Magius_Swiftscale

  “Regia, stop!”

  Telga’s warning to cease came a fra of a sed too te as Shawn sprung to a, watg that firearm swing toward him. He was not letting that on be aimed anywhere near him.

  He twisted his body to be inside of her arm swing, and forced the on upward, grabbing the avian woman's wrist to keep the firearm aimed skyward, away from everyone else. He then grabbed her vest to throw her off bance, and kicked at one of the digitigrade legs, stumbling her and attempting to seo the ground. But she had also taken a firm grip on him iumble, bringing both of them down, and falling on top of him.

  By that point he’d grabbed the gun aoi straight up at her as she’d reared back, trying to reach for a sedary sidearm inside her vest. She had gotten it halfway out before she heard the click of the hammer being cocked.

  “Please, don’t,” he warned her, and both of them frozen, mid-a. He took her appearao detail for the first time. She was a warrior of some skill, based orength and incredible rea times, based on her lean muscle, well-cared-for teal feathers, and a few light scars where the feathers parted on her arms, and one on her cheek. Her wings were spread and tensed, with blue and teal banding colorations. Her dark beak ressed tightly, and her o-blue eyes focused on him with deadly i.

  His warning may have been the only thing that gave her pause where they remained near-motionless, with her gripping his shirt with one hand, knee down on his stomach. He’d barely registered the impact or the difficulty in drawing breath. Her breath was tense, and he saw her cwed hand twit anticipation. He gnced over to Telga, who had been mid-spee telling them to stop. “Telga, is she with you?”

  “Yes! This is Regia, my chief security expert!” When he rolled his head to catch the frantic expression on Telga’s face, he k ure, reaary response. He gnced down at the revolver in his hand, the hammer half-cocked already, and he slowly slid his finger off the trigger. “Please don’t shoot her! Regia, they are not our foes!”

  “That remains to be seen,” the irritated avian snapped, and tio gre at him, her feather crest on her head ruffled in a sign of aggressioed the sides of her feather crest had been trimmed down, almost like an avian buzz cut. It suggested a surprising level of style that he hadn’t anticipated. “Where did you e from? This pce is locked down, even the cargo teleport isn’t running!”

  “We’re travelers from Earth. Telga’s portal pulled us in, in a deyed fashion.” He spoke dead steady, trying to use reason and ratioo get through to the woman straddling awkwardly on top of him. She’d moved fast–almost as fast as him. “I am not your enemy. Now, I’m gonna lower this on, and we’re all gonna be calm about it. I would prefer the courtesy if you did the same.”

  “Slowly.” It was barely more than a hiss, but it was enough.

  He slowly removed his finger from the trigger before he poihe on away, very slowly. She never blinked as she watched the motion iail--intense, raptor-shaped eyes. “Now, you get off of me?”

  After a few seds of teandoff, Regia smiled faintly with a creasing of her beak. “Been a while since I’ve been caught off-guard. You’re quick.” He took that as his sign to slowly decock the on and lower it, while she slid hers bato her vest. She stood up, and after a sed of hesitation, hauled him to his feet. “And apparently, you know how to use that.”

  “I’ve used firearms before. I’ve studied them…haven’t built ohough.” He g the on, aimed down and away from the others. It looked like a double-a revolver, aed the hammer could be cocked to a readied state. Six slightly oversized rounds sat in an ammo der.

  Wheched the catd pivoted the der out, he noticed the entire der could be removed–indeed, Regia had a few extra ammo ders with the open ends secured on her vest. “Iing design. This looks like Earth tech, and has influences from…The Unica Six. A on you’ve likely never heard of. The barrel is aligned with the bottom of the der, not the top. The trigger is oversized for your fingers and gives more relief, so your cws don’t catch. Double a trigger, a quite lengthy barrel for a sidearm. The rounds also seem…” he frowned. “Oversized. Intergeable ders suggest a pragmatic approaproving the firing rate and redug reload times. The on is light, but it’s a beefy frame.”

  “Well, now, someone reciates the design. That’s a first." The woman stood siderably taller than him wheilted his gaze upward, and he offered the der and firearm frame. She accepted it after a sed, then she reloaded the on before holstering it ohigh. “Regia Hal, sorry for the hasty rea–it’s my job to hahreats. What do they call you?” She extended a cwed handshake; he hesitated a bit before a hand. This woman was trained, of that, he was sure. Dangerous, too. But, probably not to him and Cire.

