022

The Shinelands

“You mentioned requiring someone to come back with you?” Lila asked Tenrayce as dinner wrapped up.

Tenrayce didn’t look up from her book—she had moved on to Jeweler Techniques for the Digitally Challenged. “That is correct. Someone needs to return with me who can describe the reasoning behind the project as well as the principles behind its operation.” She turned a page. “This is in your best interests because, as educated as I am, I doubt I would give your program the justice it deserves. I cannot know it in and out as you can, nor can I answer random questions that might be posed. You have been living in it for months if not years; you can probably answer questions you’d never even think to ask.” She took a sip of tea and turned another page.

Lila nodded. “Well… I am unable to go as I also serve as this town’s Mayor, and I likely wouldn’t be the best choice anyway as I am not technically skilled.”

“All of us who are need to be here to work on the thing,” Vaughan muttered. “Work will slow while whoever’s away is away… bah, can’t be helped.”

“Actually… it can,” Blue said, looking up from her plate. “…I could go.”

Vaughan shook his head. “Blue, out of th—”

“I’ve done the theorizing and math, you need to start working on the specifics. I already explained basically everything you need to know today.”

“But… Blue.” Vaughan folded his hands together. “This would involve returning to Axiom. And the Academy.”

Blue flicked her tail nervously. “Yes… I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea, but it’s obvious I’m the best choice. I was trained as a Messenger, I know how to explain things, and I know how to get around the city.”

“The wizards who oversaw your expulsion from the academy...”

“Can go eat a sock,” Blue huffed.

Tenrayce let out an amused snort. “Most of them would deserve it.”

Blue was more than a little surprised to hear the Princess of Kroan talking like that.

“I was not given special treatment in the Academy. Sometimes I wonder if my high station made them harsher on me than most.”

“You’ve still graduated at a rather young age,” Vaughan commented.

“Most of that was fueled by pure spite, natural talent, and a rushed entrance application snuck in while the normal secretary was off-duty.”

“We shouldn’t be hearing about this…” Big G muttered.

“Oh, if any of you tried to use this information against me, you’d be ridiculed into obscurity. The great wizards of the Academy, getting fooled by a princess’ application? Absurd, they had to have recognized her unique situation and allowed her to register early.” She turned another page. “Rest assured, the old bats in the Academy will be out for blood, your only recourse is the fact that they’ll be hounding me just as much as you.”

Blue let out a grunt. “I’m not saying I’m the best choice because I think this will be fun. I’m the best choice because I am. It’s not going to be fun. It’ll be even worse with those who know who I am. They are not going to want to listen to a student they failed.”

“I could go instead,” Vaughan suggested. “They do respect me.”

“But you have work to do, and lots of it. You and Suro need to get those arcane device designs ready. You and I know roughly the same amount about the general project, and if anyone there wants any actual calculations you’d be helpless.”

“We don’t need to bring everything in the project.”

“I know, but I have the most overall understanding of it, and you know it.” Blue huffed. “I’m going.”

Vaughan leaned back, frowning and scratching his beard.

“She’s really got you there,” Krays said, chuckling. “She’s the real boss. Move aside, grandpa, the genius is in town!”

“Why do I feel like you’re being sarcastic?” Blue asked.

“Habit.”

Vaughan made up his mind about something. “Blue, come with me. I’ve got something to show you.”

Blue blinked. “Uh… sure.” She levitated her plate along with her so she could keep eating while she followed Vaughan up to his room. Only Suro followed them—the others all stayed at the dining room table.

“You really are putting yourself out there,” Suro told Blue. “It takes a lot to go back to places that have left a sour taste in our mouth.”

“Has to be done,” Blue said. “Plus… I might take the opportunity to rub my accomplishments in their face. You failed me? Hah! I launched something into orbit!” She gave a half-hearted cackle. “Tremble before my mathematical prowess.”

“You’ll need a little more than that to get respect. Fortunately for you, I think I have just the thing.” Vaughan opened his dresser and pulled out a gray pointed hat.

Blue’s jaw dropped. “When did you…?”

“Been holding it back for a while. Was going to give it to you after the satellite was successful, but…” he sighed. “I apologize, there was no good reason not to. Blue, you have furthered the horizon of arcane knowledge with your tireless, devoted work. Most students gain their titles without really contributing much of anything aside from grunt work for some other wizard. You have more than earned this. With the power I hold as an official Red Wizard, I declare you to no longer be a simple apprentice… but a minor wizard.” He laid the hat down upon her head. Two thin, almost invisible holes allowed her ears to poke through the rim.

Suro stomped on the ground rapidly in applause.

Blue looked up to Vaughan with watery eyes. “You… you’re really serious.”

“Well, don’t think you’ve graduated, most students earn the minor wizard rank while still in their studies.”

“But I’m actually a wizard now. A… a wizard who can’t even cast magic.” Blue let out a sharp snort mixed with a laugh. “I’m not sure if this will make them respect me or even angrier!”

“Oh, there will be respect. When you go to Axiom you will take a letter where I record all the paperwork details required to make you official. Though, there is one thing we have to do. We do need to assign you a Color, it’s tradition.”

Blue frowned. “Well, I always thought Yellow would be best… but…”

“I think Orange, actually,” Vaughan said. “Your attribute makes you naturally familiar with it.”

“Then yeah, Orange.”

Vaughan produced an orange ribbon from his robes and tied it around the base of Blue’s hat. “There you go!”

“…You had a ribbon of every color didn’t you?”

“Well, er…” Vaughan shuffled his feet. “Yes.”

“What would you have done if I chose Blue?” Blue smirked. “Behold, Blue, Blue Wizard!”

Suro scrunched his nose. “Behold, Blue, Orange Wizard isn’t much better.”

“Ah, but I haven’t heard that one all my life! Yet.”

“Just be careful when introducing yourself,” Vaughan cautioned. “You are a theorist, make sure they know that. And try to remember everything I taught you, they might ask you basic questions about magic theory just to prod you.”

“Oh, I’ll remember all right. I may not be able to use it but I need to know every possibility for how to throw it onto a spaceship!” Blue winked. She found herself already absent-mindedly adjusting her hat with her telekinesis. “Wow it… it fits so snugly. Who did you have make it?”

“Mary’s a good sewer,” Vaughan commented.

“I suppose I owe her a thank you, then… …and you too, Vaughan.” She lifted her head up and fixed him with a serious expression. “I wouldn’t be here without you and all your insane ideas.”

