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Hooking up the last line snapped my hold on the matrix and the force of the magical recoil tossed me into the cavern wall. I slid down it into a heap.
The Gateinhaledpower from the core in a terrifying magical crush.
Then, just as quickly as it had happened, it stabilized.
The leystone glowed, crossed with nine lines that met in the center. I slithered up to the Gate. The lines met at the core, creating slightly offset concentric nonagons that continued on infinitely into the stone.
I flapped my wings from excitement.
This Gate still had all its original programming. If there was a Gate on Homeworld, I’d be able to reach it.
Time to take this baby for a spin.
I flapped backwards and gathered myself for one last magical effort.
I hooked ribbons into the spokes and gave the Gate a good old fashioned pull start.
The weight of stars washeavy.
I heaved with everything I had.
The magenta lines started to swirl. Within an instant, the spin turned into nothing, spiraled outwards, and—
Holy. Shit.
The Gate opened onto… stars.
Nothing but darkness punctuated with stars in shades of bright white, white-blue, yellow, orange. Blobs of light, discs of light, specks of light, piercing balls of light, going on, and on, and on.
I sank to the floor of the cavern, breathing hard and trembling from the magical effort. My scales turned a dull smoldering black.
But… stars. The clarity and brilliance of the cosmos without seeing it through the Earth’s haze was equal parts vast emptiness and brilliant light.
Keon steadied himself with one palm against the wood frame. He moved right up to the doorway of stars. The edges of the door-disc brushed along him, and the light from the stars moved over him in a slow wash of soft colors. The cosmos reflected in his eyes. “Helena… you did it.”
Auryn crouched beside me. I made aI’m finechirp. He ran his hands down my scales and between my horns, starlight magic baking me with warmth. I purred and closed my eyes while his magic sank into my withered-feeling scales.
Akoni knelt next to Auryn. “Helena.”
“She’s fine, just let her catch her breath.”
“Herscales, drake, her scales.”
“It’s acute magical depletion.” Auryn’s voice and presence were stars.
I cracked one eye open to watch the rotation of the cosmos. Keon’s strong calves and feet, against the cavern rock floor, shone with the faint colors, and beyond him, the stars.
The Gate was open and the view was excellent, but if Homeworld’s leystone no longer existed, all of this had been for nothing.
With the thought of the missing leystone andwhat to do if…came another wash of pictographs and lecture notes. The Queen herself had never built a Gate, so there was no practical knowledge or even a hint of familiarity. But from the jumble of new knowledge rose the details that Icouldbuild a leystone, even from this distance, but it would take the equivalent of a “very long time” and be nearly impossible, even for a forge-breaker.
How could I build a leystone to a planet I’d never been to?
Ack, don’t get distracted.
I tottered up to the Gate. I pushed Keon back with one wing.
The leystone was the open door before me, but the whole thing rotated around the concentric nonagons at the center of the matrix.
