by P R Glazier
Chapter 49. Trapped
The Gatekeeper stood; something had touched her very soul. A coldness lie there in her inner being. She shivered, the portal, something was upsetting the gateway. Someone or something was trying to adjust it in some way, or maybe they were trying to close it. The fools! She needed to return and quickly. She nodded to the helmsman to take over; the other leviathan would have to wait. For now she needed to get back to the Rift, find out what was happening and stop who it was that played with it. Taking her dagger she drew blood from her own palm, she opened a portal, without explanation she stepped through and was gone from the bridge of the dark eleven leviathan; the portal snapped closed. In less than a moment the Gatekeeper stood on the central platform above the Rift. Two figures stood there in front of the great key stone. One was writhing about his hand looked to be held in a bright fiery substance. She smiled, so the Master is having fun. The other she recognised, but could not believe stood there. Well she wouldn’t be there for much longer! The Gatekeeper walked forward the power already rising within her ready to strike, she raised her hand, felt the power surge, she smiled as she prepared to release its full force upon the figures in front of her.
Then she heard a voice, she stopped, shock filled her being. The voice came from …. No that was impossible, it could not be. Only the Master inhabited that place. The great Rift sang to her, the voice, she recognised it somehow, it said in her mind, “NO, no more killing, do not go down that path any further my friend, for in that journey lies only true death, the great emptiness, the void where even the Maker does not go. You will be lost there for all time, cut off without hope, without anything, only your great disappointment, inconsolable anger and overwhelming despair to keep you company for all eternity. Give it back my friend, give it back.”
The Gatekeeper was taken back, it had to be the Master talking to her, the voice came from within, yet it was not the voice of the Master she knew. But it was a voice that she seemed to recognise. She became aware of the power waiting to be unleashed, but something stayed her hand, she lowered it, allowing the power to dissipate around her, flow back into the earth from whence it came, back into the great Rift. Something inside her mind remembered, she thought a single name, the name of someone she once knew, a dim memory of deep understanding. But then it was gone, some other familiar thing shoved it aside and called to her to come back, come back home.