Bend Around the Wind by Scyllaya

Chapter 13: The Tale of Galand [1]

Let the real adventure begin!

Chapter Thirteen

The Tale of Galand Part I

Andromeda Galaxy

Janoth System

Planet Galand

It took at least a few weeks till they reached the Andromeda. Well, Tony assumed it was a few weeks, but he was not sure. The ship was using the Skrull Imperial Calendar, which at least showed them the passage of time, but Tony didn't bother to synchronise it with Earth time. He had no way to know how much time passed on Earth since he was taken and while he could observe that an SIC day seemed shorter than an Earth day, their hours were a lot longer, so altogether a few weeks on the SIC was probably almost two months in Earth time. He made himself stop comparing the two after a few days because it just kept reminding him how long it would probably take to get home. And he really didn't want to think about that.

By the time they were in the orbit of the Janoth System – as the map helpfully showed – both he and Loki had quite a list of things they needed and had to trade for. For Tony it was mostly things he would need for the workshop they already started setting up, things he could use to build equipment to get any real work done, but also tools and materials they needed if they actually wanted to make good use of the alyndor. Tony was a little bit surprised that Loki agreed to take part in it as easily as he did, but he would get some kickass magic armour out of it at the end of it after all, so maybe it was not so weird. Loki also had a list of things, weird things Tony had no idea what to make of.

'Seriously, why do you need all these herbs and stuff?' Tony asked as he strapped him into the seat and started the engine.

'They are for spellwork,' Loki answered. He also strapped himself in already.

'I thought only sorcerers needed... "trinkets" and all that for magic,' Tony commented.

'I do not need it, but I can make use of it. It will be practical to have ingredients for various spells around.'

'Okay, whatever, that's your field so I'm not gonna argue.'

Tony was kind of giddy at the moment, so he didn't care all that much, this would be the first time he could fly the Drake. "Drake" is what they finally named their small plane. Loki glared at every single name Tony offered and in the end remarked that looking at it from the front the plane's shape reminded him of a type of dragon that lived on Svartalfheim. So Drake it was. At first it was strange, to use the name seriously, when it sounded like something out of a fantasy book, but then he realized that he was travelling across the Andromeda Galaxy with a thousand year old alien mage and decided that it was not so ridiculous after all.

Planet Galand was a yellow-blue planet, mostly deserts, some seas, lakes and rivers here and there. As soon as they were out of the main ship and flying towards the globe, the fact that he was in a different part of the universe, that he was using a space ship and about to land on a foreign planet sunk in again. Galand looked so very different from Earth from out of space. It was hard not to be overwhelmed by the reality of it all.

First they wanted to land on Planet Guna, which would have been closer, but the atmospheric scans told him that the air was 40% oxygen and 50% hydrogen, so he quickly had to give up on that. He had no idea how the planet didn't blow up with such a high concentration of hydrogen. It was probably thanks to whatever the last 10% was made up of. It was of course one more reason while he needed a suit or at least a helmet that would allow him to breathe even in an unfriendly atmosphere. For now they travelled further until they reached Planet Galand, which was a lot more suitable even for his lungs.