(45)
No time to run. The membrane that was this portal world exploded, spilling its contents where there was no room to spill them. Space bent in mind-defying geometries. Her mind reeled from the experience, but then she recovered almost immediately.
This was just space. She knew space. Well, not her mind, but her body, her instincts did. Synesthesia merged space and sight to present rivers of glass melding and splitting in a tightly packed whole. She was… not existing at the moment. Both her mask and true self folded together in the same personal space.
It was weird. And fascinating. She didn’t have the time to enjoy it though. There was the rather important matter of preventing a trans-dimension apex predator from slaying earth’s most powerful raider and dooming the city. Her city.
“Riel dammit, Sereth.”
He wouldn’t have endangered her. That meant that she was safe, or more likely, capable of saving herself. Through the depth of the worlds, she recognized each glass vein as a layer of existence. Small bubbles represented portals, stuck to their home dimensions like soap bubbles to the skin. The largest and most imposing of them all showed skyscrapers and a sky of red. it also… tasted… familiar. Others were more distant. She almost opened her cocoon now so she could exist in space again, but felt flung into the real world. Images blurred in front of her. She saw a jungle.
“That’s not right.”
She couldn’t allow herself to reappear out there in the fucking boonies. Her mind focused, sharpening her instincts. She redirected her cocoon towards the shiniest beacon, the most mana-rich place of her native plane. There, again, the skyscrapers. She forced the bubble to close in with the glass vein. She merged both membranes. It was so easy. They wanted to merge.
Nestra stepped in front of Riel’s Beacon: Threshold’s official town hall. Air filled her lungs. Noise saturated her ears. She could see again, smell the asphalt and taste the ambient mana. She could feel their air on her skin.
Wait, fuck.