[ open ] in order to get to the heart of things

[princessvegas]

Who: Julie + opens
When: October
Where: Free Cities + Horizon
What: Julie does a pretty big thing, then spends a week on top of the world
Warnings: Doing real stupid things, otherwise noted in subjects. Halloween party will be a separate post later in the month!

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→ CLOSED, first week of October

[princessvegas]

Julie waits for the right day. A day with a breeze, so that she has the perfect excuse to "take Baron out for a ride". Which isn't even entirely untrue, as she does take him with her, if only so that she doesn't have to walk the whole way. She needs to be far enough from the city that, if this goes wrong, no one else will be at risk.

She has done so much research, so much preparation. She has accepted the risks she is taking with her own life. Portal stones can be temperamental even for creators who are properly trained; her education on this subject is coming almost entirely out of very old textbooks that she was able to find, sourced from piles in used bookshops and the dustiest shelves in the university libraries. She'd read the notes that others scribbled in the margins. For some things, she'd had to go backward and learn out of other New Magic texts before she tried to parse the logic and theories cited.

Portals had seemed so simple before she learned what went into them. For the first time, she understands how people were able to spend decades studying things like calculus and linear algebra. She is not someone who enjoyed school or book education -- her magic was mostly learned through sheer willpower, rather than instruction. The vast majority of it was deciding she wanted to do something, and then throwing every single idea she could come up with at the wall just to see what stuck.

That wasn't going to work for portals, so she did what she had to do. She has to go, and there was no one who was going to make that portal for her, not even on the black market.

Not to the Singularity.

She doesn't blame them. It would be akin to asking a pilot to fly her into the depths of a volcano. Even for the Summoned, it's dangerous, especially outside of the Dimming. There's a reason no one does it except for Thorne, and only the once a year. It doesn't matter to Julie. The danger is worth it; she feels like there's a part of herself that's missing, that she needs to go find. The feeling grows by the day, especially now that she can always feel the Singularity's presence, can always hear its voice when it speaks. The missing piece becomes an ache as the hours in the day pass, like she has lost only one of a set of identical twin babies. Even as she minds the one left, she is staring in the face at the one she has lost. A constant reminder.

Honestly, she can't even be bothered anymore that other people worry when she talks about it. That they must believe she's going crazy or something. She feels a little crazy. But what else can she do? She's not getting any better or saner continuing on the way she has been. This is something she has do, that only she can do.

At least this time, she won't have to walk quite so much.

Baron carries her several miles into the desert, and she finds him a shady place to wait under an overhanging rock. From one of the saddlebags, she takes out a feedbag and some fodder for him, then heads out on her own. Not too far -- maybe a quarter of a mile. Just far enough to test the stability of the spell, at least to an extent. But if she's right, she should be able to magnify the range later on. For now, she just needs the spell to work in its entirety.

When she feels like she's gone far enough, she lowers her hood, squinting slightly in the sunlight. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a palm-sized piece of miranolite.

"While scribestone is the gold standard for portalling, in cases of emergency, other crystals can, in theory, be utilized for the same purpose. Stones of similar strength may prove capable of containing portal spells, but are often unstable to the point of danger." Julie has memorized the passage, she's read it so many times. "It is never recommended to use unprocessed scribestone, called kemarine, or any other substitutes, as the results would be unpredictable and highly volatile."

Over the course of the months, she scoured all three cities. Kemarine, and especially scribestone, is impossible to track down outside of official channels, she finds. But miranolite isn't. They use it in all sorts of New Magic devices, and she figures it must be sturdy enough if they're selling it to ordinary people. So she bought a new toaster ("Perfectly toasted every time! No more scraping burnt bits. Sync with our new breadbox to fully automate your mornings!"), pried out the crystal powering the thing, and now here she is.

Stone enclosed in one fist, she whispers the spell from the books. Twice facing each cardinal direction. She can feel the magic moving through her veins, gathering in her palm. Seeping out and into the crystal. In her head, she locks on the visual of where she wants to go.

An overhanging rock. A cast of shade underneath, perfect for leaving a horse in. The portal should open facing the shade.

It is the only thought she allows herself. For a long moment, it seems like nothing is going to happen. Then she feels a sear of heat in the stone, a single second of burning against her skin. She opens her eyes to look at it, unsure of whether she's done it properly.

There's only one way to tell. One moment of truth -- if she's failed, she reasons that she'll likely be exploded along with the crystal.

With a sharp breath, Julie activates the stone, unable to stop herself from flinching as she does.



A portal opens.



When she opens her eyes, she almost drops the stone out of surprise. Shock, really; she was fully prepared to die in this pursuit. The fact that it works is as astonishing to her as it would be to anyone else. Her shriek of delight, completely involuntary, says it all.

I fucking did it.

Well, almost. She can see Baron on the other side of the portal, looking at her interestedly as he chews. But she still has to step through that portal, and that's the other truly risky thing.

Julie has no guarantee all of her will make it through the other end.

Another few breaths, and she manages to work up the courage to throw herself through the portal.



It's not a flawless landing. The portal has, in fact, opened roughly three feet too high above the ground, so Julie falls out of it in a heap, face-first into the sand. At the same time her feet make it through, the portal fractures, rather than closes. The miranolite in her hand vibrates so hard that it frightens her, and she throws it away from herself as she climbs to her feet in a rush.

The stone explodes against the sand with a loud bang. Shards of crystal rain against her hastily turned back, leaving a few scratches through her dress. The noise startles Baron, but he doesn't take off.

Dust clouds slowly clear from around her, and the sound of the desert wind becomes the only noise beside Baron's nervous snorting. Hesitantly, she turns back to the place in the air where the portal was, but it's gone now.

A tsunami of emotions hits her all at once. Amazement, relief, euphoria. Giddiness like she hasn't felt in years. If she weren't in the middle of nowhere, she would collapse to the ground and lie there, laughing hysterically.

I FUCKING DID IT.

As it is, she runs the rest of the way to Baron, flings her arms around his neck with a whoop of joy. She did it, and he's her witness. He huffs her hair, the top of her head, as if to verify that she is intact. In return, she conjures a palm full of sugar cubes and offers them to him before she practically launches herself into the saddle.

They gallop all the way back, with Julie screaming in laughter the whole time. She feels lighter than air.