Luca DR
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Edge of apocalypse 52
🕑 Added 2023-05-31 11:44:20 +0000 UTCFlight Oceanic 416 was several hours away from its destination of Singapore. And, it appeared for a good moment that it was destined to never arrive there. Not in one piece. Vibrations shook the cabin and the passenger space, as screams and yells of terror were drowned in the noise. The metal of the plane buckled and bent, almost to the breaking point. Albert could do nothing but watch it all unfold in slow-motion.
He was a moment away from teleporting back home to safety. The magic buildup was insane, so strong to be perceptible to even the normal senses as a kind of metallic tingle that could be tasted on the skin itself.
Albert looked around in search of the cause of this event. Someone was trying to bring the plane down.
The first thing that crossed his mind was: SpaceOps. But SpaceOps couldn't fly, at least according to his mother's intel. Was he receiving help? Or was he using his teleportation powers – much more advanced than Albert’s own – in a creative and very destructive way? Albert himself could think of various ways to bring a plane down if he needed to, and he knew for certain that SpaceOps had his own set of tricks too.
Then, as suddenly as it started, all the turbulence ended. The buildup of mana in the air ceased and dissipated, the distortion that was beginning to change even the path of visible light flattened and the plane resumed its course. All of this with no sign of the culprit.
The pilot announced that the anomalous updraft was now behind them, and that the rest of the trip should be as uneventful as they come, apologizing for the discomfort.
What the hell just happened?
Time passed. Unlike the first stretch of the journey, now the hours felt like entire days, seconds ticking one after the other incessantly but oh so slowly. Albert stared out of the window in search of signs that another event like the one that almost made his plane crash was about to happen. And while he didn’t find any, he found something else. The closer he got to his destination, the more of a pattern he could see in the way mana existed here.
It was too big to be the result of a single man, no matter how powerful, he thought. Perhaps erroneously in principle, but he was right about this particular event.
The mana. It all seemed to swirl around something. As if it was being moved by inner currents that dragged the ineffable particles it was made of along inscrutable vectors. The worrying thing: the plane was traveling in the same direction as most of the mana currents, which meant that whatever they were converging towards, Singapore - where Albert was headed - was probably close to the epicenter.
Albert landed in a state of altered awareness, different from the daze and confusion of the rest of the passengers and probably of the crew. No matter how much the captain had tried to minimize what happened to a simple case of ‘turbulence’, everyone seemed to know just how close they went to dying. But his mental state was different: not caused by the same things as the rest of the passengers. He was thinking about what to do with what he had seen.
And not only what he had seen from the plane, for he could also see it now, clearer than ever through the windows of the airport, bright as day. The halo of mana gathering somewhere beyond the horizon, towards the mountains that were barely visible behind the skyline of the city. Probably only to his enhanced senses.
His eyes didn’t linger on the impressive sights and the buildings, then, instead scanning the sky and searching for the source of the light only he could see.
He also thought about calling his mother, and weighted the options in his head. It was very unlikely that she would ever allow him to investigate alone.
He sighed.
The first thing he felt when he left the air conditioned airport was the heat. It was like hitting a solid wall, the humid air and the anomalous heat together making him feel lightheaded and dizzy. His shield did not activate, the temperature hot but not dangerously so, and thus he felt it all. It seemed a bit much, even for these latitudes, since it was October. But he had no idea. Was the climate anomalous, did the mana halo he could see somehow alter it, or was it normal around here?
He was no expert on Singaporean weather patterns. Among many other things. Wasn’t this supposed to be a simple field trip? And why did he waste his daily Analysis Mode activation on studying stupid Chinese characters?
He realized just how much he didn’t know about this place. He just boarded the plane and went flying completely blind. Perhaps his mother was trying to teach him a lesson, or making him struggle on purpose (in a controlled environment that could pose no danger if not for the unforeseen event that happened) so he could grow used to improvising. He didn’t really know. There were too many variables.
And now there was the added bonus of whatever was going on with the mana. The king of unforseeable variables. Perhaps she knew through her satellites, though. If this was true, then…
He was overthinking it.
Returning to reality, he could basically taste the mana. Already the air felt different on this side of the planet, full of alien smells and heavy with humidity. The taste of the foreign mana was different but not totally removed from the mana around Tryte, and from the Lithoid Golem he fought when he went to Elvenhome.
He needed to go investigate it, didn’t he? What would happen if he didn’t? Would an event trigger here, in Singapore, where there was no BSA to intervene? Did the HDF even have a local division akin to the BSA in Asia?
A plan hatched in his mind. First things first, with the aid of his new understanding of the language – which didn’t help as much as he thought it would, since he only knew some words – he decided to complete the mission he was sent here to do in the first place.
All the while telling his mother that he was taking longer than planned because he got lost. She got mad when he did, of course, but it was better than the alternative. He could deal with her thinking he was incompetent once he got back.
The location was a warehouse in the middle of an industrial district very far from the tech and skyscrapers of the coast, close to the border. It took a while to get there, but with the help of Appraisal to translate whatever characters he didn’t know, he managed to get his information across and reach the warehouse without much delay.
It was only after a few more hours, when Albert was already following the mana in the sky, that he texted his mother.
>Done with the mission. I want to sightsee a bit.
>…fine, but don’t take too long. We need to proceed with the next phase.
***
The source of the mana was a small, round opening of deep blue. Within it were little lights like stars in the distance, all was plunged in a haze that made it impossible to see on the other side. Appraising it gave some more information, the skill proving very useful when used on magical target inscrutable by normal means.
[Portal to a minor dungeon. Even though it has formed no more than a few hours ago, the dungeon is already leaking mana into the surrounding space, and weakening the fabric of space-time.]
Not good, Albert thought. Definitely not good.
[New Quest: Seal the Eastern Crack.]
- Eliminate the source of astral destabilization by destroying the core of the dungeon before it triggers an Event.
- Reward: System upgrade: Inventory module.
“I guess there’s no turning back now.” Albert said, looking at the small portal. He knew that he could not subtract himself from what was, by all means and purposes, something that only he could do.
He touched it. Immediately he felt a surge of foreign mana invade his body, and as his vision went white, he was transported somewhere else. The sounds of the tropical jungle, that had been a constant scream in his ears up until now, ceased. The humid air was suddenly cold and dry.
