Otherworldly Innovation

Unlike the lukewarm reception we’d gotten in the previous village, at least at first, these people were so desperate in their current situation that they barely even bothered to confirm our identity as a hero party. They surrounded us, excited for our presence and asking over and over for help dealing with the creatures in the sky. They were willing to trust us almost entirely if it meant we could come to their aid.

Unfortunately, as I learned once we were in the village and briefed on the situation, their problem was much more complex than low crop yields.

The jelloons, those balloon-like abominations above (I wasn’t sure if they were animals - were they even alive?), had drifted into the area and settled in the sky above the village. This caused three main problems as they lingered. First, they blocked sunlight, which was an instant problem for plants. Second, their bodies absorbed and released rainwater as it fell, but the rainwater became highly acidic after interacting with the jelloons. So any rain that did make it to the ground would burn anything it touched. Many of the crops and even livestock had been decimated this way. Third, the local wild animals in the surrounding woods knew instinctively what the jelloons were and changed their migratory patterns to avoid them; no herds of deer or other animals stayed in the area, which meant there was no way for the villagers to hunt for food.

Normally it would be possible to wait out a jelloon presence. They tended to keep drifting along, eventually making their way to other areas. But for some reason, the air currents had stagnated in this area for weeks, so the jelloons had stayed, too. There were hundreds of the monstrosities, if not thousands, and they hovered together far above the village. They weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

A mass of fragile, shimmering skin and air sacks was just about all these things were made out of, and their very presence was a cataclysmic event for the villagers who were hunkered down, holding out hope rather than evacuating.

Even with what little I knew of the surrounding environment, I could hardly blame them for staying put. This world was deadly, and most of those remaining in the village were children or the elderly. Based on what I’d experienced on our travels, it wasn’t safe for these people to go into the wilds. Most of the able-bodied villagers had either fled the situation entirely or gone to seek help, but none had returned yet. Hope had been all but lost, at least until we appeared.

I looked up at the jelloons, not liking the village’s chances. Yes, we would try to help, but our small party simply didn’t have the means to deal with such a large threat. The mass of jelloons was larger than the village itself. It seemed impossible. That didn’t stop my companions from immediately brainstorming solutions, though.

Simply shooting them out of the sky had been my first thought, but between the limitations of the local weapons, the scarcity of ammunition, and the creatures’ overwhelming numbers, that was out of the question.

“What if you two lifted me up and I ripped ‘em all apart?” Andra suggested to Estelar and Pira, her expression far too serious for the absurdity of what she proposed.

“That’s impossible, you’d plummet to your death before even making a dent,” Pira scoffed. Andra grumbled at the dismissive response, but Pira had already turned to Estelar. “Maybe we could make some kind of air current to push them away, some wind and weather magic?”

“I do have a few spells for that sort of thing, but for magic on this scale, it would take an entire wing of the mages' college a full day of casting.” Estelar replied, thinking. He looked back at Pira. “What if we used your technology? Could we make some kind of device to go up there and push them directly? I could use magic to get it into the sky at least, if it wasn’t too large of an object.”

She shook her head. “Even if I had all my tools, I don’t have the materials to make something like that,” Pira answered, visibly frustrated. “And even if I did, it WOULD be large for it to be effective. It would take a substantial engine to move that much mass. So that’s not an option either.”

“Pushing them all away directly is impossible anyway!” Andra was exasperated. She gestured with one arm at the mountainous terrain in the distance. “We’re in a valley between mountains. There’s nowhere for them to go. What we need to do is get ‘em all up and around first. Maybe up to a higher level, blow them upward where the wind pushes the clouds. The air just ain’t moving here.”

I thought about what she was describing. “So like… a tornado or something?”

“I mean, that’d probably work and all, that would push everything up, but we’d run back into the magic issue again,” Pira said. “We don’t have the juice for the size of the tornado we’d need.” She put a hand on her chin, clearly thinking.

“I know in my world, we can make tornadoes with much less power than you’d think,” I started to say. All three of them turned toward me, and I felt myself hesitating at their attention. “I wasn’t super well versed in all that stuff though…” I felt myself cringing a bit at my own suggestion, unsure. I was no engineer, but I remembered some of what I’d learned in university.

“Any knowledge you have is a start,” Pira replied firmly. She looked resolved, almost eager. I glanced at the others, and they both looked as though I’d thrown them a lifeline.

One thing was clear: We needed a miracle to solve this situation. And from the looks of it, with a lack of other options on the table, everyone was ready to gamble on my half-baked knowledge to create exactly the miracle we needed.

We briefed the villagers on our plan, which they were quick to embrace. I suspected they would have agreed to anything at all. Several offered to help us, so we set them to work gathering the supplies we would need.

The first step for me was helping Pira and Estelar to design a drone that could fly up and into the air while also pushing air upward. I summoned up every bit of knowledge about drones that I could scrape together from the recesses of my psyche, and after a while, we had a reasonable prototype. We fell short of power at first, and for a moment, that appeared to derail us, but then I had a realization.

“Pira,” I said, “my armor.”

“What about it?” she asked tersely, not looking up from her tinkering.

“It’s got electrocution effects,” I replied. “Maybe we can rig it as a battery, get more power that way.”

For a long moment, she stared at me, and then a slow smile spread across her face. “You’re right, I think we can do that. I’ll have to create some new connectors, but if we can get the power to flow in the right direction, we can make it work.”

I nodded and began stacking armor pieces beside her so she could work. I began to hand her my gauntlets, but she stopped me. “You keep those.” As she sorted the other armor plates, she smiled warmly and tapped me on the arm with a spanner, “Nice job, Proxy.”

