Chrysalis

“Hold, dammit!” Brilliant roared.

“I’m not sure it can take it,” Assistant cried out. “It’s going to overflow!”

“It needs more power! Give it everything you’ve got!”

“We can’t do any more, the matrix will collapse!”

“A little further,” Brilliant urged as the mana surged and frothed. Dimensional boundaries were cascading around them and she could peer into them all, flashing images of twisting reality that bent and warped themselves around her.

They were so close!

“It’s gone! Run!” Assistant shrieked, and Brilliant was vaguely aware of her followers ducking for cover or diving into the blast cages. She herself didn’t move, of course, transfixed as she was by the beauty she beheld in front of her.

“So beautiful,” she whispered.

A moment later, she was spear tackled and knocked from her observation platform.

“Experimant! What are you doing?!” she yelled.

the ant replied, flicking her antennae with irritation. “It’s a little difficult to make use of your insights

pains to

me,” she boasted, “I see it coming a

stand up only for Experimant to yank her back to the ground. Then the explosion finally happened, the haywire mana discharging as purple lightning that arced over the walls, searing jagged patterns

Brilliant muttered. “Forgot about

and carvers that made up her merry band began to emerge from the reinforced concrete bunkers someone had decided to install in their research chamber. She strongly suspected Assistant was

tap with an antenna.

finally emerged, still hugging the floor as the last few sparks danced across the walls. “It seemed

successful test will end with a multiple manifold-collapse. We were able to peer deeper into

great stone edifice she had dubbed the rift-arch. Reinforced behind thick layers of hardened ice and embedded within a holding structure of living stone, the array was a sophisticated piece of enchanting, the only one of its kind within the Colony. Smithant herself had been consulted on the crafting of

look at the readings! One-two-three… sixteen identifiable threads. Our spatial pathway managed to make it a third of the way to its

“which means any ant who travelled through it would be liquified.

the secrets of teleportation magic without exploding a few gateways. If you

not sure my brain could handle it….”

her antennae swinging low. “If we only want to travel through regular space, why is it necessary to map such a difficult course? Why bother with these other dimensions

her helper, contempt evident in every line of her carapace, but it was Assistant who

such thing as r-regular space. It is a dimension. Everything i-is a dimension. If you punch a h-hole in one, you

attached to the matrix. “It’s almost as if we aren’t looking to find a destination in three dimensional space, but rather find our way back to it. Right now,