Kriegschwein

Kriegschwein t1_j6n806k wrote

My morning this day went awry the first minute I woke up.

For a few past years, I had a habit - when I woke up, I checked my favorite news channel in Mailgram. This day, however, I wasn't able to do so - because nothing in my house had Internet connection.

Nor WiFi, nor 4G worked. I was a bit begrudged about it, but whatever - I could live without it for a day. More so, my ISP and mobile provider were the same company, so I just assumed something went wrong on their end (again). I was in no mood to argue with them at 6:30 AM and was going to work, so I postponed this problem to a later date.

Then, I decided to cook some eggs. And - surprise! - no electricity either.

Well, at least it explained things - if it was city wide outage, mobile towers with internet are obviously out of commission too. And, if it was a city wide problem, that meant what I didn't need to argue with anyone myself. At least some good came out of it.

The other problem was, however, that I lived on 12 floor of an apartment building. If there was no electricity, that meant what I had to take stairs. But I just counted it as morning exercise.

Finally, after stairs took all my breath away, I was able to leave the building. I worked in local school as a "Fundamentals of life safety" teacher. Basically, I told young and silly schoolboys and girls how not to get lost in the forest, what to do with contraceptives, and how to bandage a wound in critical situation. So, I was pretty health myself - as an example for kids and teenagers. However, taking stairs almost took me out, but I prevailed.

Luckily, my school was nearby, 8 minutes at brisk walk pace. You would think that if there is power outage, where would be no classes today. But 1) If outage was for a long time, we need to use schools as community gathering centers 2) It is not like we need electricity to give classes. We are not that rich to give pads or something to children - books here were still go-to. In other words - even if had to work only with sunlight, I still had my classes to give.

And only when I started walking to school I noticed something.

The mountains were gone.

See, our small city was located in Urals - so, the mountains were constantly giving us their monumental shadow. And now, they were gone.

I tried clearing my eyes, thinking maybe I was just too tired after this morning's exercise. But nope - mountains didn't appear.

A feeling of dread started creeping on me.

I sped up my walk to school and noticed a lot of people were headed to it too - both students and their parents alike. Some of these parents, I knew for sure, had an early morning jobs and should be on their way at this time of day.

I started running.

By the time I reached a school, a crowd was at school's yard. I saw our principal, Ursula Pavlovna - a stoic, 50-something woman, with stern gaze, endless love for children, and an utter hatred for people who tried to meddle in her school affairs. In other words - great woman.

She saw me approaching and waved me to come. People in crowd saw me too and started to give way - I was pretty known person around these parts and no one tried to block me.

Only when I approached the principal, I noticed that our local policemen were already here, as well as most of the school's stuff. Even Katya, the young, always late math teacher, was here - all anxious and all.

"So, anyone know where the mountains went? I know our city is not pretty, it is not that bad to just leave us"

I tried to discharge the situation a bit, but most people present just tensed up.

"No one knows anything" - Ursula Pavlovna replied. - "But considering how much education you need to be a government official these days, I doubt some of them will notice the difference even if these mountains fell on their heads. No offense, Alexei"

"None taken", - I replied. Before taking on the teacher's role, I was working for the government, but that is a story for another time.

And when, this happened.

A bright light started shining right above the city. It was brighter than the sun - but, strangely enough, it wasn't scorching even one bit. Then, the voice came:

"People of... " - a noise of shuffling papers started to come from the light.

"Krasnogranite!!!" - someone shouted from the crowd. I think it was a voice of Lenya, local prankster.

"Yes, thank you." - the voice replied. "So, people of Krasnogranite. I need to inform that due to a technical issue, caused by unseen consequences during an important magic experiment of our country, you were transported from your homeworld here.

Don't worry - our specialists are working as fast as possible to solve this incident. If all goes well, you will be home in no time!

For the time being, try no to leave the boundaries of your cities, which are now marked with the bright blue line. We don't hold responsibility for anything what happens to anyone who crosses this line.

Additional instructions and guidance will be provided later. We hope this situation will be resolved safely for everyone involved.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this incident. We ask for your patience until the matter is resolved. Thank you for your understanding.

Office of High Monarch Hurdun, team of magic related incidents.

Best regards,"

Aaaand the light was gone. Puff.

The silence was tangible in the school yard. Everyone was afraid to move and to utter even a single word.

"So," - Ursula Pavlovna broke the dread, - government officials are dicks here too, aren't they?"

Someone started laughing at it. Then I realized it was me. People started to join in too.

Yeah, we are maybe stuck in another world. There will be definitely a lot of problems, some even we never saw before.

But some of them were definitely too close to home.

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