Thanks :p
Catnip always rocks, especially the Suricrasian variety (hallucinations involving enormous spacecraft embedded in the terrain are always are better than the average :p)
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Blitukus thought about it... how would he prevent his mother from dying if doing so was prevented by the universe... there had to be a way around... a way that didn't cause a paradox in time. No matter what he thought of, he came to the same conclusion... her death was what drove him to his current self, and that current self was what was needed in order to travel through time in the first place. He thought about it... all actions propagated through time with ever increasing effect... the further back in time, the more effective a past event in determining the present. Dracha had mentioned those dragons who had attempted to travel through time... maybe they knew something he didn't. He would have to contact them... but it would take more than a mere few minutes to do so. The further he traveled away from his current location, the quicker the portal would destabilize. The danger of the portal becoming unstable and closing was a true hazard... his quest would truly end a failure if he became stranded, displaced in time. He thought again... perhaps it wouldn't, necessarily, but still... he needed a warning. He knew that the more unstable the portal got, the larger the currents induced within the silver spheres... a current that could be used to drive some sort of warning system. He thought of it... an alarm bell, the bigger the current, the more unstable the portal, the louder the bell. Blitukus left the room, and went back to the work room. He had a little leftover bronze... hardly any at all compared to a massive constructions needs, but a bell needed hardly any material. Blitukus forged the bronze together, then made it into a simple bell, using two wires and a bit of magnetite to drive the bell from an oscillating current. He then used some of the leftover material from building the components for the wave generator to make a regulator... it was only one or two simple and small components, but it would keep the bell from being ruined by large voltages near the collapse of the rift. He brought the bell back to the cavern, and installed it near the power wires to the silver spheres, linking it to the wires. The direct current of the control pulses would not set it off, but the oscillating current of the portal ring inducing voltage in the coils would.
As he linked it... another thought entered his mind. Energy was required to move the portals destination... relatively little, but still over the time of the portal opening, not much energy would be available to work with. It would effectively limit the range of his machine... to what, he did not know. He now had a new goal... to test to see if traveling to the days of the ancients was possible, for it would determine what his next goal after would be. Blitukus left the cavern, put on the chest plating of his suit, steam cooling on the back, and wore his amulet... what he would face on the other side was an unknown, and it was best to be prepared. Blitukus then walked back to the control panel, and opened the flow to the channels. As steam became available, he engaged the dynamos and began charging the capacitor. He would use his old deltas he had calculated for his last one, except, he would use a time delta of -2000 years. As the capacitor charged, he revised his deltas, and calculated the initial conditions at the moment. He reset the calculating machine, and began to enter it all in. As he was doing that, the capacitor filled. He switched power over to the ring, and continued, preparing the calculating machine and finally starting it. As the machine readied, he thought... now he would unleash the true full power of his machine... and whether it would reach the full 2000 years, or fall horribly short, would soon be manifest. Gradually, the machine became ready... Blitukus deep down inside sensed this would begin an important event... he had a very powerful feeling about this, but couldn't identify it. He took in a deep breath, readied himself, then pulled the discharge lever. The brilliant beam, an incandescent line of immensely energetic particles, flew into the ring and as it cut off, the rift formed. Blitukus looked away, and toggled the calculating machines output. He did not focus his willpower... this was a test of the machine and the machine alone. But... despite his attempts to be stoic, his soul still cried out to speak with his mother once again. The portal formed, and as he observed it, he felt his soul unified, powered by the agony of his mothers death twice over. He took a deep breath in. The rift had opened... and on the other side, grassy plains with buildings behind. A tear running down his cheek, Blitukus crossed the bridges over the magma and water, stepping towards the portal... his mother standing on the other side. It was his dream... and now it had become a reality. A boiler vented its excess, causing a jet of steam to temporarily shoot into the air. He walked through the portal, and emerged on the other side. His mother stood... wearing apparently nothing else than a rusty old copper sword. This was her before she became queen... he must be in the year 1050! Or perhaps... had he stepped into heaven, and met his mothers soul? Blitukus on the other hand stood clad in his steel chest plating, wearing his goggles and wearing the crystal-and-unidentified amulet. The late portion of his quest had lead to the early portion of his mothers quest... at least it seemed. It didn't seem to matter... his original quest was to once again meet his mother, and now, he had done it.
Despite his somewhat heavy plate, Blitukus ran up to his mother, and gave her a big hug, shutting his eyes, tears trailing down his face. Somehow, he had just happened to end up meeting his mother when he had not deliberately aimed to... the test was failed, for he had not gone back 2000 years... but it was the best failure possible. The odds of him just happening to be there and then to meet his mother... it must have been one in a billion at most. He found himself in a state of simultaneous relief and disbelief. He spoke, "Mother! It's really you! It's a miracle!" A moment passed, and he kept hugging her. He continued, "You have no idea how happy I am to see you again!" His mother replied, "I dun tink I... I ever got pregnant.... Say, youz'n older dan me." Blitukus replied, "It's been a long, long time since we've met..." He realized, if this really was 1050, she had no clue of what had happened from 1080 to 1085... he continued, "for me, anyhow." His mother replied, "I d'no wasu meaning...?"
