Riding the Rift Road chapter 1 to 3 (Patreon)

Riding the Rift Road

Chapter 1:

The streets of Lyon were busy. It wasn’t the biggest city of France, but it was beautiful. Tina Lyon, and yes she and her family had heard all the jokes, wasn’t focused on the sights. She was focused on lifting the bar above her head. She exhaled and pushed up before putting the weight down.

She got up from the bench, getting a pat on the shoulder from her spotter. Charles was the gym owner and he liked to help. Guy was built like a brickhouse, nearly two meters tall with bulging muscles. The kind of man you imagined when you thought about a bodybuilder. He just lacked the speedo and the baby oil.

He was also gay as hell, if the way he checked out the guys’ asses more than the chicks’ was any indication. Still a good guy who made sure everyone worked out safely.

“Thanks for spotting me. I’ll go cool down.” Tina said while doing some stretching.

“You go, girl. See you next time.” 

With those words exchanged, Tina headed for the locker room. Once inside, she stopped at one of the full-length mirrors to check herself out.

Fairly tall for a woman at one meter seventy five, wearing only a crop top over a sports bra and shorts for her gym workout, she could see the fruit of her efforts, a toned body with the hint of abs appearing on her midsection. She was especially proud of how muscly her thighs were.

Her red hair was shoulder-length, with two long locks framing her face, and her bangs parted in three, two going to the sides with the last one going down the middle between her eyes. Her eyes were round and a shade of leaf green. Even with her training, she still looked baby-faced. She blamed her mom. Even in her fifties, the matriarch of the Lyon family looked barely in her thirties.

Tina did a round of shadow-boxing, going through a few quick combinations that ended in a roundhouse.

“Looking good.” She praised her reflection. A girl could do with a bit of self ego-boosting.

The redhead had always been a tomboy, though and through. And she was always in a good mood after a workout.

Yet, her day was ruined because the world decided to end.

Suddenly, a crimson light reaped through the building. 

“Huh?!” Tina’s mouth hung open at the red line drawn through empty air.

Then, the line spread open like the maw of an otherworldly beast, letting Tina see a kaleidoscope of red, blue and purple.

The next moment, the opening started sucking everything in sight like a black hole. Tina, the other gym goers, the building itself and part of the street.

Unknown to Tina, the phenomenon wasn’t isolated, tears in space had appeared all at the same time on Earth, seemingly devouring people and constructions alike.

For Tina, all she could see was this array of multicolored lights as she fell in slow motion. Before she could even start to comprehend what was happening, the tear opened once more and Tina felt herself speed up.

She didn’t have the time to think. She saw a ledge and extended a hand to grab it. She almost felt her shoulder dislocate and the skin of her palm got scraped, yet it also slowed her down enough that when she fell further down, she managed to roll with the impact instead of breaking her legs. She came to a stop in a sitting position, but she let herself fall on her back.

“Huff, huff.” The red-haired girl panted due to the sudden adrenaline rush before she started to chuckle. “Hahaha! Take that, mom. Hehe, you always said Parkour was a useless skill!”

She kept laughing hysterically to herself until she got it out of her system. With a deep breath, she finally got up and took stock of the situation.

She was on a floating chunk of asphalt. The sky was fucked up with those weird lights she saw in the rift seemingly crisscrossing like the world’s most fucked up road system. Above her the rift had closed.

And below, she wished she hadn’t looked down. Most people didn’t have the chance to land near something survivable.

Around two dozen corpses covered the ground. She averted her gaze. She didn’t want to know if there was anyone she knew.

Further ahead, she could see a mishmash of structures and buildings having been mashed together like they were made of playdough. It was the same for the floor. Rock, wood, concrete,  asphalt, steel. It was like an artist had decided to paint a view and then decided to make it Harlequin-themed.

There were other floating platforms. Some were lower. She could go down with a few jumps. She really thanked younger her for learning Parkour, even if it was just to look cool.

A few steps back to have a run up, leap, land, roll. Rinse and repeat.

She moved. If she was moving, she was thinking about where to put her feet, not about whatever madness was going on. She would find an exit, eventually, right?

After a few minutes of walking, she found herself at an intersection, and she heard footsteps. Maybe it was paranoia, or her survival instincts, but she hid behind a broken chunk of building that she recognized from the gym.

It was the right choice, because the owner of the footsteps came around the corner and wasn’t human at all.

