Author: Tower Curator

 

Sylvara Astra clutched at the stump of her left arm, teeth clenched in pain as she staggered through the forest.

Tybalt was dead. Sylvara would bid him good riddance if his traitorous final act hadn’t cost them so much. Then again, those golden beams had opened up the city of Elmshadow well enough on their own. His help had hardly been needed.

Ludwig had been missing since the day Elmshadow fell. The chronicler could be dead or he could have made away with the retreating armies. Sylvara didn’t know and, with the way things were going, she doubted she would ever know. She could hope but that wasn’t much consolation.

A thin ray of gold blasted a tree to smithereens to Sylvara’s left. Splinters of wood exploded outward, catching her in the side of her face. Snow clinging to the branches scattered to the air as the rest of the tree came down. Her boots slid on the slick ground, forcing her to throw herself backward to avoid being crushed.

What was consolation was knowing that the Evestani army was without their heavy hitter.

He had been chasing her for the last three days.

She wasn’t sure how much longer that would last.

With the snow in the air swiftly settling, Sylvara threw herself behind another tree. It obviously wouldn’t help protect her but she could hope that it would obscure her. The Evestani purifier equivalent was not infallible. She would never have survived if it was.

Sylvara focused on her breathing, trying to still it. Three days with no rest, no food, no sleep. She was at her limits. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to seek shelter. Either she would meet her end at the golden rays or she would collapse into the snowy ground and never awaken. Now that she wasn’t moving, closing her eyes alone was enough to make her feel like they would never open again. Her eyelids were so heavy.

Sylvara chomped down on her own cheek. The pain was enough to snap her eyes open once again.

Not yet.

She couldn’t die yet.

Reaching into the tattered remains of her inquisitorial uniform, she withdrew a long strip of white paper. Despite the dirt, sweat stains, ash, and everything else, the paper still looked pristine as she removed it from the internal pocket. Lettering marked with a luminous ink glittered on the surface, though the actual words were impossible for mortals to decipher.

A miracle, captured and contained for later use.

If she were going to die, she would just have to bring down that Evestani purifier with her.

Sylvara tensed. The sound of snow crunching under light footsteps made her suck in a breath and hold it.

“Done running?”

Sylvara grimaced at the lighthearted tone of the slightly accented voice. It sounded like a child. It was a child—she had seen him during her fighting flight. Perhaps no more than thirteen years of age, a young boy with glowing box-like tattoos around his bald head. But hidden within that young face was a relentless pursuer.

She had thought the Evestani purifier would give up after the first day. Even if it was using the same magic that the armies used to avoid the cold, it was still a child. They wore easily. Surely they grew as hungry and thirsty as Sylvara felt.

A bright, golden light filled the forest. For a brief moment, Sylvara figured she wouldn’t see the next moment.

More snow filled the air as a tree crashed to the ground somewhere behind her. It sounded like a large tree but she didn’t see a single branch. It must have fallen away from her.

She didn’t know exactly where the Evestani purifier was but if it fired off another beam, she might not get a chance to do anything.

Sylvara bit down on the paper and then used her hand to rip the sheet in two.

Blue-white light wrapped around Sylvara, bringing comfort and strength. Both had been sorely lacking in the last few days. It wouldn’t last long. Seconds. Maybe a full minute if she was worthy. She pivoted around the tree just in time to avoid a golden beam blasting through it that would have taken her head off.

The boy stood in the open between two trees, one of which had been knocked askew by the first falling tree. Missing one arm—taken by Arkk if the man’s testimony had been accurate—he adjusted the angle of the other, aiming it toward Sylvara.

She moved in a blur, crossing thirty paces in three smooth steps. The ray of gold went high and wide as the boy struggled to follow, blasting a hole in the forest’s canopy.

Sylvara slammed the shoulder of her missing arm into the boy’s chest, pinning him against one of the trees. She grabbed his wrist with her arm and wrenched it aside. A series of tangible cracks filled the air as his wrist and elbow broke along with his shoulder.

He didn’t cry out. He didn’t scream or shout or even get a little watery in his eyes.

He grinned.

Sylvara lifted a leg, slamming her knee into his side with enough force to pulp bone. She clipped the tree she had him pinned to, filling the air with splinters again.

The impact sent him skidding across the snowy forest floor, slipping from her grip with a few extra broken bones in his arm. One leg twisted in the complete wrong direction as he came to a stop.

Sylvara stepped forward, ready to stomp the boy’s head until it popped, only to stagger.

The blue-white light surrounding Sylvara faded away. She felt better. Not healed—her arm was still missing and she could still feel that gash in her thigh—but better. More energetic, more alert, more awake. Maybe that wouldn’t last, it could just be a brief burst of adrenaline, but she thought she might be able to stumble her way to a village.

But first…

She clenched her teeth and balled her fist.

The boy was on the ground. He couldn’t flex his wrist let alone move his arm. He just stared, one leg twitching at random.

“There will be more,” he said, tone almost conversational. There was a note of strain but nothing that indicated he was in pain. “You saw it, didn’t you? That hole in the world?”

She had seen it. It was the only reason she was alive right now. The sky broke right when this purifier had her cornered. It had distracted him long enough for her to get away. Not just away but get a lead that led to this three-day nightmare.

Sylvara didn’t respond. She moved over, drawing a short dagger. The end of the blade had broken off at some point. It would still work.

“I imagine we’ll be allies when we next meet. The Ecclesiarch will have seen it. How could he not? Whatever fear gripped his heart when he heard of Evestani’s armies marching across your Kingdom must pale in comparison to what he must have felt that day. You’ll have new orders to work with me. Won’t that be a treat… The world is ending if we don’t stop it. You realize that, right?”

Sylvara said nothing as she knelt next to the purifier, gazing down into his glowing gold eyes. She raised her dagger.

“Well, see you around, I suppose.”

The light in his eyes faded before Sylvara could strike. His interlocking square tattoos on his head faded and dimmed.

A scream split the air, startling Sylvara back a step. It wasn’t just a shout. It was a cry of pure and absolute pain, terror, and agony. The boy’s brown eyes darted around, filling with tears. He tried to move but what little he managed only made him scream harder. His voice was already turning to a rasp as he ruined his throat, only pausing his scream to suck in fresh air.

What manner of evil was this?

That purifier… hadn’t been this boy from the start? Possession was the first thing that came to mind. Arkk had said it back in Elmshadow but she hadn’t believed it. Only ghosts and gods could possess others and neither fit with what she had seen. Those tattoos…

A fresh scream startled Sylvara from her thoughts.

She clenched her teeth.

The boy’s body was battered and broken. He couldn’t move. Even if she dragged him to a village, she doubted he would survive. In the unlikely case that he could be nursed back to health… what would stop that purifier from possessing the boy once more?

Leaning forward once more with her blade at the ready, she could see the awful horror in the boy’s teary eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

She dragged her blade across his throat.

The screams in the forest cut out.

After a minute, the gurgling died off.

Allies, that purifier had said? To stop the end of the world?

Sylvara stood, arm trembling.

Exhaustion was setting back in. But she wasn’t dead yet.

And she couldn’t let herself die here. There was a purifier in this world that needed to be excised.

Duke Levi Woldair paced back and forth in front of his throne, listening to the court jabber on. Advisors, nobles, and generals all sat at the long table, giving out various reports. The vast map of the Duchy, spread out over the table, was covered in little painted markers denoting active combat, force concentrations, and settlements that had not reported in as of late.

The initial foray into the Duchy—His Duchy—had slowed in the last week. Ever since that…

That…

Levi stumbled just thinking back to it. He tried to blot it out of his mind. He had seen the mind healers of the Abbey but they had done nothing. If anything, they were as disturbed as he was, if not more so. If they couldn’t help themselves, how could they help him?

It was like merely seeing it had torn a hole into his mind just as it had torn a hole into the sky. He could almost feel it in the back of his skull, writhing and twisting.

Shaking his head, Levi turned and focused on the table, seeking distraction from the dire events bearing down on the Duchy.

Olah Faran stood at the table, gesticulating with both hands and the entire top half of her body as she made a report. King Abe Lafoar was marshalling his forces to reinforce the Duchy but they had run into weather trouble. The cold winter was not kind to large armies or their supply lines.

Useless.

The Duchy bled. Broken in two. If the King or his precious princes thought the barbarians at the gate would stop at his borders, they were dead wrong. Yet they dragged their feet. Evestani’s Golden Order had come up with a solution for the cold, surely the Abbey of the Light could as well.

Levi looked around the room, scowling. Normally, such a meeting would warrant the presence of Pontiff Bernardin or one of his underlings as a representative of the Abbey. Ever since that…

That thing.

Ever since that thing had happened, the Abbey’s upper level leaders had holed up in their church and had hardly left. He hadn’t the slightest idea of what they were playing at. The Duchy didn’t have time to let them—or him—have panic attacks. Everything was burning down now.

Levi clenched his teeth as Olah took her seat, allowing Viscount Wesley to take the stand. The Viscount started blathering on about droll matters entirely irrelevant to the war effort. Who cared that some nobody village out in the east had been hit by raiders? That happened all the time. None of the villages would be standing anywhere if Evestani’s army resumed their marching.

That was the one good thing about that thing. Evestani’s momentum had ground to a halt. Their main force stood firm just past the Elm mountains but the Duchy was rallying everyone they had. The army had already met up with White Company’s forward force. The Order of the Claymores was merging with them. First Legion and the Burning Shadow mercenary companies were keeping some smaller Evestani detachments at bay.

Why this, why now, why attack?

Things had been going so well. Yes, there was some bad history between the nations. But that was history of a previous generation. He had met the sultan and shook the man’s hand. He had even been set to wed the second daughter of Evestani’s sultan. Had they accepted his gifts of food and resources knowing they would use those resources against him?

Those were a spiral of thoughts he had been down many times in the past few weeks. He tried not to dwell on them now.

“Astrologist June believes we will see a warming in the weather in around six weeks,” the representative from the Cliff Magical Academy said. “There will be a brief resurgence of cold about a week after followed by steadily warming weather after that.”

Six weeks.

Levi stared at the representative. An older warlock by the name of Duvat. It had been nine weeks since winter settled in but only about six since the war began. In just six weeks, Evestani had ripped through half the Duchy, free to move at will thanks to their magic while the defending forces had to contend with the weather. If they got their momentum again, they could be at Cliff City before the first snow melt.

Even once the weather started to warm, apparently in six weeks, it wasn’t like winter would vanish overnight. Some areas of the Duchy would stay cold. The north especially. Cliff City, tucked in the shadow of its namesake, often had snow on the ground well into when the rest of the land started growing their spring crops.

Would it be too late? How soon would the King’s army be able to join up with the defense? It was a long way between Cliff City and the heart of Chernlock. The King’s army was moving but not fast.

They were likely to show up too late.

He turned to the side, opening his mouth to speak to his most trusted advisor.

Only to stop.

She wasn’t there. Not anymore.

Trying not to scowl, the Duke merely waved a hand, gesturing for the next speaker to take the stand and report on whatever else was going wrong at the moment.

Would it kill them to have some good news for once?

“We received a notice via Swiftwing harpy,” the Great Marshall said. A young man for his station, even younger than Levi was. “It claims to be from… The Avatar of the Golden Heart.”

Levi’s eyes scanned around the room, once again wondering where the representative of the Abbey was. This sounded like a religious matter and, until recently, he had very little interest in religion beyond paying lip service to keep important people happy. Presumably, this avatar was something akin to the Ecclesiarch of the Abbey of the Light. The leader of the Golden Order.

So he nodded. “And? I presume there was more to the letter than an introduction.”

The Great Marshall placed the letter on the table. It was too far away for Levi to see the actual text but he could easily see the large, loopy lettering in gold on its surface. “In short, it demands our immediate and unconditional surrender followed by our full support in consolidating our forces against the one that threatens to rip our world into pieces.”

Levi flinched despite himself. The threat had to be referring to that thing. There was no other possibility. “‘Rip the world to pieces.’ Those were the exact words used?”

The Great Marshall nodded his head.

“Hand it over,” Levi said, stepping toward the large table. The Great Marshall, seated halfway down the table, passed it along. Each of the advisors quickly glanced over it, eyes on it exactly as long as it took to pass to the next one down.

Levi accepted it from his spymaster, a man he had once thought to be competent before all this mess with Evestani. He stared down at the golden lettering, eyes roaming over the text. He didn’t quite internalize it, however, thoughts swirling about distracting him from the actual words.

Immediate surrender. Threat to the world. Those were a dangerous combination to put to paper. Especially here among the leaders of the Duchy. If someone got it into their head that this threat could only be resolved through Evestani or just that surrendering would see them earning concessions, he would be in danger of waking up to find a knife buried in his back.

“Evestani has slaughtered our people, our armies, and our fellow kin with no regard for weeks. Now they have the gall to call for cooperation? This ‘Avatar’ of the Golden Order was wise to send a letter. Had he come himself or even sent a messenger, their skulls would be on a pike outside the gates.”

Levi drew himself up, walking back and forth to force his advisors’ eyes on him. “The Abbey is not unaware of this threat. They are assessing the situation and the proper response to what we all witnessed several days ago,” he said, not entirely telling the truth. The Abbey was probably doing that but they had neglected to inform him of their goings on. Much to his chagrin. “We will follow their plans in dealing with whatever threat there may or may not be. But we will never bow to the slaughterers of the very people who have placed trust in us to see them to safety.

“If any of you have objections or, Light forbid, sympathy for these—”

A rumbling in the floor cut off his speech. Levi’s eyes widened even as those at the table stood, fear obvious in their faces.

The manor had been attacked before. But that had been through infiltration. He had gone over every last individual with access to the manor and ensured there wouldn’t be a repeat. Only the most essential servants, guards, and staff remained behind and only the trustworthy from those categories. His staffing had dropped by three-quarters. There was no chance they had missed someone.

Yet he could hear alarmed shouts coming from outside the throne room.

Guards were moving. His advisors and leaders were backing away, all except the Great Marshall who had drawn his sword. His most trusted bodyguards were already moving around him, readying a defensive line that would allow him to retreat out of one of the side doors.

Levi didn’t move, locked in place. He stared in the direction of the noise, teeth grit.

The far doors to the throne room blasted open, throwing back the two guards who had been working to secure them. Immediately, a sweltering heat rushed through the chamber. Orange fire licked at the walls as three figures moved into the now-open doorway.

The light from the fire was too bright, too intense to get a good look at the figures. It swept around them as they almost casually walked further into the room. The heat alone was enough to keep all the guards backing away and yet they weathered it without apparent difficulty. All he could see were their shadows and, as they approached…

Their eyes.

One stood wreathed in fire, eyes glowing like the embers in a raging bonfire. One stood with red eyes, glowing as a demon’s might. The last…

The last had eyes like burning suns, set into a slice of the night’s sky.

Just like that…

That…

That thing.

 

 

 

Despite the looming threat of the so-called Protector, work continued within the Underworld.

A few things had changed. They were focusing on smaller areas that could be built up quickly while under plenty of protection. Lookouts patrolled constantly. Drills kept the guards on their toes. Zullie had even taken to cycling through everyone on guard duty, ensuring that they could all cast at least one lightning bolt without passing out.

Not everyone had passed that little test but at least those who hadn’t now knew that they needed to be sure that their lightning bolts would be debilitating or else they needed to not use the magic at all. It also let them set up every patrol so that at least two people capable of casting the lightning spell were in each group.

They had seen two more of the creatures. The same, carapace-covered tall monsters that all shared the same mind. So far, they had done nothing but stand and stare, watching the portal. Arkk was content to let them for the time being. They weren’t attacking. As far as he could tell, they weren’t gathering their forces to marshal an attack.

They simply watched.

The being he had spoken with said that exploring the world would put him in peril. Perhaps, as long as he didn’t leave the portal, they would leave him alone. He would have to leave eventually but for now, he could hold back on seeking that source of power.

Savren thought they were curious more than aggressive, not that he still had an active connection to their gestalt. He was still trying to sort through his thoughts and pick out what he remembered about them before passing out following the mind reading ritual. Arkk had apologized for putting him through that.

Savren shrugged it off. It, according to him, had been one of the most fascinating experiences of his life.

He had used different phrasing.

With the guard in place and no apparent danger in the immediate future—on either side of the portal since Hawkwood combined with the Duke’s men had managed to stall the Evestani’s relentless march—Arkk was experimenting.

A lot of things didn’t work in the Underworld due to the completely magic-saturated air. Ritual circles spontaneously activated, making them dangerous to be near unless specifically designed for this world, scrying failed, and gorgon couldn’t seem to petrify anything. Not even regular human volunteers.

He used a metal rod to draw a ritual circle into the orange dirt of the Underworld, sketching out a circle. A fist-sized glowstone from the fortress sat in the center, one dim and relatively lifeless. It had been completely dark before bringing it through the portal, but that had been several days ago and it was still practically black.

Glowstones stored magic and emitted it slowly in the form of light but they typically had to be mined deep underground in solid rock, which would keep their stored magic from leaking out. It was possible to charge them, but not easily. The average spellcaster would collapse from exhaustion well before even a small glowstone started glowing enough to function as even a middling light source. Glowstones weren’t uncommon but they weren’t common either, which was why most villages and even larger burgs had a plethora of candles, glowstones were only used in wealthy merchant homes and keeps.

Glowstones of a purity that would work for magic wands like the one Zullie used were even rarer and charging them up once the stone’s magic depleted was nearly impossible. That Zullie had one at all was something quite special.

Until now, hopefully.

Arkk drew out the ritual circle carefully, ensuring the venting components were drawn in well before any parts that would direct or control the magic. He worked from the inside out. Every little mark went down with hesitance. As soon as the array was complete enough, the ambient magic would activate it.

Sure enough, after one more swipe of his metal rod, an illumination coursed through the lines in the dirt. Arkk quickly dragged the rod through the dirt, finishing the component he had been working on. The glowstone in the center started brightening, its faint violet light turned intense.

Arkk didn’t stick around to watch any longer. He dove behind a sheet of metal set up just to the side of the array and covered his head with his hands.

And waited.

And waited.

He didn’t hear any snap, crackles, or pops. No explosions either. That was… good?

Arkk didn’t move from his position of cover. First, he looked down on himself with his Keeper link. That afforded him a view over the metal barrier.

The ritual circle was fully illuminated and, within it, the glowstone glowed a brilliant and almost white light. But it wasn’t exploding. On the opposite side of the circle from him, a slightly dimmer green light puffed with regularity. Like Old Man Kenton smoking his pipe after a hard day’s work in the fields, clouds of green flew up into the air. The motes dissipated after drifting a short distance, spreading back out into the ambient air.

Arkk waited another minute, just to check that the venting was working properly. Slowly, he stood and looked with his own eyes.

Glowing glowstone. Venting motes of magic. No explosions.

Good?

“Zullie,” Arkk called, standing and backing away a bit. “I think I got it.”

The witch, hunched over her own ritual circle well across the empty desert from Arkk, stood and adjusted her rectangular glasses. Her ritual circle was an attempt at getting the teleportation circles working in this world. Even if they just wanted to head to that nearby village again, it was a fair walk away. The idea that they could be ambushed by the Protector en route made the idea of teleporting straight there all the more appealing.

So far, she hadn’t been having any luck. The teleportation circles normally inscribed a mirror of themselves at the destination location to form the spatial link. Here and now, that distant inscription wasn’t working at all.

Although slightly more annoying, Zullie figured that manually drawing out the destination circle would work. However, that would require someone to trek out to the destination to do it. Better than nothing but…

Arkk shook his head and focused on his project as Zullie hurried over. Stormed over, more like. He made the cautious judgment not to ask how her teleportation circles were coming along.

