She craned her neck and tipped her head curiously as she watched him turn the key. ?Power of magnetism?? she echoed his last statement, wonderment in her voice.
?The power god gave the soil to keep us grounded!? he crowed merrily, twisting the large brass key several times before pausing to look at her. ?You aren?t even a little scared??
?No,? her lips bowed into a slight grin. ?I feel no fear. My destiny has brought me to this moment, and should I die I shall do so knowing my destiny had been fulfilled.?
He frowned, shaking his head at her answer. ?Such hyperbole. A simple ?no? would have been sufficient.?
The din outside seemed to drone on despite the tone of the Patriarch?s earlier speech. Politics were an ugly game, as was war, but despite the morbid nature of his earlier declaration people still found time to laugh and sing, to dance, to love. To her bemusement the natives of this land, the people of the luminous sky, death was not met with the stoicism of her own kind, but rather with celebration. So many things were foreign to her here, so much of their culture counter-intuitive to traditions of her own. Beyond the rounded windows of this laboratory, beyond the city and it?s celebrators outside a world awaited to show her things anew.
?Destiny,? she reflected on her own words mournfully.
The nails in the oaken walls and flooring of the laboratory began to luminesce faintly, giving the room a ghostly azure hue.
?Fearless or not, I hope you?re ready,? the smile growing on his face freezing as his wild gray hair began to rise.
?Is that supposed to happen?? she asked, watching him turn the key with growing enthusiasm.
?Nothing I?m about to do is supposed to happen,? he replied. ?That is the point!?
The dark metal apparatus began to hum, at first almost undetectably, but soon audibly enough to rattle objects on nearby tables.
?I thought the point was to create a means of travel,? she stared.
?Merely the byproduct, Violet,? he corrected her. ?Breaking the presumptuously named ?god barrier?, pushing ourselves beyond our means, bending the stars to our will! We are witness to more than science, my dear girl, we are birth givers of a new era!?
?Such hyperbole,? she smirked.
The walls shuddered as the key locked into place. The dark apparatus continued humming, from the walls, the floor, eventually even the inside of her skull. She found it compelling despite being uncertain about what she was watching.
He stood upright, evidently satisfied that his key was finally in place. Admiring the device a moment longer, he turned away from her to a nearby table where a small box fixed to ropes he?d called ?cables? rattled frantically.
?This will trigger the magnetic portions within the apparatus!? he told her, nearly shouting his words over the noise both inside and outside of his laboratory.
She understood and watched him pause, holding the box in his hand as if reconsidering what he was about to do. He peered up at her, rubbing the fingers of his hand together, licking his lips nervously, his expression almost pleading with her stop him before he might go too far.
?Professor?? she finally spoke.
He moved his free hand away from the button, relived. ?Yes, Violet??
She stared at him for a moment before finally speaking. ?Hurry up.?
