016

Tomb Raider

Once again, Blue woke up with her face pressed hard into a piece of paper covered with unimaginably complicated math that she couldn’t make heads nor tails of. Clearly, she had been on the track of something, but in her late-night delirium she’d opted to write in shorthand and now she was suffering the consequences.

This had become an annoyingly common occurrence.

Blue forced herself away from the mathematical nonsense—she could piece that together later. Right now, she had a headache and an empty stomach that needed tending to.

She trotted her way into the dining room, finding that Vaughan and Jeh had already had their breakfast. They did leave out a small bowl for her—it looked like it was salad today, which was fine by Blue. She levitated the bowl into the air and munched on the leaves as she continued on her way through the cabin.

The backyard greeted her with the sounds of Vaughan cutting wood with a saw.

“Morning,” Blue said.

Vaughan looked up at the sky, frowning in contemplation. “Hmm… I guess it’s technically still morning.”

“Har-de-har.” Blue continued munching on her salad. “So. Airlock?”

“Airlock,” Vaughan said. “Or a test of one, anyway.” He finished cutting through the plank of wood, dropping a small, rectangular piece to the ground. “I’ll be making a box with a hole in it we can stick bellows into. Then the sliding doors…”

“That’s not going to be very airtight.”

“It doesn’t need to be very airtight for a test. Just enough to hold air inside for a while while I move doors. If all else fails I can ask Mary for some of her plast crops, get some plastic sealant.”

“Mmm…”

“How’s your progress coming?”

“I’m not sure what I was doing at the end of last night, but in the middle I’d decided on an orbital path for the Moonshot. As well as a suggested one for our theoretical test orbit object. Thing. We really need a word for that…”

“Satellite?”

“…Guess that works. Satellite.” It was an odd word but at least it meant something related to the function. “But yeah, the difficult part about the satellite is that we won’t be on it to make course corrections, which necessitates a large margin for error. So I found a path for that.”

“If only we could see it.”

“Yeah. If only.” Blue frowned. “Since the mass of an object doesn’t affect the orbit, maybe we could throw up, like, a storm lantern or something. It only needs to be bright for a couple hours.”

“Hmm. A very expensive object to shoot into space and just leave there.”

“It’d be easier than heaving up a giant chunk of Magenta.”

“True…” Vaughan set his wooden planks on top of a table and scratched his beard. “Can’t help but think there has to be another way, though.”

“There are probably dozens of ways to do this. Doesn’t help if we can’t think of them.” Blue looked down into her bowl, more than a little disappointed to find that the salad was all gone.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just put another sun up there?”

“The sun is unimaginably huge and far away.” Blue frowned. “Not like we know exactly how far, but…”

“I thought the Academy was working on that?”

“They’re having difficulty. The moon has features you can use to find relative distance, and it’s quite a bit closer. The sun has no—well, wait, apparently it has spots…”

“Wouldn’t help too much,” Vaughan said. “Measuring cosmic distances depends on noticing parallax. The further something is the harder it is to see, and the moon’s already pretty far away.”

“Best way to find out might be to just up and go there, huh?”

Vaughan frowned. “Well, pretty sure the sun would burn you up with its heat…”

Blue let out a short chuckle. “Well, there’s one way to find out!”

“I can see it now. Blue. Wanted to touch the sun.”

Blue continued chuckling—and then she stopped short. “I… Vaughan, that might solve our little black cube problem.”

“Eh?”

“Throw it into the sun.”

“That…” Vaughan frowned. “Well, even if it can’t destroy it, nobody’s ever going to be able to get to it. The heat would burn up everything…”

“We’d need to see if the sun really is what we’re thinking it is, launch something into it to test, but then…” Blue stopped herself again and returned to laughing. “What am I doing? Thinking of launching something into the sun? Pff. We can’t even get to the moon yet.”

“Ah, but it has to be much simpler to toss something unmanned into the sun. Just point and…”

“The sun is moving and we already established we don’t know how far away it is. It’s big, yes. But it’s surprisingly easy to miss things in space. Trust me, the moving target that is the moon has been aggravating to calculate around.”

“Guess it’s a longer-term goal then. Throw a mysterious black cube into the sun.” Vaughan shook his head. “Really does sound absurd, doesn’t it?”

“No kidding.”

“Hey guys!” Jeh called from the cabin’s backdoor. “Droppin’ by to say bye!”

“Bye?” Blue tilted her head to the side. “Where are you going?”

Jeh put her bear hood over her head and grinned. “I’m going to investigate that stone structure I found to the south!”

Blue blinked. “Jeh, that’s not exactly… close.”

“Psh, you guys won’t need me for a few days. Gotta work with Alex to prep the water launch and everything while also going over all my amazing data from the last trip. I have time.”

“You just… want to walk out there into the unknown southern reaches of the forest?”

“Yep!”

“Jeh, that’s no…”

“Remember who you’re talking to,” Vaughan suggested.

Blue blinked a few times. “Oh. Right. She’s invincible and lived in the forest her entire life.” Blue put her hoof over her eyes and sighed. “Just… fine, you can go.”

Jeh tilted her head. “I… needed permission?”

“You… uh…” Blue shook her head. “No. No you did not. I just… guess I have child-protecting instincts.”

Vaughan smirked. “You’re a little young t—“

“I do not have any foals, shut up before you imply something even stupider.”

Vaughan simply shrugged.

“Well, I’m off to adventure!” Jeh said, giving them a salute. “Have fun with all the science and space and magic while I’m gone! I’ll be sure to hurry back!” She scrambled back into the cabin. A moment later they heard the front doors slam shut.

“This feels wrong,” Blue said. “She’s a kid and we’re letting her gallivant into places unknown.”

“Who knows how much ‘gallivanting’ she did before we found her?” Vaughan commented.

“I mean… yes… but…” Blue closed her eyes and grunted. “She’s confusing and the rules don’t apply to her and it annoys me.” She let out a short whinny. “I’m going back to my math, which makes more sense.”

“But your math rarely makes you smile like Jeh does!”

“Yeah...” Blue tapped her hoof on the ground. “If Alex comes around, be sure to get me. Even if I insist on staying in the math. I have given you permission to tear future-me away from the numbers despite her protests.”

“…I’m not sure I want to anger the vicious beast that is future-you.”

Blue chuckled. “That is future-you’s problem.”

“You’re making me remember my old philosophy class. My least favorite.”

“Why?”

“The instructor was stupid.”

“That goes without saying.”

