The previous night…
In the back of her lair proper, beyond the riches that would tempt many, was a room Aurieste told none of, and even now, would not even reveal it to her daughter.
Not because of the fact she might spill the secret to her new ‘papa’, but because the young dragon was just that: young. And just like any other intelligent species—and some not so, such as the Orcs—the youngest would see a warning of danger as a sign to explore.
And the Pocket Hole, as Ranma called it, was much too dangerous to allow anyone to play around with it. If she could, she would have destroyed the thing.
But just as her story had said, she had no idea where it might lead it, or even if the act of destroying it might cause even more harm. In the past, such as the story she had told Ranma, such Holes needed a constant source of energy to keep them open. Even some magics that allowed instant travel across the world needed but the natural mana around them to function.
Of course, even then, such travel was extremely limited, as if even placed along a ley line, the duration was limited.
And to be honest, even her own curiosity was getting the better of her. She had known of none working on such projects. She had known of none that had made a Hole such as this, one that could travel, but seem to draw power from nowhere … at least, nowhere she could sense. Even now, she had no clue if the Hole was closed, or simply open, waiting for a destination.
This was also the reason she had her magic floating the wooden table she had set it on, down the corridor at the back of her lair.
She passed many doors, each with things inside them that were best forgotten of by the world. For example, one in the second door on the left, could be used to resurrect a horde of the undead, the size of the area depending on the mana used.
One door on the right, held an enchanted dagger that could be used to absorb the life force of any being it was stabbed into, allowing the holder to gain those years of life the other would have lived.
She considered it a sad state of their world she passed no less than twenty doors on either side, before she found an empty room to place the Hole into.
“Finally,” she whispered, fear warring with her curiosity. After all, she certainly didn’t want something to come through, wipe her out, before moving on to the world at large.
Gods knew how many temples had ended up the butt of jokes, just for such an event. “It never made sense to me, to seal great evils away, and then let everyone know where, by building a grand temple over it,” she muttered, turning to leave and seal the door.
But curiosity is a powerful thing, a thing that can make any entity ignore self-preservation, and thrust themselves into the unknown.
“I wonder though,” she murmured, looking at the wooden table. Making sure she was at the entrance—in case she needed to flee quickly after shutting the door—she waved her hand, sending only a small, simple spell at the Hole: a spell of Revelation.
In terms of power, it wasn’t that powerful. In the terms of Ranma’s world, it simply would let you see the ‘base code’ of any enchanted object. In this world, it let you see the schemes of wards and enchanted objects, so you might know what you were messing with, and what it could do.
She nearly fell onto her backside as magically projected ‘code’ flashed into the room, threatening to overflow from the doorway itself. The code orbited around the table, forming a layered sphere, showing each bit of spell, enchantment, rune, and what-have-you, that allowed Ranma’s Pocket Hole to work.
“This is … sheer impossibility,” she murmured, in awe, in fear, in amazement at what she was witnessing, what she was reading.
More so … in what she could not. Over ninety percent of the ‘code’ before her … she simply couldn’t understand.
“Dragons can speak and read any language,” she muttered to herself, trying to see if vocalizing her thoughts. “We have the ability of Tongue in our blood… Anything we do not know, we may learn from looking upon one…
“And yet … I cannot read most of this,” she whispered in awe, daring not to walk into the visual spell matrix, for fear of disturbing it.
“This was not the work of a deranged sorcerer,” she spoke, eyes wide. “This is the work of Gods…,” she said, awe apparent in her voice, as what symbols she could recognize, was in the language of the deities of her world.
“Just what have you found, Ranma Saotome, and why have you found it?” she asked herself, shutting the door after shutting down the spell.
Taking a moment to compose herself, she set off towards her lair, to find the wayward human and her daughter.
It was fast becoming apparent, that Ranma Saotome was a being of destiny, especially if the Gods of his world had seen fit to gift him with such an item.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by The Demented Redhead
(Posted Sun, 04 Aug 2013 02:31)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.