“I think I got it working,” he said again as she stepped up alongside him.

“It hasn’t shattered this time,” she said with her teeth visibly clenched. Definitely not the time to ask about her project. “That’s an improvement.” It sounded like she had to fish that compliment out of her throat with a hook and ended up snagging her stomach on the way.

“I didn’t quite get the assortment array in place before it triggered but it seems to be working properly enough.”

“Didn’t I say to carve out the assortment array early on so that it wouldn’t be a problem?”

“I did that in the first few but…” Arkk gestured around him where the shards of other test glowstones were scattered around the outside of the circle. “I decided it was the least important component based on… ahh.. was it Razlegram’s theorem?”

“Razzlegere,” Zullie said, somewhat absently as she stalked around the circle. She used her own rod to, carefully, adjust a few markings on the inside of the ritual. The puff-puff-puff of the venting motes of magic steadied out into a smooth stream. The overall brightness of the glowstone in the middle dimmed along with it. Not enough to bring it down to a normal level, just enough that it didn’t look blinding.

“That looks better,” Arkk said, hoping the compliment in return might improve the witch’s mood. “Think this will work more permanently?”

“Possibly. Let’s see if we can extract the stone intact,” she said, stopping next to the metal shield that Arkk had hidden behind. Leaning up against it was a pair of long metal tongs that looked like oversized shears with flat pads on one end. She picked them up, stopped at the edge of the circle, and glanced back. “Actually, you do this.”

“Me?”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby. I’ll put up a projectile shield,” she said, turning and handing the tongs off to Arkk.

“The one that we can’t see through.”

“That thing is bright as the sun.” It wasn’t. “You’ll be able to see it.”

“Alright…”

A few uttered words from Zullie and the shifting haze of her projectile-blocking spell swiftly surrounded them. It was a good idea, Arkk had to admit. The whole reason for the metal shield was because these things tended to spontaneously explode. So, squinting at the bright light through the haze, he stretched the tongs out of the swirling sphere and grasped at the glowstone.

It took three tries but he managed to move it out of the circle and set it carefully down near the shield.

Zullie, kept up the shield for a moment longer as if worried that the glowstone would suddenly destabilize. When it didn’t, she dropped the shield and cautiously stepped closer. Taking the tongs from Arkk, she prodded it a few times, shrugged, and then picked it up with her bare hands.

“Oh. That’s a bit warm. Looks good though. Really good.” Her earlier irritation wasn’t anywhere in her tone. She started grinning. “You know what this means?”

“More magic wands. Maybe some capable of casting Electro Deus?”

“No. Well…” She paused in thought. “Maybe. But I wasn’t even thinking like that. No, these can power large rituals in place of people. Get a dozen of these and we could run that ritual again without other people—”

“We are not running the ritual again,” Arkk said.

“No, that’s not… Just an example. Any ritua—”

“Hold that thought,” Arkk said. Someone was calling to him over the employee link. It didn’t feel like an emergency. Nobody was hurt or in a fight.

It also felt distant. Not a problem in the Underworld then. He scanned through the fortress, making sure there were no problems there, before following the link further and further away. Aside from a handful of people he had stationed in the nearby burgs for the purpose of collecting mail, Arkk only knew of one employee that was away from Fortress Al-Mir.

He found himself looking in on Ilya. She looked fine. Safe. Healthier than she had the last time he had checked in on her. His relief turned to ice as he took in the greater picture of where she was. Of why she had called for him now after having spent the last month in the Duke’s manor.

Ilya sat in a small cell, containing only a pile of moldy hay and a bucket. Red-faced and angry, she shouted something at the door. The link didn’t let him hear what that something was.

“Your eyes are… doing that thing again,” Zullie said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. A blink of his eyes and he was back in the Underworld, standing next to the ritual circle. “Brighter than I’ve ever seen.”

Arkk didn’t even bother trying to calm himself down. Lightning crackled between his fingertips, the sound of which made Zullie take a step back.

“Arkk?”

“Get a sketch of the working design to the blacksmith. He’ll make us a permanent version like that boulder drop ritual.”

“What happened?”

“I have business in Cliff.”

“Oh? Oh. Is Ilya alright? Or did something happen to the Duke?”

“Ilya is… safe. For now. I’ll decide whether or not something needs to happen to the Duke when I get there.” He turned and started for the portal after checking on the location of a few other employees. “Let Rekk’ar and Olatt’an know that they have command until I return.”

“Hey,” she said, keeping up with his furious march, “if it is at all possible, would you mind stopping by the academy while you’re in the neighborhood? We’re almost out of the spell-quality glowstones I brought with me. The academy has a bunch of depleted ones sitting in storage.”

Arkk paused and looked to her. He didn’t want to delay for a moment. He didn’t want to search through the academy to find out where the storage area was or where in the storage room the glowstones would be. There were still three lesser servants in the back of the academy, fruitlessly searching for evidence of it being a proper fortress. He could redirect them but that would still leave them searching.

“Inform Rekk’ar and Olatt’an. The former is in the Underworld headquarters, the latter is in the fortress canteen. Meet at the teleportation room.”

“I’m going with you?” She glanced back to the ritual circle test area. “What about that?”

“It can wait,” he said, turning and continuing back through the portal. Zullie followed for a few steps before deciding not to pester him further at the moment. She broke off toward the nearly finished headquarters building.

As he made his way through the Underworld—the ritual circle test area was a safe distance away from anyone and anything that needed to survive an explosion—nobody approached him. In fact, most of his employees backed away, especially the newer recruits. The guards on either side of the archway remained stiff and didn’t turn their heads toward or away from him as if afraid that doing so might draw his ire.

A small part of him didn’t like them being so afraid of him. Even though his eyes were glowing, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t Arkk. At the same time, he had to mentally thank them for their awareness. If he suffered more delays, he likely would snap at them.

As soon as he stepped through the archway and made it into the comforting aura of Fortress Al-Mir, he teleported. He reappeared in the teleportation chamber, deep within the maze of wings he had been constructing throughout the Cursed Forest. Vezta appeared alongside him at the same time, not at all surprised or upset at having been pulled away from whatever she had been doing at the time—he hadn’t checked.

“Emergency?”

“Not life or death, yet. At least not for anyone a part of Fortress Al-Mir. I need a ritual chain to Cliff City, specifically the tunnel we had been planning on using for Plan D.” He held out his hand and pulled a crystal ball to his waiting palm, which he immediately handed over. “Once that is done,” he added as an afterthought, “a teleportation circle as close as you can reasonably get to the academy.”

“Understood,” Vezta said, bowing.

He didn’t stick around long enough to see her raise her head.

“Dakka,” he said, reappearing at the training room. The orc in question sat up from where she had been doing exercises on the floor, took one look at him, and immediately scrambled to her feet, back unusually stiff. “Teleportation chamber, five minutes.”

“Gear up?”

“That would be best. Get two of the gorgon to go with you. Zharja and Jann. You three are on protection detail. Zullie will be there shortly. Follow her directions.”

“Sir.” She nodded her head.

By the time she looked back up, he was out of the training room. He used the metal ritual rod to knock against a warm metal door.

“Enter.”

He didn’t bother opening the door before teleporting inside.

Agnete, resting on a cracked stone slab that looked a little too soft to be actual stone. The nearly molten rock deformed as the former purifier sat up. For all his urgency, Arkk had to take a moment and wonder if that kind of bed was comfortable. Then again, any normal bed would burst into flames the moment Agnete relaxed so perhaps it was the only choice. She could hold the heat in—she had done so while working with Vrox—but maybe trying to keep the heat down was worse than a molten slab of rock.

Shaking his head, he refocused, noting the way the scars on Agnete’s face started burning a little brighter.

“Trouble?”

“Maybe. Are you feeling up to an expedition?”

“In the Underworld?”

Arkk shook his head. “The Duke’s manor in Cliff.”

“Are we expecting a fight?”

“I would prefer to be in and out before anyone notices but best to be prepared. That’s why I’m here. I’m planning on going immediately.”

Agnete swung her legs off her slab, leaning over as she ran her fingers through her wild black hair. Glowing red streaks trailed behind her fingers before dimming back to the dark black. “I’m good for this,” she said before looking down at herself. “We have time for me to get dressed?”

“Call for me when you’re ready. I’ll move you straight there.”

Arkk teleported back to the ritual room. There were a series of six ritual circles for teleportation outside the fortress. Each headed off in a different direction. Two went directly to the nearby burgs, one headed west, though that one was marked with a sign reading ‘DO NOT USE’ for the time being. They had destroyed all the ritual circles in that direction to keep any possibility of the Evestani army from finding them.

The circle chain leading toward Cliff City had been partially destroyed as they hadn’t wanted any inquisitors to stumble across them. Vezta, out in the wilderness between the fortress and Cliff, was almost finished repairing the line.

A mental command to one of the dormant lesser servants that he had left in the city on their previous visit woke it from its slumber. They had come up with several plans for various situations, mostly escape routes to get away from the Duke or inquisitors.

The tunnel for Plan D dug deep underground, burrowing below the moat around the Duke’s manor. It didn’t reach all the way to the manor—they hadn’t wanted to alarm anyone too early—so it needed to be extended. The lesser servant in the tunnel promptly began eating into the rock, digging at an upward slope.

As long as they had done their planning right, the tunnel would open directly into the manor’s dungeons.

Agnete pinged him over the link just as Vezta finished the final teleportation circle at the far end of the tunnel. They couldn’t go too close to the manor for fear of warding but the walk through the tunnel wouldn’t take long. He teleported Agnete straight to him. She now stood dressed in thick boots and a black uniform similar to the one she had worn as an inquisitor. The ends of its sleeves were already smoking.

“Just us?” she asked, looking around.

“Vezta is at the far end,” Arkk said, gesturing to the Cliff portal.

“Operational parameters?”

“Rescue. I’ll explain more once we’re there. There shouldn’t be any danger before the final portal.”

Agnete nodded, stepped into the ritual circle, and flashed her magic into the ring. She vanished with a small puff of smoke, taking the heat with her.

Arkk considered waiting a moment. Dakka and the gorgon were on their way. However, Zullie had only just disentangled herself from explaining the situation to Rekk’ar. Olatt’an wouldn’t take as long but even that was longer than Arkk wanted to stick around for.

Zullie would figure things out on her own.

Arkk stepped into the teleportation ritual. The comfort of the fortress remained behind as he reappeared in a dark chamber, lit only by a few dim glowstones. The underground room wasn’t part of the fortress, it was just a waystation keeping the ritual circles hidden. He stepped out of one circle and into the next.

A dozen hops like that and he found himself in the final tunnel. It lacked any glowstones to keep it lit, leaving the long tunnel in complete darkness. That didn’t stop him from seeing either of his companions. Agnete’s smoldering scars and the embers in her eyes let him see her. Vezta’s burning yellow suns were a little more obvious, dotted all around her body.

Both turned to him upon his arrival. With his glowing red eyes, he stuck out as well.

He almost wished some of the Duke’s guards were down in the tunnel with them, just to hear them scream as they ran off. Perhaps they should drag the Duke himself into the tunnel, kicking and screaming. Alya too—he couldn’t believe that she let them lock up her daughter. What had happened to the woman who took him in when his parents died? Had she always been like this and he just hadn’t noticed in his youth? Or had she always been a snake in sheep’s wool?

Arkk was beyond livid at the moment and didn’t even bother trying to think lighter thoughts.

A swirl of flames wrapped around Agnete’s outstretched hand, illuminating the tunnel and ruining the effect. It was probably for the best. The floor in the tunnel wasn’t the smooth tiles of Fortress Al-Mir. They didn’t want to trip over the uneven rock. Especially once they reached the downward slope that would take them under the moat.

“Let’s go,” Arkk said.

As the trio walked, he explained everything that had led to this. The call from Ilya and the cell she seemed to be held inside. He didn’t know the whys, hows, or any other reason she would be locked up. Up until now, she had been treated as an honored guest as far as he had been able to tell. The sudden shift…

Could the Duke have been assassinated and now Evestani was taking over? Mind magics? Threats of that golden beam striking the city if they didn’t comply?

A thousand other possibilities ran through Arkk’s mind. All were equally useless. They would find out soon enough.

Or…

Not?

“Vezta,” Arkk said, pausing in the tunnel. “The lesser servant has hit a roadblock.”

“A roadblock? Underground?”

“Its teeth are sliding off the stone. It was eating through it just fine but now it’s like… as if I were trying to eat the rock.”

“Magically reinforced stone,” Vezta nodded immediately. “Like the walls of Fortress Al-Mir. I suppose we should have expected this. Good thing we didn’t need to use the escape route earlier.”

“We need it now,” he said through grit teeth.

The heat in the tunnel turned scalding, forcing Arkk to take a step away from Agnete. “My flames melted the enchantments off the fortress walls,” she said, burning embers looking at Arkk.

Arkk hesitated to say anything. Turning up the heat in an enclosed space didn’t sound like all that smart of an idea. He hadn’t even brought the ice marble with them—Agnete had never displayed any signs of needing it. But she was right. Her fire had melted the walls of Fortress Al-Mir during their invasion, severing the Heart’s connection to the false fortress. If the magical reinforcement here were anything similar, she would be able to eat through it.

“I’m redirecting the lesser servant,” Arkk said. “I think toward the ballroom. My only real point of reference is Ilya, though, so it could be off. I don’t want to break into the dungeons and flash boil Ilya or any other captives that might be down there.”

“Master, we might have to fight through some of the manor if we don’t emerge in the dungeons.”

Arkk nodded. He had already figured that. Between his lightning bolts, Agnete’s flames, and Vezta’s Veztaness… They would have to have something special to stop their group. They were the three singular powerhouses of Fortress Al-Mir.

If they didn’t care about killing their opponents, he doubted anything short of an army would stop them. While he did not doubt that enough reserves were reinforcing the city in case the Evestani army split apart and some detachments went through to Cliff, he doubted they would be in the manor long enough for that to matter.

“Any problems with fighting?” he asked, looking to Vezta and Agnete.

The latter shook her head slowly, flames gaining brightness and heat.

The former allowed a small smile to grace her features.

“Then let us go rescue Ilya.”

 

 

Savren stood alone in a dark room with a large yet simple ritual array scribed out across the floor.

Every species had variances in their minds, how they thought, and even what, exactly, constituted as thought versus reflexes or instinct. Among circles he frequented, among the libraries he had plundered for texts on the mind and clues that would lead to him curing his curse, he had found ancient analysis, documentation, and even dissection of humans, demihumans, and a large number of beastmen.

They couldn’t crack open the captive creature to analyze its brain structure. Nor could they converse with the creature to get an idea of how it thought. Not once throughout the night had it so much as twitched. Arkk had posted guards in the prison room specifically to watch for any sign of it awakening while he was asleep.

Arkk wasn’t sure if Savren’s circle would work. The mind mage said that he was basing it off drider brain patterns. The spider-like beastmen had similar carapace and multiple limbs, though this creature lacked the many legs and bulbous belly. There was a vague, superficial similarity.

Hopefully, that was enough. A lot of magic was based on symbolism and representations. It was why Vezta had participated in the boundary ritual; she, a being from another plane who had physically visited the Underworld in the past, represented a connection.

“Ready,” Savren called out to the empty room. Arkk couldn’t hear him through the employee link but the single word he spoke up to the ceiling couldn’t have been anything else.

Arkk plucked up the prisoner and teleported it straight to the center of Savren’s circle. At the same time, Arkk moved himself and Vezta out of the prison, joining Savren in the room. The tall creature didn’t shift once because of the movement. If it did suddenly move, Arkk had to be ready to teleport himself, Savren, and Vezta away.

Savren had already explained how the ritual would go. He didn’t waste words explaining again. Stepping up to the point of the circle intended for the mind reader, he knelt and placed his hand on the ground.

Vezta, hands clasped together at her waist, stood a few steps away. She steered clear of the circle and walked along its edge, every one of her eyes locked on the creature. Arkk stayed still, watching and waiting as the ritual circle began to glow.

The creature remained still. Savren, on the other hand, did not. The man’s face twitched and twisted, grimaced and gaped. He snapped his hand back but Arkk could practically see the magic clinging to his fingertips like sticky slime, keeping him linked back to the ritual circle.

“Something wrong?” Arkk asked, ready to teleport at a moment’s notice.

Savren turned his head, neck bent at an unnatural angle. He had to hunch one shoulder to look at Arkk. “Invaders.”

Vezta tensed, lowering her stance to be ready for combat.

The creature still hadn’t moved.

Arkk drew in a breath. This was not how it was supposed to go. Savren was supposed to read the creature’s mind and report back with the answers to the questions that Arkk and the others had come up with. Or as many as he could answer.

“Savren, are you in there?” Arkk asked.

Was Savren being hurt? Would it hurt him to teleport him? He thought it shouldn’t, based on everything he had learned from Zullie about ritual circles, but he also didn’t think that Savren should have been able to stand up while keeping the ritual circle going. Those sticky trails of magic connecting his hand to the ground were surely the cause. Would teleporting sever them or just stretch them?

“Savren. Human. Invader.”

“Am I speaking with the… creature?” Arkk wished he had a better name for it.

“Guardian. Protector. Speaking. Human. Invader.”

Arkk glanced at Vezta. The cadence was somewhat similar to how she had spoken before Arkk had connected with Fortress Al-Mir. But it lacked that oomph of shoving concepts straight into his mind. These were just words.

“Can you ask it who it is? Perhaps what it wants?” Arkk asked. Although Vezta had gained the ability to communicate normally, he had not gained her ability to use the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] in exchange.

“[Query]/[Question],” Vezta started, still tense yet remaining outside the circle. “[Identification]/[existence]/[guess who]?”

Savren, still hunched at an unnatural angle, flinched at Vezta’s words. “Old. Words,” it said with a sudden strain in its tone. “Protector. Am Protector. I am Protector.”

“Should I be worried that it is getting better at speaking?” Arkk grumbled to Vezta. She didn’t even shrug. Her attention was evenly split between Savren and the creature. The Protector? Louder, Arkk said, “Who or what is it that you protect?”

“Protector of Life. Protector of Under Land. Protect the Lady Shadow.”

“The Cloak of Shadows,” Vezta said, mostly unnecessarily. “Is the Cloak of Shadows still… active in the Underworld?”

Savren twitched but didn’t respond. One of the five strands of magic linking his hand to the ritual circle snapped. Stress? Or…

“We might be on a time limit,” Arkk whispered to Vezta. Then, louder, “We entered your world seeking aid and help. We mean no harm to your people, the land, or the Cloak of Shadows.”

“Trust. Impossible. Betrayal.” The voice coming from Savren’s mouth paused a moment then restarted. “The Lady Shadow, betrayed by trusted Keeper of Her Heart.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not that Keeper. And frankly, after seeing the state of your world, I don’t think you can turn away offered help from anyone.”

The voice didn’t respond but another one of the strands snapped, leaving just three.

“Are there others like you? Other people in that world?” Arkk asked with a slight urgency to his tone. “The village where we encountered each other didn’t seem to have anyone in it but if you’re some protector, I doubt you’re protecting nothing.”

“Protection comes in many forms. Answer this, Keeper: How where was why able to breech the Archway?”

“We intend to revert the Calamity. The bindings of the planes by the traitors in the Pantheon,” he added, just in case they didn’t call it the Calamity in the Underworld. “I entreated with Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, and she saw fit to grant me the boon of traveling between worlds to gather allies and knowledge.”

“Gods,” the Protector said. A haze of clarity returned to Savren’s milky eyes as another of the strands snapped but the Protector reasserted control. “Traitors all. Poor Lady Shadows.”

Vezta visibly bristled. She was about to speak but Arkk put a hand on her arm. They didn’t have time to get into a theological argument.

