The Gate Traveler-Chapter 465 B7— 45: The Fun of Chaos

As a first step, we had to practice saying the ridiculous world name. Easier said than done. After three attempts at saying it and ending up in a coughing fit, I broke it down into sections and began practicing each segment separately. Kaf-jadoo-whinga-lopper-gloi-as-nidaf. I said it again, slower this time, and the thing still felt like someone smashed a keyboard and decided it was a word. It was a bit easier, but still totally insane.

Al and Mahya were having the same problems.

Mahya's practice sounded like, "Kafjadooehing-motherfucker," and she threw her hands up. "Kafjadooehingtwhin-piss bucked asshole." This one was delivered with a kick to the couch, sending it banging against the bar. "Kafjadooehingtwhin-Fornax!" The last one, she sounded especially pissed.

Al kept his dignified composure the longest. He sat with a straight back, arms folded on the bar, chin slightly raised, but his expression grew grimmer by the second. After his own attempt came out as a strangled series of syllables that didn't belong together in the same universe, he finally broke too.

He yanked at his hair and also threw his hands up. "Damnation take this cursed name and the people who thought of it."

Mahya snorted. I coughed. Rue looked at us as if we were idiots, huffed, and went out to explore.

I took out a bigger page, wrote the segments in black marker, taped it to the fridge, and went to make a pie. My mind always worked better when my hands were busy. The second time Mahya growled Fornax, I looked back at her over my shoulder.

"What's the meaning of Fornax?"

She stopped mid-rant and thought for a moment. "The closest explanation would be a person who's a reeking boil-sack, bloated with trapped gases and fluids, and when people kick him, the skin splits and everything inside sprays out like rancid sludge."

I gulped at the disgusting mental image. "Nasty."

Mahya beamed. "Larnians have the best curses."

I shook my head, laughing, and went back to rolling the dough and practicing. The dough behaved better than the stupid name. Behind me, Mahya took another run at the word, throwing in exactly the amount of rage it deserved. The fridge paper trembled from the force of her frustration. I kept repeating the segments like a man on a mission.

Rue pranced back into the house, head and tail held high, his entire demeanor radiating smugness, not only down our bond. He walked up to us, spread his feet wide, lifted his head even higher so his nose pointed at the ceiling, and said, "Kafjadoowhingaloppergloiasnidaf."

For a second, we just stared at him, but then Mahya jumped up. "Telepathy doesn't count. It's easier if you don't have to pronounce it."

Rue gave her a withering look, shook his head like a disappointed parent, sighed, and said "Kafjadoowhingaloppergloiasnidaf" in mana speech out loud.

Mahya opened her mouth to argue again, then closed it with a click.

Rue looked at her and sniffed in disdain, sounding exactly like Al. I burst out laughing.

Yeah, the name was ridiculous and impossible to say, but the entire practice session was still fun in its own weird way.

Finally, after a lot of sweat, blood, and tears, or actually, a lot of alien curses and a delicious pie with some orange fruits we found on the islands, we had it. We were so ecstatic about it, we said it again and again, as fast as possible, laughing and occasionally still coughing. Although the coughing this time was primarily caused by the laughter, not the ridiculous name.

It was time to cross the Gate.

The other side was on the slope of a tall mountain, about three-quarters of the way to the top. A cave entrance served as the anchor. The air felt thinner up here, with a sharp, cold bite that hinted at snow somewhere higher above us. There were a few more mountains around, their peaks uneven, but since the one we stepped out onto was the tallest, nothing blocked the view. The entire landscape opened beneath us like a map.

Three smaller mountains were ahead of us with valleys in between. In one of the valleys, something shimmered, but no matter how much I squinted, I couldn't see clearly what it was.

Down beyond the ridges, the land stretched on and on, rolling into distant plains. Far in the distance, at about two hundred kilometers from us, a massive city broke the horizon, a dark smudge surrounded by rising smoke. Even from here, the haze above it drifted like a permanent cloud.

