Alien Portals: A SciFi Alien Multiverse Romance Novel

by Ruth Anne Scott

  Chapter Twenty

  Galadriel could smell water before she could see the place that Vyker was bringing her. The change in the smell around her was invigorating, but almost made the feeling of cold feel more intense as it moved down into her lungs.

  “Be careful,” Vyker said as he slowed his pace. “You don’t want to fall in the water in this cold. Light your torch so that you can find your way.”

  “Won’t the parasites see us?” she asked.

  “There’s not too much farther to go. Stay close to me and aware of your surroundings. If you see one, you know how to fight.”

  Galadriel reached into her bag and pulled out the torch that he had put there before they left the shelter. She took the flint tucked into the bottom and struck it. The added illumination filled the space around them, and she looked to her side. The expanse of the sand was broken by a lush oasis. Trees and dense grass surrounded a deep, round pool of clear water. She wished that they could stop. She longed to dip her hands into the water and rest in the soft-looking grass. The thought of being wet in the chill around them, however, stopped her, and she knew that they had to keep going.

  They had only gone a few more moments when Vyker stopped at a massive plant that Galadriel could only describe as a cactus. He crouched down and dug into the sand at its base, and she saw that there were engravings seemingly carved deep into the plant’s flesh. Vyker traced two of the symbols with his fingertips and then glanced back over his shoulder at her.

  “Give me your hand,” he said.

  Galadriel lowered herself down and reached around him to offer him her hand. He took it and cupped it beneath his, and brought it forward to touch the engravings much in the way that she had when she was in the cavern that brought her to this stream. Her hand tucked in his palm, and she felt like they were melting together. Vyker guided her hand so that both of their fingers touched the engravings. He traced several of them, and then turned to the torch in his hand. He blew out the flame and looked at her, his expression telling her to follow his lead. She extinguished the flame and cast them into darkness again. This time, though, the blackness around her wasn’t as disheartening. She could feel his hand around hers and her body pressed against his back, and even in the darkness it created a sense of safety and security.

  Vyker’s hand guided hers to follow the outline of the last engraving and before it pulled away from the plant, Galadriel felt the same falling sensation that she had in the cavern at the excavation site. She tightened her arms around Vyker and ducked her head down onto the back of his neck, closing her eyes tightly against the uncomfortable sensation. Consciousness was slipping away from her and she tried desperately to hang onto it, wanting to stay aware, to stay in control of what was happening around her. She knew now that they were moving through a portal, but even knowing what was happening didn’t take away all of the fear and uncertainty that she felt. She fought to keep her mind focused, but the fogginess was creeping in from the outer corners of her thoughts, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to hold on. She drew in a deep breath and gave into the feeling, telling herself that at least this time, she wasn’t alone.

  ****

  The slow, gradual waking was not as uncomfortable this time as it was the first, and when Galadriel reached to the side as consciousness came back into her mind, she felt Vyker lying beside her. His presence made it easier for her to continue pulling herself out of the deep sleep that traveling through the portal seemed to cast her into, and soon she felt herself come back into control of her body and her mind. The first thing that she was aware of was the glare of light through her eyelids. Then, she felt the warmth glowing on her skin and realized that they were no longer in the cold, desolate darkness that they had left. She opened her eyes and immediately winced at the brightness of the sun overhead.

  Despite the discomfort that swelled in her eyes as soon as the sunlight touched them, she was unspeakably grateful for the reemergence of the sun. A smile broke onto her lips, and the pull of the expression made her wonder how long it had been since she had truly smiled with that level of genuine, fulfilled happiness. The feeling was short-lived, however, as she heard Vyker groan and remembered the seriousness of why they were there.

  “Are you alright?” she asked.

  “You landed on me,” he said. “I had to pull myself out from under you. I’ve never seen anyone go through a portal that violently.” He took a breath and sat up, shaking his head. “Of course, I’ve never seen anyone go through a portal, so maybe you aren’t really as bad at it as it seems.”

  Galadriel couldn’t help but laugh, and when Vyker glanced over at her, the hint of a smile curved his lips as well. He seemed as relieved as she was, and for a moment they both sat looking at each other and allowing the warmth of the sunlight to wash over them. Finally, Galadriel looked around to take in their new surroundings. She could smell the water again and realized that unlike the first time that she traveled through a portal and ended up far away from where she would have thought she would have ended up, this time, the connection between the streams seemed to have left them in the exact same place. She could see the massive cactus just behind them, but now it was surrounded by a thicker carpet of grass.

  Galadriel turned in the direction where she assumed she would see the oasis and found it sprawled out in the expanse, even lusher and more beautiful than it had been before.

  “We’re in the same place,” she said to Vyker.

  He nodded and climbed to his feet.

  “We’re in the same moment,” he said. “Just a different iteration of it. The breath that you drew in right before we went through the portal is the same that you breathed out here. We entered and emerged in the same moment.”