  “Shawecost, of Earth, and my cousin, Cire–would you stop givihat look?” he asked agitatedly, daring a g her

  “You almost got killed twi five minutes!” She pointed acgly at Regia. “Does he look like a threat?”

  “Anyone who disarm me that smoothly? I’d say yes. I’m always on the lookout for danger, and there are reasons for that,” she added, then she pointed a cwed fi Telga, who scoffed. “Ma’am, my job is to keep your feathered ass alive. You didn’t think to tell me about this?”

  “Wele to five minutes ago. We were headed to the observation level to discuss our situation.” Telga put a hand ia’s shoulder for reassurance, and she took that as her sign to rex in posture, limbs no loense. "My st attempt at the portal worked...sort of."

  "Five me if I don't sing any praise, Telga," she retorted, arms folded, and took a step back from the snowy white avian. "They make any wrong moves, they're taking the express trip out the door."

  "That won't be necessary," Telga snapped, but offered her ciliatory tone when she gnced back at him and Cire. “Please, I’m sure you have many questions. We should walk and talk.”

  “We should do a lot more talking and a lot less almost-killing people,” Cire snapped, having remained in a coiled stahe whole time. “What is with the tension, are you guys expeg armed killers?”

  “Yes,” Regia answered with a single click of her beak.

  “Wonderful.” Cire nudged past Regia to examine Shaoi a hole in his shirt–a scrape on his chest fria’s cresent, with a tiny bit of blood. “Are you guys dangerous to human anatomy?”

  “No,” Telga shrugged. “There are other humans in this world. Among other species.” Shawn did a double take and his jaw parted slightly.

  “More species? Sapient species?”

  “e with me, and we go into greater detail,” Telga answered.

  Every step Shawn took in this surreal world brought a sense of wohat ic books and dozens of stories he read as a kid couldn’t. They paled in parison to the surreal nature of an actual, sapient individual from another world.

  Telga tried to diffuse the tension while walking, her cw striding slightly lohan theirs. “You know, you act like we’ll be the most surprising thing you’ll see today.” Regia was beside him, her hand gravitating toward the holster on occasion.

  “Should I not? We don’t have digitigrade, avian humanoids where we e from, not even ting portals–magical or teological. I find that there is much to talk about from a stific perspective.” She raised a feathered eyebrow at that. “And social, magical, artistic…you get the idea.”

  “Shawn, stop nerding out! You’re talking to a real-life tengus, from a fantasy novel. Pretty sure we are going to top that at least a few times today.” Cire took up stride o Telga, who stole g the two of them while she led them down the hallway made of sb stone and occasional metal frame reinfort. “Okay, a few questions, if you don’t mind. Are you familiar with the physical sces? Chemistry? Is your atmosphere simir in position to ours? you fly? Are you a derivative or reted to ahly avian species–”

  “And you accuse me of nerding out.” He couldn’t hide a faint smile, despite his best efforts. “Cire, I love the barrage of questions–but we are asking the wrong oelga, what does your species call itself?”

  “We are Aveeran. And yes, we fly.” When he examihe wingspan and did a rough estimate, his math came up short.

  “The math of your wingspa add up unless you’re capable of immehrust or you’ve got hollow bones, and a lightweight body frame.” Telga clucked tentedly at that–a vocalization that was more bird than human. “I reasonably clude that your limbs have a high power-to-weight ratio, appearing like a lean athlete from parable human physiology.”

  “Your math is n, but inplete. However, gliding is preferable over longer distances. Powered flight is energy intensive. Also, that was a shrewd pliment.”

  She had picked up on that. She turo peer while leading them up a staircase, to a higher level–stone bricks and a simple metal safety rail guarding against slips and falls. “What else you infer on how this is possible?”

  “This question alone might take a while to unpack–hmm...what else…” Shawn noticed something about his gait. It seemed more…loping. He also felt a little lighter. “Telga, do you have a standardized measurement system on this p?”

  “Metric. This is a historical e to Earth, and some itent arrivals–but not by my design.” She didn’t mention who, though, he noted. “What is your query?”

  “What’s the gravity stant? I feel lighter, like the stairs are easier to climb.”

  “Ah, solved part of it, have you? The gravity stant up here is about seventy pert of Earth if my records are correct; it’s parable to the outermost orbital yer. It's around seveers per sed squared.”

  What was an orbital yer? He’d have to follow up on that oer. “But the atmosphere is breathable. There’s a causal retionship between gravity, and atmospherisity. You respire with oxygen, yes?”

