by Joe Jackson
Karinda started to say something, but stopped herself and nodded, returning to her chair. Aaron looked back and forth between the women, but didn’t offer his thoughts, either. When Andrea came and sat with the rest of them, it was obvious she hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. She sat down with her own cup of tea, oblivious to what had just occurred.
“So, how is your research going?” Karinda asked the younger wizard.
“Not well, I’m afraid,” Andrea answered. “I wish I had more results to report to you, but I have little to show for what I’ve been working on. Whatever the power inherent in the tattoos we came across, I cannot figure out what puts it in the flesh, or how the bearer calls upon it. It is all at once the most fascinating and frustrating thing I have ever encountered.”
“Tattoo magic?” Kari asked, drawing nods from the two wizards. “I came across one of Sekassus’ princes who had tattoos that seemed to counter and focus arcane power. It was one of the most interesting things I came across while I was there. It may be helpful to your research to go to Mehr’Durillia and ask around about it.”
“Ha! As if Father would let me go to Mehr’Durillia,” Andrea returned. “We’ve been strictly forbidden to go to any of the other known worlds, even if he accompanies us. I have a feeling I’ll be a thousand years old before I get to see another world firsthand.”
“It is for your protection,” came the calm, quiet voice of Gareth Maelstrom as he finally made his appearance. Like his children, he wore casual breeches and a tunic rather than the robes that most arcane practitioners seemed to prefer. He was handsome for a man several hundred years old, but he showed his age more than Karinda did. It left Kari to wonder just how old he might be in truth.
“Everything is for our protection,” Andrea protested playfully. “I suspect it’s a miracle we aren’t encapsulated in some stasis chamber for as overprotective as you are.”
Gareth smiled and approached Aaron and Karinda. “Lady Bakhor,” he said, kissing her hand. “Lord Nystrom, it has been some time. Lady Vanador, as always, it is a pleasure to see you. Welcome to my home. I trust there must be some dire circumstance to bring you all here? Unless, of course, you simply hope to press me back into serving on the council, in which case I will preemptively say No.”
Karinda chuckled. “I would not even bother posing such a question to you, old friend. We are investigating the summoning of Mehr’Durillian attack forces, the greatest of which, obviously, took place just yesterday. It seems most likely that portal magic is being used to bring across such a large number of attackers and so frequently.”
Maelstrom bobbed his head in agreement, then straightened out when no further words were spoken. “You suspect it is my portal being used? I have hardly even looked at it in the last several years. I assure you, it was not I who summoned any such attack forces.”
“Of course not, old friend,” Karinda said soothingly. “Is it possible that someone else has managed to access your portal without your knowledge? Have you been away from your tower for periods of time that would allow for such a situation?”
“I do not get out much these days,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “And neither Reese nor Andrea are properly attuned to the portal to use it, much less without my knowledge.”
“But I can sense the power residue from it,” Karinda insisted. “May we at least take a look at it, to see if there is some clue or else evidence you are correct?”
“Certainly. Follow me downstairs,” Maelstrom said. He glanced at Kari and gestured for her to come as well, and she rose and followed the three archmages down a hidden stairwell into the deep, cool basement of the tower.
Kari got a chill from more than just the cooler temperature when she stepped onto the basement floor. It was smooth stone, and in the dimness of the chamber, all of the runes stood out as they glowed a sinister shade of purple. Kari didn’t know all that much about the arcane, but she knew what she felt, and something about this chamber made her uneasy. The writing was in some nonsensical script to her eye, but pulsing in that purple light, it clearly read danger.
The circles of runic writing around the floor were hardly the most concerning thing. In the center was another of those arching portals, nearly identical to the one in the syrinthian valley but for the lack of infernal writing around its edge. Instead, it was inscribed with more of those glowing purple runes, pulsing in such a way that Kari started to imagine they were mimicking her heartbeat. She felt the prickle of warning at the back of her neck, and sweat began to bleed out of her in rapidly-cooling drops.
