companion kick a small rock aimlessly off of the floating island we were on. We both watched the stone spiral down until it vanished into a cloud, then she shifted the weight of her massive phase broadsword to her other shoulder. Her small framed body defied all logic on how she could handle such a weapon. The light wind buffeting her cloak revealed her tufted tail twitching impatiently.

“We literally just landed, Si’era,” I said. “Stop disturbing the site and keep your ears on a swivel at the very least.”

I pulled my monocular out from my worn leather bag. Despite the many years that bag had been with me, the insignia of the Azure Dragons Corps refused to fade away. Bracing against the cold wind pricking at my own ears, I peered through the monocular, ignoring my hair whipping in the air.

“It’s an incredible view…” I mused. I could feel my heart pick up in tempo as I realized we had finally made it to the end of our journey.

“If you don’t stay your tail, it’ll start kicking up the dirt!” Si’era scolded. “It takes forever to brush it back to normal!”

She came up to my side with a holomap projecting from her palm, auto-mapping our surroundings with small camera drones silently flying around our surroundings. She cast another brief sideways glance at my bushy tail, probably thinking about how long it would take to brush it when we got back on our ship.

Before us lay endless blue skies filled with cotton like clouds, some clumping together while others wandered by themselves as if they were rebelling from their parents. Flying leviathans I’d never before laid eyes upon were lazily making their way across the sky. They reminded me of a large aquatic mammal I’d read used to live on a long forgotten world of another species. There were floating masses of land like the one we now stood upon. But, despite the rare beauty of these immense islands,the most spectacular part of the view was the fractured sphere above us. It loomed beyond the sky like an ever-watchful eye. One could easily mistake it as a planet doomed by its inhabitants, but it was in fact an incredibly ancient artifact guarding the planet we landed on from any and all intruders. It was thought to be deactivated, since no reports of missing ships have been logged around this sector of space. Even so, it still orbited the planet, now a floating monument to the legacy it had been guarding for eons.

Si’era looked up from the constructing holo map, a confused face peering out from underneath her hood.

“Elmi, the holo birds are broken. Those drones of yours indicate there are buildings within our immediate vicinity, but I don’t see them.” 

I glanced over to my friend, seeing her concentrate on the holomap’s configurations to see if anything was wrong. Looking at the pale green outlines the map was making, it really did show some buildings right around us but to the naked eye, we saw nothing but the yellow grass swaying with the breeze and the tall weathered rock formations.

“My birds can see all,” I assured her, taking my eyes off the map to survey the area. “Even things we can’t see. Don’t forget about that time in Wal’aka, Si’era.”

She smiled sheepishly as she pulled the hood further down her face to hide her embarrassment. When we first met on our first forest grade expedition, she didn’t believe there was a phase spider web, even though my drones said otherwise. She ended up walking straight through it, angering the spider who resided on this particular web. I had to cut her out of the web while profusely apologizing to the spider. She asked me later why I even bothered to apologize. Little did she know, phase spiders are just as sentient as a humanoid and communicated telepathically. Even the phase spider was impressed that I was knowledgeable enough about them, and unexpectedly gifted Si’era phase material for her weapon as a way of apologizing for placing her web in a poor area.

As we meandered around the yellow grassed field accompanied by the tall weathered stone features, I spied an unusual rock formation unlike the other stones. It was small, about waist height but far too perfectly circular. It looked like a pedestal with little rock feet jutting out radially at the bottom. The two of us had put some distance between each other by then, so I motioned to Si’era to head that way. When we both arrived, we could make out a glyph of some kind was etched onto the surface in a runic like language.

“Is this Anke?” Si’era asked, voicing the question in my mind.

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I wiped away the layer of dirt that had accumulated on top for a closer look.

“I don’t think so,” I mused. “The giants would never have made something like this.”

I continued to stare at the glyph until a thought occurred to me. Reaching out, I placed both my hands on the sides of the pedestal. I focused on a singular place deep within me. Realizing what I was about to do, Si’era increased her vigil to watch over me.