“And we wouldn’t be here without you, Blue. I hope history remembers you as the driving force behind this Project. I was just a middle-aged man with a dream. A crazy, stupid, absurd dream… that you are making a reality.”

“…This entire thing wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for all of us,” Blue realized. “Every single one of us has a part to play in this program. Including me, going off to the capital to explain what we’re doing.” She shivered. “Oh boy…”

“You probably have a few days to think about how you’re going to go about it.”

“Yeah, I know, but I have to get all my notes arranged, copy down most of it for you guys to use, and… and… you know what?” She stamped her hoof on the ground. “I can worry about that later. Right now, I’m going downstairs to brag.”

Suro rolled his eyes. “Don’t get carried away now…”

“Way too late for that.” With a wink, Blue scrambled down the staircase. “GUESS WHO GOT A POINTY HAT!? That’s right, this girl!”

“Ohmygosh Blue, that’s amazing!” Seskii cheered.

Suro turned to Vaughan. “Quite the apprentice, that one.”

“She was more than I expected when I met her. I kind of thought she was a self-entitled know-it-all living off resentment.”

“And now?”

Vaughan grinned. “She’s a frantic know-it-all living off the drive to discover and explore.”

Suro chuckled. “And how much of that are you responsible for instilling in her?”

“I don’t know… and I don’t think I need to.” He adjusted his red hat. “…We should get down there before she gets really carried away.”

“Hey, who wants to see if the hat lets me cast magic?” Blue’s voice rang from down below.

“Oh this is going to go badly,” Suro said.

“Quite…”

There was no explosion. Blue couldn’t even set the table on fire.

~~~

Days went by in the blink of an eye, and suddenly Blue was standing on the road out of Willow Hollow, her saddlebags packed full to the brim with charts, notes, and records. Alexandrite was standing next to her—he decided he might as well take her back, since he had to go back to Axiom anyway. “Might be able to help you navigate some of the more politically-infused situations.”

Vaughan, Lila, and Suro had come to see them off.

“Good luck, Blue,” Lila offered. “May Dia’s light shine upon your path.”

“I sure hope so,” Blue said, tapping her front left hoof nervously. She adjusted her hat slightly with her telekinesis—she’d already stopped noticing when she did this for the most part.

“Hurry back if you can,” Vaughan added. “If there’s any hidden math to do and you’re not here…”

“Oh, you’ll manage,” Blue said with a huff.

“Will he, though?” Suro asked with a chuckle.

Vaughan put his hands on his hips. “Who designs your device blueprints?”

“Who has to cut them with precision tools? I do have to measure everything, you know.”

“That’s nowhere near as hard.”

“Oh, would you like to try then?”

“W-well…” Vaughan stammered.

“Are we ready to go?” Tenrayce said, riding up on her horse. No one was able to hide their revulsion at the beast’s appearance—not even Blue, who usually made an effort not to flinch at fellow ungulates lest she be called out on it.

Alexandrite narrowed his eyes. “I am not carrying that horse.”

“Yes you are. And his name is Greg.” Tenrayce jumped down from the horse.

“I said…”

“It appears you have forgotten who exactly you’re talking to.” Tenrayce tilted her hat up. “You’re carrying Greg.”

“…That much extra weight will slow us considerably…”

“An experienced Messenger dragon such as yourself will have honed his flight attribute to extreme levels for heavy long-distance cargo. You can carry the three of us, and seeing as I am not willing to leave Greg behind, the day or two it will delay us is of no concern. We are not in a rush.”

Alexandrite let out a sigh. “As you wish, princess…”

“Thank you, regal dragon.” She bowed slightly in his direction before turning to Vaughan. “I’m afraid we must be off. I am sure you have many more stories to tell, perhaps one day I shall hear them.”

“Maybe I’ll tell them to you on the moon,” Vaughan said with a cheesy grin.

“My, your imagination is as boundless as it is reckless.” She extended a hand and shook his own. “It has been a pleasure. I eagerly look forward to reports of your progress.”

“We haven’t exactly decided to send those yet…”

“Oh, you will be, of all the uncertain topics that will be discussed at Axiom, that is one of the few I am sure will be an absolute requirement. So, I look forward to your reports.”

Vaughan sighed. “I really do hate paperwork…”

“Have Seskii do it, she seems to operate as your secretary anyway,” Tenrayce suggested. Without warning, she jumped onto Alexandrite’s back. “But it is time to cast off.”

Blue coughed. “Um. Alex, you okay if I…?”

“At least you ask permission…” Alexandrite grumbled. “Yes, get on. Greg will not be riding. Greg will be carried by my claws, dangled over the earth below.”

“Drop him, even by accident, and your punishment will be very creative,” Tenrayce said while opening up a book. “Hmm. Misprint.”

Blue awkwardly crawled up onto Alexandrite’s back. As he wasn’t an exceptionally large dragon, it was a little cramped with both her and Tenrayce up there—not to mention the lack of a saddle and Blue’s awkward body type. Nonetheless, they were secure.

“Now, are either of you scared of heights?” Alexandrite asked.

“No,” Tenrayce said.

“No,” Blue added. “…Though I’ve never been in the air outside of a balloon-whale gondola before…”

“You are in for a delightfully terrifying treat,” Tenrayce said with a smirk.

“Gee, tha—”

Blue’s words caught in her throat as Alexandrite took off—his wings releasing much more air on the downswing than usual, indicating that he was drawing more into his attribute’s power than usual. Even still, his rate of ascent was rather slow, though still faster than the Skyseed’s launches had been. He grabbed Greg with his claws and carried him over the tops of the trees, knocking into a few branches along the way.

The horse panicked and tried to move, but Alexandrite had him held tight.

“Hmm. I can’t prove if you did that on purpose or not.” Tenrayce frowned. “I’ll be watching you.”

Blue was pressing herself into Alexandrite’s back with her telekinesis, holding on for dear life. “If he so much as banks sideways…”

“He won’t,” Tenrayce said. “He is quite experienced, as I am sure you know.”

“Ehehehh…”

Back down on the ground, two small yellow heads poked out from behind a rock, looking at the dragon flying overhead with the very obvious and very awkward horse dangling from his claws.

“That’s the princess,” Rina or Rona said.

The other one nodded in agreement. “Things are moving faster than we thought.”

“That purple laser really changed everything.”

They paused.

“I hope Jeh’s okay,” one said.

The other nodded. “She’ll be fine. We know she will—”

“—because she’s impossible to kill—”

“—and she’s so determined—”

“—not even space itself can stop her!”

Having cheered each other up, they turned back to the sky. Both of them proceeded to thoughtfully scratch the other’s chin.

“What to do…” they both said in unison.

“How are my two favorite diabolical evil overlords in training?” Seskii asked from the tree above them.

The twins jumped into the air in panic.

“When did you—”

“—get here!?”

“Earlier,” Seskii said, giving them an innocent smile. “Anyway, you got any bread to sell me? There was no one at the bakery…”

Immediately both of them went into ‘sales mode,’ one of them taking a step forward. “We’ve always got the best confectionary wares on offer!”

The other gave Seskii a smug grin. “In my coat I have… donut holes!”

“By the dozen.”

“Though order more than a dozen and you’ll have to do some walking.”

“But that’s free of charge.”

