by C H Duryea
But it was too late anyway. The undermage’s tendrils had found purchase on the boulders below the sizzling vortex. The crackling sound intensified, bouncing off the walls, and the ragged splotch of blue energy started to yawn wider.
“No, Traverser,” Feldspar said, “I’ll leave that pleasure to you.”
The opening expanded, and a dark landscape on the other side became visible. Zeke saw a background of stars and misshapen rock and a strange shimmering light that hurt his eyes. But it was what was in front of that background that concerned him even more.
A crowd of saurian-shaped silhouettes with glowing eyes crowded and converged on the opening. And as a squad of Tozzk warriors stormed into the cave, Feldspar began to laugh uproariously.
The sizzling portal widened to encompass almost the entire breadth of the cave. The Tozzk fighters advanced out of the gate, trampling the bodies of Feldspar’s vanquished men as they closed in on Zeke and the others. At one corner of the sizzleport, the undermage worked to maintain his anchoring spell, and Feldspar continued to laugh.
“All right, game boy!” Vibeke yelled at Chuck. “What the blazes are we supposed to do now?”
Harbinger held his sword out before him with one hand while his other twitched as if searching for another current of energy to manipulate.
“I’m open to suggestions,” he retorted.
Zeke stood, momentarily stunned, still staring at the inert haptic blaster in his hand. He couldn’t get why the weapon had worked for him before—but not now.
What am I missing?
But he didn’t have time for a lengthy mediation on the problem. The alien warriors were close enough for Zeke to smell their noxious breath.
Beyond the Tozzk line, the blue sizzleport framed a strange, alien vista. On the other side of that gate was a rocky landscape studded with artificial structures and massive towers of alien technology. The centerpiece of the complex looked like a huge ring—big as a particle accelerator—hoisted up on one edge. And beyond that—a huge, multifaceted globe, slowly rotating in the open space beyond.
“Do you see it?” Narissa asked.
“I wish I didn’t,” Zeke said.
Just what Zeke needed. A confirmation of his worst mathematical fear at just the moment when metallic saurian monsters were closing in for the kill.
The Tozzk fanned out to surround the group.
“Circle up!” Harbinger yelled, and they closed in, back-to-back.
Augie picked up a second stalagmite fragment and held it up end to end with the other. The substance of the rock seemed to blur, and the two pieces fused into a solid unit.
“Let’s see how sturdy you rust-buckets really are,” he said through gritted teeth.
“How did you do that?” Narissa asked.
“I can’t say I fully understand,” he responded. "How did you turn from a merely badass martial artist into a laser-targeted killing machine?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Do I ever?” Augie replied.
“Seems we might have all picked up something coming through the warding,” Harbinger said.
Zeke suddenly remembered the surge of energy flowing through his limbs when they first came into the chamber—and Vibeke’s sudden tendency to move in the blink of an eye.
Several Tozzk snarled and drew obscenely large bladed weapons. The others gestured before them and glowing patterns of force materialized in the air.
“I’d love to stay and watch the festivities,” Feldspar said as he sauntered behind the Tozzk line towards the Dodecahedron’s ossified cage. “But I have a package to deliver.”
Harbinger swept his arm at one of the Tozzk energy spells, gesturing as if trying to manipulate it.
“Don’t let him get away with the Dodec,” he called as he pushed back against the alien’s energy screen.
With a roar, another Tozzk lunged in, swinging its mega-blade.
“Not so fast,” Augie rumbled and swung his stone longstaff to meet it. The stone shaft shattered and the creature howled in anticipation of a quick kill as he whirled the weapon for a fatal strike.
But even as the stone shrapnel was still flying, Narissa leapt back and launched herself from a rebound against the incline behind them, flew over Augie, and planted her foot at just the right stress point to force the Tozzk to drop its sword.
“Thank you, my sweet,” Augie called. The stone fragments swept around the Tozzk and enveloped the sword. With another blur of movement and substance, the stone staff reassembled in Augie’s hands, this time incorporating the alien blade as well, forming a stone and metal polearm of insane proportions. He struck the disarmed Tozzk and sent it sprawling, then swung around to strike another before it could unleash one of its spells.
“We gotta close that gate!” Harbinger yelled. “Someone take out that mage!”
