We spend the night at a watchtower on the outskirts of a neighboring sector. It is a tall stone structure fortified with steel and granite. The observation room, perched high above the ground, is where we decide to settle into. The night is warm, like usual, and the sky is a dull red. In the distance, the low rumble of ground falling to oblivion can be heard.
In the center of the room, a soft yellow glow emanates from a crystal orb of light we placed on the ground. Asha sits next to this, her holo in front of her, numerous documents and reports hovering midair. I’m near the entrance, sitting on the ground and leaning back on one of the giant crystal windows, looking outside at the fiery sky further away. Nearby me sits Kei cross-legged, scribbling on a tablet connected to one of the backpacks.
After a while, Kei lets out an exasperated sigh. I turn to look at him. His tablet is in his lap and he is leaning back on his arms, reddish-brown wings folded loosely behind him. “What’s up?” I ask him. “What are you working on?”
“The time curvature equations don’t align properly with the data.” His hand gesturing in the air. “It’s making the calculations a lot more complicated.”
“Time curvature equations?”
“Yeah, I’ve been working on a theory which considers the End as a spatial-time curvature phenomenon instead of a mass-gravitational one. The relativistic principles point in that direction, but the field mechanic calculus required to compute such a possibility isn’t quite developed yet. Compared to this, dimensional folding is simple math.”
I smile sheepishly. “And the plainspeak translation of that would be…?”
“Oh sorry,” he chuckles embarrassed, scratching the back of his head. “I must’ve been holed up in that pit for so long that I’ve forgotten how to talk normally.
“Hmmm…” He brings his fingers together and touches his nose. “So you know how nothing ever returns from the End?”
I nod. The End is what we call the bottom of this world. The abyss into which everything is collapsing down into. From which nothing ever comes back up.
“For a long time, it was believed that the reason for this was due to the strong gravitational pull as you approach the End. But we never really understood why light was also affected by this. I mean, as you know, light is pure energy and has no mass. Then why is it that light, or any other form of energy for that matter, has never been observed to reach us from beyond the End?
“The theory that I’m working on right now instead considers the End to be a spatial-time curvature. If we consider the End to be a bend in space and time, then it would explain how light does not escape. While the light itself may continue to travel in a straight path, the space and time around it is the one that bends, causing it to travel back down.”
“Spatial-time curvature, huh?” That reminded me of something. “Isn’t that the basis for how our Gate works?”
“Yes, exactly,” he points out. “The Gate uses dimensional warping, which does heavily rely on spatial-time curvature.”
I tilt my head. “But you were saying something about something being underdeveloped?”
Kei nods. “Things were in a rush when they designed the Gate. Only developing enough of it as was useful. Engineering.” Kei smirks, shrugging. “They never delved into the more theoretical side of it.”
Across the room, Asha is talking to someone over the transmissions. She smiles at a figure in her holo—her daughter, Nira.
Kei speaks a bit softer. “There was a time though, when we thought that the field of spatial-time theory was going to be big. Academics and scholars were talking about all kinds of applications for it, and proposing all sorts of projects to study it.” Kei sighs. “But that was before, you know… all of this started happening.”
I nod. The world collapsing changed many things.
We first found out about it from the stars. Subtle signs that something big was amiss. I, on the other hand, first found out about it from my friend. Flying into my dorm room one morning and crashing on to my bed.
“Yo Riah, dude!” He pulled me in and pushed a tablet onto my lap. “You gotta see this. It’s crazy!”
It was a satellite feed of our world. Continents of lush green and rocky gray scattered amongst oceans of deep blue. Spread throughout it all were the ley lines, conduits of magical energy, like veins glowing faintly on the surface of a leaf. I’ve seen images like this numerous times, and this one looked no different.
I scratched my head and turned to look at Gale. “Um, so what exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”
My friend looked at me incredulously. “You haven’t been following the news, have you? The one about the stars? Weird stuff—” Then he remembers. “Oh right, astronomy isn’t your thing huh?”
I shrugged. I liked stargazing, but the science of those twinkling lights was way too much for me.
He gave me a disapproving look. “Well, earlier this solar cycle, they published a study about some kind of stellar anomaly. Stars shifting, changing color, or something like that. It wasn’t that big of news, but…” Gale reached over to the tablet on my lap and pinched out a corner of the feed, zooming in. “Some people tracked the source of anomaly to something down here.”