~~~

The ground was metal, the plants were metal, and most of the creatures that prowled around were metal as well. The Shinelands were truly the realm of the rigids. The vast majority of it was made out of a silvery, lightweight metal Jeh recognized as aluminum, but it was far from the only metal on display. Intricate weaving bars of iron grew out of the ground, a strange pole made out of some kind of brushed, blackish metal jutted out of the ground at a wide angle, and there were a few buglike coppery things with dull green caking their exteriors.

Most of the Shinelands were highly reflective. It was currently high noon and the sun was beating down upon the smooth landscape with an unrelenting fury. The reflections only made the heat so much worse. Most of the rigids themselves were fine, able to move about in such environments as this without too much difficulty, though their internal cooling organs became very loud unless they were a particularly hardy species. Jill’s was currently running so high it was hard to hear her speak.

Jeh, meanwhile, was pulling herself along the ground like a slug, her trail of seemingly endless sweat trailing off until it evaporated into nothing.

“My… don’t you need water?” Jill asked.

Jeh lethargically flopped onto her back, the minor burn that had developed on her face quickly healing. “What?”

“I asked if you needed water!” Jill shouted over her cooling organ.

“Want? Yes. Need? No…”

“Are you absolutely positive this attribute of yours has no limit to it?”

“I was vaporized. I’m still here. Pretty sure.” She paused, panting. “…It can be blocked by Magenta, but apparently only if you’re clever about it.”

“…I’m not sure I want to know the details behind that, or even to think about what that might mean.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Jeh shrugged, turning her head back to the West. Still metal as far as the eye could see. She sighed. “It can’t be that long… the silver area didn’t look this wide from up there…”

“We’re not even a third of the way across! We can turn back…”

“You can turn back. Not Jeh! Jeh’s gonna… gonna…” Jeh looked in her pack at the Colored crystals she had attained in town in exchange for cleaning out an infestation of rabid rat-mongrels. Being immune to disease had made her particularly suited for the task. From the crystals she pulled out the Red one. “I’m gonna solve the cooling problem at this rate…” Jeh paused. “Hey, you said that loud noise was your cooling organ! How does it keep you cool?”

“Blows air through me at quite a high speed!”

“Well… that definitely won’t work in space, but…” Jeh put the Red crystal away and took out the Orange. She pushed on the air in front of her with all her might, blasting her sweat right off of her body and cooling her considerably.

The oppressive heat returned the moment she stopped blowing.

“Okay… well… maybe we can do experiments on sweat later…” Jeh hung her head.

“At least you never run out. Most humans would be shriveled husks by now.”

“What?”

“…Nothing.”

After that, they continued on in silence for quite some time. As they did, every now and then Jill would mutter to herself. “Girl’s an immortal, why are you even following her? Oh, sure, she’s cute and innocent, but there’s no need for her to be protected or have a guide she can just charge right through and the Ch’eni’tho won’t even be able to touch her, I should just go back now and… and…”

“I hear you ranting about something back there,” Jeh called.

“Nothing important!” Jill shot back, nervously. Jeh evidentially didn’t pick up on her tone because she left it at that.

They soon came to a crest in a large hill that gave way to a jagged canyon-like opening. Peering over the edge, Jeh found that she could make out non-metal near the bottom, and what looked like a river.

“…You’re thinking about jumping down aren’t you?”

“What?” Jeh asked as she started preparing to jump down.

“How are you going to get back up!?”

Jeh frowned. “Huh, good point, I can’t exactly levitate myself up without a device…” She tapped her foot. “Our rope probably isn’t long enough…” Suddenly, she locked eyes with Jill’s singular one. “You can just float down there!”

Jill twirled around like a coin. “And do what? I don’t exactly have hands.”

“…How do you survive?”

“Watchlights eat by ramming into the ground. Like so.” She slammed herself into the ground, eye-up. A few rectangular slots popped open, revealing a smooth black interior. Then she closed the panels and floated back up, revealing a small circular depression where she had just been laying. “We don’t have to do it very often, though.”

“Rigids are weird.”

“And now you’re insulting me.”

“Weird is good. So…” Jeh rubbed her hands together. “How about we tie a bucket to you, and you go down there and get some water? Eh? Eh? Pleeeease?”

“…What bucket?”

“…Shoot.” Jeh crossed her arms behind her back and grumbled. “There’s gotta be some way to the water down there up here…”

“Suggestion: jump down.”

That had not been Jill’s voice, and Jeh knew it immediately—this one was far more distinctive, deeper, and unlike Jill had no emotion to it whatsoever. Jeh quickly whirled around, only to find herself skewered through the stomach by a large metal spike.

Annoying…

The beast that had stabbed her was a six-legged rigid, with each leg having three segments, the largest of which was a large, pointed blade that somehow doubled both as swords and feet, despite clearly not being easy to balance. Each blade was easily as long as a human was tall, which made Jeh quite insignificant in comparison. The center of the beast was a hexagon with six black spheres attached to the corners where the legs were affixed, and both on top and bottom were glass spheres with sparks of lightning coursing inside of them.

Jeh pulled out a Red crystal. The glass around the lightning balls looked vulnerable and she could probably melt it.

“How impressive, she fights back.” With an effortless flick, the rigid tossed Jeh off of its blade and into the canyon below. Jeh let out a scream of rage. She quickly pulled out some Orange and pulled on her attacker’s leg as hard as she could, trying to take them both into the canyon.

The beast slammed three of its legs down, cutting into the ground with sufficient force to resist the direct pull. This did not stop Jeh from pulling, pulling so hard and with so much might that she ripped the rigid’s leg clean off.