“Your body hasn’t moved in a day and a half,” Arkk said. The time on this conversation might be running down but that didn’t mean it had to be the only conversation. “Aside from a missing leg, which we treated as best as we can, you look uninjured. Do you have any tips for healing you?”

“Healing unnecessary.”

“You’ll die if you sit there and don’t eat or move.”

“The body in your possession is already dead in all ways that matter,” it said as the fourth strand snapped. The haze in Savren’s eyes kept moving in and out of focus. He was probably trying to fight off the ritual if he was still conscious under there. “Explore the Land of Shadows at your own peril, Keeper. We will protect.”

Arkk shoved his confusion into a little black pit and focused on trying to get something meaningful out of this conversation. “We’re trying to help. We haven’t attacked anyone that hasn’t attacked us first and—”

The final strand snapped. The glow around the ritual circle snuffed out and Savren, hunched in an odd position, yelped and fell backward onto the ground.

Arkk’s teeth ground together even as he rushed over to his employee. “Are you alright?”

Savren had his hands clamped over his eyes as he rocked his head back and forth. “I… I… I…” He smacked his hands into his cheeks. “Hive. Hive heads having harmonious hammer. Hammer?” he said, lowering his arms from his face.

The haze in his eyes was gone entirely but a trickle of blood leaked from the side of his nose. He stared up at the ceiling in confusion but with enough awareness that Arkk didn’t think his brain had been completely scrambled.

“A collective mind?” Vezta asked, stepping between the unmoving creature and Arkk. She had her back to them but an eye on her spine kept careful watch.

Savren snapped his fingers and pointed at Vezta. “Correct!” he practically shouted. “Connecting craniums called to the collective and, craving control over the corpse, caterwauled caterwauled caterwauled…” Savren smacked his hands into both of his cheeks. “Communicated with my consciousness.”

“Are you alright?” Arkk asked again, a little more concerned.

“Confused. The collective overcame my curse and caused counteraction, comeback, counterblast, backlash.”

“So it wasn’t the creature that… knocked you silly? But your own curse?”

“Correct,” Savren said, groaning as he pushed himself to a sitting position. He ran the back of his hand along the bottom of his nose, smearing the blood across his cheek without doing much to clean it. Wobbly as he was, Arkk helped to support his back. “I sawwww them,” he slurred. “Saw their sights, standing in their stations. Some spied the soldiers at the s… something something.”

Arkk blinked in confusion for a moment before tensing as understanding hit him. “They’re watching the portal?”

Savren nodded twice, only to hang his head into his hands.

“Rest. A respite is required. I’ll right myself rather rapidly but only after repose.”

“I’ll send you to your chambers if you want,” Arkk said, already teleporting the creature back to its prison cell. The Protector had said that it was dead but Arkk wasn’t going to trust the words of a potential enemy and leave it lying about.

“Rest, yes. I… require rest.”

Arkk teleported Savren away. He would have Larry bring him something to eat and check on him. But first, he and Vezta reappeared in front of the portal.

Nothing had attacked the archway so far. He checked the moment Savren said that. The link to his employees let him easily see the other side even if he couldn’t teleport there directly. No one was under attack. But being watched made him nervous.

He stepped through the portal. “Check the perimeter,” he said with a glance at Vezta.

She nodded and headed off while Arkk made his way across the small and still-forming courtyard to the main headquarters.

It had only been a few days but Fortress Al-Mir was working hard to secure the far side of the portal. Lesser servants scurried about, carrying bricks and wood to the various construction sites. Flopkin volunteers joined them, hauling material. Some of the more constructive recruits along with a handful of refugees—whom he had ensured knew that this was purely voluntary and that they would be paid for their labors—were putting together walls and buildings around the archway.

Right now, the headquarters was still just a large tent. In a few weeks, barring these Protectors assaulting them, they would have the start of a permanent keep out here.

“Rekk’ar,” Arkk said, shoving a flap aside.

The orc, boots off and feet on the table, jolted. He lurched out of his chair and looked around, bleary-eyed, for any possible threat. Finding nothing but a few of the other orcs in the room chuckling at him, he let out a low growl as he bared his tusks. “What?”

“Double the guard. Regular check-ins. Anyone who can’t be reinforced in about thirty seconds needs to be pulled back to the tent and the archway.”

Rekk’ar’s anger at being woken from his nap shifted to wary concern. “What’s going on? Incoming threats?”

Arkk shook his head. “Not immediately. I have it on good authority that more of the creatures that attacked us at the shadow village might be watching our activities here.”

“The big thing you dragged back? They don’t seem so tough.”

“They’ve got tough skin and their strength will make them dangerous to small numbers, but they can be overwhelmed.” Arkk turned slightly to the side. “Orjja, there are two orcs on patrol around the other side of the portal. Take Kia and Claire with you and bring them back closer.”

The orc saluted and, along with the two dark elves, hurried out of the tent.

“Rekk’ar, get the guard—”

“Wait. Full report on the methods you used to take down the previous creature.”

Arkk crossed his arms, a little irritated at being interrupted. However, Rekk’ar had a point. They needed to know how to fight them. “Get Olatt’an to give you the full details. Every orc in my employ should be capable of casting at least one Electro Deus lightning bolt. It might drain them to the point of requiring rest but a well-placed bolt to the head seems to have killed the one we dragged back.”

“Thought you said it was still alive.”

“It killed the body but left the mind. Or vice-versa. Honestly, not sure. They have some kind of hive mind, so each of them knows what happened to the rest. If we start flinging enough lightning bolts, they will either get the hint or they’ll die.

“However,” Arkk continued after taking a breath. “These things claimed to be protectors of the land and people here. I still think there is a chance to negotiate. If one attacks, defend yourselves. If you see one just watching or even peacefully approaching, get me immediately.”

Rekk’ar squared his shoulders and nodded his head. At least he was taking the situation seriously. He immediately turned and barked out, “Luthor.”

“Y-Yes?” The nervous beastman’s scaled skin shifted through a few colors. He had been deftly avoiding anyone’s eyes ever since Arkk walked into the room. “Sir?”

“Go wake the second shift early. We’ll adjust scheduling shortly but for now, I want everyone up and on guard.”

“M-Me?”

“Yes, you,” Rekk’ar said, tone flat as he shot an irritated glance toward Arkk.

Arkk could only shrug. He wouldn’t have normally hired Luthor. Unfortunately, he had strongarmed Alma into Company Al-Mir and he came as a package with the half-werecat and their oxen companion.

“O-Okay. I can do that,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “I can do that. Just wake up a dozen angry orcs. It’ll be fine.”

“Get moving!” Rekk’ar barked out.

With a clipped yelp, the chameleon beastman bolted from the headquarters tent.

Rekk’ar glared after him, shaking his head in a disappointed manner once the tent flaps fell back to their resting position. “What do we do about the construction?”

“Keep it going as long as it can be guarded. The workers are the most vulnerable but having proper buildings to fight from is too valuable to stop.”

“Thought you said those things could climb walls like a spider?”

“They can, but they might not be the only things out there. These things are protectors of something and protectors from something.”

Rekk’ar grumbled to himself, arms crossed. His eyes drifted away from Arkk and toward his thoughts.

“Something on your mind?” Arkk asked.

“Just a suggestion I’m sure you’ll ignore.”

“I don’t ignore your advice. I just… don’t follow it all the time.”

“Ever.”

“Not true. There was… I listened when you…”

“Save it.” Rekk’ar looked at Arkk and put all his effort into rolling his eyes. “Recall everyone here and destroy the archway.”

Arkk’s frown at being unable to come up with an instance where he had listened to Rekk’ar remained firmly in place, though his reason for holding it turned to one of incredulity. “You’re right. Going to ignore that one.”

“Why?”

“Why? Are you serious? After all the effort it took to get here—”

“And we’re spending even more effort to stay here. Our personnel, not numerous to begin with, are split between here and the fortress. We’re expending resources and time and, potentially, lives just to maintain a presence here. And for what?

“We have an army bearing down on us back in our world and yet here we are, dithering about in the dirt of a desolate—”

“Please don’t do the Savren thing,” Arkk interrupted with a sigh, shaking his head. “And I get it. I am well aware of the pressures. But…”

Arkk took a breath and sank into the chair next to the one Rekk’ar had been dozing in. With everyone in the headquarters having been sent out, it was just him and Rekk’ar, free to talk and argue without anyone’s authority being undermined. Even still, he wasn’t quite sure how to broach the topic he wanted to bring up.

So he just came out and said it. “I talked with a god.”

“What.”

“Between wanting to ensure we weren’t attacked from the other side of the portal and dealing with the Protector, there hasn’t been time to call a proper debriefing. Especially because I didn’t think it mattered. But I talked to a god.”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me. What.”

“Crazy right? That’s another reason I haven’t called a debriefing. How exactly do I explain this without sounding like the village idiot?”

“Try.”

Arkk took another breath. “That ritual Zullie and Savren cooked up? It didn’t open the portal. One moment Vezta and I were sitting there in the middle and the next… It was there. I didn’t get a good look with my actual eyes before Vezta smothered me and I can’t be sure that what I saw later was how it looked. Regardless, we… communicated. Talking isn’t quite the right word.”

Rekk’ar leaned forward, hands on the table. He squinted his eyes at Arkk, oddly concerned rather than suspicious or angry. “Has the stress of everything finally gotten to you?”

“Funny,” Arkk said, tone flat. “Vezta can verify everything. When I call the meeting, I’ll have her explain. I’m sure she’ll do a better job.”

“Perhaps you ought to lie down.”

“Funny,” Arkk said again. “The point is, the ritual didn’t directly open the portal. It was the god, specifically in response to our request for aid in both reverting the Calamity as well as in repelling Evestani’s army. There has to be something here. I don’t know if it is the Protectors, some other people, or knowledge lying about.

“There is something here.” Arkk frowned, feeling rather like he had in the presence of that being. It was probably just his mind recalling things now that he was talking about it. Still, some small part of the back of his mind felt like a boundary had shifted. Some wall between ignorance and knowledge. “There is something here,” he said again. “I can feel it. Some power off in the distance.”

He turned his head, not looking anywhere in particular yet still staring toward one corner of the tent. It was something… familiar yet alien all the same. Perhaps he hadn’t been attuned to it properly at the time, panicked and ignorant as he had been, but it felt almost like the ambiance around the [HEART] of Fortress Al-Mir before he connected with it.

If there was another intact and functioning heart here, claiming it could be a vast boon.

 

 

“Well,” Arkk said, peering into the prison cell he had constructed specifically for the creature. “It still hasn’t moved.”

Zullie hummed to herself as she ran a scrub brush down the horse’s side. Little bits of meat scraped off, leaving the bare white bone beneath. Arkk watched in morbid fascination as the skeletal horse shuffled in place. Its movements didn’t look anything out of the ordinary compared to a regular horse being brushed. If Arkk were to judge, he might even say that the skeletal horse was enjoying it.

The problem was that it was a skeletal horse.

When Zullie had used her spell, the meat turned fetid in minutes. Far faster than normal. The skin frayed apart, the eyes shriveled up, and the stomach, heart, lungs, and everything else in the belly slopped to the ground with a wet, disgusting squelch. The walk back ended up knocking loose most of the remaining bits of hair and flesh and now…

Now Zullie was doing manual labor, clearing away the last scraps of flesh.

No one else would touch the thing so it really was up to her and her alone. The lesser servants looked at it with wary eyes.

Even Vezta stood to the side, eying the risen horse with ill-concealed disgust.

Arkk didn’t want to question her lest she realize what she was doing and stop. The ride back had reeked of stewing, rotten meat. If she intended to keep the skeletal horse around for any length of time, Arkk would feel much better about it if it was just clean white bone. So he couldn’t afford to stop her.

“I said, is it dead?”

Arkk blinked, forcing his gaze away from the empty eye sockets of the horse. “What? No. I don’t think so. The fortress doesn’t think so, at least. It is counting it as a prisoner which, I feel, requires the creature to be alive.” He sighed. “It makes me feel a bit bad. We just charged into this thing’s home and kidnapped it.”

Zullie paused. “It attacked us. I distinctly remember you saying that we came in peace.”

“Yeah. What if it didn’t understand? What would you do if a bunch of heavily armed warriors showed up on your village doorstep and started making strange noises?”

“I didn’t see any others. Bet this thing attacked or otherwise displaced whoever used to live in that village.”

Arkk crossed his arms, thinking while tapping his foot against the ground. With a snap of his fingers, he plucked Lexa from the canteen and dropped her directly in front of him. The gremlin jolted, starting at the sudden relocation. She whirled around only to freeze still as the skeletal horse leaned its skull down toward her.

Perhaps like it was sniffing at her. Except the skeletal horse failed to displace any air as it didn’t actually breathe.

Zullie started chuckling to herself as Lexa took a few stiff-legged steps backward.

“You saw it on the way back,” Arkk said with a frown.

“I didn’t think we were keeping it. I thought it was an emergency situation. Now she’s grooming it?” Lexa made a face. “And what’s all over the floor?”

Arkk glanced down to find strips of desiccated flesh littering the floor.

“The servants will clean it later,” Zullie said. “Got to get all this flesh off so it doesn’t stink.”

Arkk gave a few vehement nods. The sooner the better.

Lexa stared. Glared. Her sharp teeth were framed in a severe mix of a frown and a recoil of disgust. Gathering some of her courage, she stepped forward and grabbed hold of Arkk by his belt. She dragged him away from Zullie and the skeletal horse to the corner of the room. Reaching up, Lexa grabbed his shirt and dragged him down to her level.

“If I ever die,” Lexa said, wide eyes boring into him, “she is not allowed anywhere near my body. Am I understood?”

Arkk glanced back to Zullie as the witch started polishing the horse’s skull. She hummed happily. Probably the happiest he had ever seen her and that included while working on her research projects. It was… eerie. Did using necromancy spells make one more comfortable with… that? He would have to ask Savren and hope he could parse the answer.

For now, he leaned down to Lexa. “I will on the condition that if I die, you don’t let her get near me.”

Vezta leaned over the two, nodding along. “I am not sure if I could be… revived like that. Nevertheless, please keep my corpse well away from any necromancers.”

Lexa stared at Vezta then back to Arkk and firmly nodded her head. “Now, send me back. I was enjoying a nice, cold ale with—”

“First, tell me what you found in the village.”

Lexa winced and took a step back. “Well, I thought it would be good if we had warning in case a second of those things showed up. We couldn’t see into the village from the outside so I went in…”

“I didn’t ask why you went in, although that was going to be on the list, but what you found.”

Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Lexa glanced around.

Arkk tapped a finger against his elbow. “Just spit it out. I’m not going to be mad. Probably. Your motives for ditching the fight are a little suspect—”

“Honest,” Lexa said, snapping back at Arkk. The uncertainty in her stance had vanished, replaced with indignation. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t going to be overwhelmed. I couldn’t say anything because, you know, fight. At first, I was just keeping watch not far from the rest of you. A few of my spells let me see a little better inside that dome—but only while inside it.

“I saw the fight turn in our favor and decided to do a little more forward scouting.”

“Alright. I’ll believe it. Then you started peeking through houses? What did you find?”

Lexa dropped her gaze back to the floor. “I… don’t know.”

“Memory problems? A spell or—”

“No. I remember. It’s just… In one house I saw a family sitting around the table, eating a meal. The family looked humanoid but I couldn’t tell if they were actual humans or some demihuman variant. They were perfectly normal, sitting there. Wouldn’t have seen it as out of place in any town or village in the duchy.”

“I’m sensing a but…”

“It was fake. Like…” Lexa looked around and moved closer to one of the glowstones set into the wall. She held out her hands, linking her thumbs together, and then looked down at her shirt. A shadowy facsimile of a bird flapped its wings over her clothes in time with her moving her fingers.

“Like a shadow puppet,” Arkk said, staring down at her.

“Yeah.” Lexa let her arms drop to her sides. “Every house was the same. Fake people doing fake things to look like they were real. I don’t have any proof. Maybe they’re just weird beings not like anything here—it’s a whole other world, you know?—but… I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something there putting on a show. Whether that show was for it or me, I can’t answer.”

Arkk tapped his fingers against his elbow some more as he turned to Vezta. “Thoughts?”

The pre-Calamity monster shook her head, despondent. “It is strange. The [UNDERWORLD] I knew is nothing like this Underworld. Were it not for the shadowy pillars and that dome around the village, I might have thought we managed to connect to the wrong place. The centuries have clearly not been kind to the land or its inhabitants.

“When I was there last, it was a lush forest with a long river running through the middle. The trees were odd. Similar to those around Darkwood—I wonder if there is any relation—and the river was as black as it is today. There were three primary inhabitants. Gorgon, who were relatively unchanged from those we have in our employ, Dark Knights—who felt relatively similar to orcs but… not quite—and the keth. The latter were devoted servants of the Cloak of Shadows. I suppose a decent analogy would be something like crabs.”

“Crabs?”

Arkk, confused, looked to Lexa. The gremlin shrugged her shoulders, just as confused as he was.

“Aquatic creatures,” Zullie said. She stripped the outer layer of her robes as she approached their group. Probably a good thing given the bits of flesh that had clung to it. “Like giant spiders with these little snappy claw things and hard shells. They’re considered a delicacy in Cliff.”

Deciding to take the Cliff local at her word, Arkk nodded. “Alright. Water spiders with claws. A bit frightening.”

“Giant water spiders,” Zullie corrected.

Arkk shuddered. “Anyway… Moving back to the story. These water… keth lived with orcs and gorgon. What next?”

Vezta shrugged. “Not much else to say. I knew things would have changed over the years, which is why I didn’t lay down exactly what we might find in advance, but I didn’t know how much. I thought we could find more gorgon allies at the very least. It’s… concerning.”

“Question,” Zullie said, adjusting her glasses. “How did each of these species handle magic? Or, focus on the keth. I have a good idea regarding gorgon and orcs, assuming they haven’t changed too much.”

“The keth were the favored of the Cloak of Shadows. They wielded her gifts as easily as you breathe.”

“And there aren’t any in this world because none ever traversed the archways before the Calamity?”

Vezta shook her head. “No. My former master had a whole detachment in his army. Assassins.”

“Then I posit that, upon the Calamity cutting off the other realms, they perished like so many other magical species. Likely because they could no longer access their god’s magic.”

“I cannot argue against that theory,” Vezta said. “From what I’ve learned on our travels, there are no magically dependent species alive today except myself. Or creatures like fairies, who have entirely lost their magic.”

“So,” Arkk said, looking to Zullie. He was fairly sure he knew where she was going with this. “Our prisoner is one of the keth?”

“Impossible,” Vezta said. She cupped her hands and moved them together, stopping before they touched. “They were smaller. Much smaller.” Looking down, she frowned at Lexa. “Even smaller than this one.”

“And yet, a magically sensitive species stuck in a world where the levels of magic just keep going up and up and up wouldn’t change and adapt? Or grow? I’m not an expert on magibiology but I did take the required courses at the academy. I know the theories. I will bet a lot on our captive being a keth. Or a descendant of the species.”

“Okay,” Arkk said. “That… how does knowing that help us?”

“And what about the shadow people?” Lexa asked.

Zullie waved a hand casually as she turned away. “Don’t know. I’m tired and exhausted and I’ve sweat so much today. You guys can figure that out. If you discover that the shadow people are magic, let me know, but I don’t want any part of interacting with some being who can’t be perceived that thinks making shadow people puppets is fun.” She walked off, drawing in a deep breath. Her sudden gag made her stop. “I need a bath,” she grumbled as she stepped out the door.

