by Prax Venter
“Chaos Jar detected! Activate an-”
Mark yanked his finger out before he saw anything and took a few deep breaths to get his heart started again.
“Tether to Chaos Jar severed. Please try again.”
“Well there goes any element of surprise,” he said with a sigh.
“Maybe no one on the other side heard that,” Sasha said, trying to be helpful.
Mark gave her a sideways grin and turned to open the portal again. This time, he braced himself for the excited automated announcement.
“Chaos Jar detected! Activate one additional reference link to reset sys dot world dot anchor.”
This time, Mark made sure to open it wide enough to look, and he saw a glowing white orb, an imposing red door, and a highly augmented centaur holding a laser rifle. Mark tried to duck, but the quick blast caught the side of his head and instantly melted his ear. He fell to his knees, causing the portal to close. Nothing prevented him from popping a self-heal right away, and the robot voice boomed into the chamber as he did so.
“Tether to Chaos Jar severed. Please try again.”
“Mark!” Sasha yelled, and his three Enthralled swarmed his position.
“I’m fine,” he said, more frustrated than anything. His succubus helped him back to his feet, and his mind raced with options.
“Okay,” Mark said, spinning to face his team. “Here’s the deal. I’m opening a different portal across from this one. There’s no way they’d think we can open another doorway if we strike fast. I’m running in and putting down a barrier to shove anything away.” He paused and turned to Abby. “You activate your Mind Cloud and get the door frequency while Sasha Arc Bolts and Jezebel Vines. The door is over there.” He pointed to the spot where he’d seen their target.
“Ready?” he said as he moved to a different dimensional link.
With him recently being hurt, all his bonded loves were intently focused on him. They all nodded in unison. They were ready.
Mark held up his hand, coated it in anxious dark energy, and then ripped open a giant gash between worlds.
He had an instant to see three armored centaur asses as they all waited for another incursion from the other portal, then Mark hopped through the doorway and activated his magic barrier.
All the heavily metaled centaurs were shoved forward as Mark’s shield snapped outward, but only one of them was knocked off their hooves. He heard the voice go on behind him about resetting the “world anchor”, but Mark ignored it and focused on the fight.
A moment later, he saw Abby hop in and dash for the door while Jezebel cast Vines on one of the guards still standing. As soon as Sasha knew which targets were open, she tossed her Shock Bomb through between the one struggling to get up and the one turning to face them.
Then, from opposite sides of the small room, two massive laser turrets turned to point at Mark’s shield. The magic barrier lit up with infinite focused energy and was going to drop within seconds. They were all going to get melted.
Abby was running back, her yellow eyes wide, but she wasn’t going to make it in time.
Mark’s mind locked up as he encountered an impossible choice between leaving his slender abyssal horror to die or closing the portal and saving everyone else.
Desperate for an acceptable answer, Mark expanded his mind and searched for a third option… but he didn’t need to look too far.
He shot out his right hand and forced the black, crackling energy to obey his will. He stretched his mind as he stretched his body to reach another portal and was just able to poke into it with the tip of his energy-coated finger.
A second micro-doorway opened between the two dimensions, and the Jar of Chaos instantly returned to Lagos.
As he’d hoped, the turrets were so close that the centaur had hooked them directly into the infinite power of the legendary orb. Once the unimaginable happened, and it was gone, the turrets stopped functioning. He dropped his outstretched hand and moved back through their main portal as his magic barrier popped. The reinforcements pouring through were held at bay long enough by Sasha’s lightning attack for Abby to dive back through.
The moment her black boots passed the threshold, Mark yanked away his hand, and the doorway snapped shut.
He was about to take a calming deep breath, but a ray of wild blue energy lanced the air in front of his nose, and the black metal building began to shake under his feet.
“Oh, what have we done!” Jezebel yelled as a ring of purple energy shot behind her back, narrowly hitting her as well.
It felt as if the currents of the universe were swirling into a whirlpool and pulling everything inward- bending time and space. He looked at the pulsing white orb the size of an apple resting only a few feet from his blind eye, and he knew that they needed to be anywhere but there.
He shot his hands out to grab Sasha and Abby.
“The recall charm!” he yelled at Jezebel. “Now!”
The satyr nodded once before she dug for the object in her armor as a cloud of eyeballs like a bunch of grapes phased into existence in midair next to the orb. He watched as they morphed into a cluster of identical gemstones, then globes of water, then a wireframe structure of pure light… and then they faded away to nothing.