Now she and a disembodied leg-blade were falling together and she could no longer see what was happening up there.

“ARGH!” Jeh flung her arms around wildly.

A few seconds later she hit the ground—not the river—and the leg promptly skewered her in the stomach again.

“…This is ridiculous,” Jeh grumbled. With her Orange she pulled the weapon out of her.

Then she promptly ducked her head into the river and drank. Only afterward did she stand up and take a look around.

There were a large number of human skeletons lying on the riverbank.

“Huh. If I was normal this water would probably kill me.” She waited all of a second before dunking her head back under the water. After she was finally satisfied, she stood up and grinned. “Well, now I have to think of a way to get out of here! Isn’t tha—”

It was at this point that Jeh realized Jill wasn’t there.

A sinking feeling came over her. That’s not good…

~~~

Jeh’s current mission was simple, all things considered: get out of the canyon.

Actually accomplishing this was a nightmare and a half. First, there was the usual difficulty of climbing up a canyon wall on a very hot day—her mind became fuzzy and she wouldn’t be able to keep her balance without focus. However, she could manage it, but only for the first section. The bottom of the canyon was earth and rocks, things she was used to back from her time in the forest. The other parts of the canyon were either smooth or unbelievably jagged, being almost entirely metal. Using her bare hands and feet simply wasn’t going to cut it.

Not that she didn’t try, at first. She pushed herself up past the rocks and made numerous dents in the metal with Orange in an attempt to give herself handholds, but this was not to be. One of her dents was a little too smooth, and the moment she put her hand in, she slipped and fell all the way back down.

She tried this a second time before admitting it was probably a lost cause.

“What I need are tools…”

She started rummaging around the remains around her. As it happened, most of the skeletons down here had, at one time, belonged to people trying to traverse the Shinelands, and as such a fair amount of their equipment was still around. Anything too complicated or organic was no longer usable due to the march of time, but things like pickaxes, swords, and nails were still in working order—though even a large portion of these looked as though they had been partially eaten by something. She even found a set of climbing gear, but sadly much of it had relied on a rope that had disintegrated into dust long ago.

Pickaxes it is…

With a pickaxe in each hand and a few more on her back, she returned to the canyon wall. On the earthen section, the pickaxes were more likely to do harm than good, so she relied on her hands for it. However, once she reached the metal, they worked like a charm. Sometimes she took several swings but she’d eventually puncture the metal into a hollow cavity on the other side—and even when this didn’t work, a few minutes of heavy Orange-assisted swinging would bore a deep hole into the solid wall, for aluminum was not the hardest of metals.

Significant progress was made, but Jeh eventually began to realize another problem. The canyon wall didn’t go straight up. It curved backward, becoming an overhang. She had never climbed anything like this in her life in the forest, but she pushed on.

Until one moment her feet lost their hold and suddenly she was hanging from a single pickaxe embedded in the metal surface above her. She had gotten this far by sheer determination and willingness to ignore pain alone—she was not physically strong. Having to support her own weight with one already quite exhausted arm was extremely difficult.

“For the love of…” She tried to swing herself back to the canyon wall, but her hand slipped. She slammed into the wall without any control and bounced back, careening down into the river once more.

When she came to it was night, but she was still in the same place—bottom of the canyon. The leg of the rigid was still there, glinting in the moonlight.

Jeh felt like the moon was mocking her.

She angrily kicked the ground, unearthing some poor sap’s skull and throwing it into some other long-forgotten warrior’s round shield.

Round metal shield.

Round rather large metal shield.

Slowly, Jeh walked over to it. She pulled out her Orange crystal and lifted the shield into the air with some effort. The straps were gone, but the handholds where they once were still existed. She turned it around over and over in the air.

Even most Orange wizards would not have thought of what to do next.

She ran around until she found a metal sheet, which she proceeded to methodically tear into strips with her magic. She used these strips to create new straps on the back of the shield. It was far too large for her to use as a shield, but she could hold it above her head with both hands, each one gripping her shoddy metal straps. She held so tightly they cut into her hands, but that was fine.

This was going to work.

She set the shield down for a moment and then proceeded to stab herself in the forearm with her Orange crystal—she’d been using it so much it was already visibly smaller, but it should have more than enough to complete the plan.

“Here we go…”

Jeh lifted the shield above her head. She focused her will on the Orange… and told it to lift the shield up.

She would later realize it would probably have been best to not try to move at full speed. She shot into the air at an alarming velocity with no control whatsoever, slamming violently into the side of the canyon—but through her surprised screams, she held onto the shield and, most importantly, she did not stop pushing up on it.

She was the pilot of the Wizard Space Program. Even if this shield wasn’t perfectly balanced and she herself was flailing around like a ragdoll, she would fly herself out of here. Every time she smashed into the walls, the shield became a little more dented and harder to control, but she persisted, and somehow managed not to hit her head dead-on and knock herself out.

She eventually smashed through the upper part of the canyon, creating a semicircular hole over the edge. She flew a fair distance into the sky before she realized she could stop pumping power into the shield, at which point she fell like a stone, pancaking against the surface of the Shinelands.

It was frigidly cold now. But it was the surface.

She wanted to jump and shout for joy, but she needed to give her bones a minute to properly reset themselves. That had been a huge beating, even by her standards.

“Mission accomplished!” She declared, giving a thumbs up to the night sky. Her hand was shaking though. I’m getting really tired… She slapped herself in the face. No, stop that! You’ve got to go rescue Jill from the crabby rigids! Who are…

Jeh looked around. The moon was full, it was easy to see.

There was no sign of any six-legged rigids or Jill.

The sinking feeling in her stomach was back.

~~~

The sun rose over the Shinelands, beating down upon the sheen once more. The biting cold quickly transformed into raging heat once more.

A single six-legged rigid strode across the landscape, performing her rounds along the Eastern side of the Great Fissure. She rarely found anything on these rounds, but they needed to be done, for it was one of the easiest places to find foolish people who were trying to cross their lands. Coincidentally, it was also extremely easy to take care of even the hardiest adventurers, so long as they didn’t have wings or something.

So she wasn’t all that surprised when she saw someone near the edge of the Fissure. She was surprised that it was what appeared to be a human child, snoring peacefully with her back on the metal. Surely it was too hot to be comfortable at this point?