We were alone, so we dropped the Invisibility.

My red light was blinking, which was a surprise.

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<td style="width: 99.0848%; text-align: center">Glamor Advised</td>

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That was a first.

"I just got a message saying 'glamor advised,'" I said. "What the hell?"

Mahya nodded. "Yes, I got it too. It happens sometimes when the population is too different, and our looks might cause problems."

I pointed at the Gate behind us. "They were blue and had horns, and we didn't get a message."

Mahya shrugged.

Al inclined his head. "I encountered mentions of similar situations in my family's archive. When a populace is hostile to everyone, regardless of appearance, or accepting of everyone, regardless of differences, the Guidance does not notify."

I glamored myself and took out a mirror to see the result. The change wasn't that dramatic. My eyes were much bigger, taking up about a fourth of my face, and my hair was all purple now, not white with purple streaks. My ears had pointy tips—not like Al's pointed ears, regular size but with the tips sharpened.

I unfocused my eyes and checked the others. They changed pretty much the same way. Bigger eyes, colorful hair, and Al's ears were actually less pointy for once.

I pointed at the shimmer. "I wonder what that is."

"We can go check if you want," Mahya said.

A strange sound came from behind the mountain. It was a mix of rattling, whirling, whizzing, and clanging, like someone had jammed an engine, a wind tunnel, and a metal workshop together. It grew closer. A sudden boom echoed across the slopes. All of us jumped, exchanged quick glances, and turned invisible again.

The strangest thing I had ever seen in my life flew out from behind the mountain. At first glance, it looked like a zeppelin, but not quite. It had an enormous balloon like a zeppelin, but everything under, above, and on it looked like someone had taken every idea they ever had and glued it together at three in the morning.

Two sets of enormous bat wings were bolted to the balloon, flapping out of sync and linked by thick chains that rattled. On top, it had sails. Actual sails. Three of them, stiff with the wind, pointing in different directions.

Then there were the propellers. Over twenty of them. Some small, some huge, all positioned randomly across the balloon. Some were mounted on the sides, some pointed straight up, and some pointed down. One spun so close to a wing that it looked like a disaster waiting to happen.

Instead of the zeppelin cabin I saw on Earth, it had three big square boxes hanging underneath, dangling from thick chains and swinging wildly in the wind. Just looking at them made me queasy.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Another boom sounded. Smoke burst from the tail end of the monstrosity, accompanying the boom, and drifted upward. The thing shot forward faster and slowed again.

This strange contraption groaned, whirled, clanged, and flapped through the sky with occasional booms. It moved slowly, wobbling up, down, right, and left, and every time a boom sounded, it jumped ahead with a small burst of speed, making the hanging boxes sway even more violently. I held my breath, sure the boxes would smash into each other. They came within ten or twenty centimeters of colliding before swinging apart again, and I let out a relieved breath.

"Yep. Nothing to learn from these guys," Mahya said in a fatalistic tone.

I chuckled, and we kept watching the monstrosity until it finally drifted past the last mountain.

"So, want to check the shiny thing?" Mahya asked.

"Don't you?" I asked her.

"Yes, I do."

Well, the shiny thing was a mana portal. A deep yellow, almost orange, mana portal.

Al looked at it with disgust.

"What's the problem?" Mahya asked.

"I wish to meet Genomey, not fight spawnies," Al said.

I pointed my thumb at him. "I'm with Al."

Mahya looked between us and went for the nuclear option. She widened her eyes, made an absurdly cute face, and folded her hands together like she was praying. "Can we check if it has sources of metal? Please? If not, we'll leave."

She gave a tiny hopeful wiggle of her fingers for extra effect.

I sighed. "Fine."

Al looked at me like I'd betrayed him.

"What?" I asked him. "You know we'll eventually fold anyway. Why postpone the inevitable?"

His shoulders slumped, and he nodded. Mahya giggled.

