D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2286 Through the Mirror

--- Kat ---

Kat was staring at the portal with Appoline under one arm with Lily resting on top of Appoline, pressed against that same arm trying to fit into the elbow space. It was working pretty well. "You know, this is undignified," commented Appoline.

Kat raised an eyebrow. "It was your idea. You decided this was safer then other carrying methods."

"I’m not saying I regret my choices or that it’s NOT the safest. Just that it’s undignified," countered Appoline.

Kat just shrugged, not really sure what else to say. After they’d packed up there picnic Kat had offered a chance for a break... and Appoline had downed a potion meant to keep people awake and then insisted on continuing forward. Kat wanted to argue that if Appoline needed rest, she should take the chance... but the potion was already drunk and allegedly there was no way to easily get to sleep after that. Considering Kat had lie detection she had no choice but to believe that statement, though Kat was guessing Appoline had some method ready even if it wasn’t ’easy’ by technicality.

Kat flexed her wings a bit before taking a few steps backwards. The debate on if they should fly or jump through the portal had been a fierce one, but Lily’s space affinity had ended the argument. While flying would be safer in a lot of ways... stopping partway through a portal was just asking for problems. Swiftly moving through it in one motion was the safest way to go about it, so that’s what Kat was going to do.

Even still, Kat didn’t want to be travelling too quickly. So she got a small runup, one step, one skip, and then a jump angled perfectly through the centre of the portal. It was more than large enough for them to fit through even if Kat hadn’t been so dead centre with her jump. Kat hit the portal and felt almost nothing. Perhaps a slight bit of extra air resistance... and then landed heavily on the other side.

Kat’s tail stabbed into the ground as she tried to stabilise herself. Her stomach felt like it was doing flips and Lily wasn’t feeling much better. Appoline was looking around trying to find something else well. The three couldn’t properly concentrate on their new surroundings because of the gravity. It had decided to be... weird.

From a purely mental, and perhaps inner ear perspective, it felt like they were upside down, walking on the ceiling and that they were being pulled away from the ground. From a literal perspective, Kat was standing without (much) aid, and her hair was falling towards her feet as you’d expect it should.

The dichotomy of this was, if anything, making it all feel a lot worse. Kat gently removed her tail from the ground and tried to make sense of what was happening, even as she tightened her grip on Appoline and looked around. The area was a hilly area, a few odd trees here and there, and a stream could be heard in the distance. The hills of rolling grass were all around them, but now that they were looking... things seemed odd.

The shading was wrong. All of the shadows were frozen in such a way that they implied the sun was directly above them... but if Kat looked up she didn’t see sunlight. No, in fact, she could see the ground much further below them. They were clearly upside down, and likely on one of those giant chunks of the mountain that had gone flying... but then why did the shadows say otherwise? Why was there light? Why did it feel like they were being pulled... down? Yet the ground remained steady under her feet.

Kat gently took a step forward. No issues. Kat flexed her wings a little bit, readying them just in case, and then did a small hop. She did not start to comically fall downwards as soon as she left the ground, nor did she do a quick 180°. Nope, she just had her feet hit the ground a few moments later as if she’d jumped normally on the normal ground. Something this definitely didn’t count as. "Ok what the fuck? Appoline are you feeling this and do you want me to keep holding you or let you down?"

"Do you think I’m going to fall to my death if you do?" asked Appoline.

"I don’t even... eh, yeah, I don’t even fucking know at this point. I feel like I’m upside down, my whole body is telling me that I need to cling to the ’ground’ or let myself fall... except I’m in shoes and I was able to jump just fine. I guess there’s probably some sort of a limit... somewhere but... I don’t know how high that is or what the heck is going on. It feels really, really weird," grumbled Kat.

"Yes this is a strange feeling. It’s like I’m about to fall yet I can feel my hair is not agreeing with the gravity on the rest of my body. Is it an illusion?" pondered Appoline.

Kat opened her mouth to agree that it had to be... but would it affect HER? Kat’s eyes let her see through illusions and it worked on auditory illusions... Kat was pretty sure... did this count? Was her... what, ’sense of gravity’ protected by things? Was it some sort of weird enchantment Thyme set up? "I have no idea," was all Kat had as an answer.

"Hmmm... alright can you let me down for at least a bit. Not sure I want, or even can fight like this. Actually, what happens when I throw stuff?" mumbled Appoline as she was gently put down. Kat decided to play things extra safe and deposited Appoline stomach down on the ground rather then righting her so she could stand. Lily remained with Kat, though Kat shifted her arms to be more comfortable for Lily so she wasn’t just hanging off the sleeve.

Watching Appoline attempt that, was also somewhat amusing. At first, Appoline simply tried to hop to her feet, clearly used throwing herself off the ground at times... but it didn’t work here. Instead of going up, Appoline went a bit sideways as her arms were pulled out of sync and then she collapsed back onto the grass.

Kat kept an eye out on the surrounding area, just in case something approached as Appoline went for her next attempt. This time she slowly worked her way upwards using both her arms and legs. She managed to get into a bridge pose fairly easily, and then... all she had to do was push herself up a bit and it would be fine. Appoline however seemed to not quite be able to do it.

Her pushes were too light. Each time she tried to get away from the ground she’d barely get a finger’s width away. "Ok, this really sucks. My automatic response is to push myself only a bit because I’m being pulled upwards so hard, or that’s what it feels like. Yet I don’t know if I trust myself enough to do this all manually. How are you even standing?"

"Carefully," laughed Kat. "I can sort of walk... but it’s odd, and I keep wanting to flex my wings and use them to help me deal with it... except I’m really not sure what would happen if I try to fly and I really don’t want to find out."

"Fair," agreed Appoline. "Do you think you can grab my leg with your tail? I’m going to try standing up but I don’t want to launch myself too far." Kat nodded and let it snake around Appoline’s ankle. A few more test pushes, and then Appoline pushed herself up... and back over. It was more than enough to have her upright, which was precisely the problem. Appoline kept going and her arms couldn’t stabilise her before she fell onto her ass. "I’m not looking forward to fighting like this,"

Appoline grumbled as she patted herself down and started to work on standing up again. Kat just gave a soft smile, while leaving her tail in place. It really helped much the first time, but at least Appoline hadn’t gone flying into the air. Not that it was likely, but... well it wasn’t impossible at the moment so it was worth the effort.

While Appoline was doing this, Kat took a few careful steps of her own. It was like accidentally stepping down two steps instead of one, where you made that heavy, jarring step and your body wasn’t quite ready for it. It made your pause, reassess, and try to make sure that things weren’t too bad. Awkward, certainly, but not impossible to deal with. Especially when you weren’t hurting your foot with your mistakes. Kat was more than sturdy enough to deal with the oddly heavy footfalls. The ground a bit less so.

At her side, Appoline had made another attempt, and while she wobbled quite a lot, this time she did manage to keep herself physically upright. The challenge of walking was still unaddressed... but Appoline could stand, so that was a nice start. Lily had already decided that she probably wasn’t going to even try.