“Well, here we go,” she mumbled. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, oval shaped capsule, the Capsa. She turned it in her hand and pressed it between her fingers. She squeezed it and tossed it onto the platform. It bounced, a hollow, tapping sound, and then stopped. It popped and from its thin shell burst a plasmic arc, igniting the posts and joining the Silo’s topmost portal in a shower of light. At the point of convergence, above the blackened ground, a thin, dark sliver formed and then spread apart, growing into a portal many times Rive’s width and height. She gazed into the portal, which was so black that it tricked her groping eyes, always evasive, always defying. She could feel it pull at her hair and skin and clothes. She could hear the sounds of Griddish as they warped and folded into indecipherable knots.

The Slipshot to Var 7 is finally open again.

She stepped and then fell forward into darkness. She gasped and choked, her breath sucked out of her lungs as if she were squeezed inside a vacuum. And then, the bright blue sphere known as Var 7, Farth, appeared, encircled by a glossy, glimmering white ring. She felt a chill and then a blast of wind. Her lungs heaved greedily for oxygen as she plunged through wispy, white clouds. She braced herself, and then, a moment later, her booted feet landed squarely on brown soil.

She stood tall and gazed along the horizon, at the choppy, blue waters of the city’s bay, the clusters of tall, lean towers that blinked a constant pink and blue glow, at the streaky, white planetary ring that stretched from one horizon to the other.

She smelled deeply of the air, which carried a scent of decaying sea. “Nissy,” she mumbled, as a scowl curled on her upper lip. So, this is the city where Cythiria resides. I suppose I should get used to this place. I have a lot of work ahead of me.