Immediately after leaving, Theora’s periphery started lighting up with System notifications. Dema and Bell were already sending messages over the alliance chat. Balinth sent a quick “You go, girl!” and Hell opened a group chat with many of their shared friends, all of whom soon chimed in to cheer Theora on.

How had they even managed to invite them?

“Alright,” Isobel murmured. “Acceleration constant at 1.3 uud per second squared, as expected. Current altitude, 3209 uud above ocean. Expected remaining time until leaving atmosphere, five minutes, 55 seconds. Keep going!”

Theora nodded. Then, she realised the nod would not be conveyed through the transmitter. “Noted,” she responded. She had no idea what a ‘uud’ was, but Isobel was apparently having fun blurting out this information. “I’m getting many messages.”

Isobel giggled. “Yeah, of course! I’m in the group chat too! They are all going to miss you. I’ll let you know when you need to change course to Alton, until then you can just go straight up.”

The main issue was, of course, that ‘straight up’ wasn’t necessarily an easy direction to follow. Most directions weren’t easy to follow. The wind was making it harder. That’s why they had decided to have her leave at night; for one, at night the continent was facing away from the sun, which was good, because the sun was the opposite of where Theora wanted to go, and also, the stars made it easier for her to keep a steady aim. She had put in a lot of effort to learn not only the constellations, but the names of hundreds, if not thousands of stars as well, in order to enable Isobel to give more accurate descriptions. She also had the star maps, just in case.

She looked down at Himaeya. It was pretty, and she wanted to do it while she could still easily move her body. It was getting cold, after all. The winds were biting at her.

For now, Theora decided not to answer all these messages. She needed to actively fly right now, and it was important to keep a steady aim, because each correction later would expend resources or time. She had to reach the first patch of magic mould today, so that she could use the last hours of Orb-flight to get out of it. Later, there’d be times when she’d simply drift through space with no Orb active. She could chat then. And sleep. For now, she mustered as much focus as she could to remain accurately on her path.

“So, did you make out with Dema?” Isobel suddenly blurted.

Theora swallowed. “I made up with Dema,” she said.

“Yay! You were both so down these past few weeks. I’m glad you two managed to sort it before launch.”

“Me too,” Theora said. “I want to see her again soon.” Her gaze went to one of the notifications. Maybe it would be fine to just answer Dema?

No… Theora was on a mission to save the planet. Although the decision felt much harder than it ever should.

“You’re veering off a bit there! Remain on course, Sun of Heofen.”

“Right. Thank you,” Theora murmured. “So, how is Bell?”

“Bell’s well!”

“… I see. I hope things will be fine between her and Dema, while I’m gone.”

“Oh… yea. When she and I started adventuring together, we clicked so well. Obviously, we didn’t know at the start that I was related to you and Dema. After we all met, her… opinions have made things a bit more difficult, I suppose.” After that, Theora heard a bit of shuffling and scuttling, and then Isobel went, “Yep! We’re talking about you!”

“Ah,” Theora said. “She’s there?”

“Yes, came here like two minutes ago.”

“Please convey a greeting to her from me.”

“Mom says hi!” A few seconds passed. “Bell says good luck.”

“Does she seem uneasy?” Theora asked.

“I’m holding her hand, so she’s fine,” Isobel answered and Theora could hear her smile. “She’s a big scaredy-cat but you just have to cuddle all the worries out of her.”

Theora smiled. She checked her quest countdown — it had been 255 seconds since launch. Her body would probably freeze soon, so maybe this would be her very last smile. She tried to savour it. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Scholars weren’t entirely sure how exactly Theora’s body would react to exposure to the Grand Voids; they knew the higher atmosphere was cold, and space itself was cold as well, but there was no air, so Theora could only lose heat by radiating it away. She’d never felt more in-tune with the title her home town had given her; it really was like she’d be a little sun.

She was also already suffocating.

“Hm?” Isobel’s voice suddenly rang in Theora’s ear. “What’s wrong?”

Theora blinked while she still could. “Nothing is wrong. Ah — sorry. I thought you were talking to me.”

“No, Sun of Heofen, I am talking to you,” she said, her voice concerned. “Why are you slowing down?”

What? “I’m not slowing down. I’m going straight up.”

A moment of silence.