Jezebel grabbed his arm and snapped the charm back to Starglade.
- 28 -
All four of them appeared inside a dim wooden room with glowing orange mushrooms, a small dark window, and two benches.
“What the fuck just happened?” Sasha asked, her tail snapping like a whip. “And where the fuck are we now?”
Mark shot her and the others a look while sending out a silent message to keep quiet until they were out of Starglade. He took that deep breath he’d put off and then looked around the small space they recalled into.
“Looks like a holding cell,” Mark said, trying to project an air of calm. “We flew in the first time, maybe this is what it’s like to teleport here instead.”
He focused on Abby and raised his brows expectantly.
She lifted one of her tentacles to show him that the stone he’d given her moments ago now displayed three deep-green throbbing lines.
He gave her a sweet smile and a kiss on the top of her silky black hair.
“We have what you hired us for,” Mark yelled out. “Now let us out of here and hold up your end of the trade.”
A few minutes passed with nothing, and Mark’s mind drifted away from the fact that these powerful, magically tuned plant-elves probably knew their Orb had been stolen, toward a deeper more soul-crushing despair that he’d just doomed Learis’s home dimension. He felt the same sinking dread from the others, but Sasha seemed to be the most upset. They needed to get back to Lagos and find out for sure. The “Chaos Jar” seemed to belong there, and it was still possible that everything was fine in that alternate universe- or maybe even better… maybe, but from the insanity he’d seen before they escaped the facility on the floating island, that didn’t seem to be the case.
Every second standing in this room was torture, and Mark started considering options that required more violence, but soon enough, a section of the wall slid sideways to reveal the robed pumpkin-man Klax.
“That was too fast,” he said as he stepped into the small room with them and noticed Jezebel back in her satyr form. He lifted his small orange hands as his fuzzy eyebrows reached the top of his pumpkin head. “Oh! And, Jezebel, glad to see you worked out the issue with your shifting.”
She gave him a small curtsy. “As am I.”
“Here is your door frequency,” Mark said and nodded for Abby to relinquish the stone.
She extended her appendage to the military mage, who quickly took the glowing object and examined it closely.
“I can’t…” he started to say and then snapped his eyes up to them. “How did you do this?”
Klax didn’t wait for an answer before he reached his free hand into his robe and pulled out a twig. Unlike Learis’s pretend rifle, this ordin
ary length of wood was enchanted, and he waved it around the stone, appearing to scan it for authenticity.
Mark crossed his arms. “Our methods are a trade secret, I’m afraid.”
The green lines in the stone grew brighter, and Mark detected a faint hum as if Klax struck a tuning fork.
“This is… you did it.”
“You’re welcome,” Mark said. “Now about the shards...”
“Yes, of course! Those old things are worthless to us sitting in Noma’s Conservatory! I probably shouldn’t have said that…”
Klax carefully put the stone into the vacuous depths of his black robes before pulling out a wooden tablet and a fat wooden block. He tapped it a few times and then ground his signature block into the tablet.
“Done! I’ve been given the authorization to release the shards to you by CEO Channa after I verified the door frequency. Go see Guild Master Noma to collect your reward. Mark, I cannot thank you enough. Sasha, Jezebel, Abby… you’ve made my one and only dream come true, and I’m sure I’ll never forget you. Stop by and visit any time you are in Starglade!”
He turned to leave but then paused. “Oh! Here.” He darted back into his robe and pulled out another Recall Charm carved to look like a pumpkin. “This will take you outside my arcane sanctuary. It’s where I spend most of my time- until we get our Legendary Orb of Stars back, that is!”
Mark took it and felt a burning pit in the center of his stomach. They sure were making a lot of powerful enemies lately.
“Thanks, Klax,” he said. “We won’t forget you either.”
The short Kalorplast escorted them through a security checkpoint to a nearby cluster of teleport crystals, and after an instant zap through the living trunk of the great tree as pure life energy, Mark and his Enthralled were back in the vast hallway with impressive stained-glass windows.
The sun was just setting in this dimension, but time had lost all meaning for him. He gathered his three loves and conspirators with a look and hurried for the high arch that led to Noma’s desk.
There, they found the short plant-elf entwined by his wall of vines, his withered eyes closed.
Mark was worried they’d have to wait until he was awake or some nonsense, but the ancient Guild Master began speaking as they walked up.
“So, you’ve already returned for the shards,” he said, one of his eyes cracking open to peek at them. “I expected as much from you four.”