“No, this was far beyond your usual complaints, Blue. I’m not even sure the man could read…”

~~~

“Here it is, girls,” Jeh said, standing with her hands on her hips at the end of Willow Hollow’s southernmost road—a tiny dirt path that led into some foliage without any clear direction after that. It was far enough away from town that they couldn’t see any buildings. “The end of civilization!”

“Oooh…” one of the Sourdough twins said.

“…Monumental,” the other asserted.

Jeh nodded. “Yep! You two ready?”

“The bakery is closed up…”

“…and we have our supplies!” The two of them danced around each other, gesturing at their large backpacks filled to the brim with supplies—bedrolls, extra food they baked themselves, hunting knives, and an assortment of other objects suited for proper hiking. Jeh carried nothing aside from her usual stuff—which included her crystals, her notebook, and not much else.

Jeh glanced at their bedrolls. “I will teach you two how to sleep out in the wilderness before this is over.”

“Oh, we know how.”

The other twin nudged Jeh. “We just don’t want to!”

“Bedrolls are comfy.”

“And do wonders on our angular bodies.”

“Gari are very sharp in places.”

“In several senses of the word.”

Jeh shrugged. “There’s something to be said for spending the night in a tree… though I agree, beds are a bit comfier. Usually.” She took in a deep breath. “Well, nothing left to do but walk.” She started her half-scamper, half-march through the forest, being sure to zig left and zag right so Rina and Rona would have time to catch up with their slower steps.

The twins were no strangers to hiking through the forest, but they had a lot of supplies and hadn’t lived among the trees for years like Jeh had. However, Jeh wasn’t really bothered by their speed. They weren’t really in a rush. It would take a day, two at most to arrive at the structure, and then a day or two back. Almost no time at all, really.

“So are there any tricks we should know?” Rina or Rona asked.

“Yeah, are there secret blood pacts you make with the forest animals?” Rona or Rina added.

Jeh giggled. “Nope! Some of them just try to eat me. A few have managed to get off with a leg, but after they see me regrowing they tend to run. If they don’t at that point, the best thing to do is just whack them in the nose or the eye.” She twirled a Red crystal out of her satchel. “Though I prefer the application of fire these days. Much faster and more effective.”

“And we are absolutely defenseless!”

The other nodded in agreement. “Just ignore the dozens of knives we have on our person.”

“We have no idea how to use them.”

The other remained silent and threw a knife at a nearby tree. Clearly, she’d been intending to skewer the trunk, but the knife bounced off and fell to the ground below.

Jeh blinked. “You really don’t, do you?”

“I’m getting better!” the knife-thrower huffed.

Her sister nudged her. “Told you it wasn’t time to show off yet.”

“I hit all the loaves yesterday! All of them! Not a single bready crust was spared my eagle eye aim!”

“Train on trees next time?” The other twin picked the knife off the ground and threw it at a different tree, perfectly embedding it in the bark. She gave her sister a smug grin.

With a grunt, the failed knife thrower retrieved her blade and refused to make eye contact with her sister. “Point being, we are the damsels in distress, and you are our heroic knight. Do not forget how squishy we are.”

“Protect you, gotcha,” Jeh said. “Though to be honest, what are we even gonna find here? With that plast dragon gone, the worst things out here are bears, and I know how to deal with those.”

“Is it a punch…”

“…Right in the snoot?”

Jeh sighed. “I wish it was. The answer, though, is usually just to be loud. They don’t like it when you’re loud.”

“Oooh, we can shriek unimaginably loud!”

“Tremble in before the might of our resonating squeal!”

Jeh grimaced. “Please n—“

Jeh quickly rammed her hands over her ears to drown out the reverberating sound of two girls hitting notes that were just offset enough from each other that their tones oscillated in a headache-inducing pulse.

They had clearly practiced this maneuver many times.

Jeh had to admit; it would be a pretty good bear deterrent. And people deterrent.

~~~

“All right, pack it up,” Big G called to his miners. “Day’s done, time to go home and rest.”

The various miners in the cavern nodded in understanding and started gathering their tools and supplies. This would take a considerable amount of time, as those who finished would have to go down the many side-tunnels to tell the other miners it was time to go. This was the main reason Big G told everyone to pack up a little before the actual end of the workday—squeezing an extra hour out of them by technicality just wouldn’t be right.

As they cleaned up, Big G took a moment to examine the progress. A few weeks ago, they had discovered this abnormally large cavern close to the surface that they had only missed by chance, and it had been absolutely full of crystals. On the first day, it had been a rippling rainbow of brilliance just waiting to be excavated.

Now, the entire cavern’s walls were bare of crystals. The only points of light were in veins the miners had uncovered behind the walls that were not quite done being extracted. It looked rather lifeless—which couldn’t have made Big G more proud. His boys were really living up to his potential. Technically speaking, referring to his miners as “his boys” was not accurate and had not been accurate for almost a decade at this point, as there were a fair number of women working the mines, but the name was a holdover and nobody complained about it. Being one of “the boys” was a decent badge of honor in Willow Hollow as the mines brought in most of the town’s income.

“Hey, Big G,” one of his best miners said, jumping over some uneven rocks to get to him. He skidded to a stop just in front of his boss. “Found some fun stuff today.”

“Oh? Gemstones?”

“More than that today. Come, take a look.” He led Big G to a collection of minecarts. Most of them were filled to the brim with a single Color of crystal, while one had a bunch of “interesting” rocks that contained things like metals, small gemstones, and the like.

What Big G was shown was not any of these things, but rather a large skull seemingly made out of rock. It had teeth the size of Big G’s hand and massive holes in the skull where the eyes would have been.

“…Fossil. Interesting.” Big G walked around the skull, frowning—struck by how little he knew about fossils. “We’ll need to get someone to identify what this is. If they can.”

“I believe I can help with that,” Alexandrite said as he walked down the rocky slopes to Big G. For a moment Big G was shocked—Alexandrite wasn’t exactly small, how did he even get down into his mines? But after a quick consultation of his mental map, Big G noted that this cavern was close enough to the surface that large tunnels had been dug to it, so Alexandrite would have been fine, if a bit cramped.

“Given the size, shape, and arrangement…” Alexandrite paused, staring at the skull. “I believe it is the remains of a Tyrannosaur. You can find them in some far-off jungles, apex predators.”

“You ever seen one?”

“No, that would require quite a bit more traveling than I am accustomed to. Not all young dragons are wanderers, despite what the rumors say.” Alexandrite carefully ran one of his claws over the skull. “Fascinating thing about fossils, you don’t find any of plasts or rigids. Though in the latter case it is theorized to be largely because rigids don’t have bones in the usual sense.”

“Mhm…” Big G folded his arms. “Alexandrite, what are you doing in my mines?”

“Seeking to understand more about the economy of this town and its people,” Alexandrite said, carefully investigating the minecarts filled with their valuables. “You are Willow Hollow’s primary industry, I simply wished to see it in action.”

“And…?”

