Lillene

Enjoy!

Serenity watched the approach to Themrys along with Rissa, Tek, Blaze, and Ita in the new small Observation Room Tek assembled based around the preexisting Owner’s Chair. The room was too small for more, so everyone else who wanted to watch was in a secondary (but far larger) Observation Room Tek created once she finished the small one. Serenity expected he’d probably use the large one most of the time; it was far more convenient to the passengers’ rooms. This time, however, he wanted to be with a smaller group of people.

Both Observation Rooms were covered in giant screens that displayed a zoomed-in image of space. All of the walls other than the part where the door was were covered, as was the ceiling, but Tek thoughtfully left the floor under the seats blank. Serenity suspected that had more to do with viewing angles and the difficulty of screen installation around the large movie theater-style chairs than it did with any appreciation of how disorienting walking on a floor you couldn’t see was to many people, but it was still helpful.

Serenity had no idea where Tek got the seats. Amusingly, neither did Rissa; a movie theater wasn’t something she’d thought about when she set up the ship. She hadn’t even included an auditorium in the plans. There was nowhere Tek could have gotten the chairs, which meant she’d either brought them herself or had the ship make them. Serenity was betting on the second, even if he hadn’t been able to get either Tek or Simurgh to tell him how yet.

Simurgh was there as well, of course. Serenity could even see her avatar floating nearby, more or less where Rissa was. Since her location was only a projection, she didn’t always worry too much about whether or not she overlapped with things.

Serenity didn’t technically need the screens. Neither did Tek, but Serenity could tell that she was watching them rather than simply observing the data feed. Simurgh was definitely paying more attention to the data, but then she was also the person directing the view to the screens. 

Rissa was on the edge of her chair, possibly the most excited person in the room. Tek was her only real competitor; the goddess wasn’t even in her seat. Serenity wasn’t trying to pay attention to her, but her excited hops as they drew closer to the planet that filled the front screen made it hard not to.

Themrys was a beautiful world. It wasn’t a blue-white marble like Earth; instead, its dominant color was green. There were oceans, but they looked more like huge landlocked seas than Earth’s world-spanning ocean. There was probably less water than Earth, even though almost a quarter of Themrys was covered in ice, clearly trapping a large portion of the water that would otherwise have enlarged the oceans. It didn’t seem like that should be enough water to disconnect the oceans.

Despite the differing landscape and the lack of true oceans to mitigate the climate, it was obvious that life thrived on Themrys. There were occasional stripes of yellow or brown, but the deserts were even less common than on Earth. 

The planet grew larger on the screen until it was nicely framed and easily visible on the wall; after that, the details seemed to sharpen but the planet stayed fixed. Before long, other ships started to appear. They weren’t to scale; if they had been, they wouldn’t have been visible against the backdrop of the planet. Despite the liberty Simurgh took with their scale, they were otherwise accurate and it was quite a sight to see. There were at least a dozen spaceships shown on the near side of the planet at any time. 

While there was far more activity than Earth had in terms of spaceships, the satellites were completely missing. There were no space stations and there definitely weren’t any communication, GPS, LANDSAT, or spy satellites, much less any intended for war. Serenity was certain he’d missed an important category or two, but it didn’t matter; they weren’t there. 

Serenity had no doubt that it was possible to make a magical satellite, but there was no equivalent to a solar panel for magic; like a spaceship, it would have to carry all the power it was going to use. Satellites were one of Earth’s advantages; while there were magical ways to achieve most of what Earth did with them, they were like other magic items and tended to be less generally available.

Serenity listened as Captain Tsa’ikeet spoke to the nearby ships and to the spaceport. It wasn’t the easy communication of radio; it required some very specific enchantments to allow the different ships to speak to each other. Even so, it worked. 

The groundside controller sounded a little surprised that Captain Tsa’ikeet wanted to land a ship as large as the Death’s Wings rather than using small craft, but they were still given a location to land. Serenity expected to hear the sort of permission to land he expected for an airplane, but after the instruction “land on the outer ring, Bikta to Gir are available,” the controller said nothing more. 

Nothing changed for a few minutes, then Themrys began to grow bigger on the screen once more. This time, it wasn’t enhanced. The world rotated slowly ahead of them as they approached the atmosphere, then dropped in the screen. It wasn’t quite the real orientation, but it gave a good impression of the planet suddenly being “down” as well as “ahead” of them.

The ship shook slightly as they hit the outer atmosphere. Serenity didn’t remember that from the previous landing and decided to look; this time, a human was at the controls instead of a tsarualk. The shake was well within acceptable parameters according to the information Simurgh forwarded to Aide, but clearly the pilot wasn’t as skilled yet. Surprisingly, the pilot was a woman Serenity vaguely remembered meeting, rather than Captain Baxter; Captain Baxter was listening to everything Captain Tsa’ikeet said and echoing his screen instead of actually running the landing.

