The Rosen Bridge

Priscilla leaned against the metal railing of the Rosen Bridge. She was gazing into the deep blue abyss above, enchanted by the thousands of faraway suns that speckled the dark, cloudless sky far beyond our reach. She loved stargazing almost as much as I did, though neither of us could find our way around the sky to save our lives.

We were on the lookout for the Earth's sun, which was visible at this time of the year according to the hand-written stargazing guide I swiped from the guild master's office earlier today. We eventually singled out a small, white star in the eastern half of the sky that seemed to fit the criteria after about half an hour of intense searching.

"Told you it was there," she said, pointing excitedly at the sun, the Earth's sun, small and pallid like every other star in the sky.

"Well, I'll be," I said, closing the guide. "I didn't think it'd be so far away. Or so small."

"We'll have to visit Earth again once we get back," she said, smiling proudly. "There's that coffee shop I always wanted to visit."

"The one in San Diego?" I asked.

"Yeah! The one where you can adopt the cute little kitty-cats," she said.

I frowned. We had visited Earth together about a month ago to celebrate her birthday, and it had cost her a small fortune. I didn't see why she would want to visit again so soon.

"Why a cat?" I asked.

"To hunt the mice on the estate you're going to get for me," she replied. "We'll need a cat sooner or later."

I sighed.

"Of course," I said. "I'll add a trip to the cat cafe to our itinerary."

Priscilla had gone all out in preparation for our meeting with the Empress. Her lips were painted a deep, cherry red. Salmon eyeshadow adorned her light brown eyes. Her brows and lashes were gracefully accentuated. A pair of sapphire earrings hung on her earlobes, the pair she had stolen from her mother. She wore a red, ornate dress, shoulderless and patterned with a royal design. A pair of glossy black high heels shod her feet. Her curly hair hung loosely around her shoulders like a curtain. A red sash covered the right half of her upper back and was wrapped once around her neck like a scarf. The wind made the scarf flutter like a banner on a high castle wall.

I, on the other hand, wore a simple black tunic made of silk and a pair of white hosen. A worn, enchanted cloak dyed a royal blue was secured over my shoulders, a gift from my mother. There was no need for me to be dressed as fancily as my lord. My garb needed only be functional.

I was munching on the remains of the last fish pastry we had bought from the food court located on the third floor of the Portal Docks. It was our dinner for that night. The red bean filling and the greasy batter coating had long since grown cold, but it was still good. We started with twelve. I was lucky to eat five before Priscilla scarfed down the rest.

"Done?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Bug repellents?” she asked.

I slapped the side of the sixty-pound backpack strapped onto my shoulders. It rustled slightly in response.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

She took the guide from me and tucked it away inside of her bag. Then she hoisted her bag from the ground and tossed it to me. When I caught it, I nearly lost my balance. It must have weighed at least eighty pounds.

Priscilla raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Seraphs were strong, many times stronger than the average human. I think she sometimes forgot that I was only as strong as her when using my magic.

We stepped onto the wooden bridge and carefully made our way across it. The bridge was ten feet wide and a hundred feet long. It hung over a chasm so deep that you couldn't see the bottom of it even during the day. There was no shortage of rumors of the various monsters that inhabited the abyss below-wraiths, liches, man-eating manticores and giant scorpions with echo-location. The only thing anyone knew for certain, however, was that after the first few miles down, the temperature of the air increased sharply, enough to boil one’s blood without the proper equipment.

On the other side of the bridge was a massive, floating mountain, a haven for wildlife and exotic trees. Even from the bridge, I could smell the pungent scent of night-blooming jasmine wafting down from its heights. It was hard to see just how beautiful the mountain was in the low light of dusk. In the winter, its peak would be capped in the purest snow, perfect for skiing or building snow castles. In the summer, all the snow would melt and create small waterfalls that fell deep into the chasm, never to be seen again. In the fall, its trees would shed their golden leaves, making the mountain appear to be in perpetual mourning. But in the dark, the mountain was a foreboding fortress floating above a sea of shadows. No one knew what caused it to float, but we suspected it had something to do with its proximity to the portal located near it.

At the center of the bridge was a tall, circular frame installed upright directly onto the bridge. It was eight feet in diameter and made mostly of silver ethereal steel--an Einstein Ring. It would be where the portal, once created, would appear.

“Alright,” I said. “Do your portal magic stuff.”

Priscilla raised her arms. A ring of blue light encircled her left iris.

“Stand back,” she warned.

A moment later, a bright sphere of blue light enveloped the entire Einstein RIng. A melodic hum filled the air, like a bell being rung over and over again. The wind picked up slightly, just enough to be noticeable. For a moment, the portal Priscilla opened was the brightest star in the sky.

“First try!” she exclaimed proudly.

When the light dimmed, we stared into a pool of clean, blue water. If I was not mistaken, that pool of water existed in the very portal docks of the Empress’s palace on Nivandor, a world perpendicular to ours. The Rosen Bridge was the one place in our world that intersected with Nivandor. This meant that a stable portal could be created between the two worlds without the usual chaos that accompanied crossing in between worlds.

Priscilla took her first nervous step toward the shifting, shimmering portal before breaking into a confident stride. Then she turned and beckoned me to follow.

“Go first," she said. “I really don't want to redo my makeup."