“You’re doing very well for yourself, from what I’ve seen. How much of that is proper technique and how much of that is simple luck from living next to a large crystal reserve is up in the air.” He picked up a Red crystal and examined it in the light of a nearby lantern. “Such a large vein should be much more profitable than the size of your town indicates, however.”

“It works for us.”

“In time, as we progress in our mutual endeavors, perhaps we could discuss matters of economic growth.”

The reason this isn’t as “profitable” as it should be is because I pay my boys what they deserve and don’t work them to death and beyond, unlike some people. “A later time, perhaps. We are wrapping up for the day. Perhaps you would like to get your claws dirty and assist?”

“I’ll pass,” Alexandrite said, putting the Red crystal back in the cart. “I am rather large and cumbersome for such work.” He flicked his tail around as he turned his back on Big G. “Thank you for the enlightening conversation.”

We didn’t talk much and I didn’t invite you into my mines, dragon. “Don’t mention it.”

“See you at the Wizard Space Program in the future.”

“Eeyep.” Annoyingly.

~~~

The night was chilly, but not freezing. Jeh, Rina, and Rona all sat around a little campfire they had made in a clearing. The sky was nearly cloudless, allowing a rather unobstructed view of the thousands of stars that dotted the skies above.

“You ever just…” one of the twins reached out a hand to the stars. “Want to grab the stars?”

Jeh didn’t take her gaze off the sky. “Not really. Not sure we could grab them, they have to be really big… I think.”

“Really? You never just…” she formed her hand into a fist around above her face. “Imagine them in your hands?”

Jeh shook her head. “Not until tonight.”

“You need more ambition,” the other twin said. “You’ve got a pretty sweet deal with the Space Program and all, but you got that by luck.”

“Think of what you could get if you applied yourself!” the first added. “Why, you might even be able to grab the stars!”

Jeh raised an eyebrow. “What is it with you and grabbing the stars?”

The twins shrugged. “Just something we like to think about,” they said in unison.

“Right…” Jeh found her gaze drawn to the stars again. “I do like just… staring at them though. Even when I was alone in the forest, I loved the stars. It was the most amazing thing I ever saw from day to day… just, bam, sparkles in the sky. So many of them I could never count them. Of course now I know that there are actual star charts with actual counts and stuff. About five thousand, apparently.” She crossed her arms and smiled. “But you can never count them in a night.”

“I wonder how far you’ll go?” one of the twins asked.

“Farther than even the stars, I think,” the other said. “And she’ll bring us with her.”

Jeh chuckled. “You two aren’t invincible. And I’m pretty sure Blue would have something against ‘normal kids’ going to space.”

“One, we aren’t normal.”

“Two,” the other said, “we run the bakery and are hardly kids.”

“Apparently age means something?” Jeh shrugged. “I’m not one to question it. I’m the girl who lived in the forest forever, there’s a lot of stuff I still don’t know.”

“That’s why we like you, though!”

The other twin nodded in agreement.

“Cluelessness is a positive trait?” Jeh asked.

The twins giggled. “Maybe, but that’s not what we meant.”

“We meant that since you don’t know things, you ask questions.”

“Questions nobody else will ask.”

“Just by existing you call a lot of things into question.”

“And we like being challenged to look at things differently.”

“How do you expect to take over the world if you think like everyone else?”

“Take over the world…” Jeh chuckled. “Seems ridiculous.”

“So does going to the moon,” one of them said.

Jeh chuckled. “Yep! Guess we’re just a bunch of crazies.”

“If you study history…”

“…You’ll find that the crazies are the ones who change history.”

The twins both gestured at Jeh with cocky grins on their faces. “You’re gonna change history, Jeh.”

Jeh blinked a few times. “I… am?”

“Oh yes.”

The other nodded. “It’s quite obvious.”

“Great explorer of a new frontier.”

“Your name will be written in the history books.”

“First person in space!”

“Well, assuming someone on the other side of the planet isn’t doing it.”

“They don’t have the invincible, indomitable, Jeh!”

“Yeah… invincible.” Jeh frowned. “I’m apparently supposed to hide that from Alex.”

The twins nodded. “Smart move.”

“I don’t like hiding, though.”

“Jeh, people would want to take you away from the Space Program to do other things.”

The other one winked at her. “It’s what we would do if we were the King and an invincible girl with a fighting instinct showed up in our kingdom!”

“You have to prove that you are indispensable to the work you do and that the work is very beneficial before making yourself public.”

“Only then would the King let you stay.”

Jeh frowned. “Who is this King and why does he get to decide everything we can and can’t do?”

“Ooooh!” Both of the twins lit up. They started talking at once but, for once, they didn’t say the same thing and ended up talking over each other. Jeh caught phrases about “monarchial theory” and “power struggle” and “governmental necessity” and “rising the ranks” and a bunch of other things that, quite simply, went over her head.

One of the twins must have noticed Jeh get lost because she blushed slightly and nudged her twin to get her to stop. “Sorry. We, uh… spend a lot of time thinking about the structure of power in Kroan and the neighboring kingdoms.”

“Hey, you two take over the world all you want, it’s clearly not for me.” Jeh rubbed the back of her head awkwardly. “…I’d need to focus too much on too many different things.”

“Such a shame…”

“…Your invincibility would give you almost automatic credibility.”

Jeh rolled her eyes. “And then I’d have to talk to people all the time, deal with arguments, tell people what to do… I’d much rather listen to Lila than tell her what to do.”

The twins shrugged. “You’ll still help us, though.”

Jeh nodded, not realizing it wasn’t a question. “What… is your plan, though?”

Both the twins put a finger to their lips and started giggling.

Jeh rolled her eyes. “All right, guess I’ll never know.”

“Oh, you’ll know eventually!”

The other nodded eagerly. “But it changes all the time as new information comes to light.”

“It didn’t involve you before, but now it does!”

“You really are something special, Jeh.”

Jeh grinned. “You bet I am! I fly into space! I am part of the most cutting-edge team of wizards and geniuses in the world!”

~~~

Vaughan glanced at his reflection in the mirror.

His beard still wasn’t gray.

“I’m over forty, come on, I need that wizened wizard look…”

He put his hands on the mirror and started adjusting it, vainly thinking that maybe he just had the wrong angle. This proved to be a terrible mistake as the sunlight streaking through the window reflected off the mirror at the perfect angle to get right into Vaughan’s eyes and temporarily blind him.

“Augh!” Vaughan stumbled back, holding his hands to his watering eyes. “Geh… I just want the gray beard, what’s wrong with that?” He put his hands back on the mirror and adjusted it back to where it was—noticing a bright spot move across the room as he did so.

He had seen the spotlight created by reflective surfaces many times before, but something about it today drew his attention. Carefully, he adjusted the mirror back and forth, moving the brightened spot all over the room, wherever he wanted, so long as it was in the beam of the sun.

Slowly, but surely, a wry smile crawled up Vaughan’s face.

