I slowly took a step forward, and my foot completely left the ground. Surprised, I jerked backward in an attempt to right myself, only to realize that my body was still weightless. In my shock upon seeing the frozen world around me, I had forgotten that I was still under the effect of Beltane’s [Fly] spell.
Beltane grabbed my collar and stopped me from spinning around in an uncontrolled spiral. He said, “Don’t try to walk. You’re still weightless.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why is everything frozen? Why haven’t you dropped concentration on your spell?”
“That’s a funny way to say that,” Beltane mused to himself. I used the terminology frequently used on the forums. It made sense that the actual people of Ferrum wouldn’t use such terms. “Regarding the state of the scene around us, I’ve seen this once before. It will end when the [Fly] spell ends.”
“So you didn’t do this?” I asked Beltane.
“No, chronomancy is far beyond my level,” Beltane said. His words were not mere modesty, they were a simple statement of the truth.
“So…” I took a moment to put my thoughts together, “something about the [Fly] spell makes us immune to this effect.”
“Yes,” Beltane said, “I was using the [Fly] spell last time something like this happened.”
I moved my head around and saw that the colors of the scene around me changed subtly as I moved. It was as if I was looking at a LED TV screen, and someone was pushing on the edge of the screen. As I moved my head forward, everything became slightly more bluish. As I moved my head backward, everything became slightly more reddish.
The effect on the color of the scene around me must have been the effect of blue-shift. Usually, blue-shift only occurred when an individual moved at a large fraction of the speed of light. In this case, however, the effect must have been caused by the slowed speed of light caused by the time dilation.
It should have been impossible. I remembered an old quote: “The only thing God fastened shut in the universe was the speed of light.” I wasn’t a physicist, but I was pretty sure that some immutable law of nature should have stepped in and prevented me from observing this crime against special relativity.
Yet I could not deny what I was seeing with my own eyes. The only explanation I could think of for the changing colors outside of the small sphere of zero-gravity was a light-based Doppler effect.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“The lights are trippy, right?” Beltane said, bobbing his head forward and backward like a chicken.
Two puzzle pieces connected in my head, and I started to understand what was happening. “Hey, Beltane. How exactly does the [Fly] spell work?”
“It’s not that complicated,” Beltane said with his eyes still focused on the kaleidoscope of colors outside of the bubble surrounding us. “You just make a bubble around yourself that creates an isolated Source field. Since gravity travels through the Source field, the gravity from the planet cannot reach you in the isolated field.”
Just as I thought. The effect surrounding me made perfect sense once I remembered that “Source” was just the spacetime continuum.
“The visualization of the spell isn’t that difficult, but it is very mana intensive,” Beltane said. He closed his eyes tight and grunted in pain. Mana exhaustion was starting to catch up to him. “I’m going to drop the spell.”
The kaleidoscope stopped, and the scene around us returned to life. The animals started moving again, and the guard near us jumped at our sudden appearance. My body pushed down on the ground again as gravity once more wrapped its unforgiving hands around me. As I touched the ground, I was once more made aware of the myriad aches and pains that afflicted my small physical form. I would have to learn [Fly] soon so that I could occasionally get some relief from the constant pain.
“What?” The guard sputtered in confusion as he took several faltering steps away from the two of us. “How did you get there?”
“Magic, good man,” Beltane said with a good-natured laugh. He stepped forward and patted the man on the shoulder before entering Northwind Castle.
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Autumn, 625 CA
Months passed.
Lord Koravin left a few days after we arrived, but Nina stayed behind. The education system of Northwind was far better than that of Sableton, and Nina begged Riomed to let her take classes in the city. She had learned a few Illusion spells at the Northwind Academy of Magic where she was heralded as a prodigy. I did not step into the Academy, however, because I would not be sticking around for long.
The pain of losing two parents in a few hours faded slightly over those months, but it had certainly not yet healed. Merrick and Miriam were largely back to their normal selves, but Solana had taken on a much more serious exterior. They were just starting to heal, and I was going to break their hearts again.
Briefly, I considered disappearing in the night. They didn’t deserve that, though. If anything, I owed them the opportunity to say goodbye.
On that fateful day, I took a deep breath and stepped into the office of Edwin Feldrast, Regent of Northwind. He and Solana were standing near the desk at the center of the room, speaking to each other and gesturing to the map on the top of the desk from time to time.
The room was very similar to Count Armond’s study in Feldrast Manor. This room, however, was just one of many administrative offices in Castle Northwind. Normally, the Count of Northwind would work in a much larger office that was attached to the throne room. The throne room and the office attached to it had been empty for many years at that point.
I cleared my throat in order to get the attention of my two relatives. They turned their heads toward me, and I prepared myself for what I was sure would be a difficult conversation.