I realized that the portal she had created was just as likely to drop us face-first into the pool of water as it was to throw me in on my back because it was a spherical hole in space-time. If it was a flat hole, stepping through be like going through a door. But because the portal was a spherical hole, stepping through was like plunging head-first into a whirlpool. There was no telling which end of me would emerge first on the other side. If I went first, I could at least catch her with my kinetic magic after I had reoriented myself.

I stepped up to the portal as close as I could without actually touching it. The wind abruptly picked up in intensity, as if I was standing beside the open door of an airplane. The moment I stepped back from it, however, the wind vanished almost immediately. It was as if the very fabric of space-time forgot how to behave around the portal.

I looked back at Priscilla and saluted.

“See you on the other side!” I shouted.

Before she could respond, I held my breath and jumped into the portal. I was immediately flipped upside down and tossed about like a wet towel in a high power dryer. After a couple of seconds of nauseating somersaulting, I was dropped headfirst into a freezing pool of water. Water surrounded me on all sides. I had no idea which direction was up. After floundering for a few seconds with my breath knocked out of me, I realized that I still had a sixty-pound backpack strapped to my back and an eighty-pound bag secured in my arms. In a moment of panic, I opened my eyes and scourged the dim pool in a desperate attempt to find the floor. If I could find the floor, I could find the surface.

When I found it, a white, tiled, moss-covered surface, I planted my feet as best as I could against it. Then, with a bit of help from my kinetic magic, I pressed off it with all of my might.

I managed to break through the surface with that first jump, but I knew that the weight on my back would drag me back down into the inhospitable realm below. As I prepared myself to be inundated with water once again, I stopped sinking the moment the water reached the bottom of my chin. It was then that I realized that the pool was a little under six feet deep.

I laughed as I tore my backpack off and tossed it onto a nearby ledge. Then I carefully set Priscilla’s backpack down next to it. Both were waterproof thanks to the enchantments woven into their material.

I heard her laughing her head off from the other side of the portal. Her rich laughter echoed throughout the dimly lit chamber I was now in.

“Oh, I wish I had my camera,” she said, clapping her hands. "You sank like a rock!"

"I should have thought that through," I said, splurting water back into the pool.

There wasn't much to see in the chamber apart from the single, metal door that stood on the wall opposite the pool I was in. The place looked like it hadn't been cleaned in ages, odd for a place as important as a portal dock. Then I reasoned that it was likely to help disguise the room's true purpose, for a portal dock was the only way to reach the Dawn Sanctuary. The fewer people that knew what the room was for, the safer the Sanctuary would be from unwanted visitors.

I lowered myself onto my back and let myself float on the mossy pool. I looked up through the portal. Priscilla stared straight back at me, standing upright on the Rosen Bridge. Such as the nature of perpendicular worlds, that one could be looking up at the sky on one side and staring straight ahead in the other. Her image was blurry and distorted, like when one looked at the world through a dewdrop. But I could hear her voice just fine.

“Alright,” she said. “If you let me fall into the pool, I will electrocute you.”

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I prepared a kinetic barrier to catch her. It would act as a net to ensure she didn’t plunge into the pool beneath as I did. But the moment she stepped up to the portal to cross over, the portal abruptly vanished.

For a moment, I stared up at the stone ceiling of the chamber where the portal used to be, dumbfounded at what had just happened.

"Priscilla?" I called out.

When the portal didn't open after a few moments, I felt the pit of my stomach sink into the soles of my feet.

Something must have happened to her.

I frantically looked around the chamber to see if I could find anyone who could open the portal from this side. I waded my way to the edge of the pool and dragged myself out over the edge. Water poured from every crevice of my clothes like a punctured water tank as I scrambled toward the exit.

“Hey!” I cried out. “I need help!”

I ran over to the only door in the room and tried to pull it open.

It was bolted shut.

“Attendant? Anyone?” I called out again, banging on the door with my fist. “I am a Watcher from the Dawn! The portal closed unexpectedly and I need to return to the Sanctuary!”

No response. Odd, since it was midday on Gideon thanks to the time difference between the two worlds. There was bound to be at least one attendant on duty at all times to let in visitors from the Dawn Sanctuary.

After slamming my fist against the door for half a minute, a panic seized me. I knew better than to destroy imperial property, but Priscilla needed me. I prepared a kinetic blast and fired it at the doorknob. The door flew clean off its hinges and slammed onto the ground several feet away onto a mound of sand.

Sand? I thought. In the palace?

I stepped through the doorway only to be temporarily blinded by the cruel sun that began roasting me the moment I entered its piercing gaze. When my vision returned, I saw nothing but a vast desert speckled with cacti, large boulder formations, and stunted desert shrubs. I was nowhere near anything that resembled a building, much less a palace.

“Where am I?” I said.

A thought struck me: what if Priscilla had accidentally opened a portal not to the capital, but to some obscure place on Nivandor? That was bad news because while opening a portal to Nivandor was fairly simple, opening a portal back to the Sanctuary could only be done at the capital.

For a moment, I was completely lost as to what I was supposed to do. I tried to remember my training on what to do in a crisis like this, but all I could think about was the fact that if I didn’t figure out how to get home soon, Priscilla would be in serious trouble.

And that would be on me.