“Yes…”

He grabbed the mirror on the sides and lifted it up—no simple feat seeing as it was an upright full-body mirror. It would have been a simple matter to move if it had occurred to him that Orange magic was a viable method of doing so, but in his excitement, he opted to carry the bulky object in his hands down the stairs at a pace faster than he would normally descend.

It was a miracle he didn’t break it.

He burst out into the backyard. “Behold!”

“Nobody says ‘behold!’ ” Krays called back at him. She was currently working with Blue and Suro on some kind of arcane device with a lot of Blue and Orange.

“Mirrors are the answer! Mirrors!”

Blue glanced down at Suro. “Do you understand him?”

Suro shook his head. “He does do this from time to time, though. Last time it was magnets.”

Vaughan held the mirror up over his head—an act that made him wobble considerably, but he managed to stay upright. “Mirrors can solve everything!”

“Poverty?” Krays asked.

Vaughan reflected the light of the sun into Krays’ face.

She put her hand over her eyes and winced. “And it’s also apparently a good wea—hold on.” She dropped her hand and glanced to Blue with wide eyes. “I understand what he’s talking about.”

“You do?”

“Mirrors. Just. Just make the satellite shiny.”

“Bingo!” Vaughan declared, pointing a finger at Krays. Attempting to hold up the mirror with one hand proved to be his undoing—he lost control and it clattered to the ground, shattering.

Suro facepawed with a dramatic sigh.

Vaughan cleared his throat. “Ahem. Well. Here’s some mirror fragments for you to use.”

Blue clicked her tongue a couple of times as she thought about it. “If the satellite was shiny, it’d reflect the sunlight much like the moon… but, no, at night it’ll be in Ikyu’s shadow and we wouldn’t be able to see it.”

“Not if the moon was out!” Krays said, grinning. “Think about it, you can use mirrors to reflect light across vast distances. It’s often used as a covert means of sending a message or a signal. Like, say, ‘I’ve disabled the city gate’s lock, come on in’ and such things.”

Suro frowned. “We wouldn’t be able to aim it…”

“Spheres,” Blue said. “Spheres are the answer, always. The Moonshot is going to be a sphere, this satellite should be a sphere too. Just make it perfectly round!”

“A spherical mirror!” Vaughan clapped his hands. “It’ll reflect anything and everything! Really shiny!”

“There are a few logistical problems…” Blue frowned. “The biggest being it has to be small for us to launch it into orbit effectively.”

“How big does it have to be for us to see it?”

Blue blinked. “I… actually don’t know. I’m not sure how to calculate that, either…”

“You can signal across canyons with a hand mirror,” Krays said.

“Focused Purple lasers can seemingly go forever,” Vaughan added. “And sunlight doesn’t appear to be stopped unless it hits something solid.”

“The atmosphere doesn’t have zero effect,” Blue said, tapping her hoof. “We know that from Jeh’s images… but… hmmmm.” She scratched her chin. “Mirrors…”

“We should get everyone together to talk about this in more detail,” Suro suggested. “Get better ideas.”

“We’re gonna make a satellite!” Vaughan declared. “With mirrors!”

“The answer to everything!” Krays said, winking. “Including coating the ground of your backyard and everyone else with dangerous shrapnel.”

Vuaghan glanced at his broken mirror. “…That wasn’t exactly a cheap item, either…”

“Hey, at least it’s cheaper than magnets,” Suro pointed out.

“True… that magnet may not have been the wisest purchase I ever ma—“

“You have a magnet!?” Blue blurted.

“Er. Yes?”

“That… I’m not sure how that could be useful but it might be!”

“Where does a compass point if you’re in space?” Krays wondered.

“That’s something we can find out now because, apparently, we have a magnet!” Blue let out a huff. “What other potentially useful things are hidden in that cabin of yours?”

Vaughan scratched the back of his head. “Not… sure. I haven’t really taken an inventory in a while.”

“Oooh! I can do that!” Seskii said, popping into the conversation from seemingly nowhere.

“By all means,” Vaughan said.

“Seskii, master inventory-er, will get right on it! …It might take a few days. You have a lot of boxes of stuff littered all around the cabin.”

