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.

replied, flicking her antennae with irritation. “It’s a little difficult to make use of your insights if you die in the process of

been at pains to

can’t hope to find me,” she boasted, “I

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

Brilliant muttered. “Forgot about

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

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

still hugging the floor as the last few sparks danced

times do I have to teach you? Only a truly successful test will end with a multiple manifold-collapse. We were

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

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

it would be liquified. Not quite the result we are

don’t discover the secrets of teleportation magic without exploding a few gateways. If you

not sure my brain could handle it….” Assistant

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

line of her carapace,

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

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