deserted
Jet kicked the portal frame in disgust. After nearly burning to a crisp on reentry, she was stranded in, of all places, the meteor-strewn wasteland of the Glass Desert. She had only just barely managed to avoid striking the planet’s surface like a meteor herself, struggling with her suit’s failing systems to activate the vent magic passthrough and use her own natural power of flight to wrest a controlled descent from the clutches of a fatal impact. If her GPS had been able to orient her any more precisely than a vague smear on the map, she’d have picked a better place to land. As it stood, though, she was back in Skire, and too much adjustment to her descent could have sent her careening into the ocean, miles offshore into intercontinental waters, and arguably that would have been a far worse situation to be in.
Her mechsuit’s various systems continued to malfunction from the damage. Reentry had chewed almost completely through the suit’s ceramic heat shielding, exposing the delicate electrical and magical circuitry to temperatures far beyond their operational capacity. Climate control was completely offline, leaving her to the mercy of the elements. The sun gleamed blindingly against the desert’s pillars of meteoric alloy and glassy crystalline sand, and her visor wasn’t able to switch modes to filter the glare obscuring her heads-up display. She had to stay aware of the position of the sun to make sure she wasn’t cooked alive by a stray sunbeam amplified by the shiny metal outcrops. It was morning, and it was already uncomfortably warm. It would only get worse as the hours rolled by.
The air was mercifully still, but there was no guarantee it would stay that way for much longer. If the wind picked up, a sandstorm would surely follow, and the sharp sands of the region would cut her to ribbons, expensive mechsuit be damned. She needed to get to shelter, and fast.
What little data her flickering GPS could muster told her that there were no designated safe zones or natural cave openings nearby. Nothing but blinding, sharp grit for miles around. A pinging icon in the static of the map indicated that she was 250 klicks southeast of Ravim, where she could at least pawn off the destroyed remnants of her suit to a desert scrap baron in the deepmarkets in exchange for the crowns to afford replacement parts. Godsdammit, she’d have to practically rebuild this thing from scratch. It wasn’t the first time she had a mechsuit chewed up and spat out in the line of duty, but she had hoped this one would have lasted a few more years. She was too exhausted to fly, especially with the suit weighing her down, because propulsion was offline due to failure of the magisolar charging array. This old abandoned portal was her best bet for salvation, and right now it was looking like as much like a hunk of junk as her suit.
Jet kicked it again for good measure, and its ley lines suddenly sputtered to life, though no portal opened within the frame itself. She froze in shock, then immediately noticed and knelt down to examine a break in the magical flow. She pried apart the shell of the frame and found a conduit with its outer insulation worn away by the sand that had collected inside the portal’s hull. She fiddled with the wires, allowing the remaining armor on her fingers to protect her against any magical backfiring, and when she twisted the cables back together, the portal snapped open, revealing a hazy image of a human man behind a market stall in upper Ravim. He scrambled back in surprise, having clearly been interrupted during his work on the portal’s twin that he had probably salvaged from somewhere. Not waiting for his response or consent, Jet stepped forward and dropped into the portal, finally reaching safety. The portal buried in the sand flickered out just as the breeze began to pick up.