3. Running in Circles
Awakening
Solocitizen
3.
Running in Circles
Present Day
A thud-thud-thud came pounding on Lumina’s door early the next morning, and put an end to her rest. Riding on a wave of hot adrenaline, she shot up in bed with her eyes trained on her door and her ears as forward and alert as a bunny rabbit’s. She stared at the door for without moving, or breathing, while she studied the thuds from the other side. After a moment, she crept out of bed, picked up a lamp with her mouth, and approached the door. She tapped the lock controls and raised her head to strike with the lamp, but she dropped it in shock once the doors were open.
A set of robotic arms were deployed from the ceiling and busy hosing down a busted emergency ladder, and every sixty seconds they took a break from watering the twisted metal to polish it with a scrubbing attachment. The scrubbing arm beat the ladder into the floor with a thud-thud-thud.
“By Celestia’s beard, what is going on in here?”
“Please restate your command.” Animus’s voice boomed out of a speaker by the mechanical arms, and continued to spray water on the ladder and drenched everything in the hallway.
“That wasn’t a command.” Lumina tried her best to shield herself from the water, but still managed to get soaked.
“Please state a valid command.”
“Uh oh, I think I get it.” Lumina hid her face in her front hoof.
Last night, just before she retired for the evening, she spent the better part of an hour trying to get Animus to fix the staircase leading to the bridge and ‘restating her command.’ The conversation ended with her trotting off and telling Animus to, “Just clean up the stairway.”
And this was how he interpreted her.
“I asked you to clean up the stairway, the one going up to the bridge, not to wash and scrub this ladder,” Lumina said. “This, what you’re doing right now, is making a mess, which is the exact opposite of what I asked you to do. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not my fault.”
“What?” Lumina dropped her jaw just a bit, but then recomposed herself. “How is this not your fault?”
The mechanical arms retracted up to a hub in the ceiling and repositioned themselves next to Lumina.
“Analyzing previous valid command: ‘just clean up the stairway’,” Animus said. “Key words recognized ‘stairway’ and ‘clean.’ Command executed nine hours and forty-two minutes ago. One thousand and three targets designated for cleaning procedure.”
“Wait, you mean to tell me you’ve been doing this all night, all over the ship?” The thought horrified Lumina.
“Please restate your command.”
Lumina darted to the hyperlift and rode it up to the forward most section of the ship. The stairway was still just as broken as she left it the other night, and now there was a large puddle covering the floor. She maintained hope that the observation deck escaped the deluge. When she ventured down for a quick peek, the observation deck was already knee deep in water. Furniture bobbed up and down and little waves sloshed against the walls and panoramic windows. Lumina decided not to deal with it.
She took the hyperlift to what remained of the kitchen and ordered a daffodil and lavender sandwich from the food synthesizer. The light above her never stopped flickering and the sandwich tasted, well, acrid. The urge to gag rolled up her throat and fought her through the entire meal. After she finished breakfast, she ordered a full sweep of the long and short range sensors, and headed down to Cargo Bay F-6 to check on her food supplies while the ship ran the scans.
Lumina climbed all the way down to the starboard storage area, and stumbled her way through poorly lit passageways, only to reach Cargo Bay F-6’s hatch and find nothing but the snowblind from the frozen wastes staring at from beyond the window. Lumina’s ears flopped down, and she dashed to the other food reserves. The Luna Dream had two others, Cargo Bays E-6 and D-6, and each held enough organic protein goo to fuel the food synthesizers for a year. When she reached Cargo Bay E-6, her heart sank and her knees quivered till they threatened to give out from under her; the refrigeration unit was busted, and the goo sacks strung up along the cargo bay’s ceiling already started to turn pink with mold. The food synthesizers could reconstitute most mold and contaminants into healthy food, but not the pink stuff. The pink stuff killed desperate pilots who tried to eat it.
