10 :: Destruction

“There you go. Now hold it. Hold it… and POP! No! Not like that! What even was that? That was ridiculous. Try it again. This time, without any explosions. Do you explode every time you jump dimensions? No. The pebble shouldn't either. No light, no sound, and for the last time, no kinetics! Are you a spatial mage, or a stone mage? We aren't making sand right now. There's enough of that here. We're making energy! We aren't destroying the pebble, we’re converting it!”

Kurt was a far stricter instructor than any of the Senior Wardens Nora had studied under previously. His vague instructions and harsh, senseless criticism were doing nothing to help her accomplish this task. Even she could tell that an explosion was not the end goal here. She still didn't trust him completely and had kept her pistol handy in its holster strapped to her side. There were several times since he had started this little farce that she had considered shooting him. Still, she kept her expression as calm as ever and continued to wage a violent war against the tiny stones.

Forty exploded pebbles, several hours, and one very long walk ago, Kurt and Nora had been finishing up their introductions in the Warden’s Office. Following their conversation, Kurt had taken a brief, pointless shower to freshen up before dragging Nora back into the sweltering jungle she had just come from. Standing on the bank of what Nora swore was the same lake she had first appeared in, Kurt had begun to explain his grand theory to harness enough energy to bring her home.

His answer was pebbles. Specifically, the conversion of matter to energy via the medium of pebbles. Nora had been fairly certain that this phenomena was impossible for any mage to accomplish, regardless of affinity, but Kurt was determined to prove her wrong. For close to three hours now, he had been walking her through the process in an attempt to get her to understand the intricacies of matter-energy transmutation, but victory eluded her still. She had tried everything she could think of to destroy the pebble without losing any of its energy and had therefore witnessed the widest variety of miniature explosions that any world had probably ever seen. Her frustration had begun to impinge upon her creativity and quite a few of her most recent failures had actually been repeats.

“Why don't we break this down a little further? This time, try putting it into a dimension first, and then closing the dimension,” Kurt directed from the decaying log upon which he was seated. His hair looked even more ridiculous now than it had before his shower. Free from the confines of the grease that had weighed it down, his hair had initially shown a faint curl. Now that it had been exposed to the heat and humidity of this world, it was a jungle in its own right.

Nora pulled her eyes from his forest of curls and grumbled to herself. If he had better directions for her, then why hadn't he just said so in the first place? She scoured the ground for another pebble and then, upon finding one, dropped herself to the surface, tired of standing.

The pebble she grabbed was the same bluish hue as the buildings in town were. Maybe they were made of the same mineral or something. Nora set the pebble on her fingers and pushed it through a gap in space, creating an invisible bubble that swallowed the pebble and hid it from sight. Nora could still feel it though, and she manipulated the tiny dimension to form tightly around the pebble. But then what? Should she just dismiss the dimension? If she just left the pebble in the dimension when she dismissed it, that would cost her energy. It was the opposite of today’s goal. Finally, she decided to speak up.

“How do I close the dimension with the pebble still inside?” she asked, casting her gaze towards an unprepared Kurt who had been using a stick to draw patterns in the sand.

“I mean.., you just close it,” he stammered. “It's just magic. The stone’s gonna be gone in a second, so just pretend it isn't there.” Nora was stunned beyond words. Was this man really a Warden? You can't just use violate the laws of physics and write it off with an ‘It’s just magic’. “Remember, it's not the pebble that you're concerned with. It's the space that the pebble occupies. You're just voiding the space. You're canceling out its existence and recalling the energy that made it up,” Kurt added. Either Kurt was starting to explain things better, or Nora was getting dumber, because what he said was kind of starting to make sense.

Nora returned her focus to the pebble, this time concentrating on the shape it held, its volume, its density. Then she imagined it empty. She imagined stripping the pebble of its physical properties, and before she knew it, the tiny dimension slammed shut with a faint crack. The pebble was gone. In that instant, the spatial energy from that pebble had been sucked into Nora, and she could feel it beginning to mix with her own.

“I did it,” she gasped, incredulous. Kurt had been telling the truth. He gave a lazy smile, still stirring the gravel with that branch.

“Told you so,” he smirked. “Try it again. This time, without putting it in a dimension beforehand.”

Nora nodded and did as she was told. Gathering another pebble into her palm, she repeated the process, imagining the pebble being conceptually stripped into nothingness, imagining a void filling the space. With another small pop, the air surrounding the space the pebble had previously been occupying crashed together. Nora breathed a sigh of relief as she felt the warm burst of energy enter her. It was a small amount, larger than before, but still not even close to the amount needed to restore her to top condition. It would take a lot of pebbles to get her back on her feet, but she thought she had an idea of what Kurt had in mind.

“I can convert larger objects too, right? Larger stones?” she asked.

“Naturally!” Kurt responded congenially, “but you do need to be careful with that. Take in more energy than your capacity, and you'll burst. You'll fry yourself from within, and it will most likely be fatal.” Nora nodded in understanding.

“Pebbles though,” she began, “those should be small enough, right? If you convert a pebble when you're already at capacity, it should just push the limits of your capacity without breaking it, right?” she asked, a confident smirk playing across her lips.

“Exactly!” exclaimed Kurt, grinning at her revelation. “See? What do you even need me here for? As long as you keep gradually expanding your energy pool, you'll be able to build one large enough to take you home in around a year. Not ideal, I know, but better than nothing!” he shrugged.

His comment sobered Nora. She was still looking at a whole year stuck out here. It was a much better timeline than she had recently resigned herself to, but she still wasn't satisfied. Her classmates would have to spend a year without their families. She felt awful that they had to be separated from their loved ones for so long. She saw herself in them.

