Chapter 149: Planetfall

Smoke. 

Acrid, black and burning. 

It was all around me, filling up the cockpit as we hurtled through the atmosphere of the planet our jaunt through hyperspace had brought us to. 

I could barely breathe, barely think… and yet. 

I was just about able to push BB back down into our Synchro Mode. 

Manna was a strange thing. It was reactive, an element of the universe itself. 

I closed my eyes and pushed my own consciousness down as well. 

It was like sinking into a river on a hot summers day, only instead of immersing my body in the rushing water of the rapids, I was immersing my mind in the rapids of magic itself. My magic. 

AND IT WOULD OBEY ME. 

It took a colossal force of will from both myself and BB. 

Even though my eyes were closed I could see a bunch of warnings currently pop up on the system display. 

[BREAKING ACCEPTED BOUNDS OF SYSTEM WETWARE]

[HALT CURRENT ACTION]

[DANGER]

BB and I ignored them all. 

I plunged my mind deeper and deeper into the stream of manna and began, for the very first time, to twist a spell all by myself. 

No system helping me take the easy way out. No BB helping me regulate the flow of power. 

This was going to be me, all me. 

I visualised what I wanted to happen in my mind's eye. I wanted the corona shield that covered my skin and clothes, that small flickering shield that covered me like the atmosphere of a star, to bloom out and cover the entire ship. 

I had no reservations about the fact that Yr'Arl and I would likely survive a normal crash like this, though I had no idea what the damage to the planet below would have been like if the Sloop hadn't been supercharged. 

The truth was the sloop had been supercharged, by my magic, and the resultant explosion would probably crack the mantle of whatever world we were hurtling down into, atomizing all life on the surface in moments. 

We were a makeshift planet cracker, and I wouldn't allow this planet to be cracked because of my mistakes. 

I breathed out, long and hard, and my corona shield expanded with the breath. 

The flickering energy covered the entirety of the ship, nestling into every nook and cranny so that none of it was in danger of being breached when we inevitably hit the ground. 

But I wasn't done yet. 

My corona shield had always moved with my body in the past, every time I moved an arm or a leg or even blinked the shield would adjust to compensate. 

I was about to take that concept and apply it to something much more esoteric. 

Once again I dived under the surface of the flow of manna that resided in the core of my being, once again I felt like my mind was being battered by the rapids of the energy that dwelled there. 

But I couldn't be swayed. 

With a colossal effort, I tugged on the manna that made up the corona shield that was covering the sloop. 

The ship shuddered and groaned as an outside force started to act on it, but the craft didn't break or come apart any more than it already had. 

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the nose of the ship began to point further and further up instead of directly at the ground that we were falling toward. 

I didn't have the control to get us back up out of the atmosphere and into space and considering how damaged the ship was, I didn't think that would have been a good idea anyway. Not until we could get some repairs going on. 

Instead, I gave us just enough lift to stop us from hurtling down to the ground so quickly. It wasn't flight, we were still falling, but now we were falling with style. I was hoping that we were falling with just enough style that we wouldn't burst the drives of the ship and crack the planet anyway. 

The drop down to the surface didn't take long at all, not in real-time, but struggling against the flow of my manna down in my mind it felt like an eternity. 

In no time at all, and in what felt like forever, the ship collided with the surface of the planet. 

The jolt of the craft impacting the ground shook me out of my almost trance like state in an instant. My mind was thrown clean out of the manna at the centre of my being and back into my skull. My eyes snapped open, and I couldn't help but yell. 

The ship gouged its way through the dirt of the planet we had crashed into, cutting a long hole through the mud and the dirt, until eventually, it came to a shuddering stop. 

"Are… Are you okay?" I coughed out to Yr'Arl. 

There was no response. 

Was he dead? 

Had I killed the alien that I would probably consider to be my best friend in this new world?

"I am…" Yr'Arl responded, cutting himself off with a hacking cough, "I am… alive, Squadron Leader Jacob Lyre." 

Well, that was a relief at once. Both of us had come through the ordeal in one piece. If my actions had led to the death of Yr'Arl then I had no idea what I would have done. 

"What… What happened to the ship?" He wheezed. 

He didn't know. He didn't know that it had been because of me…

"It was my fault," I croaked, he may not have known but he had a right to be told the truth. That his faith was misplaced. "The ship caught hold of my Manna and it wouldn't let go, it just kept on draining me, and I'm a bit like a limitless well, so it wouldn't stop draining. We went faster and faster and then… I think one of the engine nacelles were ripped off, so we span out of hyperspace and crash-landed on… well… whatever planet this was." 

We were completely stranded. 

Lost in space.