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Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (98/?) WiP 1
🕑 Added 2024-09-08 01:11:00 +0000 UTCHey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 98 I hope you guys enjoy! :D
The Transgracian Academy for the Magical Arts. Grand Concourse Terminal. Local Time: 0620 Hours.
Emma
Teleportation via convoluted and magical means was not beyond me.
I’d experienced way, way more than my fair share of it in my first week of being here.
But portals, a literal bridge between two points in space? Where all it took was a simple step to bridge the gap between tens of miles, as if it was just separated by a solid foot of stone?
Now, that was markedly different.
Or at the very least, it felt different.
Whether it was simply because I was now face to face with a portal without the added pressure of a bomb looming overhead, or whether it was because I wasn’t still reeling from the explosive repercussions of said bomb, one fact remained the same — looking through that door was quite literally breaking both my mind and my sense of perspective.
This was amplified even further, the moment Ilunor stepped through that door, and arrived in a space that was effectively an entire cable-car ride away.
He’d just traveled miles… in a single step.
I could feel the spirits of Professor Doctor Fujikawa, Professor Doctor Khan, and Associate Professor Shaw, bearing down on me with varying levels of satisfaction, frustration, and self-congratulatory ovations in that order.
Their life’s work, having been relegated to the footnotes of the many, many, failed attempts at getting us out of Sol before the warp drive, was now being proven at least somewhat tenable here in an entirely different reality.
Whilst not exactly a wormhole… this most certainly felt as mind-breaky as one, that’s for sure.
“Ahem!” A voice from behind me finally snapped me out of my shock and reverie, as I turned around to see the apprentice. “Gawking at the fixed-point portal between the Academy and the town now are ya?!” He cocked his head. “What?! Haven’t you ever seen the groundbreaking, reality-defining, earth-shattering wonder of instantaneous transport between two points in a physically discrete space before?!” The man paused, managing to just about close the distance between us, leaving an uncomfortable two inches of space between our personal spaces.
“I mean, I have, but, I guess this one’s just… different.” I offered.
To which the man simply let out a loud hmph, before responding. “Very well then!” He shouted, loud enough that I feared for anyone sleeping in a hundred mile radius, before reaching into his coat and producing a letter. “Here, take this.” He pushed the letter right in front of my face, prompting me to grab it, a groan escaping my throat the moment I saw who it was from.
The Dean.
“Is that all?” I replied with a sigh.
“That is, in fact, all.” The apprentice nodded, before strutting back over to his ticketing booth with a few stompy footfalls.
With another frustrated sigh, I began tearing into the letter, revealing a rather short one this time around, with a particularly curious instruction that felt innocuous as it did… dare I say it — magical.
In accordance with Academy regulation, given you are classified as an atypical mana-fielder, you are instructed to purchase an Arcane Focus from any of the approved proprietors within the Crown Herald Town of Elaseer. Attached to this letter is a list of approved…
The benign wording, and the lack of any passive aggressive jabs (barring the whole atypical mana-fielder thing), felt like it was setting the tone for the day.
Hopefully, Thalmin’s hopes would come to fruition.
Hopefully… Today would actually be uneventful.
The fact that the dean was being civil and upfront for once, was a good of an indicator as any, right?
In any case, I eventually turned my attention back towards the door, as I resumed my stares of complete and utter disbelief at the magical wonder in front of me; more specifically, at the horizon line that was entirely off from my perspective.
With the strangely overcast night behind us, we were promptly treated to the sight of a pale blue sky, barely lit up by the sun; giving an almost whimsical feeling to the start of the day.
It was that same feeling I got when waking up extra early at the start to a long weekend. That feeling of being free to do whatever it was I wanted, and the large and seemingly endless possibilities that awaited me at the dawn of a new day.
But instead of just waiting for another episode of Forgotten Tales to drop, or diving head first (then promptly getting lost) into the seemingly endless physical library in my dad’s study, I was instead faced with the boundless and practically infinite possibilities that awaited me in Elaseer.
This was a magical town.
In a genuinely magical reality.
And sure, if I were to be cynical about it, I could say it was a college town, and a pretty gentrified one at that.
But that didn’t mean that that spark of honest to god fantasy wasn’t still there somewhere.
A town was, after all, composed of people.
And if the Academy had taught me anything, it’s that even in a sea of brainwashed subjects, there were always those that didn’t conform.
So if Thacea, Thalmin, Sorecar and Chiska were anything to go by, the town could very well be my closest shot at fulfilling this fantastical world itch.
“EVI.” I began, eliciting an affirmative beep from my virtual partner in crime. “Keep a close eye on telemetry readings, and whatever you do, don’t freak out.” I warned playfully, before going through the motions of what literally any other person would do in my shoes.
I began testing out the portal.
With a tentative, but curious motion, I pushed my ‘hand’ through the threshold.
I expected some sort of resistance, some sort of barrier, some weird surge in energy, some sort of suction pulling me through the threshold.
Instead, I felt nothing.
There was no resistance.