A silence filled the space Zullie had left behind. Vezta stared off into the distance as if some missing piece in her memories might help out. Lexa just turned her gaze downward, staring at the floor in equally deep thought. Arkk had to wonder if everything hadn’t been one large waste of time. He supposed a desolate wasteland was better for Fortress Al-Mir than a hostile invasion force but…

What really bothered him was the state of the Underworld. If they cracked the dam that was the Calamity and all that magic flooded into the world—his world—would it act like a flooding river? A sweep of magic carrying away trees and lives as surely as any flood. Originally, before the Calamity, it must have flowed in and, somehow, drained out or otherwise wound up consumed. What if they ended up breaking that dam but a stopper on the other end resulted in the world turning just as horrid, stoppered against draining?

Although it seemed they wouldn’t have the promised legions of willing soldiers, they needed to find out more about what happened to the Underworld, what steps the local inhabitants took to try to solve the issue, and what might happen if the Calamity were to end here.

And at the moment, unless they wanted to scour the endless desert, they only had one lead.

With a thought, Savren appeared in their midst. The greasy warlock stumbled slightly. The exact motion someone made when they had been ascending stairs only to suddenly find themselves on flat ground. Aside from an inelegant noise of alarm in the back of his throat, he didn’t react beyond steadying himself. He took one look around the assembled group and wrinkled his nose.

“Necromancy now? Knocking nooks into nether planes not enough for you?”

Arkk shot a scowl at the skeletal horse before teleporting all four of them out into one of the meeting rooms. The sudden breath of fresh air only served to enforce how foul that room had smelled. He quickly set a lesser servant to clean up the flesh shavings as he looked to Savren.

“How adept are you at reading minds?”

“To a master of mind magic such as myself, amassing memories is most manageable.”

“Magnificent. Come along,” Arkk said before teleporting the group once again.

This time, they appeared within the prison chamber. A large room with a deep oubliette. Thick metal bars crisscrossed over the top, preventing even the most adept of climbers from reaching the top. A narrow catwalk allowed guards or, in this case, Arkk and the others to stand over the pit and look down.

The glowstones in the walls grew dimmer and dimmer the deeper the pit went. Ten gems, each spaced apart by about the same length as the average orc was tall, descended downward. The very bottom one barely provided any light at all, casting the prone form of their carapace-covered captive in a fitting shadow with only its edges highlighted in the violet light.

It hadn’t moved since falling at the shadowy village but the prisoner link said it was still alive.

“That thing,” Arkk said, pointing a finger downward. “Can you read its mind?”

Savren stooped over the railing, peering down into the depths with squinted eyes. “Ah, the being brought back from beyond the barrier?” He hummed to himself, not expecting an answer to the rhetorical question. “I shall scribe a circle suited to this species, though it may take a try or two to tune.”

“How long will that take.”

Looking up to the ceiling, Savren nonverbally counted something on his fingertips. Looking back down, he shrugged. “Morning.”

Arkk’s eyebrows popped up his forehead in surprise. He wasn’t quite sure why he was surprised. The few magical rituals that didn’t involve calling down the god of barriers, such as that inferno spell he had used on the slavers and Zullie’s cooling ritual, hardly took any time at all to develop. He supposed he anticipated some long, involved process. “Good,” he said. “I’m counting on you.”

“A moment,” Savren said, holding up his finger. “Meandering through memories without minding the material might get you what you want. Were you to whittle down the whys and wherefores, we’ll sooner wrap up.”

Arkk narrowed his eyes. That one took an extra second or two to parse. Savren, for all that Arkk wasn’t fond of the man, had come through in the research and development department. He had no real reason to try to get rid of the man at the moment. Finding a solution to his curse of alliteration would help not just him but everyone who had to communicate with him.

Of course, the man had been studying his curse and mind magics for the last year or so. Zullie had already said that curses were outside her area of expertise. Arkk wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it and, with the war on, it wasn’t like he could stop by the Cliff Academy seeking help. All capable spellcasters were enrolled in the Duke’s Grand Guard.

He would have to figure it out later. Maybe old magic could help if the creature in the oubliette below could read those old books in the library.

“You think it will go better if I know what I want in advance?”

“Correct.”

Arkk nodded. He was inferring, but memories were vast and widespread. Doubly so if the creature was long-lived. If Savren had to randomly stumble through those memories to find what they wanted, they could be here all week.

“In that case,” Arkk said, “focus on three topics. The history of that other world, what they did to combat the Calamity on their end, and—most importantly—whether or not this creature is an unthinking beast or something that could be reasoned with.” He looked around to Lexa and Vezta. “Anything else?”

“The thing fought with a sword and its limbs,” Lexa said, looking down below. “Might not know anything about magic or the Calamity.”

“If that’s the case, then oh well. Nothing we can do about it. Guess the mind reading will be quick.”

Vezta looked at Savren with most of her eyes. She didn’t often engage directly with the man—except on the occasions where they had to work together for the purposes of the ritual—so seeing her turn to address him directly made Arkk pay attention. “If you could, it would be wise to discover whether this is a solitary creature or if it has a group that will be missing it. Also knowledge of any other inhabited areas it knows of.”

Arkk gave Vezta an affirming smile. That was a good point. Even if it couldn’t be reasoned with, if it knew where others who might be reasoned with lived, that would save them the trouble of searching that entire wasteland.

“One other thing,” Arkk added. “Is the entire other world a wasteland or only the area in the vicinity of the portal? We might have just gotten unlucky.”

“The gateway used to connect to a variety of locations depending on the configuration of sigils around the crystalline structure. I believe I remember a few alternatives.”

Arkk shook his head. “Nope. Don’t touch it. The portal being opened at all is a boon from a god. If we turn it off and find out we can’t turn it back on, we’re stuck. We’re not running that ritual again to get it open.”

“A notable concern. We’ll—”

“Excuse me.” Lexa marched directly between Vezta and Arkk, looking between them. “What was that you just said?”

“Not to turn off the portal?”

“Wrong,” Lexa said, smacking him in the stomach. “The portal is a gift from a god? Like the Light?”

Arkk looked to Savren and then to Vezta before dropping his gaze to the startled gremlin. He cleared his throat. “Yes? Like healing magic is a miracle from the Light. So is this door. Nothing more to it than that.”

“You’re protesting too much.”

A shudder ran through Arkk’s back as memories of that being holding him in the palm of its hand surfaced in his mind. “It’s nothing. Don’t think about it.”

“But—”

Arkk teleported her away, sending her off to her quarters.

“Her suspicions won’t be alleviated like this,” Vezta said.

“Doesn’t matter. She can think whatever she wants to think. I don’t want to discuss… that.”

“Shame I hadn’t seen…” Savren said in a wistful tone.

“Trust me. Not a sight I wish to see again anytime soon. The weight of being there was crushing.” Arkk shook his head. “Just focus on your mind-reading ritual. I…”

Arkk frowned. If they weren’t going to get unlimited reinforcements from the other side of the portal, they were in more dire straits than he had feared.

“I need to figure out what to do about this war.”

 

 

Company Al-Mir was ready. They had been ready from the moment the two werecats noticed something amiss. While they had held their attacks at Arkk’s urging, that only meant they were all the more ready once the creature landed in their midst.

Dakka went for its legs with her axe. Crossbow bolts flew from four different directions. A bolt of lightning flew through the air while Zullie flicked her wand, sending out a blast of air.

The creature, tall and lithe with its carapace-covered limbs, did not want for dexterity.

It leaned back, picking one leg off the ground. Dakka’s axe swiped through the air, missing the clawed, insect-like end of its foot by a hair. With it leaning back, the bolts flew harmlessly through the spot where the creature had been before leaning. Zullie’s blast of air did hit it but only seemed to push it further into its lean.

The lightning bolt struck true. One of its four arms spasmed, fingers flailing wildly. It wasn’t enough to stop it.

It landed on all four of its arms, suspended upside-down. Leaning again to one side, it brought its blade up to bear, spinning on one hand while swiping out with that jagged sword.

The blade caught Dakka, Orjja, and Krett’al square in the chests, scooping them up and off their feet. Arkk could feel their pain through the link but not their deaths. They went flying, scattering away from the rest of the group, but they weren’t dead yet.

Lyssa jumped up as the blade continued around, launching herself over it even as she threw her chain toward it. The heavy spear tip made the far end of the chain lag behind the rest as the blade struck, looping around the jagged sword. Lyssa gripped the chain in both hands and pulled, trying to free the blade from its grip.

The creature turned its upside-down head, focusing its horizontal-pupiled eyes on Lyssa.

Arkk flung another, larger bolt of lightning at the creature’s arm. The resulting spasm made it release the blade.

Lyssa, surprised at the sudden lack of resistance, ended up throwing herself backward. The blade, pulled by her chain, followed and embedded itself into the ground mere inches from her head.

The creature made no move to retrieve it. It simply allowed its legs to fall back to the ground, crushing the cart and interrupting Zullie’s chant of a longer spell. A glob of caustic venom from Zharja covered Zullie’s sudden retreat. The gorgon had been standing still for the rest of the fight, just watching. Arkk had to wonder if she had been trying and failing to petrify the creature.

The poor old horse, which had been trying to back away from the creature since the fight started and had been unable to thanks to the cart at its back, went down to the ground with three sharp gashes across its side.

A shadow crept across the battlefield. For a moment, a jolt of fear coursed through Arkk, worried that this was some extension of the strange place he found himself in. The shadowy dome over the village hadn’t looked inviting and he was wary about some other enemy coming to attack. That fear turned to relief as he recognized the source. Razor-filled maws formed along the darkness.

Vezta snapped out. An oily black mass erupted from the ground. The razor maw on the end attempted to bite the leg of the creature.

The creature wrenched its leg free, twisting away with such force that it bordered on panic. Its face remained entirely placid. Which, if Arkk was correct in assuming that its face was cast from a hardened chitin, wasn’t all that surprising.

The sudden movement allowed Olatt’an to flip his crossbow onto its bladed end and swing down on one of its arms. It bit through the carapace, leading to a spatter of green blood over the brown dirt.

Seeing the creature bleed rallied those still standing. Joanne brought her heavy claymore down over its torso. That blade bit into the carapace as well, though not deep enough to draw blood. The carapace over its stomach must have been thicker than that which covered its arms.

“Zullie,” Arkk shouted, “keep it off balance!”

The witch poked her head up and over the toppled cart. Probably hating everything about the situation, she sent him a heavy glare. But she didn’t argue. Rather than try for another long spell, she brought up her wand and blasted the creature as it tried to right itself.

Arkk immediately flung more lightning at the creature. It didn’t seem to be doing long-term damage but the short spasms were damaging enough. Instead of overcharging one useless bolt, he fired off some smaller ones. One stopped a claw from decapitating Alma, letting the half-werecat send a pair of small crossbow bolts into its segmented neck. They didn’t dig deep into the carapace but it did look like they limited the mobility of its head. Another lightning bolt went into its arm just as it was about to catch itself from Zullie’s knockback. It crashed into the ground shoulder first, just in time for Dakka to rush back into the fray with her axe held high.

The axe to the creature’s chest didn’t puncture, much like the claymore, but it did knock the creature flat on its back. It tried to pick itself back up with its legs and arms. A razor-maw opened directly under its foot.

A horrid grinding filled the air. Like the sound of the watermill saw if a piece of metal fell into its path. Arkk had seen Vezta consume goblins in an instant. This leg held on. The grinding continued even as it tried to pick itself up. Dakka brought her axe down again. Zullie knocked one arm out from under it. Arkk caused spasms in another. More crossbow bolts jammed into its neck—Alma took ready advantage of that weakness—pinning its head at an awkward angle.

With a terrifying crunch, the leg came free.

At the same time, one last lightning bolt slammed into its face.

The entire creature thrashed. A stray arm caught Lyssa but it didn’t hit the werecat with its full strength. It just knocked the breath out of her.

All at once, the creature ceased moving. It went completely limp. Dakka continued to wail on it, trying to crack the thick chitin of its torso. Zullie had her wand ready to knock it over if it tried moving again. Olatt’an tried to pry his crossbow out of the gouge he had made in its arm. Alma looked to Arkk with confusion covering her face, as if he had any idea what was going on.

Closing his eyes for just a moment, Arkk reopened them, knowing they would be fully glowing with an ominous red light. “Hold,” he said, hoping he wasn’t going to regret this. “Dakka,” he said when she was the only one to continue her assault.

With a furious growl, Dakka turned away from the creature. One look at Arkk, however, and she snapped her jaw shut. All at once, she doubled over, clasping a hand to her stomach.

Blood stained her clothes.

“Go see Zullie. That goes for anyone else injured. We don’t know if there are more of these lurking in the shadows.”

The only three who weren’t injured, as far as he could tell, were Alma, Zharja, and Olatt’an. Everyone else had caught at least one attack. Dakka and the other two orcs had the most severe wounds, having caught that blade straight in the chest. He would have to give Lyssa some kind of commendation for disarming the creature so early into the engagement. It could have been a lot worse.

Vezta stepped up alongside him as he cautiously approached the downed creature. She, obviously, had avoided injury as well. “Do you think it is dead?” she asked, looking down at it.

“I was just about to ask you the same question.”

“I suppose I could remove its head. Just to be sure,” she said, extending an arm toward the creature.

Arkk held up a hand, stalling Vezta. He looked down at the creature with a frown. Its eyes were open but unmoving, staring straight at the sky with those horizontal pupils. Its hair, black and long, looked different now that he was closer. Like a thousand ants all clinging to one another in long chains. It writhed slightly. The only movement the body made.

Moving away, Arkk approached one of its arms. While its sword had been in its other hand—part of an arm that now held a gouge from Olatt’an’s axe—the hand Arkk approached still grasped the wine glass. Despite the fight, it had come out unbroken. Why a wine glass? Why hold onto it for the entirety of the fight, somehow managing to avoid breaking it? That spoke of care and forethought, knowing where and how to place its arms so that it wouldn’t break the thing while performing the acrobatic tricks it had gotten up to.

Arkk had a hard time believing that this was some kind of beast that had attacked with no cognizance behind its horizontal pupils. It was a thinking creature, intelligent and aware. Sentient and sapient.

Crouching, Arkk tried to retrieve the glass.

The hand kept its grip. Arkk only tried for a moment, prying back the fingers, before realizing that the tension in its hand wouldn’t be there if the creature were dead.

It was still alive.

Standing slowly, not wanting to disturb anything to the point of waking, Arkk moved back to Vezta and, arm on her arm, put some distance between them and the monster. “How do you suppose we might restrain a creature like this?”

“With heavy chains and manacles. Or dismemberment. Or decapitation.”

Arkk crossed his arms over his chest. Things had worked out for him so far in his career as master of Fortress Al-Mir. Most of that felt like a combination of luck and determination. They had never taken serious casualties and had always managed to accomplish at least part of their objectives. Notable exceptions being the inquisitorial invasion of the fortress and the disastrous defense of Elmshadow. In the latter case, the only reason they hadn’t lost people was because Arkk had sent everyone else back before the final moments.

This could have gone much worse. A creature as tall as a building had no right to be laid low so easily. For the first few moments of the fight, he had feared that it would destroy their team without taking a scratch. His lightning and Zullie’s blasts of wind might have been the only things that allowed proper hits in. Numbers had helped and maybe numbers would have brought it down without magic but that was a chance he didn’t want to take.

If there were more of these things…

Arkk looked up, scanning the village. The shadowy haze still concealed most of it, preventing him from peering inside beyond a few paces. For all he knew, there could be a dozen more of these things just watching and waiting. Arkk doubted that these creatures were the original inhabitants of the village. The buildings were too small. But these creatures could have moved in, displacing or destroying the original inhabitants. Maybe it was just the one but moving forward assuming that would get someone killed.

They needed to retreat. Examine their options without a looming threat hanging over them.

Arkk wasn’t sure if—or when—the creature would recover. He needed to decide what to do about it before then. He wanted to drag it back to the fortress and see if it was a little more willing to have a discussion while incarcerated.

The cart was damaged. The front axle had snapped when the creature stomped on it to get at Zullie. Even if the horse could be healed with Flesh Weaving, the cart wouldn’t be going anywhere. They would have to drag it back. If it woke while people were in such close quarters, things could get bad.

“Do you think you can use your body to restrain it?” Arkk asked Vezta. “Tie it up in your tendrils?”

“If it is too strong, it will likely force itself free. I wasn’t able to judge its strength during our brief engagement, only its durability.”

“Do you think you could move it while restraining it?”

“Not easily.”

Arkk nodded and motioned toward it. “Restrain it. If it wakes and feels like it is going to break free, shout a warning. I’ll try frying its head again.”

“Very well, Master.”

Arkk watched for a moment as Vezta dispensed with her humanoid form. It was a fairly disturbing sight. Her flesh just bulged out into a large blob of oily mass. The human form folded up like a potato sack, disappearing into the mass of flesh. This was perhaps the first time Arkk had watched her switch between forms. She had done so before—and he had seen her already in the less shapely blob—but never while he had been in a position to watch.

It was just Vezta. He didn’t let it bother him.

Vezta managed to twist and bend the four arms and one and a half legs into something of a knot, pinning its limbs behind its back. She tried to haul it on top of the rest of her mass and even managed to take a few steps. It wouldn’t be enough to get back to the portal in any reasonable amount of time.

“Report,” Arkk said, walking back to the rest of his employees.

Zullie looked up with sweat beading off her brow. With the cart having been destroyed, so too went the cooling ritual circle. Concentrating on Flesh Weaving probably hadn’t helped. She opened her mouth but Dakka beat her to speaking.

“Think I broke every single rib,” Dakka grunted, rubbing at her chest. She had most of her clothes off to allow Zullie access to her wounds.

“Don’t rub,” Zullie said, swatting the larger hand away. “I know it feels weird but I hardened your skin to let your ribs heal better.”

“Oh right. You said that.” Dakka pressed a hand to her forehead. “I feel so… dizzy.”

“That’s probably because half your blood is spilled out across the sand. You shouldn’t have jumped back into the fight with that wound; she was practically in two pieces,” Zullie said, looking up at Arkk.

Arkk looked over his field commander with a more critical eye. Blood stained the clothes on the ground near her. A thin seam just above her stomach was likely where that blade had hit. The normally tan skin of the orc was covered in crusty, coagulated blood. The heat had done its job of drying it out.

She otherwise didn’t look harmed. The Flesh Weaving spell had done its work.

The rest of the group looked better than she did. The two orcs who had taken the blade along with Dakka didn’t look anywhere as bad. Not as much blood and much less evidence of the healing spell on their skin. Arkk had to breathe out a sigh of relief. If that blade had struck a human, Lexa, or one of the werecats, it probably would have bisected them. The natural hardiness of the orcs might have spared their lives.

“The horse is dead,” Zullie said, bringing Arkk’s attention to the toppled cart.

He grimaced at the sight of the horse on its side, eyes wide open and tongue lolling out. Yavin was going to spiral. The poor elf had taken to caring for the horse like it was his own. And now…

“I was focusing on the orcs. Didn’t realize how bad the horse had it until—”

“No, no. Focusing on the orcs was the right choice,” Arkk said, earning a few grateful nods.

“Still could have given them a patch job and then fixed the horse. But…”

Arkk shook his head. As much as the loss of the horse pained him, better to lose it than one of his employees. “Is anyone incapable of walking?”

He looked around the group, waiting for a response. Olatt’an was performing maintenance on his crossbow; slamming the end into the creature might have messed something up. Dakka, Orjja, and the other orcs were seated around Zullie or on their feet watching the shadows, depending on the level of their injuries. Alma and Lyssa stood near one another, the latter coiling her long chain while the former kept shooting wary glances at the creature and Vezta. Arkk wasn’t sure which Alma was more concerned with.

Nobody said anything.

“Where is Lexa?” he asked aloud, already using his Keeper sight to figure out the answer.

