10/19/2014, 01:12 AM #425 Nevaraas - Colony
Grey walked out of the colony's headquarters, uncertainty creeping in the back of his mind. Although things were proceeding, he couldn't help but wonder if everything was going to be fine.
Outside, he looked up into the clear skies above. A brief, bright glint of green caught his attention. "Could that be?" he wondered to himself. He was aware of these structures in orbit around each planet of the Galaxy. From what he knew, they were a sort of Warp Gate system that connected distant parts of the Galaxy together. Curiosity growing, he increased his pace, hurrying back to his old transport, quickly climbing into the cockpit and starting up all systems. Soon enough, he was air-born and throttled the engines to maximum thrust and engaging the afterburners in preparation to reach escape velocity. Buckling in, the craft shakily accelerated out of the atmosphere and into low orbit. Now out of the turbulent atmosphere he began to relax slightly. Artificial gravity activated and he slowly began to throttle back so as to allow more energy to be expended on life support and other necessary functions. Glancing outside, Grey saw the source of the green light. The warp gate station was a hive of activity. The main gate, a ring of green energy, encircled a strange rift. As he approached the station, he got a better look of the rift. Through it one could see a planet, brilliant blue with a lone continent surrounded by islands. The area around the planet was dotted by what seemed to be constellations. "Is that... Alcyon?" he thought to himself, as he looked on almost in a daze, memories of stories coming back in a rush. However, the dream was cut short as the gate suddenly collapsed in on itself.
After a moment, he turned his craft and decided to head closer to the gate area. Ignoring his communications device beeping angrily with the attempts of those working on the station to contact him to possibly tell him to turn back or whatever they might have to say, Grey slowed his ship until it was a mere meter away from the location where the rift was previously. Glimmering up from where Grey was, one of the three gate devices sat still in its proper position. A quick glance down confirmed the other two were as well. Reaching over to a control panel, Grey muttered to himself "Let's see if this old bucket of bolts can still access these." He flipped one switch, the three devices started to glow after a moment. He flipped another and the ring of energy formed. Slowly, he opened an old book that had page after page of numbers and names.
"A-Z...A section... Al.. Al... Alcy... Alcyon." His finger stopped at the planet name and code he was looking for. Communication device still beeping furiously, other ships were beginning to approach his. "Sheesh...just give me a moment here!" He said, although he didn't open the communication line. Tapping slowly on a keypad, Grey entered the code listed in the book, but stopped short before pressing enter. "Please let this work... for old time's sake." Closing his eyes, Grey submitted the code to the gate. For a moment, nothing. Then what looked like a tear in space itself opened up violently. At first, Grey was delighted thinking that it worked. However, upon further inspection of the rift, all feelings of joy vanished. Through the rift that opened...there was nothing. That is what she perceived. That is what Ignis Leonares perceived. She froze in terror thinking that somehow she opened a rift to someplace else. In her horror, she accidentally pushed the throttle up when a sudden tremor of one of the Gate Station ships attempted to latch on to her ship. Ripping free of the latch, she hurtled through the rift. Her eyes closed, teeth clenched and knuckles white from gripping the controls of her craft in fear, she hurtled into what she thought was the Void. But the reality was: she was in fact falling helplessly in the grip of fear and Alcyon's gravitational field.
Alarms snapped her back to reality after what seemed an eternity. Feeling the tremors of the ship plowing through Alcyon's atmosphere, Ignis opened her eyes and saw that she was spinning uncontrollably. Ground, sky, ground, sky.... Everything was flashing before her in an insane spiral of plasma against shields. Attempting to regain her wits, she frantically looked over her controls. "Flaps...Stabilizers...uhhhh...Thrusters!" She engaged the Omni-directional thrusters again and then tried to get a feel for how her ship was spinning, all the while the altimeter reading was dropping rapidly. "400 m/s... going down... 5,000m..." She didn't bother with how long she really had. Trying to remain calm, she stared outside, trying to watch how the spin was going so she could try to counter it. Sky, ground, sky, ground.... It was a frontal flip. She slammed the stick back in an attempt to counter the spin. After a few seconds, the spinning slowed and she almost achieved a glide. "2,000m..." She then engaged all downward thrusters in an attempt to force her craft into horizontal flight and to slow her fall. She was now at 200 m/s and slowing. "1,000m..." Panic was starting to leave her now as she was almost to a manageable speed and the craft was leveling out. But there was one alarm she didn't realize was going off. "50m/s...! 300m! 25m/s! 150m!"
She achieved horizontal flight. Throwing the switch for stabilizers, the craft started to glide gracefully over the treetops. She began laughing as she thought she managed to recover from a very bad stall. But then...
At that moment, power cut off. She had overtaxed her power core and drained it of power. The ship was not capable of flying without power.
Gliding into the trees below, the stabilizers ripped off and the trees spun her ship around, forcing it to crash into the ground.
The impact knocked Ignis unconscious, but the craft remained intact as it came to rest amongst the trees of the forest. There was no fire. No signal. Nothing.
The whole ordeal from afar would have seemed like a falling star.
The forest was on the south-western portion of the continent. The Forest of Spirits. Not far from the crash site was a hidden shrine...
***
Some time passes...
Ignis starts slightly, the sounds of the forest wildlife outside slowly brings her back to consciousness. She looks up faintly and sees the gentle glow of the sunlight filtering through the foliage. Still dazed slightly, she unbuckles herself from the pilot seat and stumbles forward. After regaining composure, she reaches down and opens a small hatch of a storage compartment under the seat. Inside was an emergency system with a beacon and some flares. Slowly, she turns on the Beacon and takes out one flare. Ignis then makes her way to the hatch of the ship, grabbing her battle scythe, Reaver X, on her way. Pushing open the door out, she takes a moment to get some sort of bearings on where she was. Small little creatures glowing with Gaia energy floated among the trees and shrubbery. The whole scene felt as though she was in some sort of fairy tale. Ignis stood wide eyed for a little while longer before returning to her original task. Igniting the flare in hand, she situated it in a crack in the hull of her ship. The red glowing smoke rose up through the foliage creating a moderate column of color that could be seen easily against the green and blue of forest and sky.
After watching the column of smoke form, Ignis then looked around the forest. There were sounds of creatures trilling softly in the canopy above and the hum of others in the shrubs below. A moment passed, she gave into curiosity and started to explore. She wandered away from her ship and into the thick of the forest. Inadvertently she was heading towards the Shrine.