“It was claimed, sisters.”

“The energy… is vibrant…”

“Worth the patience.”

“Yet more is necessary. Inform them.”

I was skeptical about entering the construct, not only because I had terrible memories to it, but also because it was way smaller in size; it didn’t have the four pillars around it (making it just the wooden tile with glowing yellow and green circles), which worried me in a sense. The old Dwarf must’ve noticed I was hesitating to step on the tile.

“Don’t worry, it may look different, but in essence it’s the same Air Essentia Powered Teleportation Unit, just a slightly improved version of it. Nothing can go wrong, trust me.” He reassured me.

“The last time I heard something was ‘improved’, my transmitter and receiver broke off.”

Feldir apparently found that funny. “Nothing has majorly changed, Kate. Don’t worry. The pillars have just been replaced with a more advanced Essentia Storage Unit.”

Storage Unit, I repeated in my head. Oh right! This ‘improved’ Subject has a… What was its name? Mini Black Hole thingamajig… I should put the books there probably.

So I did. I first made sure nobody could see me – they didn’t need to see my insides, as disturbing as that sounds – with an age-old excuse that always seemed to work:

“Before we go, is there a place where I can… You know… Powder my nose?” I seemingly innocently asked. Feldir let out another one of his signature sighs.

“Walk back to the door you came from, when you take the first right – just behind the bookcase with books about the grammar of Startalk – you should find yourself a room where you can do just that.”

“Thanks!”

I started rushing towards said door, not noticing Val was right behind me just until I wanted to enter said room.

“Excuse me, Valentina? You’re not coming with me, are you?” I asked with a tone like I was just insulted.

She blinked green in a slower way than usual, like she actually had no idea what she was doing wrong.

“I’m sorry Val, you’ll have to stay outside, it won’t take long, I promise!” I said while quickly getting through the door. As I closed it behind me I saw her turning just slightly blue, which made me feel bad – even though I knew I was in the right here.

My seemingly seamless shell first split itself into four parts, all closely resembling a right angled triangle; which in turn made a square with rounded off corners. Oddly, I didn’t feel anything during this procedure, even though The Subject did receive pain and transmitted it to the memories that powered it – for whatever reason the elitist Khaei thought it was a great idea to make a probe feel pain. (That couldn’t possibly cause for any troubles during its research on The Lands.) It was a strange sensation I got, to say the least. The parts started rotating in a counter-clockwise direction, making the square open up and reveal a small black hole – at least smaller than any other out in the multiverse – which seemed to have lost its gravitational pull. For some reason it reminded me of a baby, very small and looking fragile; I felt like it was just asleep, and when it woke up it would start crying – or in this case get its gravity back. But I knew it wasn’t asleep, I knew it wasn’t anything like a baby, it wasn’t even a naturally created black hole. It was created in a laboratory – I don’t even know how they managed it, but they did – and they broke it, like with everything they do in those Gods forbidden laboratories. Everything that once was natural, they break. Granted, some of the things they make can be really useful, but at what cost? I’m in no doubt nature will take revenge for this, and I’ll be there supporting her.

I broke out of my wandered-off thoughts when I heard an elderly voice calling my name

“Kate! Come on! There’s a damn war starting!”

“I’m almost ready! Just give me two more minutes!” I lied, or at least about the first part.

I took one of the books and reached inside myself – now that’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever say in my entire life. I firstly put the bestiary, then my hand with it through the Baby Black Hole (I like that name… ‘Baby Black Hole’), and it disappeared when we reached the event horizon, the so-called ‘point of no return’. Isn’t it strange how it has lost his gravitational pull on things, yet light is still unable to escape it? I always wondered how they did that… My thoughts were wandering off again, and I didn’t have much time left, so I let go of the bestiary and I think I heard it fall to the ground as I instantly took back my hand, after which I did the same with The Book of Love. Now the real challenge was going to be getting both books back, because I didn’t have any vision over the contents of my Baby Black Hole. Maybe thinking about something sends an electrical signal to the Storage Unit which automatically deposits said thing within reach. Those were thoughts for later, I needed to get out this room before they started to ask questions.

“Thanks for waiting for me,” I thanked them with a grateful smile they couldn’t see.

“Can we go now?” Feldir asked impatiently, for which I couldn’t blame him.

“I’m ready, are you, Val?”

Val blinked green quickly. She was very confident in her answer.

“Great! Now, get in the Air Essentia Powered Teleportation Unit, I’ll start it up and send you closer to The City.”

Both Val and I floated towards the wooden tile with green and yellow circles on, with which we were all too familiar. I assumed Val was still scared something could go wrong, as she once again held onto me very tightly.

“Hover perfectly still, you’ve done this before,” Feldir said whilst taking a small Air Essentia Crystal out of his pocket.

“Wait, you’re not coming with us?”

“I’ll be taking another way, don’t worry, I’ll catch up to you.” He said while starting to channel the Essentia into the device.

“But, we don’t know where to go!” I wanted to step away, but the same force field as before appeared, we were now at the point of no return. The event horizon.

“I’ll come and find you, don’t worry!” Feldir said peacefully, when a white light appeared, the same light as before. That stayed that way for about fifteen seconds, before fading to the normal environment. We had been teleported, and we were alone yet again. Just Val and me.

The tunnels had changed: no longer was there a canal of water on the floor, nor was there any sign of the magical root (of which – I now remember – Feldir never explained what it was), which made the tunnel as black as the starless nights on the flying bases of the Khaei.

