32

Alecia had never, but not due to a lack of trying, found a way into Mal Meg. It had taken quite some time for her to figure out where it was, or at the very least where she thought it was. That location did keep moving, but it wasn’t too difficult to follow with drones, Nightingale did randomly keep breaking them thought.

She had eventually decided that the large invisible floating object, although most people called it an island, was probably Mal Meg. It also wasn’t invisible, just effectively so, reality simply went around it. Like a pea under your mattress, observable only by it’s effects on reality on top of it.

The object was shaped like a massive rosebud, mostly likely by the mysterious Rose, who she only knew about because Owl had mentioned him. Alecia had managed to map its entire surface, and as far as she could tell there was no way in. Teleportation didn’t work either since reality went around Mal Meg there was apparently nowhere to teleport into. In frustration, she had learned that ballistic attacks would simply follow reality around it. That was an interesting phone call from Owl.

That was all without an invitation, now she had one it even guaranteed she would be allowed back out again. Not that she could find the entrance any easier as she circled above it, after ten minutes or circling Owl eventually just called. “Just fly straight in”.

So she did, pausing momentarily at the barrier of reality and unreality. Carefully pushing her hand forward and finding no resistance. It was odd, she could see where the divide was, but she couldn’t see Mal Meg she could see her hand going through it, or rather the gantlet of her power armor. She decided to just push through, and see what would happen not that she had much choice in the matter.

She couldn’t see what was inside until she was all the way in, not just her eyes. Inside was something out of a fairytale. From one end of the horizon to the other it was all roses, that seemed to be affected by a case of gigantism. The thorns on the bushes were as large as she was, the flowers several times that size.

In the center was a fairytale castle, the base appeared to be growing out of the roses themselves. Further up the castle the vines turned to stone, then stone blocks then to crystal blocks finally the crystal started growing like it was alive for more vines.

The casted was located exactly equidistant from the horizons, and Alecia got the feeling no matter how far in any direction she went that would not change. Every sensor in her suit that dealt with locational data had a metaphorical seizure. Forcing her to shut most of it down, and fly completely manual, something she hadn’t done in a long time. Even the gyroscopic stabilization wasn’t working as it should.

She was expected and sitting on a large balcony located on the crystal block portion of the castle was Owl and Bluebird. Owl was looking disturbingly like her mother, not just the face because she hadn’t bothered with the usual glamor, but also the fashion sense. Although that kind of fashion sense was common among the mad scientist types. Alecia herself had several lab coats like that, with all the extra bits hanging off that did things.

It was a common problem, Alecia always needed that one tool to do something. She would need it so often that she would add it to her lab coat. Immediately after she would never need it again unless she took it off and left it in the next room. So most mad scientist types ended up with lab coats covered in things they never needed. You could actually tell what kinds of projects they had been working on six months prior by what was in their pockets.

Bluebird was looking a lot like herself but in miniature. She was barely three feet tall but proportional. Like she had been hit with a miniaturization beam or something. They still had the same face, a 98% match when size was taken out of account. Meaning that they had both stopped aging about the same time in their lives. She also wasn’t wearing clothing just fire, and lots of it.

The blue flames curled around her body in an interesting lattice, spiraling around in a pattern that when Alecia started counting followed Fibonacci’s sequence. The fire seemed to be acting more like a liquid, except when it was acting like her hair, as it pooled on the table around where Bluebird was sitting.

Once Alecia had landed she went through the three-minute process of taking this particular set of armor off. Each piece falling to the ground making an odd hollow ringing sound, like the crystal, was made of hollow metal it didn’t make much sense but trying to make sense of it would probably hurt her brain.

She had long ago decided that the biggest problem with power armor was the inability to wear anything under it. You either had to go naked or wear a flight suit. It was possible to wear clothing, but the skin tight aspect combined with things like seams made that expressly uncomfortable, also your outfit would get creased, badly. Flight suits essentially looked like full body wetsuits, her first had been a full body wetsuit. That was a bad idea, the zipper on the back had hurt like hell.

Comfort wasn’t really an issue to Alecia anymore, but since none of her suits had been made to accommodate clothing she was still using flight suits, except for her lower profile suits that didn’t even have room for that.

Once free of her armor Alecia did the only thing that her pride would allow her to do. Shout at the top of her lungs, in the girliest scream she could manage. “Oh my god, you’re adorable.” Rush forward, and pull Bluebird into a massive hug. “She’s like a mini me, can I keep her.” Bluebird responded by reminding Alecia why she was considered the most powerful fire Elementalist alive, by setting both of them on fire.

 

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