“This thing needs to be destroyed,” she declared, attracting curious stares from the three archmages. “It’s being… I don’t know how to say it… usurped by an outside power. I can feel it. This thing is dangerous, and you either need to shut it down or else destroy it.”
“Kari, are you all right?” Karinda asked again.
“Lady Vanador, these runes you see glowing here prevent exactly that,” Maelstrom said. “Though I can sense that Lady Bakhor is correct, and this portal has been used recently. I will simply–”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. There was a heavy pulse of what Kari could only describe as gravity that shot through the concentric circles on the floor, pulling everyone down to kiss the stone. The portal let forth a booming hum as it came alive, a grainy purple film forming within its circular opening. Fatigued, sore, and mentally exhausted as she was, Kari was the first to get to her feet, and had her scimitars in hand before the visitor even came through the portal.
“Andrea! Reese!” Maelstrom called to his children from his prone position.
Kari stepped forward to intercept the erestram as it ducked through the portal and onto Citaria. It unleashed a massive swing at her, and Kari opened the floodgates to allow Zalkar’s power to flow through her. She parried hard and stepped in, trying to force the creature to stay within the portal archway to limit its mobility and the arc of its swings. Even with Zalkar’s power flowing through her, though, her legs still felt stiff and sore, and the erestram’s second swing only masked a brutal straight kick that sent Kari into the wall behind her at considerable speed. She smacked her head against the stone and saw stars…
…stars, and that mallestrem child again. The boy laughed, running around her in a wide circle. “Who are you?” she asked.
The erestram ignored her question and turned to decapitate the prone wizards before him. He raised his bladed staff, but a gesture from Karinda turned the haft into a writhing snake. The erestram growled and cast the weapon aside, reaching down for the shakna-fury woman with one of its massive, clawed hands. It withdrew its hand painfully as Karinda sprouted porcupine-like spines all over her body, sticking out even through her robe, and she got her feet under her and shoved the erestram back with another gesture.
“Aaron, Gareth, it is a gravitational trap. Use a flight enchantment to counteract it!” she cried, and Kari watched as Karinda erected numerous shields and protections about herself, just the same way Sonja would.
Maelstrom finally got back to his feet with Karinda’s suggestion. “Andrea and I will shut down the portal. You two deal with our uninvited guest.”
“Who are you?” Kari asked the child again, but received only a playful laugh in response.
“Who is she talking to?” Aaron asked, looking at Kari lying spilled on the floor.
“She must have truly struck her head dangerously,” Karinda said. “Protect her. We must either get this erestram back through the portal before it closes, or else kill it.”
The wolf-creature snarled and approached Aaron. It grabbed him, but the human turned himself into some form of stone, and the erestram could barely budge him. Aaron was no threat to it in that state, but neither was the erestram a threat to him. Frustrated, the creature turned back toward Karinda and looked around for an improvised weapon.
Karinda tried shoving the creature with arcane force again, but it shrugged it off this time. Kari re
membered that erestram were particularly resistant to arcane and divine power, the better to keep their smaller brethren in line. She shook her head, but that hardly helped with the dizzy spell she was experiencing. The child had faded from her sight again, and she got to her feet as quickly as she could.
That didn’t turn out to be very quickly at all. Even with Zalkar’s power flowing through her, she realized she had damaged her body significantly, and hadn’t given it the proper amount of time to heal. Between the beatings she’d taken on Mehr’Durillia, the painful transformations to and from the mallasti form, whatever had happened with the side effect that caused her womb to bleed, all the running around she had done the night before, and the paltry amount of sleep she’d gotten, she was lucky to be standing at all. Nevertheless, Kari picked up her swords and approached; she was the only one present with any martial prowess at all.