I felt a warm flush pass over me at her praise. It was nice to be contributing.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my original idea for the device itself was impossible due to basic physics. I was no expert in any of this, and for a moment, I felt like I’d misled my team about the possibilities of this plan. But I was soon reminded that we weren’t working with physics alone. Estelar stood nearby, his hands moving through the air as he cast the spells we would need to supplement the engineering efforts. With the help of literal magic, we got the first drone in the air.

While the three of us worked on the devices, Andra went out to survey the mountainous areas near the village to find the best place to form our tornado around natural windfalls. She climbed up along the crags where the hills met the peaks, gauging the direction of the air and making note of where the currents went. The more help we could get from nature, the better.

Back in the village, we needed to rig what was functionally a transmitter and a bunch of emitters to weakly replicate Estelar’s wind magic. Magic did follow some rules, as it turned out, and it could be encouraged to work like radio waves with the right coaxing. Estelar had to try a few times to make it work, but eventually, the magic began to pass through the devices, which made him smile broadly. Pira laughed with delight and patted the elf mage on the back.

Rather than pointing the emitters straight up, we positioned them in a circle, blowing in a spiral. We put some of the villagers to work helping out by holding the devices for us, as there were dozens of them. In a matter of moments, we had a circle of villagers nearly the size of the village itself, each clutching one of the new devices and waiting for further instructions.

Pira’s excitement over the new tech we’d developed was tinged with just a bit of frustration. She had had to take apart nearly all of the gadgets, armor and tools she had brought with us on this journey to give us even a slim chance of making this plan work. Not a single part was wasted, though, and I gently pointed out how much good all this gear could do for the village. She seemed satisfied with that and refocused on the joy of her new creations.

Finally, we needed an updraft that would help push the devices upward as much as possible. I put the children of the village to work gathering firewood, and soon, we had a large pile in the center of the village. As more and more children ran out of the nearby woods with armloads of branches and logs, we prepared to start the fire. It didn’t take long for the flames to catch on the dry kindling, and soon the low burn turned to a massive roaring bonfire that singed my eyebrows a bit. I’d never been so close to such a large fire; it looked like a building was burning down. I took a step back from the healthy blaze, showed the children how to add more wood as needed, and helped Pira and Estelar put the last of the devices into place around the perimeter.

It was time. We took up our positions around the ring of villagers. Pira activated the machines, Estelar began to weave his magic, and everyone else extended their arms to release the drones they held. As a group, the circle of devices took to the sky, rising upward toward the mass of jelloons hovering above. We stood and watched their ascent; I got a glimpse of Pira beaming in the distance, and I could see the outline of Estelar’s form far across the circle, casting his spells with enthusiasm. Everything was working in tandem. I felt like a real leader, guiding my team to victory.

All that was left was to wait and watch.

And wait.

And wait.

We watched. The tornado didn’t form.

The devices blew in formation, the wind magic pushing circles of gusts around, but nothing resembling an actual tornado took shape. From where we stood, it looked like we had succeeded in pushing the bulk of the jelloons up a bit, and we managed to group them slightly closer together, but it wasn’t enough. The devices simply weren’t strong enough. The mass of menacing orbs stayed firmly put.

The first time I had begun to feel like a leader had ended in unexpected heartbreak.

I had failed.

I stared up into the sky at the cloud of jelloons, trying not to let despair take hold. I heard the disappointing cries of the villagers around me, but I tried to ignore how horrible the sounds made me feel. I refocused on the problem, trying to come up with any solution, anything at all that would fix this.

An explosion might work to dispel the jelloons, but creating and controlling one big enough to do the job would be extremely hard. Plus the chance of destroying part of the village was not worth taking the risk. Another, stronger gust of wind might be able to push them away, but we were running on empty in the wind magic department. Estelar had to be exhausted from our first attempt, and he wouldn’t be able to try again for a while.

Soon, I knew, the jelloons would descend and spread out once again, and we would be back at square one. No, actually square zero. Team morale had plummeted. Andra wasn’t close by, she was somewhere in the woods monitoring air currents, but I could imagine how angry and frustrated she would be at the failure. Pira, I saw, had already started to deconstruct her inventions, her face drawn and pale. I ran a hand down my face and turned to look out across the mountains.

Suddenly, I noticed a large cloud approaching from the horizon. It was massive, like a giant stormfront. It moved far faster than a cloud should move, and it was heading directly for the village where we stood. For a moment, I wondered if the world was going to add insult to my injury by throwing precipitation into the mix that would join with the jelloons to pelt us with acid rain. That would be fitting. It was hard to muster the energy to care.

My apathy turned to shock tinged with horror as the cloud barreled toward us even faster. It was enormous, large enough to block out most of the sky over us, and it was clearly not natural. The villagers began to shout, and many of them ran for cover, ducking into their cottages to hide. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good.

Suddenly, the front of the cloud parted to form a gaping hole, larger than the village itself. It was directly above us now, and I braced for rainfall or lightning or whatever might come next. As I watched, the hole swallowed the jelloon mass over us, consuming every one of the creatures in a single motion. The clump of jelloons vanished, leaving empty sky behind. After a moment, the hole closed, and the cloud shifted directions smoothly as if someone were steering it. It drifted away to wrap itself around a nearby mountain peak.

I blinked. I couldn’t process what I had just seen. The jelloons were just… gone. I had no clue whether to be relieved or terrified as I stared at the cloud that had somehow eliminated the deadly threat to the village in seconds. I began to look for my teammates to gauge their reactions, but before I could spot them, I saw tiny dark specks emerging from where the cloud had parked itself. I squinted, trying to make out what they were, and then my eyes widened.

Human-sized figures had begun descending from the cloud, and they appeared to be flying toward us.