She also blamed herself for their misfortune. It hadn't been her fault that they'd been summoned, but as Warden, it was her job to bring them home, and she couldn't do that. She'd even abandoned them to run off and look for help. From her standpoint, it was a logical action, but she knew what the others would think of her if they knew that she had left them to fend for themselves. Especially, Adam. He had seen her there in that room. He knew she had left them. She only hoped he had found the note she had slipped into his pocket before she left. Suddenly, a voice jolted her from her ruminations.

“You got another one of them sidearms?” Kurt asked. Nora glanced him over suspiciously before giving a brief nod. “Hand it over,” he demanded, holding out his hand. Nora couldn't read his expression, but he didn't seem to be acting threatening, and he knew she could easily refuse him.

Nora pulled the unloaded spare she kept in case of an emergency from her storage dimension. This one had a higher tendency to misfire. Its silver trimming had blackened with the years. Still, it was Nora's favorite, found in her father’s safe after his disappearance. He was fond of antiques and was probably planning on restoring it, but he never got the chance. Nora had borrowed it when she started getting into some of the more dangerous work Wardens were responsible for.

She hesitated, but ultimately handed it over. Whatever Kurt’s past was, he was no more dangerous with an empty, tarnished pistol, than he was with whatever other backwards, confounded magic he had in that curly head of his. Kurt accepted the pistol, drawing it into his lap, and set about carving tiny patterns into it with a sharp stone that he must have found while digging.

“What are you doing?” Nora exclaimed, grabbing for the pistol, completely aghast at his actions.

“Relax!” he chuckled, pulling it out of her reach. “I'm improving it,” he assured her, continuing to etch tiny runes along the barrel. “This important to you?” he asked, pausing to wiggle the gun playfully in front of her face.

“Yes!” Nora proudly announced, snatching at the firearm and missing. “It belonged to my father,” she snapped.

“Then that makes it perfect. Is this the same father that won't be waiting back home to forget you?” he taunted, recounting her words from earlier as he returned to his etching.

“Yes. He can't wait for me, because I'm already waiting for him. Both of my parents disappeared years ago,” Nora explained.

“Disappeared?” Kurt continued, unperturbed by her declaration. “Isn't it a Warden’s job to find people who vanish?”

“It's not for lack of trying,” Nora sighed, an air of frustration in her voice. “We're hardly omnipotent though. Sometimes finding people is easier said than done.”

“Fair enough,” said Kurt, thoroughly nonplussed as he examined his handiwork. He tilted the gun back and forth, catching different angles of the evening light, before returning it to Nora. “Aim and fire!” he sang as he gestured to a branch overhead. Nora moved to load it, but was stopped.

“It's empty,” she complained, but Kurt offered no explanation and continued pointing at the tree. Nora raised her arm at the indicated tree and pulled the trigger. Instantly a perfect hole was torn through the branch without creating a single sound. Nora dropped the pistol to the ground in shock.

“It's a formula my mentor gave to me,” he disclosed. “It was originally designed with staves in mind, but I've found it works best on handguns because you can link it to the trigger. It uses the same principle that you just learned, but disperses the energy back into the environment instead of absorbing it. The beam doesn't stop for five kilometers. That's a lot of pebbles. We wouldn't want any accidents. Anyways, I'm sure you can find some use for it.”

Nora was silent as she delicately picked the pistol up off of the ground. This was an extremely powerful weapon. It was quick, devastating, energy-efficient, and silent. A formula like this was the type that was treated like a family heirloom, passed from mentor to mentee. It was not easily given. Nora understood why Kurt had given it to a stranger like her. She knew for a fact that she was the only Warden he had seen in years that was unrelated to his imprisonment here. A formula like that was meant to be passed on, and Nora might be Kurt’s last chance to do so. Even so, could she accept something so precious?

“This is too much,” she finally muttered after some time and much thought.

“It's fine,” Kurt replied with a mournful smile, fully aware of the formula’s significance. “Just put it to good use. My mentor used to tell me that formula could kill a god. I never got a chance to find out if that was true, but maybe you'll find something worthy enough to try it out on.”

“You really think there are gods out here?” Nora asked skeptically.

“Nah,” he replied with a chuckle. “If anything, it'd be devils that roam the Outer Realms. I've seen some strange things out here, and I get the feeling that there is something going on, for sure.” A complicated look crossed Kurt’s face, as if he wasn't sure whether or not to continue. Eventually, he did.

“Near the beginning of my stay here, a group of Wardens came by. I don't get visitors ever, so I knew something was up. They asked me if I knew anything about the Warden stationed at the nearby realm. Apparently he was a volunteer, so he wasn't restricted like me. I had never seen him though, and I told them so. They said that he hadn't been reporting in at all, so they sent someone to check on him. That guy disappeared too, so they wanted to see if either of them had visited the nearby realms recently before investigating the realm whey had disappeared. I told them that I didn't know anything, and they went on their way. About a month or so later, another group came by and told me the same story, except now, the last group I had seen was missing as well. I told them about the group that had visited me, and they went on their way. Those were the last visitors I had, until you came. According to my map, that realm has now been declared too dangerous to enter and all access has been forbidden.

“That realm is the very same realm you pointed out to me when you first got here. The one you said you were summoned to. First a whole score of Wardens disappear there, now a new one and a whole pack of unrelated school kids appear out of the blue. I don't know what to make of it, and I'm in no position to find out, but whatever is going on out here is serious enough to make me question just what kind of devils haunt the Outer Realms. As much as I enjoy your company, I think that your classmates may be in danger. Once you recover your energy, you probably shouldn't stay here too long.”

***

First chapter of the weekend! Next one will be out on Sunday. Thanks for reading!