“There’s a bit of chaos here now,” Bell wrote in a message. “There’s a [Diviner] casting a high-level Skill, and someone else claims that perhaps gravity only exists on our planet, and just isn’t a thing anywhere else. And you can’t defy gravity where it doesn’t exist, and so on. And then someone else says that that can’t be the case, judging from the documents of the old spacefaring civilisation.”

Theora appreciated the update. She was still very close to home, so there was no practical difference in writing or using the instant-transmission device, so shutting the device off was a good call, especially if Theora would be stuck here for a while.

The worst part, of course, was that the Orb was already active. If there was a way to keep using the Orb in space, they had to find it quickly.

And if she couldn’t use the Orb to fly, she’d have to land again and find a spot to jump from — an approach that had been discarded early on, for a number of reasons. The most prominent one being that people had voiced concerns that if Theora jumped too hard, it would cause an ice age. But it would also bring them back to potentially losing communication, since Theora couldn’t jump out of patches of mould.

Meanwhile, Dema was sending heart-shaped text imagery, and Theora briefly explained that they’d run into an issue; an explanation she repeated in the group chat. In response, countless messages flooded in, and she tried her best to keep up, although half of the conversation happened so fast that she couldn’t even participate. 

And so, the first hour passed in the blink of an eye. Theora was now a frozen statue, but she had all she needed in full view. Her friends in the Interface, and an incredible sight of a whole planet beneath her where she could vaguely make out the places and regions she’d travelled through in her long life, despite the night. Her eyes were frozen, so moving them was difficult, but she tried her best.

There was the Zenith of the End, the northern cusp of the one continent that made up the world — the place where Dema had been sealed, and she noticed the Land of the Dead — a broken-off large island in the east, a white and pale spot. She’d never been there.

And of course, the large black blotch, half the size of the Land of the Dead, to its south, not too far from her hometown. Unchanged, ever since it had appeared. The reason why she was up here now. No matter where she looked, there it was, piercing and throbbing in the periphery of her view.

Theora eventually found a message from ground control telling her to try and move sideways.

After a few minutes, Isobel said, “Huh. That seems to be working. One sec.”

Next, Isobel instructed her to find a specific spot, on the other half of the planet, mostly filled with endless ocean, where she could not see her training grounds, and where it was still daytime.

It took a few hours to get there.

The sun was very hot. It scorched Theora’s interdimensional attire and burnt her skin. Luckily, the attire was self-repairing, although Theora had no idea how long it might withstand this strain.

“So, what if that’s just it?” Balinth’s grandson wrote at some point, in the group chat. “What if we only have barely a month left to live?”

“Could all evacuate into the Grand Observatory of Fiction and live our last days in some cool world,” someone else suggested.

“I think this world is already pretty ‘cool’,” Balinth wrote. “But I still have confidence that they will find a way.”

That sentence made Theora’s heart pang. She stared down at the planet.

Water everywhere. Was that why Isobel had asked her to position herself here? But, if Theora messed up the jump, it could still create a devastating wave to wander around the planet. And also, it would send her off entirely the wrong way.

Eventually, a total of five hours passed since launch. Theora was ready to give up hope when the transmission device cracked into activity again, together with frantic shuffling.

“I think I have an idea,” Isobel said, sounding a bit groggy. “We argued for hours and then Bell said I should rest because I hadn’t in days because I was preparing for launch and then we went to her bubble and she floated as usual and I sank to the bottom because of course I did since I’m a rock.”

“Yes,” Theora said.

“So I suddenly got big shivers! Like. That makes total sense, doesn’t it? I went down the water because I am denser than water. Dema didn’t sink in lava because she was less dense than lava.”

Theora wanted to nod but found that she couldn’t due to her neck being somewhat stiff, and then she remembered she couldn’t answer through a nod on transmission anyway. “Yes,” she repeated instead.

“We assumed that the Orb works by disabling gravity. So it makes you float,” she kept saying. “But what if it literally makes you float?”

“What if it makes me float,” Theora repeated. “How would it do that, if not by undoing gravity?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Isobel chirped. “That’s why nobody really thought much of it. It either disables gravity, or it makes you accelerate faster than gravity, although the latter doesn’t really conform with how people report feeling after eating an Orb.”

“Hm,” Theora hummed. “It’s typically not eaten.”

“But,” Isobel said, “what if it doesn’t do anything about gravity at all? What if it changes your density to match the medium you are submerged in, and then gives you a constant acceleration to be able to move?”

“What?” Theora wanted to tilt her head, but couldn’t. It felt very hot and cool at the same time. “Wouldn’t that make it more of a Wish of Swimming?”