There was a small spot which seemed to be glowing white. In one of the uninhabited outer sectors. The spot pulsated and grew little by little, like a matchstick flame slowly burning a piece of paper. “Dude… What is that?”
“The sector’s collapsing. Falling down.”
I looked at my friend weird. “How?”
Gale shook his shoulders. “They don’t know yet. They think the magic is weakening or something.”
In the midst of the growing spot, there were darker areas. Flickering shadows.
“There are rumors,” Gale continued.
I felt a chill down my spine.
“They say that if you fall down there… there’s no coming back.”
We stayed at the outpost a few days before starting out on our flight off to Central. The trip was just more dull hazy skies and sandy deserts dotted with city ruins. The final area we had to pass now lay in front of where we stood. Central Canyon, as it’s come to be known. A long collapsed divide between our part of the sector and Central’s. We’ll be crossing it at one of the narrower sections, to avoid flying over the End as much as possible.
Kei helps load one of the packs onto my back. Now that the weight wards were starting to run out of power, they were beginning to feel a bit heftier. I stretch out my cast-iron-colored wings as he pulls a few straps over them. Beside me, Asha double checks our levi-gears—our safeguards while flying over the End.
“This one’s good.” She passes me a circular device. The center is a crystal interface, while the edge is soft metal.
I nod as I take it from her. Pressing it onto my chest, it activates, digging through my armor and into my skin. I wince every time.
Kei is done with my backpack. He taps at his wristband and the weights on my back shift. Asha passes him a levi-gear and he puts it on also.
Our packs are tight and our levi-gears are on standby. A gentle breeze blows in the direction of the canyon. Through the haze above, midmorning sunlight can be felt. We leap up and begin to fly towards Central, the city outline already visible on the horizon.
Far below us, currents of flame and plasma can be seen rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, like a sea of fire. The heat can be felt rising powerfully from below. The depths of the abyss. If you look carefully, much further down through the dimmer areas, you can make out patches of darkness flitting in and out from behind the waves of bright above them.
I look back up. We’ve almost reached the other side of the canyon. Asha is in the lead, silver wings glinting in sunlight. Kei is behind her. He flaps his copper-colored wings up.
Then he falls.
A gravity sink. It hits Asha and me next, pulling us down fast.
A surge of tingling energy spreads through my body and my fall stops abruptly. Our levi-gears kick in at almost the same time. Asha and Kei float not too far away from me. Around us, a heavy cold wind blows downward. I catch my breath.
Kei is signaling, ‘safe’. I do the same. We’ll probably be stuck in this position for some time. I pull my wings in as not to get dragged down by the wind.
Asha has her holo up. Monitoring the surrounding readings, in case there is a fire burst we’d have to avoid while trapped like this. It would be pain to do so, but not impossible if we have enough warning ahead of time.
I notice Kei’s wings are still spread out a bit too much. This might be his first time hitting a gravity sink. He seems to be hovering a little lower than before. I’m about to signal him.
TWANG! A snap of energy. And Kei starts falling again.
I quickly exchange glances with Asha. She’s already signalling her approval as I signal her, ‘cover me.’ I switch off my levi-gear, diving in Kei’s direction.
Kei is spreading his wings breaking his fall, as protocol, and so I manage to catch up with him soon enough. I grab on to his arms and armor, hooking his harness to mine. His body is shivering with energy.
“I-I think the weight wards broke,” he manages to say. I notice his levi-gear sparking and shorting out. That device is a goner. I yank it off and throw it away.
Flames are beginning to bite at our skin. I feel an arc of plasma slice through one of my wings. I tap my levi-gear, which jolts us upwards. But we continue to fall. His backpack, no longer warded, is way too heavy to lift up. I flap upwards against the wind, shuddering. The levi-gear might not be strong enough to hold us up for much longer.
Kei gestures to his backpack. I frown. All that data collected from the End.
He shakes his head. “We only need one of them.”
I’m not sure what he means, but it’s not like we have a choice. I grab a blade and cut the straps on Kei’s pack. It immediately gets pulled downward into the flames, while Kei and I begin to hover midair.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Far above, I can see Asha hovering down to meet us. A ping from Asha. “The gravity sink is weakening,” it reads. “Hang in there, guys.”