  “It didn’t feel like it,” she said.

  “Was it the same as the first time you went through the portal?” he asked.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “It was a little faster. It wasn’t as scary with you there with me.”

  Their eyes locked, and Galadriel felt the tension build around them again. This time, it was her that looked away, dragging her eyes away from his in an effort to break the tension. It seemed to disturb him, and she didn’t want to do anything that might cause him to stop helping her. He reached down for her, and Galadriel took his hand, allowing him to help her up out of the sand.

  “Welcome to my home,” he said. “This is my stream. It is where the rest of my kind exist.”

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  He looked at her strangely.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If there are streams that you haven’t entered, how do you know that there aren’t more of your kind in another one?” she asked.

  “I know,” he said, the tone in his voice telling her that he wasn’t going to explain any further. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll show you the temple.”

  Galadriel’s heart jumped as she realized that he meant he was going to bring her to see the wall, the true wall, as it was originally built and intended to be. Even though she realized that it was him that she was drawn to when she felt pulled toward the segment of stone in the museum, the thought of being so close to this piece of wall that had dominated her thoughts and energy for so long was enthralling. She wasn’t even sure how she was supposed to respond to it. Drawing in a breath, she hiked the bags on her back into a more comfortable position, shoved the unlit torch into one of them, and followed Vyker as he started across the sand.

  “Is everything desert?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Vyker said. “It’s not as desolate as the other streams, but that is the way that it is here. There are more oases here, more plants, more water. It is more comfortable and more beautiful. I can only hope that it will remain that way.”

  Galadriel fell silent, not wanting to push Vyker any further into the emotions that he was obviously starting to experience. He was a volatile creature, someone who she felt was filled with an intensity and po
tential that was frightening in its power. Though she no longer feared him, she didn’t want to risk the balance that they seemed to be starting to achieve, especially now that she was just starting to explore the feelings within her.

  As they walked, Galadriel tried to orient herself. She tried to remember the number of steps that she took as they traveled between the cavern and the portal, but it seemed that the darkness had disoriented her enough that she wasn’t able to determine how far they had walked then, or the distance that they would need to walk now. Suddenly, she remembered the night that they passed in the underground shelter and wondered if he would expect them to stop again. As if he could hear her thoughts, Vyker glanced briefly to the side to look at her and then back ahead of him.

  “We’ll go for a while further and then stop to eat. I want to go the full distance today if you think that you can handle it.”

  It sounded like both a moment of genuine concern and a challenge, and Galadriel straightened her spine. She refused to be seen as a burden or unable to keep up with him. This was the first chance that she had ever truly gotten in her life to prove herself without help or interference, and she was going to take it.

  “I can handle it,” she said.

  He nodded wordlessly and they continued. The sun was high in the sky above them when he stopped and lowered his bags to the sand beneath a clutch of palm trees. She gave a sigh of relief as she dropped the bags off of her back and lowered herself onto the ground beside them. She leaned back against one of the trees and let her eyes close for a moment.

  “Don’t go to sleep,” he said. “We don’t have time to rest for long. We need to get to the temple.”

  “I’m not sleeping,” she said. “I’m just resting my eyes.”

  Vyker gave what sounded like a soft laugh, and she heard him rifling through his bag, she assumed searching for their lunch.

  “I feel like I’ve heard you say that before,” he said.

  Galadriel opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  “You have.”

  Vyker nodded as if relenting to the strange reality that they were both still coming to terms with. They ate quickly and then gathered their supplies again and started back through the desert. Galadriel felt dirty, sweaty, and uncomfortable as they walked, but she knew that there would be no point in her complaining. There was nothing that could be done about it. She longed for the suitcase of fresh, clean clothing in the hotel she left behind and for the first time thought about what others were going to think when they noticed that she was gone. How long would it take before the housekeeping team noticed that she hadn’t slept in the bed or used the shower? How many times did Rick try to call her back? When would Ty get worried about her? What would he do when he did? The thoughts made her even more determined to find their way to the temple and ensure that they could protect it, saving it as well as herself and everything that she had ever known.

  She had completely lost track of how long they had been walking when Galadriel was suddenly aware of the dimming sun overhead. The sky that was once a bright, clear blue was now becoming deep and dusky, and the shadows that they cast across the sand were darkening until she couldn’t perceive the grains through them any longer.

  “The sun,” she gasped. “It’s going away.”

  She was terrified that they had somehow already failed, that they had allowed the parasites to follow them through the portal and now everything was lost. Vyker shook his head.

  “It’s alright,” he said. “It’s just the sunset. Don’t worry.”

  She let out a long breath to calm herself and continued ahead, telling her tired legs that it couldn’t be much further. If they had been walking all day, the temple couldn’t be much farther away. She just had to keep going.

  They had gone only a few more minutes when Vyker let out an audible sigh, and Galadriel looked up from watching her feet create deep imprints beside his in the sand. Ahead of her, she saw an open expanse of sand filled with dark silhouettes against the evening sky.

