“This doesn’t feel right. I don’t know if I can control it.” Heather murmured, but Smiley wasn’t going to let her give up.
“Just move the warp charge closer before extracting it.” Smiley said, and Heather did so.
It would help a little, but just keeping it from exploding was a challenge. It was clear that the blue energy kept it subdued in some way.
“You can do this.” Smiley said, encouraging her as he stood at her side and patted her shoulder.
Loki watched from afar, but his mouth fell agape. He was more shocked at this comment than the portal experiments; if he told anyone at the academy that the smiling demon encouraged someone, he would be laughed out of any class in an uproar.
The warp charge responded to Heather’s power as her mind went under strain, her brows furrowing and teeth clenching as she wrestled with the unstable red energy, but she slowly seeped it through the glass containment chamber.
The red energy crackled and sparked, fighting furiously to escape whatever containment or power tried to contain it. By its own nature, it wished to burst into a chaotic blaze, ending its wrathful existence in a self-destructive glorious blast.
The dungeon entrance began to respond, and the rubble remains from the last warp charge experiment flickered back into existence, showing the cratered damage that Smiley’s first warp charge had created after he’d dashed it with his sword.
Smiley immediately sensed danger. His eyes narrowed and he instinctively lowered into a combat stance, readying his sword.
“Do it.” He whispered to Heather’s ear, and as the energy pooled on the entrance she finally released her grasp.
Finally set free, the red power did everything it could to ignite, unleashing its raw fury.
A clap of thunder rolled over them with a pulse of energy, a red wave spreading through the entire mirror reality, rippling and tearing the fabric of the pocket dimension.
The void rifts opened, tearing wider. Gravity intensified and loosened. Pockets of air super-heated, distorting vision into swirling waves. Parts of the forest instantly blazed with fire, tree trunks splitting and cracking from the sudden heat. Other parts turned to into fractals, splitting into infinite copies and mirrors of themselves. Pockets of time hastened and slowed; everything caught between was rend into halves. The ground quaked with deep groans, unable to contend with the empty voids swallowing everything they touched.
Despite the hellscape they created, Smiley’s eyes were fixed to a gleaming red ring, hissing and spitting caustic energy as it swirled around a portal. The rings around portals were supposed to be blue, but this red ring was otherworldly, causing fear to strike his heart, a threat to his very mind and soul. He had never seen anything like it—but it was a portal nonetheless, and the other side was much darker than the bamboo forest dungeon. Somewhere entirely different. He had succeeded, but it too dark to tell exactly what or where he would be walking into.
The crumbling mirror reality was dangerous, but jumping into an unknown abyss was not an option.
“You did it.” Smiley whispered, and glanced at the girl.
At his side, Heather was shaking, hugging her arms from the danger she unleashed. Smiley would have told her off for being scared, but time was fleeting, and he had to act.
Smiley grabbed Heather’s wrist, pulling her closer to the portal.
“Take a look at what you’ve accomplished. Be proud.” He said, fighting all his senses to stop himself from running from the crackling red energy surrounding the portal.
“I. I—I didn’t. This wasn’t—” Heather could barely speak, but as she drew nearer, her eyes widened. The energy reached out to her, and her eyes flickered white. All her fear was replaced with a dazed look.
Something was drawing her, a curiosity that transcended logic, an allure she couldn’t resist. Captivated by the darkness, she ignored all signs of danger and looked into it, pulling her eyes into focus and trying to make out any details she could.
“Be proud.” Smiley said, and raised his boot.
*Thud!*
A heavy blow landed on Heather’s back. Smiley had planted his boot and spartan-kicked her into the portal.
Heather didn’t scream as she went in, even as the red energy seared her skin as she passed by. Her mind was entirely consumed by something she wanted, needed to grasp. But she wasn’t the only one scathed by chaotic energy.
“Grrh!” Smiley grit his teeth as a tendril of the red power lashed out, crackling around his boot and melting the flesh within. But as Heather plunged into the abyss, he immediately refocused himself, ignoring the pain and looking into the otherworldly portal.
Heather breached the darkness, shattering and tearing it like a veil. There was a dark membrane across it, but it no longer blocked sight to the other side.
Heather lay on the ground, writhing in pain on a cold stone floor. Smiley was ready to jump in, but froze as noticed something else, peering up.
Haunting eyes peered from the shadows, a luminous green glow filling the eye sockets of empty skulls. A black altar. A room filled with clay jars, and a large, unmoving figure with a hulking body kneeling before the undead.
Both Smiley and the skeletons were as confused as each other, each stopping in their tracks. And with a shudder the portal snapped close in a blinding flash.
“You kicked her? You fucking kicked her? Wh—what was that through the portal?” Loki said, his voice trembling.
“Hell.” Smiley coldly said.
He stepped back from the disappearing portal as his only exit closed. Whether his indecision to jump through had killed or saved him, he couldn’t be sure, but without Heather, there was no way to repeat the experiment, even though he had another warp charge.
The forest around them was burning. The academy’s headmaster’s voice began to sound out through the forest, calling everyone back to the academy.
Smiley frowned. He had failed but felt like he was one step closer to his escape, but he guessed they would evacuate everyone and he would have a better chance at escape in the real world.
Or, they would just kill him.
With the temporal robe equipped, Smiley began to sprint back through the forest, passing by the markers he had laid and escaping the reality-warping effects of a broken dimension.
“Hey, wait!” Loki called, sheepishly following along. But he couldn’t keep up with Smiley’s speed.
However, that was the least of Loki’s problems. His fingers started disappearing, turning invisible. The Others were enacting their revenge; the academy had became unstable, allowing them free reign to cast their forbidden spells, and Loki had angered them.
Loki passed by bushes and branches as he ran, but as he went to push them away his hands and body went right through them. Loki knew he wasn’t being erased from existence, instead he was becoming completely imperceivable, though he wasn’t sure which was fate was worse. He had angered The Others, and this was his punishment, a full taste of their powers with only one remedy—to grovel and beg at their feet.
Smiley kept running, ignoring the calls of Loki—until they turned to a distant murmur, becoming nothing but whispering echoes. And a few moments later he wondered what Loki looked like, who Loki was, until the name slipped from his mind as if it never existed.
The crystal-projected voice summoning all students back to the academy became distorted, sounding slow and deep in some parts of the forest, or fast and high-pitched in others.
Numerous voids began springing up through the mirror reality, pushed up by some unknown force as the trees rejected the ground.
One sprung up before Smiley, blocking his path; the other side of the tree fell into black nothingness and pulled in the earth, leaving only a deep pit behind.
The colorful patterns on the temporal robe were shifting and buzzing frantically, as if they were trying to leap from the fabric and run for cover.
The robe’s patterns were an early warning sign of reality instability, but no matter which way Smiley turned, the patterns never stopped moving.
He grit his teeth and pressed on, following the safety markers he’d laid to the best of his ability, as swiftly as his feet could carry him. He saw some students along the way, but without a second glance he brushed past them, uncaring for their looks of shock and horror as the world crumbled, and uncaring if they followed him or not.