But there were ways around arcane protection, and Karinda demonstrated that quickly. The woman brought forth stone hands from the floor and the walls, and tendrils of liquid-like stone wrapped around the erestram from the portal itself. Aaron, no longer directly threatened, lit up the chamber with a comfortable light source, just in time for the purple glow of the runes and the portal to die out. Karinda had the erestram bound by the stone, and she started to make some sort of gesture toward it, but then she looked back at Kari.
“Would you care to take this one prisoner?” she asked.
“There’s always room for one more,” Kari quipped before she sank to her knees and then her side as the strength left her body. Maelstrom was the first to reach Kari, and he lifted her up with surprising ease, considering his age and her weight. “You must be cheating…”
“Surrender yourself, or I will have these stone limbs tear you apart,” Karinda said. The erestram didn’t appear to understand, so she repeated her demand in infernal, and it nodded its assent. She summoned the snake-staff to her hands and transmuted it again, this time into a pair of shackles that Kari suspected cancelled arcane power – like the ones she’d found with Jason Bosimar’s things. With the erestram subdued, they all began to file upstairs, Andrea in the lead before her father, who was carrying Kari. The demonhunter hadn’t even noticed the archmage’s daughter coming to join the fight.
Gareth set Kari down on one of the couches in his sitting room. “This is even worse than you had feared,” he said. “Not only has the portal been used to summon attackers, but whoever has done so is able to do it from a remote location.”
“Any idea who, or from where?” Aaron inquired, but Maelstrom shook his head.
“Where’s your son?” Kari said, or at least she thought she said it before her eyes closed and refused to open again.
Chapter III – Rifts
Kari sat below the great tree that marked her husband’s grave. The summer sun was warm and strong, and she took shelter under the tree’s shade in the early hours of afternoon. The children were playing in the yard, and she looked up from her book every so often to smile and see what they were about. There was a tingle of warning in the back of her mind, the signal that all was not as it appeared to be and danger was approaching. But she was content, sitting and watching her children in between reading Sole King of the Matriarchy, the book about her lover and master in her prior life, Suler Tumureldi.
The children were practicing their soccer. Uldriana was old enough to play now, and even though Little Gray had a significant height and weight advantage over her, Kari’s daughter still managed to hold her own. Back and forth, around and around they went, practicing taking the ball from each other and guarding it in turns. Once they’d crossed the length of the yard, Little Gray unleashed a shot at the makeshift goal they’d erected from old vineyard posts.
The young mallestrem boy caught it easily, laughing as he rolled it back toward the other two children.
Kari rose to her feet as she realized this wasn’t right. There was this child again, now inserted into her dreams of the future. He had the tall and lanky frame of an elestram, but with the coat, ears, and eyes of a mallasti. He looked at Kari with that amber gaze and giggled. She started to approach him, but found he was suddenly beside her, holding her hand as they walked across the yard. He was nearly Little Gray’s height, and that soft but densely-packed fur on the inside of his hand tickled Kari’s fingers.
“Who are you? What’s your name?” she asked him. He didn’t answer but to giggle again, so Kari repeated the questions, this time in beshathan.
Those curious little eyes came up to meet hers. “You know my name, Mama.”
Kari sat up with a deep intake of breath, glancing around quickly at the ground floor of Gareth Maelstrom’s tower. Karinda was before her in moments, and she sat on the edge of the couch and gently pushed Kari down onto her back again. “What happened? Where is he?” Kari barked, unable to muster the strength to resist.
“The erestram was taken into custody, and is on his way to the prison on your Order’s campus,” Karinda answered.
Kari looked around, then focused on her niece’s eyes. “Not him; Maelstrom’s son,” the demonhunter said to cover up her dream. She wondered if Karinda would be able to read her thoughts. The archmage’s mother, Carly Bakhor, had been empathic and even telepathic to an extent, and it was quite possible she’d passed those traits on to her daughter. Karinda gave no indication she could read Kari’s mind, but her reaction to Kari’s daydream earlier did point to her being sensitive in some fashion.
“I am here,” Reese said from his place near the fireplace mantel. “I did not hear Father’s call from upstairs, else I would have come to assist with the invader.”