We’re soon catching our breath on the other side of the canyon. I lie on my back in the sand, feeling my body stitch itself back together again.
Asha is checking on Kei, who’s sitting upright next to me. He’s shaken up, but okay.
“So, we lost one of your loads,” I mention. “What did you mean by, ‘We only need one of them’?”
Kei grins. “Who stores data without making a backup? Each one of those backpacks carry the same thing.”
I sit up, looking incredulous. “So you’re saying, all this time, we’ve been doing extra work carrying redundant copies?”
Kei smirks. “Yep, in case something like this happens.”
Asha chuckles. “You didn’t know?”
I sigh, shaking my head. “Such a genius,” I say half-sarcastically.
“I know,” Kei’s says smugly.
Asha looks ahead in the direction of Central, a sandy desert between here and there. “We can probably walk for a bit, if you both would like.”
Behind me, my wings still feel a bit tattered. “Yea, Ash. That would be nice.”
I turn to look at Kei, who’s been looking at me for a while. “Riah.” A sincere look in his eyes. “I know you probably hear this a lot. But thanks. For the save.”
I nod. I try my best to save those I can. Because there were many that I couldn’t.
Our first evacuation mission was a disaster. The moment people heard that their sector was collapsing, knowing that if they fell into the End it would be hell for them, they panicked. Perhaps the government didn’t expect things to get out of hand so quickly. We had been prepared to aid the citizens in moving to safer grounds, but we hadn’t been prepared to do so in the kind of chaos that ensued.
However, we tried to do the best we could given the circumstances. Gale and I were part of the contingent dispatched as backup. Asha was too. Three days of flying in and out of the semi-fortified grounds as heat and flames rose from below. There were people trying to save their possessions, but losing themselves in the process. Others sought their lost ones, venturing too far into the collapse. Children stranded without their parents.
I will never forget the scene I saw that day. People stomping over each other to get to safety. I guess we had thought of ourselves to be pretty selfless. Having indefinite lives with nothing to fear, we could focus ourselves fully on the well-being of others. But reality struck hard. The moment our security was taken away from under our feet, many were lost as to how to act.
That day hundreds were lost to the abyss. Many of whom I saw falling down, but couldn’t do anything about.
It was a few days later, as our contingent was recuperating and managing the outfall of the incident, that I found myself at the edge of a cliff overseeing the fallen sector, looking out into the vast beyond. Flames were licking from below. Wards humming powerfully with magic.
Gale was sitting up straight, beside me, on the ground, legs crossed. “Riah.” He wanted to say something.
“Yeah?” I turned to look at him. He was looking into the distance, soft brown hair rustled by the wind, sparks flickering in his eyes. The past few solar cycles had been rough for us. It’s changed everyone somewhat. Even Gale.
I knelt down to sit beside him. Pulled up my legs and let my wings rest on the ground. The earth was warm, and tingling with energy.
He glanced at me. “I know I say this a lot, but you really do mean a lot to me.”
I nod. There was a time when I’d find some smart reply to get back at him for saying stuff like this. But with the world falling apart and the future uncertain, I wasn’t going to take anything for granted any more. He was my best friend, and who knows how many more chances I’d get to hear him say stupid things. “I’d say the same, Gale, but you know that already,” I said with a smirk.
Gale chuckled. “The past few days…” He gazed into the distance. Fires blazing. People screaming. Children crying. “Has got me thinking. I know everyone is just trying to save themselves. And I’m sure as shards don’t wanna end up in that inferno for the rest of eternity. But…” He looks up into the starless sky. “If anything happens to you.” He glances at me but for a moment. “If you, well… if I lose you to that…” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t be able to go through the Gate. Not while you’re still down there, burning alive.”
Gale turned to look at me. “Honestly,” he continued. “I’d rather be stuck down there with you, painful as it may be, than to let you go through all of that, alone.”
My wings quivered behind me. I looked down. “Gale, I know I don’t tell you this a lot. But you really do mean a lot to me too. If you ever fall down there, I’m not going to let you go alone.”
Gale put his arm around me, a grin on his face. “Well, neither am I.” Then with a smirk, “You’re never going to get rid of me now.”
I snickered.
But I took that as a promise.
