User:Nyerguds/Silvia/intro

''This is the introduction story for my character for El_Nazgir's RPG. This is a character from a cyberpunk RPG I've played before. Her world is a polluted city sprawl ruled by megacorporations, and populated with elves, orks, dwarves, goblins, humans and dragons. It is a world where 'Industrial Light and Magic' is a reality rather than a special effects company, where cybernetic upgrades are common, and where professional mercenaries of all kinds are constantly hired to be pawns in the games of industrial sabotage and espionage played between the megacorporations.''

Silvia - Branching Out

by Nyerguds

The ultimate adventure... and she was the only one who could do it. She would be the one to break the barrier.

Silvia was nervous. She didn't know much about dragon magic, and this was probably the most advanced magic she'd seen in general.

Everyone knew by now that the last dragon war was what wiped out all dinosaurs. Some claimed the dragons evolved together with the dinosaurs, but there was no immediate proof of that. And now, Neuwerke Intelligence had uncovered something that could change the way the world looked at the dragons completely.

World portals.

The dragons had built floating cities which were marvels of technology and engineering, and their emergence from hibernation from the cold depths of Antarctica had revolutionized magic right after it returned to the Earth. Neuwerke GmbH had invested vast amounts of money into the project once they found their first scrap of evidence. And now, they finally had the complete picture. World portals. Travelling to different worlds.

Unfortunately, they soon found out that this particular magic, being specific dragon magic, simply didn't work without a dragon. Luckily, they employed one person who was probably close enough to being one.

The young woman looked at the preparations the mages were making. She had memorized the entire procedure as part of this mission. They knew they needed her magic, but so far it was completely unknown if she was just needed for her unique type of magic, or if non-dragons could simply not pass through at all. She felt especially nervous about that last part... after all, she was only half dragon, and she didn't particularly look forward to accidentally getting stuck in some other world. She was glad they'd given her permission to use the Akuma suit, even if it was purely as precaution.

She looked very odd, standing there in the full hi-tech infiltration suit, but softly holding a small child. Her daughter would obviously not be involved in this in any way, but Silvia never left her behind for very long. For now, nothing was happening anyway. When the whole thing started, the little Anyasi would be safely in the observation post, behind armoured glass and more than a dozen magical defence wards.

The images from the first portal tests had looked very promising. The mages had warned the Neuwerke staff that nothing could possibly move through these first portals, since they were still filling in some blanks, and weren't using Silvia's dragon magic yet. But the city shown through the 'looking glass', as they had called it, was a marvellous metropolis with a clear blue sky above it. Pollution seemed to be well under control, at least compared to this world, and they even got images of people bathing in the sea, something that was pretty much inconceivable here; the toxic sludge melted the flesh off your bones in mere minutes.

The head of the mages approached her. The man was wearing a plain white uniform, with a Neuwerke logo on the left pocket of the shirt. If not for the pentagram on the right-side pocket, he could easily be mistaken for a simple technician.

"You'd better get her inside." he said. "We're almost ready to start." "Alright." Silvia replied. She smiled at the baby she was holding, and walked to the observation post. The baby, barely half a year old, looked at her with a mix of uncertainty and excitement. Anyasi felt her unease. Silvia's smile didn't fool the baby; she seemed to have direct access to her mother's emotions. Silvia didn't mind. She just hoped that growing up with her special abilities from birth would prevent her daughter from having the kind of disastrous mishaps Silvia herself had had with her own power. She put the baby in the baby carrier, and put it in a corner of the armoured room. Miss Meinlich, her big boss, gave Silvia a friendly nod. "It is fortunate you agreed to cooperate vith zis experiment." she said with a heavy German accent. "It vould be a shame to leave it at ze looking glass stage." "Right." Silvia replied, not sure what to say. "I'll, eh, be going then."

She gave the woman a curt nod and returned to the main area of the magic lab. A giant pentagram was drawn on the floor, with several rows of concentric circles around it, all of them filled with dragon runes. Silvia knew most of them, but others were completely incomprehensible.

One of the mages walked towards her. She was wearing the same kind of work uniform the head mage had.

"You can begin channelling the spell now. The robot is ready to leave for the first exploration test." the woman said. "Oh, and this will go more easily if you shift to your dragon form." "Very well." Silvia replied, morphing to her other body. The woman had been right, it did make the magic easier to focus.

