Melody of Mana

Things began, as they often do, so easily. At my mark the portals flipped on and the projectile was released. This was all according to plan, all exactly as I suspected it should be. The little steel ball fell, and accelerated in its fall, towards the portal, only to reappear back above, continuing the cycle. It was draining mana from the portal, but for this particular test I'd made sure to fill the very significant mana storage on both portals, to make sure it wouldn't fail before we got a good speed on the thing.

"Is this really dangerous?" Ulanion said, seemingly unconvinced after only a few seconds.

"Oh, you'll see, it most definitely is," I assured him, watching the projectile move faster and faster.

For the first few moments, it was rather normal, rather boring even. There was still air resistance, and even once it had broken past terminal velocity it took a bit for it to get going good. As the moments turned to minutes though, things began to change.

"That's pretty quick, faster than most arrows for sure," Ulanion observed. "And a steel ball like that will make quite the dent."

I just chuckled, and let it run.

There was a whooshing noise, that grew, and grew, and grew until.

CRACK!

"Just broke the sound barrier, like a whip when snapped," I said.

From there nothing too interesting happened for a little bit. The portals had a nasty wind going between them and kicking up dust all around, and they were pretty noisy, but that was all within expectations. They were also drawing mana faster than I might have expected, but with their reserves and the fact that the missile wasn't that big, it was no major issue.

"Alana, something's happening. It's turning... reddish?" I couldn't see that much from here, but I trusted Ulanion.

"Yeah, it's heating up from all the rubbing against the air. The enchantment on it should help keep it from melting or anything though."

The noise grew, and the light coming off the little steel ball too, until it was straw yellow and bright, and making a sound like a jet taking off. I checked the mana level, as I'd planned to let it run until the first pair ran out, but with where things were I wasn't sure that was a good idea. The horses were even further than we were, almost a mile away, and they were looking very scared from their tied up positions, it almost looked like they were trying to pull the ties from the ground.

"That's enough, turn it off!" Ulanion shouted, because he had to. The noise was getting worse by the second but hadn't reached the level or sudden escalation that would trip the wards to block sound.

With a quick movement I slammed the off switch, sending the projectile into a safe section of ground. The wards did activate on that one, though I could still feel the ground shake and shudder as the little steel ball rocketed into the dirt, sending up a huge shock-wave and cloud of dirt.

That was when things started to get weird. The gates the ball had been circling in, or at least where they were when the explosion went off, started to glow a brilliant blue. I couldn't see the gates themselves, as the cloud expanded, churning and distorting the air. It almost looked like a giant balloon was being blown up, but in a small space. Bigger and bigger the light got, until it hit something.

It hit one of the distortions from our previous experiments. I thought they'd closed, but apparently I was wrong, they'd just shrunk. As that blue light touched them though, they too started to grow, grow and expand, and it jumped from one to the other, all along the other side of the lake.

I knew they were expanding because I could hear the sucking of air, the water from the lake, and in places where the distortions came close to the ground, the ground being sucked in like a vacuum. It was much like the sound the weapon had made, only a thousand times more eerie. The various bits of matter floated, suspended in misshapen whirlwinds as the ripples in space expanded even from our perspective, moving out from where they'd been before.

"Oh, shit," I said, watching as the expansion began to quickly slow.

Iron hands grabbed me and pulled me down into the trench, not a moment too soon. As I looked up and tried not to scream I saw the wards activate to stop the incoming shock-wave, and then shatter like glass. I closed my eyes and pulled into the man holding me against him as the blast washed over us with an ear-shattering BOOM!

I knew it only lasted seconds, but it felt like a lifetime as the explosion worked its way out, and then came back in with a roar, pulling the matter lost back to where it belonged. The wind made my hair tangle all around me and it felt like I struck a brick wall at a full run once in each direction, knocking the wind clear from my lungs.

When it finished Ulanion helped me to sit up. I was shaking, my hands moving on their own like I was cold. He was saying something, again and again, but I couldn't make it out. The only thing I could hear was painfully loud ringing as the damage to that sense began to set in. He placed both hands on my shoulders and looked at me, lips moving again and again.

It took a second to process that he was saying my name, over and over. Another moment and my thoughts began to finally arrange themselves into something even resembling order, and I started to understand just how close I'd come to dying a moment ago. Curious, I put one hand up to my left ear, and it came back coated in red. That wasn't good, that wasn't good at all.

I put a finger to my boyfriends lips to calm him and began to sing. It was hard as I couldn't hear myself at all, and he looked less than pleased, but I needed to be able to hear, and I was guessing he did too. Ears for both of us came first, and as the shock began to fade, and my ability to perceive sound returned I started to find a number of smaller injuries. I was covered in small bruises everywhere from being pushed so hard, and a more general healing spell took care of those.

When I finished I was greeted with crystal clear sound, and one I really did need to hear.

"Alana, are you okay?"

"Shaken, but alive. That... was unexpected," I answered, pulling my finger away.

"What happened? That was not supposed to happen right?" I was asked.

"Not sure, either the explosion from the ball hitting ground and breaking something, or it not being all the way through one of the gates when they cut off, or some interaction between them and it at that speed, or some combination of all of the above. Those little distortions weren't closed though, that's for sure, and it tore them right back open and filled them with... stuff. I think the explosion was them expelling that stuff, but again, I don't know for sure."

"Okay, I'm going to pop up and see what it looks like, give me a moment." He did just that, and I could see him stiffen. "Alana, I think you need to see this."

I rose as well, the trench we were in was falling apart, the dirt having shifted. Even as I braced a hand on it it shuddered and poured into the hole, a large section of the wall just bursting down. Once I saw it, I knew I must have looked much like he did.

The crater was easily a three hundred feet across, and nearly half as deep. It looked like something out of a WWI movie, one of the places artillery had fallen and made a hole, only so very big. Floating in the center, and all around what used to be the far bank of the little pond were writhing blobs where light moved in odd ways, the distortions we'd seen blown up orders of magnitude in scale. Even the air around the crater itself looked... off, like the light was bending ever so slightly.

As for the pond, most of it was gone. What water there was left in the small lake was pouring in, and disappearing, into the bottom of the crater. There looked to be something down there, far below the messed up space and in the lake bed, but I couldn't see it, and whatever it was, the remnants of the water were being consumed by it at speed.

"We're going to need help with this," I stated, it sounded stupid but it was the only thing that came to mind.

"I'm going to get the horses. Are you good to stay here for a few moments?" He asked.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good."

I sat there, watching, looking upon the destruction I'd so carelessly wrought. I'd been so excited about this, so happy to see what would happen after so many tests where nothing had gone awry. Now... it was possible to slowly fix some of the distortions I'd seen before when my portals were less clean, but they were nothing compared to what I could see now, just little blips. If I had time, and lots of help perhaps I could do something, but alone... unlikely.

Oddly, the water just kept coming. All these little lakes must be connected somehow by more than the surface creeks we'd seen because this one was looking quite dry, yet still more arrived from somewhere. It sounded almost like someone had taken the stopper out of a bathtub, perhaps a bit louder.

"I can't find them," Ulanion said about fifteen minutes later when he returned. "They're not that important, we need to go, we need to get... I don't even know."

"I'm sorry, I didn't..."

"Not your fault, nobody could've known this would happen."

"Still..."

"Come on, we need to get back to the waystation, I'll carry you," he said as he gently helped me up.

I was thinking about how to climb on his back when he laughed, scooping me up. "Only one way to carry you... your Highness."

I tried to punch him but he was already running and fast, and I was held tight as he bolted across the plains. Had to admit though, it did lighten the mood just a bit.