The essence in our surroundings quaked and shuddered, like a leviathan emerging from the depths of the ocean. Space started to crackle and pop, and. I could feel adistortion in the world around me grow. There was a sense of wrongness in the air around us that hadn’t been present before.

When we had first entered the mountains, I had noticed some kind of giant essence machine operating on our surroundings. I had been very curious about what it did, but I hadn’t been able to figure it out, and Old Mo said that several scholars had investigated it and learned nothing. Once we had met with the hologram from the Market, it had mentioned the essence machinery again and said something about it being a failed attempt at creating a pocket dimension. His creator had theorized that it was supposed to create an ‘eternal homeland’ for the Zelyr, or something like that. And that the essence machinery also filled up the mountains with manifestation essence.

Since I had so little context for how the whole essence machine worked, I had just filed it away as ‘kind of interesting’ and then forgotten about the whole thing. After all, I had no idea how Zelyrian spellcasting worked, and whatever they had done in the mountains was a level of spellcraft that I was nowhere near. If Zelyrian spellcasting was advanced Calculus, I couldn’t even do basic addition, so there wasn’t much learning value from studying it. Once I had learned that it was a ‘failed’ project, I had assumed it was harmless and then ignored it.

And I was now paying the price for it, as the essence machinery in our surroundings was imploding on itself. I had absolutely no idea what that meant or how to handle it.

What was going on?

Old Mo turned towards me, and I could see that he was hoping that I had an explanation. His eyes were wide and worried.

I frowned, and turned my attention to the Zelyrian machinery around us. I had no idea how it worked, but I had worked with manifestation essence before. I hoped I could get a rough idea what was going on, even if I wasn’t completely sure what was happening.

But before I could use my familiarity with manifestation essence and a huge amount of guesswork to figure out what the now-active Zelyrian essence machinery was doing, I figured out the answer.

This was because a portal ripped itself open in our surroundings. It was a broken, messed up tear in space that looked nothing like the portals I made. It wasn’t… complete. It was like an error in the world itself, and all I could see on the other side was twisted, mangled void. It was like the corpse of an unborn infant, swollen and bloated with mana that had seeped into its rotten carcass and caused its essence to collapse under its own weight.

And the portal had opened right next to our group.

Immediately, I reached out with my alteration essence. I didn’t understand what principles the Zelyrian portal operated off of, but luckily, I didn’t need to.

Breaking things had always been easier than creating them. And there was nothing alive or intelligent that was trying to maintain the portal’s existence, so there was nothing to push back against my essence. The portal was inherently unstable, and ending it was nowhere near as hard as it would be to destroy a functioning portal.

I reached into the underlying essence that had formed the fragmented, broken portal.

And then I ripped at it with my alteration essence. The portal looked even more swollen and bloated for a moment.

And then the portal collapsed, almost as quickly and thoroughly as someone hit with a full-powered extinguish. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that we were safe from whatever that messed up portal had been.

Then I looked at our surroundings. There were dozens of other portals opening and closing randomly in the mountain range. Each one seemed almost like a vacuum, as they sucked in the matter in their surroundings before snapping closed. In the process, they ate the surrounding region like a hungry, carnivorous set of teeth trying to eat the world itself.

Small boulders were sucked in. Plants were ripped up and dragged in. It was utter pandemonium.

“What in the world is that?” asked Sallia’s mother, her voice rising to a dangerous shriek as the portals started randomly opening and closing in our surroundings.

“Some sort of broken teleportation attempt,” said Felix, his voice an unusual mixture of terror and curiosity.

“I can break down the faulty portals when they open near us, but my essence is limited,” I said. “We need to get away from the mountains and wait for the Zelyrian essence machinery to settle down.”

“What caused this mess?” asked Anise.

“Probably an action whichever army won the battle? Maybe the generals of each army figured something out and thought of a way to ‘exploit’ it, only to mess up catastrophically. Or maybe it’s just what the essence machinery is designed to do,” said Old Mo, after a moment. “I did think it was very strange that a few thousand men from each side would bother coming to the mountains. There isn’t anything important to fight over here. But if someone figured out how to activate old Zelyrian ruins… then things change. These areas go from being useless to being incredibly valuable. Nations are always willing to fight over old Zelyrian artifacts and technology - they managed some wonders that even today, scholars and alchemists can’t replicate. Even though we’ve developed gunpowder and prosthetic limbs that the old Zelyrians could never have imagined, they had artificial creatures and spells that we just don’t understand.” I saw Old Mo’s expression shift from curiosity to a strange mixture of fear and amusement, and he glanced at us.