"Get in place!" the head mage shouted. The woman hurried to her point of the pentagram. "Miss Ulane, a little more, please." Silvia nodded. She could feel the strain of the magic she was channelling, and had to concentrate to keep the stream steady. Her magic manifested as a purple haze stretching between her and the centre of the pentagram. Pretty soon, the centre was completely engulfed in the purple light. "On the wall, now." the head mage said, calmly but methodically.

Silvia shifted her focus to the wall. The purple glow followed, sunk into the wall, spread out on it, and formed a solid surface; a circle with a diameter of roughly two meter. Slowly, the purple became transparent, showing the world at the other side.

"We're not done," the head mage said. he was sweating profusely. "This is just the looking glass. Entering phase two."

The circle of mages started chanting in the ancient dragon language. Silvia joined in.

The image in the portal slowly turned purple, without obscuring the other side.

One of the mages shivered.

The head mage spontaneously got a nose bleed, a thin stream of blood leaving a red line on his otherwise spotless white uniform.

Then, suddenly, a purple spear of light shot out of the portal, straight at Silvia. At the last moment, it split off, with the second branch going straight for the armoured observation room.

Silvia's eyes widened. She just managed to scream her daughter's name before the light engulfed her and pulled her into the portal. Behind her, all of the magic defence wards in the observation room sparked violently and died, and the purple beam crashed through the bullet proof glass and engulfed the quarter-dragon baby. Less than a second later, she was also pulled into the portal.

Silvia felt like she was suspended in jelly. Or pushed face-first into a giant balloon. She felt the force in front of her pushing her back, while the purple haze kept pushing her into it. She turned her head to the side, and saw Anyasi, suspended in the purple haze, right beside her.

She didn't see or hear the mages behind her, falling to the floor one by one, some screaming, others shivering, most of them bleeding out of several orifices.

She reached out to the child. Her movements seemed incredibly slow, like it took her minutes to simply extend her arm.

Finally, she reached her daughter's arm, grabbed it, and started pulling her towards herself, again noticing how slow all movements went.

Then, her vision doubled.

No, the baby doubled. And her own arm.

She turned back to look at the owner of the arm behind her | looked forward to look at the owner of the arm in front of her.

Her thoughts just doubled. She saw herself staring back at her, and heard what she was thinking. She wondered whether it was a side effect of her psychic power.

Suddenly, the force around her disappeared, and she was violently catapulted further into the portal | back into the magic lab.

She pulled her daughter into her arms to protect her from the concrete street in front of her | floor behind her.

Through the portal's purple haze, she saw Meinlich run towards her second self, and saw her mouth move. | ''She fell. Meinlich, in a rare show of compassion, rushed towards her, and asked if she was okay.''

She got back up immediately, and rushed towards the portal. She saw the Silvia on the other side do the same thing. She touched the portal. It felt like glass. Shocked, she clawed into it | she backed away from it.

Nothing happened. The portal looked and felt like glass, but it was impenetrable.

The last of the mages dropped unconscious. The portal cracked like a broken mirror, and faded away. She was looking at a brick wall now, nothing like the smooth white concrete in the magic lab. The doubled thoughts slowly faded towards one side, and she started to realize that she wasn't the one that had been launched back into the lab.

"Why the sleg did it... duplicate?" She felt numb, Panic was rising inside her, but at this moment, the full scope of what happened hadn't quite gotten to her yet. "They... must have gotten something wrong... this wasn't... the dragons... maybe..."

Then it hit her. She looked up, and stared at the blue sky of the strange world. "No one's coming back for me... she's still there... no one will even miss me."

She frowned, and looked at the baby in her arms. The spell had obviously sought out anything remotely dragon in the area, and sucked it it. A weak smile appeared on her face. At least she still had Anyasi. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

She shifted back to her normal elven self, and looked around. The streets were still empty. It was barely 6 o'clock in the morning, local time. All tests Neuwerke had done through the Looking Glass seemed to indicate that the world was identical to their own Earth, except for the influences of intelligent life. And that it didn't seem to contain any dragons.

Silvia looked at the clear blue sky, took a deep breath of the fresh morning air, and decided that the intelligent life on this world was probably a fair bit more intelligent than that on hers.