Vaughan chuckled. “At least I’m not a hoarder like Wizard Gibbons. That man barely had room to walk in his house…”

~~~

“At the end of our long…”

“…and arduous journey…”

“…we have arrived at long last…”

“…at our goal!”

The Sourdough twins gestured extravagantly at the stone structure.

Up close it didn’t look all that impressive. The stone blocks that made it up were old and worn, cracked in multiple places, and overall it was only about the size of a small house. The most impressive part of it was the rather large Magenta loop situated on top of the flat roof, with six pieces that made up the points of a star. While the stones of the structure were old, the crystal couldn’t possibly be—the stand it was situated in was almost the perfect size for it, which was impossible for an old Magenta loop as it would have burned away its mass long ago.

Someone had to be maintaining the Magenta. While also allowing foliage to grow all over the proper structure. The stone showed no sign of maintenance.

“This is odd, right?” Jeh asked.

“Very,” the twins agreed.

“Ever find anything like this in the forest?” One of them asked Jeh.

Jeh shook her head. “At least not that I remember. My memory really isn’t the best. It’s all scrambled up in there out of order. I remember something about winter then a ton of things about spring then a winter, then a summer, as though I skipped fall but then I have memories of fall much later but that’s impossible…” She put a hand to the back of her head and chuckled. “Without people around I think I just… didn’t bother arranging memories in ways that made sense.”

“Fascinating,” the twins said as they scratched their chins in exactly the same motion at exactly the same time.

Jeh jumped up on top of the structure to investigate the Magenta crystals. She had a basic understanding of how Magenta loops worked and identified the cycle of the will. She took out her own Magenta crystal and probed the loop, seeing if there was actually a spell stored inside of it. There turned out to be none—this loop’s only purpose was to trigger more Magenta and perpetually light up as the spell bounced back and forth between the components. “No spell!”

The twins had split up and started circling the structure. “Found a door!” one of them called. Jeh jumped down as the other twin ran over. At first, Jeh thought she was messing with them—the wall looked just like the other walls, made out of weathered and old stone.

Except the cracks in this wall lined up suspiciously with one another.

“Hmm…” Jeh placed both of her hands on the stone door and pushed as hard as she could. Nothing happened.

“It’s a pull door, Jeh.” One of the twins stuck her hand in between the cracks between the stones and pulled. It shifted, but she was nowhere near big or strong enough to move the door.

“Stand back, I got this.” Jeh cracked her knuckles and placed her hands in the crack and pulled with all her might.

Despite being very experienced at roughing it and engaging in high levels of activity regularly, the fact of the matter was that Jeh was small, weak, and rather flimsy. Her strength was not enough to open the door either.

“All three?” one of the twins suggested.

“Y-yeah…” Jeh managed through her heavy breaths. They all placed their hands into the crack and pulled, slowly but surely dragging the massive stone slab open. The inside had no light, but with a quick Red spell, Jeh was able to illuminate the area with a flame. The interior was devoid of decoration and empty. Stairs led down into the earth. They couldn’t see the bottom even when Jeh increased the intensity of the light.

Jeh grinned. “Now this is going somewhere.” She pointed her Red crystal forward. “Onward!”

She took one step. The stair beneath her foot depressed into the ground. An arrow shot out of the wall and struck her in the neck.

The Sourdough twins gasped audibly.

“Oh look, a trap,” Jeh deadpanned, ripping the arrow out of her neck. “What an amazing deterrent.” She stepped hard on every single stone step she could, eventually finding another trap that threw a spiked ball into her stomach. “Much pain.” She pulled the ball out and threw it down the stairs, triggering dozens of other traps as it rolled down. “Very effective.”

“And this is why you go first,” one of the twins said.

“Obviously.” Jeh put her hands on her hips. “I shall become pincushion!” She started a dutiful march down the stairs and began perhaps the most awkward trap-finding quest ever. Rather than try to find traps so she could avoid them, she sought them out so she could trigger all of them and spare Rina and Rona from getting skewered in their heads.

Jeh was bloodlessly stabbed, sliced, poked, slapped, and skewered innumerably many times as she descended.

“If the people who built this place could see you…” one of the twins started.

“…they would probably be screaming in rage.”

Jeh chuckled. “All their efforts, for nothing! Ha—“ A spike shot out of a side wall, skewering her through the ribs and making her run out of breath. “Ah…” she gasped. “Impaled… fun…” She attempted to remove herself from the spike.

Only then did she realize that her legs weren’t touching the ground. She was too short. She rather comically scrambled around, but all she accomplished was running in place for a while. She deflated. “Little… help…?”

The twins rolled their eyes but dutifully pried Jeh off the spike and set her back down on the ground.

“It’s a good thing you guys are here, that’d have taken me a while to get off of,” Jeh said, taking a moment to stretch even before the hole in her side had fully healed. “Then Blue would have gotten worried because I took too long and we don’t want that.”

“What a travesty that would be,” the twins deadpanned.

“We don’t want to make her ma—“ Jeh stepped on another trap. This one opened up a hole in the floor. “-aaaAAAAAAAA!” Jeh scrambled for something to grab onto but only found her fingers sliding off the smooth sides of the stone pit. She kept yelling loudly for several seconds before there was a loud thud.

One of the twins pulled out a small Purple crystal and lit up the pit with white light. They stuck their heads over the edges and looked down, seeing nothing but blackness.

“Jeh?” they called.

There was no response.

Both of their eyes widened and they looked to each other in fear.

“Uh oh.”

~~~

“Today’s meeting…” Vaughan said over the dinner the rest of the Wizard Space Program (save Jeh and Seskii) were eating. “Is about mirrors.”

“…Mirrors?” Mary asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Mirrors!” Krays shouted, slamming her fist into the table with a wild grin on her face.

“Mirrors,” Suro added with a slight nod.

Blue facehooved. “If we make the satellite a spherical mirror we should be able to see it from light reflections. We just don’t know if we’d have to make it too big.”

Big G nodded. “Seems reasonable.”

Suro jumped up on the table—something that wasn’t very dramatic given his small stature. “I’ve been thinking on this, and it seems to me the best way to test if we can see things in space is to have the Skyseed take up mirrors of various sizes and see what works. Once we can clearly see it we know how big we need to make our satellite.”

“But what if it needs to be huge?” Blue asked. “Size is a problem in carrying it and deploying it. The type of device we’re planning on using to launch it is an arcane gun. It can’t shoot very large things, you have to build it to fit around whatever you’re launching.”

“Not necessarily,” Vaughan said. “There are elastic launcher designs.”

“Eh?”

Vaughan pointed at a bowl on the table and lifted it into the air with Orange. “In addition to holding this bowl in the air, I am using Orange to pull on it in two different directions, holding it still. If I suddenly stop pulling from one side…” Suddenly, the bowl flew across the room at high speed—almost smashing into the wall, but Vaughan managed to catch it with his magic. “This can be used to accelerate large objects at a distance.”

“Alternatively, we could make the satellite small and have it unfold once launched,” Big G said.

“Engineering nightmare!” Krays declared.

“So’s the elastic launcher,” Vaughan admitted. “See, a high Orange Wizard could probably launch the satellite without issue as he knows precisely how to induce the correct amount of acceleration. Neither Jeh nor myself are that precise, so we’d have to create an arcane device to do it. Which would be an engineering task all its own.”

Blue smirked. “But at least I can tell you exactly how much force you need to induce over time!”

“That’s one of the biggest issues with making the elastic launcher device. Wizards are able to adjust the location their spells act on. A device just goes where it’s told. As the object moves away, the spell can easily lose its ‘lock’ on the satellite.”

“Not if I calculate exactly where it’s going to be at every moment in time!” Blue’s smile dropped slightly. “Oh boy… minuscule time updates in the calculations…”

“Engineering, arcane, and mathematical nightmares abound.” Krays kicked her legs up on the table. “Sounds like you lot are gonna have a hard time.”

“Krays, you’re one of our engineers,” Suro pointed out.

“…True…”

“It… might not be that bad…” Blue said, scratching her chin. “If we can get to speed fast enough—say, in less than a second—I can assume a straight path. Lemme…” She pulled out a notebook and did some quick calculations. “Let’s say 10,000 meters per second in a second… so that’s the acceleration… mass of one kilogram… yep, 10,000 Newtons* of force.”

*Naturally, they call it something else. Yes, they have the equivalent of Newton’s laws but not his theory of gravity. This is due almost entirely to Orange Wizards being able to measure force directly through stored Orange spells. Also note that, for us, the speed equals the newtons required to accelerate one kilogram over one second. This is because our metric units of measurement were created to be amazingly simple. Blue had to do several conversions in her actual calculation.

“Huh. Big number.” Mary tilted her head. “What does it mean?”

“It means you’d tear the satellite to a fine mist even if you could accelerate it that quickly,” Vaughan said. “And yes, I am remembering the fact that we won’t light on fire in space.”

Blue continued scribbling numbers down. “Hmm… the thing is, if we extend the time very much, I won’t be able to calculate its exact position as it’s going to start falling and we don’t know enough about that…”

“So we make it less massive,” Vaughan said. “It just needs to be reflective, not heavy.”

Big G crossed his arms. “Mirrors are heavy. Even if we make it hollow.”

“A lot of these problems depend on how big it has to be…” Suro reminded everyone. “Which is something we just don’t know.”