The gremlin moved through the shadowy village with a shadowy spell of her own wrapped around her. If not for the employee link, Arkk might have thought that he was looking into nothingness. Focusing a little closer, he could see the edges of the buildings and the occasional windows she peered into. When had she slipped away? After the fight? During? He didn’t recall her throwing any daggers.

She was headed in his direction, however. Arkk didn’t know if she had gotten turned around or if she was deliberately trying to regroup. Either way, he had both questions and a lecture for her upon her return. Scouting out the village would be helpful but going off on her own without even letting him know was concerning.

“Never mind. Anyone who can move, get the cart righted. If it looks like the broken axle can be repaired with some simple binding, do it. Vezta will keep the creature restrained but we’ll have to pull the cart to bring it back. We’ll take shifts,” he added at the groaning. “Zullie, if you can get the cooling spell working again, that would be good. Don’t want anyone fainting on the way back. Especially our injured.”

“Actually,” Zullie said, holding up a finger. “The horse is dead but I might be able to use a spell… uh. It might be considered a little necromancy,” she said, shifting. “But it would save us from having to haul that thing back on our own.”

Arkk folded his arms, frowning. He had a feeling he knew from which book she had learned necromancy. Arkk wasn’t necessarily opposed to it. There were always stories about necromancers and the heroes who fought against their empire of the dead. In every tale he had heard that involved necromancers, they were the villains.

This was a fairly pragmatic usage. Not like the legions of zombies that he had heard of. He didn’t see a problem with it.

Zullie, apparently taking his hesitation in responding as condemnation, adopted a scowl as she adjusted her glasses. “Not that I don’t trust Vezta,” she said, “but I don’t want to be pulling the cart myself if that thing wakes up.”

Arkk nodded his head. That was a good point as well. Anyone pulling the cart would be dangerously close to the creature. An undead horse that nobody cared for getting mauled again before he could fire lightning—or whatever it took to put it back down—was far preferable to the same happening to one of his employees. “Do it,” he said.

A wide grin spread across Zullie’s face.

Arkk watched as she rubbed her hands together, pulling a black book from the folds of her black robes, and wondered if he had chosen poorly.

 

 

 

There were a few things about the other side of the portal that stuck out as just being off.

The sun didn’t seem to set. If whatever was up in those orange clouds was a sun at all. Since the portal opened, round-the-clock guards stationed at the entrance had kept an eye on the situation. None of them could recall any darkening of the other side. Even after spending three hours on the other side of the portal, waiting for Zullie to give her assessment of its stability, the dark orange light in the sky hadn’t moved one way or the other.

The sun might have been a major contributor to the second oddity. The heat. While not to the point of boiling flesh from bones, there was a dry, sweltering heat that never seemed to lessen. It felt about as hot as the hottest day in summer. Weatherable, but not pleasant. That had caused another delay in further exploration. Not wanting his men to collapse from heat exhaustion, Arkk had Savren and Zullie work on magical methods of cooling while the guards brought out large tarps to provide shade. He had even brought over some lesser servants. They couldn’t build without a contiguous connection to the fortress—which the portal did not count as—but they could dig down to provide cool places to take breaks in.

Finally, the sheer density of the magic permeating throughout the air was tangible. Literally. Just drawing up a little magic to Flesh Weave a small cut back together felt tingly. One of the ritual circles Zullie had drawn up to try to cool the area down activated spontaneously. She and Savren had descended into a long and academic discussion—or shouting match—about the viability of harvesting the magic to later power ritual circles without requiring spellcasters or overcharged magic wands and other artifacts.

“Was this what the world was like before the Calamity?” Arkk asked. He flung a lightning bolt at an old stone column without even speaking the Electro Deus incantation. There was no need. The magic was already at his fingertips. All Arkk had to do was shape it into a bolt of electricity, which was an action he had done hundreds of times.

Vezta shook her head, long and slow. “No. There was more magic in the world then than there is now but not like this. To be clear, it wasn’t like this here either. They were more… balanced, I suppose.”

Arkk frowned, considering everything he knew of the situation. Vezta had explained the generalities of the situation when he first met her and, on the occasions he asked, she explained some of the specifics as well. Her findings and theories on the subject of the Calamity often went over Arkk’s head. Especially at the start.

But he felt he knew enough to make some general assumptions of his own.

“The Underworld is the closest plane to the… surface world?” After all this time, he still didn’t know what his home plane was called.

“Null. Or the [ALLWORLD],” Vezta supplied. “Called such because it is the only known plane lacking a connected deity, thus allowing any of the [PANTHEON] to act upon it. Or so it used to be. The traitorous trio might have claimed it as their own at this point. I am not sure how such matters truly function as they are a level elevated from beings such as us.”

“Alright, Allworld, then. So we’ve got fifteen other planes like this, all of which are brimming with magic and one that isn’t. And they’re at some metaphysical distance away from each other. So the magic… flows like a river through them and into the Allworld? Except the Calamity was like a dam, leading to the magic from all the various planes just building and building here.”

“An assumption most reasonable, Master.”

“Is the excess of magic the reason this place looks like this?” Arkk asked, stooping to pick up a fistful of sand, which he let drift between his fingers as he stood. “You said this isn’t how it used to be.”

“Also an assumption. Unfortunately,” Vezta said, frowning down at the mound of sand he had disturbed, “I imagine it will take years of research to determine if either assumption is correct.”

“Let’s assume they are for the moment. At least until we have a meeting with Zullie and anyone else qualified who might have other theories.” Arkk paused, watching as Dakka approached from the little outpost that the defensive team was building. Their delay must almost be at an end. “If we undo the Calamity and demolish this dam, so to speak… What happens to Allworld when all this magic floods into it?”

Vezta didn’t respond. She stared off into the distance with her lips held tight in a small frown. She maintained the stance until Dakka finished her approach, at which point she slowly shook her head. “I have never claimed to hold all the answers.”

“I suppose it isn’t a concern for the immediate future,” Arkk said. Cracking the Calamity was still a far-off project. “We won’t be able to do anything at all if that golden man gets to us. Dakka,” he said, turning away from the servant. “How goes the setup?”

“Finished. Or finished enough for us to head out. Zullie completed her cooling array and the guards are posted around the portal. The build team has started assembling more permanent defense posts. Everyone’s ready, just waiting on you.” Dakka hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other. “Is… uh… Is it really necessary to head all the way out to that group of buildings we saw?”

“It is if we want to find out if this place has anything valuable for us, whether that be people or information.”

“Yeah but why walk? Can’t you scry? At least to see if we’re wasting our time heading to a deserted hovel.”

Arkk shook his head. “Crystal balls don’t work here. At all. Not like how the inquisitors were blocking us. Just nothing. Might as well be a rock.”

“Too much magic in the air, I presume,” Vezta added. “The magic at the point of view is too saturated with random noise to connect back to the ball.”

“Why?” Arkk asked. “Is there a problem with a little march? The buildings don’t look far.”

“Just… Been standing around with Zullie for the last hour as she works on that cooling magic and I’m still sweating like a pig in Larry’s kitchen. Not looking forward to this.”

Dakka lacked her heavy armor at the moment. All the orcs did. It was too hot to be sitting around in a metal can. They had traded the heavy gear for lighter cloth. Breezy and loose to try to help cool them down. Unless they stripped down completely, there wasn’t much else they could do. And, though the sky was transiently overcast in that strange orange way, removing clothes would just leave them exposed to the sun.

“I’m having lesser servants dig a tunnel in the direction,” Arkk said. “But they won’t be done for some time. The ground here is… different than that back home. They’re having trouble eating through it.”

“It’s magic saturation again,” Vezta explained.

“We can get out there and get back well before the lesser servant makes it a quarter of the way. With the Evestani army marching, we don’t have the time to sit around waiting.”

Dakka didn’t look too happy. Her expression was all the worse with the dark paint she had under her eyes. It was supposed to help with the glare of the sun but, at the moment, dripped down her cheeks in long streaks. “Understood, Sir,” she said with a mild sigh.

“We’ll bring plenty of water. Maybe Zullie can work up another cooling array in the back of the cart that will help everyone standing near it.”

“That’d be nice.”

Arkk nodded. If he were being honest, he wasn’t too thrilled about marching across the desert either. And the poor horse… Zullie would have to get something set up en route. They had delayed long enough. “Let’s set off then.”

“Got it!” Zullie called out.

At the same time, a rush of cool wind blew out in all directions from the cart. The relief among the travelers walking alongside it was palpable, obvious in their sudden leaning toward the cart. Arkk let out a long sigh despite himself. He didn’t want to look like the heat had been getting to him.

But taking in that first breath of cool air, suddenly it felt like he could think properly without his head lighting on fire.

He had been about ten minutes from turning the expedition around just to pick up the ice marble from the fortress.

“It was a bit tricky,” Zullie said. She had been talking the whole time Arkk had been basking in the sudden chill. “Most rituals don’t like to be moved. Tossing a circle like this in the back of a cart normally winds up with either nothing happening or a mild explosion. But I managed to refactor the intake and exhaust arrays to handle this magic-saturated environment, using it as both a power source and ventilation.”

“Wonderful,” Arkk said. “You are a genius.”

“I know.”

“Any chance you can get scrying working?”

“I’m a genius, not a miracle worker.”

Zharja shot a look at Zullie. Gorgon expressions weren’t easy to decipher normally. Today, Arkk had a feeling that the gorgon wasn’t all that pleased with Zullie’s work. Gorgon liked warm environments. A sudden cold wind blasting out around the cart wouldn’t feel good on her scales.

Sure enough, Zharja slithered ahead of the group. “Sscouting,” she said as she advanced.

“Don’t go too far!” Arkk called out. “We don’t know what dangers might be lurking in this place.”

Zharja raised a hand, signaling her acknowledgment. Her self-imposed scouting mission didn’t extend further than a few dozen paces ahead of the cart. Presumably just far enough to get out of the direct gusts of wind.

In the future, it would be best to send gorgon on their own rather than mix them with people who would undoubtedly want to make use of Zullie’s cooling ritual. For today, Zharja would just have to deal with it. They were almost at their destination anyway.

The distant buildings were almost upon them. Walking at a fairly sedate pace, it had taken about two hours of travel to reach the village. And it was a village. Or, at least, it held the shape of one. Several cube-shaped buildings jutted up out of the desert landscape, all made from the desert dirt. They had the same reddish-orange coloration as the land around them. As for size, it was well larger than Langleey village but nowhere near Cliff. Without walking through it, it was a little hard to tell, but he guessed it would be on the larger end of most burgs. Akin to Moonshine, Darkwood, or Elmshadow.

Interestingly, the entire village was cast in shadow. At first, while they were still a fair distance away, Arkk had thought that the village was built on and made out of darker earth. Then, upon realizing it was shadow, he had thought that some part of the clouds overhead were a little thicker, thus leading to the strange sight.

But the shadow didn’t move. The clouds did, the orange skies roiled and churned. The shadow around the village stayed in place.

The expeditionary caravan slowed down upon arriving at the shadowy threshold. Even Zharja fell back to the cooling cart, hesitant to progress forward on her own.

Arkk moved up to the front of the group, stopping right at the edge. He glanced at Vezta. “Any idea what’s up with this?”

“This is the Underworld, domain of the Cloak of Shadows. To find oddities involving light does not surprise me.”

“Think it’s dangerous?”

Vezta stuck a hand out. There was no resistance like there had been at the portal, no membrane to puncture. She just swiped her arm through it, brought her arm back, and looked at her hand. “No.”

“I figured,” Arkk said. “You shouldn’t test things like that on yourself though.” Vezta just shrugged—as she had been here before, she had likely known that odd shadows wouldn’t be dangerous. Arkk looked back to the village and cleared his throat. “Hello! Anyone home? We come in peace!”

“Should you really be shouting like that?” Zullie hissed from the cart. “What if someone is home?”

“Then they’ll probably have noticed our approach anyway. We came here to meet people, after all.”

“They would have sent someone if they wanted to meet with us,” Zullie scowled. “Maybe we should go. Oh well, we tried. Nobody home.”

“I thought you would be excited to explore a whole new plane of existence and all the inhabitants.”

Zullie shook her head. “The magic that got us here is what I’m interested in. I don’t care about some dusty world. And I’m starting to get a little freaked out here.” Her eyes narrowed behind her rectangular glasses as she swept her eyes over the shadowy village. “Am I the only one? I’ll shut up if so, but I’ve been feeling like someone has been watching us…”

Lyssa’s head snapped one way. Her ears perked up and started twitching back and forth. The normally quiet werecat narrowed her eyes. “I hear something,” she said.

Frown on her face, Alma pulled her floppy cap off her head, letting her ears stand tall. She looked and listened around as well before nudging Kelsey. The burly ox-hooved man hoisted the smaller half-werecat up on his shoulders. After another moment of listening, she frowned. “It’s a chittering noise. T-t-t-t-t-kind of like. That direction,” she added, pointing to the left. “Er… That way?” she said, swinging her pointer finger to the right. Her finger wavered, drifting back and forth. “Uh…”

“Back up,” Dakka barked out, drawing her axe. The rest of the caravan followed suit, readying weapons. Lyssa unleashed her chain, Zullie drew a magic wand, and Olatt’an hefted up his crossbow.

Arkk stepped away from the shadowy barrier around the village, letting Vezta lead him to the safety of the warriors. “Don’t attack first,” he warned. “We’re here for friends, not to make more enemies.” Despite his words, electricity started crackling between his fingertips.

“I am unaware of beings who might chitter,” Vezta said, tone calm despite her many eyes darting about, seeking out any possible threats. “But a great deal of time has passed since I was last here. I would not be surprised to find new inhabitants.”

“Reassuring,” Olatt’an grunted.

Arkk paid the nervous banter little mind, focusing on the shadows of the village. Disregarding a sudden wish to simply scry on whatever was approaching, he scanned the spaces between the buildings. Was it just him or were the shadows darkening? He could barely see beyond the first row of buildings. Whereas before it was more like the village had been in the shadow of a large tree, now it was like night had fallen just for this one section of the land.

Not seeing anything beyond the darkening shadow, he quickly glanced over to the two werecats. Lyssa, the more cat-like of the two, stood stooped over, glowering at the encroaching darkness while lightly spinning her spiked chain. Alma readied her twin hand crossbows, eyes actively flicking back and forth at the same time as her ears twitched. Just before Arkk looked away, both their eyes widened.

Arkk snapped his head to the side, following their gaze.

It took a considerable expenditure of willpower to avoid an undignified shout. Some of the others did not succeed but Arkk lacked the wherewithal to check who at the moment.

A face lurked just beyond the veil of shadows. Barely humanoid, it had wide, yellow eyes with black horizontal pupils like those of a sheep. Two long horns stood tall on its head while an array of smaller spikes poked out of a mess of black hair. Its obsidian skin looked hard and gleaming. More like a spider’s carapace than flesh. The spikes continued down its face and neck, which was segmented like an armored gauntlet to allow for movement.

Its arms split at the elbows, ending up with four total hands. Much smaller spikes covered the arms and hands and the segmented sections existed anywhere a bend was necessary. Two of its arms clung to the side of one of the buildings while the other two were hidden above the top. Its chest bulged in a way that looked sculpted more than natural. The rest of its torso was lined like a ribcage that stretched far, far too long with far, far too many ribs.

Arkk couldn’t see the rest of it, hidden both by the veil of shadows and the side of the building. With its arms and torso being as large as they were, he could easily see this creature standing taller than the building it clung to.

It crept forward, arms moving in a way that sent chills up Arkk’s spine.

Like the first time he had encountered Vezta, Arkk felt that this was a monster that had existed before the Calamity. A class of being that didn’t fit within the categories of demihuman or beastman. Unlike the first time he met Vezta, Arkk did not feel that encompassing sensation of dread or terror. It was creepy, there was no doubt about that. Especially the movement of its arms and the way it tilted its head far more than any being with a spine could manage.

After meeting a literal god, Arkk wasn’t quite sure that anything so mundane could fill his heart with terror anymore.

It stopped moving forward at the edge of the building, looming over the side.

Arkk held out a hand to his crew, palms facing toward the ground. “Steady,” he said, trying to inject as much calm as he could into his voice. It hadn’t lunged, pounced, cast a spell, or otherwise attacked. “Vezta?” he whispered to his side.

“I don’t know this creature.”

Well… it hadn’t attacked so far. It had a remarkably humanoid face as well, if one ignored the wide, sheep-like eyes. Despite looking insectoid, it even had lips. Though, much like its chest, they looked more sculpted than natural. Still, perhaps it could talk?

The situation reminded him so much of the first time he had met Vezta that he decided to try the same thing he had then.

Taking a step forward, Arkk waved a hand. “Hello,” he said, still going for the calm and confident tone. “Sorry for intruding on your home.”

The creature stretched its neck out a handspan, swinging its chin from left to right as it focused on Arkk.

He noted two things in its hands. One, a blade as long as Arkk’s arm, jagged and curved. The other hand, one opposite from the blade, looked like a wine glass. A fancy one like what he had drank from at the Duke’s party. Both of those sparked hope in Arkk’s mind. Tools meant that this wasn’t some unthinking animal that had taken up shelter in an abandoned village. Tools weren’t typically used by the unintelligent.

And a wine glass, made from proper glass, indicated some level of civility. At the very least, it had taken care to avoid crushing the fragile flute.

His hopes turned to ash as the creature opened its mouth. It didn’t speak. Its mouth opened beyond the sculpted lips, taking the entire jaw down to reveal a mouth filled with thin, needle-like teeth.

An ear-piercing screech of ten thousand bats wailing at once made everyone flinch.

A crossbow bolt flew through the air. Arkk wasn’t sure which of the crossbow wielders had let loose but it didn’t matter. The creature wasn’t on top of the building by the time the bolt struck the side. Propelled into the air by thick, digitigrade legs, the creature flew and came down amid the group, forcing Dakka and Krett’al to dodge its landing.

It stood tall, bringing its clawed feet together. It towered over everyone, twice as tall as the tallest orc in the group.

Its head swiveled around a full circle, looking at every one of those who now surrounded it.

A beat of uncertainty passed.

The following beat brought chaos.

 

 

 

Every time Arkk closed his eyes, he saw a god.

That brief glimpse that he had gotten with his actual eyes before Vezta pulled him down replayed in his mind over and over again. Even just walking into a dark room made him feel like that looming presence was going to pop out of the shadows. It might not be harmful. Xel’atriss might have even been helpful.

Arkk didn’t think he wanted to go before any god ever again.

It wasn’t even that he was afraid that it would do something. Arkk feared that he would be unable to resist peeking even knowing that a split-second glimpse of the being had him lying in bed, awake and wide-eyed, the entire night.

With everything stable in the fortress—nothing was blowing up and no mass invading army came through the crystal archway—Arkk had called for a hold on the exploration. One night’s rest, ostensibly for magical recovery after the ritual. The others, with the exception of Agnete, had all been drained to the point of lethargy as well, so his excuse hadn’t sounded all that strange.

It was more that he just wanted to process.

And what a process it was.

“That was real, right?” Arkk asked as the door to his room opened.

“Master,” Vezta said as she stepped up to his bed. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

Arkk hadn’t even changed out of his sweat-soaked tunic before crawling into bed. He had stared up at the maze-like pattern that covered the ceiling, following the lines and pathways as they twisted about. Even now, with Vezta at his side, he still stared up at that maze, wondering why he couldn’t find a way out.

Vezta folded her arms across her chest, looking down with a disappointed expression. “Master.”

“Did you sleep?” Arkk asked. “Could you sleep? I mean, who goes and has a chat with a being like that and just goes to sleep.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” Arkk’s head drifted to the side, looking at Vezta from top to bottom.