Gulping down her fear, Lumina and hurried up to the last cargo bay. Luckily for her, Cargo Bay D-6, and all its contents, were still intact.
“Thank Celestia!” Lumina slumped against the hatch and caught her breath.
On her way back to the kitchen, she ran the math on her food supplies. Prior to the crash, the food synthesizers were mainly drawing goo from Cargo Bay F-6, so with F-6 and E-6 gone, she still had a full year worth of food. In an emergency, the synthesizers could reconstitute sewage into food, which she heard was good for the amount of food she had plus the waste tanks’ current levels, divided by a half. So that left her with just over a year and three seasons before starving. Rounded up every step of the way, of course.
Lumina moped into the kitchen, plopped into the nearest chair, and buried her face in her hooves. She needed to distract herself, desperately. So she picked up a datapad and checked on the sensor sweep.
Long range scans identified this star system and pin-pointed the Luna Dream’s location to an unexplored system two hundred light years off course. If Lumina fired the distress beacon now, somepony might pick it up in the next couple millennia, and if they were feeling generous, dispatch a search team soon after. That was, of course, assuming that whoever attacked her didn’t hear her signal first and come looking for her. Lumina gulped, cleared the command from her touch screen, and navigated to the short range sensor report.
Calling the outside conditions ‘weather’ was a generous use of the word. There was an atmosphere, yes, but a thin one nearly devoid of oxygen and polluted with ammonia. Temperatures outside reached about one hundred and eighty degrees Kelvin. Atmospheric pressure, negligible. Wind speed, also virtually nonexistent. A pony would last all of a few seconds outside without a spacesuit. Lumina ran her hoof across the screen and selected a thermal reading of the nearby terrain.
At first she thought it was a glitch, that big red glob just east of the ship just wasn’t real, nothing natural in that wasteland could rise above the ambient blue.
“Animus.” She called out to the AI without taking her eyes from the touch screen. “Recalibrate the ship’s sensors and troubleshoot.”
“Please restate your command,” it said.
“Fine, run self diagnosis on thermal sensors.”
No request to reword followed, it must have understood her that time. She closed the sensor report and waited for Animus to complete the diagnosis.
“All systems within standard operating parameters.”
“No way,” Lumina said.
Something out there was generating heat. It was burning, it was big, and it wasn't natural. Lumina opened the thermal scan again and tagged the location in Luna Dream’s navigational database.
Lumina galloped across the ship until she found a window facing East. She propped herself up on the railing and gazed out the window with a pair of binoculars. Rocks, glaciers, and more rocks stretched out as far as she could see; whatever it was, it was buried beneath literal mountains of ice. Lumina snorted, she had no intention of letting anything stand between that heat source. It could be a way off the planet, or she might find a way to restore Animus. Even if all she found was rations, that would still add weeks or months to her life span.
The Luna Dream was a commercial freighter, and therefore unarmed. However large rocks drifting in space had a tendency to sneak up on large starships. So, the Interstellar Express installed powerful mining lasers on their larger ships. The laser was far too inaccurate for the long-range artillery duels of space combat, but it excelled at burning anything at close range.
Lumina spent the next hour programming the mining laser, and left it to run its firing sequence while she put together the right gear for her expedition. It took Lumina two more hours figuring out how to set a transmat beam to teleport her outside, and how to keep it fixed on her so it could bring her back on demand. Normally Animus would do it for her, but he wasn’t up for the challenge. She experimented on some apples before trying it herself. The first five turned to apple sauce on the return trip, but after seventeen trials without any incidents, she decided it was safe.
Standing on the transmat platform with her saddlebags packed and sealed snug in her spacesuit, Lumina tapped a button on her foreleg and blinked. Yellow light surged through her eyelids and flooded her with an overwhelming burning sensation. Transmat beams hurt, but in less time than it took for her to blink it was over, and when Lumina’s eyes popped open, she was standing in the frozen wasteland. Pale rings glistened in the sky and arced over the cruel mountains to the west. Ice crystals rained down on Lumina from a big cloud hanging over her destination.
