Arriving

The portal closed behind Valerie and she collapsed facedown seconds later on a filthy hardwood floor. The device stopped working as soon as the portal closed. At this moment the only emotion she felt was happiness to be alive. She knew she had to get up and look around to see where she was, to investigate her new environment but Vali couldn't bring herself to stand up. For another few precious moments, she let herself bask in her dreams for a better future. She now could start her new life and fulfill her promise to her dead friends and lover. The four of them made a pact that if they survived the war they would open up a bistro.

Slowly she looked around and noticed she landed in what seemed to be an abandoned house. The floor and the ceiling were cracked and filthy, the room she was in had no furniture, the windows were closed and the dirt on them made it impossible to see through. Although her muscles throughout her whole body still spasmed because of the electrical shocks, she forced herself to sit up.

First things first. She conjured up a mirror to see herself for the first time in two years. Sometimes she was able to glimpse at a reflection when the scientists transported her to or from her room before they knocked her out. So she knew her appearance changed during the endless experiments or as Vali liked to call it torture. The change in her appearance started as they finished tattooing the runes for anti-aging. Vali didn't know if the change was intentional or if something went wrong in one of the experiments.

In the mirror, she could see someone that resembled her old self but was undeniably not her. Originally she had long, unruly dark her und bright dark blue eyes, white skin and a body that looked like it belonged to a supermodel because of the excessive exercises she had to do to be fit for combat. All in all, she was a really beautiful young girl but her body and face were marked with scars from her training and battles. Now though the scars were gone her former white skin turned to a healthy golden glow. It looked like she had luminescent golden skin. Her former dark blue eyes had a violet sheen to them, her dark unruly hair was now a black waterfall as dark as the deepest night and it had a metallic shimmer. She transcended beautiful and now looked divine, but all Vali could see with growing horror was that they took not only her mortal life but her normal humanoid appearance and made her different - she hated it because it would serve as a constant reminder that they made her into an undying freak.

In her old world women constantly used glamour to make them look more appealing. The glamour didn't change how they looked in general but enhanced the features that were already there. As Vali casted the spell with her personal spin on it, she could see how her violet eyes turned to normal dark blue ones, her skin turned white and now her hair was brown and unruly again. She looked like before her imprisonment, with only one exception: her scars. They were too many and too obvious so she kept the unblemished skin.

Valerie had absolutely no clue how the citizens of this world looked like, for all she knew they could even be non-humanoid, so she made herself invisible and untraceable and started to walk out the door. Outside she was met with loud traffic noise and high buildings. The next thing she noticed was that the people in her vicinity looked like normal human beings. Suddenly she froze. The reason she didn't move and was truly shocked was that the city looked like manhattan and that thought frightened her. What if she didn't jump dimensions as she thought she could with her portals but they only teleported her randomly across the globe? In her panic, she nearly didn't notice the absence of all magical energies. Vali took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. With her magic sense, she reached out and tried to get a read on anything magical, but nothing came up.

The sun was up high - it looked like it was around lunchtime, so she had time to explore the city, which looked like manhattan, the whole afternoon. In the end, as it grew dark she had verified a few points: First and foremost she was definitely not in her dimension anymore but it looked like she jumped to a parallel universe instead of an entirely different dimension.

Manhattan and all major cities she knew in her old life still existed but there were significant differences, for example, the high-rise building complex in midtown Manhattan with the letters STARK at the top and she couldn't find magic anywhere. As soon as she knew the big cities were the same as in her dimension she tried to teleport to the ones she knew or saw a picture of. It went fairly well but to her utter dismay, it looked like in this dimension she was the lone magical being.

In the evening she teleported back to the abandoned house in Manhattan. With help from her magic, she cleaned the room she first arrived in. Then she took her bed out of her storage ring, after some nights on hard and dirty floors during her training, Vali began to always carry a bed in her storage dimension for emergencies. Sitting cross-legged on her mattress with the help of a locator spell, she could feel the exact spot where the bombing device was situated inside her brain. Concentrating she activated her space magic and tried to teleport the explosive into her outstretched hand. But something went wrong. It felt like her spell dripped off the bomb like water. To Valerie's misfortune, the scientists had extra insurance installed. She didn't know exactly what they did maybe a spell or maybe runes that prevented her to take it out. The only good thing about this situation was that the detonator was in another dimension, but to be one hundred percent safe she encased the device with a bubble of her magic so no signal could reach it. After casting the spell she fell facefirst onto her bed and slept like the dead.

At first light, Valerie woke up, well-rested after the first uninterrupted sleep since she could remember. Vali sat up and after stretching got up to start her brand new life. Gathering intelligence is the first order of business. If she wanted to build her life here she needed knowledge about politics, the people, currency, government, and technologies. Today would be dedicated to gathering intel.

During her exploration, she found a pawnshop where she was able to sell a diamond necklace. The money she got from this sale should tide her over the beginnings. With money in her pocket, she walked into an electronic store and bought a laptop to investigate the state of this world's technological progress.

At her temporary home, she opened her laptop and began to investigate. As Valerie learned about the internet and Google she was really thrilled. Best Inventions ever! if you had questions you could simply ask google and you would get a qualified answer. That was something unimaginable on Terra: Knowledge is power and only the mighty should have access to such knowledge. Certain Magic was only accessible if you found someone to teach you. At night after surfing through the internet she discovered Wikipedia and totally lost it: she didn't sleep for three days and nights because she was browsing and reading through it.

In the end, Valerie came to the conclusion that the technologies of this world were on par if not greater than magic. She loved it, all this knowledge on the tips of her fingers. This new mindset of open, accessible knowledge was an innovative new concept for her. She searched for magic and she found out that people didn't believe it existed. So she could only summarize that if there were magic or magical beings then they were in hiding. One surprising tidbit she found were the mutants. No magical beings but mutants and superheroes existed!