Mana. A source of energy used to make phenomena happen. It is difficult to explain how it works without going into high detail, but what should be known is that there are two distinct ways to accumulate it.

One way is to pull it from your surroundings. This way makes it easy to control in great quantities, albeit not as efficiently, and with less density.Pulling it this way, it can be used for simple spells, or to charge the mana lines in circuitry like a lamp switch, or a camping stove.

Then there is mana that comes from within. Denser, exponentially more efficient, and much more powerful if wielded by a veteran mana tech - which are rare. I was what you would call a Specialist in Arcane Grade Electronics, although we’re most commonly referred to as SAGEs. Legend has it that mana used to be used without technology and was used purely organically, but the art of magecraft was lost ages ago.

Focusing on the energy within me, my mana core activated the mana converter attached at the base of my neck’s nerve cluster. I sent the energy racing down my mana line pathways and out to the surface of my body.

Si’era’s Viewpoint

As Elmi poured her mana onto the pedestal, I stood by her side watching our surroundings. We hadn't been to this world before, but so far all I saw was the vast sky and the nothingness below the floating islands. The leviathans were too far to be of any worry and there had been virtually no small critters or even bugs on the island we were on.

I was her guard, but really she could handle herself. But when it came to discovering the unknown, she would get so carried away.. Her SAGE moniker wasn’t just for show. She was often called on to take down rampaging titans, soothe eldritch entities, and most recently, taming a wolf-like land leviathan known as Fenrir to the locals. However, she often forgot her surroundings, getting too absorbed in whatever object was in front of her. But when she got like this, it was when I had to step in and be her eyes for her. Especially when she was channeling her mana into a pedestal of unknown origins.

Suddenly, a bright light flashed from the pedestal. Elmi was still focusing on her mana exchange, but I started to see the rocks around us shimmer as if they were a mirage on a hot desert planet. I rubbed my eyes, thinking that I was disorientated by the light, but the next thing I knew, the tall weathered rock formations were replaced with old rocky ruins of a civilization long since passed.

“Elmi! Look!”

Elmi’s Viewpoint

My unfocused eyes started to come clear again as I heard my name from my ever vigilant friend. The rock structures around us appeared to have changed to their original form. Tall old buildings made of stone. Decrepit and covered in moss. What I wasn’t expecting was that the pedestal that I once had my hands on had disappeared and in its place stood a grand tree, its stone-like bark making it hard to discern if it was a real tree or not. At the top, however, was a canopy of greenery swaying in the wind.

Shaded by the new tree, Si’era and I stood mesmerized until we heard something behind us, like rock against rock being ground together. We turned to see a white slab monolith appear before us. Large, runic text on its surface started glowing a dark purple.

Strangely, I could read this language without knowing how to.

“Si’era… can you read this?”

“I can actually,” she answered. “How am I doing that? I don’t know what it says, but it’s somehow translating for me.” She tilted her head and read the text aloud:

Those who set foot on this land

We Dwarvenkind have doomed our own

We beseech thee, run, flee, fly from this place

The tools we made were meant to ease the burden

The crafts we wove were meant to bring joy

The drinks we distilled were meant for celebration

However, we went too far

We beseech thee, run, flee, fly from this place

We created a grand forge to match the god of earth

We created a grand weapon to match the god of fire

We created a grand shield to match the god of water

Dwarvenkind has never seen such utter annihilation by their own hand

We beseech thee, run, flee, fly from this place

Starships fly, flee, and run

For it looms in the sky, destroying anything and everything

Our greatest creation, the !#%$) lays waste to all

We beseech thee, run, flee, fly from this place

“Si’era…”

 “On it.”

Without missing a beat, she opened her emergency long distance portal, one that goes directly to our ship in orbit, and we both dashed through, leaving our lander behind.

…

Looming in its orbit, the once thought deactivated !#%$) turned its targeting system offline, mana expelling from its exhaust as it watched a starship make an FTL jump away from the system. Echoing in its now empty command deck,

“...We bes%## &^ee, ^(n, f---, }$y from %$#s place…”