Just as the damage reports had said, the bottom decks of the Luna Dream were completely torn away and lay scattered across the ice. Bits and pieces cluttered the snow. And what of that super clean hull she had been working on? Ruined.
Lumina brushed the ice crystals off her visor and pressed onward across the wasteland. Ice squeaked and crunched underneath her hooves each step of the way.
The hike toward the heat source took her over a uniform expanse of ice. The valley walls and the wreckage of Luna Dream helped guide her, however she was not without a GPS system. A little waypoint projected on her helmet marked the path to the drill site. That cloud of water vapor hanging over the site was a dead giveaway if all else failed. Along the way she encountered rocks the size of small houses, jutting up from the ice like bones protruding from a wound, and ice twisted into spikes at least two meters tall.
Less than a kilometer away, she told herself. Her hefty saddlebags weighed down her steps and dug into her back. It was unrelenting, constant, and more than she thought she could endure.
In an effort to keep her mind off the pain in her back, Lumina accessed the ship’s network and downloaded a news recording from the cargo’s database. She caught up with the latest news out of Unitopia while she hiked.
“Sightings of pegasus FTL scout ships has the High Council in a panic today and has left unicorn and earth pony council members unable to devise a plan of action.” The image of a unicorn with a luxurious mane filled the lower-most portion of Lumina’s screen.
“The FTL ships jumped away before the local fleet could intercept. With most of the Unitopian fleets engaged in the battle for the homeworld, the Ministry of Defense has asked the Council to request military support from New Canterlot in the event of a full scale invasion. Recent polls suggest that the local public believes support from New Canterlot will not be enough to repel an invasion by the Pegasus Tribe. Word of the FTL ships has many fleeing the planet and many more demanding a recall of all forces on the Equus front. I’m Amethyst Letter, and this has been The Unbiased Truth. Next on UNN, can algae be the secret to a perfect mane?”
Lumina gestured with her head and the window vanished. No news was good news. She was just about to the heat source anyway.
The hole before her stretched down, and down, and down. Lumina stood on the edge of the precipice and gulped. The beam cut through the ice at an angle, blocking the sun and obscuring the bottom.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?” Lumina asked, but to whom she didn’t know.
She shrugged off her saddlebags, pulled out a stake gun and while standing on her hind legs, looped one free hoof into the trigger-loop and the other around the stock. Lumina nearly tumbled over in that precarious position, but kept her footing long enough to fire a stake into the ice. After testing the stake’s hold, Lumina fastened a steel cable to it and dropped the rest down into the hole. She secured the cable to a harness on her suit and took a final look down into the precipice.
And with that, Lumina descended into darkness.
It was possible that she hadn’t drilled far enough to reach the heat source. She entertained the idea, but even as the sunlight faded away, she held out hope that her salvation lay just a few meters deeper. Lumina kicked against the walls of the hole and clung to the cable for dear life.
After twenty minutes of descending through the darkness, Lumina aimed her suit-mounted searchlights directly ahead of her. No more than five meters down a metal plate sat embedded in the ice.
Whatever the thing was, it was not of pony origin. The spiraling organic patterns on the thing were a far cry from the utilitarian work of earth ponies and the angular designs of pegasi, and it much more intricate than even the most regal unicorn architecture. Definitely not unicorn, the organic curves were just too visceral.
Lumina unclipped herself from the harness and dropped to the plate.
Before Lumina’s hooves even touched the metal, the entire thing groaned, and opened. She panicked, but before she could hit the button to transmat out, she smacked into metal.