“But we can test!” Krays clapped her hands together. “So how about we stop trying to find trails that don’t exist in a forest and make our own? Surely Jeh can take up a giant mirror and adjust how much of it is visible.”

“There is a problem with a flat mirror, though,” Vaughan said. “She’d have to aim the light back at us. A sphere can just be a sphere.”

Big G nodded in agreement. “Making several dozen sizes of spherical mirrors is a waste of resources.”

“Another engineering problem rears its ugly head…” Vaughan took a moment to scratch his beard. “How to make a reflective sphere that can adjust its size…”

“Wait. Wait. Idiots.” Krays facepalmed. “We don’t need to go to space to test this.”

“Eh?” Blue tilted her head. “But…”

“We know people that can fly. Instead of testing vertical distance, then why not horizontal?” Krays tapped her finger on her forehead.

Everyone stared at her blankly for a moment.

“Actually, we might not even need someone to fly. You can see a long way from the top of Mount Cascade. Just hike a big mirror up there. Take readings, do science, then have Blue calculate the size you need to be able to see it at any distance using math.”

“That will actually work,” Blue said, shaking her head. “Krays… you are actually a really good experimentalist. First the armor, now this…”

Krays grinned smugly. “What can I say? I’m an ideas kind of girl.”

“We just need big mirrors, Purple crystals, and darkness,” Vaughan said. “…Then we’ll know how big we’ll need it to be for any distance!”

“New problem,” Blue said. “How does Jeh know how high up she is? When does she launch?”

“You can probably measure that from the curvature of Ikyu,” Vaughan said. “…Which means someone will have to calculate the visible appearance of Ikyu at different heights…”

“But we can do this! Lila!”

Lila, who had been rather quiet since her input was not needed, smirked. “Yes?”

“Do you think you can run around town looking for the biggest mirror you can find?”

“Absolutely.”

“We’re in business!”

~~~

Rina and Rona collectively entered their “this is serious” mode. Neither of them spoke a word as they took off their backpacks and set them on the ground. Each of them found the coils of rope they had taken. One grabbed a loose rock and tied it to the end of one of the ropes while the other started collecting arrows and spikes from the various traps that had already been triggered.

The one with the rope shook it every so often, listening closely for the sound of the rock hitting the ground, but there was no such luck with one length of rope. She had to tie it together with her sister’s rope to get to the bottom—where there was a satisfying clack sound. She signaled success to her sister with a quick, almost imperceptible twist of her wrist. Her sister responded in turn with a subtle tap of her foot on the ground, indicating that she’d found enough materials to successfully anchor the rope.

One of them started arranging the arrows and spikes near a crack in the wall, tying one end of the rope around it to secure it. The other twin pulled the rope out of the pit and found that there was nothing attached to the rock, so that ruled out any toxic pool of acid at the bottom. Or even something as potentially helpful as a pool of water. She noticed a few new chips in the rock though, so she indicated potential spikes to her sister with a pointed finger.

Her sister finished securing the rope on the arrows and spikes, at which point both of them ran up the stairs in unison to find a large chunk of loose stone. They carefully slid it down the stairs with no small amount of effort, but eventually set it on top of the secured rope. A second level of security to make extra sure it didn’t collapse.

The two of them quickly tied the rope around both of their waists, making it so their backs were to each other. In one hand, each of them held a small Purple crystal for light. In the other, they held securely to the rope. They coiled the rope up in a spool and made sure to hold above that point so that, as they descended, they could slowly uncoil the rope rather than falling.

They quickly but cautiously dipped over the edge of the pit, pressing their legs to the sides—while it may have been possible for them to climb down with just their hands, it would have been extremely exhausting and likely would have required all of their hands. Now, with their legs adding stability, they could essentially walk down.

Each of their steps they took cautiously and in unison, looking every which way for potential defects in the wall, things that would catch the rope, and any traps. Fortunately, whoever built this pit made the somewhat reasonable assumption that no one would ever be climbing down it and hadn’t installed any traps here.

It took several minutes and even with all their preparations, they were still very tired when they reached the bottom of the pit. Unfortunately for them, the pit did not simply end, but rather opened up to a much larger area, so they couldn’t use their legs to support them anymore as they descended.

The expanse extended a fair distance in every direction save downward, as it was rather flat in shape. Below them was a forest of spikes made out of crystal, clearly arranged in such a way that as they grew and deformed, the spikes would only become sharper even after eons without upkeep. However, there was a notable lack of Magenta spikes, while every other Color was represented. Both of the twins noted that roughly one in every seventh spike had been removed.

At least now they knew where the crystals to maintain the loop on top of the structure were coming from.

Jeh was easy to find. She was lying in one piece in a hole where one of the Magenta spikes should have been. Given the large tear in her clothing that ran from her chest to her legs, she’d probably been badly skewered and slid down into there, hitting her head hard on the stone ground. She was unharmed, but obviously out cold. The twins noted that her black undergarments were completely unharmed, despite the fact that they also should have been clearly torn to shreds.

Carefully, the twins angled themselves towards her, careful not to touch the edges of any crystal spikes—though they did have to use their legs to bounce off the flat edges of a Yellow one. Soon, they were on their feet and trying to help Jeh up.

“Mmmfl… five more minutes…” Jeh grumbled.

“Jeh!” the twins shouted.

“Not a real bear…”

The twins took one glance at each other. There was no debate, they immediately started their shrill reverberating scream.

“Agh!” Jeh shot to her feet. “No, no, never, why!?”

The twins stopped. “You were out cold.”

“We woke you up!”

“And we saved you.”

“Youuuuu’re welcome!” The two of them struck an intentionally cute-yet-smug pose.

“Saved me…?” Jeh looked around at the field of crystal spikes. She looked up at the rope dangling from the ceiling. “Oh. Guess I do have a weakness. Pits.”

The twins untied themselves from the rope. “We’ll need to tie you up and climb back ou—“

There was a loud sound from far above them, like two sheets of metal coming together. Immediately, the rope went slack and started falling into a spool at their feet.

“…Uh-oh,” the three of them said at once.

One of the twins caught the upper half of the rope in her hand before it hit the ground. She ran her fingers over the bristled end. “This was deliberate. Someone cut this.”

“Dangit…” Jeh grimaced. “Guess we’re not welcome here…”

“I thought we...”

“…already knew that?”

“Y’know.” A twin pointed at a nearby spike. “Because of the traps.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s here now, that makes it a whole lot more complicated.” Jeh looked around. “That pit better not be the only way out…”

One of the twins looked around at the spikes. “Crystals aren’t very structurally sound, we could break our way th—“

There was a loud, unearthly shriek from above them. Whirling around, the three of them were witness to a truly horrible creature. It was as tall as a man and a half, and it floated above them with an overly arched back. Dark gray tendrils hung from its body like tattered rags, but were made of flesh and twitched occasionally like some kind of sedated tentacle. The entity had no legs, but it did have two arms with a pale blue complexion that ended in extremely long fingers with pointed nails. In each of these hands it held a rusted blade, though the two weapons were of different sizes and makes.

It was the face that was the worst, though. Two eye sockets led into a pit of pure darkness, and the mouth hung open in an eternal howl, even when it wasn’t making any noise.

Rina and Rona finally lost their cool. They tightly hugged each other and let out a pure, panicked scream.