He was lowered to his feet and then hobbled over to stand in front of Mark. “Mmm, but this leg of your journey has changed you, hasn’t it?”
Mark knew this creature looked frail but wielded potent magic, and he considered his words carefully.
“We all wake up a new person every morning, changed by experiences that we collect the day before.”
“Indeed,” Noma said, narrowing his eyes. There was a longer than comfortable pause, but the old pile of walking bark grunted once and then started moving for the display that held the seven Crystal Heart shards.
They all followed him past the other pedestals displaying nuts, berries, and seeds before Mark saw the soft red glow of their coveted treasure.
With a wave of his staff, Noma caused the glass covering to disappear.
“Take your reward, Collector, and may your legendary quest to gather them all result in a better world for everyone.”
“Actually,” Mark said, “I don’t want to touch them all right now. I’d probably burst a blood vessel from the torrent of essence. Probably waste most of it in the processes.” He looked over to Jezebel. “Would you be so kind, my love, as to load them up into your bag?”
She nodded a little too frantically then did what he asked.
“Thank you, Noma,” Mark said, turning back to the Guild Master. “Thank you for believing in us.”
He grunted once, nodded, and then hobbled off back toward his vines.
“Come back any time you feel like helping the people of Starglade,” he shouted over his shoulder, apparently done with the conversation.
Mark couldn’t believe it. They were getting away with this. He saw Jezebel put the last shard in her bag, and he turned to head for the teleport chamber, but the essence reward for simply finishing the impossible door frequency mission assailed his senses. He clenched his teeth through the pleasure but couldn’t believe that he was nearly full again- and he had yet to absorb any of the red shards.
“What now?” Sasha asked as she clomped faster to match his swift strides.
But before Mark could answer, the pure-black eyes of the game world’s admin AI appeared floating in his vision. He came to a skidding halt in the middle of the expansive hallway, fear gripping his insides as the rest of her face appeared distorted and then sharpened to a crystal-clear image.
“People of my Universe,” she said in a deafening voice, and Mark noticed that not only were his Enthralled also seeing and hearing the same thing, but everyone passing through the hall around them had stopped to focus on the same image floating in front of their eyes.
“My name is Lady Maliah. It was I that created you and all that you know. Now know this, a great evil has returned to cast your home into the Void. They are the four death-bringers, the four liars, and their quest to restore the Crystal Heart must be thwarted. In time, I will return, but I will grant godhood to the one that slays the Collector, Mark; or his succubus, Sasha; or his satyr, Jezebel; or his abyssal horror, Abby. Keep the shards safe, my people, until I return to you. I am watching.”
Then, the Helper Fairy’s face faded away.
“That was a system-wide message,” Jezebel murmured.
“We have to go,” Mark said, and she instantly began rooting around in her backpack.
“Go where?” Sasha said, panic and fear rising in her voice. “Everyone saw that.”
“This was what she was talking about,” Mark muttered, shaking his head. “This was what she meant by raising the difficulty…”
Jezebel held up a small plaster square. “This random recall charm from Audra is one of the few with a label. The word Sanctuary is written on the-”
She was cut off when a horrible wailing siren began echoing through the hall. Mark looked around and noticed several Kalorplast mages in the area were pointing at them. It was time to go.
Mark, Sasha, and Abby all grabbed onto Jezebel at the same time, then she snapped the charm, and they vanished.
The End
Of Mark 2.0 Book 2 “Hate”
Keep a True Sight eye out for Mark 2.0 Book 3: “Change”. Target release is around March 2020.
Note from Prax Venter:
Greetings! Thank you so much for making it six books into The Crystal Heart Saga. I’m not sure how many books will make up the Mark 2.0 spin-off series as I am allowing for organic, character-driven plot developments. For example: At the very beginning of this book, Mark goes to ask Amina if he can open a portal in the Awysai dome in order to gather the last two Crystal Heart shards (that they know of) in the Wrongside dimension. Originally, I had planned an exciting, quick adventure where they go in and [Redacted for Spoilers].
However, when Mark asks the chieftain’s daughter, she says, “No.” When this happens, I feel I must let the characters have their way- despite the author’s careful planning. To me, it means I am on the right track with my storytelling. Please continue to join me on this adventure to see where it takes us.
Don’t forget to check out my Irrelevant Jack series as well!
Thank you again! Anyone reading this far has my eternal gratitude.
~ Prax Venter
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