Pain blossomed across Lumina’s side, but she picked herself up and glanced around at her new surroundings. This place was just as alien on the inside as it was on the outside; the long hallway Lumina found herself standing in resembled the intestines of some great animal. Her suit detected an atmosphere, standard pressure and normal amounts of oxygen, at a comfortable two hundred and ninety-one degrees Kelvin, however she didn’t trust it enough to take off her helmet. Save for her suit lights, and a pale glow flickering from further down the passage, Lumina was standing in total darkness.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” She gathered up her resolve, queued up the transmat beam, and ventured toward the pale blue light. “Who am I kidding, this is how ponies end up dead in sci-fi movies. They just keep pushing it, just to see what around the next corner, and pretty soon an alien is bursting out of somepony’s stomach.” Lumina stopped talking, paused to gather up her remaining courage, and forced herself to continue.
About five minutes later, the passageway opened to a hall that expanded out in every direction. Massive columns shot up from the ground and branched out near the top to weave a ceiling together. Blue light trickled down from beyond the canopy. Standing there in awe, Lumina couldn’t help but think of both a cathedral and a forest. Her hoof falls echoed off the pillars and throughout the hall.
The hairs on the back of Lumina’s head twitched. That primal part of her was trying to warn her; she was being watched. She dismissed the feeling and ventured into the hall.
Lumina paused next to one of the pillars near the entrance, and discovered carvings of winged creatures and living machines covering its sides. She gasped, ran a hoof over the engraved figures, and recorded as much of the pillar as her suit cam allowed.
The pillar told the story of two tribes. One walked on two legs and flew about on wings as delicate as a butterfly's; their faces were narrow and full of teeth. The second tribe was a race of machines that came in a multitude of shapes. The figures on the pillar were shown together, living in harmony, with many coexisting under one roof. Lumina galloped over to another pillar deeper into the hall. That one depicted a great war between the two tribes, and a sky full of fire.
Lumina walked around the pillar at a slow pace with her suit camera recording everything, and then nearly jumped out of her space suit.
Before her stood a monster of metal and teeth, it was as long as five ponies and had as many needle like legs as a centipede. In fact, that’s what it looked like, a great black centipede with a blender for a face. It was reared up over Lumina as if it were a snake just before a strike.
She screamed and adrenaline burned in her veins to prepare her to run or to hide. Her front legs tried to run but her rear tried to hide. In the end she just stood there.
Thankfully, it was as motionless as a statue.
“You!” Lumina pointed her hoof at the thing and let out a little laugh. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, you ugly, stupid, statue.” She poked it with her hoof and cantered to another column, maybe that one had something about a way off this planet.
Needles tapped against the floor metal right behind her, and when she turned around to confront the noise, the centipede was gone.
Her heart jumped and the hot fear came surging back. Lumina shook her head and backed away from the spot with ever widening eyes. Her head darted to her right, left, and over her shoulder and found nothing. She'd seen way too horror movies to stick around and let that thing sneak up on her. Lumina jabbed a button on her foreleg and let the pain and light of the transmat beam engulf her.
The transmat light faded away and the alien scenery was replaced by Luna Dream’s familiar interior, transmat station D-13 by the looks of it. She flung her helmet off and collapsed against the wall panting. Safe, she was safe.
She kicked her gear off and began fighting her way out of her space suit. As she pulled free of her suit, she noticed a number of sore spots all over her left side. The slightest touch produced a sharp pain. She hissed. Lumina didn’t bother picking up the equipment, she just left it where it fell, but she kept the stake gun on her. It was going under her pillow.
After hiking all over the ship and out to that thing, Lumina was exhausted, and wanted more than anything to lie down. Not to sleep though, not after what she’d seen. She planned on keeping both eyes open and one hoof on her gun for as long as possible.
When Lumina reached her room, the door was already open and the sound of a power washer blared from inside.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
She forgot to tell Animus to stop cleaning.
Lumina crossed the threshold into her room and, after putting her hooves down on carpet that oozed water, winced. Animus’s hub of mechanical arms was deployed over her bed and power washing the walls. That white paint job the Interstellar Express had forbidden Lumina from even touching was nothing more than scattered chips on the floor.
