Dimension Fracture by Corinn Heathers

Author:Corinn Heathers [Heathers, Corinn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Urban Fantasy
Published: 2015-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

quiescence

The door to the guest quarters slid open. The dim glow brightened as the sensors detected a presence, bringing the room into focus. Beds were made and a basket of fresh fruit had been set on the small table. The room was so clean I could detect no evidence that Meilin and I had even slept here.

I was alone. Meilin went off somewhere with Amber, ostensibly to continue laying the groundwork for the combination rescue operation and information raid. I didn't like the risk that the secondary objective added, but there wasn't much I could do about it. We needed Luna's help and that assistance came at a price.

My ears twitched as I sat down on the bed and started removing my boots. New boots were never very comfortable and the balls of my feet were protesting their mistreatment. Meditating into a focus state never came easily to me; the last thing I needed was yet another distraction preventing me from clearing my mind.

I stood up and sealed the door, ensuring that I wouldn't be disturbed, not even by Meilin or Amber. Dimming the lights, I positioned myself in the center of the small guest room and sat on the floor in a lotus position. It bothered me intensely that I had to spend so much time and effort meditating to sharpen my mental focus in order to perform anything beyond a simple cantrip.

There wasn't anything I could do to change it; at least I still could work more difficult magic with such limited access to astral energy. I closed my eyes and let my breathing slow, feeling my ears droop just slightly. My tail slowed its usual swishing, curling around and coming to rest on the floor. Keeping it still was one of the hardest parts of achieving this sort of razor-edge concentration.

The trickle of mana that sustained me flowed instantaneously, regardless of distance. Astral energy didn't obey the natural laws of this world. I was no expert on the subject, but I knew that the rules of the astral world differed greatly from those of the material world.

Despite the fact that the mana came to me without traveling through time and space, I could somehow still discern its source. I couldn't feel anything, but I knew my body was trembling and sweat gathered on my brow. Working magic without the framework of an invocation would be difficult and exhausting even in ideal conditions.

Painstakingly, I bent a line of force here, rerouted a connection there. I had no concrete data to work with, only an insistent pulling as the trickle of fresh mana tugged at my consciousness. I altered the natural pathways it took through the universe, fusing them together to form a longer conduit.

The feeling of attraction increased in strength steadily and then started to plateau. I slowed my efforts and concentrated on perceiving the infinitesimal point where the plateau started to dip again.

There!

I stopped and pushed just a tiny mote of mana into the conduit I'd created. That tiny mote, shaped by the invocation I began to cast, would yield up images, sounds, smells.

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