  “The ck of suffocation on our part would indicate that, Shawn,” Cire pointed out. “I want to hear more about this magientioned. We don’t have that oh.” They climbed the stairs aered a new corridor behind ag door. It looked like a dormitory area, but there was minimal lighting. The low glow of ambient light–simir to Telga’s ability–floated like small globules just above head height in the polished tile and sb stone corridor. Smaller doors had demarcations for names–likely, people’s assigned quarters. "You summoned us here with...magic?"

  “Correct. The st remnants of my divirength were barely enough t you here. Your intact state is nothing short of a small miracle.” Telga guided them through the hallway where a few humanoid-sized furnishings were arranged, and they were headed toward a rger set of double doors. “These powers we have? We call them the gestalts. Almost everyone has oher ied or acquired.”

  “But you’re a cut above, you said divine. Like, actual gods?” Shawn had to scratch his head at that. “Yet here you are, flesh and blood.”

  “I…was.” The way her voice halted gave Shawn pause.

  Regia also gave a sidelong go Telga and sighed. “I told you that your misadventure might have costs–”

  “I don’t o be reminded of the price we paid,” Telga shot back. He could feel the tensiole ba betweewo. Some kind of discourse had been going oweewo for a while–well before he got here, he theorized. “Suffice to say, there are those of us above and beyond what the gestalts are normally capable of. We are called ‘Radiants’ in the on parnce.”

  “Her, not me. I’m just a gal with a pent for tactics, paintings, killing monsters as, and keeping her impulses in check. Telga, have you broken to them where exactly we are?” Regia asked and poio the double doors. “You might put them into pure sho this one.”

  “It’s easier to show it than it is to expin it. The view outside should give a clear indicator.” She motioned for them to follow her, and unlocked the tch before motioning for him to open the door himself. “I’ll give you a few moments to take it in.”

  “They’re gonna freak,” Regia said with a click of her beak, but made no motion to stop her terpart. He opehe door and stepped out to a walled garden–and so much more.

  The garden was very much that, a garden with shrubs, low trees of green and teal leaves, with colorful flower equivalents, verdant and bright. There was a chatter of small birds nearby, fn bird calls unfamiliar to him. The entire area was walled in by stoic-looking gray brick, expertly shaped and f a barrier wall.

  At the far end was a metal fehat overlooked something. A fountain sprinkled water in a spiraling ar the ter, yet another oddity of physics that seemed broken. But Shawn and Cire gasped when they looked upwards. Gravity being broken was now the least of impossibilities.

  They were not oh. Above them was the gleam of an otherworldly nebu shining brightly, and a sea of stars twinkled behind the celestial beauty. Ghostly tendrils of the raced across the sky in small whorls and arches, with green, blue, and yellow streaks painting its outline, as his gaze followed the endless expanse. A red star ated the sky, low to the horizon of where they were, and his arms fell to his side while his brain tried to recile this.

  They were in space. The garden was in space. There was a faint glow of some kind of atmosphere around them that terminated in a faint blue shimmer, just beyond the threshold of the walls. The fact that his lungs didn't instantly colpse or his body simultaneously boiled and froze like it would if exposed to a hard vacuum, gave him a modicum of relief. But he did hold his breath for a spell lohan he should. “Whoa. Well, the engineer in me says that we should be dead. Yep.”

  “Shawn?” Cire sounded shaky and k on the grass–he thought it was grass, because it looked like grass from Earth–and she rocked on her feet unsteadily. “Shawn, this ’t be real.”

  “This is Remaria. Wherever it is.” A cold trickle of fear draped his back, everyone he’s ever known was so incalcubly far from him, that he couldn’t even pute it. He forced himself to take deep, slow breaths. The greenery still smelt like fresh-cut grass, and cedar.

  He peered at the railing. There was a hint of something round in the sky obscured–was it a ring? A pary ring? He couldn’t see the rest, he saw just the tip of a lemon-colored ring, like Saturn. He tinued his advand walked along the dusty-colored brick path.

  The closer he got to the railing, the more he was filled with fasation. The outline of a p was in the sky. A world of green and blue, like Earth. Whe to the railing, he gripped it tightly. Cire let out a lo. “Shawn, what the hell am I looking at?”

  “We are not in Kansas anymore.” he gripped the railing tightly a his stomach lurch. Down below him .

  Aire p.