It was like someone had taken the general body shape of a dog, and slapped a crocodile head, tail and scales on it. All in bright yellow.

It sniffed the air and Tina held back a curse, praying that it wouldn’t sniff her out.

The Heavens must have heard her because another set of louder steps made itself known, attracting the gatordog’s attention.

The second figure was humanoid, vaguely. A torso, arms, legs and a head, but it was only a rough silhouette made of rocks and apparently held by some bands of bluish light.

The scaled hound crouched low, ready to attack. Tina thought it was going to lunge at the moving pile of rocks. Instead, it opened its jaw, and a lightning bolt came out to strike at the golem.

Pieces of rock came loose and the golem took a step back before suddenly moving at speeds something so big shouldn’t and tackling the gatordog against the wall before starting to pummel it with its bludgeon-like arm

It hissed in pain, but didn’t let itself be taken down that easily. Swipe of its claws left gouges in the rock. A bite took out a chunk.

The hound charged another lightning bolt, but a fist to the jaw made it miss.

Tina was frozen, gazing at the fight right out of a JRPG.

Eventually, the golem won, crushing the gatordog’s head. It let out a victory roar that sounded like two pieces of gravel rubbing against each other before leaving.

Tina, only wearing her workout clothes, hidden behind the ruins of one of her favorite places, wondered why she didn’t see the rabbit before falling into the hole.

Chapter 2:

After the golem left, Tina wandered the strange space, making sure to keep quiet in order to avoid the  monsters in this place.

The more she walked, the stranger it became as she found traces of civilisation that were clearly not from Earth. She found things that wouldn’t have been out of place in a sci-fi show, or remains of beings that should have been long extinct but still had meat left on them.

Tina was guessing that the rift didn’t just open in the gym.  It must have been swallowing things and mishmashing them for a long time. Aliens, magic, whatever it was that caused the rift was beyond her. She just wanted to survive.

And the world wanted to test her. Just as she turned a corner, she was met face to face with a monster.

It was humanoid, far more than the golem. It had skin and muscles. It was also only around 180 centimeters tall, which still towered over Tina, but was in the average human male size range.

However, its skin was oddly stretched out, as if it had been pinned in place and left to dry. Then, there was its face. It had an oversized lower jaw without cheeks, letting its sharp teeth on display. And finally, there were its arms. Instead of ending in hands, there were club-like stumps with spiky bone spurs growing out of them like a biological mace.

One would have gouged out her eye had she not leaned back from a sudden swing.

“Shit!”

Tina backed away, raising her hands in a guard. The thing screeched and followed her, already arming another swing.

Tina ducked that one and her fight or flight instinct went on overdrive. A left hook landed where the liver would have been on a human body. A body shot from her right fist slammed in the solar plexus. She ducked another blow with a step back. She then leapt and went for an overhead Superman punch. It slammed cleanly in the monster’s jaw.

It took one step back from the impact. Tina’s left hand stung from the impact, and before she could land, a backhand swing caught her in the midsection.

The redhead was sent flying and rolled multiple meters before her momentum stopped.

Good news were that the monster had hit her with its forearm, not the pointy stump, so Tina’s stomach wasn’t full of holes. Bad news, she was left holding her stomach in the fetal position as she felt like her ribcage had just been caved in.

She could barely breathe, but she still tried to get back up. She stumbled and had to lean on a wall, and she saw the monster approach. 

So, she barely tickled it, while one hit was that close to breaking bones. She looked around, and of course it had punched her into a corner. She couldn’t flee, and fighting it seemed like a fool errand.

Maybe some would have given up there and then. Tina raised her guard once more.

The pain was still there, but it dulled as her brain told her to survive. She went on the offensive first this time. If she hit the monster enough times, it would fall eventually. She had to believe that.

She charged with a roar. A club-like limb was swung in response. She slid under it, and right between the beast’s legs. She sprung back and hit the back of its knee with the sole of her foot.

It stumbled to a knee. She grabbed its head from behind, palming one side with her right hand, while her left was already flying through the air. Dirty boxing at its finest.

The monster grunted as her fist met its temple. She was hurting it!

With a screech, it spun, and Tina circled around with it. She also pushed its head down, making it fall with its own momentum.

The monster was on its hands and knees. The moment it lifted its head, Tina’s shin slammed into it via a soccer kick. She knew it was the kind of kick that could have snapped someone’s neck.

