Cathalia Wright

When Thinking With Portals

Cathalia inspected the runes she’d drawn on her fingers with a careful eye, blowing on them to dry the paint. Drawn in shimmering violet magic combined with ink, they glowed in the low lighting of the stables as she examined them. Fumbling for her pen, she carefully jotted down notes. Step one complete. Paint on fingers. Runes to be activated by purple magic. Should be just a flick of wrist?

She examined her hands again. Spindled fingers were bonier by the day, though she didn’t really mind it. She had long since stopped caring about her appearance — not that she had much when she was alive either, though waking up sans jaw really put pretty into perspective. Still, the way the low light reflected off of her painted on magical runes was quite alluring, if not actually pretty. Shaking her head, she began to write again. Dangers of experiment; could lose my hands. Could die. Could cut myself in half. Anyway if I die someone feed my horses please thank you.

Cathalia stared down at her notes, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, no science ever got done by being nervous and safe,” she finally said, though only the sounds of comfortable and resting undead steeds answered her. She knew she could be particularly reclusive; she rarely came around to chat, shy and preferring the company of horses to other people. It was why she was practicing in the stables rather than the lab or another area specifically for the purpose. But magic and horses, at least, were good friends. Both sometimes tried to kill her (again, she reminded herself, kill me again) but they were consistent about the why and how.

Standing up abruptly, she shook the nerves from her body, a few pieces of hay shaking loose as well, drifting to the floor. She had worked out all the magical formulae, or created her own for the purpose. Cathalia was certain other members of the Branch would be able to do it faster and better, but—

“You can’t worry about that right now!” She brought her hands up, papping her cheeks and metal jaw with both hands a few times. Squeezing her eyes shut, she spoke to herself in a low and reassuring tone. “You are Cathalia Wright, and you do things the Cathalia way. You don’t have to do things any other way to be good. Ain’t no one going to laugh at you for being a little off the beaten path if the results are good. We don’t do gloom here. We do happiness, and results!”

The pep talk seemed to work, at least. With a rattling breath, she stilled her hands and body, opening her eyes. Holding her first rune-inscribed hand out, as if to take someone’s hand, she paused before talking to herself once more. This time, she seemed more focused: her eyebrows narrowed, and she seemed to let go of her anxiety, completely in the moment of experimentation.

“So a normal portal has runes for entry and exit,” she mumbled to the horses. “When applied sequentially and exerting magic and will, it makes a big ol’ portal in one direction. So it stands to reason that if you continually placed and replaced the entrance and exit to the portal, you could not only hold people and stuff inside like my project, but even begin to move it. Give it direction and uh— when it shoots really far, really fast.” She stumbled over her words slightly, lacking the appropriate vocabulary, but continued onward. “So you could— you could launch something. But it’s all about timing, because if you shut the portal at the wrong time, you could get ‘em stuck, or cut ‘em in half. Precision will be key.”

A horse nearby neighed, and Cathalia glared at the skeletal creature, which was chewing on hay as if the substance would not merely drop out of its bony body. “Oh hush up, Sunflower, you ain’t know nothing about portals either!

“Hmph. Subject one!” She sniffed, turning her attention back to her work. “That water bucket.” Cathalia pointed to a bucket placed safely away from every other item in the stable. She stilled for a long moment, the sudden surge of magic making a few of the more skittish beasts shift nervously. Cathalia’s eyes flashed violet, the runes on her extended right hand sparkling in the low lighting as a portal appeared underneath the bucket. The thing disappeared into the void as if on command. “So just like the stable test with the Branch,” she murmured. “Held in stasis ‘til an exit is designated. So if I add an exit portal…”

She pointed her left hand now, another surge of magic flashing through her painted runes and soaring through the air. The exit portal appeared on the ceiling above the entry portal, the bucket falling neatly out and back into where it came from in an endless loop. Cathalia let out a loud whoop, grinning from ear to ear. Her hands covered her smile as she danced in a circle. “Fuck me sideways, it works! Hah!”

Her moment of glee complete, she shook her hands out again. “Okay okay, not part two: get the bucket out of the endless loop without breaking it in half. Or shattering it to pieces.” She watched the rotation of the bucket into and out of the portals, memorizing their pattern. Surely it wouldn’t be so hard to just-- one two--

She flicked her hand, the exit portal leaving the ceiling and landing right in front of her. With an oof, she caught the bucket as it launched straight at her chest. Having misjudged the velocity of the bucket -- or perhaps, just how hard and fast something could hit her bony frame having been in endless freefall for several minutes -- the force of impact sent her flying backwards. Cathalia slammed into the stable wall, the entire building creaking perilously as one of the boards keeping it together cracked. Horses and other mounts made noises of fear as the building around them seemed to shift slightly.

She groaned, the bucket now nothing more than wooden pieces sticking into her armor and lodged into her chest after she broke it with the exit and subsequent collapse. Though it didn’t truly hurt her, the reaction was more subconscious and frustrated, than anything. She sighed, shaking her head, as she began to pull splinters out of her mage armor. “Okay, note to self, don’t use wood or-- don’t try to catch the shit flying out of the portal. Or something. We’ll get it right next time.”