“Animus, stop, just stop.” Lumina let the stake gun roll out of her mouth and onto the bed. “At this point, I’m too tired and bruised to care enough to scold you, so just stop.”
The power washers trickled to a stop and retracted into the hub over the bed.
“Command confirmed,” said the computer. “Cleaning procedure terminated.”
Lumina hopped onto water soaked bedding, sighed, and rolled over to her hiding place and retrieved her book. The box she kept it in was reduced to cardboard slough, and when she finally freed it from the mush, it fell into her lap soaked with water and bleeding ink.
“No.” Her eyes widened. “No.” She opened the cover. The words and pictures all blurred together. “No!” The pages were so soft that when she tried to turn a page she ripped out three. “No! No! No! You stupid machine!”
Lumina jumped off her bed and delivered a kick to the arms with her hind legs. The machine flinched and played a satisfying alarm. She wanted to kick it more, but then she got a better idea. Lumina picked up the stake gun with her front hooves and fired.
Recoil knocked her off her hooves and onto the carpet. She landed on a bruise. Animus’s arms were in much worse shape. The stake shot clean through two of its arms before stopping in the hub assembly. A water jet and a scrubbing arm spasmed on her bed.
Animus didn’t attempt to flee, neither did it complain, nor did it even attempt to retrieve the severed arms. Instead it kept the arm hub stationed over the bed without responding.
“What? You’re not going to try to run or hide or fight back?” Lumina sat up, ignoring the rogue strands of golden-yellow hair jabbing at her eyes, and stomped her hooves. “Are you just so weak and helpless that you just accept whatever happens to you?”
No response came from the damned computer, not even a ‘please restate your command.’ Lumina sat there on her water-logged carpet and stared up at the machine.
Anger boiled in Lumina, and she barred any thoughts of forgiveness from her mind. That stupid machine should have known better.
After a time, cooler thoughts prevailed. She pushed all her anger down into a lump beside her heart, and when she did, shame took its place. At the moment his engines weren’t firing on full power, but he was still her friend. Her only friend, really. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and pushed her mane back behind her ears.
“Hey, look, I’m really sorry I kicked you,” Lumina said, “and for shooting off two of your arms. I don’t suppose it really matters much to you, but if it’s all the same, I’ll get those reattached in a little bit. I’m also really sorry for calling you stupid. For the amount of processing power you have right now, you’re actually doing a really good job.
“The mess in the observation deck, here, and everywhere else around the ship, that was all my fault. You were just trying your best. I really should know better than to lash out like that. It’s just that, well, that book over there was all I had left of somepony very important to me.
“You see, when I was very little I thought I could do magic.” Lumina chuckled.
“I know, it’s stupid, but I actually thought I could make things move with my horn.” She pointed to the top of her head. “I thought I was something magical, like a wizard or maybe even an Element. My mom was always really supportive, and I think she might have even believed me, but my dad, well, he was a stallion of science and didn’t want to hear about it. My parents fought relentlessly over this, and eventually they split up. I don’t know all the details of what happened, but I never saw her very much after that. When we left home we had to leave her behind. That book, that soggy mess on my bed, that was all I have left of her."
After that, Lumina was silent for long while, she didn’t even think Animus had the faintest clue what she was saying.
“I’ve been through a lot these past couple of days, that’s all. You’ll just have to be a little patient with me.” Lumina laughed again. “What am I doing? You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Animus’s robot arms rotated in place, almost as if it were turning to face her.
“You are not alone.” All that time, it said nothing, and in all honesty Lumina didn’t expect it to stay to even maintain the illusion of listening, but when he finally spoke, he brought the first smile to her face in a long time.
Lumina whispered back: “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, Lumina got up, and searched a nearby supply cabinet for power tools. She didn’t find what she needed to reattach the robotic arms, but she found a set of replacements, and over the course of the evening, Lumina replaced the broken parts. Good as new, she hoped.
