Melody of Mana

Selene, bless her heart, was slow as she could be. She'd managed to finally add the update to her core, consternation from the rest of our group or not, and was working on the gate now. I'd finished several days ago and gone to work on much the same project, but nobody else knew, or needed to know that just now.

It was slow going, but aided greatly by the fact that whoever had built this particular gate hadn't seen the need to hide the runes they were using. This meant that I just needed to work my way through and check them to see what was going on. That prospect was being aided by the workup in the update, which at this point of course nobody else had.

It was weird dealing with the new Guide and the like, since it wasn't properly connected, the whole situation was weird, but I got the feeling that that was to preserve the integrity of the original core. While Justin hadn't shown back up for me to ask, I got the feeling that he either wouldn't or couldn't make any base changes to that. I could have popped down and asked, but got the feeling that if he were still working in the basement, he wanted to be undisturbed.

I wondered what he was doing down there. He was clearly researching the magic that had brought us here, but to what end? Was he trying to return to Earth? Perhaps he was trying to bring someone else from there here. In the end it didn't really matter, since he seemed more interested in his project than the rest of the world, which was sad, but what could you do?

On the other hand I had some practical concerns. The first was making my way home, which this gate seemed the best option for. After that was achieved, I would begin pushing, quietly, for a public transport network. The quick exchange of ideas and items had thrown my first world into a new age of progress, and I would much like to see that here as well. The basics were already there, we just needed more trade and organization and we'd be on our way to a full on industrial revolution.

How would Emperor Durin respond to that idea? I had no clue, but I had good hopes. It wouldn't be coming all at once at any rate, instead small increments and improvements, the elven nations had already given me some ideas on how to make those. We might even be able to supplement magic with some more traditional technology if we pushed for some science.

It was safe to say that having seen how the elves in their cities lived I wanted that for my own people now. I didn't have any delusions of being able to change everything, but basics like running water and lighting for the people of the world would perhaps be feasible.

I ruminated on this while slowly making my way through the gate runes. I was intentionally handicapping what I was telling the others to an extent, but even with that we could see how it was coming together. It created a connection between the two gates by something like my radios. From there they linked and formed a path by manipulating space between the two. Since we'd worked through much of this back home we understood most of that, but going through the new Guide I learned a few things.

Like that whatever happened we always stayed just below the speed of light. Causality seemed to have some big issues if you tried to make space warp in such a way that it was truly instant, but for planet-side travel that hardly mattered. The Guide described how any attempts to bypass the universal speed limit just failed, not catastrophically or anything, they just didn't work.

Each gate was also a one-to-one path. A gate pair linked, and could be turned on or off from either side, but once they were linked it seemed they would be really, really hard to send to another without messing with both sides.

"Okay, I think we can turn it on now," I declared after another long day.

"I'm still unsure on exactly what this sequence is doing," Selene said, pointing to one that was responsible for the space molding.

"That looks to be the same as is on the ones back home. I can't work out all the math to it, or why it's doing that, but from what I'm reading here that is the connection."

"Yeah, but we don't know how it works," she complained.

"And we probably won't, not right now at least. That math is beyond me." It was too, there was a description on the update to the Guide. It also basically said, 'This works, use it like this if you're unsure.' which was good enough for me.

"How sure are you this isn't going to blow up and kill us or something?" Dras asked.

It was annoying, because I was very sure, but I couldn't explain why without giving the game away. In any other situation he would have been absolutely right to question me here. I had to suppress my frustration for now though.

"Eighty, maybe ninety percent?" I answered.

"Better odds than we have if we try to go back the traditional way in my books," Glen said, shrugging. "Can I be the one to turn it on? We should have the rest of you outside in case it goes wrong, but with my armor I can survive anything that's not too extreme."

"Turning it on is easy enough," Selene said. "We'd need to charge it up with some mana, but there's another concern. How do we communicate who we are and where we are? Assuming that this one links to one of the dead gates in Emperor Durin's home."

That much was unconfirmed. We didn't know where this one linked to, and without turning it on to try, there was no way to find out. I suspected that it did link up to one of the unused ones at Durin's complex, but until we tried it there was no way to be sure.

"If I'm remembering correctly, they also had some portcullises over those, so we won't be able to just walk through. We'll need some way to send a message that nobody else will get," she continued.

"I think I've got an idea on that one, I can prepare it by tonight," I responded.

"Alright then Alana, it's on you."

It took some time gathering the materials, but I made a little plate of aluminum. On it was a simple message. "The lost girl from Orsken wishes to speak to her teacher, use the earpiece." I knew Mystien still had my first radios and they should be able to communicate through the gateway no problem, that, along with the metal should work as a big hint to those who needed to know. I also made another one of my radios while I was at it, for when they got around to contacting us.

Glen had us all move several hallways away while he opened the gate and tossed my message through. It went without a hitch and then it came to a waiting game. I had no delusions that we'd be getting an immediate response, if we got one at all. If we didn't... well, we'd have to look into other methods of checking what was on the other side without just stepping through.

A week was put aside for us to wait before we did anything else. By my guess that would be more than enough time. The plate would be seen almost instantly, the gate activation probably sending up a whole mess of alarms. From there they'd read it, and look at the metal. Aluminum was rare enough to prick up eyebrows and there were only a few known to work with it, so it'd get back to either Durin or Mystien soon enough, and both of them knew where I was from.

Five days into our wait there was a buzzing as the gateway powered up. We'd taken to waiting in the gate research room while we puzzled our way through the runes as we could. At the sound all of us jumped and looked over, just in time to see the connection take and the portal form.

Everyone was on edge. There was a chance, however small, that this gate led somewhere else, to someone else, and we knew that if it did, bad things could occur. To that end spells were readied and blades drawn all looking towards the gateway.

"Alana? Is that you?" A rather tired sounding voice issued from my new radio.

"It is, who am I speaking to?" I asked.

"Mystien who else? We need to confirm identities and the situation."

"Agreed, hmm, who was the bard you first called to teach me healing magic?" I asked. It was a simple question, but one that few would know off the top of their heads.

"That pervert Jackson. What is your uncle's name?" The response was immediate, as was his question.

"Barro. I'm satisfied, and you?"

"Confirmed, where are the team leaders? We had protocol for communication if it needed to be secret," Mystien asked.

"Dead, and that would have been good to share with the rest of us."

"Dead!? All of them?" He seemed a bit shocked at that revelation.

"Yes, our team is now down to six of the original expedition. Along with an elf who opted to join us and is interested in joining with Lord Durin and his." I wasn't sure how to tell them about Ulanion, but ripping the bandage off seemed the best idea.

"We sent over twenty people! What the hell happened!? Never-mind, we'll have to do a full briefing anyway, and I see that you've found a gate on your end, so can we confirm that the mission was at least a success?"

"We succeeded, and are ready to come home any moment," I answered.

"Alright, the way is clear. Come through one at a time, and bring that communicator with you. Last thing we need is any more disaster from this," Mystien said, and we all started to line up.