Rising Shards

As I waited in the void entry building for Dr. Diast, I got out an envelope Stella had given me. It was one of those office delivery ones with a string on it and a bunch of crossed out names. I tried to look into the little holes punched into it but couldn't read any of the papers inside. The way Stella described it made it sound like super boring paperwork so I wasn't desperately curious. I was going to give it to Diast earlier, but forgot during our morning classes because I stayed up late the night before looking up speculation and discussion on the newest Tower episode, which opened up the potential for a fifth timeline and dimensional rift in the universe of the third reboot, causing me to sleep in and be in a rush in the morning. Dr. Diast arrived to the void building with a can of energy drink, taking off her sunglasses as I approached her.

"Here, Dr. Diast," I said, holding out the envelope. "Stella told me to give this to you."

"Oh!" Diast said. She put the envelope in her bag. "Terrific."

Diast didn't explain what it was, and continued on to class. I trotted up beside her, deciding I wouldn't pester her for info on it.

"So you ready for the big day today?" Diast asked.

"Kinda nervous." I said, cleverly disguising that I was really nervous.

That nervousness stuck with me all the way past fang scrape and void jump. I had rehearsed it in my head a lot, but I still wasn’t prepared for what waited for us as Oka, Kalei, Aira, Laenie, Lillia, and I returned to our void temple. 

Dr. Diast told us to sit for a second. She started scanning parts of the temple, mainly focusing on the doors that had the weird creepy statues of us above them.

“So I’m jumping the gun a bit here,” Dr. Diast said. “While Laenie, Aira, and Lillia haven’t done their memory trials yet, I want you all to get a taste of some higher-level void combat.”

“This stupid temple,” Diast said. “What the hell did they do to this place?”

Diast's wrist scanner kept blinking red and buzzing, and each time she sighed or groaned.

"Do you need us to help, Dr. Diast?" Oka asked.

"No, no," Diast said, scanning another spot and getting another buzz. “Ah, you know what, screw it. Wait, maybe...nah. No. Hang on, let’s go back to the gate room."

“What were you trying to do here, Dr. Diast?” Lillia asked as Diast wallowed in her defeat for a moment.

“I was trying to get your doors to open to the levels below," Diast said. "But it’s not letting me open them for some reason. Usually, I can bypass it when the entire pod hasn’t finished their memory trials, but it’s not working this time, like anything in this stupid temple Wildfire Hearts cooked up. I’m feeling pretty inspired to get on the ‘find any source other than Wildfire Hearts for void temple generating’ campaign to the school board, but it’ll probably get ignored as usual.”

“Still think pod is a gross name for our group,” Kalei said.

“Hmmm, what about void buddies?” Oka suggested, doing jazz hands to really spice up her pitch.

“Ew, that’s even worse.” Kalei said.

“Jumpers?” Aira said. “Like, as in jump fifteen and such?”

“But we do more than just jump fifteens,” Kalei said. “We need something badass, like void raiders.”

“Isn’t Void Raiders that game coming out next year?” Lillia asked.

“I thought I heard that from somewhere,” Kalei said.

Diast brought up the gate pedestal bowl thing, which I really wished had some kind of name (or that I knew its name if it actually did have one), and we warped back to the void entrance area at the school.

“OK, so if I maybe…hm,” Diast said. She scratched her head as she looked at the big projection console in the room used to plot out jumps into the void. “I guess we can do it this way. Maybe.”

Diast led us to another room as she muttered to herself.

“I’m really glad we have a teacher that has it so together, you know?” Kalei said.

“Shut it, Kalei.” Diast said.

Diast opened a door to a room that looked a lot like the locker rooms and showers in the gym building. It had eight shower-like white porcelain rooms.

“Alright, this is the uhhh, what’s the word,” Diast said. She snapped her fingers. “Backup void room. It doubles as a void gunk cleanup room if you get like really dirty and need to full on get out of your clothes and the other showers are all full.”

“This isn’t gonna get inappropriate, is it?” Kalei asked.

Diast held the bridge of her nose. “You wear me out sometimes.”

Kalei looked like that was the best compliment she could receive.

“This will basically act as an elevator to the void level we want,” Diast said. “Just make sure to not use these if you need to actually shower without someone here to set it to shower and not void entry. The regular showers are on the other side of the building. But you all know that already.”

"You're throwing a lot at us, Diast." Kalei said.

"A lot of shower related things, curiously." Aira added.

“So what’s going to happen in these?” I asked. “Or rather, what’s supposed to happen in them in case something goes wrong?”

“This isn’t going to be…scary, is it?” Laenie asked.

“I think it’s better if I don’t explain what’ll happen,” Diast said. “And nothing’s going to go wrong, these are just as safe as the other method.”

“That’s like the worst answer you could possibly give to that!” I said. “You’re going to get my imagination all...imagine-y. Scary imagine-y."

I was getting pretty freaked out now and nobody stopped me from trailing off rambling about my imagination being scary, which added embarrassment to my scaredness, which was socially frightening. Especially when we were directed by Diast to each stand in one of the shower room things. Diast pressed a button, and we were all sealed in by a door.

“It’ll just take about three seconds!” Diast said. “This is perfectly safe, so no need to worry.”

I could feel my heartrate continue increasing. There was a strange showerhead above me, and spots in the walls of the room that looked kind of like speakers. On the door were three lights that were currently blue.

“Alright, everyone just stand still and be cool,” Diast said. “The latter won't be tough since you're all super cool cats. Dropping into the void in three…twooo…”

The room shook. The three lights turned red. Then the middle one turned yellow. Then the one next to it turned green.

In an instant, it felt like the room was filled with water. It happened so fast I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing or not. Then, it felt like a skyscraper elevator as I dropped down into an abyss below. I was still in the shower chamber, but the walls were invisible now, and I could see I was falling down into void plane from high above. I felt like I was flying, while still feeling like I was surrounded by water. I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t throw up. Then, in another instant it was over. I was standing in the void, well, really inside the shower chamber thing. After stepping down out of it, I had to look myself over to make sure I hadn’t been seriously injured. Kalei, meanwhile was cheering and pumping her arms. I was strangely completely dry.

“Again!” Kalei said.

“That’s kind of a newish invention,” Diast said, stepping down from her shower-elevator thing. “Originally, they were designed as a way to get non-Cani into the void too. But that hasn’t panned out so far. But luckily, they work just peachy on us.”

“Can’t we just use our fangs to go to whatever void spot like we did with the imagination node?” I asked. “Instead of ever having to use this again?”

“You mean why can’t we do that every time we go into the void?” Kalei asked. “Zeta, are you afraid of elevators?”

“I’m not afraid of elevators,” I said. “I just don’t like the magic void elevators that force me to stand in a shower prison cell thing, make me feel like I’m underwater for a second, then drop a hundred thousand feet to the ground. I’ve literally had nightmares where stuff like that happens.”

Kalei elbowed Oka. “Zeta’s afraid of elevators.”

“It’s pretty cold here,” Oka said, ignoring Kalei as she shivered.

“Oh yeah, make sure to set your adaptive gear to colder environments,” Diast said. “You remember how to do that, right?”

We all fiddled around with our gear changer on our wristband, jumping back and forth between full snow gear and regular for a bit until we all settled on our preferred warm void hunting clothes. I had a light jacket with pants that were a bit more insulated than my regular battle clothes. Oka’s gear added a heavy coat and a cute little hat with a little poff on it, I had to look away because she looked so precious all bundled up.