“Are you certain you are prepared, Jacob?”
I tore my arm out of her grip as I answered. “You know I am. This is why we came to Rome, why I abandoned my humanity in Britain, why I allowed nothing to stop us between then and now. The last half decade has led me here.”
It was in moments like these that my suspicions of this woman were usually piqued, but when the smile she offered me next came slowly and almost as reluctantly, I felt content with my trust in her. She stepped back and waved her arm in a welcoming gesture, enticing me to step toward the portal.
I stared at it, and it seemed to stare right back at me, beckoning me, just as the blue orb used to do before I’d finally decided to wield it. Such was the modis operandi for these objects, and I assumed that the red orb, once I found it, would have some kind of draw as well, one that I no longer had an issue acting on. Once the two orbs were paired, any clouded judgment and lingering negative effects should evaporate.
I took a step forward, reaching out toward the portal with one hand while my other went for the orb in my shoulder bag. I was a step away when I finally had the orb in my hand, outstretched toward the portal like a key ready to be turned. I was focused, so absorbed by what I was about to do that I barely noticed the altercation going on to my left. But it was distracting, and I couldn’t help but glance toward it, but I had little time before a hooded figure was bounding in my direction like a masked serial killer from a nineties horror movie, shoving its way through a throng of Praetorians trying to stop it – to no avail.
I tried to react, but not one moment later, a strong hand roughly clasp my forearm. Instead of attempting to deter my progress, as I thought it would, it pushed me forward and through the portal. I hadn’t a moment to wonder who the interloper was or what he was trying to accomplish before I felt my hand make contact with the energy barrier before me. All I could do was ready myself for the transition, prepare to handle my attacker, and wonder what in the world Agrippina had been shouting as I made the transition.
***
There was a moment where nothing seemed to have happened, where all had remained the same, but the moment was yanked from me the instant I realized it. And then everything changed. Conscious thought returned, and with it, the understanding that I was no longer standing on a professionally constructed Roman road, but on the side of a hill, ready to plummet down its steep face, but not before a comical Wiley E. Coyote moment of suspended animation as I grew aware of what was to come.
But then I fell, toppled really, pulled down the hill by gravity and the same force that had thrown me through the portal. The individual fell with me, causing his hood to fall off his head, revealing him to be, in fact, a she, but, just like last time, not just any she, but a she I recognized.
Boudicca.
I felt her large frame crash into me more than once as we continued our unanticipated dance down the hill. Twice I felt an elbow jam into my ribs, right near the healed wound in my flank that still hurt on occasion, but at least I was able to exact some measure of revenge as I was fairly certain my booted foot connected with her jaw at least once as well.
Finally, we came to a rest at the bottom of the hill, sprawled out and twisted like a veritable Jack and Jill, and I reached up to check my crown with a hand, sighing in relief when I discovered that it wasn’t broken.
Boudicca was already rising to her feet, her eyes scanning our surroundings for danger. “Are you injured, Cernunnos?"
“Fine,” I answered, still on my back as I patted myself down. When I was certain I was in fact all right, I looked up at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She cocked her head to the side. “You told me to help when I saw the orb.”
I let my head fall back and hit the dirt as I responded. “I meant when I found the red orb.”
“Oh,” she replied innocently. “My apologies.”
I shook my head from its extended position but then slowly lifted it, seeing her extend a hand. I took it and allowed her to haul me to my feet. I looked around for my gear, finding most of it scattered around my immediate area. Boudicca had already retrieved her medium sized pack, which she must have had concealed beneath her cloak.
Leaning down, I picked up my considerably larger pack and shouldered it. I then found my shoulder bag and SR-25 sniper rifle and slung them as well, but had to walk a few steps away before I found the orb. I returned it to my pack, but when I finally discovered the spare M4 I’d brought with me, I was met instead by a twisted and broken pile of junk that would never again fire a bullet.
I picked it up and examined it helplessly, muttering, “No harm done…”
“Can we return, Jacob?” Boudicca ask from behind me.
I glanced up the hill and easily saw the portal, looking just the same as it had in Rome.
I offered her a nod over my shoulder as I tossed the rifle aside and turned around to look at Boudicca. She’d already shed her long, brown cloak, revealing what I assumed was her “summer barbarian warrior attire,” as it left little of her body to the imagination. It offered minimal protection, although I wasn’t sure how much protection animal skins could offer her even if she was completely encased in them, but I could already tell as she loosened her joints and muscles that it kept her agile and flexible. Nor would I complain since she’d cut quite a bit of weight since our time in Britain and wasn’t nearly so bulky anymore. I supposed I would have even ogled her had her revealing attire not keyed me into the reality concerning our current location.
That it was insanely hot.
Stiflingly, almost unbearably hot, in fact.
So hot that I was already sweating buckets.
And it was night time.
I looked to the sky, hoping to find stars that I could align into familiar constellations, but there were none. At least, I couldn't see any, as the sky was enveloped in thick clouding that was impenetrable to the naked eye. I squinted, thinking that I saw what looked like giant splotches that dotted the sky behind the clouds. There were dozens, if not a hundred of these discolorations, but I couldn't discern what they were, figuring that they were probably just pockets of odd weather patterns.