That said, disturbingly, a convoluted and far-fetched explanation like that sounded exactly like the type of result Theora would expect if one was to try and untangle a magical effect. Almost as if to spite anyone who tried.

“Flying, swimming, what’s the difference! But — if I’m correct, that’s going to be great. It would mean that you are stuck merely because you reached the surface of the atmosphere, and are now swimming on it like in water, and the Orb’s speed isn’t enough to overcome gravity, so you’re stuck. But in that case the Orb’s acceleration would still work once you escape gravity. Also, if your mass is magically reduced, that would mean your other means of propulsion will be magnitudes stronger. We could get so far!” 

It wasn’t very easy to keep up; the laws of nature had never been Theora’s strength, even though she hailed from a town of scholars. “What do you suggest?”

“Wait, lemme [Compute].” A few seconds passed, with a few clicks and clatters of Isobel’s body. “Alright, so take a propellant, maybe a thirty. And then throw it towards the ocean. You can do it gently so it’s safer.”

Huh. A thirty, and less strong than usual? That wasn’t what they had agreed on previously, but if it meant a safer procedure, Theora was all for it. She didn’t want to kill countless sea creatures. It did hurt to already start expending weights when she should be using her Orb right now.

And so, despite how much effort it took, Theora moved her arm. The attire shielded it from the sun, so it was still frozen underneath. It cracked and broke and fissured with the motion, fracturing into thousands of pieces that she kept whole with power of will, and pushed it inside her attire, to take out a round of Dema’s crystallised blood stone.

One of the smaller ones. Her body half-cracking and emanating a fine cloud of ice particles while the other was boiling hot, Theora got in position, wound up, and threw the blood stone towards the ocean. A shockwave broke out from her, the stone deformed and bent and turned into a molten mess from the force Theora applied, and they both shot off in opposite directions.

Within a fraction of a second, they were already far apart, and Theora tried her best to target the velocity of the bloodstone fragments.

[Obliterate].

If she did that correctly like practised, the item shouldn’t do harm to the planet. Unfortunately, she couldn’t throw matter away at full strength, because the objects she threw might harm other planets after millions of years of travel, so she had to constrain her throwing strength to an amount that would allow her to safely [Obliterate] the mass afterwards.

With each throw, Theora gained incredible height. 

“Wait!” Isobel let out after a few moments. “About 3,541 uud per second… That’s not enough. Why is it not enough. It should be enough!” She let out an annoyed grumble. “Sorry, mom. Just throw two more, that should do it. Once we are out and know what’s going on, I will calculate a new route.”

Theora did as told, exerting her body to propel her to the speed necessary to eventually soar out from the gravitational influence of the planet. She almost lost a finger doing it, but was able to catch it at the last moment. Her body was falling apart with each motion. Was this how Isobel felt all the time?

Theora had to go give her another hug once she got home.

“Alright… Try to keep going up with the Orb. Let’s see what the readings say.”

Theora went on for about five minutes, and the planet was getting smaller and smaller beneath her.

“So… We’ll need to wait for readings on the Orb, since they are so small in comparison. Another twenty minutes and I should be able to tell for sure. But… it definitely seems like the Orb didn’t decrease your density to match the air and have you float… because if you were lighter, you would have gained a lot more momentum from that throw…”

“Right,” Theora said. “And it’s not like I got bigger.”

An awkward silence followed. It stretched out uncomfortably long.

“What did you just say?” Isobel asked.

“I mean,” Theora went on, “it’s not like the Wish of Flight makes me larger. I feel the same size. Except for this awkward sensation of being puffed up that comes with using that wish, of course.”

Another pause. Shorter, this time.

“Oh, wow, that has to be it.” Isobel clattered around, maybe checking instruments. “Perhaps the wish doesn’t make you lighter, and just puffs you up and folds the extra volume away into a fifth dimension. And that’s why you start swimming in air.”

“That—”

That made an uncomfortable amount of sense. Magic sure was something else. The Orb had folded part of her away into nothingness to make her lighter, but keep the same mass, so now she floated on the atmosphere, and then it also gave her propulsion on top of it? Theora wanted to cry. This was exactly why she’d decided against becoming a [Mage].

“Preliminary measurement suggests that you are still gaining speed, so I suppose that must be how it works. Oh well, at least there is no upper limit then. We’ll be able to use the Orb to get you on course. Just lost a few hours. We’ll need to use more propellants than planned to get you to the first magic mould patch in time, but… In any case, keep going while I consult the others to plan a route with what we know now.”

The connection shut down with a crackle.

Theora tried to sigh, but failed. The ice was making her throat close up. Now that she’d fully left the atmosphere, she couldn’t wait to melt again. Although she still wasn’t sure if that would actually happen.

All things considered, it could have gone worse.