ALL NOVEL Chapter 136: Bait
With flight, travelling to the other side of the planet was easy enough. She soared across the landscapes, and from what Theora could see, the entire half facing the sun was completely covered in dense flora. Many different patches of biomes stretched across the surface, all in that same muted-but-colourful palette, almost autumn-like.
The other side of the planet was dark, cold, empty desert rock. Not that this made it less beautiful — it was a sight to behold, for sure. But at least this meant she wouldn’t blast a sea of life into nothingness when she’d jump to take off, although the fallout of dust could still harm life on the other side by obscuring the sun. It depended on how much force Isobel would ask Theora to apply when taking off.
Even with the Orb, it took about twenty hours to get in-position.
Theora wasn’t sure if her impact had meaningfully changed the planet’s trajectory — with how large it was and how small her impact crater had been in comparison, she considered it unlikely. But perhaps she could offset whatever damage she’d done by applying the same force when she’d jump off the planet, in the way she’d corrected Himaeya after accidentally rotating it a little.
Isobel only dialled in for one-sentence directions; things like “Hold course,” or “Veer to the left,” or giving short estimates on how much longer it would take to reach the target location. Unfortunately, the atmosphere was still thick on the planet’s backside, so Theora couldn’t use the stars to orient herself, which would make her jump far less accurate, but she could use the Orb to fly high enough to see the stars, then try to remember the proper direction and fall down again, right in-place.
“Alright,” Isobel said. “Only minutes left of communication, and only hours left on the Orb. You’ll have to use flight a lot after take-off to properly adjust, but I’ll keep in contact for as long as I can to help. Some of our calculations suggest there are lots of caves and air pockets in the planet, and there might be softer materials underneath. You probably won’t destroy the entire thing even if you jump hard.”
This was going to be tricky. Theora had thoroughly practised throwing weights with the right amount of strength, but this was completely different, and Isobel had no way to properly communicate the amount of strength necessary to get them where they needed. Theora also wanted to avoid a jump that was completely unrestrained, because in the worst-case scenario, it might break the planet apart and launch the rubble into the solar system. And it might attract the Ancient Devourer to this place instead of where she wanted it to go.
So, no breaking the planet too much. At the same time, she needed to apply enough strength to make up for all the time and momentum they’d lost.
This was tough. Theora knelt down. No markers in the sky. All she could do was jump straight up and hope. The planet orbited the sun, so she needed to take off the moment Isobel said ‘go’ or she’d add further error.
And thus, on what Theora now knew to be almost five hours into the eighteenth day of her journey, Isobel counted down the second launch. The launch Theora had never expected to make, but was now forced to.
“Three… Two… One… Go.”
The connection shut down immediately, and Theora took off. Her feet and the ground below her melted into hot puddles first, then the shockwave tore her and the surroundings apart. Again, she kept a tiny part of her cloak safe and sound in her fist while crashing up into the sky, the atmosphere trying its best to hold her back and keep her in-place on the ground, but to no avail. Theora simply condensed and destroyed it as she flew through at a speed that should have been impossible.
This time, she was better prepared, so she didn’t pass out from being mushed, and regained composure and shape within seconds of launch, and pulled her cloak out the moment she left the atmosphere. A few minutes later, Isobel clicked back online.
“You are fast,” she said. “Almost a fifth of the speed of information.” Then, she issued some course-corrections Theora tried her best to accommodate to.
She fetched one of her last rocks, and threw it away as instructed. And with it, she threw away a tiny piece of herself. Throw after throw, she pushed herself further away from home with no way to undo it. She was burying herself. And the only one to attend her funeral would be the Ancient Devourer.
Over the next few hours, Isobel tuned in to give a few remaining commands for correctional weight throws and star routes, trying her best to get Theora in the right spot by the time the Orb ran out.
Theora finally threw her last rock, and now nothing inside her was left of what Dema and all the others had helped her rebuild over the last dozens of years. Back to being an empty shell. Back to not thinking about anything but her final task.
Then, things went calm for a few minutes.
“Alright, mom. You are in position for now. You can go back to sleep.”
Theora wanted to sigh, but she was too tired. The past few hours had been far too stressful to just calm down again now, so she could already tell she’d stay awake for a while, despite how much that jump had exhausted her.
Perhaps Theora could somehow jump off the Ancient Devourer. Perhaps she could even aim it well and it would take centuries, but she might eventually dive back in range of the System. Perhaps she would one day reach home, if Isobel could help her somehow, or perhaps at least she could stay in touch with everyone for a long time until she’d fall out of range on the other side.
Perhaps the encounter with the Ancient Devourer would go by quickly. Then, she could use the remaining flight to set course toward home. It would still take long to get back, but maybe that way, she’d be slow enough to get caught in a gravitational well.
Perhaps she’d get to see Bell, Iso, and Dema again. If Theora was lucky — very, very lucky — the three of them would gather goodbye-letters from everyone else, and she could… could…
This hurt too much. She knew it was all lies. There was no way for her to navigate back home, even if she found new resources, because she would be too far away from home with no way to orient herself.
So, Theora turned herself off.
“It’s time,” Isobel said two days later, and woke Theora back up.
“I’m here,” Theora said, and her heart ached because the words reminded her of a little boy she’d forgotten a long time ago.
Soon after, she plunged into the magic mould, and Isobel gave her detailed directions on how to get out later with the last Orb, once the Devourer was on its way. Her messages were very short by now, and she no longer waited for Theora to reply, instead cutting the connection as soon as she could. They must be almost completely out of time.
Crack. “Alright,” Isobel said. “That should be it.” Crack.
Then, Isobel spent some time doing calculations, before saying, “Second-to-last message. You are in position. Let go.”
Because of the jump, Theora had made it almost five trillion standard units of distance away from her home planet. Much farther than any of the people in the mission could have ever hoped for. It was the outskirts of her solar system — not completely outside, but far enough to make it unlikely that even a creature of gigantic size could end up hurting those she left behind.
There was only one thing left that Theora needed to do, and a few things thereafter that she wanted to do.
Space was truly unfathomably large. She’d jumped off a planet while exerting tremendous amounts of effort, and it still had only led her to the outskirts of her planetary system, where the rest of the universe was yet so much larger by an unimaginable factor. Gargantuan. And within all this, Theora was just a tiny thing adrift, and it made her nostalgic of when she’d been a small child.
And another gargantuan creature had come to eat her. She was bait, a snack, as Dema would say.
Therefore, now, Theora had to boast a little. She had to make herself appealing to a creature that fed on nothing but strength.
“Come here,” she said in thought, and unleashed.