I lowered my head, finding that the only light by which to see by was what appeared to be ambient light coming from a location off in the distance and beyond a large hill. The light was reddish in hue, and was just bright enough to confirm my suspicions that we were, in fact, in a desert, although the color of the sand and dust didn't seem quite normal. It was impossible to tell because of the nature of my light source, but the terrain seemed darker and almost reddish compared to the sandy tan of most hot deserts.
“It is too dark to travel safely,” Boudicca offered, stepping up beside me. “Did you bring your night seeing masks?”
I had, so I rifled through my pack and found the pair I’d thought to bring, however, I quickly discovered that one had been damaged in our fall and was useless. I tossed it over my shoulder in frustration, not caring if it was at all fixable.
I looked at Boudicca. “Give me a moment.”
I dropped my rifle and bags so that I could remove my tattered combat shirt and undershirt. I wasn't concerned over the loss of my protective Kevlar lining or protective polyethelene gel pads, nor was I worried about getting sunburned when there was no sun. All I cared about was how blistering it was in this environment.
I placed my shirts back in my bag and began the process of reequipping myself. I retrieved a glow stick from an ankle pocket in my combat pants, snapped it, and secured it to the back of my backpack so that Boudicca could easily follow me. I secured everything back in place and glanced back at Boudicca, seeing that she was ready to go as well. She had her small animal skin pack secured across her back, along with a pair of twin short swords, the hilts of which poked up past her shoulders so that she could unsheathe them easily. She normally carried a large broadsword, but I assumed a pair of smaller blades had been easier to conceal back in Rome.
“Ready?” I
asked.
She nodded, all business, so I nodded back and took my first step up the steep hill and whatever could possibly be waiting for me.
***
I’d done my time in deserts before. While there wasn’t much in the way of water in the middle of a desert, that didn’t mean SEALs weren’t deployed to that most arid of climates. I’d been to Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and most recently Syria, each with their own particular challenges to overcome when dealing with the climate, but nothing had prepared me for this.
This place, wherever it was, was unlike anything I could have ever imagined.
It was hotter than Death Valley but the air also felt about as thin as I imagined it would be at the summit of Mount Everest. Breathing was difficult, but despite my weakened frame, my lungs were still powerful thanks to strenuous living and a multitude of dive instructors back home. I was perspiring heavily, shedding entire pounds by the bucketful it seemed, but I was moving easily. Boudicca was having a tougher time of it, but while her breathing was heavily labored, she continued to trudge behind me diligently and wordlessly.
And we’d only been here ten minutes.
If this was what night was like, I was certain we’d die during the day. I’d decided eight minutes ago that at the first sign of sunlight, if we weren’t anywhere near our target – whatever it was – Boudicca and I would retreat through the portal and return to Rome.
Luckily, eleven minutes were all that was needed to reach the top of the steep hill, where I hoped we’d be able to see our destination. Only a few more steps to the apex, I signaled for Boudicca to go low, and I followed suit by shrugging out of my pack and crawling the remaining distance. When I reached the summit, I fell into a prone position upon the dirt – I now realized it didn't seem quite like pure sand – and looked, Boudicca doing the same seconds later.
My eyes widened in disbelief at what I saw.
What lay before us was nearly unbelievable, and very nearly indescribable. To an ancient Briton who’d never left her island before, I was fairly certain Boudicca wouldn’t be able to describe it. I only could because of the imagery I’d been exposed to in my youth, watching movies and television and studying whatever I could about just about anything. These visual cues were crucial for my understanding of what I was seeing now, because what I was seeing was, quite simply, something that didn’t belong on the planet I’d come to call home, in any period of time, at any point in history.
It was a volcano, one that I immediately wanted to label as Vesuvius because of Rome’s proximity to Naples, even though the two cities were separated by over a hundred miles. Normally, this leap in logic would have been too extreme even for me, but this volcano was unlike any volcano I had ever seen. By their nature, volcanos were enormous and gargantuan, but these adjectives were useless to me right now. This volcano dominated the horizon, stretching from one edge of the world to the other and rising high into the sky, disappearing through the clouds that concealed the sky. If I for one second had entertained the idea that we were no longer on planet Earth, I would have said that we had been sent to Mars, and that I was looking at Olympos Mons. As far as I knew, it was the largest peak in the entire universe, knowing that it was a number of times taller than Mount Everest and its entire circumference would barely fit inside the country of France.
That’s what I was looking at.
It was majestic, it was awe-inspiring, and it was terrifying. Something so large had no justification for its existence. The sight of it was offensive to my senses, setting off a string of irrational thoughts to cross my mind, one in particular being that the sudden appearance of a mountain so large should have thrown the Earth out of its orbit to send it hurtling toward the sun. Such a concept was idiotic, but when faced with something so impossible, so unbelievable, the mind was prone to act in such a manner.
