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.

life, again,” the ant replied, flicking her antennae with irritation. “It’s a little difficult to make use

point the Eldest had been at pains to

me,” she boasted, “I see

yank her back to the ground. Then the explosion finally happened, the

muttered. “Forgot about

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.

rushed around the team, giving everyone an enthusiastic tap with an antenna. “Fantastic

hugging the floor as the last few sparks danced across the

have to teach you? Only a truly successful test will end with a multiple manifold-collapse. We were able to peer deeper into the weave than ever before! Our goal has never been closer

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 only one of its kind within the Colony. Smithant herself had been consulted on the crafting of it, to the specifications of Brilliant’s

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

through it would be liquified. Not quite the result we are aiming

the secrets of teleportation magic without exploding

sure my brain

this is so difficult…” Experimant huffed, clearly frustrated, 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

line of her carapace, but it was Assistant who

as r-regular space. It is a dimension. Everything i-is a dimension. If you punch a h-hole

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