The Pinnacle
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R I X E N "That would make sense," I agreed, continuing to examine the wall with great interest. I wanted to reach out and touch the barrier. And if I was anyplace else, I probably would have. This was not any other place. This was the Rift, and around every corner there lurked unforeseen dangers. I almost liked that aspect of the Rift. It kept me on the tips of my hooves. It kept my heart beating and my blood pumping. In a way, it gave me life where there was none for me before. Still, I wasn't about to try anything without at least some notion of what I was getting into beforehand. The Rift was too dangerous for that. "By the looks of it-" I gestured again up and down the height of the blackness with my antlers, "-this wall doesn’t look too salubrious." There was a somber, almost deathly look about it. This quality was not solely due to its dark color, but another I couldn't quite place. "Strangely, I couldn’t see it from far away. It was only when I drew closer to you that the wall became visible. It seems like it’s disguised by some kind of illusion, one that tricks your mind into thinking the desert stretches on when it really comes to an end. Rift magic sure does work in unusual ways." I observed. Everything and everyone I had encountered during my time in the Rift thus far reminded me that magic was all around me now, though I once thought it to be naught. In the blink of an eye, it was all very real. I watched as Otem tried to nudge her orb toward the wall, but the second she moved back the orb returned to its position by her shoulder, as if it were tethered to the mare’s side by an invisible string. As it turned out, Otem was almost as clueless about the Rift as I was. That's what her words implied, at least. She knew more than me, but in the spectrum of things to know about the Rift, the knowledge was not much. My response came with a humorless and rather distant chuckle. I don’t know why I chuckled, because there was nothing particularly funny about any of this. It was not a nervous laugh, but an unpretentious one - my way of filling the otherwise still air with a little more sound. "As I'm sure you know, I’ve been here a small fraction of the time you have. I wish I knew, but very much like you, I'm haven't got any idea how things around here work." I was not trying to make an excuse for myself, for my cluelessness. Even though there was not really any reason for Otem to think that I would know something more about the Rift than she did, I went out of my way to state the obvious, just in case. In no way did I want to sound arrogant. What an idiot I would make of myself, if I were to say something as if I knew, and it turned out to be completely wrong. Otem’s idea was simple, and certainly better than anything I could come up with. That's not to say it anything special, just throwing a course of action onto the table of possibilities in hopes of uncovering a path to the answer. Nevertheless, trying to use both of our orbs together was better than staring at the wall for who knows how long. Until we were bored, I guessed. "It’s worth a try." We were flying blind. The worst that could happen was nothing at all. "Talk." they heard me singing and they told me to stop quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock |
