“I guess we shall see if you are more valuable as a battery, or as one of Nitthogr’s pawns.”
. . .
Rob found the particular runes required to realign the portal’s target and cleaned them off. He wiped the thick dust out of the symbols’ grooves so that they could be activated. The brown and amber hue shifted to a more vibrant color.
Hand in hand they stepped into the radiant glow and evaporated into beams of pure energy. They rematerialized within a dimly lit cave where torchlight cast just enough flickering luminescence to blind them against the shadows beyond. They couldn’t see the enemies, but heard the unmistakable sounds of firearms being drawn and readied upon them.
Rob and Claire threw their hands up immediately. Their hearts sent up little prayers in the hopes that the darkness did not hide the vyrm. A voice from beyond the torches demanded, “Identify yourselves!”
Rob recognized the voice. “Wulftone?” He dropped his hands. “Who else is with you?”
“It’s Zabe… and Bithia?” Wulftone’s voice exclaimed excitedly. Clicking sounds came as the weapons were lowered. A second later Wulftone stepped into the light and gave Zabe a hearty hug. “It is good to see you!” He bowed low to Claire. “Princess!”
Zabe shook his head. “No. This is Claire Jones from the Earth realm.”
Wulftone shot him an incredulous look. “You planeswalked?”
He nodded. “Yes. And I understand the risks.”
“But how? We were hoping to trap Regorik’s forces here in the slim chance they come this way. Perhaps we could trade him as ransom. A large contingent of the Black went to the Desolation and we thought they might return on this path—even if it’s not been used since its discovery, eons ago.”
Zabe pulled the battered manuscript portion from his bag. He admitted matter-of-factly, “I robbed the museum and took the forbidden Grimmorium texts.” He looked around the room; his eyes had begun to grow accustomed to the light. “It’s good to see that many of our kin survived long enough to flee.”
“We thought you had perished during the invasion,” an old man said, walking into the circle of torchlight. “If you survived, perhaps there is hope, too, for Zahaben?”
Zabe pulled his grandfather into an embrace. “I am sorry, Shardai. I was there when he made the grandest sacrifice.” He held up his left wrist, brandishing the leather band embossed with their family crest.
Shardai nodded, his face weathered and tight-lipped. “Tell us about this girl, then,” he said and beckoned him to follow. “I’m sure we both have much catching up to do.” They passed through a hidden passage in the tunnel which led away from the more public cave where the portal resided at an old shrine.
Zabe told them everything while they ascended the organic, flowing tunnels that rose steeply though the ground and to their hideout. Claire filled in the blanks where his memories were incomplete or nonexistent. They neared the end of their summary as their climb leveled off.
Pausing just long enough to stow his duffel bag, discard his tattered earth-clothes, and grab a spare tunic from one of the many barracks rooms, Zabe found a few spare rations for he and Claire. He found an adjacent room for Claire and a change of clothes before they rejoined Zabe’s grandfather.
Shardai took them through a long, craggy hallway; it opened at a sharp precipice where they could look out over the sprawling landscape. It was dark here; no torches lit the mouth of the cavern. The darkness helped their location remain hidden on the steep slope. Zabe crept forward, careful not to go too far and tumble out the entry and down the rugged mountainside, and swung his feet over the ledge.
Claire and Zabe sat on the entry’s lip. Shardai and Wulftone joined them on either side. Already the sky burned rubicund at the edges; the sun had begun rising with an ominous red sky. It was not necessarily an ill omen, but the view certainly emanated an ominous tone.
As the countryside came into view beneath the morning light, Zabe’s spirit sank. His kin shared his pain; their hearts broke all over again each time they looked out over the destruction of their home. Claire’s eyes welled up; a stinging heart-pain rang through her soul as she felt the pain—seeing the devastation through Bithia’s eyes.
Just below the steep granite and sandstone escarpments that hid the caves, the once rolling hills of green had been lit ablaze. Smoke curled skyward from villages and ancestral homes that would have otherwise dotted the verdant countryside. The glowing, red line crept across the land, leaving only ash and carbon in its wake.