Well... where can I start? Electromagnetic induction of graviton flux or the optical/wave properties of exotic matter? The world map... it is a common item in both of our quests... say... she told me once that... wait a moment, I'm the one to tell her of the world map! She got it from... a-... Atek! Yes.
Blitukus replied, "It's... it's complicated. When you meet an axeman named Atek, ask him about a map. Trust me, you'll find it useful." Pressure differences forced more warm air out of the rift... forces building up caused more steam to be vented as it built up back in the cavern. Blitukus heard the ringing of his bell through the rift... indicating the portal was beginning to become unstable. He wished he could just stay, and be with his mother again... but it wasn't in the best interest of the flow of time... and also, he had not only a quest, but a duty... that demon was still out there. Blitukus, wishing he didn't have to say it, spoke, "I must leave..." But, he found the words he had forever wanted to speak to his mother since that tragic night, "I love you, mom." She hugged him, and replied, "I wuv you too!" Blitukus found himself smiling, a tear running down his cheeks. He stood there... he felt the full strength of his love for his mother again... only now, this strength lifted the heavy, melancholic depression from his heart, and cast it away. Those were the words she never got to say to him the night that she was killed... those were the words he had missed so much those 5 long years. The alarm bell became much louder as the portal destabilized, back-flowing forces forcing the boilers to vent a large burst of steam, some of which flew through the rift. Blitukus jumped... he still had further tasks. Blitukus leapt back through the rift, diving through to the other side, the rift collapsing down under fundamental-scale forces just after he passed through. The bell stopped. Blitukus pushed himself up, then knelt there. He took off his chest plate, then put his hand over his chest, his eyes shut. His heart beat with a strong pulse... his machine was complete, his original quest was complete, his heart was complete. Those words had filled the missing piece. His original quest had been completed. Death had failed to stop him, he had met his mother once more... and now he was ready for his soul to finally be at peace... he already felt the forces within his heart mending his soul. He had truly done it.
He opened his eyes, and looked up at the console. His original quest was complete... but extended events have led to extensions to his quest. The demon still lurked... and he was to put a stop to its plans. Then, finally, it would all be all right again. Blitukus stood, and walked back to the console. He switched power to the capacitor to recharge it. He thought... what would his next destination be... traveling through space was, in theory, much less energy intensive than traveling through time... the entire world and then some was easily accessible. The world, and then some... he remembered he had received some coordinates, some coordinates from the heavens above. He walked back to his room, and then sifted through his books and papers, eventually finding the tablet he had written down the coordinates on... the white ringed world wished him to go there, right there. Wherever 'there' was was unknown... the conditions 'there' could even be radically different than the conditions he was familiar with. Blitukus returned, and began to dial in the 11-dimensional coordinates into the middle stage of the calculating machine... after he did so, he started it going in order to transform those coordinates into button presses. As it worked, the capacitor finished charging. Blitukus switched power over to the ring. He thought... if 'there' could be as bad as near the adamantine, he would want his full suit on. While the ring spun up, he took his chest plate back, and suited up fully, making sure everything was properly connected. When he got back into the chamber, the heavy suit thumping on the floor as Blitukus walked in it, the ring had gotten up to speed. Once again the machine was ready... 35 years was impressive but it was far short of 2000... perhaps those of another world could aid him. He discharged the capacitor, causing a rift as the particle cannon finished its powerful fire, triggering the machine-driven controls immediately after. He curiously observed the portal... behind it lay white, dusty, barren terrain. Air was sucked violently through the rift. Blitukus walked slowly up to the rift... what lay on the other side was a world inhospitable to life as was known. Blitukus realized, his suit could be pulled apart for lack of pressure... he could be crushed by gravity or cast off into the black abyss of the heavens above, he could be turned to a skeleton by a corrosive air, or frozen eternally by inconceivably frigid winds. Blitukus took in a deep breath, then let it out. He shut the vent on the mouth of his suit, making it air tight. The rewards outweighed the risks. He stepped through the portal, and set foot on the fine, white dust on the other side. The joints of his suit stiffened quite a bit, making it difficult to move. It seemed as if the lack of pressure outside of the suit was unsuccessfully trying to suck the suit apart. Blitukus felt much lighter all of a sudden. No sound was to be heard save for his own breath. He felt 1000 mile per hour winds gently nudging him as he stood within a barely existent atmosphere. He looked up, and saw the horizon had a thin white haze around it, straight above, the sun shone its piercing rays down, making him squint. He placed his hand between his eyes and the sun, and observed the skies. The stars shined brightly, glorious and majestic rings spanning above, slowly circulating. He had received a transmission from the white planet... and now he stood upon the white planet. Luckily, since he was merely traveling through space... even though it was a distance quite unimaginable to many... the portal would endure much longer. Blitukus looked forward, and smiled. He saw immediately ahead a chasm, on the other side, a small town of sorts. The town was composed of a few simple yet ingeniously designed mithril and adamantine