“You don’t see what this means for the future of inter dimensional research. Percy, the project can’t be cancelled! We’re on the verge of obtaining literal unlimited power. Each of the test runs were within expected tolerances!”
Three adventurers sat in the room with tired expressions on their faces while the conversation they could only hear one side of had rage for over the last half an hour. The Kirg brothers were used to working for long winded clients, but typically that would also involve eventually fighting something. This lizard was among the worst of them when it came to grandstanding. Anything at this point would be welcomed to break the tedium.
“How much you want to bet she cracks the runestone?” Mugran chuckled under his breath.
“Five gilder,” Nenlu offered.
“Seven says she’ll throw it across the room first,” Zar countered.
“Nenlu, does it count if I take it away from ’er first?” A lopsided grin curled across Mugran’s face with his one broken tusk.
“What do you mean! No... No,” Professor Dansin’s argument was clearly heating up. “You can’t, you wouldn’t!”
“Sounds like we might not have a job here much longer, not that I mind,” Zar said.
“Hear hear,” Nenlu toasted with an imaginary tankard of ale.
“Babysitting these nobles with their pet projects is decent pay. The experience sucks though. Guild posting was four skulls, that’s supposed to be a city level threat. The only threat here is to my sanity.”
“No fights,” Nenlu gave a sad shrug and ran a grizzled hand across the well oiled links of the massive chain draped over his shoulders.
“That’s for sure bud. I’m itching for some action. Old Mugran there might just keel over from old age at this rate.“
“I’m thirty-seven. I’m not old!”
“Sure you’re not big bro. That’s exactly what an old man would say.”
“Having you twins was not, as our mother called it, ’a happy accident’. No, it was divine punishment,” Mugran concluded. The twins had always been a handful, keeping an eye on them as they worked up the ranks of adventurers was the least he could do to honor their mother’s memory.
“Power! Unlimited power!” Dansin cackled into the runestone “Just join with me and together we will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all of Eshix! I don’t care about the funding cuts, this will pay for itself.”
The professor stomped around her office for another ten minutes or so, tone of the conversation eventually calming down as it went on.
“Alright gents, thank you for staying around here while I was getting that sorted out. Director Percy has agreed to one more test before mothballing the project. It’s the best I could do. Don’t worry, your presence here has been nothing but a boon. I feel a lot safer breaching the barriers of inter dimensional physics knowing the Kirg brothers are here to bat down whatever hell spawn might come out of the rift.”
“Pay good,” Nenlu affirmed. “But boring.”
“Not much to keep him occupied,” Mugran added, “we’re a combat outfit. Research isn’t his strong suit. Eldritch horrors from the void between, that’s where it’s at. Good crafting materials. We’ll be glad to pick this contract up again though if you can get it approved. No need to worry about that.”
Professor Dansin gave a smile as way of response then dismissed the group for another day. Now if only a third of my budget didn’t go to these meatheads I might actually have been able to make some progress.
Unfortunately for the professor, but fortunate for the citizens of Eshix, Azur’s ruling triumvirate had seen fit to require Guild security in the form of at least a third ranked team in all spatial research projects. The town of Eshix was at the forefront of Magitech research but those profitable rewards carried heavy risks. For each breakthrough such as teleportation beacons, recall stones, or the communicator there were an equal or greater number of...less than successful projects.
After an incursion of The Unbidden sixty years prior, the rulers of each of the surrounding countries formed a conclave and signed the treaty dictating that a full first rank adventurer team would be present for any future testing which could result in transference of life. Doppelgängers and body snatchers were an insipid menace at the best of times, catastrophic if a king were suddenly compromised. Second rank teams would be for non-biological transference, third rankers relegated to energy and theoretical implementation. Even if a team failed to contain a threat, the hope was that they would buy enough time to keep a threat from establishing a beachhead in this reality.
With the lab all to herself, Dansin began to prep for the final test run tomorrow.
“I just wish Percy could understand how important this would be if it could be perfected! We are on the cusp of not needing to pull energy from ourselves to power enchantments. Even the lowest pauper could heat a home or travel to a new city for work! The possibilities are endless. It WILL change our world.”
Dansin checked her spell diagrams again for the hundredth time. A spell matrix to draw extra dimensional energy and convert it into something they could use! Just an infinitesimal hole drawn from dimension A-342-CR would result in such a plethora of energy that it would put her not insignificant soul power reserves to shame. Something about that dimension in particular reacted differently than anywhere else in the cosmos. The Guidelines of Physics were quite mutable after all.