We – I should say the Khaei, people like me didn’t help in the construction – always built our bases high up in the skies, where it is near impossible to be seen by anything on the celestial body that floats below us. In any normal cases, this ended with the atmosphere of the planet – if there was one to begin with – but with The Forgotten Lands that wasn’t an option in the slightest. Months and months of preparing research had proven there must’ve been something living above the surface, in the clouds. Seeing how the star The Lands were orbiting was seemingly the only one in this universe, it was the only source of light we had, and it was only visible during the day. During nighttime we didn’t have any natural lights ourselves, not all the time at least. The Lands had two tiny asteroids orbiting them, acting as miniature moons, which, albeit very rarely, shone their reflected lights upon our bases. Any other light that was being made came from below us, shining very faintly though the final layer of clouds above The Lands. The elitists made assumptions these lights were coming from the creatures that lived between the clouds, and thus they introduced the word ‘The Starfolk’ to the Khaeï language.

Luckily I still had my dearest Valentina – whom I may have been treating in a way she didn’t deserve – who could guide me the way with her peacefully pretty, purple light. We started moving forward in the tunnels towards the direction we were facing when we got teleported here. Neither Val nor I had an idea whether this was the right way or not, for Feldir had left us without giving us the information we needed.

He said he’d come and find us, and I believe that, I truly do. But how long will it take? How long are we to wander these hallways without a clue of where to go? Not that there was much of a choice, it was a linear path, leading only – what we assumed to be – forward.

I only assumed it was a blessing in disguise I had been altered to have the ability to float, instead of needing to walk; so my feet didn’t make any sound when rushing over the ground. The Magnetic Field Manipulators were isolated very well, making sure it wouldn’t make noise when active – you could deactivate them, but who knows why that’s a useful property, seeing how that’s your only way of moving around. Valentina, too, made no sounds for the first time in the duration I had met her. She had always made some type of electric or glassy or wispy sound, mixed in with a very rarely occurring high-pitched note – which only meant she was in some sort of pain. The absence of sounds coming from both of us made the cave silent as the dead, which made it very eerie, and that made every one of the slightest sounds we’d hear infinitely more frightening.

I don’t know how long we had been traversing the tunnels – it couldn’t have been any longer than an hour – before the silence was broken by a most terrifying sound. It wasn’t the sound I was expecting (and frankly, hoping) to hear, it wasn’t the sound of rapid footsteps of an elder Dwarf that came to join us in the caves, it wasn’t a comforting glassy, wispy or electric sound of Val, and it certainly wasn’t my own voice echoing through the caves once again. The sound was unusual, it closely resembled that of an earthquake, but not a big one. It sounded like a massive amount of ground was being moved, which was complimented by the tunnel starting to tremble soon after. I looked at Valentina in fear, and I spoke the first word since we appeared here. (Not like it mattered anymore, we had been found by something, it might give Feldir some instructions as to where to find us, if anything.)

“Val? Do you know what this is?” I asked quietly. She could easily hear my concern.

She blinked red, a red I had hoped I wouldn’t get to see.

“What do you think would be the best? An earthquake in the middle of a mountain, or some sort of beast coming to eat us?”

Obviously, she didn’t know how to answer that, seeing how she can only really answer with yes or no using her colors. The sound was getting louder, way louder, and the cave was shaking a lot more intensely now.

“Actually, don’t answer that. Whatever it is, I think we’re in for the latter.”

There was a pause in the conversation, yet not in the ground moving.

“Stay about a foot behind me, and if I say you need to run: you run. I don’t want to get you in unnecessary danger, I’m protecting your life at any cost, even if that cost would be my own.” I said. I didn’t feel as much heroism as I felt a sense of duty.

“Understood?” I briefly asked.

She blinked red. A very solid red, a very confident red; and while she blinked red she came floating next to me, holding on to my arm.

“Valentina. I am protecting you at whatever cost, but I cannot do that when you’re putting yourself in the danger itself. I’m begging you, please stay behind me. I don’t want to lose you.”

My words did get into her conscience, because she let go of my arm, yet instead of going behind me, she hovered right in front of me, right in front of my face, while she turned back to a very peaceful, purple color – even though the current situation would make you think otherwise. I don’t know what her plan was, but she was floating only about six inches from my faceless head, staying in that soothing purple. I only now realized how small she was: even though she was floating so close to my face, I could still see about thirty percent of my surroundings without moving my head. I actually became calm because of this, I gained faith again in our ability to get away safely. We may not be able to defeat whatever was coming for us, but we sure were ready for it.

Valentina stayed floating there for as long as the earth was moving and the sound was ongoing, which was about twenty seconds. After those twenty seconds – which seemed to be an eternity, not that I minded it – it stopped. It all just stopped: no more sounds, no more shaking of the earth.

“Did it go away?” I silently asked.

Val, still floating in front of my face, hesitatingly blinked green.

“I don’t trust this… Can you light up the cave some more? I need a small rock to throw.”

Val started floating very low to the ground, revealing all that was lying there: small bits of crushed Essentia Crystals, dust and small rocks.

I grabbed a stone and threw it in front of us, not all too far from us, but farther than 6 feet at least. At the exact moment the stone hit the ground, the earth shook one last time, ripping open the ground below the rock I threw. Out of it came a gigantic snake-like creature, letting out a terrifying roar.