《Kinda Real Online》29. Friends Meet Friends
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As soon as I could see again, I recognized exactly where we were. It was the same room that the augur machine had been in. I say had been, because it was kind of destroyed. There was a ton of crystal all over the place, that looked like it exploaded from the center of the room where the augur machine was. There was a crater in the center of the solid stone floor, and there were cracks from that crater that stretched out to the walls. The wierd part about the cracks was they were filled with crystal, but it almost looked like it was water that flowed into the cracks and then froze. The chunks of crystal that were scattered all over were hard and jagged, but the crystal in the cracks was smooth.
There were several people spread throughout the room, who looked like they were examining everything, until we showed up. They were all looking at us now.
"Bwyd. Can you hear me?" The doctor waved his hand like he was trying to get my attention, probably becuase I was a bit dazed. All three of us were.
"Yeah, uh, sorry about your machine."
"No, no. That, whatever it was, gave us more research data than anything I've ever seen. The energy that came through could revolutionalize everything we do here. The possibilities that you showed us, more than make up for the loss of a single augur machine. And no one had to die to discover this." He paused to take a breath, "We thought you might have died, but it seems you survived, and brought friends."
"Oh right. This is Marcus, and this is Lily."
When I said their names they seemed to jump.
"Yes, I am Marcus the Magnificent. I can, um, apparently make portals to other worlds with a seance." He kind of trailed off and started looking around instead of standing there in a daze.
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"And I'm Lily. And disappointed, I thought we were going to see a ghost Marcus."
"I didn't think a seance would create a connection with another world. It was supposed to connect with a spirit, or the energy of the crystal, but instead it connected with this place, and transported us here."
The doctor seemed to be torn between talking to Marcus, or Lily, but finally he chose. "Lily, do you mind if I ask what you are?"
"You know that's basically like asking what I am while asking to ask. But I don't mind. I'm fae."
The doctor's eyes seemed to grow bigger, and several gasps were heard from the others in the room. "You are fae?"
"That is what I said. Is there something wrong with being fae?" She looked a little worried.
"Not at all. We just thought that all the fae had perished. The true fae anyway. If you exist here then maybe hope is not lost... Wait Marcus, you said something about another world. What did you mean by that?"
"Well, now that I'm here, that's the only thing I can describe this as. Bwyd told us about it, and we thought it might have been a part of our world, but now, I'm not so sure." He made a ball of light on his hand, "Magic seems to work in a similar way, but not exactly the same. For magic like mine, we had shortcuts to avoid chanting. We could use an invocation if we wanted to, but that meant we had to memorize a ton of invocations, and say them right everytime. So we had a slot system that could basically remember our invocations for us, and all we had to do was say the name of the spell. I can't access that system here."
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Lily gasped, "Oh, neither can I. Bwyd why didn't you tell us?"
All three of them started looking at me, Lily with disappointment, and the other two with a surprisingly similar look. I wasn't sure if it was excitement, or something more creepy, "Well, I've never used that system. I, I didn't even know it existed. My magic just kinda happens."
There was silence for a moment until the doctor broke it, "Hmm, must be innate dragon magic."
Marcus looked surprised, "Bwyd, how could you know so little and still be so amazing?"
"Is that a compliment, or an insult?"
The doctor interrupted before he could answer, "That's not important right now. If you truly come from another world, then can we go to that world? Or can you bring others from your world to save ours? The possibilities are endless. Will you help us save ourselves and our world?"
Lily looked disappointed, "Aw, I miss quest prompts already."
Marcus walked up to the doctor, "I have never been more excited about anything in my entire life. Let's do this!" He offered his hand to shake.
The doctor took his hand, "I am glad you are willing to help. Now if you all don't mind, please go into the next room, I have some tests to run."
He gestured to the door, and started tapping on his tablet ball while walking around the area where we had appeared. When we didn't immediately leave he looked up from the screen. "I will be with you in a moment, I just want to try to capture this end of the portal that you created to get here. I'll only be few moments." He pointed at one of the others in the room, "You, take them to the meal we prepared for Bwyd, it should still be warm."
We followed the man out and into another room. It was a bit smaller than the augur machine room, but it looked kind of like a break room. There was a table in the middle, and a sink, like the ones from the bathroom, in a counter against one wall. On the table was a feast. There were several plates piled with different types of meat. There was steak, chicken, something I think was pork, and a ton of different types of meat on sticks. Like what you can get at Chinese restaurants.
There were also a couple people in there eating. The looked really surprised when we walked in, and then they looked terrified. "We're so sorry. We thought you were gone, so we didn't want to let the food go to waste."
"Yeah, here, you can have what's left of this." He started handing me a half eaten steak.
"Ew, no. You can keep that. You already took bites out of it."
He looked a little stunned till Lily spoke up, "If you don't want it, I'll take it. I don't like letting good food go to waste." She started to reach for it, but he recovered and stuffed the rest of it in his mouth.
We all kind of stood there for a moment, then everyone started laughing. Then we ate.
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