Irrelevant, the rigid thought. Just another one to take out. She approached, knife-legs creating small punctures in the ground from whence she derived her traction. Without hesitation, she lifted a leg and stabbed the girl right through her chest.

The girl’s eyes flew open. “Oh, dangit! I fell asleep!”

Identify language: Karli. Observation: she is not reacting to the pain, no blood either. No known conclusion can fit the data.

The girl quickly pulled out an Orange crystal and pointed it at the rigid. “So, be nice or I pull your legs off.”

Legitimate threat potential. The rigid lifted the girl into the air and tired to throw her over the edge—but she clearly knew exactly what the rigid was trying to do and used the Orange magic to bend the blade-leg she was embedded on, making it so she couldn’t slide off.

“I said be nice.” The girl started pulling on one of the rigid’s legs with her magic.

“Superiority acknowledged.” The rigid immediately stood down, though she kept the leg the girl was skewered on in the air. “What is your request?”

“I, quite simply, want you to take me to your leader.” The girl smirked.

“You wish to enter a hub of Eastern Ch’eni’tho civilization?”

“Yes.”

Overwhelming force will be able to subdue her. “Request approved. I shall take you to the others. Query: do you wish to remain impossibly skewered on my leg?”

“No,” the girl said, bending the leg back to more-or-less straight with her magic and sliding herself off. “I would like to ride you though.” She jumped up onto the rigid’s primary platform and sat down cross-legged. “Onward, metal… bug… thing…” The girl paused. “I’m Jeh, do you have a name?”

“I am Yellow Seven,” Yellow said.

“Boring, but all right. Onward, Yellow Seven!”

There is contradictory information here. She is being an absolute fool, but evidence suggests she was waiting for one of us to pass by, indicating a level of intelligence. These facts do not match. She is human by every metric, but demonstrates a healing attribute. An extreme bundle of contradictions.

Ultimately irrelevant. She will be subdued by the others. Then will be the time for questions.

Yellow Seven skittered along the edge of the Fissure at a rapid pace. Part of her hoped that Jeh would fall right off, but the girl actually seemed to enjoy the rough ride. She never took her hand off the Orange crystal, though—Yellow Seven would not be able to take an opportunity while she had that out. They would make it all the way back to the primary settlement in this area.

Yellow Seven likely wouldn’t hear the end of this embarrassment for the rest of her life. Annoying. But it is what it is.

Without warning Jeh, Yellow Seven suddenly jumped into the air and bounded over the Fissure in a place where the far side was a bit closer, and barely managed to skitter to the other side.

“Woah, that was awesome! Do it again!”

“…What?” Yellow Seven was at a loss for words.

“Oh, wait, uh…” Jeh sighed. “Actually, we probably need to hurry so just take me to your leaders already.” She seemed quite disappointed that there would be no more exciting death-defying jumps over the Fissure.

Now that they were out in the open without any obstacle, their trip proceeded at a heightened speed right to the settlement. It had no name, just a number: Seventeen. It had been erected on top of one of the rare patches of surface earth in the Shinelands, not because the Ch’eni’tho had much use for active soil, but because with their eternal presence they could trap anyone who thought actual green plants meant a place of safety they could retreat to. From the outside, the settlement wasn’t even visible—just a bunch of large, bushy trees specifically chosen because they could grow dense foliage that could hide anything and everything.

“You guys live in a forest?” Jeh asked, tilting her head in confusion.

“Do you not think it is a suitable encampment?”

“I… well. I like it, but I didn’t think rigids would.”

“Who are you to judge?” As doomed as this child was, Yellow Seven wasn’t about to share Ch’eni’tho secrets with her.

Once they entered the forest, rather quickly the trees started to thin and they were suddenly in a field of mixed rubble and metal shards. It wasn’t really fair to call the arrangement a town, for there weren’t really any buildings, just ramshackle bits of metal arranged to provide simple shelter for the Ch’eni’tho who lived there. Around a hundred of them lived among the rocks in total, though only half were here at the moment—the rest were out on patrol or gathering resources for the settlement.

Yellow Seven prepared to tell her people to attack Jeh, but Jeh spoke before her.

“Hey! Rigid crab things!” Jeh shouted, standing to her full height on top of Yellow Seven—somehow managing to keep her balance even as the rigid kept moving forward at high speed. “You have a watchlight named Jill! Give her back and I don’t bring the magic smack down on this place! Don’t give her back and we have a problem!”

One of the Ch’eni’tho rushed Jeh, aiming his knife-blades at her. Jeh lightly flicked the Orange crystal and sent him flying into the forest.

“I’m not kidding!” Jeh declared, grinning cheesily at them. “So, hand Jill over and I’ll be out of your hair, got it?”

“Observation, you are foolishly brave.” Yellow Seven recognized the voice immediately—it was the Chief, Colorless Seventeen. He was exactly the same size and shape as the other Ch’eni’tho, but he had red markings on the joints of his limbs, signifying his position. “Counter observation, you are powerful and not as stupid as your actions make you appear, for you are correct, we do have the watchlight identified as Jill. Quite a mystery.”

“Look you can ask me all the questions you want after you hand Jill back, aight?”

“A very tempting offer.” The Chief skittered closer to Jeh. “However, you seem to be under the impression that you can take us all. Yellow Seven, can she?”

“Unlikely,” Yellow Seven responded.

“The fact that you have not said impossible has been noted.” The Chief sized Jeh up and down, both of his orbs flashing with more intense lightning. “You would cause damage.”

“Look, I’m immortal.” Jeh stabbed herself with the Orange crystal and pulled it out, healing right in front of him. “There’s nothing you can do to me, and I can do all sorts of stuff to you. Rigids don’t heal real well, right?” She put her hands on her hips. “So, hand her over already.”

The Chief pulled out a Magenta crystal from a bag hanging around his midsection. “Negative.” He activated it, scrambling the magic around Jeh. Immediately, Yellow Seven threw her to the ground and drove a spike through her chest.

“Her attribute is still active,” Yellow Seven reported.

“Fascinating. Her attribute is resistant to the effects. Perhaps there is a way to adjust, but I am not certain I wish to. She will be a unique specimen.” The Chief skittered over, touching a spike to her cheek. “Just what is she?”

Jeh pulled out a Magenta crystal of her own. “I’m about to bring the magic smack down.” The Chief may have been scrambling magic, but if she tried to scramble magic herself, there wasn’t much he could do about that.

