What greeted on the other side of the portal was an endless, warped expanse of nothingness. There was no air, no light, no ocean of souls, and no distant stars in the sky. I had originally thought that we might end up stranded in the middle of space if the portal partially worked but rerouting it failed, but I had no idea what had actually happened. All I knew was that there was absolutely nothing here.
The other thing that I rapidly beca aware of was the fact that I had no oxygen. I needed to breathe, and there was no air to breathe. I reflexively hit myself with a bit of healing magic, which removed the damage lack of oxygen was already starting to cause my body. My healing restored damage - but our situation was dire. We hadn’t arranged for any sort of ‘the portal is unsafe’ signal, because we didn’t have enough ti before the universal tree’s forces hit us and wiped us out, and we had been rushing.
I had about ten seconds to figure out how to get us to a destination where we could survive. After that, people would start flooding this area, suffocate to death en masse, and end our final hope of survival. I could heal a few people, but my essence reserves were ultimately limited. I started to panic.
My understanding of space and dinsionalism were nowhere near the level they needed to be. That much was already obvious from the fact that we had landed in this ss. I couldn’t get us out of this ss, and I had no way to deal with an ergency. However, failing to deal with this ergency ant everyone would die.
I struggled, thrashed, and flailed, all to no effect. I felt helpless as I tried to find a way forward, and failed. There wasn’t enough essence left to try making another gate, and I couldn’t rely entirely on the concept of hope to save us, either. Hope still needed so kind of basis to operate, and right now, I had no foundation to build off of. Hope was an amplifier, not a magic wand that could solve all of my problems.
Then, I realized that while I didn’t have a way to communicate with the other mbers of the tribe, I could still send a ssage back.
I shouted into the ntal bracelet.
Said Sallia.
The fact that Sallia would receive ssages directly from would reveal that we had so kind of thod of ntal communication - but I was long past the point of caring about exposing a few smaller secrets like this. We had bigger problems to address.
A few more monts passed, before Felix gave an update.
I said. I was relieved that the townsfolk had believed my friend’s word about communicating with so quickly - otherwise, this could have ended in a disaster.
A few monts later, I felt soone slip through the portal. I had no idea what they were doing, but I did my part, and started blasting them with healing magic as well. They barely had enough contact with water for my healing magic to still work - but luckily, a few spots in their clothing were still damp from the snow.
A few seconds later, I felt the other spatial mage send out several pulses of mana and essence into our surroundings. The pulses of mana continued for several seconds, as my essence continued to drain away at a ridiculous pace. Finally, the spatial mage used so kind of spell to drag and them back through the gate I had opened.
We collapsed on the other side of the portal, and I took in a few gulps of air before I sighed in relief. As much as healing magic could alleviate the problems with not breathing, it couldn’t fix the feeling of suffocation and desperation that accompanied the lack of air in my lungs.
After a few monts of deep breaths, I finally got ahold of myself.
“The target for the gate is wrong. Our attempts to connect to one of the other planes and use that as a destination didn’t work,” I said. The other spatial mages in our surroundings grimaced. Sothing had gone wrong.
“How much essence do you have left?”
“I can hold this kind of gate open for about five minutes, I think. Past that point, the whole evacuation project will probably collapse.”
“Not enough ti for extensive testing, then.” The spatial mage eyed the tree root in the distance, and then grimaced. “Though we were already on a desperate enough tir.”
“Let’s try our best. I have one other idea that I think will work. I suspect that our first modification attempt worked exactly as intended - but the tree here likely didn’t stop at invading one plane. It’s quite obvious that this tree has consud trillions of planes - I see no reason why it wouldn’t have ripped away more than one of the planes attached to our old ho. So we probably rerouted from one empty space right into another.”
I paled. The mage’s words made sense. How much of our previous dinsional cluster had been lost? A few dinsions? Dozens of dinsions? More?
I shook my head. Now wasn’t the ti to think about that. We could assess the damage and the tragedy once we were safe.
“So we just try to make another redirect spell, and hope for the best?” Asked a third dinsional mage, an old lady with a grandmotherly face.
“We don’t have much ti to research or try anything else. Ti is ticking,” said the first mage.
The grandmotherly lady sighed, before she grunted in acknowledgent.
With a final decision made, the mages got back to work. They used their mana and spells to create a deep, communal connection to my gate spell. They didn’t have the sa level of solidity to their spells that I did - it felt more like they were working with pieceal, patchwork abilities. I burned a little bit more hope to help them, and felt my essence reserves dip even lower. I bit my lip in frustration. Every second the portal remained open was another few people we could evacuate. Spending my essence felt wrong. But without the concept of hope to guide their actions, there was no way our ssy, cluttered spellwork would integrate the way it was supposed to. Monts later, the portal rippled. This ti, since I had integrated the concept of hope more thoroughly into the spellwork, I saw sothing.
It was like a giant web, connected to the other end of my gate. This giant web wasn’t physical in nature, but entirely magical. It spanned every direction, and right near the other end of my portal there was a giant, gaping hole that had been torn into this web. I could feel several other gaping holes in the giant web as well. It only took a few seconds to realize what I was looking at.
It was the dinsional cluster that we had been part of. The previous mage’s speculation had been right - we had successfully redirected the gate, but we had blindly swapped from one missing dinsion to another one, which was why I had been dumped into the middle of a lightless, soundless void. I grunted in pain, and then did my best to look at every connection in the ‘web.’ It only took a few seconds to find a dinsion that wasn’t missing.
There was no ti to hesitate. I reached out towards that dinsion, and then anchored the spell to it. A mont later, my gate twitched and spasd, before it shuddered. The mages around grunted in pain and exhaustion. I could tell just how much they were pushing themselves, and I hoped that I had picked a good destination. If this dinsion also turned out to be problematic, I didn’t think we had enough juice left in us for a third reroute of the portal.
Without a mont of hesitation, I leapt back through it. Ti was ticking, and the faster we moved, the more people we would save.
When I ca to, I did a quick check, and sighed in relief. I wasn’t in the middle of a gaping, lightless, soundless void anymore.
However, my relief was short-lived.
On the other side of the portal, I was in what appeared to be a massive jungle. Tall, towering ferns, grasses, and other leaves stretched in every direction, as far as the eye could see.
Unfortunately, the jungle was on fire.
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