The servant was the picture of calm, standing with fully-formed legs and her hands clasped at her navel. The starscapes that surrounded the burning suns of her eyes shifted and pulsed as she looked him up and down. Her violet hair dripped a glob of dark tar onto her shoulder. The tar remerged with the rest of her body as soon as it touched. That little oddity made Arkk narrow his eyes, looking at her closer. Her face, drawn tight into a frown, looked somehow more liquid than usual. Like congealed slime. The eye at the base of her neck sagged, lopsided. When she opened her mouth, strings of that black tar stretched thin from her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

“Master? Are you alright?”

“Am I alright?” Arkk repeated, forcing himself up. The motion made him dizzy but he shook it off. “I should be asking you the same question,” he said, reaching out and poking Vezta in the shoulder.

His finger sunk into her body like it was a pool of thickened honey.

Her eyes widened and, with a slight glare at his finger, she firmed her body, forcing his finger out. He prodded a few more times in a few more places. She felt normal now, at least, but it was probably taking more concentration.

“We’re kind of a mess, aren’t we?”

“Time dulls memories,” Vezta said. “This will fade. In light of that, it may be prudent to delay this morning’s expedition for a time.”

Arkk shook his head, feeling another wave of nausea, before forcing himself to his feet. “Can’t. Shouldn’t have even delayed one day. Every minute that passes, the Evestani army and that golden-eyed avatar get closer. People die. Villages burn. Hawkwood says that the King is sending an army but it won’t be here anywhere within a reasonable timeframe.”

Pressing his lips into a shallow façade of a smile, he shrugged. “It’s up to us. Get the expeditionary team ready at the archway. I’ll be there shortly.”

Vezta stared a moment longer, eyes once again taking in Arkk’s stance and appearance. For a moment, he thought she was going to protest. To insist that he stay in bed for another day at the very least.

If Arkk were being honest, he would have appreciated the excuse.

However, another day of rest was not to be had. Vezta nodded her head. “I will see it done,” she said, bowing out of the room.

Arkk waited until the door shut behind her before moving to the basin of water in his room. He splashed his face, smacking his cheeks. All-in-all, he didn’t feel that bad. He had pulled a few sleepless nights in his time, usually when danger was spotted near the village. For most of those, he had been entirely wiped out by morning. Instead, he felt… not well rested but at least not exhausted. He entertained the idea that he might have fallen asleep with his eyes open at least at some points during the night.

Looking up in the mirror, frowning at the increasingly scraggly beard on his face, he took some solace in the fact that, at the very least, he wasn’t melting.

Taking his razor in hand, he decided to do a little something to keep his mind off other things. This was twice in the same thirty days that he had seen something impossible. Arkk wasn’t quite sure how much more he could take. And now he was headed off to some plane of existence that nobody knew existed, filled with who knew what?

He hoped that between the [STARS] and Xel’atriss, he was building up some kind of mental immunity to world-shattering experiences.

Based on recent trends, he would need it.

Beard trimmed—he would need a haircut as well one of these days, but that could wait—Arkk changed clothes, grabbed a sword just in case magic didn’t work in a different reality, and finally teleported straight to the archway room.

A quartet of guards, three orcs and one gorgon, were keeping watch on standby. All four jumped at Arkk’s arrival but quickly settled back down once they realized who had appeared in their midst. None of the expeditionary crew had assembled yet. Vezta was still gathering them up.

Arkk turned his attention to the archway. He had examined it the night before but hadn’t been in too much of a state of mind to really think about it.

The archway room was one of only two rooms that hadn’t been eaten by the lesser servants. The other being the [HEART] chamber. Aside from tidying up broken bodies and repairing cracked tiles, the lesser servants had left the archway alone.

It was a giant of an arch. Three times as tall as the doorways in the fortress, all of which could easily fit even the tallest elf without requiring stooping. Golden crystal, jagged and blocky, jutted up out of the ground on one side of the room. It didn’t bend so much as it had been grown up and to the side and up and to the side, over and over again until it reached its apex. At that point, it went down and to the side until it reached the ground once more.

Inscrutable runes and sigils covered the entire thing. Carvings that no one seemed to understand. Zullie and Savren hadn’t seen a single one of the runes before and Vezta couldn’t explain their origin. They weren’t even the same script as what Arkk had seen in the few salvaged books from the original fortress library.

Prior to the day before, the sigils had been inert. Little more than decorative carvings. If not for knowing that the archway was a magical portal to another realm, Arkk might have thought they were just decorative. Now, however, they glowed. Much like everything else in Fortress Al-Mir, they preferred a rich violet hue.

Of course, they were barely notable next to the portal. The opening of the archway formerly looked out onto the back wall of the room.

It lacked the spinning gold ring of stars that Arkk had seen Xel’atriss create. Nonetheless, it was the same place. A flat, desolate wasteland that stretched out as far as Arkk could see, broken only by the towering pillars of shadow. The main difference between what he saw before and what he saw now was that the perspective then had felt aerial, looking down on the world. Now, it was ground level, looking out over what anyone else might confuse with the Cursed Forest.

And there were buildings out there. Not built around the other side of the portal but in the distance, poking up as little nubs on the flat horizon.

That would be the first stop, then. It didn’t look like there was much else around. If Arkk had a harpy in his employ, a scouting flight might have found more. As it was, they would have to hope that some people did live in those buildings who might be able to connect them to the rest of the world. If the entire place was like this little desolate section, it wasn’t hard to imagine everyone over there joining up just to get a chance to see blue skies or grass.

Would scrying work over there?

Magic?

What did they eat?

And…

Curious, Arkk walked around the outside of the crystal archway, wondering if he could see in the other direction from the other side of the portal. Instead, he saw the four guards.

No back side to the portal then.

By the time Arkk made it back around the portal to the front, the door opened up. Vezta walked in first, leading the expeditionary group behind her.

The expeditionary crew had undergone a few changes over the night. Nothing major. Olatt’an stood at the forefront, dressed for battle with his crossbow-axe slung over his shoulder. He was one of the few orcs to still wear his old armor, not the new plate gear that the blacksmith had been making. Behind him, Dakka stood a head shorter even despite the short spikes on top of her helmet. Five other orcs, Zharja, and Joanne—formerly of the Claymores—rounded out the main warrior group.

In addition to the main warriors, Lyssa stood with the group. The formerly one-armed werecat still had a manacle around her right wrist. The chain, however, had been lengthened with spikes jutting off from the last few links. A heavy spearhead sat at the end of the chain. Her left arm didn’t match her right. As Hale’s grasp of the Flesh Weaving spell grew—and in need of a willing assistant to help her learn the spell—they had… fixed Lyssa’s arm according to the werecat’s specifications. Rather than the more humanoid paw that werecats normally possessed, Lyssa’s right arm terminated in a truly monstrous clawed gauntlet. Each ‘finger’ was about as long as Arkk’s hand, tipped with a razor-sharp protrusion of bone.

That was the kind of work that Flesh Weaving had truly been designed for. Not mere sealing of wounds. It was… Well… Arkk had to admit to being a little worried about Lyssa’s mental state. She didn’t talk much beyond making requests of Zullie and Hale for more ‘improvements’ to her body. Thicker muscles. Stronger legs. And so on. But she had yet to harm anyone at the fortress so Arkk was relatively content to leave her be.

Lexa, Alma, and Kelsey strode in behind Lyssa. The gremlin sported a cocky smile as she spun a blade around her fingers. Her eyes, already large for her smaller head, went even wider as she caught sight of the portal. Most of the orcs and gorgon had seen it the night before while standing guard but this was Lexa’s first time. She missed a step, almost tripping over her own feet.

Alma didn’t exactly look like she wanted to be present. But that wasn’t anything new. Of all of Arkk’s recruits, she was easily the most reluctant. Arkk hoped the half-werecat would eventually come around. Especially because the few bits of what she overheard during the recruitment session hardly seemed to matter these days. That said, neither she nor her companions had asked to be released or otherwise disbanded. They had volunteered for this job.

Zullie was the last member of the expeditionary group to enter. Her eyes gleamed with awe but not surprise. She and Savren had investigated the portal before Arkk sent everyone off to rest. They made sure that it was stable and not likely to cause any harm to the denizens of Fortress Al-Mir. She looked much better today; her steps were filled with energy rather than exhaustion.

While the expeditionary group moved up closer to the portal, more people entered the large room. Rekk’ar and Khan made up the defending group along with the rest of the orcs and several of the new hires from Cliff City—mostly beastmen. They would be securing the portal from the other side to the best of their ability, with the aid of lesser servants, to ensure that Fortress Al-Mir couldn’t easily come under assault. A smaller contingent would be waiting as backup inside Fortress Al-Mir, led by Agnete, both as a last line of defense in case something hostile did come through and to support any retreating that had to be done.

And to incinerate the bandits, or Edvin, if they caused problems in everyone else’s absence.

Arkk clasped his hands behind his back while waiting for everyone to assemble. Despite having practically the whole of Company Al-Mir present, it didn’t take long. Despite recruitment, they still weren’t anywhere near the level of a large organization. It was a bit depressing but…

No, it was much too soon to get his hopes up about possible recruits from the other side of the portal. First of all, it looked like a desolate wasteland. Was anyone even alive over there?

“Thank you all for coming,” Arkk said as the movement and shuffling died down. “Sorry for the delay. In case you missed the explanation, that ritual was a bit more draining for those of us involved than expected.”

Zullie let out a commiserating scoff, drawing a few eyes.

Arkk just gave her a nod. “You all know your tasks so I won’t bother with another explanation or long speech. This is… quite literally the adventure of a millennium. I think we’ve delayed long enough.”

Rekk’ar cupped his hands over his mouth. “So which idiot goes through first to see if it is safe?”

Arkk opened his mouth.

Vezta beat him to speaking. “I will,” she said.

Arkk glanced to his side. Vezta didn’t look quite so melty now. Whether that was because she was feeling better or because she was concentrating more, he couldn’t tell. Either way, he considered objecting. As the leader of Company Al-Mir and the Keeper of Fortress Al-Mir’s [HEART], it felt like it was his responsibility to go through first.

It was also his responsibility to ensure the safety of the people who placed their trust in him. Not to mention, he didn’t exactly want to die. Especially not before seeing Ilya again. And if anyone in this room could survive in a hostile environment long enough to get back safely, it would be Vezta. Her unique physiology gave her that advantage. Not to mention her unique perception. Perhaps her eyes could see dangers that everyone else would miss.

Arkk didn’t think that Xel’atriss would intentionally open a portal to somewhere dangerous after all that he had experienced yesterday. Why offer a warning against performing that ritual a second time if walking through the portal would get him killed? That said, a being like that might not even realize that the ants beneath its feet required air to breathe.

Was there air on the other side of the portal? He didn’t know.

But Vezta was significantly more valuable than certain other test subjects he had in stock.

Holding up a hand to stop her from going forward, Arkk pulled one of the lesser servants from elsewhere in the fortress. A wave of his hand commanded it through the portal.

There was some hesitance as it crawled forward. The faint shimmer of the portal grew more intense as it approached, almost turning opaque in the small area around the lesser servant’s body. But it kept going, puncturing through the film of the portal.

It made it to the other side and… seemed fine. It moved. It didn’t seem in distress. Interestingly, he could still see it through his Keeper ability. However, he couldn’t teleport it back to the fortress despite it being a mere few inches away. The way he plucked up minions to teleport them simply slid off, like trying to grasp water from a bucket. Another command had it return, slinking back through the portal. Unfortunately, it couldn’t talk or communicate much about what it had felt over there—if anything. So Arkk looked to Vezta and relented with a nod of his head.

Vezta turned on her heel, marched toward the portal, and stretched a hand out. Her hand stretched further and further, coming apart in a thick strand of oily flesh as she pressed it through the membrane. Arkk could see the resistance. There wasn’t much, like pushing through a curtain hung over a doorframe. Just enough to be visible.

Her arm punctured through and, after waving it about for a moment—during which she opened both eyes and mouths along its length—she pulled the arm back. Giving Arkk a shrug of her shoulders, she said, “Seems okay.”

With that, she stepped through fully.

Arkk watched for any sign of distress. He could see her on the other side, pacing around the dead landscape.

At one point in time, there might have been a building around the other side of the portal. Maybe a fortress like Al-Mir or maybe just a housing structure. It had long since withered away, leaving mounds of brown dirt up against the remains of crumbled walls. Vezta moved up to a carved pillar and brushed her fingers over its surface. She looked down, rubbing at the residue between her fingers.

Her fingers turned into one jagged mouth which she used to take a small bite out of the pillar.

After a few more minutes of walking about on the other side of the portal, she stepped back into Fortress Al-Mir.

“The air seems breathable and I am not sensing any toxins in the ground,” she said, hands clasped in front of her once more. “I doubt the environment will be deleterious toward mortal life. At least in the short term. Without further exploration, I cannot confirm that there is a source of water or food.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem as long as Fortress Al-Mir remains intact,” Arkk said. “Though, Zullie, your first task on the other side is to ensure that the portal structure over there is stable and not likely to collapse. Physically or magically.”

Zullie nodded her head, excitement unbridled in her expression.

“Well, people. A whole new world awaits.”

 

 

Arkk stared through the void around him, hesitant to take a single step. The world had shrunk down to the size of a small sphere, upon which only he and Vezta stood. It was about the size of the [HEART], though despite feeling like he was standing at an angle, he didn’t feel like he was about to fall off.

There was nowhere to fall to. No up or down, just the sphere and the void. It was as if he stood on the edge of a dream.

Vezta was looking around just as much as he was, a frown firmly planted on her face.

“Think that was supposed to happen?” he asked, forcing a note of levity into his voice.

Vezta, with her burning yellow eyes, looked at him. She opened her mouth to respond but, before a single sound could come out, lithe fingers emerged from the shadows of the void, large enough to grip the sphere he stood upon with long, violet-colored nails.

A face, as large as a church, loomed out from the void, peering down at the sphere held in the palm of its hand.

Arkk stared up, meeting those violet eyes. He opened his mouth, a cry of fear welling from the back of his throat.

Vezta’s tendrils wrapped around him, looping around his face, his mouth, and the rest of his body, dragging him downward.

For a fleeting moment, Arkk panicked. He feared that Vezta had just attacked him. He didn’t know why she would. They had been working together for months now. He knew her. He had possessed her. They had shared quiet moments and planned strategy together. She wouldn’t just attack him out of the blue.

He forced himself to calm down. Vezta wasn’t trying to break his neck or even restrain him. She was just holding him. Arkk still didn’t know why.

His faith did not go unrewarded. As soon as he ceased struggling, he felt a breath on his ear.

“Do not move or open your eyes. We’re in the presence of the [PANTHEON]. Just looking could have… deleterious effects.”

Arkk’s mouth went dry. They were what? That wasn’t supposed to happen. That was definitely not supposed to happen.

Thinking about it made him start shivering. It was a completely automatic response. He couldn’t help it. And yet, he was fairly certain he had recognized that face that had appeared, despite only seeing an instant of a glimpse.

He had seen it dozens of times. Even just a few minutes ago. One of the statues in the temple room, Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The patron goddess of barriers, locks, boundaries, and separation… according to Vezta. The only thing missing from reality versus the stone depiction was the door that stood behind her. Unless that had simply been too large to comprehend, he hadn’t seen it.

Arkk wanted to peek again. Just a glimpse to confirm that his memories weren’t inside-out. But for all the start she had given him, he did trust Vezta to know what she was talking about. Peeking would likely not end well for him. Just thinking back to the half-glimpse he had gotten, in which his imagination was likely filling in a vast sea of blanks, had him trembling uncontrollably.

Still, it made sense. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, held dominion of barriers and boundaries. Their whole ritual had been about knocking down the barrier separating the world from the Underworld.

Why had she shown up? Was this god upset at having mortals intrude upon her domain? Would she crush them in her massive grip or just swallow them whole?

The lack of sight was making him nervous. What was going on? Was Vezta talking to this being? Probably not. Arkk imagined a single hum would shake him to the core. One word would have him reeling. A full sentence would end in his death. Perhaps Vezta was keeping her head down and not looking either. She certainly wasn’t moving. Was this situation as terrifying for her as it was for him?

Arkk moved one arm. Vezta tensed for a moment until his slow movements reassured her that he wasn’t trying to escape her grasp. Once he could bring his hand up to the level of his head, he gently patted the tendril clamped against his mouth.

Vezta hesitated. He could feel the tension in her tendrils. With a second pat, however, she relented. The tendril around his eyes and ears remained in place but the one over his mouth slackened and hung down below his chin. Arkk took in a breath of air and tried to swallow only to find his mouth far, far too dry.

He had his mouth free now. He could speak.

But what to say? What did some nobody mortal have to say to a god?

“Hey there.”

Vezta hissed and promptly clamped her tendril over Arkk’s mouth once again. “What are you doing?”

Arkk couldn’t respond. Not with Vezta holding him ever tighter.

He patted at the tendril around his mouth once again. This time, Vezta was even more hesitant to release him. It took several increasingly insistent pats to get her to peel away from him. Free to speak once more, Arkk cleared his throat and licked his lips.

“Sorry about that. She’s just nervous.”

Entangled so tightly with Vezta, he could feel her indignation. Hadn’t this being been the one to bring her down from the [STARS]? She shouldn’t be that worried, right? Or… had she not actually seen Xel’atriss back whenever that happened? Arkk hadn’t asked. The master of boundaries might have simply opened a door that Vezta then stepped through, never having physically encountered Xel’atriss at all.

There was no response to Arkk’s words. No voice, thankfully, but no other meaningful response either. If Vezta had him blinded and was keeping her own eyes clamped shut, Arkk had to wonder if the being was even still there, standing over and watching them. For all he knew, they were just sitting and huddling to themselves. Surely a member of the [PANTHEON] had better things to do than stare at some mortals.

Or… maybe they didn’t. If the Calamity had severed them from the rest of reality, they might have just been floating around in a dark void with nothing going on up until now. But now, Arkk was just wildly speculating on things he couldn’t know even the most minute details of. An active imagination wasn’t going to get things back to normal.

“We were just trying to break down the boundaries between worlds just enough to reach the Underworld,” Arkk said, hoping he wasn’t insulting the being’s intelligence by explaining. If it so wished, he was beyond sure that he would be rendered into paste with a simple flick of its fingers, never mind whatever other powers Xel’atriss might possess. “Sorry for disturbing you.”

With that apology, something shifted. Not Vezta, who remained utterly still. Neither was it a physical shifting. Xel’atriss hadn’t spoken. Neither had it crushed them.

But knowledge stabbed into the deeper parts of Arkk’s mind anyway. The border between ignorance and knowledge moved. Not much. He had no grand revelations about the nature of life, the universe, or anything. The concepts needling into his mind were concepts of understanding and acknowledgment.

It did make him grimace in a pain not unlike that which he had experienced when exposed to Vezta and her [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE] before contracting with the [HEART].

The barrier of knowledge shifted once more, bringing forth a sensation of approval. But also a warning. This ritual they had done was wrong. It did not have the intended consequences. Rather, it had drawn the attention of far more beings than just the Lock and Key. Even at this moment, others were bearing down their gazes upon Fortress Al-Mir. They were unable to act. Most of the [PANTHEON], separated as they were, couldn’t act.

Only Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, lord of barriers, could interact with their ritual to breach boundaries today. But it had been a close thing. A slight variation, a different intention, or even a small change in the cosmology of the universe and Arkk could easily have been staring down the Almighty Glory. For as long as the Almighty Glory would have entertained his presence before crushing him like an insect.

“I… I understand.”

The line in the sand between knowledge and ignorance shifted more toward the side of ignorance. It was almost a playful shove. Like this god was trying to say that he did not understand but that was fine because his puny little mind couldn’t understand.

