Dimension Of Perfection (And Its Flaws)

Chapter 16 - Less Than Stellar Things Come To Those Who Wait

The swirling colours envelope me once again. The wind has gotten easier to bear, and by easier, I mean that I'm not constantly doing somersaults in mid-air. It's more that I'm doing mini somersaults, then trying to stabilise myself, which only causes more mini somersaults to happen and then the cycle repeats itself.

4663 jumped through a few seconds ago and I'm not so sure if that thing that happened last time is going to happen again. I never asked about why I was suddenly in the sky, straight in the path of a nuclear bomb. Looking back, I probably should have.

Though, if I asked every question I had, 4663 would begin to wonder if this was my second day alive.

I tumble and flip in the wind, as the continuous magic pulsing sound coming from around me drowns out any other sounds.

This swirling hum is then brutally disrupted by an intense flickering and electric combustion that zaps away the energy sounds in the portal.

The blinking and flickering cause the colours to flash white and before long they all fall out of my view.
I once again review the space around me in fright, as the exact same event as last time has already begun.

The wind stops abruptly this time, and the temperature of my new location is already uncomfortable. I lie in mid-air as I wait to get taken through.

I let out a groan in slight annoyance and don't pay too much attention to the environment as I shout out to 4663. "Hey!!" I call out. I look vaguely around to see if I'm missing something. The word echos about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and now ten times before I hear a response.

"Just- Gi-!" The first words echo over the rest of the sentence, to the point where I can't hear anymore of what she says.

"Huh!?!?!?" I call again, like a teenager from another room.

"Give me a sec!!!!" She corrects.

I grunt in acceptance and look around to occupy myself with the new sights, of which are totally different to last time. Now, instead of sitting kilometres in the sky, I'm pretty much right over the ground; if I was floating upright, I could probably touch the grass covered ground with my feet. I shift around in my still-life skydiving position and try to look for any recognisable objects. Like maybe a house, or just a building in general.

A large jungle of sorts stretches around me, far off into the horizon as mammoth mountains fade into the colour of the sky several kilometres away. Towering over me, are the obviously dominant palm trees that sway in the slight breeze and give homes to fruits, of which some less fresh ones lie on the ground at the base of these trees.

Otherwise the ground is covered in all sorts of rocks, plants, grass and mud, which in a particular patch of it by my left, holds a dried imprint of a weird star. Rest assured, this place doesn't look anything like Craftworld, more like some strange version of it before anything really existed.

Several bugs squawk and croak around me, like the whole jungle is infested, and some terrible screeching from above alerts me. I try to shift toward the source of the noise and point my head as far upwards as it will allow. A blurry thin shape passes just by where I can see, and a whooshing sound follows the direction of the shape. I yelp at whatever I saw and heard, now desperately trying to turn myself around.

I throw my arms weight around to slowly try and move myself. Surprisingly my strategy already seems to be working, as with each attempt I turn backward ever so slightly. I continue trying to move myself, before I'm startled as the electric failure sound flashes again. I whip back and forth as a tube of flickering lights surround me and as the sound becomes even more aggressive.