“I can do that!” Vibeke shouted. Zeke felt an instinctive urge to hold her back, to keep her out of danger, but then he remembered who he was thinking about. He was too slow anyway—she had already crossed the distance to the mage, impossibly right past the Tozzk line, and was giving the mage hell.
“Zeke, look out!” Augie yelled. He turned then leapt back just in time to miss a sweeping Tozzk blade, tripping over one of the prince’s men. The massive fighter strode in for another swing, but Harbinger blocked it with a barrier spell spun by a few quick flicks of his fingers.
As Zeke scrambled to get out of range, he spotted Feldspar climbing up the far side of the speleothem enclosure and towards the Dodecahedron’s brilliant green radiance. He grabbed the sword and buckler from the downed soldier and went after him. He stopped at the lip of the incline and peered past the stalagmites. The prince was approaching the Dodecahedron’s stone platform, his posture a mix of wariness and determination.
“Think about what you’re doing!” Zeke called out as he leapt into the enclosed circle. Feldspar turned, then sneered as he recognized Zeke. “If Chuck is right, you touch that thing and your brain’ll be a puddle by the end of the day.”
Feldspar laughed. “Your concern for my welfare is touching,” he said as his hand began to glow. “But I’ve been preparing for this day for more years than you can know.”
The prince flung out his arm and launched a column of force at Zeke that slammed into him and sent him skidding back. Zeke reflexively held up the buckler in his left hand—and his skidding suddenly stopped. He straightened up and held the shield directly in the line of energy pouring from Feldspar’s hand, and he felt a hot surge of power collecting around the vambrace and coursing up his arm.
“You didn’t tell me you were a mage,” Zeke said.
“Neither did you,” Feldspar answered, extinguishing the spell.
Zeke moved forward, sword ready. “Can’t imagine the Lady Regent is too crazy about that. Tell me, did you kill her father yourself, or did you farm it out to your mage?”
“Far too important a task to delegate.”
“And the men who disappeared? Who you used to justify your movements in the eastern mountains? Did you kill them too?”
“They died in service to the Crown. Acceptable losses."
“Guardian of the Western Territories? Commander of the Vigil at the Gate? You were never defending Inverketh against the Tozzk. You’ve been coordinating with them this whole time.”
“I see nothing gets by you, Dr. Travers.”
“So, you’re going to take me out with the same sorcery you used to kill your grandfather?”
“No,” Feldspar said, drawing his sword. “You’ve developed a resistance I have no time to circumvent, but I watched you with the gnoll. You have no skill with a blade. Skewering you will be one of the simpler pleasures of my day.”
Feldspar attacked, and Zeke retreated, parrying the blows with his buckler. The prince was right. Swordplay was not a critical skill set in the lab, but he was still able to confound his opponent by robbing each blow of its kinetic energy. Unfortunately, this did not help when Feldspa
r spun and came around with a cross-cut to Zeke’s open right side.
He didn’t have time to think. He brought the sword in his right hand up as hard as he could against the attacking blade, and he felt something akin to lightning striking under his right vambrace.
His blade cut through Feldspar’s as if it was a dry twig and kept going. A plane of force slashed out from each edge of his weapon, missing both of them, but splitting the rock floor between them, shattering stalagmites on both sides, and cleaving a long ragged crack along the ceiling, loosing speleothems that came crashing down like icicles during a thaw. The prince fell back and sprawled into the shadows on the other side of the cracked floor.
The entire cavern rumbled.
Zeke leapt out from the enclosure, back to the main floor. Over by the sizzleport, Vibeke had managed to knock out the mage, but apparently, that had done nothing against the anchor spell holding the gate open. She struggled against the rocks, trying to pry the membranes loose.
For Augie, Narissa and Harbinger, the situation was direr. All three of them were battered and bloody. Although they had taken out several of the Tozzk fighters, four of the monsters remained. Augie kept two of them at bay with his fused polearm, and Narissa stood back, favoring one leg, and giving directions to Harbinger as he gestured wildly, blocking the Tozzk spells from the other two as best he could. Every few seconds, she picked up a good size rock and hurled it with unsettling accuracy at a Tozzk eye or vulnerable joint.