“Well, thank you for the warning, then.” Arkk wasn’t sure what else to say. “I don’t suppose there is anything you could do to help. We’re… I am in over my head here and really have no idea…”

Arkk trailed off as something else moved. It wasn’t some line between ignorance and knowledge, this time. Instead, he found that he could see. Not with his eyes. Vezta still had her tendrils firmly wrapped around his face. Yet he could still see. It was more like he was using his sense of Fortress Al-Mir or the many minions contracted to him. He saw from an outside perspective, looking down upon…

Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, drifted in the abyss. One hand, fingers splayed out, hovered beneath the small planetoid that Arkk and Vezta occupied. The twisted and warped version of the ritual’s central platform. Her fingernails glowed a cool violet in the void. Following her arm, Arkk found that rippling galaxy of a dress—like a slice of the night’s sky made into fashionable wear. Twin-black locks of surprisingly normal hair dangled down on either side of her chest. The back of her hair was pulled up into an infinitely spiraling bun.

Her violet eyes, half-lidded as she stared down at the planetoid, slowly drifted upward until they met with Arkk’s point of view. Like moons hung in the cosmic expanse of the universe. Holding up her other hand, she plucked a pair of stars from the void. They rotated around one another, spinning faster and faster until the two points of light became one solid ring. She held it up for him to see.

On one side, he could see Fortress Al-Mir. The crystal archway room specifically. Dakka, Olatt’an, and Rekk’ar, along with several other orcs and gorgon, stood at the ready, watching and waiting.

Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, rotated her wrist, showing off the other side of the spinning ring of stars.

Arkk looked out into a world unlike anything he had ever seen. A great, desolate landscape expanded outward, flat and mountainless as far as he could see. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the Cursed Forest except for how vast it was. A river flowed through, black as the night, and in the far distance, great spires of shadow jutted straight up and into the red haze of the sky.

With a casual, almost lazy wave of her fingers, Xel’atriss tossed the ring of stars into the distance. Arkk followed it until it became nothing more than a pinprick of light. Even that vanished after a moment.

Arkk turned back to find the goddess almost reclining. She curled her free hand, folding it so that her chin rested on her knuckles. Maintaining that pose, Xel’atriss stared. She looked so relaxed and calm, unbothered by anything or anyone. He had to wonder if the Calamity was as big of a problem as he had been led to believe. At least for this member of the [Pantheon], it didn’t seem to be the case.

She was one of the few who had a statue at the temple. Along with the known traitors. Arkk had to wonder if the one holding dominion over barriers could have shattered the Calamity at any time if she so chose.

Arkk didn’t get more time to consider. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, hefted up the planetoid that held him and Vezta. He didn’t feel anything—no movement nor even a gust of sudden wind. Not until she flicked her finger and sent the marble hurtling through the void. That ripped Arkk’s stomach out from under him.

But before he could so much as panic, awareness of the void cut off and awareness of Fortress Al-Mir returned in full. He felt the minions, from the nearby casters to the orcs to the distant Ilya, currently dragging her mother through a room in the Duke’s manor. He could see the hallways and the rooms in the ever-expanding fortress. The beating of the [HEART] thrummed louder than ever in both the walls and his chest.

Arkk sat on the central platform in the temple room, wrapped in Vezta’s tendrils. She still had a hold of his face but within Fortress Al-Mir, he didn’t need eyes to see. The other casters were in varying states of panic. Hale had her eyes squeezed shut, trembling violently. Agnete’s eyes were alight and her teeth clenched. Savren and Zullie weren’t in an outright panic, both simply looked resigned.

The bandits who had joined in were by far the worst, shouting and frantically looking around.

Had everyone seen what Arkk had seen? Or were they still in a panic over being unable to stop the ritual?

Speaking of the ritual, the central platform snuffed out. All the light in the array vanished at once, leaving only the glowstones in the room to provide light. The thrum of magic died off and a distant ringing started up in Arkk’s ears.

Zullie got to her feet in an instant, now smiling at herself. “And that’s it. See, I told you all nothing to worry about. We just had to let the magic run its course and… Arkk? What are you doing?”

Before anything else, Arkk pulled one of the lesser servants from the gold mine and dropped it on the altar. It promptly started eating away at the central component, destroying the ritual circle. Arkk grabbed the two prototypes from the library and dropped them into the vault. He would debate destroying them later.

Only once he was sure that the ritual couldn’t possibly be triggered again did he give Vezta a soft pat on her… herself. She wasn’t at all in a humanoid form at the moment. Her body had reverted to her natural state of an amorphous, oily mass, covered in pulsating eyes and snapping mouths that looked like a larger version of the lesser servants. “I think we’re back,” he said softly. “Are you alright? Can you get up?”

Vezta didn’t respond. She did squirm somewhat. Through the magic of the fortress, Arkk could tell that she was physically okay.

“I can sit here as long as you need. However, the minions are in something of a panic and the archway is working.”

Vezta didn’t peel herself away. If anything, she wound around him a little tighter. “Are you alright after that? You conversed with a being mortals can’t even comprehend.”

“I don’t know if I would call that a conversation,” Arkk started. He trailed off, looking inward. Contemplating.

Something changed in him. He wasn’t being flippant for the sake of being flippant. Nor was he defaulting to his usual methods of charging right in and dealing with the consequences later. Something was different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what. It was like his perspective had been broadened.

“I think Xel’atriss did something to me. Made me more okay with what happened. When I first saw it, before you pulled me down, I could feel the terrible awe bubbling in the back of my mind. But now? It was an extraordinary situation, to be sure, but I think I’m alright. We’ll see if I don’t wake up screaming from endless nightmares tonight.”

A bright golden eye formed on the tendril that peeled away from Arkk’s face. She wasn’t humanoid at all and yet, he knew her well enough to feel the incredulity in that look.

Forcing a smile, patting her on… whatever again… Arkk slowly disentangled himself and stood.

He looked to Zullie. “We’re not running this ritual again.”

Zullie adjusted her glasses, looking around. “Yeah. We’ll have to figure out what went wrong and try—”

“No. Nothing like this again,” Arkk said, feeling the weight of the warning heavy on his head. “The portal is open but not because this worked as intended. If we do it again… We’ll probably all be dead.”

“What? No. As long as people don’t move,” she said, glaring at the empty spot in the ritual circle. “It’s perfectly safe. We just need—”

“Need nothing. Divine intervention saved us. Nothing more.”

Zullie’s jaw clicked shut. She stared down at the array around her for a long moment before her glare found Savren. Aside from a small huff as she crossed her arms, she didn’t say anything.

“Hale, are you alright?”

The youngest ritualist in the room forced a shaky smile. She pulled herself up on wobbly legs. “That… was a rush,” she said, voice trembling. Her smile faded and she put her hands to her head. “I don’t feel…”

Arkk teleported her straight to him, catching her in his arms before she could fall. “I got you,” he said, holding her tight. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”

She didn’t respond. One hand grasping his tunic, she leaned against him. Her eyes fluttered closed.

Agnete, stoic as ever, managed to stand without trouble. Savren did as well.

“Escort everyone out, Savren,” Arkk said, looking around the room once more. “Make sure they get a good meal in the…”

Arkk blinked three times as he noticed something new in the room. Another statue. One standing at the wall that previously held no statues. The sixth occupied pedestal in the room held a woman, draped in a shadowy veil that obscured all her features save for the outline of her body. The veil, long and flowing in an unfelt wind, dispersed into ethereal wisps like the trails of smoke from dying embers in a campfire.

Arkk knew without even needing to ask Vezta who this was.

The Cloak of Shadows. Lord of the Underworld.

 

 

It might have been in the middle of winter with a war going on but the world continued to turn and life had to move forward.

The morning started as any other for Jacob of Loan. He got up with the sun, headed out to the coops, and did a patrol around the perimeter. Coyotes, wild dogs and cats, and even harpies all liked to feast on the chickens any time but winter was an especially vulnerable time of the year. A lot less food to go around with the cold.

No alarmed squawking had woken him but still best to make sure the fence was intact. Didn’t want the mangy mutts prying something loose one night and then breaking in too fast to react to the next. Finding no problems in any of the likely areas, he opened the coop gate, stepped inside, and started spreading feed. With the chickens happily enjoying their feast, he started collecting eggs. Egg output dropped in winter months as well but it didn’t stop completely. With enough chickens, there were more than enough eggs to go around. Keeping them happy and safe helped.

Heading back inside, he handed off the eggs to his lovely wife. She was already prepping for breakfast. Leaving a peck on her cheek, he headed back into the bedroom of their small house to rouse the boys. Jacob’s father had never let him sleep in. While Jacob was a little more lax, there was work to be done.

James, the older of his two boys, got up without complaint. With a gargantuan yawn, he headed off for the latrine. Jims, however, wasn’t even asleep when Jacob entered the room. His youngest boy sat back on the bed, eyes wide as he stared up at the ceiling. Jims had his fingers gripped tight on the edge of the blanket, knuckles as white as his face.

With a sigh, Jacob sat down on the bed and rested a hand on his son’s chest. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. “Did you have another nightmare?” he asked, giving his son a firm squeeze of his hand. “It’s alright. Everything’s fine, Jims.”

Jims turned his head, eyes unblinking, to stare at Jacob. In the hoarsest whisper, he spoke two soft words. “It’s happening.”

“Nothing is happening, Jims. It was a nightmare. A dream. It can’t hurt—”

“It’s today,” he half-shouted, lurching forward as much as he could with Jacob’s hand on his chest. “The sky is breaking!”

“I was out there not five minutes ago and the sky was fine, Jims. Did you get any sleep last night?”

Slowly, still without blinking, the young boy shook his head.

Jacob let out a heavy sigh. He didn’t know how to handle this. He knew what his father would have done. Under no circumstances was he about to bend the boy over his knee and whip him until his bottom bled. Instead, he just patted his son on the chest. “Close your eyes, Jims. I’ll have your mother bring you something to eat but try to sleep, alright? Everything is fine. I promise.”

As if those words were the only thing he needed, Jims nodded his head and slowly closed his eyes. Jacob sat still on the bed for a long moment, watching as the tension drained from his son’s grip on the blanket. After a moment, his breathing slowed and steadied and he fell asleep. As easy as that. With a sad shake of his head, Jacob got up from the bed—carefully; he didn’t want to wake his son—and quietly stepped back out into the main room of the home.

Annette gave him a concerned look. Jacob could only shrug. He was about to explain when he heard his eldest son calling from outside.

“Dad? Daaaad?”

Hearing the undertone of fear in his voice, Jacob rushed out, grabbing the heavy club that rested by the door. If some coyote had been prowling around the latrine, it wouldn’t even know what hit it.

But his son was just standing outside, halfway between the house and the latrine. Jaw open and eyes wide, he stared upwards.

Bugs eating at his stomach, Jacob slowly followed his eldest son’s gaze.

The sky, the bright blue sky, wasn’t so bright or blue anymore. A dark, vibrating line split the gray sky in two, stretching from horizon to horizon. The club slid from Jacob’s loose fingers, thumping lightly against the ground. The chickens in the coop were going wild, clucking and thrashing and beating against the fence. In the distance, he could hear the baying of dogs or coyotes, howling as if they were being torn apart.

Color fled from the world. There wasn’t much color to begin with in winter but the browns of the house’s wood faded to a mute gray. The green needles on distant trees, cloaked by a dusting of snow, turned completely black. His son’s brown hair turned to a snowy white.

Jacob, mouth dry and fingers numb, just stared.

The slit in the sky peeled apart, warping and twisting the dark gray of the cloudless sky. The vibrating lines of the fissure trembled and shook violently, like a continuous bolt of ever-changing lightning. It continued widening, filling the sky with a void filled with numerous tiny lights. Like stars except… not quite. They danced around, darting here and there.

A moon rolled into place, obstructing most of the void. It wasn’t the normal moon—he could still see the normal moon, low in the sky and somehow less real than usual, lacking not just color but presence. This new moon, covering a full third of the entire sky, was a deeply violet moon with bright purple jagged lines radiating out from the black center.

Something snapped in the back of Jacob’s mind. He sank down, knees settling in snow-damped soil. It soaked into his clothes but he barely felt it. He was too busy staring up at the sky, watching as the sky stared back down at him.

It happened.

It was today.

The sky broke.

Priscilla barreled through three trees before she lost enough momentum and the next caught her. She tumbled and fell, snapping branches and scattering needles to the wind. The frost-covered ground was as hard as a rock but dragonoids were hardy. It barely felt any worse than crashing into several trees had.

She was too preoccupied to think about pain anyway.

Sightless eyes stared up at what had been a perfectly normal sky only moments ago. The great burning stars overhead had been shoved aside like they hardly mattered. In their place, a beacon formed.

Priscilla wasn’t one to admit fault. Ever.

Leaving her mountaintop without a guide had maybe not been the wisest course of action, however. She had been stumbling along, flying toward nothing more than a feeling. She hadn’t known where to go and the Stars, though they clearly had been pointing something out, had never been something she had been that good at reading. Too vague. Too far off. They just didn’t have the context to give proper signs to any who might watch. Good for asking about something as grand and ever-changing as the future but not so good for asking specific directions.

Now, it was as if a finger jammed down out of the sky, practically pointing out exactly where she needed to go. Like the powers of old had seen her fruitless wanderings and decided to take pity.

Well, she wasn’t one to ignore the old ones offering a gift. More than a gift, even, a sign. This was it.

Priscilla stared up. This wasn’t something that only she could see. Everyone would see it. Everyone would know.

Claws dug into the tree as she pulled herself back to her feet, all without blinking even once.

That fiery dragon heart she had left at the base of her mountain would see as well. She would know. And she would come.

But Priscilla would get there first.

Sule nearly fell out of his chair. To be fair, aside from the listeners, everyone in the room at least jumped. The listeners went into an outright panic as the movement caused ripples in their bowls. Some screamed short, clipped squawks of fear and surprise, others faceplanted straight into the water.

When the resident monster in human skin with bright gold eyes jumped to his feet and rushed out of the room, it was hard to maintain a semblance of calm. When he first jumped up, Sule had thought that that was it. The golden-eyed monster was finally going to dispense with niceties and platitudes and just usurp the position of sultan in full. He was already running practically everything.

But he just left. Not a word.

That was… odd.

Normally, the man moved with a practiced lethargy. As if nothing, no matter the situation or the people involved, could possibly be a bother to him. To see him rush out like he had contracted a sudden bout of dysentery had more than just Sule staring at the door. Zarkov, his Grand Vizier, gathered the presence of mind to rush through the room, pulling the listeners away from their disturbed pools of water. As soon as he finished, he turned to Sule and quirked a single eyebrow.

Sule, supposed Sultan of Evestani, sighed. “I suppose I’ll go see if he’s… alright?”

“I would hate for him to reenter in a distressed state.”

“Of course,” Sule said, not bothering to fight the sneer off his face. He heard what Zarkov hadn’t said. The man didn’t want to risk their resident monster returning upset so better calm him down. The coward was just worried over his own skin.

With one last look over the large table and the map it held—their campaign into the Duchy of Mystakeen was going quite well, especially with the golden magic their monster provided—Sule stalked out of the room and searched around for where he had likely gone. It didn’t take long to notice the foot-shaped cracks in the stone floor. Figuring they would lead him in the right direction, Sule left the central area of the palace, heading to one of the guest rooms. The nearest one. The door was wide open and half hanging from its hinges.

The golden-eyed monster stood out on the balcony, staring up at the sky. His fingers, gripping the balcony’s railing, clenched tight enough to crush the smooth stone in his grip.

Sule felt he had a working survival instinct. That instinct screamed at him that approaching would not be the wisest course of action if he ever wanted to see his daughters again. He was about to turn around and walk away—he could figure out what had happened later when he wasn’t in immediate danger of having his head crushed—when something strange started happening.

The colors left. The guestroom bed, covered with a rich red blanket and translucent blue curtains, simply lost all of its brightness. The red turned dark. The blue faded to a gray. The floor even lost its color. Which didn’t quite make sense given that the black and white mosaic tiles didn’t have color to begin with.

Confusion made Sule step into the room. Rich dark wood turned pale. The amber glowstone lights dimmed to the point where he could barely see. In the polished silver mirror, his own face, normally a healthy brown, looked like it had been coated in ash.

Staggering forward, nausea filling his stomach, Sule stepped out onto the balcony. If this was a counterattack, he wasn’t quite sure what its purpose was. Nevertheless, the source was outside.

Stopping just behind the man with the golden eyes, Sule couldn’t help but gape.

In the far east, on the distant horizon, the sky had been torn apart. A great not-moon hung in a black void. So vast and so encompassing—

“Don’t look at it.”

Sule blinked. He was on his knees for some reason, staring up. But his view of the sky was blocked by the back of the glowing-eyed monster. Sule couldn’t see his face but he could hear the barely-concealed rage vibrating just beneath his calm tone.

“That is what we fight. That will be the end of all if we fail. We must not fail.”

Sule could still see the holes in the sky on either side of the monster’s shoulders. He didn’t dare move, however. Not if it meant seeing that not-moon again. He simply nodded his head, perspective on this war altered. Perhaps it was more important than he had thought.

Ilya folded her arms across her chest, glaring up at the sky.

“What? W-What is this?” Duke Woldair stammered.

Alya, Ilya’s mother, had a hand clutched to her chest as she stared up with nervous eyes. Beads of sweat dripped down her face. Two other advisors had rushed over along with seemingly half of the manor’s guards. All to her room. It was on the right side of the manor to see the event in the sky in full but there were surely other balconies to watch from. Then again, they could have seen it from practically anywhere. It was almost directly overhead. Not even the mountains shading Cliff could obstruct that thing.

From the manor balcony, Ilya could easily see the streets of the rest of the city. Not all of them, of course, but enough to guess that everywhere was probably the same. The streets were crowded, packed full of people. Many were on their knees, staring up. Praying, perhaps, though whether out of fear or reverence was anybody’s guess.

With everyone in varying states of panic, Ilya felt like something of an outsider. She was the only one not experiencing some level of distress. Worry, certainly. It was hard to not worry when the whole sky split open. Yet it wasn’t the all-encompassing dread that seemed to have hit everyone around here.

There was some sensation in the back of her mind that this was fine. Not normal, but fine. This wasn’t going to kill everyone or destroy the world. It just… was.

The other major emotion running through Ilya’s mind was a tinge of irritation. She didn’t know exactly what this was but, given that she was apparently the only one immune to whatever they were experiencing, she had a feeling that she knew who to blame for it.

There had been one large ritual they had been planning. The ritual that would weaken the barriers between planes so that the archway could reconnect to the Underworld. There had been concerns that it was too strong of a ritual, that it would do something far more than what was intended. Savren and Zullie were supposed to have tuned it back.

Was this what they called holding back?

Ilya had a feeling that the whole fortress was falling to pieces without her there to make sure everything ran smoothly. Arkk was good but he got focused on his ideas, often rushing off to handle them personally. Vezta was an inhuman monstrosity who probably didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraint’. The orcs, gorgon, and thieves were hardly reliable. She had thought that Zullie, at least, had a good head on her shoulders…

Now?

She needed to get back.

Her wounds were better these days. She wouldn’t be drawing back a bow or running through a forest anytime soon but she was at least back on her feet. She could make her way back now. Perhaps not on her own, but…

Ilya looked at Alya. Something must have caught the older elf’s eye. She managed to pull her gaze off the spectacle in the sky.

“You… knew?”

“Knew what, Mom?” Ilya said with a glare. With their voices, the Duke had managed to drag his eyes off the sky, though he didn’t quite look all there. He stared in confusion.

