Comet's Fall 1: Ostancine

2.2

"You're a wizard," I said after a long moment. "Wizards aren't allowed in Ostancine."

"Well, my dear, if I wasn't a wizard then you'd be dead right now," he said flatly. His eyes pierced into me and I suddenly suddenly found my throat dry. When he was satisfied that he had made his point, he continued.

"Well, most of what is going on here is engineering and physics, but the rest of it couldn't fit together without my learning from our neighbors to the east,"

"How far east?" I asked. "As in, Tarn east?"

"Oh relax," he said dismissively. "This whole damn city has gone paranoid about nothing. As a young man I was sent from the Ostancine academy of astronomy to Tarn on a research mission. A lot of what I learned there has aided me in my work here, and if you're worried about me being a spy or something absurd like that then rest assured that the interior guard knows about and has condoned my magical talents."

"They sent you to Tarn so that you could conduct research for Ostancine?" I asked.

"Precisely. Most fools waste their time trying to turn lead to gold or some other rubbish, but I've found it has much more practical applications for getting in touch with the stars. For example, turning your skin to stone just now to keep your cells from bursting in the unforgiving cold and vacuum of the upper atmosphere."

I shuddered to think how the doctor had discovered that would happen to a living creature. He produced the brass rod from his coat again, and I studied the engraving that ran up and down it. There was an intricate weave of lines that led to its tip, with what looked like pointy fish scales that made up its grip.

"It's also responsible for producing, or I guess I should say transporting, the air that's filling the observation deck and thus our lungs. Without it we'd be unable to talk or hear with no medium for the sound to travel through. Oh, that and we'd suffocate."

"So I just walked through a door, which lead me to a point five hundred kilometers above the planet, and I'm only alive because you turned my skin to stone and pulled me into a glass case which you're filling with air using that little brass rod."

"You see now why I told you to stay away from my office?" he asked in a suddenly fatherly tone.

"You're crazy," I said. "I could have been killed. To think I spent all of this time thinking you were purposefully keeping me way from your research."

"Well, I was in a way," he shrugged.

"And all of this time you were hiding a little door to heaven in your office," I continued, starting to feel light of breath.

"It's a bit cold to call it heaven," he said.

"Then, when I reached my breaking point and pried open the locks to your office, expecting to snoop on your research, I found myself flung out into the ether five hundred kilometers above the ground," I continued, feeling frenzied.

"Five to six hundred kilometers," he clarified.

"I could have been yanked out of that door..."

"It's called a portal."

"And flung out into the stars..."

"I suppose."

"Where if you had not turned me into stone..."

"The correct term is transmuted, dear."

"I could have either frozen to death... or exploded..."

He looked at me with set jaw for a second, and then flashed a wry smile.

"That's the magic of space, my dear. Both could have happened simultaneously!"