Kari tried to sit up again, but it was painful. She was sore all over in a way that defied her healing abilities, as King Morduri had called them. Karinda put her hand to Kari’s shoulder once again and eased her back down onto the pillows. “You have greatly overextended yourself in recent days,” the archmage said. “You must allow your body time to rest and recuperate. I would suggest spending a few days in bed if possible, but if not, you must avoid physical labor or activity as much as you can.”
“Take him into custody, and quickly,” Kari said, her words coming out forced in a growl.
The other three archmages glanced at Reese, then back at Kari. “On what grounds?” the elder Maelstrom asked.
“This isn’t difficult to figure out,” Kari said, swallowing hard. Of all the times to be left incapacitated, this had to be one of the worst. “He was the only one that didn’t come help. You said it yourself: The portal was being accessed… remotely. He’s the only one that knows of it and could use it, and who didn’t come to see to it.”
“Reese?” Maelstrom asked, straightening out and fixing his son with a questioning gaze. “Is there something you would like to share with us?”
“You cannot honestly believe it was me…?” he returned defensively. No one made a move to surround him, but he reacted as though they had. There was no panic in his eyes, only confusion and, Kari mused, hurt over being accused. “I am not even attuned to it…”
“The evidence, circumstantial as it is, remains compelling,” Aaron said.
“Father?” Reese asked tentatively.
“This is an issue easily investigated,” Karinda said, rising from her place on the edge of the couch. “Now that we appear to be safe, Aaron and I will go and inspect the arcane signatures left by whoever accessed the portal. If it was anyone present, we will know in little time.”
Maelstrom agreed with a nod, and stood vigilantly by Kari while his archmage guests made their way back down to his cellar. He continued to stare at his son, but there wasn’t any hostility in either man’s stare, just confusion and anxiety. Kari glanced over to Andrea, and she, too, looked perturbed by the suggestions. Kari knew little about the arcane or even the three people in the room with her, and it suddenly occurred to her that she should be quite nervous to potentially be in the room with the summoner.
Gareth’s eyes eventually t
urned back to Kari, and he managed a crooked little smile. “I see you are learning first-hand how taxing it is to wield the power of the gods. Selflessness is commendable, Lady Vanador, but take care that you do not cost the gods a champion with your zeal. The entirety of goodness and light does not fall solely on your shoulders. As the great Turik Jalar once said: the strength of a demonhunter lies not in their sword arm, but in their allies. Learn to lean on those around you, and not burn yourself out too quickly.”
Kari blew out a sigh. “I know. My recent trip to Mehr’Durillia involved a lot of travel, fighting, and even an arcane transmutation,” she said, and his brows rose at that. “I think the combination of the three did me in more than I was expecting.”
“A transmutation, you say?”
“Yes, I was changed into a mallasti to help hide amongst the people there while I went about my work,” she explained.
“Fascinating! Who did the work? And what was it like to see things from such a new and different perspective?”
“Um, it was an elestram artificer?” Kari bluffed, not wanting to give out names of the Ashen Fangs, even to someone she trusted. “The change was painful, but it was worth it. To not just be able to hide among the beshathans, but to experience what it’s like to be one… it was eye-opening, for certain. Although, on the other hand, I did find it amusing how similar we all are.”
“How so?” Andrea asked, approaching.
“I just mean we’re different races, created by different gods on different worlds. And yet, we still have a lot of similarities, right? How we eat, relieve ourselves, mate, give birth, how we speak and communicate, even if the languages are vastly different… I don’t know. It’s one thing to share those similarities with other creatures created here on our world, but across worlds? I guess you probably think I’m pretty simple, but to me, all of this stuff is really wondrous.”
“I do not find you simple at all,” Maelstrom said. “I find myself in similar awe on those occasions I am able to go to other worlds and study their people. Surely, there are those who are seemingly vastly different – such as the czarikk or tenku – but your point remains true: we do all share many striking similarities.”