Also, she hadn’t exactly learned nothing about spellcasting in her time at the Wizard Space Program. Magenta Wizards did a lot more than just scramble magic and make arcane devices with it, they also studied how Magenta interfered with itself in many complex ways. Much of this was far too complex for a spellcaster with her lack of finesse, but there was one factoid that was very useful to her in this moment.

Magenta could scramble Magenta if more will and energy was put into one spell than the other. And as Jeh knew, she had a lot of will, enough to push back against the Chief’s scrambling just by trying really hard. She pushed hard enough that the Magenta the Chief was using started to sparkle and fizzle with random flecks of wild magic.

This was the opportunity Jeh needed. She quickly used the Orange and ordered it to push everything around her away. This included, annoyingly, the air, but she could make do without air for a few seconds. More importantly, it tore Yellow Seven away, freeing Jeh from the prison. However, given all the Magenta nonsense that was happening around the Chief, the spell dissipated when it made its way to him.

So Jeh jumped up and punched his Magenta crystal with her bare hands, shattering it. The shards tore right through her hand, but a few of them sliced at parts of the Chief’s chassis.

Jeh landed on her feet, smirking. “So, do we want to reconsider handing Jill over to me yet?”

“…Perhaps,” the Chief said.

“So bring her out.”

“Only if you promise to remain and answer some questions about yourself.”

“…Sure. Just bring her out.”

The Chief pointed at one of the other rigids, who scrambled under a nearby plate of metal. A second later, the rigid returned, carrying Jill.

Jill had seen better days. Most of her outer plating had been ripped off, one of her segments was completely missing, and her eye seemed cloudy.

“…What have you done to her!?”

“Harvested her for parts,” the Chief said as if this was evident. “It is the right of all Ch’eni’tho to make use of all who pass through their territory. She has passed through ours.”

“Fix her.”

“Do you think we can?”

Jeh twitched. She held out her hands and the Ch’eni’tho uncaringly dropped Jill into her arms. “…You still in there, Jill?”

“R-r-run away… trap…” Jill’s voice said.

“…I could have sworn her voice box was already damaged beyond repair,” the Chief said. “Unfortunat—”

Jeh pulled out a Blue crystal before the Chief could finish and took off in a run, breezing through the trees at high speed, emerging from the settlement and heading due East as fast as her legs could carry her, which was exceedingly quickly—though from her perspective, everything else was just moving slowly. Parts of her were catching on fire due to the air friction, so she knew she couldn’t go any faster without risking Jill.

“So, what kind of trap was it?” Jeh asked.

“Th-they have made a s-solemn vow to kill all non-rigids w-who cross their l-land…”

“…You already told me this, didn’t you?”

“Y-yes…” Even with her voice choppy and garbled, Jeh could hear the exasperation. “Th-they will pursue…”

“They’re welcome to t—”

As it turned out, a few of the Ch’eni’tho had Blue crystals as well, and they could also accelerate to the same rate Jeh was going, but they didn’t care about fires breaking out on their legs.

“Don’t suppose you’d like being lit on fire…”

“A-any damage w-would be… be… be…”

“Right, got it.” Jeh stopped accelerating, prompting the rigid pursuers to slide past her. Setting Jill on the ground, she took out her Orange and Red crystals. She would take the entire settlement down if she had to. She shoved one of the enemies to the side while she focused heat onto the electric orb of another.

While she was doing this, one of the Ch’eni’tho released two bolts of blue lightning from the glass orbs that struck Jeh right in the chest. She felt her heart stop. Her hair stood on end and started smoking. All of her nerves locked up and she collapsed to the ground. Her regeneration quickly restored all of the burns, but her muscles weren’t recovering properly.

That… okay yeah that was kinda cool not gonna lie.

However, she was not out cold, and eventually the muscle spasms subsided and she jumped back up, stabbing herself with the Red crystal so she could still activate it while using Magenta in her hand. “No more fancy lightning attribute for you guys!”

She was blasted again by the lightning, though it was from a different Ch’eni’tho, and she went down again. This time, they descended on her, pinning her various limbs to the ground. One of them managed to shatter her Red crystal, removing her access to it.

However, even without access to her muscles, she still had her will—and the Orange obeyed, flinging all the rigids off of her—though it also sent Jill sliding along the Shinelands like a puck. Shortly thereafter, Jeh leaped back to her feet, a scowl on her face. Do they have an attribute like mine…? “What gives with the lightning!?”

“It is not an attribute at all,” the Chief said, suddenly behind her. “It is our gift—we can send the energy stored up within ourselves at our enemies, no magic required. Not even a Magenta Crystalline One could stop us.”

Since she lacked Red, Jeh swapped her Magenta for Purple, dual wielding it with Orange. “But it doesn’t work on me!”

“It takes you down momentarily. We will get our opportunity. We will be patient. And then we will uncover what makes you unkillable so we may more effectively keep our lands sacred.” His glass orbs started to glow brightly.

He’s going to shoot me. Jeh heard a Ch’eni’tho moving behind her and got an idea. Just before the lightning released from the Chief, she jumped, using Orange to give herself an uncontrolled boost into the air. The lightning shot forth from the Chief and struck the other Ch’eni’tho head-on—but the Ch’eni’tho wasn’t affected.

“What gives!?” Jeh shouted.

“Immunity is evidence of our superiority,” the Chief said. “You would do best to learn your place in the cycle of time. Query: have you ever considered if you deserve this life you have?”

Jeh wasn’t really listening to him anymore, she was already running to Jill, picking her up with Orange, and continuing to run.

“You cannot escape!” the Chief shouted, though somehow the increase in volume did not carry with it any emotion. “We will hunt you to the ends of our territory! You cannot be allowed through!”

“Try and stop me!” Jeh jumped into the air and activated the Purple, creating a blinding white light around her and Jill. There were a bunch of loud noises, metallic scraping, and a few Ch’eni’tho shot bolts of lightning randomly.

Then the light cleared. Jeh and Jill were nowhere to be seen.

“Find her!” the chief shouted—clearly angry, but his tone remained level. “She cannot be allowed to escape…”

But find her they could not. There was nowhere to hide on the flat, smooth Shinelands, where could she even have gone? The only objects within sight range were the settlement and a handful of rigid trees in the distance. All of those trees were cut down by the Ch’eni’tho in short order, and Jeh wasn’t in any of them.

“Perhaps an illusion, she was using Purple,” one of the Rigids suggested.