Lumina abandoned her room for the time being. She gathered up some spare blankets, her stake gun, and a pillow from her closet and took the hyperlift to the AI core. There, she spread out her things on the grated floor and made a bed for herself.
“I came up to see you, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” Lumina touched the remains of his quantum processor with her hoof and leaned in for a hug. “I always thought space travel would be easy, just a bunch of zipping around and flashy lights. Nopony said it would be this hard.”
Over the next hour Lumina filled Animus in on the details of her trek into the alien ruins. When she finished, she sat down on her blankets, closed her eyes, and searched for that quiet place in her head. She visualized light pouring in through her horn, just like her mother taught her. After a few minutes her horn began to ache.
Don't stop now, said a voice in her head. You’re so close. Keep going a little more.
Why, what’s going to happen? Lumina asked.
The aching gave way to a deep pressure that flowed down her spine and into her heart, and wherever the light travel it brought a pulse. The pulse had a rhythm, a frequency that it vibrated on. But Lumina ignored it. Through it all she kept her focus on the light. Even as the pulse expanded to every place in her body, she never let the sensations distract her.
Flash.
Lumina opened her eyes.
White light poured out of her head and filled the room, then it retreated, and left Lumina tingling throughout her entire body. Her horn throbbed.
“What?” she shouted at the darkness and the silent computers. “Did I really just…” Lumina couldn’t finish the question.
Yes, you did.
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You wait for one chapter and two come along at once
This just keeps getting better and better.
Alright, I just finished you fic, and it's pretty interesting so far. I find your story to be very interesting and find myself eagerly anticipating what happens next
. On the other hand, you seem to have the same problem I have in that you need more stuff to fill out the chapters a little better. I feel that they're good, but you could explore the dynamic between the doll and Lumina and the one between Lumina and Animus a little more thoroughly. Sorry if my analysis wasn't as lengthy as yours
, it's just that you made very few mistakes. Other than what I just posted, it's very close to being a great fic 
. Keep up the good work my friend.
Thank you for sharing with us this wonderful story !
I have a question regarding worldbuilding, but please do not answer it if answer will contain spoilers :)
There were mentioned invasion by the Pegasus Tribe. If this is far future and not alt universe - genes should be mixed enough during equestrian period, that there will often happen other tribe foals even in families consisting purely of pegasi. So question is: what pegasus tribe is: society consisting purely of pegasi (what do they do with non-pegasus foals in that case?); society with pegasus majority; or mixed society inspired some flight/fight pegasus ideology (quite interesting might be for space pirates or anarchists) ?
2206046 It's a pegasus majority, and though there are still plenty of earth ponies and unicorns on their worlds, the government is dominated by pegasi.
I really enjoyed this story, especially the first chapter. Wonderful interactions between Lumina and Animus. :D
Review from authors helping authors in return for you having kindly reviewed mine first.
Pros:
Alright first of all this fic reminded me that its been far too long since I read sci fi. Now for the pros.
Very good interaction between Lumina and Animus, I was curious how you write it now that Animus is basically running on 1% which was a drastic fall from their previous interactions but I believe you wrote the interaction between them very well. Luminas frustration at the situation together with remembering him as her friend, take that and the occasional glimpse of real intelligence from Animus and I am left wondering how much of him still is available.
Also as far as I can notice you're doing well with showing instead of telling your story, and the occasions where you do tell part of it doesn't feel forced or redundant to me. Merely interesting information as the current universe in which Lumina live in is revealed.
Now I'm no technological genius but I found the sci fi setting to be well written, carrying with it that futuristic sensation without going overboard with any kind of miracle machines.
And finally, it's an interesting story. Simple as that, I am curious exactly what it is that Lumina has found, who was it that shot her down and other questions alongside those. Nothing like interesting questions to be answered to grab ones interest, well mine at least.