Upon the charred terrain the newcomers spotted prisoner camps. Their heavily armed towers were hastily constructed from the repurposed homes of these peaceful people the vyrm had enslaved. The camp towers flew the black flag of Sh’logath.
Far closer than anyone liked, the nearest internment facility boasted a swelling group of detainees within its barbed fencing. Zabe and his kin watched a burgeoning line of new prisoners approach from a more distant, burning village. They had been forced to march through the night. Several broke rank and attempted to flee; their vyrm oppressors readily mowed down the escapees with disruptor rifles.
“What can we do?” Zabe whispered with a defeated tone.
Claire put a hand on his shoulder. “Remember the mission,” she reminded him, even if her strong voice almost cracked with pain. “My father… your people… keep the big picture in mind. Stop Sh’logath’s reviving by any way possible, and that means rescuing the princess.”
Wulftone whispered to Zabe, “You’re sure this is not Bithia?”
The four nodded solemnly. Far in the distance, the royal castle stood tall; encircling the stockades, the armies of The Black camped in massive droves according to their legion commanders. Beyond that, the old, beautiful ivy had been burnt away from the scorched, bastion walls. Somewhere in those heavily fortified dungeons, their princess languished in the dark.
They knew what had to be done: they needed to break Princess Bithia out of the most heavily guarded fortress in the universe.
. . .
Morning came quickly as Zabe and his men drew up plans for the rescue mission. Reports were unsure, but scouts thought that they’d spotted Regorik, back from the Desolation; they also thought they spied Caivev. Nitthogr’s top agents were best avoided if possible.
Zabe’s kinsmen had already planted people within each of the internment camps in order to stir up dissent and raise the hopes of detainees; hope was their most powerful weapon—even if it meant willful captivity on the part of some of their warriors. While Wulftone and Shardai hadn’t expected either Zabe or Zahaben to return and lead them, they’d come up with a variety of contingency plans for their moles in the prison camps.
If they sent up a signal, the recruiters would start riots within the camps and try to overthrow their oppressors. Even if they couldn’t overthrow the despots at one camp, it might draw vyrm support from other camps and enable the resistance in those other areas to rise up.
Zabe gathered the troops he’d selected and initiated them into the Guardian Corps with a simple, yet sincere pledge. Some details of the mission were too sensitive to share without any troops outside the bounds of the Corps, details such as the secret passage underneath the royal throne room.
Alongside his new inductees, Zabe led the small crew of his kinsmen through a narrow shaft in the bedrock. He and the newly pledged warriors donned the pieces of royal armor and weapons collected in the secret armory maintained by Shardai; Zabe’s fine platework bore a neatly trimmed gold stripe, identifying him as one of the elite Guardian Corps. Shardai had even found a set to fit Claire’s smaller frame; it had once belonged to Zabe’s younger brother who’d disappeared long ago during one of Nitthogr’s mad attempts against the crown.
The tiny lights each wore on their foreheads cast eerie shadows through the jagged, natural warren that ran below the castle. The tunnel’s faraway network of caverns connected to the palace’s foundation by a series of nightmarishly claustrophobic, buried fissures.
Zabe kept an eye on each member of the troop. His gaze sized Claire up in her armor; light from his headlamp glinted off the armor’s gilding. He nodded to her with a melancholy smile as their eyes met. “It’s good to see someone in this set of mail,” Zabe said, and then turned away.
Something in his voice asked her not to probe the subject deeper, and so she didn’t ask about it. She merely fingered the engraved craftsmanship thoughtfully, and then stumbled, bumping into the next bend in the tunnel which narrowed significantly. Jarik, one of Zabe’s younger kinsmen, steadied her before she could fall.
After squeezing through the tight crevasse, Claire sighed and tried to regulate her breathing. She’d never been terribly afraid of tight spaces, but she’d spent enough time underground these last few days that she begun to develop a strong distaste for it. “Of course there would be a secret, underground tunnel leading to the castle,” she mused under her breath. “No castle is complete without one.”
