Dissonance 8 – Start to a Small Adventure

The portal was tiny, barely large enough for one person to walk through at a time. It was no wonder, then, that it was located in the middle of a factory hall, its surroundings poorly defended. Since a war over the Echo yield of such a small rift would hardly be worth it, the focus laid instead on facilitating the resource extraction. Eldred had to climb on top of a deactivated, industrial belt to get to the portal.

The mission was simple: go in, kill the goblins, report the location of the alchemical supplies, get out. The general location of the goblins was already known. Much like humans, goblins ranged from savages all the way to brilliant engineers and the former was their state of nature. Though, from what little Eldred had retained about goblins from his species classes, primitive goblins were… concerning in a lot of aspects.

‘I’ll see soon how true that was,’ he thought as he stepped through the portal.

On the other side was an outpost. It was a building of concrete and steel, keeping a watch over the portal. It didn’t seem that odd to Eldred at first, just a bit brutalist in its plain, efficient design. Once he made it past the two guards, though, he was treated to the comical sight of the environment.

The portal had torn open right by the castle of the local lord. Its medieval core structure of cobblestone and wood was in the process of being overhauled and extended by a variety of Iridescian engineers. Huge concrete blocks and marble columns were erected, utilising cranes made of steel beams that, by themselves, contained more valuable material than was used in the entirety of the peasant village on the western flank of the castle.

It had likely extended to the east as well, but in its place was a yawning chasm over two dozen metres deep. Eldred strutted along the bridge that led across it, gazing down at the machinery that had been brought over part by part and assembled on this side of the portal. They were currently inactive, standing in charging stations connected to the spherical, mobile Pulsar that supplied the operation with electrical energy.

When the machines were in use, soil would be shovelled up by the truckload, dumped on the conveyer belt at the middle of the bridge, and dumped straight through the portal. It was a remarkably efficient way to take a cut out of the world. All Iridescia paid in return was labour and expertise. Eldred doubted the concrete or the steel had come out of the City of the Interstice.

“What an odd sight,” Nyx stated. “Cobblestone and concrete… and not a tree in sight.”

Eldred looked around the area. She was correct, the castle and its village were located on a green, wavy plain. “They probably cut them all down well before Iridescia arrived here,” he theorised, then shrugged. “Not our problem.”

“Iridescia has no qualms about getting involved in other world’s business at all, does it?” Nyx wondered, her tone oddly flat, as if pulled between various emotions.

“Are you remembering something?” Eldred asked.

His banshee remained quiet, her expression pensive. Black lips parted as if to speak, only to give way to a saddened sigh. “No.”

They reached the end of the bridge. Rather than the concrete trim, Eldred now walked the gravel road leading up to it. When he looked left, he saw more machinery. When he looked right, he saw donkey-drawn carriages rolling into the village. “I don’t know why we wouldn’t get involved,” he confessed. “They want our stuff and we want their stuff.”

“You change their entire history with your arrival,” Nyx remarked, again in that flat tone.

“So do earthquakes, gods and demons.” Again, Eldred shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it too much in his life. This was just the Iridescian culture. A trade was a trade and that was all that mattered. The king had the right to sell his soil and the Iridescians had plenty to give him for it. Everything that flowed from there wasn’t their problem. “At least it’s not the Age of Blood anymore.”

“The Age of Blood?” Nyx asked.

“Uhm…” Eldred hesitated, trying to scrape together his meagre history knowledge to explain what he had just mentioned. “Basically, some… thousand years ago, Iridescia used to invade places connected to it via portals and then… run… puppet economies?” He got progressively less certain as he talked about it.

“We should ask Avari once we get back,” Nyx suggested.

“We should,” Eldred agreed, then planted his foot on the grass. He had reached the edge of Iridescia’s overt influence. Beyond that point were the plains.

Swiftly, he ran a final check on his equipment. He had a backpack with a sleeping bag and enough rations to last him a couple of days (even if the mega-dense nutrient bars were bland and tasteless). An axe was strapped to the side of the backpack and Eldred’s knife, the same knife Avari had bought him before the last portal dive, was on his hip. Eldred wore his suit, trusting in the expensive fibres. If they worked as advertised, they would provide essentially the same protection as chainmail armour baseline. If he used his Core properly, he could further reinforce that defensive capability.

In this world, just the technology of Iridescia would have made him nearly untouchable. With Cultivation, he even was above the local mages. Well, most of them. ‘Do not get too comfortable,’ he warned himself again. ‘You only have 1 Core. It’s not that much.’ “Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.” Nyx turned fully incorporeal, her presence no longer even a light draw on his stamina. Everything tightly strapped, Eldred tensed up… and began to run.

Eldred couldn’t recall when he had last run like this. Over the past couple of weeks he had jogged a lot, but that was endurance training. Today, he treated himself to a genuine sprint. His soles slammed into the grass repeatedly, his speed rising and rising as the energy in his soul reinforced the strength of his muscles.

It was like he was a child again, jolly in his usage of his growing body. He had no fear of falling, no concept of propriety. He laughed, the world around him turning blurry with his speed. How far was he running? 30 kilometres? He was getting faster still. The previous way of running was starting to become inefficient. It was starting to feel less like running and more like skipping across the ground, each step a refreshing of his forward trajectory.

