The soundless blast shredded and incinerated every piece of the ship.

Right as I hit the dagger, Heartsflame fired a blast of energy that annihilated my laboratory. Instinctually, I set out a small shield around my body using my White Prophet powers. I had no idea why this happened, but as I attempted to create a larger forcefield around me, I found the Pure Crown within my grasp. It is possible this was due to the fact that the Pure Crown is the source of my blessed weapon’s power, but I wasn’t able to test this theory.

With the Pure Crown in my grasp, I used its power to create a larger, stronger shield around me within a moment of being blasted into the emptiness of space. Gasping for breath as I tried to maintain my shock, I found that I was less afraid at the realization of what happened and more enthralled with the fact that I was floating around in space without any technological protection.

Excited and relieved laughter mixed with panting gasps of shock as I struggled to right myself and tumbled toward the moon. Before I could compose myself, Sevens’s gravity won out over my explosive propulsion and pulled me back into an orbital path.

It was a strange sensation, tumbling uncontrollably like that. In gravity, it feels sickening. Without gravity, it just meant I had no control of my direction. Using the power of my lens and the Pure Crown, I shifted myself to a proper position, stationary in an orbital path in the spot where Prosperity 9 used to be.

I took a few moments to look around and examine the situation. There wasn’t a piece of the ship larger than my head remaining. Using the power of the crown, I scanned the area for any sign of Law or Heartsflame. Five hundred kilometers away, spiraling through space, I felt the presence of Heartsflame and shifted there to retrieve it.

Missing several times, I finally grabbed hold of Heartsflame and examined its surface for damage. There was none. “Experiment proves hypothesis false,” I said, forgetting my recorder had probably been utterly demolished. “The dagger is in normal condition and has ceased to glow with energy. Hmm.”

I looked all over the dagger, unable to believe that man-made material could withstand such punishment. I was almost ready to throw facts and science to the wind and write a one-hundred-page thesis on the deific craftsmanship of the three weapons when an object orbiting Sevens at one hundred thousand meters per second crashed into my shield.

The impact sent me tumbling once again and I shifted after the object to set myself straight again. When both the object and I came into normal orbit, I got a good look at it. A spherical thing of metal, four stiff wires trailing out the back. Its silvery surface shimmered with a polished shine, save for the blackened spot where a where a solar panel had fried.

I had no idea what it was, but quickly grabbed hold of the orbiting object. It felt sturdy, heavy, and I could tell it had some sort of electrical function. There were no markings on it, no indication of where it came from. As far as I could tell, it was some sort of broadcaster, possibly a radio wave transmitter.

Whoever had planted it in Sevens’s orbit hadn’t counted on the magnetic field. Every planet has a magnetic field. Unfortunately for us, Sevens has a unique one with a concentrated layer of erratic electrons in a field that would fry any mechanical or electronic equipment made of metal. I was only able to avoid this with Prosperity 9 by placing the ship on the far edge of the field. However, its presence will forever disable space travel to and from this planet. Shifting, however, gets around this without any issue.

This knowledge made the idea that this sphere had been placed in orbit by someone from Sevens an illogical conclusion. It had to have been someone from another planet. But none of the other planets have ever found Sevens.

I looked down toward Sevens, realizing I was in geosynchronous orbit with the main continent. For some reason, though I was hundreds of kilometers above the ground, I felt a sense of closeness to the planet. Directly beneath my floating feet, I could see the glinting tip of the Pinnacle. This allowed me to realize that this sphere, this radio antenna of some kind, had been placed in geosynchronous orbit with the city of Pinnacle.

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Like a gigantic dish laid in the surface of the planet, the spire shooting out through its center, I watched for a few wondrous moments as the city glistened below me. I had come up here looking for answers. As often happened with science, I had simply found more questions, and blown up my lab. Again.

A streak of flame caught my vision as I stared down at the planet’s sky. Pieces of Prosperity 9 were raining down on the planet, nearly all of them burning up in the atmosphere as they broke through the magnetic field. One piece, quite large, burned brighter than all the others.

“I seem to have forgotten Law,” I said, my eyes going wide as I realized the third weapon was plummeting to the ground like a meteorite. Clutching my lens, Heartsflame, the Pure Crown, and the strange metal sphere, I shifted next to the falling sword.

I pushed as much power as I could into the white forcefield glowing around me while I fell alongside Law. I pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and watched the sword fall, bright flames licking around it as the friction of the atmosphere tried to melt it away.

“It appears that even breaking orbit has not harmed Law,” I said as I jotted down my notes. For the sake of science, I tossed Heartsflame next to the sword. Both weapons tumbled through the thickening atmosphere, falling toward the ground at hundreds of meters per second as the air glowed around the sword and the dagger glowed even brighter.

“Both weapons appear to be able to withstand the high heat and wind damage from an orbital fall,” I said as the three weapons and I broke the stratosphere. I had to shout to hear myself over the roar of the wind and keep my mind concentrating on using the Pure Crown’s energy. With that glowing crown’s help, my shield seemed able to take on even the heat of reentry. “Impromptu experiment: what will the effect of a collision with the lithosphere be from a fall of orbital distance?”

Looking down at the quickly rising planet, I was grateful to find that I wouldn’t have to wait long for this experiment to occur.

Dust and flames burst around me as the three weapons and I crashed into Sevens at what I could only assume was several thousand meters per second. It was exhilarating, especially since the power of the Pure Crown enabled me to stand up in the crater I’d formed, completely unharmed. I quickly checked to make sure the spherical object was intact, and was relieved to find that it as well had been protected by the shield. Looking around me, I realized my impact had created a crater a hundred meters across.

“Impressive,” I said as I scaled the walls of the crater and looked around for Law and Heartsflame. They weren’t difficult to locate. Law lay in a crater roughly the size of the one I’d created, intact in the center. About three kilometers away, I saw a gorge in the planet’s surface almost a kilometer long and half that much wide. Burning ash and smoldering rock were still raining down over the spot of the impact where, I assumed, Heartsflame had crashed.

I shifted over to Law and found it completely untouched by the impact. When I shifted over to the center of the crater Heartsflame had created, I found no trace of the dagger. I had assumed it would be in the center. However, when I reached out with the power of the crown, I located its energy a few dozen meters away.

“Experiment results,” I said as I retrieved Heartsflame and examined it, Law, and the Pure Crown. “All three weapons are completely unharmed following an orbital collision with the planet. Conclusion...” I looked down at the three weapons, at the spherical object.

The spherical object had riveting and other obvious signs that it was manmade, but that it couldn’t have come from Sevens. The three weapons had no signs of being manmade but we know they came from Sevens.

It was in this moment that I revealed another use of the Pure Crown: insight. I was able to look deep into the scarred metal of the spherical object and see how it was made, the electrical devices laid into it, the transmitters that had fried in the magnetic field. I was also able to learn that it predated the foundation of the city of Pinnacle, but not by much.

“Eureka!” I exclaimed as a hundred White Prophets appeared around me with a hundred white flashes.

Weapons of various shapes and sizes were all pointed my direction as Reds and Golds joined their fellow Prophets. Manessa shifted next to me, Bisha alongside her.

“See,” Bisha said to Manessa, “I told you he couldn’t hurt them.”

Manessa fumed as she stared at me, her face an unspeakable force of anger.

“Look what I found!” was all I could say as I showed the head of the Sept the alien sphere.