Zabe looked at her curiously. He ignored the ironic trope and searched for the next turn in the damp web of secret passageways.
Fingering a carving of the royal family’s crest upon the rock face, Zabe waved them forward into the dark several paces until they came to a slightly larger subterranean grotto. He pointed to the ceiling where a large hole yawned open above them. Three quarters of the circumference were covered with wrought metal ladders; riggings for hauling freight adorned the smaller side.
He checked his timepiece as Claire, Wulftone, and the four others joined him. “The royal family sometimes used the tunnel network to transport highly sensitive items for safe storage in the vault… the Chamber of Mysteries. Only the Guardian Corps has ever known of its existence, beyond the royal family, that is.”
Claire nodded. Bithia’s knowledge of the place unfolded in her mind. Unused for several generations, it had kept many things safe from the public eye. One of the primary duties of Bithia’s family was safeguarding the realms by locking away artifacts or items which posed too great a threat to the people across the dimensions to remain at large.
“And now we wait just a little longer.” Zabe glanced at his timepiece again. “Shardai and the larger force will begin the diversion soon.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. He knew that many of them would die at the hands of the vyrm so that they could have this chance at success. The last time he had been home his father had been sacrificed; today he might lose his grandfather.
Wulftone put a comforting hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “We will succeed,” he assured him.
Claire laid her hand on the other shoulder. Zabe nodded and sighed, pushing his anxiety far from his mind. He looked at his timepiece again. “Friends, are you ready to save the worlds?”
Only seconds later, the ground shook slightly with a mild aftershock from the distant explosions Shardai had detonated. Dust gently rained down on the party. Jarik spat a mouthful of dust that had caked his lips.
Silently, they jumped and grabbed the ladders, clambering up a great distance until they found a ledge carved from the heavy minerals. Overhead, an ancient stone door with a complicated system of latches forced them to remain crouched. Barely more than a slab of granite, it bore an engraved symbol of the royal family.
Zabe crouched low and groaned slightly as if he flexed every muscle in his body. Lupine features burst forth and he grew large; his body stretched and his snout elongated as fur sprouted everywhere, rippling as he shifted for comfort in the royal armor which had been built to stretch with the shape-shifter. The elastic joints between shield plates expanded around his bulging biceps and quads.
With one massive paw he held the stone door. With the other, he triggered the latches and they opened with a loud clank.
Everyone held their breath as he slowly lowered the four foot square stone. It remained fixed on a hinged side. Above them, the bottom side of the opening was covered with a large tapestry-carpet. It sagged slightly without the support of the floor to uphold it.
The tallest by far, Zabe, peeked through first. He stood and lifted the rug enough so that he could peek out. Crouching back down, he reported, “The coast is clear.”
Crawling out from the tapestry, they crawled to their feet behind the pair of thrones in the center of the palace throne room. Just a little further behind them stood a huge set of double doors. The barrier glowed metallic, engraved with sigils and inset with gems. Moreso than by their immense physical strength, they were protected by old magics given by the Architect King. Even if Nitthogr joined forces with Basilisk there was no way they could ever break it open. They needed the key: a member of the royal family.
“The Chamber of Mysteries,” Claire whispered. She touched the amulet around her neck as she thought of the Architect King, and in turn, the face of her father.
“Can you sense Bithia?” Zabe asked Claire. She was critically important to locating the princess, otherwise she would’ve been too valuable to have brought her along. The mission rested on finding her and escaping as quickly as possible.
“I can feel her,” she said. “The connection is strong, but I can’t feel her like I did when we merged.”
“Humph. The vyrm poison must still be interfering to some degree.”
“But I can get sense of her general direction. I just can’t pinpoint an exact location, but I can give a kind of compass heading?”
Zabe nodded encouragingly as Claire pointed hesitantly in the direction of the Princesses’ cell. “This way,” Zabe said, guiding the small force down a hallway just beyond the royal chamber.
. . .