Now that Old Mo knew about the Market and the greater multiverse, as well as the four different types of essence, he knew exactly why Zelyrian spellcasting was so weird compared to the alchemy of this world. I put aside my own thoughts on the matter, and tried to concentrate on the unfolding crisis around us.

If one or both of the armies had figured something out and fought over a way to ‘activate’ the essence machinery in the mountains, it would explain this mess. Both of them probably thought they were activating some sort of ancient super-weapon, or a pocket dimension that might let them create a massive resource base or sneak armies around the backlines of the war or something. After all, nations in this world held the Zelyrians in pretty high regard. So they probably thought that whatever the Zelyrians had created, it would be worth fighting over and activating.

Instead, they had activated a half-broken mess that had started slurping up the mountain range.

I glanced at my mother, who still had the same glassy-eyed expression as usual, and then grimaced.

Sallia immediately picked up my mother. The sight of a six year old easily hefting a grown woman and preparing to sprint was slightly absurd, but we needed to move as fast as possible. “I’ve got her. Let’s go!”

Then, Sallia turned towards one of the side paths that looked like it led away from the mountains and charged forward.

I immediately ran after her, and everyone else followed along.

As we sprinted away, I opened my spatial sight. But my ability to see using ‘space’ was almost completely ruined right now. Normally, my ability to see through drops of water in our surroundings was like gazing through a clear pane of glass - but now, it was like trying to look through a dirty, cracked window. The space in our surroundings was too chaotic. I couldn’t see anything clearly.

I gave up, and instead concentrated solely on my essence sense to disrupt any portals that tried to form near our group.

But each portal was taking a huge amount of essence to dispel. My reserves were rapidly draining away, and Felix’s perception wasn’t as high as mine. He was seriously struggling to keep up with the forming portals, and although he sometimes managed to pop a portal before it opened up on top of us, I was the one who needed to handle most of them.

Anise was desperately clutching her orb and looking at the broken portals, but Anise hadn’t even made much progress in translating her spellbooks yet. She couldn’t do anything about the giant essence machine breaking down in our surroundings.

“Left!” yelled Felix, as we rounded another mountain trail.

I looked past Sallia and glanced at the massive amount of ground we had left to cover, and resisted the urge to throw something out of frustration.

There was too much distance left. We had maybe half a day’s worth of jogging left before we could leave the mountain range - and my essence reserves could last maybe fifteen minutes, at most. If I had a more intricate understanding of the portals, we might have been able to make it - but since I barely understood how they worked, I was just brute forcing the collapse of each portal. That kind of essence spending wasn’t sustainable in this situation.

“We need to find a safe spot or make one! My essence won’t hold up for long, and we have too much ground to cover!” I said.

“Where the hell are we going to find a safe spot?” asked Sallia. “The entire mountain range looks like it’s dissolving!”

I batted away another portal, and felt the urge to curse.

The portals were opening with no rhyme or reason to them. A portal seemed just as likely to open up in the middle of the sky as it was to open below the earth. Parts of the mountain range were starting to collapse, as chunks of rock got teleported into the broken pocket dimension and left behind voids where supporting rock had once been. Little potholes were starting to form as the land supporting the ground disappeared and cave-ins occurred below our feet.

It was like an earthquake and a spatial disaster, all folded together into a terrifying collapse of reality itself.

Our group started desperately sprinting forward, towards the plains, in hopes that maybe we would somehow make it. But each time a portal nearly opened up on top of our group, I was forced to spend more essence. Felix did his best to help, but it just wasn’t enough.

After ten minutes of playing whack-a-mole, I finally messed up.

The ground beneath our feet teleported into the broken pocket dimension, dragging the rest of our group into it as well. Before I could even blink, everything faded into darkness, and the world disappeared in front of my eyes.

We had entered the broken pocket dimension.

acaswell

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