Isobel was likely double-checking the data. Meanwhile, Theora kept flying straight up. Although as the seconds passed, she noticed something feeling off too. Her body felt somewhat weird, in a way. Bouncy? Almost like she was swimming. The air resistance she’d felt on her way up was almost entirely gone now, so flying should have been getting easier from here on out, but that didn’t seem to be the case. As she glanced over the planet beneath her, she realised it wasn’t getting much smaller anymore.

Theora tried to ignore the feeling of her saliva bubbling in her mouth. She was getting quite dizzy too. Her brain was shutting down. Of course, that much was to be expected, but it made her feel tired. She already wanted to go back to bed.

“You have pretty much stopped gaining altitude,” Isobel finally murmured. “You seem to be going up a bit, then falling back down… this is weird. Hm? Yea, checked that too. No, she definitely made escape velocity, the acceleration of the Orb should be constant… Yeah. I checked divination devices too. No magical readings. I don’t think she ran into a magical quirk already.”

Iso kept discussing things with people who were apparently offering ideas, bouncing back and forth little arguments. Isobel’s tone was a bit tense, and several minutes passed, all without Theora being able to travel any distance.

Finally, Isobel’s voice started to get fairly displeased.

“Is everything alright?” Theora asked.

Isobel clicked parts of her face. “One of them is arguing that the Orb might have a built-in altitude limit.”

By now, Theora’s eyelids were too frozen to blink. “Wouldn’t that be bad?”

Isobel gave a sad sigh. “Yes, mom, that would be bad. That would mean mission failure.”

So the start wasn’t going very well, then.

“No,” Isobel was letting out, “I’m just saying — let’s save ‘done-in by magic quirkiness’ as our last explanation for what’s going on, not the first. Maybe this is something else?”

All Theora really knew about magic was that the more one tried to understand it using laws of nature, the more obstacles magic would place in one’s way out of spite. That said, it wasn’t completely unreasonable to try to figure out the precise rules of how a magic effect would function, although the results tended to be a little frustrating more often than not.

Theora still remembered how much trouble she’d had figuring out the interdimensional attire. At first, she’d thought the attire was just really hungry. Shades weren’t super uncommon, so a bundle of fabric with space inside that things disappeared into had obviously brought the attire closer to a Shade than to what it actually was — a many-lidded chest whose insides were shifted just a little towards the outside of reality.

The point being — figuring out magical items was difficult. And Orbs of Seven Wishes were incredibly rare; they were the ultimate reward the System could give. There was a reason why they’d only been able to scrape up five even to save the world. Theora had gotten three or four in the entirety of her life, and she was the strongest hero with the highest chances of attaining one.

Nobody would have been able to use one to just — test things out. They’d been aware of that flaw, and some scientists had protested quite heavily to making assumptions, but it’s not like they had an alternative up their sleeves.

The Wish of Flight granted the ability to fly. Theora hadn’t expected it to not work in space, but it was possible that space travel was not categorised as flight in that sense by magic. And if that was the case, then things were looking just a little grim, perhaps.

“Alright, we need to figure this out,” Isobel then said. “I’ll cut the connection to save power on the transmission device while we do. Please stay put.”

With that, a soft crackle resounded in Theora’s head, and Isobel’s voice was gone. Theora had only taken a few minutes to get up to this point, so in theory, she could have gone back down. But if she was to stay put, so be it.

It was a beautiful place anyway, up here, above the world. By now, her arms and legs were frozen solid to the core, and she couldn’t feel them anymore. This was slightly preferable to her insides boiling and bloating up. Theora could maybe expel the cold and thaw herself if she really wanted, but that would be a lot of effort, especially considering how much cold there was everywhere around her.

Her brain had also stopped working. That was inconvenient, but maybe not too different from her usual self. Theora without a brain. Hadn’t that happened before? Right. With that poor lint on Dema’s dress, back in the bathhouse. Oh, what she would give to be a lint on Dema’s dress right now.

Yes, her brain was definitely gone. Oh well. No hugs for a while. It was tragic.

She was just a rock of ice now. Still well-preserved, though, so in and of itself, it didn’t seem like an issue. She kept her mind working despite not having a brain or a functioning body, because if she didn’t, she couldn’t complete the mission. And the mission was important, because she had to save the world.

From herself, that was.