In the year 2058, a woman was sourced with a power that Durus had seen once
before. She was a filter portaler, meaning she could transport clumps of
molecules, but nothing too large. This really only helped her move water and
air from one place to another, because nothing else was small enough to fit
through the filter. No one knew why it was that this rogue planet held an
atmosphere, or more importantly, where the air was coming from. They did
have a pretty good idea of where this air first showed up. Several
kilometers North of Hartland was a special location they called Gaspunui. A
seer town mage had named it that many years ago, but never said how he
thought of the word before he died in 2054. There was nothing particularly
special about the land itself. It looked just as the land looked anywhere
else. But the oxygen levels here were slightly higher than anywhere else.
The atmosphere originated here, and spread everywhere else, but it wasn’t
evenly distributed. The air was thinner the farther away one traveled from
this spot. All six towns were well within normal range, but if one attempted
to spend a significant amount of time on the other side of the world, they
would have a harder time breathing. It wasn’t impossible, and certainly
people could acclimate to it, just like people on Earth did with higher
elevation, but it wasn’t ideal, and there wasn’t much reason to try.
It was too far from Watershed to build irrigation pipes, so why bother?
Well, the people in charge of coming up with the seventh town knew why it
was worth a try. Being so far from everything included the time monster
portal ring. As far as they knew, these monsters never traveled so far,
because they sought out life to destroy, and there wasn’t anything out
there. Much of the planet was covered in weedy plants they simply called
the thicket, but not even that extended this far out, because the
seeds that portaled there from Earth couldn’t float that far; and the now
native plants had not yet done so themselves. But the filter portaler
changed everything. She could give hopeful inhabitants of a distant new town
the opportunity to live peacefully, free from the monster attacks. She just
needed to be convinced. Filtering worked both ways. She could transport
molecules nearby to somewhere far away, or she could summon these
molecules from somewhere else, to her location. The latter was a lot
easier. Portaling something away took more energy, and more concentration,
than bringing it to her. So if she wanted to help the people of the new
town, she would pretty much have to be one of them, and that wasn’t
something she was naturally interested in. In the end, though, she agreed to
leave Springfield, and the rest of the Mad Dog Army, to make sure these
people had what they needed. She sacrificed her own happiness for the good
of the community. It wasn’t entirely without its advantages, however. She
met a good man there, and later married him under the Arch of Endless Water,
which she created with two looping portals that stayed open permanently on
their own. She was also given the honor of naming the town whatever she
wanted. She chose Distante Remoto, which was obviously redundant, but she
liked the cadence, and everyone else liked it too. Walking to Distante
Remoto became a journey that people trained to be able to do, and was
ultimately incorporated into the 2070 Mage Selection Games.
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