At least I was also presented with enough comforting evidence that suggested that we weren’t actually on Mars and this wasn’t Olympos Mons. Because Olympos Mons was an extinct volcano, or at least it was dormant, and this volcano was anything but. It was very much active, and was thus hellish in appearance, fire and brimstone spewing forth from its main, cavernous maw that must have been the size of a small country, as well as a number of other fissures along its slopes. It appeared like something out of a nightmare of biblical proportion, or at least like something out of Tolkien.
It lit up the night sky like a light house, beckoning all observers to pass through this dead and desolate landscape to visit – observers that totaled two, for all I knew, as I couldn’t see any indication that there could possibly be any other life forms in the vicinity. I hadn’t seen anything like civilization, and I was suddenly met with the idea that trying to find a red orb the size of a melon in a place like this was about as stupid as searching for just about anything in a volcano sized haystack.
If this was in fact another version of Earth, another reality, another dimension, and the tear worked as a gateway between my reality and this one and had deposited me to the same geographical point in said reality, then judging by what lay before me, this reality was vastly different from my own.
Obviously.
“Cernunnos…”
There was a fucking volcano the size of France in the middle of Italy, which meant the damn thing probably extended all the way into the Adriatic Sea, which could mean a million things, none of which I was prepared to speculate on. All I knew for certain was that I had no geographical landmarks to work with, nothing of uniqueness to use as a travel reference. This place was flat and empty, besides a few pits like the one I’d just crawled out of dotting the nearby area. It was lifeless and dead, and the only viewable object anywhere was the volcano. There was no way for me to navigate this world, let alone have any clue where to begin searching for…
“Cernunnos…”
How the fuck was I supposed to find the red orb in a place like this? What was Merlin thinking sending me to this place? Had he sent me here to die, with no hope of…
“Jacob!”
I whirled on Boudicca. “What?”
I was beginning to think that bringing her had been a mistake, but then I noticed that she was holding up a finger, pointing at the sky with a slack jawed expression. I wasted a moment wondering what could illicit such a shocked look to spread across her face, but then I shifted my head so that I too could stare into the sky and I understood almost immediately.
I stumbled back, almost falling to my knees, at what I saw.
Back in another lifetime, I spent much of my time behind a book, in front of a television or computer screen, or at the movies. I had once made it a mission to absorb knowledge and culture in whatever way I could. History and science had been of particular interest to me, the former edging out the latter because less math was involved, and I had sought out their fictionalized equivalents at every turn as well. Usually with most historic fiction and science fiction found on film, the real fun was picking apart their plots, seeking out all their ridiculous inaccuracies, flaws, and holes.
But one film in the science fiction category had always held a special place in my heart, for its sweeping musical score, scientific prognostication, and its existential storytelling. 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of my absolute favorite films of all time, and would remain as such until the day I died. Its convoluted plot concerning human evolution, our place among the cosmos, destiny, and the insanity of the universe and what could possibly be waiting for us out there had enamored my childhood self for years. I could still remember lying awake night after night, trying to comprehend the deeper elements the movie had been trying to advocate.
I’d enjoyed the film so much that I’d immediately sought out and read the novel, which had only worked to further my obsession with the story and all its implications. One line, however, had stood out more than all the others, one that hadn’t been included in the film version – although it was in the sequel – but had become the lynchpin for all my memories of the story.
&n
bsp; It was all I could think about now as I stared into the night sky.
Through the thick cloud layer, I could finally see what lay beyond in vivid, clear detail. It was overwhelming, implausible, and beyond words – at least any creative ones, which is why my mind focused solely on that one line of dialogue, the one thing that popped into my mind that could possibly comprehend what I was seeing.
Near the end of the novel, astronaut David Bowman had stared into the monolith and saw stars, and boy did he see stars. He saw them in a place where stars couldn’t possibly be…
But I didn’t see stars in the night sky.
What I saw was quite possibly the exact opposite of light in the sky.
I felt Boudicca reach out and place a hand on my arm, gripping it tightly, a decidedly vulnerable gesture from an individual who seemed larger than life and a woman who rightfully knew no fear. But I could hardly blame her for that vulnerability now, because mere mortals could never understand the machinations of what must have been a godly influence.
“In the sky, Jacob… what… what are they?”
“My God…” I breathed, and I could feel Boudicca turning to look at me. I shook my head, barely believing my next words. “It’s full of… black holes.”
VII
Science
Date: Unknown
Location: Unknown
Jacob Hunter
My jaw fell open as my eyes lingered on the sky.
If my mind thought the volcano was some unnatural freak of nature that was destined to alter the laws of science and physics, then what filled the sky was bound to send my mind into a state of delirium and panic. It was already happening to Boudicca, who backed away step by step, as though pulling back a few feet would somehow keep her from being sucked into the cavernous voids that dominated the sky. While she had no idea what a black hole could possibly be, or what they actually do, I did, and even though my rational mind knew that we were already dead, I too found myself trying to back away.
All Roads Lead to Rome (The Praetorian Series Book 4) Page 21