The moment we stepped in, we sank to our knees in green muck. The portal was a swamp. Rue growled, lifted himself out of the muck with a sucking sound, and flew straight out of the portal. I followed him without a word. Al joined me a second later.

We stared at the portal, waiting, but Mahya didn't show up. After a few minutes, I started to worry. This was a fifty-one-mana world after all. Inside, I felt her at the edge of my Traveler's perception, and then the feeling vanished. Flying in the direction I'd sensed her, I caught her presence again.

The portal was huge, about twenty kilometers across, all of it swamp. Creatures slithered and splashed through the muck below, but the air was empty. Mahya moved closer. I couldn't see her, but I felt her.

"What the hell are you doing?" I shouted in her general direction.

"A quick fly-by, nothing more," she answered telepathically.

I shook my head and flew back to the entrance. In the air, she was safe enough, and I had zero desire to explore that portal.

"She's exploring," I told Al.

Ten minutes after I left the portal, Mahya came out too, looking disappointed.

The moment she appeared outside, Al marched toward her with stiff, controlled steps. "This was highly inadvisable and selfish," he said. His tone stayed calm, but there was a sharp edge to it.

Mahya looked up at him with big innocent eyes. "I didn't do anything."

Al drew a steady breath and pointed a finger at her chest. "This is a high-mana world and an orange occurrence. You cannot treat it lightly." His voice kept rising with every sentence. "When you failed to exit after us, we became worried. Why do you think John went in after you? He went to ensure you were not in danger. I understand your desire to gather metals. Please remember that I assisted you in this endeavor. And also remember that you are part of a group." His tone finally cracked with anger. "When a group member does not exit an occurrence with the rest, the logical assumption is that they are in danger."

By the time he finished, Mahya had shrunk so much her neck had practically disappeared, and her shoulders were up to her ears. She nodded quickly and mumbled, barely audible, "Sorry. Won't happen again."

"Good," Al said.

With the issue resolved, my mind turned to more practical matters. "I don't think we should drive the jeep or the bikes here. Who knows how they'll react to them?"

"Flight would be the most advised course of action," Al said.

Mahya sighed and nodded.

"If your mana drops too low before we reach the city, tell me, and I'll carry you," I told her.

She smiled. "Thanks."

Even from a distance, the city looked big, but up close it was enormous. And very, very strange.

The first bizarre thing were the Genomey. I'd read in the Archive that they were short and had big eyes, so that part didn't surprise me. What I didn't expect was… everything else. Their hair came in every color of the rainbow and many others. Their general appearance was mostly human, but with enough differences to make you do a double-take. Their eyes were huge, and their ears were a bit pointy and hairy. It took me a few minutes of staring to realize that only the men had the hairy ears, not the women. And all of them had surprisingly big noses compared to the rest of their size.

Their clothing didn't help with the sensory overload. Like the hair, it came in every color under the sun, thrown together in combinations that would give a fashion designer an aneurysm. Green pants with orange suspenders and a red-and-yellow checkered shirt. A long pink dress covered in massive multicolored circles. A black-and-white striped suit that looked like an old prison uniform, except it was decorated with splotches of bright paint, including the splatter patterns.

Then there were the buildings. Naturally, they were built to Genomey size, but many of them were crooked, leaning in ways that made me question whether there were any actual engineers in this world. And they weren't just crooked. They were accessorized. Metal spikes, cogwheels, rods, balls, tubes, random boxes, welded-on scraps of machinery—anything a person could attach to a wall, someone here had done it. Smoke rose from nearly every rooftop and alleyway. Explosions sounded periodically from various directions—some muted, some loud enough to rattle my bones. Every time one went off, I flinched. The locals didn't even glance up.

And the wildest part was the traffic.

Most of the moving vehicles were boxy go-karts with bizarre modifications. Each had a steering wheel and two sticks. It took me a while to understand what I was seeing: the left stick was the gas and the right one the brakes. The drivers steered with one hand on the wheel and the other on the gas, but when they needed the brakes, they simply dropped the wheel altogether to grab the brake stick. In a lot of cases, the karts veered wildly the moment the wheel was abandoned, bumping into other karts or forcing other drivers to swerve dramatically.

