Aayla and Ramona both sat in an awkward silence for several minutes as the lights continued to flash outside. Eventually, they faded from the intensity of the sun to the intensity of lightning. Ramona clasped her hands together and cast a concerned gaze over towards Aayla.
"I know that you probably have many more questions right now, but I need to know exactly how you got here. Your arrival has attracted way too much attention. The current situation in Chinebar is unsteady at best and dangerous at worst. Start from the beginning, the very beginning. I'll answer your questions at the end."
Aayla nodded and fiddled with her hair. She closed her eyes for a minute before beginning to speak. At first her voice was soft and uneven, but eventually became steady. Aayla talked about her parents' latest job in the Northwest Territories of Canada, and how she and her brother were left at the ruins dig site run by Dr. Willem van Brakke.
A slight frown formed on Ramona's face upon hearing that name. Her frown went unnoticed as Aayla continued. One day, a team had found a hidden tunnel, and her brother Mikey had secretly followed the second exploration team after the first disappeared. Aayla chased after him, only to find an underground chamber where the insane Dr. van Brakke tried to kill them both with a strange artifact. She only escaped when a strange pure black circle pulled her in then threw her out on Tellus. Aayla had no idea what happened to Dr. van Brakke, but he was sucked in before her.
A myriad of emotions briefly flickered through Ramona's eyes when she heard about Dr. van Brakke's murderous rampage. That artifact definitely sounded like a spatial coordinate plotter. How could a man like that ever get a hold of a working model of such a rare artifact on Terra? The design of the tunnel and chamber sounded like it could have come out of an ancient Tellus history book. Could an ancient magical organization have crossed over to Terra before the Great Disaster?
Ramona sighed and leaned back onto the couch. A deep scowl formed on her face as she went deep into thought. That d**n Willem van Brakke, just what did he do?! Messing around with magic then dragging others into danger with him. She clicked her tongue in disgust. When she was on Earth, Ramona learned firsthand about his obsession with magic and saw how it consumed his life, his wealth and his sanity.
To be honest, Ramona never thought that crazy old man would succeed. It should be impossible for anyone on Earth to use magic at all. How did he do it? If he fed the artifact life energy instead of pure magical energy, that would explain his deadly rampage. How many people did he really sacrifice though? The excavation teams would not have been enough. Chills ran up her spine just thinking about how many people were murdered to fulfill his insanity. Ramona deeply regretted dismissing him as a crazy, desperate loser.
"Ramona? Godmother? Earth to Ramona?"
"Whoops! Sorry dear, I got lost in thought for a bit."
"Do you know what thing that brought me here was? And could you explain a bit more about this place?"
Ramona smiled then reached down to the bag on her waist. She pulled out a large scroll and unfurled it. On the map was an extremely large landmass mostly surrounded by water. The landmass was attached to the rest of the continent to the east through a long mountain range. In fact, the northern and western regions were also dominated by mountains. The central and southern regions were dominated by rivers and the seaside. The words "Chinebar Republic National Map" appeared in the top right-hand corner. Several dots with labels next to them were scattered around the map. Ramona pointed to a dot in the far north of the map labelled 'Forest Waypoint'. A mountain range called the Glacier Mountains was to the north, while the Ural Bay was to the east.
"That pure black, oval window that transported you here should be a portal that transported you here. Currently, we are in the world of Tellus, my home world. We are at Nafriton University, which is located here near Forest Waypoint."
Ramona moved her hand down towards another mountain range that cut off Chinebar from the rest of the continent.
"This mountain range is the Northern Divide Mountains and also serves as the border between the Chinebar Republic and the Ferreus Empire. Since we are near the Glacier Mountains, Ural Bay and the border, we often get many visitors, including some spies as of late. This brings us to our next problems.
First, you have no mana. None at all. Mana is the energy used to cast spells and perform magic. Here on Tellus, every living being at least has some mana. Chinebar in particular is known for magic and we already have several issues with class and magical potential based discrimination.
Aside from us and Dr. Brakke, I know of no others who have been to or come from Earth. Here, 'Earth' is known as 'Terra', and is a mix of the lost city of Atlantis and Pluto, like Nibiru but without planetary destruction. If anyone finds out that you are from Terra, then the uproar will be on par if an Atlantean or Martian appeared on Earth. Absolutely no one can find out where you truly come from. Countries and organizations could literally go to war over you."
"But why? I don't have any mana at all and I don't know how to get back home."
"To people here, mana is equivalent to life. Therefore you, a healthy person without mana, are a near impossibility.If others discover that you have no mana, we can cover with the excuses of illness or injury. But if they discover that you are from Terra…
Terra has long been viewed as a world of opportunities. The ruling factions in particular believe that even a minor discovery from Terra could impact the balance of power. The powerful would do whatever is necessary to seize anything that could give them the edge over their enemies. With magic, everyone is so used to the impossible that can believe anything, no matter how outlandish."
The nations are merely keeping up formalities right now. As the only republic and leader of magical development, most of the other nations have historically viewed Chinebar as threats to their ways of ruling. Now, they have an opportunity with the True Order destabilizing Chinebar for their own delusions of grandeur and control. The external foes can simply sit back and wait for Chinebar's internal enemies to do all of the dirty work.
However, everything changes with a potential person or artifact from Terra. The other nations can't risk that opportunity stabilizing Chinebar or going to others in the chaos. Their blind faith in Terra was simply too overwhelming. Starting a war over nothing was better than letting a potential enemy nation becoming a superpower.
She glanced at Aayla, who was struggling to stay awake with drooping eyes and a pale face. Ramona gently rolled the scroll back up and placed it into her bag.
"Alright, time for bed. There should be some rooms that we can use upstairs. I'll tell you the rest in the morning after you've had some time to process what happened today and a good night's rest."
Ramona helped Aayla up and they slowly moved towards the right staircase. The fire extinguished itself behind them. Only the pale moonlight streaming in from the stained glass Windows gently lit their way.
Aayla crashed hard on the first bed that she came across. Ramona gently took off her shoes and pulled Aayla's cloak tightly around her before leaving.
Ramona peeked into the room. Seeing that Aayla was fast asleep, she gently shut the door. Fortunately, Aayla appears to be alright for now. She is physically in bad shape, but not as much as if she had received the full backlash from the artifact. Perhaps Dr. van Brakke bore the full impact of the backlash as the wielder? Or maybe the shattered pendant absorbed it in Aayla's place? Since the pendant originally stayed by Ramona's side for many years, perhaps Aayla arriving so close to her was not an accident after all.
Dr. van Brakke was a bigger problem than the pendant for now. Since he is in this world, there's no knowing what damage he could cause. Feeding the artifact life energy instead of pure magical energy should have caused some nasty side effects. Hopefully, those side effects and the artifact's backlash killed him. At the very least those extremist nutcases shouldn't get their hands on him.
Ramona started down stairs. There was no time to sleep for her just yet. The university should still be in an uproar due to the exit portal. Her report was way past due. How exactly should she explain Aayla's appearance to the headmaster? Or Aayla's complete lack of mana?
So many questions with so few answers and so little time. It was going to be a very long night for Ramona.