The Death’s Wings didn’t use the sort of magical shield that Serenity was used to on spacecraft. It also didn’t have the highly heat-resistant tiles of an Earth-based spacecraft. Unlike both, it didn’t turn into a very hot and bright point in the sky as it descended. Instead, it somehow turned the relative speed into energy that it would use during takeoff to return to the sky. There was quite a bit of loss from the numbers Serenity saw, but enough was captured that the ship’s skin temperature only rose about a hundred degrees, an increase that was well within the capability of the Death’s Wings skin cooling systems. 

To Serenity, that was the real magic. He understood shields; he didn’t have the available power to shield an entire spacecraft from reentry but he knew how it could be done even if he couldn’t build the enchantment. He couldn’t do it without mana and as far as he could tell, this was entirely technological. No wonder Tek was enthralled; scientists from Earth would be as well.

On a more practical note, the technology (and the skin cooling) explained why they could exit the ship almost immediately after touchdown. The Death’s Wings would bake the area around their landing far less than the ships Serenity was used to.

The first signs of the mana of Themrys were thin and wispy, almost like the atmosphere ten minutes earlier. Serenity knew it was still too weak to do anything; he wouldn’t have even been able to sense it yet on a normal enchanted ship, as the ship’s own magical field would have overpowered it. The time when that changed depended on the ship; many would maintain their protections all the way to the ground and until they opened the hatches. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be sensed, but it was generally very hazy.

That wasn’t the case on the Death’s Wings. It was still only a few dozen miles above the ground when the planet’s magical fields were strong enough to truly sense easily, about the distance where a commercial airliner would fly. The ship maintained a high enough mana density that Serenity didn’t hurt while he was on board, but he still wanted the natural feel of a planet, even without a ley line. He didn’t expect a ley line, as they were extremely rare that far above a planet’s surface.

Where Serenity expected to feel the relief of a planet’s mana, he instead felt pain, like someone was stabbing him. 

“Fuck.” He didn’t often swear, but the word slipped out without any thought. That hurt! It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d expected it, but it came out of nowhere.

“Serenity? What happened?” Rissa was halfway out of her chair before she even started speaking and by the time she was finished, she stood in front of Serenity. “What hurt you?”

Serenity held up a finger to tell her to wait while he pushed the pain away. It didn’t take long to push the awareness to a corner of his mind; he couldn’t quite forget about it but it also wouldn’t stop him from doing what he needed to do. It might make him more irritable.

It was better to tell everyone at once. Most of the people he’d want to tell were here; in fact, both Ita and Blaze were already watching him instead of the landing. One person was missing, however. Senkovar. It was easy enough to open a channel to the large Observation Room where Serenity watched the landing. “Senkovar? Would you come to the small Observation Room?”

Serenity closed the channel then looked up at Rissa. She wasn’t normally taller than him; it must be because she was standing and he was seated. Serenity suspected he might be feeling a little loopy right now. 

Rissa seemed to relax a little when Serenity didn’t say anything. Or perhaps it was because he sent for Senkovar instead of immediately explaining?

Serenity checked where Senkovar was. He normally wasn’t that impatient, but right now he was nervous. The two Observation Rooms were a good distance apart.

Senkovar was running. Serenity hadn’t expected that. Had Senkovar also felt the pain? He definitely hadn’t looked in pain when Serenity looked into the Observation Room. Serenity didn’t think he’d want to run right now; everything seemed just a little off, even beyond the pain. Something was very wrong.

The way mana was moving was wrong. The world was screaming in pain. The way mana moved hurt. No, that wasn’t right. It didn’t hurt when it moved through Serenity. It carried the pain.

Yes, that was right. Serenity was feeling another’s pain through the mana. There was only one being that it could possibly be; he’d already guessed that. It was the reason he’d called for Senkovar.

Senkovar had barely opened the door when Serenity spoke. “Themrys has definitely been hurt by the World Eaters. If this is what it’s like, I can safely say that Eitchen hasn’t been affected yet. Is it always this bad?”

“This far out?” Senkovar stepped into the room and let the door close behind him. “No wonder you can talk to worlds so easily. You’re a Sensitive, aren’t you?”

Serenity blinked. He didn’t think he was a Sensitive, whatever that was. Well, he didn’t think he had been one when he was Vengeance; maybe he was one now. So much had changed. “What are you talking about?” 

“It also explains why you can use spellforms at far too low a Tier; you can see them! I should have realized; the adjustments I’ve had to make for you are exactly the ones I’d need to make for a Sensitive.” Senkovar frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me … oh, of course. The Tutorial isn’t set up to test for or train Talents. You wouldn’t even know. That should probably be changed in the next iteration. Untrained Talents can be detrimental.”

Serenity stared at Senkovar. Why was he talking about updating the Tutorial when they should be trying to figure out how to fix Themrys?

For that matter, why was he talking about updating the Tutorial at all? Serenity knew he had some sort of connection to Order’s Council, but was that something the Council even did? Serenity had always thought it was entirely the Voice’s purview!

Lillene

Now we see some of the downsides of some of the abilities Serenity has picked up. There are two that are interacting to make this as bad as it is.