1233: A Quick Tour of Astoria

A Quick Tour of Astoria

Emma undid the straps and walked up to the windows from where she saw the millions of stars in the sky, shining brightly while they hid in the shadow of the earth.0

"It's… beautiful," Emma couldn't help but say.

"This looks amazing," Clara said. "Can we go out and check?"

"Go out?" Emma turned around. "You will die out here. There is no air for you to breathe. I would try on my own, but I can't do it with you."

"There's no air here?" Clara asked with a weird look on her face. "Why would there be no air here?"

"Because this is space," Emma answered. "All the air is gathered on the planet down there thanks to gravity. You know what gravity is right?"

Clara nodded slowly. She looked out of the window of the ship she was in now that they had entered a stable orbit around the planet. 

They were moving along the same direction of the planet's rotation, and as a result, the scenery down below was moving at an incredibly slow speed. 

"This… is the world we live in?" Clara couldn't help but ask. Umbra was similarly surprised as well.

"Yes," Emma answered. "Do you guys have maps? You might even recognize the continents."

"Uhh… that right there," Clara pointed to a cluster of islands that could be seen even so far up from here. "That must be the Sunken Lands."

"Ooh, that's the continent that was ripped apart to make Papa's sword," Emma said. 

"What?" Clara looked at Emma with a curious look.

"Yeah," Emma said. "You know the sword my father has? The really strong one? It was made from a continent that used to be there. A really strong god-like figure destroyed it to make the sword."

"Where did I come from?" Umbra asked curiously.

"Uhh, you came from…" Emma had to search around for a bit. "If I remember correctly, the Springwind continent must be directly opposite to the sunken lands, so it must be that one there."

She pointed to a continent that was exactly in the opposite direction of the Sunken Lands. 

"How big is that place?" Umbra asked.

"Hey ship, can we zoom in on that continent there?" Emma asked.

"Certainly!" the ship's AI spoke in a language that neither Clara nor Umbra understood. Then an interactive image appeared, showing the continent.

Emma quickly zoomed in, showing the continent on a larger image as soon forests and cities became apparent. She quickly zoomed into a single city from the ship and showed it to the two.

"This is one of the larger cities as you saw. I don't know where this is, but just the fact that there are thousands and thousands of cities should tell you a lot."

"How… how big is this continent?" Umbra couldn't help but ask.

"If you wanna know the size of the continent, just compare it to the place you came from," Emma said and quickly switched to an image of a place forever covered in clouds.

"This is the region where the beasts live," Emma explained. "As my father mentioned, it's hundred and hundreds of kilometers long, large enough to be considered the size of a decently big country."

"And yet…"

Emma zoomed out slowly at the region that was covered in clouds and continued doing so. The three continued watching as the region with the clouds became merely a small portion of the entire continent."

"I… I didn't know the continents were so… large," Clara said. "I definitely knew they were large but… not this large. Seeing it all at once is so surreal."

"I never even imagined anything could be this large," Umbra mentioned.

"Hehe, we have yet to see the other two continents," Emma said and went around to show the two the Blueflame continent and the Glacien continent.

"There's so much water in between the two continents," Clara noted. "No wonder they don't come from this side."

She then looked at the Galcien continent and saw a small mountain range on the bottom left region, which was her homeland. 

"That's the Whiteowl region," she said. "Where I was born. How long will it take to go down there?"

"A minute?" Emma said.

Clara gave a dry chuckle as she couldn't believe it at all. Had she really gone from one continent to the other in such a short period of time?

"I wonder if we can ever progress to reach what you have in our lifetime," Clara said. "To go from one continent to another in a matter of minutes— no, seconds."

"Well, you guys need to first start with a steam engine and maybe go from there," Emma said. "I won't lie though. It is very highly unlikely that your world will ever develop to reach the same level as this one."

"Discovery and invention come out of necessities," Emma said. "You are forced to learn to rub sticks to make fire when you suffer from the cold eternally. If you can just move your hand and create fire, you will never know that rubbing two sticks together can create fire."

"Similarly, you guys have no need to create artificial light, as you can easily capture natural light and keep it working throughout the years," Emma said. "Unless something happens that completely changes the world, forcing it to stop depending on Essence, I doubt you will ever manage to reach anywhere in your lifetime."

"I… see," Clara said. Those were some harsh words to hear, but she understood what Emma meant.

They went around the world for a while longer, looking at the continents multiple time, noting the important locations.

"I think we've seen it all," Clara said. "Can we go back now?"

"See it all?" Emma chuckled. "We haven't seen it all yet."

Clara and Umbra were a little confused. "What else is there to see?" Clara asked.

Emma waited for a second and pointed in the distance.

Clara turned to where she had pointed and narrowed her eyes to see. "Is that…"

"Our next destination," Emma said. "The moon."

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