  But the p wasn’t right. On its surface, he saw that it had that wonderful marbling of brown, blue, and green, just like Earth would. But that is where the simirities stopped. This world was fractured. He could see rge ks of the world missing. No, that wasn’t it. They were free-floating across each iant fissures f between tis. Water formed vast sheets where the o would drop into a chasm…and down into another yer. This world was hollow. Even now–some of the water looped impossibly, and against gravity, back around the poid.

  Below, sunlight filtered from the dwarf star, to the giant, gleaming crystalliowers he could see from orbit, veying their impossible scale. They gleamed with brilliance, and carried the light deeper into the yers, gleaming like small suns themselves where they terminated in spherical endpoints, illuminating the deeper tis–it was difficult to even look at them for more than the briefest instant. There were other yers below those, some marbled with greenery–others barren, dusty looking. He could make out at least three distinct orbital yers, where the majority of the teic masses seemed to form around.

  He then realized what they were standing on, and he was woruck. They were orbiting above the world. Their garden e a terminus. Raw rock, earth, and roots g to the side in a sheer drop. He dared to leahe railing, and realized their position must be a small moon. A tiny moon that couldn’t possibly have enough gravity to hold him to the surface, let alone have a breathable atmosphere. It was terrifying–and in a moment of brilliaterly awe-inspiring.

  This pce…was something special, alright. He didn’t have words for this. It was like someone had taken a Matryoshka doll, and applied it to aire world. Whole tis and seas, split and separated from previously one gruous spheroid, each yer showing the same fractured position. But there was greenery down there. There was life.

  “Shawn? Should I be terrified? Or inspired?” she let out a slow breath and g to the railing for dear life, even dropping her body low to the frame.

  “It’s a spectacle of something incredible.” He couldn't take his eyes off of this sight. “I want to dissect how this pce defies gravity. How every bit of physics says that the world should colpse inward. How this world ’t possibly be hollow. But all I see is the beauty of the impossible.”

  “Remaria is a special pce.” Telga and Regia had emerged from the doorway without a trace of sound, and the snowy white Aveeran spoke in a tranquil tohis pce is a flux of worlds beyond, a nexus of gods and mortals. What you see below, is our hallowed world. Our home.”

  “I would say hollow, but given that you have godlike beings walking around–assuming you aren’t embellishing–the s quite well.” Shawn poio the fragmented world. “And what threat is dowhat pushes you to what might be an act of st resort?”

  “My brother.” She hung her head low, and Regia let out an irritated click of her beak.

  “You should have killed him when you had the ce–”

  “He is family!” Telga shouted with a fp of her wings, agitated by the callous ent fria, her golden eyes locked onto her terpart. Regia gazed at her, unfling, and crossed her arms while leaning up against the doorframe, one cwed foot tapping.

  “He is soelga, it’s a disservice to call him family. He made ohing clear: he will kill you. He will do whatever he deems necessary, to obtain power.” She stepped toward Telga, but looked right at Shawn and Cire. “Make no mistake: He is an enemy and a dangerous o that. He ot be reasoned with. We tried. We failed.”

  Shawn put up a hand to interrupt. “Why is he so dangerous?”

  “He has an army, a creepy gestalt, and a passion for violence. His followers, acolytes, whatever they call themselves, are itted to his vision of making the world whole.” Regia looked nonplussed, having to say that.

  Shawn g the broken world, then back at her. “I presume you meaure of the scattered, disparate civilizations, down below?”

  “Hah. I wish. See, he thinks he make the world whole. Except if he pulls it off, it’ll be a cataclysm worse than lit the world into pieces,” Regia stated deadpan. His eyes widened, and several apocalypse movies instantly pyed through his head.

  “I was hoping you were being figurative.”

  “Yeah, me too. He’s hit some roadblocks, but…”

  “He’s a threat to the whole world. He's tearing apart everyone in his path, with an obsessive vision to reuhe world. He might just destroy it, in the process.” Telga leaned onto the railing, cws making a soft metallic tapping sound, and her eyes narrowed and focused on that tral core. “I know what you’re thinking. This pce defies logic.”

  He nodded calmly, thinking about that impossible beauty, down below. "There's a lot I have questions about."

  “You think I’m crazy.”

  “Not something I haven’t thought about myself, either,” Shawn responded. “You think we help stop him?”

  “I know you . You’re intelligent, driven, unafraid. All precursors to make that happen,” Telga answered fidently.

  “But, how?”

  She let go of the railing and gazed at him, her beak set firmly, her eyes filled with a spark of determination. “By granting you the power of the gestalts."

  Overlook of the nebu from the gardeuras Sanctuary:

  Spoiler

  [colpse]