~~~

Seskii dropped enough papers to fill a book on top of Vaughan’s desk in his study. “Tah-daaah!”

Vaughan looked down at the stack of paper. “What… am I looking at?”

“An inventory of everything you have in this cabin! Except the cube. But I’ve got everything else in here!”

Vaughan opened it up to the middle and found a page recording dozens of different shapes of crystal he had stored away in boxes. “This is… thorough.”

“I left no stone unturned! By the way, found a bunch of taffy behind a spider’s nest.” She held out a bag filled with carefully wrapped taffy. She popped one out of the bag and started munching on it. “Want one?”

“…So that’s where that went…” Vaughan shook his head. “Wait, that’s like… twenty years old.”

“It’s taffy. Tastes great!”

“…I’ll pass.”

Seskii shrugged. “Your loss. Also found a ton of trash. Well, more than a ton, actually. Stored all that outside in the big crate. Oooh, and this page catalogs the sizes of every box you have!”

Vaughan tilted his head. “Wasn’t this a little… boring?”

“Oh yes, absolutely. But it was for a good cause!”

Vaughan flipped through the pages, finding several with cute cartoony drawings of Seskii’s face with little comments. You sure have a lot of books, Vaughan! Shame how so many are missing pages… but I found some of those stuffed in cracks in the attic!

“Oh, and I did find the secret room,” Seskii said.

Vaughan blinked. “I have a secret room?”

“Yep!”

“Is there… anything in it?”

“No. Totally empty. My guess is whoever you hired to help you build this place forgot to tell you about it. Or, alternatively, the room was a complete accident. You do kind of have to get between the walls to get there and it’s not exactly… neat.”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “And now you know my house better than I do…”

“Yep! By the way, you’re running out of beard oil.”

“…You cataloged my beard oil.”

“I cataloged everything!”

“Good… job?” Vaughan scratched his head. “Is there anything you found that’s immediately helpful?”

“Nope. But there’s tons of interesting stuff, but I’ll tell you about them if they become relevant, or you can find them in the catalog. I did find something that will make a nice addition to your study, though!” She reached down and hefted up a bluish glass orb off the floor and set it on top of the table. “Behold, a pretty orb for you to contemplate!”

“…I remember when I bought this. ‘I’ll look even more like a wizard if I have an orb,’ I said. Silly, in the end.”

“Buuuuut you still like looking at it, riiight?”

Vaughan smirked. “There is something… pleasing, about it. Thanks, Seskii.”

“Don’t mention it!”

At this point, Blue walked into the study with a letter. “Oh, hey, nice orb.”

“Thank you,” Vaughan said.

“Anyway,” Blue levitated some papers out of the letter. “We’ve just gotten a rather large sum of money from a professional cartographer named Immi. He wants us to take a lot more pictures of Ikyu from above so he can make more maps… like this.” She unfolded a map and set it down on the desk, showing a very professionally done drawing. It was far better than just re-drawing the images they’d taken and included city names, roads, borders, and natural features, all with names—even the ones nobody had named previously, such as the Purple Cube. There were a lot of empty spots, though, with only city names and such.

“Cloud cover was the biggest issue,” Blue said. “So, yeah, going up at a different time will get us different results.”

Vaughan examined the map. “Well… this is turning out to be far more profitable than I realized it could be.”

“Which is good for us.” Blue noticed the giant stack of papers at this point. “What’s… all that?”

“An inventory of everything in the cabin!” Seskii declared. “Everything!”

“Except the cube,” Vaughan said.

“Yes. Except the cube.”

Blue took a long look at the stack of paper. “Yeah, I’m not gonna waste my time digging through that heap. At least it exists, I guess. I don’t suppose there was a legitimate compass in there?”

Seskii shook her head. “Just the magnet. But you can use that to make a compass easily enough.”

“Right.” Blue shook her head. “Man, I’m starting to feel like we’re doing too much at once… launchpad, mirror experiments, cartography, planet picture, water experiments, moon mission…”

“I think it’s a good sign,” Vaughan said. “Means this is actually worth something. Something big. And here I am, only wanting to go up because it sounds cool!” He let out a joyous laugh.

“We are going to spend all this money on the Moonshot and you know it.”

“And then people will want us to take pictures of the moon! Or use the Moonshot to go elsewhere!”

Blue clicked her tongue. “There’s… not exactly anything keeping the Moonshot from going to other places besides the issue of supplies and the danger of the complete unknown.”