  “It’s the village,” she said. Vyker nodded and painful realization crystallized in her chest. “That was your village,” she murmured, remembering the charred remains of the buildings in the other stream.

  “Remember that I told you that I am the only one of my kind who has crossed the streams?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that I know that there are no others in any of the other streams?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I first discovered that stream, there was a group of my kind there. Like you said, one living creature cannot exist in two streams at the same time, so none of them were from my stream. I don’t know how they got there or how long they had been there. It was them that told me about the destruction of the temple in the streams and the threat to ours. I came back here to tell my group what I had learned, but none of them would believe me. By the time that I got back to that stream, the village was destroyed, the temple was demolished, and all of its inhabitants were gone. I don’t know what happened to them. I can only assume that they were all killed.”

  “But I still don’t understand. How do you know that there are no others left? There could be more in a stream that you haven’t visited yet. There could be another temple.”

  Vyker shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “But how can you know? If you didn’t know that that other group was in the other stream, how can you be so positive that you know that there are no others?”

  “I did know that they were there,” he said.

  “What?” Galadriel asked breathlessly.

  “I did know. I didn’t know how they got there, or how long they had been there, but I did know that they existed.”

  “How?”

  “I know every star that exists in the sky. I know its place and its age. I know when it was created and by whom. I knew that there were stars that belonged to members of my kind who I had never met and who didn’t fit into the lineage of any of the families in my village. Only I know the stars that well. I didn’t know where those people were, but I knew that they still existed. I just had to find them.”

  “So when the StarKillers destroy the stars…”

  “They destroy a little bit of us. Every star that we create contains a piece of our heart. It is part of our very essence. That is how, when I learned about the existence of the streams, that I believed that I would be able to move from stream to stream. If there is a part of me there, I can be there.”

  “So you can exist in more than one stream at a time.”

  “In a way. When the StarKillers came to the different streams, though, they didn’t just take away a piece of the people who lived there. They destroyed the people, and with them went every star that each of them had ever created. When they fell, so did their stars.”

  “But if the stars are still in the sky?”

  “Then the person who made them still exists. That is why the stars change. They live, they breathe, and they die. The reverse is also true. If all of the stars that one of us created are destroyed, so are we. Protecting the stars in my stream means protecting all of the stars that will ever exist.”

  “But there are still stars in my stream,” Galadriel said. “I can still see them. That means that everything is fine. You said that if I can touch the wall that it means there are no more of your kind in my stream, but there are stars.”

  She was feeling hopeful, relying on her basic understanding of what he was telling her to reassure her that what they were doing wasn’t futile, that somehow everything had been preserved in her stream so it was preserved in this one as well. The look in Vyker’s eyes, however, told her that this wasn’t the case.

  “They are there for now,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that they will always be. Every moment that passes is another moment closer to the stars going out forever.”

  “I’ve seen them, though,” Galadriel argued. “I know the stars. They’re there. They
haven’t changed.”

  “Have they?” Vyker asked.

  His eyes lifted and Galadriel followed them, realizing that the sun had fully set and the sky had unfolded in a seemingly never-ending cascade of stars.

  The view took Galadriel’s breath. She couldn’t speak and felt tears forming in her eyes. She had once thought that the night sky at home was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen, and was humbled by the sheer number of the stars that sparkled against the darkness of the night. This, though, was indescribable. What she had once thought was impossible to fathom number of stars now seemed sparse as she tried to take in the glittering of stars so abundant they nearly covered the sky.

  “Where did they go?” she asked.

  “They fell.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Vyker turned his eyes away from her and continued into the village. She followed close behind him, still marveling at the cool, white light that surrounded them from the stars overhead. She had still not seen anyone else, but the area didn’t have the empty, hollow feeling that the other stream had had, and she found herself gradually relaxing as they continued on through the last few steps of their journey.

  Suddenly, ahead of her she could see a large building rising up from the rest of them, its shape darker and more impressive than the others. She drew in a breath as they approached, and she saw the smooth, black stone of the wall. There were no engravings on the face that she could see, but she knew that when she entered the building she would see the words that had been the forefront of her thoughts for so long.

  Galadriel hesitated as they approached the open arched gap in the silver-tinted wall adjacent to the black stone.

  “Am I allowed to go in?” she asked, remembering what Vyker had said about him being the only one who was able to approach the wall.

  “Yes,” he said. “Anyone can enter the temple. It is approaching or touching the wall that is restricted.”

  Galadriel felt like he was never telling her everything that she needed to know, like he was keeping her teetering on the edge so that she was never completely on the same level as he was. It made her uncomfortable, but in the same moment she wondered if he was even aware of what he was doing. She was gradually becoming more aware of the time that Vyker spent alone. The distance that he placed between himself and others had become his reality. Being alone was what he knew, and it seemed that he no longer knew how to exist alongside someone else.