The monster fell on its back, clearly stunned, but it was still moving and getting back on its feet.

Tina felt feverish, yet her body was answering better than it ever had.

The monster stepped forward. Mid-step, she kicked its leading leg, making it stumble again. The monster was stronger, yet Tina was now realizing that it was slow and clumsy.

She hit it, again and again. She ducked, waved and circled around its blows. Slowly, she felt that she was getting somewhere. The flesh that didn’t give an inch was now folding under her blows.

She didn’t care if it was some kind of mutant, an alien, or some demon from Hell. It needed to die.

When she punched its jaw, she felt something give. The rock hard bone that had hurt her hand to hit was now the one crumbling.

Tina was feeling light, and a grin had sprung on her face without her knowing.

The humanoid monster had enough and tried to crush her with a hammer fist. She spun aside like a ballerina. At the end of her spin, her leg rose in a roundhouse that landed right in the thing’s neck. With a sickening crack, Tina felt bones break under her strike. The monster fell in a heap, body twitching, but clearly immobilized from the neck down.

Now that the fight was over, she was fully aware of her body. The pain from the earlier hit had not only dulled, but disappeared. She could feel something oozing out of her pores, leaking from the depths of her guts, echoing with the beat of her heart, and racing through her body with every synapse fired from her brain.

She didn’t know what was happening to her, but it was awesome. So awesome that she started giggling like a little girl.

[hr]

After getting her laughing fit under control, Tina went back to searching for an exit. Except that now, she was running, faster than she ever did before and without feeling winded.

Something weird was going on, but exit first then she could worry about getting some radiation superpowers or the following cancer.

She still avoided the bigger monsters. She saw things that were terrifying. Flying whales, giant sandworms that burrowed through steel buildings, creatures that didn’t hesitate to attack those giants. And what’s more, most of them discharged lightning from their bodies.

She may have gotten stronger, but she was still a little fish, so she kept her head down.

Then she found the corpse. It was sitting there, half gored out, splattered in blood but clearly human.

Except, he was wearing some kind of power armor with glowing lines. A sword half as thick as Tina’s body and twice as long was laid on the floor, alongside what looked like a double-barreled shotgun that was glowing too.

She approached the cadaver, morbidly curious. 

Beep.

The redhead jolted back at the sudden noise.

“Sapient Resonance Energy detected. New User?” A voice came from the armored corpse.

Tina hesitantly walked closer to get a look at what was speaking.

Some kind of watch was pulsing on the corpse’s wrist.

Chapter 3:

Tina blinked dumbly at the talking watch.

“The hell?”

The watch pulsed with green light as it spoke again.

“Some people do refer to the Rifts as a possible afterlife, but no.”

And of course the talking piece of gear was sassy. Tina decided things couldn’t get more weird.

“Seriously, what is happening?”

“Considering your state of dress, and the distress in your tone, may I assume you don’t know what a Rift is?” The watch beeped.

“I don’t know what’s going on!” She yelled at the piece of junk.

“You should take a deep breath and calm down. Heightened emotions are not productive for a conversation. Introductions are a good start. I am designed as Seekio, an Artificial Intellect Spirit built on Nexus Station 54. What about you? What is your name and where do you come from?”

And while Seekio introduced himself,  Tina did as asked. If the talking machine knew what was happening, maybe it did know  a way out. It wasn’t like she had a lot of options.

“Tina Lyon. I’m a human from Earth, I guess.”

“Tina Beast King. Interesting name.”

The redhead sputtered.

“That is not what I said! Lyon, with a Y, not the overgrown lazy cat!” 

“Ah. It seems your resonance is still unstable if a mistranslation happens that easily.” Seekio’s response cut Tina’s anger short.

“You talked about Resonance energy earlier, too. What is that about?”

The space watch was silent for a moment, seemingly in thought before it answered.

“Resonance Energy is a lot of things. It is born of the interaction of all things. From space and time making reality, matter and anti-matter, body and spirit. All things resonate with one another. Such a prevalent phenomenon has many uses for those who know how to use it. One of those being a translation between thinking beings as their spirits resonate with one another to form an understanding beyond language, as we are doing now.”

Tina nodded in understanding.

“It’s space magic.”

“Many see it that way. One of the attributes of Resonance Energy is that it is easily awakened in another being through simple interactions. Like being hit by a being who had awakened its own Resonance Energy while being in an environment full of it..”