“The unknown will be conquered, in time.” Seskii’s expression became uncharacteristically wistful as she looked out the window. “The answers to the greatest mysteries are out there, my friends. All you need to do is go looking.”

~~~

Jeh knew exactly what she was looking at. She’d read about them in Vaughan’s books.

A wraith.

Wraiths were known for a few things. The first was their attribute; the ability to become completely intangible at will. This allowed them to phase in and out of solid matter and had the potential to wreak havoc on stores of Magenta dust.

The second thing they were known for was being absolutely terrifying to look at and listen to. They were able to make the most harrowing of haunting shrieks, leading many legends to form around them being dead creatures, hence the name “wraith.”

Thirdly, there were no shortage of legends about them killing and eating children.

Jeh was well aware that her two best friends were children.

She wasn’t about to let some ghostly monster eat them.

“You want some indigestion!?” Jeh pulled out a Red crystal with one hand and pointed at herself with the other. “Come and get it!”

The wraith was already slicing at Jeh’s head with his blades. Jeh opted to duck under the dual blades and release a fireball right into him—where it promptly phased right through him. He took the opportunity to attack again, this time embedding his blade in Jeh’s side.

“Ow,” Jeh deadpanned. She twirled herself off the blade, the wound sealing up in less than a second. This time, she pulled out a Magenta crystal. “No more ghosting for you, buddy!” Pulling the same trick the kankathi pulled on her, she jammed the wraith’s attribute.

The wraith was intelligent enough to know that this was what she was doing, but his ability to float was also an attribute, so he fell to the ground, narrowly avoiding being impaled on the tip of one of the spikes.

The wraith was still capable of physically standing upon his unusual tentacles, brandishing both of his blades. He let out a ghostly shrieking howl.

With her free hand, Jeh thrust at him with Orange, knocking him back into the flat edge of a crystal spike. He struggled, howling louder and louder, but she held him firm. Without his attribute, he wasn’t all that much to worry about.

“Gotcha,” Jeh chuckled. “Now… how about you tell me what this place is?”

The wraith only howled in response.

“Really…?” Jeh glanced back at Rina and Rona—they were no longer screaming, but they were still visibly shaken. But they hadn’t been eaten. “Right… we… should probably go.” Jeh turned to the wraith again. “Hey, buddy, you want us gone, right?”

The wraith only shrieked.

Jeh blinked. “You can’t understand me, can you…?”

There was no change in the wraith’s demeanor.

“Great, now what are we going to do?”

“Y-yellow,” one of the twins suggested. “It… it does have its uses.”

Nodding, Jeh made sure to hold both the Orange and the Magenta in one hand while she pulled out a Yellow crystal with her free one. She waved it in front of the wraith’s face. “You know what this is.”

The wraith’s screams began to quiet as its empty eyes followed the crystal around.

“Good. So just… let’s ‘talk.’ “ Jeh pushed her will into the Yellow and made contact with the wraith… and he accepted her.

Jeh saw thousands of wraiths, all living in a stone chamber deep underground. However, they didn’t look all that scary when they were all talking to one another, laughing, and doing things normal people did like buying food from merchants. Granted, their words sounded like extended scratchy moaning and their food always seemed to be in a state of rot, but they were doing normal things.

Jeh saw as several wraiths were suddenly outside, lifting Magenta crystals on top of the structure—their home. They maintained the Magenta star and bowed their heads in some kind of ritual every time they went.

Jeh saw this ritual replayed dozens of times in her mind, but each time there were fewer and fewer wraiths present. Every time, the forest grew more and more around them, turning the smooth stone structure into something old and worn—but they never did anything about the plants, only the Magenta crystal.

Sometimes, people would see the Magenta crystal. They would come. They would scream and run away… or attack violently. However, the memories did not have with them the idea of rage—they were of sadness.

The wraiths were waiting for something.

Something that never came.

In time, there was only one wraith. One wraith who took crystals from the traps and carved a new Magenta star every now and then. One who kept the rituals he had been raised with. He did not know where they started or why they were done… merely that they were done.

In turn, Jeh expressed who she was. Her life in the forest, her journeys in space, her home at Willow Hollow. Their wish to leave.

It wasn’t as good as words, but their emotions were laid bare.

Jeh cut the Yellow connection. She also released the Orange and Magenta grip on the wraith. She wiped her eyes. “I’m… sorry.”

The wraith silently floated into the air, making the twins jump nervously. Slowly, he nodded in their direction. He dropped his swords to the ground and picked up the cut rope with his bony hands. He floated up through the hole in the ceiling, taking it with him.

About a minute later they heard a loud clank.

Jeh pulled on the rope. “…It’s secure.”

“You…”

“…Trust it?” The twins frowned.

“Yeah, I trust him,” Jeh said. “This… is his home. We’re invaders.” She gave them an awkward smile. “Let’s get out of here.”

The three of them tied the rope around themselves and, rather awkwardly, climbed up until they were in the hole again and could use their legs to stabilize.

“You guys did this all the way down?” Jeh asked. “…Wow.”

“It was…”

“…no problem.”

“Seriously, though, thanks for coming for me.”

In time, and with significant strain, they eventually managed to flop out onto the stairwell once again. The rope was currently attached to the ground by the wraith’s swords. The wraith himself was floating a short way down the stairs, watching them from the shadows.

The twins quickly hid behind Jeh. Jeh looked down at the wraith with sad eyes and waved awkwardly at him. “Bye… hope you… find what it is you’re waiting for.”

The wraith only stared at them as they slowly backed up the stairs to the world outside. The sun shone down on them. Somewhere, they could hear birds singing.

Both of the twins let out sighs of relief.

“You guys okay?” Jeh asked.

The twins glanced at each other for a moment. “…Not really,” they said.

Jeh pulled the two of them into a hug. “It’ll be fine. We’re out. …Let’s go to our home.”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Lots of science is hidden in the background of this chapter.

First of all parallax. This is actually a rather simple concept. If you stand in one place and look at an object and then move a little to the left, it visually moves relative to the distance you are away from it. However, the farther something away is, the less parallax has an effect on something. Walking across town will see a building move a long ways, but that mountain in the distance will seem to be in the same place it always has been.

This change can be used to find how far away something is, assuming you know the distance between the two points you were looking at the object from. If you have a line between two points you measure from and angles measured with respect to that line to the object you’re looking at, well, you can create a triangle and solve for all the sides and angles to get a distance.

The problem arises when things are really far away. Because more distance produces less visible change. So you need precise measurements. For instance, to find the distance to the moon you need to perform a simultaneous measurement of the moon’s position on two distant places on the Earth’s surface, taking into account the curvature of the earth in your calculation. However, the moon is close enough for this to provide a reasonably accurate result, which is why the Wizard Space Program has pretty good data on the size of their moon and its distance.

Blue’s calculations on the force required to move the satellite are done quickly, and that’s because they’re actually really simple, relying only on two equations: F=ma (force = mass times acceleration) and v=at (velocity = acceleration times time). She wanted to accelerate something to 10,000 m/s in 1 second, which has an acceleration of 10,000 m/s2. Then we plug the acceleration into the F=ma for 1 kg and find a 10,000 N force. The lovely benefit of metric is on full display here. No need to convert, watch units, or get confused at the scale of the number.

But yes this is an absolutely absurd force. 10,000 N over one second. That’s 1000 times the force of gravity, more or less. “Force over time” is actually an important concept calculated, known as impulse. See, if you apply a force for an instant, it doesn’t actually accomplish much. It induces an acceleration, sure, but acceleration has to be applied for a time to see a velocity change (see v=at). So to actually get a change in velocity, force must be acted over time. This is easy when you’re a wizard on a spaceship with easy access to Orange-produced force. This is not easy when you are trying to launch a satellite to absurd speeds before it gets out of your range.

Now, when I started writing this chapter, I was sure the calculation for “how big does a spherical mirror have to be for you to see it in space?” would be simple.

It is not. There are lots of issues with relative light pollution, the angle at which the sunlight (and moonlight) hits your mirror, the resolving power of your eye which, on a fantasy world, has a very large variation…

The Sputnik could barely be seen as a faint light orbiting the earth. It was largely a reflective sphere with a 58cm diameter and a rough orbital distance of 577 km, which is quite a bit higher than the ISS. So something smaller will be able to be seen at the height the WSP is going. Still, that’s a half-meter sphere—nothing to sneeze at!

Since this Science Segment is already getting long I won’t get into it, but I suspect a future Science Segment will deal with the specific annoyances of calculating luminosity, reflectivity, albedo, and all sorts of other nonsense.