“She did not strike me as the sort to be able to shroud herself in invisibility… if so, she could have vanished without the light.” The Chief paused. “Let us scramble the area with Magenta anyway.” And so they did, and they found nothing.

“…Announcement,” the Chief declared. “She has escaped. I cannot fathom how. There is nowhere to hide, and no evidence of active magic. Just the usual scrapes in the ground when our kind make in battle. We must admit our inadequacy and seek to better ourselves for the cycle.”

With that, they turned and walked back to the settlement.

Beneath the ground, Jeh let out a sigh of relief. “I was beginning to think they’d never leave.”

“H-h-how did you…?”

Jeh gestured around at the bubble-like cavern they were sitting in. “I found several places like this when I was trying to climb out of the canyon, just… pockets of nothing. They were very helpful in my climb, and they seemed to be everywhere, so I figured one must be around here somewhere. Which was why while the Purple blind was up I was frantically smashing the ground with everything I could find—I was hoping to find this! And we did! Then I sealed the opening up from within and…” Jeh looked up at the tiny crack in the ceiling where she’d used Orange to fold the metal back into place. “I guess that just looked like one of the scratches they made in the ground with their feet, to them.”

“W-we got lucky…” Jill stammered.

“Yeah.” Jeh turned her attention to Jill, shining a light with Purple on her. “You look… terrible. Can… Green help?”

“B-b-been too long… the… Western Ch’ch’ch’eni’tho c-can help… Maybe…”

“Then that’s where we’re headed,” Jeh said matter-of-factly. “You just rest, I’ll carry you.”

“O-o-okay.” Jill’s voice caught and she wasn’t able to form a proper word for over an hour.

~~~

The capital of Shimvale was nowhere near as impressive as Axiom, Wyett decided very quickly upon arriving. The architecture had no unity to it, no sense of planning. This city, known by the unusual name Scarlet’s Knee for reasons unknown, was “themeless.” Roads snaked in and out of every nook and cranny of the landscape, having no care for organization. Nor were they even made out of the same material—some roads were dirt, others cobblestone, and others brick. Scarlet’s Knee was a city that grew wherever it want whenever it wanted with pure, unrestrained freedom. If there was an annoying hill in the way of construction, they would build the road sideways directly up it because why not, apparently.

Also, it was snowing currently. In late spring. Wyett was, to put it simply, not a fan.

Wyett was walking with his closest advisors—the majority of his entourage had been taken by the Shimmers to special lodging for foreign ambassadors, including the dragon Grimmmer. Large races were uncommon in Shimvale and the meeting hall was not prepared to greet an individual of his size, so this made sense.

Hyrii pulled her coat closer around herself. “There’s less snow on the ground but it feels colder…”

“That’s because we spend considerable amounts of time clearing the streets of snow,” Fr’ll said as he drifted ahead of them. “Many of us are not suited for traveling across deep snow every day. Those of us who can float, such as myself, have a bit of an unfair advantage.”

“I can see…”

They turned a corner and suddenly beheld the ruins of a truly massive castle—one that had been clearly destroyed deliberately. Charred and cracked stones remained on proud display, and not a single parapet of the once grand structure remained in place.

“The ruins of the ‘Palace.’ “ Fr’ll said. “Left as a reminder of what we overthrew and what it cost.”

Wyett shivered. It would be best if we remembered that these people likely resent the concept of royalty. We are essentially behind enemy lines, one wrong step…

They soon left the ruins behind and came to the current seat of power for the Shimvale government—the Council Rotunda. It wasn’t the largest or most impressive building in the city, though Wyett knew this was by design, for the government did not want to seem important. It was just a white, circular building with a big dome over the top of it.

They were let inside. The first few floors of the Rotunda were clearly office spaces used to house government employees and the truly stupendous amount of paperwork the unusual Shimmer government required to stay operational. There were a ton of people scrambling all over the place, several shouting with a sense of urgency. There was so much hustle and bustle, no one noticed as a young scarlet gari ran through them.

But Wyett noticed.

Because she elbowed him as she passed by.

“Don’t listen to her music.”

Then the gari scrambled off into the chaos.

Wyett knew a desperate warning when he heard one.

“Hyrii,” Wyett whispered. “Put your earmuffs on.”

Hyrii looked at him in confusion. “I can’t hear anything with—”

“Exactly. Act cold. I’ve been warned not to ‘listen to her music,’ but I suspect I am not going to be able to avoid scrutiny. You can.”

Understanding that the situation might actually be very serious, Hyrii nodded and said nothing further, bundling up in her coat and pressing her earmuffs to her ears. Everything would be muffled to her, now.

They rose higher and higher into the building until they emerged at the top. Under the building’s main dome was a single, immense room meant to house hundreds of individuals at once in order to facilitate a feeling of togetherness in the government. Most of the chairs sat around on the edges like an auditorium, with multiple different levels all looking toward the center where five larger seats sat—showing importance, yes, but none of them were anywhere near extravagant enough to be called a throne. One was literally just a stool.

When Wyett and his entourage entered, the room was mostly empty. Every footstep echoed ominously across the great halls. Four of the five seats were occupied, and the fifth was quickly taken by Fr’ll—his seat was the stool, which was less a “seat” and more just a place for him to hover while official proceedings took place.

No doubt these five were the Council of Shimvale. Wyett took a quick examination of the other four. There was a young woman with ice-blue hair done up in twintails, a sphinx with white fur, red wings, and multiple rings hanging from his ears, an ice elemental currently taking the form of an icosahedron of ice, and a strange red rigid of a race Wyett couldn’t identify.

He knew some of their names immediately. Vi, the legendary ice elemental of Shimvale, was unmistakable. Noran Toran the sphinx was also known, as he was usually the one who did traveling for diplomatic purposes when it was required. The human girl and the red rigid were complete unknowns. Wyett wasn’t too worried about the girl, he could read humans, but rigids… rigids could be a problem. Perhaps it was her music he was to look out for.

This proved out to be the wrong assumption to make.

“Greetings,” the human said, bowing slightly. “I am Kaykayzee Ziggurat, the current Voice of the Council. We welcome you to Shimvale in these uncertain times. As a welcome, I will play for you the song of my people, a minor tribe that lives in the furthest reaches of the North.”

Wyett cursed inwardly. There was no way to stop this, his assumption had been correct. Whatever the music was that he wasn’t supposed to listen to, whatever it did, it was being presented as a diplomatic gesture of peace. He could not risk a diplomatic incident over the words of a gari informant he didn’t even know.

And this Kaykayzee knew it.

Wyett made sure to not even so much as glance at Hyrii. With luck, she would be overlooked.

It was not his first choice to rely on her, as she was largely just a personal interest to him and not a political one, but Dia had evidentially weaved fate to place her here by his side… an unassuming gari that no one needed to pay attention to.

He hoped it was enough.

Kaykayzee took out a violin finished with an ice-blue sheen. She laid the bow across it…

~~~

“We’ll be coming up on Axiom shortly,” Alexandrite announced.