“This… you knew it was coming,” Alya said, eyes wide and fearful.

“I didn’t know anything of the sort,” Ilya said as she glared up at the purple moon thing. “I’ve been trying to tell you, Arkk and I went into the Cursed—”

“This is my fault. We were warned of this. I’ve failed.” Alya’s shoulders slumped. “I left, thinking I could stop another war from starting. And I failed at that too. I left my position behind and now… My whole life…”

She sagged, leaning up against the doorframe that led out to the balcony. Like the weight of all her centuries hit her all at once. Ilya could only stare, wondering how her mother had ended up like this. She was warned? Warned of what, exactly? And who warned her?

Ilya tried to ask but, with tears in her eyes, Alya just shook her head.

Grabbing her by the wrist, Ilya dragged her back indoors. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Now,” Ilya said. “I don’t know if I’m well enough to travel on my own—damn Arkk for destroying the teleportation circles on his way out—so you’re going to help me. You’re going to explain everything on the way. No more deflections, no more lies.”

“Where are we going?” Alya said, her voice sounding steadier as Ilya dragged her away from the balcony.

“Back to Fortress Al-Mir. You have explaining to do. Arkk has explaining to do. And I’m sick of that handsy duke coming into my room to check on my condition,” she growled. Her mother could throw herself at the Duke all she wanted. Ilya wanted none of it.

Even with that Fissure in the Sky, the Duke paid far too much attention to the women. Ilya made it a mere five steps before he called out after them.

“Guards! Guards! Stop them. They know something!”

The pair of guards, normally posted outside Ilya’s room for her protection, stepped into the room. They hadn’t left their posts with all the commotion. They hadn’t fallen into a stupor after seeing the sky. They did glance at one another, surprise riddled in their faces when they realized the Duke was pointing at his chief advisor and the guest they had been guarding for the past several weeks.

Their confusion didn’t stop them from lowering their pikes, stopping Ilya in her tracks.

At Ilya’s side, her mother looked back and forth with just as much confusion as the guards must have felt. It was like she couldn’t quite comprehend what was going on.

Ilya glared. Not at anyone in particular. Just at the situation. Slowly, she raised her arms in surrender. “Perfect,” she hissed. “Just perfect.”

 

 

“Places, places everyone!”

Arkk and Vezta stood at the very center of the ritual circle. Arkk took the anchor position, the point where the most magic would flow, while Vezta stood in a symbolic spot. She existed less as an active participant in the ritual and more as a simple connection to the beings that brought her to this world as well as the idea from ages past that people could traverse planes as easily as Arkk could hop on a horse-drawn carriage and travel the Duchy. There was a large altar between them, covered in intricate metalwork designed to channel magic this way or that.

As much as Arkk felt he could craft working ritual circles and maybe even design a few aspects himself, staring at the altar boggled his mind. He hadn’t the slightest idea how Zullie and, later, Savren had worked out what was needed. Not to mention how they assembled such a large and complex ritual.

Arkk didn’t want to say that he would be surprised if this worked. That implied a lack of faith in his employees. Still, if they all stood around and nothing happened, he doubted he would be particularly shocked.

There was an undercurrent of fear lingering at the back of his mind. Not that it would work but that he would manage to screw something up. Having spent most of his life blowing up ritual circles—or animals affected by his magic—standing at the very center of this complex, experimental, and even theoretical ritual circle didn’t exactly fill him with feelings of reassurance. Savren and Zullie were here. He doubted they intended to blow themselves up. The pylons jutting up from the waters drew his eye. Four large pylons stood in the water between the bridges. Not high enough to connect to the roof. They were each topped with smaller ritual circles, tangentially connected to the main ritual via thin wires.

“Those weren’t in the original design,” Arkk had commented upon first seeing them in the small model.

“Magic bleeders,” Zullie had answered. “We weren’t sure about the level of magic you or Agnete would output but, anticipating too much, we’ve decided to err on the side of caution and add magic bleeders into the array. If the level of magic increases beyond safe levels, the excess will be channeled into the pylons where smaller arrays will disperse the magic safely.”

Arkk had nodded along. “They were absent from the original design because you wanted to overpower it anyway.”

“The original design was made before Agnete was a consideration,” Zullie had said with a shrug, “but yes, there wasn’t any concern then.”

So they had some precautions. Nothing should blow up today. Still…

The real reassurance was knowing that he could teleport himself and all his employees instantly should something go wrong. The bandits wouldn’t be safe but… Callous as it was to say, Arkk didn’t feel nearly so conflicted about leaving them behind.

Savren and Zullie were the only two who weren’t in position, as far as he could tell. They were running around the room, making sure that everyone else hadn’t stepped out of their spots in the time it took for everyone to get settled. They were all standing up, some looking quite a bit more nervous now than they had been during the meeting earlier.

He spotted one bandit out of position, having stepped forward to peer down into the smooth silvery water. Arkk was about to yell at him to get back but Zullie saw him first, grabbed him by the shoulder, and wrenched him back. She promptly started chewing him out. “What did I say? Don’t touch the water, don’t move, don’t even breathe. Do you want to be the one explaining to your boss why we had to cancel to find a replacement? My boss isn’t going to be happy with your boss if that happens.”

Noticing that they were looking in his direction, Arkk glared. A faint red light reflected off the silvery water—odd because it didn’t reflect anybody. He maintained the glare for just a moment, making sure that the bandit noticed, before glancing aside with a small smile.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“More than I should,” Arkk admitted to Vezta. “I look forward to the day I can get them out of my fortress. It just feels… dangerous to have them around. Throwing a little weight around, making sure they know who they’re dealing with, that does feel nice.”

“I have to say, it is an unconventional situation. Most Keepers in the past would never have allowed potential enemies so close to their [HEART].”

“After that little stunt one of them pulled trying to get into the treasury, I did make up some extra security features in the hallway outside both rooms. Lesser servants are standing by, ready to drop anyone who approaches either door down a large pit. Beyond that, we should be able to handle any ideas that they might get. You, me, and Agnete.”

“For the majority, I agree. Some of them, those here, possess magic that is harder to plan around. While we could handle them, I’ve no doubt, I do worry about potential damage to your [HEART] before we can react. Seeing the gremlin’s stealth spells makes me worried.”

“Ah, damage to the Heart would be a concern if we were playing host to someone like Inquisitor Vrox. Thieves, however, are going to be less inclined to immediately attack a magical artifact. They’ll want to steal it. Assuming the piles of gold surrounding it don’t draw their eyes first.” Arkk shook his head. “I’m more concerned about a knife in my back while walking through the hallways.”

“Master, someone of your status doesn’t walk through hallways.”

“Not since inviting them here, that’s for sure,” Arkk said with a sardonic chuckle. He continued looking around the room, making sure that nobody else was causing problems. His gaze landed on Hale.

The young spellcaster looked nervous, shuffling her feet and rubbing her hands while looking around the room with ill-disguised awe. She wore a relatively nice dress that the tailor servant had made. It was simple, like most everything the servant crafted, but still leagues nicer than anything someone from Langleey would have worn. Arkk couldn’t help but feel like she looked out of place here.

Agnete, eyes glowing and face stoic, stood opposite from Hale, wearing an outfit fashioned after her old inquisitor uniform, a long coat with several straps holding it closed across her chest. In comparison to Hale, she looked perfectly at ease. Maybe even a little irritated with how long Savren and Zullie were taking.

Having a sudden thought, Arkk teleported Zullie straight to him. The witch stumbled but was used to moving around enough that she quickly caught herself.

“Problem?” she snapped, lips tight and tone terse. “If not, I’ll thank you to leave me to my job. This is stressful enough without—”

“I just wanted to ask about Hale.”

“Hale?” Zullie quirked an eyebrow, turning her head to look over the bridge. “What’s wrong with her?”

“You did tell her what she needs to do, right?”

“It’s just like activating a ritual circle. Let your magic flow.”

“I know that. Does Hale? Or did you assume she already knew?”

Zullie crossed her arms over her chest, glaring over the top rim of her glasses. Notably, she didn’t say anything. That did not reassure Arkk in the slightest.

“Go remind her,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “And do be nice about it.”

“Nice? I’m always—”

Arkk teleported her away before she could finish, dropping her off right at Hale’s side. The younger girl let out a small yelp, hopping aside before realizing who was there. Zullie shot Arkk one more glare, which he returned with a light wave of his hand, before bending at the waist to speak to Hale.

“Will she be alright?” Vezta asked, watching them as well.

“Hale? Or Zullie?”

“Both,” Vezta said with a light chuckle. “Mostly the smaller of the two.”

“Zullie says her magical capacity is surprisingly high for someone who wasn’t taken to an academy as a child. Honestly, I’m more worried about the bandits. According to Zullie, none of them have a formal education. They all just stumbled through magic, teaching each other rituals and spells. Not often very successfully. Lexa says that everyone had their spells that they kept secret from the others, not wanting their usefulness usurped. It wasn’t uncommon for some to try to sabotage others. Likely by teaching them bad practices.”

Vezta shook her head, touching her brow with her fingertips. “Something of a mess, isn’t it?”

“Nervous?” Arkk asked. “I am. But I’m excited as well. Like… What if this works? War aside, casting great magic like this is something I dreamed of when I first started blowing up my ritual circles. I mean, not exactly like this, but—”

“Arkk,” Savren called out, now standing at his position in the ritual circle. “I’ve accomplished assessment and appraisal of all our allies. Awaiting your adjuration.”

Waving a hand to show his acknowledgment, Arkk turned to find Zullie hurrying past several of the ritualists, moving from Hale’s position back to her own. As soon as she arrived, she opened her mouth to call out as well only to notice Arkk watching. With a huff, she nodded her head.

Arkk took a breath, flashing a smile at Vezta. “This is it.”

“I eagerly await the outcome.”

Humming, Arkk raised his voice. “Alright. We’re beginning. Listen for Savren and Zullie’s callouts.” With one last sweeping look around the chamber, Arkk knelt and planted a hand in the designated spot.

“Arkk,” Zullie called out from across the water. “Start slow. Ready when you are.”

Arkk nodded and began pushing magic into the ritual array. Just a touch at first. Like he had done before finding Fortress Al-Mir. The tiny scraps of magic he pushed into the circle were more prodding than proper flowing as he worked to make sure nothing was amiss.

“Good. Increase output slowly.”

Arkk obeyed, moving from his careful probe into a more proper flow, much like he might do if he were powering a regular ritual array. The large altar in front of him began to glow. Slowly at first; his magic took its time to weave through the interlaced diagrams of metal. It accelerated as he turned up the flow rate of his magic, flooding through the altar array. With a slight popping of his eardrums, the entire altar thrummed with a low violet light.

“Hold. Maintain output but don’t increase any further,” Zullie called out. “Alright, stabilizers! Your turn. We’re starting with the four closest to me and Savren. That’s me and the idiot opposite from me in case you lot haven’t been paying attention.”

“Simply sluice the sigils set before you,” Savren added, speaking a little quieter as he looked to the two bandits at either side.

Arkk kept his head down, eying the array to make sure the intensity of the glow didn’t increase or decrease. At the same time, he could peer throughout the room using his total knowledge of Fortress Al-Mir. In sort of a double-vision, he kept monitoring the altar while also watching the ritual arrays around the bandits light up as they followed directions. Their purpose here didn’t require anything quite so complex as the altar around them. It was more like, should someone’s magic output dip for any reason, their magic would make their way through the ritual circle to steady it out until the original caster could correct their error.

Even with only the four active, as soon as some of the light made its way across the bridges and to the central altar, Arkk found himself relaxing. It wasn’t quite as strenuous to maintain the exact level of magic output that he had been when Zullie called for him to hold.

“Excellent. Alright, Hale, Agnete. You’re up. Take it slow at first. Steady. Breathe, Hale. You’re fine.”

Turning his attention to the youngest person in the ritual circle, he watched as Hale clenched her fists. Her hair, tied into two long ponytails on either side of her head, wafted about her shoulders in a way that normally would have required a fairly stiff breeze. The levels of magic in the air, continually rising as the ritual went on, charged the currents with enough energy that magic alone held her hair against the forces of gravity.

The smaller rituals atop the pylons in the water were slowly brightening, their intensity helping to illuminate the room. Arkk wondered if he should pull back somewhat only to shake his head. Neither Zullie nor Savren had said to stop. Everything must be going according to plan.

Hale took a deep three breaths, eyes scrunched shut, before she slammed her hand down on the platform. The components around her feet immediately lit up with a bright violet.

“Slower, Hale. Pace yourself.”

The metal channels around Hale’s feet immediately dimmed, only for some of the stabilization magic to divert, keeping it at a low steady glow much like that of the central altar. Aside from some winces from the bandits, everything seemed fine on that side of things.

Agnete, calmer and more experienced, didn’t require any assistance or beratements from Zullie. There was a bit of an oddity, however. Rather than the violet that suffused throughout the rest of the ritual circle, the array components around her feet were a dim orange. More flame-like.

While Zullie was focused on Hale, Savren noticed the oddity around Agnete. He stared for a long moment. Arkk could see the wheels turning in his head. But he didn’t say anything. A few moments later, when Zullie looked around, she also stared, thought, and decided to proceed anyway.

“Next stabilizers,” Zullie said. “That’s anyone who isn’t currently doing anything. Start pushing your magic into the array.”

The remaining bandits, and one orc, followed Zullie’s directions. Arkk watched carefully for any sign of subterfuge from the bandits. He didn’t expect anything from them, however. Not after that whole discorporealization warning from the meeting earlier.

“And now us.” Zullie’s voice carried over the gently rippling pool of water, though she was talking more to herself. She and Savren locked eyes over the top of the central altar for a brief moment before both knelt.

Violet light coursed across three bridges. Amber light emerged from the last. They merged together at the central platform, brightening the few dark parts of the array around Arkk. On the other side of the altar, the rings around Vezta brightened as well. Vezta’s many eyes darted back and forth, watching the changing and movement of the light as it swirled around her. Her expression, calm and serene, belied an almost frantic anticipation in the back of her eyes.

After spiraling around her, the magic funneled back toward Arkk, cresting the edge of the circular altar. The light’s path took it directly to the center of the metal diagram. A shaving from the crystal archway stood upright at the center point. The magic poured into it, bringing forth a brilliant luster from the formerly rough piece of crystal.

“Okay. That looks good,” Zullie said. The genuine surprise in her voice was a bit disturbing. “Arkk, next part. Remember, you need to—”

Arkk knew the ritual front to back. He might not have been involved too heavily with its actual design but he had gone over every detail, in detail, with Savren and Zullie. Yet, whatever reminder Zullie thought he needed fell by the wayside as the ground shook. Roiling waves of the silvery water crashed out from the central platform, rippling out to the outer edges of the pool.

Hale shrieked in shock and several of the bandits shouted. The glowing light on the altar flickered even as Zullie shouted out, “Calm. Do not move. Do not stop! Everyone keep pushing magic into your arrays or you’ll destabilize the whole thing!”

Savren echoed her sentiments, though in his far more verbose manner.

They kept speaking, kept trying to calm everyone down. It worked. The flickering of the array ceased and the low violet light glowed steady. Even still, there was an undercurrent of nervousness suffocating the large room.

“Was that supposed to happen, Zullie?” Arkk called out once the witch stopped trying to get everyone under control.

“Look, Arkk,” the witch shouted back. “There isn’t some book I can cross reference that says ‘Oh, in case of quakes, divert more magic to the paradimensional entanglement array’. This is cutting-edge magic here.”

“So is that a no?” Arkk said, trying to keep levity in his voice. A little humor helped calm people more than shouting at them any day of the week. It helped show that nothing was wrong, everything was under control. If he wasn’t worried, nobody else should be either.

Even though he was worried. The fact that even Vezta looked mildly alarmed was enough to set the hairs on his neck on end.

Connected to Fortress Al-Mir as he was, he didn’t detect anything wrong with the rest of the place. That quake hadn’t damaged anything. No lesser servants were scurrying around trying to repair the damage. It was almost like it had only occurred within the room.

“Back down before barrier-breaking breaks our backs,” Savren said, voice raised.

“Right,” Zullie agreed. “We’ll shut everything down, examine what that tremor was, and try again in a few days.”

“Start with the stabilizers or the strong-sigils won’t stop.”

“Yes, Savren. Thank you. I know how to shut down the ritual. We’ll go in the same order that we started with. That means the two closest to me and the two closest to Savren. Pull back slowly so that—”

One of the bandits, the one directly to Zullie’s left, started to scream. “I—I can’t stop! It’s—” Gripping his hand with his other wrist, he tried to rip it away from the array. With a vigorous wrenching of his arm, he succeeded, though not entirely. Bits of flesh from his fingertips and palm remained behind, trailing sticky strings of blood. Hand still gripped to his wrist, he stumbled to his feet and teetered backward. He tried to steady himself with a flailing of his hands.

Tried.

The moment both feet left the protective ring he had been positioned within, he froze.

He didn’t quite stop moving. Like a feather floating loose through the air, he started drifting lazily toward the vaulted ceiling. His hair, short and brown, turned gray as it grew at an alarming rate. The young skin of someone in his mid-twenties paled, wrinkled, and started crumbling away. His eyes shriveled up along with his tongue. By the time the man drifted into the ceiling, he was little more than a withered skeleton. Even that crumbled to dust at the gentle impact.

Most everyone in the room stared with undisguised horror. It was some small consolation that Hale had her head down, focused on the array in front of her. She hadn’t seen the man’s gruesome demise.

“Damnit. I told them… Nobody move. What part of do not move do you people not understand? Sit where you are and don’t do anything you aren’t told to do. Now, you there, on Savren’s left. We need to balance the array. Slowly pull back your magic.”

“I… I can’t either. It’s like it’s sucking it out from me,” the bandit said, voice unsteady.

“Okay. Don’t panic. Just… Okay.” Zullie sucked in a deep breath, eyes darting back and forth over her array. A thick dribble of sweat worked its way from her brow to the lens of her glasses where it dripped down to the glowing lines below. “Okay. Think. Give me a minute to think.”

Savren was just staring up at the crumbled bones and decaying clothes, frowning in deep thought.

Agnete looked stoic. She simply kept her hand down and the lines around her steady.

“I can teleport us away,” Arkk said, offering up that possible solution.

“All at once?”

“Yes,” he lied. He wouldn’t be able to bring along the bandits, being non-employees. Perhaps with the rest of them gone, the ritual would shut itself down and they would be safe. Perhaps not. “Unless you’ve got a better—”

Another quake shook the room. Far more violently than the first. Arkk had to grab onto the altar to keep himself steady. His other hand was still pressed down against the array. Like the bandit, he couldn’t remove his hand. He didn’t try.

Instead, he tried teleporting everyone.

His mind shuddered. Nobody moved. Locked in place, they were stuck. It was a feeling he had felt only once before. When the inquisitors invaded and that ice marble fell to the ground, freezing a number of them in place, his powers had refused to function. It was the same now. They were trapped in place, held captive by the ritual circle.

“Arkk, get us out of here.”

Arkk blinked. He tried again only for that same lurch to throw his mind.

He tried peering out of the ritual room, only to find a black void awaiting him. Even if he could remove them from the room, he couldn’t see anywhere to place them down at. There was no territory around. It was like the only thing that existed was the ritual chamber.

“Arkk?”

A third quake hit. This one warped the space around him. The central platform started to stretch and bend, twisting into a small marble that he and Vezta stood upon. The rest of the world fell away. The walls, ceiling, floor, and water twisted in space, stretched off into infinity. His awareness shrunk further, cutting him off from Zullie and the others as the space they occupied spread out.

He and Vezta stood atop a sphere the size of the [HEART], alone in a black void.

Alone until two violet lights burned down from the expanse overhead.