No barrier.
No weird eruption of energy or anything to indicate anything was amiss.
Not even a weird ‘suction’ to push me through the threshold.
Nothing, but a heavy dose of mana radiation that increased in intensity at the threshold of the portal, presumably there just there to sustain it.
I stood there, my body firmly stood within the Academy, and my ‘hand’ inches in front of me… miles away in town.
A familiar feeling I thought I’d be experiencing more of on this mission quickly manifested — the feeling of complete and utter befuddlement, disorientation, and outright disbelief.
I was seeing what was only possible in VR, manifesting in real life.
And it was just so jarring.
Comments
Michael Halpern
the key issue with wormholes is that energy differential tends to collapse them, you need exotic matter/energy to hold them open or you need to pull them open with something like a gravity ring, Its clear that magic is acting as the exotic matter for these portals, with such limited magic/quintessence the best places for Earthrealm to set up portals would be in interstellar space, far enough away from outside sources of energy that you can average it out and require less to compensate,
Michael Halpern
The way I see it, portals are one of the few advantages the Nexus has over Earthrealm, and it's a good thing too, one need only watch Star Gate: Atlantis to figure out EXACTLY what GUN would do with that capability.
BigBro Bluesman
Nah see they wouldnt fully understand the ramifications of it but it really fucks with Emma's head for a bit
Google Google
Bringing the Matrix into this would scare a bunch of students and staff.
Willow Arkan
isn't grumpapotamous also the drama apprentice who likes to play military officer commanding his troops when no one is looking
DarkValorWolf
This part feels a bit longwinded, can't wait to see the town tho
UC-79
"Hey by the way magic wands/staffs exist and I'm ordering you to buy one" Thanks, Dean! An easy way to test if mechanically casting magic is possible.
Anton
I do feel like it's a bit more writing than necessary to dedicate to her just stepping through a intra-planar portal when she's gone through an inter-planar one thats much more impressive. It's probably using (magic-powered) dimension folding, which we already have the math for now, if not the tech and energy. I'll bet she could even surprise the professors with a guess to how it works.
Blake S
We need wizzard hat ema
Surreal Nightmares
Halo reference? :o I like me some Shaw Fujikawa Translight Engines :)
Tainted_But_Thriving
So how many apprentices are there that have shown up in the story? There’s Larial the life indebted, Shadow boy the mysterious, and this guy Mr. Grumpapotomous who some say is the Dean’s apprentice?
Blake S
I suppose the atypical mana fielder aspect could just be an excuse to gage thier mana field manipulation abiliies via the focus vendors. But it would be odd for that to be a copy and paste form considering its from the dean, and new realmers are far from common.
LumiOak
I kinda think this is a standard letter given to most new realmer that the mage just has a bunch laying around of or wrote it before she came
Michael Halpern
Emma's going to find some unconventional uses for the focus
Garrett Sommerkamp
Finally, alist of required materials. I hope they make Emma wear a wizard robe over her power armor.
Blake S
Nice confirmation of earths portal capabilites, at least past portal capabilities, i wonder if thier research into diving into the nexus could help with in house portal travel back in earth realm. ALLSO Intetesting that the dean wants her to get a focus. Like is he trying to save face pretending like she can use mana to somehow explain away her impossible feats. Or is he still in denial and expects that she is just weak feilded or is hiding her mana signature quite well. Allso allso ema obviously cant do partical assingments yet, but what about written ones, did she bring her own stationary, does she have a future laser jet? How will a proffesor respond to ema handing in an eight and half by eleven sheet of paper with perfectly consisitant times new roman font.
Blake S
Well the first portal she went through was the earth portal, which for all intensive purposes worked so fast and violently it might has well been a teleporter. the second portal she went through was the one she dive tackled her way through as it was forming and shunted into the transportium as a result. The third one she was hurredly ushered through when she had been up for 24 hours and had just crawled her way out of a exploded building as the town she was in was being attacked by a dragon. This is the first time shes seen a portal and properly had time tp digest it. Spatial magics are the one field earthrealm cant match. So of course she interested in it.
Thisisanick
Yet it's a first time she really has enough time to actually experience the event of passing through portal, with clearly defined destination view as well. On the other hand.. it's seems a bit strange her mana resistant armor is not "breaking" portal behavior.. maybe it's because the whole space-time is simple bend aka "wormhole" or maybe we will see xD
Kevin Quintana
Its been nearly 100 chapters of magical shenanigans with a fair share of space warping, and she's getting mind bent at this? I don't mean to be rude or anything but it feels a bit late for that and its not like she hasn't stepped through a portal or two before
I Dare Korval
Ah, .. it's just a case of folding space. It's shouldn't be that big of a surprise and even EVI should be able to understand WHAT if not HOW is going on.
BigBro Bluesman
She's probably going to bring up the possibility of realitys and pure existence is just a simulation which she wouldn't be wrong but I honestly don't think the others would understand
Pyrion
Only fair for Emma to experience a mindfuck considering how often she drops them on everyone else.