“You mean I have this stuff too?” Tina asked, kind of already knowing the answer. The way her strikes suddenly started working after being hit by the monster.

“All things possess the potential to awaken their Resonance Energy when their physical and spiritual energy align or when exposed to raw Resonance Energy. From our current talk, my theory is that you came from a world that hasn't discovered Resonance Energy yet. And you were swallowed by a Rift, and you have been surviving until you found me.”

Seekio hit the nail on the head.

“Speaking of. What is a Rift? What is this place?” Tina asked once more. She needed knowledge. She would ask about the other world stuff later because it really wasn’t the most important topic, and the recent events made her far more likely to believe in crazy shit.

“We come to the most important point of this conversation. Rifts are a natural phenomenon of Resonance Energy. They are small dimensions made of a certain type of Resonance Energy which will create holes between dimensional walls, gathering more of a specific Resonance to increase in size. This one in particular possesses an affinity for lightning and metal Resonance Energy.”

“Okay. So, if it makes those holes, which I guess got me here, it means more holes will open to get me out.” She looked at the corpse Seekio was still attached to, the one wearing alien power armor. “What are the chances it will get me home?”

“Astronomically low as it could open in any other plane of existence, but it would allow me to call for help from my deceased user’s allies, and maybe one of them could help you search for your home.”

Tina thought about it, and it seemed fair.

“However, your current chances of survival are almost as low as a Rift opening to your home. So learning to harness your Resonance Energy is the most urgent step if we both want to get out of here.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a manual to teach me, would you?” The lost Earthling really hoped Seekio did.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” It seemed Tina’s luck was turning. “Richie Machlicht, to whose wrist I am currently attached, was a Rift Pioneer who liked to hoard his belongings in his personal dimensional inventory, of which I am currently in charge of, alongside many other systems of his armor. Among those belongings are many training manuals, including the basics that he kept as a memento of his own teacher.”

A blue, straight line appeared in the air, unlike the jagged line that created the Rift that swallowed Tina. The line expanded into a square that spat out a book.

It read: Resonance 101: if you can’t do what’s in this book, give up.

“The title is not very encouraging, but the lessons it contains are actually very well explained and contains all a new user of Resonance Energy needs.”

As previously mentioned, Tina did not have a lot of options, so she started reading.

[hr]

The redhead was seated in a meditative pose as she focused on her breathing, listening to the book’s advice.

The most basic use of Resonance Energy was the one coming from one's own self. The union between physical and spiritual energy to make both better. She had hers awakened but it was currently running wild because of the method of awakening: a fight where the shock jolted her metaphorical engine.

Now, she was trying to grasp her Resonance Energy and get it under control before she ran dry.

Since it came from both her body and spirit, cutting out the world and focusing on herself to see what had changed was the starting step. Seekio was keeping watch and would warn her of any approaching monsters.

The fever she had been running since fighting the monster was a good indicator. She felt the flush that had spread across her body, how each breath made it travel to different parts.

Slowly, she started to get a grasp of it, of the Resonance born of herself, like suddenly becoming aware of your heartbeat. Now she had to give it a structure.

She remembered her dive into different religions and the occult, with a lot of debate where the soul was in rapport to the body.

Personally, she decided to focus on her brain and heart. Logic and emotion. The brain gave orders to the heart to beat, but the brain wouldn’t work without the heart pumping blood. Logic and emotion not above the other, but working as a whole. Those would be her cores.

Then, following that logic on a more physical side, she mapped the major veins and arteries of her body, aligning energy routes along them, which split into thinner capillaries, making sure that every single cell of her body was nourished.

“The first step is complete.” Seekio commented the moment her Resonance Energy was under control, flowing along the meridian system she built inside herself.

“Now, we need to go beyond the basics, and create an affinity for yourself, one that will allow you to grow strong enough to survive. Thankfully, you have more than enough resources around you for that.”

“Yeah, about that. I get that you can build an affinity, but the basic book didn’t go beyond saying that it was about exposure.” Tina pointed out.

“Indeed. Some people are born with natural affinities, but it is not your case as your Resonance Energy is pure. The only mean to change that is to resonate with the element you wish to build an affinity to. And, in a Rift, powerful sources of Elemental Resonance Energy gather naturally.”

Tina was worried that she was getting where this was going.

“You said this place was attuned to lightning and metal.”

“Hope you don’t mind a little bit of tingling.”