Professor Jarfig huddled in his home with his wife and two children. The head curator at the Prime’s chief museum, he lived for curiosity. His zeal for discovery and the preservation of history motivated him in all things. That same curiosity compelled him to leave one window in his home open. He’d watched the entire vyrm invasion unfold from that lonely hole.
Jarfig’s wife had begged him to board it up, to collapse the only remaining access to the outside world. Their hillside, dugout home was spacious and well-appointed; they could easily wait an extended amount of time before they would need to worry for supplies. By the second day of the siege, however, she knew it vain to continue begging him; he had already filled an entire journal with the chronicles of military activity. He actively preserved these moments for future generations.
As a whole, his family abhorred violence. Jarfig and his wife did everything they could to inspire their children to pursuits of intellect; they took away sticks that his children might pretend were swords and forbade any kind of toy that might resemble a blaster.
Much as it sickened the family to watch the war rage on their doorstep, it satisfied them at some deep level. Their morbid curiosity demanded satisfaction in the same way that people can’t look away from a grisly accident scene they pass.
“Honey,” Jarfig whispered loudly with his face pressed into a pair of powerful, telescopic lenses. “Come quick. What do you make of this?”
She left her children to continue the quiet game they’d engaged with on the wooden, tiled floor and tiptoed over to her husband. He pointed to the anomaly and handed her the binocular device.
“It must be another of Nitthogr’s evil magics,” she said of the blazing beacon that hovered in the sky. It moved surely and slowly: a pulsing light in the sky.
Jarfig watched it throughout the day with intense fascination. Sometimes it was a mere sliver of light; sometimes it appeared to be a collection of strange faces contained within a burning, triangular frame.
Vyrm forces had not come near their home since the early days of the invasion and the guards they’d posted at the museum nearby did not venture out often and they never wandered far. Now, however, this magic beacon worried him; it seemed to draw nearer with each hour. And then, it suddenly disappeared from sight.
Jarfig watched for a long while. He scanned his full range of vision repeatedly, but could not locate it again.
Aft
er watching and waiting through his lunch hour for it to reappear, he finally gave up on its return. The professor leaned back in his chair and set down his goggles. As nervous as the approaching irregularity made him, he felt a little disappointed to be presented with a mystery he was unable to solve.
He picked up his pen, about to record his final entry regarding the enigmatic light when a blunt pain flashed across his face. The blow knocked him over backwards, flinging the journal from his hands. Jarfig twisted around on the floor and screamed for his family to flee.
Standing over him was Jarfig’s doppelganger. He sneered down at the professor where he lay, bleeding. A group of armored men stormed through his window as the glowing triangle whirled around through the air and then enlarged.
“You’re not vyrm!” he howled, noting their strange dress and weapons. “What do you want? Please, I am a man of peace!”
The doppelganger laughed and turned to the faces watching from beyond the fiery veil. “A man of peace? Well, isn’t that ironic.” He gave a neck slicing motion to his accomplices.
Jarfig screamed as the alien mercenaries opened fire with their weapons, cutting down his wife and children. “No! Why?” he wailed tearfully.
Jacob Sisyphus looked down at his pathetic variant. “We only want you.” He clubbed his Prime across the side of the skull, knocking him unconscious.
Sisyphus dragged the body outside and easily threw him over his shoulder. With an evil grin he hopped back through the enlarged energy gate.
. . .
Smoke curled against the ceiling inside the spacious atrium. Zabe, Claire, and Jarik poured blaster fire from their position into a troop of vyrm sentries. They’d flanked the reptilian invaders and traded offensives with Wulftone. One side pummeled them with laser bursts and then move into a new position to take a better angle against the enemy while the others provided cover fire.
The last vyrm soldier fell and the six invaders regrouped in the middle, quickly moving ahead. They had worked to systematically clear the rooms between the throne-room and the prisoner chambers. Resistance was stiff, but not overwhelming in numbers; as long as they worked smartly, their mission remained possible. Their diversion to pull the significant forces outside the castle walls appeared to have worked.
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