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 if

at pains to make, numerous times, but Brilliant

she boasted, “I see it

Then the explosion finally happened, the haywire mana discharging as purple lightning that arced over

right,” Brilliant muttered.

minute before the mages 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

an enthusiastic tap with an antenna. “Fantastic experiment, another rousing success! We are getting ever closer

hugging the floor as the last few sparks danced

snapping her mandibles to emphasise her pheromones and mimic the human sound. “How many times do I have to teach you? Only a truly successful test will end with a

on those who didn’t share her clarity of vision, she raced to the enchanted array embedded into the floor beneath the 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

One-two-three… sixteen identifiable threads. Our spatial pathway managed

drawled, “which means any ant who travelled through it would be liquified. Not quite the result we are aiming

making great strides. Great strides. You don’t discover the secrets of teleportation magic without exploding a

not sure my brain could

difficult…” Experimant huffed, clearly frustrated, her antennae swinging low. “If we only want to travel through regular space, why is it necessary

line of her carapace, but it

such thing as r-regular space. It is a dimension. Everything i-is a dimension.

delicate instruments 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, all we are doing is shooting bright light into the dimensional weave, illuminating the darkness so we can better understand it. Once we