buildings, a glass dome with mithril supports encasing it... or, at least it used to. The top of the dome had fallen in, and many buildings had collapsed at least partially, showing the signs of millenia of decay. Close by, just over the chasm, was what appeared to be a large antenna, similar to his wave generator, precision-manufactured and made primarily of a dark, unknown material. The town was dragon-make, and the antenna seemed to look like the amulet in material... it was cat make. Near the antenna was a hole in the ground, adjacent to which was a small metal box and a dragon-made crystal drilling rig of sorts, a crystal recessed within a barrel as if it bored a hole using a beam of specialized energy. Blitukus ran towards the chasm... he felt very light indeed. He leapt off the edge, the wind nudging him forward. He soared through the air, the low gravity giving him far more distance on his jump than he had ever previously done. He found though... he was falling slightly short. Thinking quickly, he realized that in all of the implications of his cooling suit on a foreign planet... one fundamental concept still held true. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. Blitukus reached behind himself in a rather uncomfortable motion, forcing the valve linkage of his cooling systems piston downward. This allowed high pressure steam to escape out of the lower exhaust, into the very low pressure environment. This produced upwards thrust... very little thrust, but enough to nudge his path up a slight bit. He landed on the very edge of the opposite side of the chasm. He walked over to the antenna, and looked down the line of where it was aimed at. It pointed toward a small, blue-green twinkling planet in the distance. Blitukus smiled. This was the antenna that had summoned him there... but why would the cats, or a cat relic, be so interested in his world? HE walked over to the metal box... on top of it were a scroll and a tablet made of an unidentifiable material. The tablet seemed to be of cat make, covered in almost hieroglyphic text, seemingly distorted in ways considered to be conventionally impossible. He investigated the scroll... it was titled "Scroll of Universal Translation". The text of the scroll was charred by misfiring energy, rendered illegible. On the bottom was a note, "Their encryption is at least 100-fold our current capabilities. Tell Leader, I know you will hate to have to tell him yourself, Auza, but somebody has to. This one has us stumped." Blitukus then looked back at the tablet... he realized, those seemingly impossible distortions reminded him of the bending of space at the fundamental level. He interpreted what he saw, using chance and chaos to choose results, and viewing it as he viewed the full universe in all its glory from the fundamentally small to the all encompassing large. It was not encrypted at all... it was simply written in a font involving more than 4 dimensions. Blitukus smiled and gazed into it through the glass lenses of his helmet... he overlayed his view of the true universe, and found that the distorted characters became solid... they transformed into plainly readable text, even though their original creators had likely written it in another language.
The message read, "Since you have made it here and are reading this at all without being completely stumped, we judge you have, mrr, the proper mind, to operate the device within. We encased it in (word of an alien language) after the gods kept trying to get it, but, since you are not a god (this message will temporarily scramble itself should a god attempt to read it), AND you have the ability to read this, we know you are the one to be entrusted with it. It was, in fact, designed to be a device to manipulate and control certain gods... it is capable of reducing all paths to probability once more, allowing us to observe a path down which we wish the gods to take. Or, at least, it will be capable of that, once you find where we hid the rest of it. Until then, it may serve as an n-dimensional capacitor of sorts. We do not want to risk the entire device falling into the hands of the gods should you lose it to them, for it could in theory unlock the true power of this universe... if you manage to complete the device, you will at least be able to flee should a god attempt to kill you for it. Best of luck, fellow entity! -Feril Sai, Leader of All Felines". Below the message was a hieroglyphic combination... he found a button pad on the front of the metal crate... the metal was scorched by numerous entity blasts, but didn't even have the slightest dent. Blitukus typed in the combination on the pad... a few moments later, the crate opened, revealing a partially complete, spherical device... a combination of particle-scale technologies and particle-scale magic, about 1 foot in diameter, its surface black with an unknown material and blue with adamantine. Blitukus retrieved the device, and quickly made his way back to the chasm. He leapt over, and with his free hand, thrusted in mid-air, crossing to the other side. He moved back through the portal, forcing his way through the rushing air, went back to the console, and shut off the machine and all of its components, closing the rift. Blitukus found the dark material of the spherical device blended in with the environment of the empty space beneath the calculating machine. He placed it there, and found it was well hidden. It hardly needed to be hidden though... Armok payed him no attention, believing his quest was a guaranteed failure. Blitukus thought otherwise... opening all paths to probability once more, and then narrowing it back down to one definite reality... perhaps there was a definite probability that this would all turn out to be a dream, and he would soon wake up, finding his mother was still perfectly alive. He smiled, and snickered a bit. He actually felt kind of amused and happy with the situation, for the first time in a long time. He had found a definite goal... the cats relic had to be completed.
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I'm hoping my being tired didn't effect the quality of the end of the update. It shouldn't have done much.
Author
Topic: A Kobold's Quest II (Read 76146 times)