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A spell funnel to limit the size of the aperture, with a secondary barrier overlay for safety per standard specs. Her own reserves would fuel the spell, but the city’s SP grid would be tied into the completed construct. Batteries from beneath the citizen’s treasury had been set up to absorb the converted power, or could be turned to forcibly collapse the siphon before serious damage occurred. Protection in layers was most effective.
It was to be an end to the SP tax, Dansin could see it as clearly as the scaled hand in front of her face. Maybe it was a result of the vestiges of draconian blood in her veins, maybe it was the feeling everyone had when asked to pay for what they created. Either way, her work was dedicated to changing the world. A nice little hoard from royalties would just be a welcome side effect really. Being free of the accursed machine that drew a fragment of your soul out on a monthly basis was the main driver. Even if everyone did it, it still left her fatigued for days after the procedure itself.
With a hand on the stabilization frame she let out a sigh, “Soon, this will be the starting point of a brand new world. As long as it doesn’t get dragged down through the bureaucracy first.”
One last look back at her lab then she turned out the lights.
***
“What do you mean something has lodged in the aperture?” Director Percy stood to the side of Dansin who was holding up the spell matrix with a steady outflow of her will.
“I don’t know, but it feels... big,” Dansin said as a droplet of sweat began to form on her crested head.
“How does something ’big’ get stuck in a hole barely a tenth of a nanometer in size?” Percy ruffled the feathers on his nape, then made his call. “Expand the aperture by 50% for one second, then close it back down again.”
“On it...now.”
A sudden jolt of light and heat washed over the lab as the conversion matrix adapted to a sudden influx of energy.
“Dansin, shut it down. Right now,” Percy stated, a quiver of apprehension leaking over into his calmly stated words. Panicking would help nobody.
“Disengaging from the matrix. It...it’s not shutting down?” Dansin quickly went from relieved at the full charge of energy she’d received to apprehension as the spell failed to extinguish itself. “Kirg brothers stand to and be ready.”
Looking around, she could see that the three of them were already positioned around the lab and ready to attack at any moment. Tier three adventures were nothing to scoff at when push came to shove.
Slowly, the spell focus began to rise up from its stabilizing frame. A crack was clearly visible in the cradle from the immense strain the energy surge had created. A brilliant light as bright as the sun herself began to glow.
“I’m cutting the connection!” Percy yelled as he hit the switch to draw power from the city’s grid. Costs be damned, this situation was rapidly deteriorating and indecision cost lives.
A humming sound at the limits of perception emanated from the focus as untold volumes of SP were dumped into forcibly aborting the spell. Lights in the lab and across the city of Eshix dimmed as the spell gone awry was shrunk until the originally fist sized focus was the size of a marble.
Then it bloomed.
Magical backlash sent the civilians sprawling flat while the ork adventurers stumbled before regaining their footing. A four pmeter hole in reality laid bare the destroyed laboratory.
“I’ll take point,” Mugran stated, moving forward to place himself better the void and the civilians. “Backup should be on the way already. Professor, you and the director get away from here. Call in to the guild and let them know what has happened here. We need a purgation squad if this is to be dispelled.”
“Director, make the call and leave. If there’s a chance I can get this back under control... I’ll stay here as long as I’m able,” Dansin handed her communicator to Percy before sharing a look and sending him off.
“Honorable choice,” Nenlu said with a hint of admiration in his gravely voice.
“This isn’t lost if we do our jobs. Now let’s see if I can’t sort out the quantu-”
BOOOM
Dansin was interrupted by a force that rattled her teeth and caused all the lights to flare incandescent.
Silence followed as the four looked at the fire rimmed portal, waiting for something else, however horrible it might be.
Minutes passed by, only the sound of breathing from within the room. Suddenly-
KABOOOOOM
Another blast nearly shattered her eardrums and the world began to sway. “Get out of here before I make you Professor. You are not going to be able to help if you die before the invasion begins,” Mugran motioned to Zar who began to help guide the stunned woman away from the epicenter of the rapidly unfolding tragedy.
“Invasion...what? No... there’s no way something could survive the transition to enter our realm! It.... the barrier...everything thing that comes through is.... on no. Oh no no no. No no no no... how could I be so stupid!”
“Speak quickly!” Mugran tried to get the point of her realization from the researcher before she was knocked out by the next surge.