“Good!” Blue stammered. “No offense Alex but I do not want to ride another dragon as long as I live.”

“How am I supposed to take that if not in offense?”

“I don’t know I’m just speaking what’s going on in my head!” Blue laughed nervously.

“You should be more nervous about the master wizards judging you,” Tenrayce said, flipping a page in her book.

“You are doing the opposite of helping.”

“What gave you the impression that was my goal in this interaction? Or, secondarily, that I needed to be informed that was what I was doing?”

“I bet you’re a riot at parties.”

“I do tend to cause them if I set my mind to it.”

“If you truly aren’t afraid of heights, you may want to look out now,” Alexandrite said. “Axiom really is a sight to behold from the air.”

With a sigh, Blue adjusted her hat and followed Alexandrite’s gaze. Despite the fact that she had lived a great portion of her life within the capital city of Kroan, her jaw still dropped. It really did look even more magnificent from above. The truly grandiose palace dominated the center of the urban sprawl, its many pointed domes colored the blue of the Kroan royal family. Patterns of constellations in the night sky were painted on every dome, art that couldn’t truly be appreciated for what it was except from a bird’s eye view. There were dozens of towers, numerous halls, and perhaps thousands of rooms through all the windows. The royal dragon den was clearly visible, with numerous very large and brightly colored dragons roaming about the very luxurious gardens they called home.

Another striking location was the Academy, composed of the seven colored towers. The eternally burning Red, the blocky and disjointed Orange, the unassuming but pristine Yellow, the actively flowering Green, the eternally rotating Blue, the dark and shrouded Purple, and in the center the brightly-flashing Magenta.

Lastly, there was the Great Tree, a truly massive plant of unknown species that the city had been built around. When Axiom was founded, it was no larger than an oak tree and seen as just a scientific curiosity, but it had never stopped growing and was easily the tallest thing in the city, if not the most visually spectacular. Numerous people lived on structures constructed around its trunk and in the dense foliage of the ever-changing leaves. Blue remembered getting nightmarishly lost trying to deliver messages in the Great Tree, but from up here all those problems seemed insignificant.

“Yeah, that’s… that’s worth the price of admission,” Blue admitted.

“Take us down into the royal dragon den,” Tenrayce said, flipping to the next page.

This startled Alexandrite so much that he almost dropped Greg. “You… you’ll let me in there?”

“You are serving as my mount, are you not? You deserve a reward. Do remember not to rough up Greg, though.”

“Y-yes, your Majesty.”

“Offer him a stay in the royal dragon den and he suddenly likes you a lot more…” Blue huffed.

“Oh, there are many legendary dragons the public rarely sees who live in that den,” Tenrayce said. “I am sure the luxuries of the location mean nothing compared to the opportunity to simply speak to such elders.”

“Ah…”

“You and I, though, will not spend much time there. We have work to do, and you have a project to explain.”

“…Great, now my mood’s back to stress.”

“A more appropriate one, wouldn’t you think?”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Short segment today, and one fixated on a very specific moment in the above chapter: the Ch’eni’tho (which is a proper name for a people, not the name for the race) are immune to each other’s lightning, even though they’re clearly what we would call robots. Shouldn’t zapping a robot with electricity make it short out, or something? Well, sometimes. Only if the robot was poorly designed and had open circuitry and you hit it in the right spot. However, lightning strikes our cars all the time, and they’re perfectly fine, safe, even.

In fact, if you put on chain mail, you can walk up to a giant tesla coil. Lightning will arc from it onto you and, aside from getting a little warmer, you will not feel a shock at all. (Assuming the chain mail was designed correctly, mind.)

What’s happening here is a property of all conductors: any excess charge will move to the outside surface of a conductor. There will be no excess charge on the inner surface or the interior of the conductor. This arises entirely from the fact that excess charge is composed of either negative or positive charges—if you try to introduce both at once somehow, they cancel out until either one dominates or the charge is equal and there are no longer any electric concerns.

Negative charges are the easiest to think about because they can be associated with electrons. (Positive charges modeled in conductors are just “holes” where electrons “should” be. This is confusing, yes, especially when you start talking about the “flow” of these holes, so let’s stick with electrons today.) Electrons all carry a negative charge, and because of this, they want to repel each other.

When in conductors, electrons have the option to move completely freely within the medium, so they are free to choose the best possible arrangement for themselves, the one where they all repel each other equally. This turns out to always be on the outer surface of a conductor—even if the conductor is hollow in the middle, they still go for the outside! Thus, all the flowing of electrons in a metal goes out. And so, when lightning strikes your car and introduces a charge imbalance, well, it all moves around on the outside of your car. And when a Ch’eni’tho zaps another one, the charge runs along the outside, ignoring any and all sensitive components.

Now, you are not made of metal, and thus are not a conductor. And neither is Jeh. When lightning zaps us the charge follows very different paths, often through the interior, where sensitive bits like our organs and nerves are. So don’t go out and try to get struck by lightning.

Also, even if you are wearing a chain-mail suit, there’s still a problem. See, when we said electrons were FREE to move around earlier, this was technically a lie—virtually all conductors actually have some resistance to charge flow. The electrons still move to the outside, yes, but in doing so they generate a lot of heat. Which is likely to just straight up burn you given how much power a lightning bolt is trying to shove into you.

Final fact: cars actually have a way to get rid of the charge stored on their exteriors—the ground. It “slowly” (relatively speaking compared to the metal conductor shell) travels through the insulators that are the tires and seeps into the ground. The ground is a great place to sink extra charge, hence why we call all places we sink extra charge “ground,” even if it’s not literally the ground.

Disclaimer: yes, cars are designed to withstand lightning strikes and keep you inside safe. No, this does not mean the car itself will be just fine afterward. It can mess up the tires, melt the antennae, and other things. Any electrical components near the exterior or point of the strike can also be damaged rather effectively. But you’ll be safe. And that’s the important thing, right?