Dimensional Reality: Oz (Chapter 5)

  Dorothy’s aunt and uncle had gone to bingo night at the community center, leaving Dorothy home alone.  She had cleared the floor of her bedroom and gotten the various books and components ready.  She had combined spells, rituals, and writings together in her own spell in what was supposed to give her the ability to fly…at least she thought so.  The translation she had gotten on some of the books had been a little iffy, but she thought it shouldn’t matter too much if the spell worked at all.  She had drawn the requisite runes and symbols on the floor in chalk and rose petals.  She had lit the proper colored candles.  The time and the position of the moon was right.  All she needed to do was the read the spell she had wrote.  She stood in the center of a circle and half rune, half hieroglyph.  She slowly recited the words on the paper she held.  The wind started to pick up. Her curtains began to move wildly in the strong winds blowing in from outside.  Some of the candles started to go out and in others the flames seemed to grow.  Her voice shook as she saw the words of the spell began to burn from the paper.  She kept reading it though.  She felt weightless and saw that she was floating off the air.  At first she was happy that the spell was working, but then as she finished reading it, something felt wrong.  The room seemed to spin as if in a tornado.  The symbols beneath her began to swirl like a tornado, until a hole of blackness opened up.  She screamed as she flew down toward the darkness below.  She banged her head on the sides of the floor around her as she went down and passed out into darkness.

Meanwhile…

  Joseph walked into Bastion, the Enforcer headquarters, on the largest of the three planetoids orbiting the Historian home world.  He nodded at Sunny, the Historian working the front desk.  He walked back into the control room.  He smiled and waved the the Enforcers working at various stations around the room.  He walked over to the main station and lightly massaged Sydney’s shoulders.  She smiled and turned her head to smile wider at him.

  “Hi love.”

  “Hi.”

  Joseph leaned down and kissed Sydney lightly on the lips.  She kissed him back and caressed his cheek softly.

  “How’s everything looking?”

  “Well, overall not too bad.  We got some class 3 situations on a couple of worlds but Enforcers are already out to take care of them.  But we’ve got a recent problem and Gilean told me to save it and ask if you’d take it.”

  Joseph wondered what could be up that Gilean, the head of the Historian order, would ask for him in particular to go. 

  “Well, what’s the problem?”

  “We had a shift from Earth to another dimension that’s already reading a class 6 and climbing.”

  “So what?  At most it will be a nightmare and they’ll snap back when it gets too bad for their mind to handle it.  It’s standard procedure.”

  “That’s the problem.  It’s not a stardard nightmare.  According to the reading, the person was awake when they shifted.”

  “What? Are you sure it’s not picking up one of ours by accident.”

  “We don’t have any Enforcers in Wichita, or even in Kansas for that matter.”

  “Damn.  Well, where did this person shift to?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.  They shifted to Oz.”

  “Oz? If things weren’t bad enough there already. This has got the Fates written all over it.  Okay, tell Gilean that I’ll take it.  I’m gonna go suit up now.”

  “Kay babe.”

  Joseph kissed Sydney again and walked toward the supply room to suit up.  He shook his head and just hoped that whoever had landed in Oz ended up in one of the unpopulated areas…