It wasn't one or two chaotic drivers—it was all of them.

The result was a swirling mess of swerving, veering, clashing vehicles all over the city. Horns blared constantly, though I couldn't really call them horns. They made various alarming noises, sounding like foghorns, shrill rings, metal clappers, loud chimes, bellows, sirens that rose and fell in panicked howls, and at least one device that sounded suspiciously like a screaming cat. Somewhere nearby, a cart let out an explosion sound, followed by manic laughter and a rapid ticking that made everyone instinctively steer away.

Interspersed between the go-karts were massive atrocities that looked like the bastard children of a tractor, a sci-fi rover, and every loose part ever found in a workshop. Bolts, gears, pipes, tools, plates, chains, broken bits of metal—every piece looked like it had been thrown at the machine and stuck wherever it landed.

The big ones made a racket of their own. They whirled and clanged even louder than the flying monstrosity we'd seen earlier, and some of them occasionally released smoky explosions from vents, chimneys, or, in one case, from the underside.

Judging by the way the locals strolled past them without a care, this chaos wasn't unusual at all. This was just a regular day in their city.

We flew over the city, looking for a place to land and learn the language discreetly, but couldn't find anything. The whole place was packed tight, a maze of buildings squeezed together, with only narrow alleys between them and main roads cutting through the city in a grid-like pattern that still had the Genomey influence—drunk and veering—but a grid, nonetheless. The alleys were so cramped they felt claustrophobic even from the air, and the big streets were completely overcrowded, a nonstop flow of karts, the huge junk piles, and pedestrians spilling over every available space.

A loud explosion sounded from the building we flew over, and all its windows rattled, but didn't break. I stopped and stared at it, trying to figure out how.

"Do you need assistance?" Al asked me telepathically.

"No, it's fine," I sent back and caught up to them.

"We need to land," Mahya sent. "My mana is 300 and dropping."

"Look to the left," Al sent. "I see an area with less smoke."

He was right. There was a rounded area without smoke toward the city edge on the left. We flew there and reached a park. Sadly, it was also crowded.

"The red building at our three o'clock looks relatively straight," I sent.

We landed on the roof and looked over the park. It had a lake in the middle with two cannons set up beside it, each with its own line. Kids waited for the smaller cannon, and grownups queued for the bigger one. An operator opened the top of the first cannon like a coffin, and a kid climbed in and lay down on his belly. The operator closed it and hit something on the cannon's side I couldn't see.

There was a loud pop—almost an explosion, but not quite—and the kid shot out in a perfect arc, screaming in delight at the top of his lungs as he splashed into the lake. While I tracked the kid's trajectory, a grownup climbed into the other cannon. I looked back just in time to see them launch out of it.

"That looks fun," Mahya said.

"You can jump higher," I pointed out.

"Yes, but I'm the one jumping. I think getting shot out of a cannon would feel different."

"I do not advise it," Al said.

Mahya sighed. "I won't fit into the cannon anyway."

"We need to learn the language and secure lodgings," Al said.

"I don't think we would fit in any of the buildings," I said.

"You can open the house inside," Mahya said.

"Yeah, but look at the doors and floor height. You and I can enter if we stoop, but it'll be miserable. Al will have to fold in half," I said.

"I have a suggestion," Al said. "You can replace the core in my RV with your core, as you did in the past, and we can drive into the city and park at the outskirts."

"It might create an uproar," I said.

"I do not believe so," he said. "They have so many strange creations driving on the streets that one more will blend in. As a masquerade, we can attach some of Mahya's tools to the outside."

"I need to regenerate some more before we fly out," Mahya said.

"Take your time," I said.

Rue put his head on my lap, and I scratched his ears while watching Genomey get shot out of cannons into a lake. Yeah, this world was going to be interesting.