“Don’t you see?! The spell is an energy transformation matri-”
BOOOOOOM
Dansin wobbled but continued with a slightly delirious look in her eyes, “The transformation matrix is intended to convert EVERYTHING into pure energy. Don’t you see the problem? In the void it would be fine, the vast majority of the universe is nearly empty space! But... but what if the portal opened up on a world?”
“What if that world was hostile?” Mugran shuddered. Everyone had heard stories as children of The Unbidden. Was the cosmos truly such a hostile place? Then again, Azur was hardly a peaceful world to begin with. Was it only natural for the most dangerous, most ruthless to survive and consume all that stood in their way? By highjacking the spell matrix, invaders could lob anything they wanted to at the city without recourse.
Mugran’s musing was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the greatest shockwaves yet.
BOOM-BOOOOM-KRACKOOOOOOOM
The staccato beat of detonations ripped through the connection and blew out most of the lighting in the lab. The remaining few flickered with an alarming urgency and burning brightness.
In a moment of lucidity, Professor Dansin ran over to one of the few readouts that hadn’t been burned out by the surge, “The city grid...is at 184% capacity,” Her face fell. The city had been at 46% when she interconnected the spell this morning. At full war footing the city had rocketed to nearly 60%. The siege enchantments, capable of wiping out full battalions with a single activation, only drew it down by 0.5% per shot. “Mugran... we have to stop the energy pulses. The grid is overloading. I...I don’t think we have time to figure out how to shut it down from here. Any more power and...”
“I will go. Brothers, defend this city.”
“You..” won’t be able to come make back. The words caught in her throat. Of course he knew what this meant. It was what being an adventurer was all about. Dansin reconnected herself to spell, trying to stabilize it for one way passage to combat the enemy from the other side. Fire burned in her veins as she wrestled control of the runaway construct. “You’re good to pass through, I don’t know how long I can hold stable this though, please hurry.”
“For death and honor!”
“Honor and death!” His brothers echoed.
Mugran charged forward into the rift, sword held high, then disappeared.
The vibrant kaleidoscope of raw power washed over Dansin’s senses as the world began to grow fuzzy. The energy flux was unlike anything she had witnessed before. It was... beautiful.
“Hey Prof? I don’t think you should be glowing like that,” Zar warned.
“I can take it, but not for long. I think I...yes! I can see the other side!”
“What there?” Nenlu demanded, the berserker’s rage building up as the stress of the situation continued to grow.
“It’s Mugran! He’s fighting with...some sort of kin. I’ve never seen their likeness before. There’s at least a dozen of them, he’s holding them off but not for long!”
“I help,” Nenlu turned towards the portal and charged through without waiting for a response.
Zar looked crestfallen, stuck between Mugran’s order and the need to support his brothers in battle. Dansin quickly tipped the scales “There’s nothing more that can be done here by you. Go with them, they *gahhh*” a spasm racked the researcher’s body as light began to emanate from her fingers, “go now if you want to... I’ll keep it open if I’m able but hurry.”
Zar nodded, took a breath, then readied his mace and shield for what was to come. Stepping through the portal, his stomach lurched as vertigo overtook him and his body was simultaneously compressed and stretched unbearably thin.
Opening his eyes after an eternity of floating, Zar felt the solid ground beneath him and saw his brothers. Mugran locked in combat, Nenlu daring an attacker to approach his whirling chain. Reaching deep within, Zar let loose a [Warcry] to buff his brothers and demoralize the revolting half-elf, half dwarf kin.
“Waaaaagh!” The sound came forth, but Zar found nothing as he reached down. No wondrous increase to his strength, the kin around him shrunk back but from surprise and not terror. Zar quickly reached deeper. Not out of SP, but as if it had never existed. There was no time to figure it out now, not surrounded and outnumbered four to one.
Zar charged into the fray, bringing his mace down into a raised shield. They might have disabled his Skills, but he was skilled. Soon they would all learn what made the Kirg Brothers a third rank team.
“Portal! Runner!” Nenlu’s typical sentence structure was shorted even further now that he was raging. A swing of his chain went wild as the dark skinned kin dodged.
Zar turned to intercede but was engaged by another one of the tenacious foes and unable to fall back in time. The runner made it to the portal, then passed through the barrier.
After a moment, a ball of fire brighter than the harshest desert’s noonday sun spilled outward. A shockwave of force flattened Zar to the ground and his skin began to scorch under the heat as his consciousness slowly faded.