Arvid
THREE
"Thank you," she said, stepping onto the cracked asphalt in her black boots.
The Texas heat hit her immediately, but it felt manageable compared to the heat of uncertainty burning in her chest. Her analytical mind cataloged every detail as she stood there with her suitcase handle gripped tight.
Power plants generated electricity. They contained turbines, transformers, and cooling systems. None of that explained how she was supposed to travel to another planet from here.
She'd consumed enough documentaries and scientific literature to understand that interstellar travel required technology far beyond anything housed in a municipal power facility.
"I can practically see the wheels turning in your mind from here," Gerri's voice rang out cheerfully as she approached from the main entrance. "I know that analytical brain of yours is wondering how this place makes any sense."
The woman looked impossibly put-together in a light pink pantsuit that should have clashed with her white hair but somehow made her look like a force of nature wrapped in designer fabric.
"But trust me, dear, you'll understand soon enough."
Arvid doubted that profoundly, but she found herself following Gerri toward the building anyway. The security guard behind the reception desk lit up when he saw them approaching, his face breaking into a grin that suggested long familiarity.
"Morning, Ms. Wilder! Right on schedule as always."
"Good morning, Frank. How's that granddaughter of yours doing with her college applications?"
The easy warmth of their exchange shouldn't have surprised Arvid—Gerri seemed like the kind of woman who collected people the way others collected stamps—but it added another layer of surreal normalcy to an increasingly impossible situation.
They moved toward a bank of elevators, and Arvid stepped inside without asking the questions crowding her throat. Her recent experience had taught her that Gerri's answers tended to create more confusion than clarity, and her nerves were already stretched thin enough.
The elevator doors closed with a soft whisper, and Gerri pressed the button marked 'B.
' Arvid expected a short descent to a basement level, maybe two floors down at most. Instead, the elevator plummeted with a stomach-dropping velocity that suggested they were traveling far deeper than any normal building should extend.
One hundred feet. Two hundred. The digital display kept climbing—or rather, descending—until it showed depths that made no architectural sense.
"Oh, don't worry, dear," Gerri said, apparently sensing the spike in Arvid's heart rate. "We need to get far enough underneath the ground for the wormhole to activate properly."
"Wormhole?" The word escaped Arvid's lips before she could stop it. She'd encountered the concept in quantum physics textbooks and fringe theoretical papers, but those were mathematical abstractions, not real-world applications. "Those are theoretical constructs. They don't actually exist."
"Honey, half the things that matter most in this universe started out as theory before someone figured out how to make them work." Gerri's smile held the patience of someone explaining basic arithmetic to a child. "Albert Einstein thought they were possible, didn't he?"
The elevator finally shuddered to a stop after what felt like a thousand-foot descent. The doors opened onto a sterile corridor that stretched toward a single door at the far end, the kind of institutional hallway that belonged in a government facility, not beneath a power plant.
Arvid gripped her suitcase tighter and followed Gerri down the corridor, her boots echoing against polished concrete.
This had to be some kind of elaborate hallucination brought on by stress and sleep deprivation.
Twenty-four hours ago, her biggest concern had been whether she'd remembered to eat lunch.
Now she was preparing to travel to an alien planet to treat dragon shifters with a disease that might be related to her research.
"You aren't imagining things, dear," Gerri said without turning around, as if she'd plucked the thoughts directly from Arvid's mind. "This is very real, and soon enough we'll be on Nova Aurora, right in the heart of Ashvorn. So just relax and enjoy the wonder of it all."
Relax.
As if relaxation were possible when every fundamental assumption about reality had been systematically dismantled in the span of twelve hours.
Arvid had built her entire adult life around facts, evidence, and reproducible results.
Now she was following a woman who claimed to be a paranormal matchmaker through an underground facility that shouldn't exist, preparing to step through a theoretical physics phenomenon to meet dragon shifters on an alien world.
They reached the door, and Arvid's eyes caught on the gold nameplate mounted beside it. "G. Wilder" was etched in elegant script that somehow managed to look both professional and whimsical.
"This is just one of my many offices around the world for interplanetary travel," Gerri explained, producing a key from her purse. "I find it's best to keep these things separate from my regular matchmaking business. Fewer questions from the IRS."
The door opened to reveal the most anticlimactic office space Arvid had ever seen. A simple desk. A single chair. Nothing else. No computers, no equipment, no indication that this room served any purpose beyond bureaucratic storage.
"What is this place, really?" Arvid asked, her scientific mind demanding some kind of logical framework to hang onto.
Instead of answering, Gerri moved to the desk and opened the single drawer, withdrawing what appeared to be a metal egg. Its surface gleamed with an opalescent sheen that seemed to shift colors depending on the angle of view.
"What is that for?"
"This is how we're getting to Nova Aurora." Gerri's tone carried the casual certainty of someone explaining how to operate a coffee maker.
Arvid decided to stop asking questions. The answers weren't helping her feel more grounded in reality—if anything, they were making her feel like she'd fallen down a rabbit hole with no bottom.
Gerri moved to the center of the small room and whispered something to the metal egg that Arvid couldn't quite catch. The words sounded like they might have been in another language entirely, or perhaps no language at all.
But what happened next shattered every remaining assumption Arvid had about the possible and impossible.
The egg lifted from Gerri's palm and began spinning with increasing velocity, generating a low humming sound that seemed to resonate in Arvid's bones. Blue light began emanating from its surface, growing brighter and more intense until the spinning object became a blur of radiance.
The light expanded outward, forming a perfect circle in the center of the room like a window had been cut through the fabric of space itself. And through that impossible aperture, Arvid could see another world.
A massive volcano dominated the horizon, its dark slopes rising against alien skies.
Below it spread a city built from black stone, with architecture that looked both ancient and purposeful.
Steam rose from various points throughout the settlement, and the quality of light suggested this place orbited a different star entirely.
Arvid's scientific mind stopped fighting the impossibility and surrendered to pure wonder.
She was looking at another planet. An actual, literal alien world, visible through what could only be described as a tear in space-time itself.
The theoretical had become tangible, and despite every rational instinct screaming that this couldn't be happening, she found herself stepping closer to examine the phenomenon.
"That's Ashvorn," Gerri said with obvious pride. "Beautiful, isn't it? A bit warm, and the air does carry a sulfurous edge from the Caldran—that's the volcano—but you'll hardly notice after a while."
She turned and met Arvid's gaze, flashed a mischievous smile, and gave Arvid a quick wink.
"I'll meet you on the other side," she added, then stepped through the portal as casually as walking through a doorway and disappeared entirely.
Arvid stood alone in the sterile office, staring at the swirling blue gateway to another world. Her fingers tightened around her suitcase handle as she approached the portal, every instinct warring between scientific curiosity and survival caution.
She reached out tentatively to touch the edge of the phenomenon. The moment her fingertips made contact, electric sensation shot up her arm—not painful, but intensely energizing, as if she'd touched a live wire made of pure possibility.
Then, taking a deep breath that tasted of ozone and anticipation, Arvid stepped forward into the portal.
The sensation defied description. Time seemed to compress and expand simultaneously while her body became weightless yet somehow more solid than ever before.
Every nerve ending sparked with electric energy, and for a brief, glorious moment, she felt completely alive.
Then her feet touched solid ground, and the overwhelming sensory experience faded to reveal her new reality.
The ground beneath her boots radiated warmth even through the soles, and the air carried the faint sulfurous scent Gerri had mentioned, along with something else—something that made her skin prickle with recognition she couldn't name.
"Welcome to Ashvorn," Gerri said, standing nearby looking completely unaffected by their interdimensional travel.