Cons:
I'm sorry here but I don't think I can come up with much at all actuall, I'm not happy about it as it makes me seem lazy and criticism is what most authors most hope for when receiving these reviews. The only thing I can come up with are some slight grammatical errors that I take up in the grammar score. I simply enjoyed the story and couldn't find anything to nitpick about really.
Grammar score:
All in all this story flows out quite well, however as far as my english grammar can carry me I spotted some small errors that throw one of a bit. However that is mostly just simple stuff such as using the wrong word at one location, forgetting an "a" or "the" in the sentence. Simple stuff like that which can easily be fixed by skimming through it one more time. There was one occasion where I felt a comma instead of a dot would have worked better, however that was merely a single instance and I am far from mastering where to place proper punctuations so I might be wrong, I just noticed it broke of the flow for me when I encountered it. All in all, just simple errors that easily happens so I give it a 9/10 in grammar.
Notes:
Not much to add besides what I already said, so I just repeat this. This is a very enjoyable story and I am eagerly awaiting more, I tried to find some more cons to mention however I failed in that regard, if somebody else makes a review in the future I hope they fare better with that than I have.
I have thoroughly enjoyed what I have read so far! This really inspires me to write
However, a couple of things.
1. If it is 180K outside, despite what I'm assuming a limited sunlit world, and the sun fades out like you mention, wouldn't the temperature drop to something so low that it would freeze her suit?
2. I'd be scared lifeless if that centipede machine disappeared. Is she really that fearless?
Just my thoughts on these, its nothing really. But I thought this was a great story. Please continue!
2219049
I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! Knowing that people are getting so much out of this fic has really made the long hours and months of work well worth it. I hope that you're just as happy with the chapters to come.
As for point number 1, I really don't know how her spacesuit works exactly. I do know that ponies have been perfecting the technology over the course of many thousands of years, so I'm pretty much going to justify it as super advanced and time proven tech.
And to address your other point, that's why she got out of there right a way. I'm probably going to revisit that scene a little bit, and play up the terror the centipede invokes, when I sit down to make some revisions to the fic as a whole (which will be next week sometime), but I'm not going to change the "what happens" in that scene.
Thank you for the feedback!
2222548 I hope moar chapters soon?
If you need, I'm totally happy to edit or whatever. 
Additionally, I totally agree to keep the centipede part. I was like wigging out and was screaming at her to leave. Just needs a small tweak, in my opinion.
2223820
Thank you, the feedback is most appreciated, and I never turn down assistance when it's offered. Yeah, if you see something that you think could use improvement, point it out and I'll take it under consideration.
All in all, so far it's really good, I don't see to much wrong with what I've read so far. There is one sentence that didn't make a whole lot of sense though.
"The hefty of her saddlebags weighed down her steps and dug into her back. It was unrelenting, and caused her to reconsider the excursion."
I think "hefty" might not be the right word. Maybe you meant "heft" or "weight"?
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/328/957/498.png
Lumina: "Eeenope."
2320712
Thank you thank you THANK YOU~!
I love you so hard right now for all of that.
Also, I giggled when you said 'plot hole'.
"Millennias" isn't actually a word -- "millennia" the plural form of the word "millennium", and you can't pluralize a plural like that. You probably want just "millennia".
"Closed the navigated to the" doesn't parse. I suspect you started to write one thing and ended up writing another halfway through, as it looks like it should be just "navigated to the".
"Request to reworded" doesn't work tense-wise. I'd recommend something along the lines of "request for rewording".
Err, what? How could she know that it was alive at this point? All she knows is that it's hot, and plenty of things can be hot without being alive.
loving the story, so sad to see her book ruined though.. all she had left.. first Animus, now that...
>That book, that soggy mess on my bed, that was all I have left of her
"have" → "had"
So Lumina can use magic. And she's trapped on an unknown world with what might be an alien centipede.
All right. I'm game.
Then he is bad scientist, because magic is branch of science.