Air resistance pushed against his face, drying the teeth exposed by his wide grin. The same power that accelerated him reinforced his flesh. Despite the howling wind, his eyes felt barely inconvenienced. His hair fluttered in the draft. His heart hammered in his chest.

He reached the highest speed he was currently capable of. Holding it made his lungs burn. He had no idea how fast he was. 50 kilometres per hour? Rather than hold it and exhaust himself, Eldred wound down until he had hit a pace, about half that top speed. It could be comfortably maintained. Long strides, half jumps really, meant his legs were only moving every so often. Plenty of time to recover between motions. His quickened heartbeat fell into a comfortable rhythm.

Eldred climbed a peak of the wavy landscape and stopped. A nearby boulder allowed him to get a little higher still. He climbed it quickly, stood on the uneven surface and just… took it all in.

It was his first time he was looking at an open space like this and his second time on another world. This was nothing like the caves of the Chunk of Attarius. It was a wide open world, expanding into every direction. The sun was setting, the time of this world conveniently close to the standard Iridescian clock. It painted the emerald grass a gorgeous shade of orange.

Beyond the plains was a forest. A gorgeous forest of deciduous and pine trees. In the far-off distance a waterfall fell from a mountain, split cleanly by the strike of a legendary hero or a god or a demon or whatever, really. This was the kind of fantastical realm that so many stories Eldred had read, real and fictional, were set in.

Eldred hadn’t experienced these sounds or scents before. The gentle breeze that carried the pollen from the meadows mixed with the aromatic smell of pine and decaying leaves. The chirping of the birds as they prepared for the night. The quiet.

It wasn’t his home. Eldred was a visitor here. He had no intention of staying. He enjoyed the lights and multitude of possibilities of Iridescia. He enjoyed the technology. This was a novelty he enjoyed, that he treated himself to.

‘I am now the kind of person that gets to just see other worlds like this,’ he thought, the grin on his face unfading. ‘And it will only get better going forwards. There is no stopping me now.’

He hopped off the boulder, taking the three-metre drop like he was descending two steps at once. Then, he was right back on his way, a well-dressed blur in an undeveloped world.

________________________________________________________________________

“One really would think they would know better,” Eldred muttered into his smartphone.

Even out in the forest, he still had reception. He was only a couple of hours away from the portal, not a problem at all for Iridescia’s signals, especially not with the repeater they had on this side of the dimensional divide.

“It’s goblins, dude,” Avari responded. “Primitive goblins. They don’t really develop higher brain function. It’s a wonder they managed to steal the supplies in the first place.”

“She is right,” Nyx muttered, close enough to Eldred’s ear that Avari could hear it. “Goblins are vile creatures, unfit to even be born.”

Avari was quiet for three seconds. They had a signal, yes, but not without latency. “Okay, wow, I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve got to defend my fellow shortstacks a bit. It’s just the primitive goblins who’re less useful than turds.”

“I was not referring to the actual thinking kind, rare as they are,” Nyx clarified.

“Okay… not the first time I am thinking this, Nyx, but I think you may have been some noble with some rather strong attitudes in life.” Avari yawned after delivering those words. “Anyway, glad to have heard your voice before I go to bed. Lets me know exactly what I am avoiding in terms of snoring tonight.”

“Love you too,” Eldred responded sincerely.

“Yeah, uh, your face is stupid!” the gremlin on the other side of the line stammered. “So there! I hate you!”

“Sure, sure. Be a good girl and think about me when you masturbate tonight.” With that instruction, Eldred ended the call. Whether she would actually do that or not was not a question he even asked himself. Their sexual dynamic had become quite entrenched at this point. This was pretty mild compared to the stuff they had talked about trying as soon as they got that hook installed in the office ceiling.

It was nice having a woman waiting for him. It was even nicer for her to call him before he went and threw himself into a goblin den.

Swiping a couple of times brought Eldred back to his navigation app. It wasn’t quite good enough to pinpoint his exact location, but it could estimate where he was based on his distance from the portal. The map, on the other hand, was quite accurate. A scout plane had gone in circles overhead, snapshotting the entire area. Eldred’s target was located underground, but the cave system was known. The goblins within it had been permitted to live until now because they had been no real trouble.

The jagged cliff looked out of place from the bird’s eye view. When he looked at it in person, Eldred realized why that was. It was not a natural formation. Rather, some powerful earth mage seemed to have dragged up a shard of bedrock. The entrance into it was too evenly formed to be natural, forming a perfect arch.

The goblins had enough sense to position lookouts. Eldred wasn’t stealthy whatsoever, but he had the advantage of knowing they were there while they stared out into a dark forest. Night had fallen now. Goblin dark vision was good. The second Eldred came out from behind the trees, he would be seen.

Quietly, he put down the backpack. Where he was going, a sleeping bag wouldn’t help him. After loosening the belts, he pulled the axe from its spot. The stainless steel instrument would serve him well in this.

If the alchemical supplies were in that cave, then he would get this job done by tomorrow. If they weren’t, then he had more tracking to do. Either way, the next step was obvious.

‘Time to be a goblin slayer.’