Winds whipped about, filling the air with tarps whacking against crates. It was unfortunate that the lady was the only one who could freely come into this area. A sudden gust and a small rock squarely struck the lady in her face. Sighing in defeat, she wordless returned to her shelter to wait out the latest windstorm. Marred torn skin wept as the stone was removed, but no further treatment occurred.
"Note, create suit that will resist sand and windstorms for company to visit." No one was present to hear the call out nor could anything record.
"Note, rocks and stones as well."
With nothing more to do the women flopped on the mat she used to sleep on. Staring at the rockface that her shelter was leaning against, she inspected it, counting each dark spec. The exact time that passed was unknow, but she counted to several hundred thousand. Leaving the small shelter, she checked a bulky crate with a set of spinning cups on before examining the face for the weather forecast.
"Good enough time to get these to the fourth level." Thick steal cable was attached to the pallets and the women took a moment to click the carabiners on. Once done she put thick hide gloves on and grabbed one of the many cables running along the dusty earthen surface.
"Release the hounds!" She shouted to nothing as she pulled a cord to deploy a set of chutes on the crates. Colorful silk canopies blossomed as the omni present wind slowly caught the crates upward. From where the women held the cable the complicated set of rigging allowed one person to hoist several pallets of hard steel. With the wind to lift the whole thing it was just a matter of pulling the cable to move them across the vast gulf.
"Easy girl, nice and steady." Speaking this time to the package she was floating across the gap; the women didn't focus on anything but her hoisting.
Outside this small operation, a desolate endless storm of dust and sand blew about, generated by the rotation of massive rock. Grand Rings was the common name for her location. At two and a quarter kilometer above sea level she was well below the summit that stood three and three eights. Winds and heavy pressures created, with copious quantiles of magic energy generated by the central core, keep a vast sets of rock floating around.
"Almost there…" Ignoring the relative rotation this floating brick was a few hundred feet wide, while two and three thirty seconds above sea level. Globally speaking this monument to an old monstrous god had long since lost its fervor, positioned far into the northern reaches of the world. The dying curse would keep the earthen platforms floating until the super-giant star expanded and swallowed this planet.
"Ones landed let settle two and three." Using the strong winds and chutes one person could move the heavy equipment up to her target platform in the fifth layer of rings. It held a decent position in terms of its height to location on the outer side of the vast orbiting structure. Happily placing the crates down, she looked out over the cragged landscape. Smaller rocks dripped pools of liquid magic energy, a stunning sight, but the person cared far more about the recliner she called home in the far south.
"Well one more lift to go." After rechecking the weather report, she flew up the rigging. Stuffing the shelter sheet in mat into her side pack, she removed her specialty relocation device. Strapping herself in she fired the ignition sequence. Humming to life the solid-state rocket jet pack thrummed as the turbine slowly spun. With a running start, the women bounded off the platform without qualm. Spread her limbs out, the girl engaged her pack.
Following the currents, the women had at some point considered flying by altering gravity, but felt the good old fashion jetpack fit her mythos better. Zipping up she angled upwards, enjoying the feeling of flying freely. A large twirling boulder fell into her path, but it was child's play to shift her angle and adjust her flight path around the obstacle.
"Don't you know who you are dealing with, the great-" While she found no trouble navigating the traitorous skies, the discharge from the core was a different story. Struck by a bolt of energy like a cobra, her thrust became supper charged. Pleasant ride turned into a rollercoaster.
"Did you hear that?!" Shouting at the solid rock face that had blasted her. Slipping left, right trying not to become pancake mix, the crazed jet pack shot about. Climbing high the monument became tiny and she could barley see her crates on the ground. Slow crates, drifting away on a platform that the lady was rocketing in the other direction of.
"Fools I am the great-" This time an erratic discharge from the core killed her pack completely.
"I hate you!" Shouting as she ran through the fault procedures for emergency starts. Kick starting the turbine to several groaning whirls. Several furious kickstarts failed to engage. Falling past the sixth level she estimated the time. Running a hot start took longer but dropping the hydrazine directly into the mix, caused the turbine to run even if it didn't want to. Having fell several levels the calculations to find the path need to get where she wanted took moments.
Blasting at a soft angle directly into a rock face was far from an ideal solution, but the alternative was to spend three days ascending from the base of the rings. Kicking the afterburners on, the engine made a single valent effort to deliver the lady directly into the earth in an almost perfect strait line.
Several minutes passed after the lady crashed into the earth. From the small furrow in the earth, the lady face first decided to simply stay put. Thick dark smoke rose from her jetpack…than the whole thing exploded. Covered in soot the lady rolled on to more level ground before speaking.
"Fine, I will use the cable gun."
Two days later…
After returning and flying herself and the cargo up to the desired spot the exhausted lady began the process of setting up her equipment. Glancing up she didn't have to worry about the suns setting for another two weeks. Four suns existed with this system; three small stars orbited perpendicular relative to the planet by the massive blue star that held them. In short, most of the planet's surface beyond the poles was area well suited to human colonization.
Finishing her setup, the lady engaged the entire system. Several small dishes began to rotate and receive, the transistors fired up properly. In moments the small screen began flashing and she sent the first test message. At this juncture, magic was the only force that did any work in this world. This small receiver listening post was the only long distance, non-physical message transmitter network in the world.
Not that the lady cared at this moment, all she was waiting for was to receive the response. This wasn't the first 'tower' she had built. No one else had this kind of capacity because of how stewards monopolized magic power. For days the person waited on the lonely platform next to some sagebrush that had become a bright neon color surviving somehow in this wasteland. Finally, a response was sent.
"We found a descendent." Nothing happened after that, for a long time no one moved. The last descendent disappeared more than a hundred and twenty years prior.
"I will return immediately. End."
"End."
From a dark part somewhere in Castle Dyne, Sir Octave watched the screen flash. Pressing the off button, the butler returned from which ever secret passages he came from. It had taken days for the genealogy for the newest hire to be run, the results were out of all expectation.
Now he could only wait, for the Lady Dyne to return.