Zeke watched the shadow into which Feldspar had tumbled, to make sure the prince did not reemerge, then he turned and charged towards the fight, sword drawn. Even if he had no skill with the blade, he was beginning to understand the workings of the vambraces.
The left side absorbs energy. The right side unleashes it.
If he could apply the sword like he had just done, he could do some serious damage to the enemy fighters.
But as the chamber continued to tremble, he hesitated.
Damage, yes. But if the sword’s plane of force further damaged the cavern’s structural integrity—
He couldn’t risk it. He tossed the sword aside. He felt paralyzed, unsure of what to do. But also sure that if he did nothing they were all going to die.
But then he heard a strange metallic slithering and felt a slap of cold metal against his right palm. He looked.
The haptic blaster.
Of course! How could he have been such a dimwit? In a flash, he understood why it had worked on the gnoll—and why it hadn’t worked on Feldspar minutes before.
He took aim at the closest Tozzk fighter and pulled the trigger. A powerful—and focused—beam of force lashed out and burned a deep gouge in the ferrous hide of the fighter.
“Ha!” he exclaimed. “Now I’ve got you, iron-ass!”
The injured Tozzk turned from the others and roared its displeasure at Zeke.
The blaster, for whatever reason—the fact that it had attuned itself to Zeke’s nerves, or anything else—Zeke was able to operate it regardless of the local physics. As long as his vambraces were charged.
The beast charged Zeke, its mighty clawed talons thundering across the shaking floor. Zeke smirked and took aim.
And—nothing.
“Oh, come on!” he yelled.
The Tozzk grinned and bore down on him. Zeke scrambled back, his legs searching for any evasive option.
And then something small, fast, and heavy slammed into the side of the fighter’s head. The Tozzk lurched, righted itself with a fierce growl, and turned just in time to get hit again. As the projectile streaked by, Zeke recognized it.
Qaant Yke’s flying metallic death-ball.
The hard-shelled alien emerged from the shadows near the crevice where Zeke had heard the running water. Zeke realized he must have taken the other passage, through kilometers of underwater tunnels. He stepped into the light and summoned the metal orb back to his waiting claw and strode towards the Tozzk fighters with the confident aspect of a hunter.
“Are you a sight for sore eyes!” Augie shouted.
“I advise you to move to a minimum safe distance,” he replied.
The Tozzk lost all interest in their human quarry. Rumbling and growling, they turned on the new intruder, with no idea what was in store.
Qaant Yke launched into motion, his long carapaced limbs lashing out with powerful and deadly accuracy at Tozzk pressure points and plate seams, his death ball delivering contrapuntal blows. With the spikes and serrations of his shell, he gouged holes, hacked limbs, and peeled back armor plating with the utilitarian efficiency of an old-fashioned can opener. With his characteristic detachment, Qaant Yke put down one Tozzk fighter, then the next, and the next.
Zeke joined Harbinger, Augie and Narissa near the edge of the drop-off. Vibeke hung back close to the sizzleport, still unable to cross the line of combat to join them. But soon the last Tozzk was down and Vibeke started to run towards them.
She was yelling, pointing.
“Stop him!”
Zeke turned. In the shadows on the other side of the rumbling cavern, Feldspar was making a dash for the sizzleport—carrying the Dodecahedron.
Zeke and Harbinger broke into a run, over Tozzk and Inverkethi bodies, past Vibeke, trying to intercept Feldspar before he reached the gate. They were too late. He ran to the wide mouth of the sizzleport, clutching the Dodecahedron and howling triumphantly. Zeke and Harbinger raced after him into the gate, but the prince was disappearing into a surge of glowing mist.
From behind, Zeke heard Vibeke.
“I’ll stop him!”
And suddenly Feldspar skidded to a halt, blocked by Vibeke, who now stood in his way. Zeke and Harbinger ran to catch up.
“Going somewhere, lunkhead?” Vibeke asked the prince.
But Feldspar didn’t answer.
Out of the mist behind Vibeke, a massive shape emerged. Zeke and Harbinger scrambled to a stop.
It had huge glowing eyes and the general saurian silhouette of a Tozzk. But it was much, much bigger, spinier and rustier.
“Vee,” Zeke called. But she was too busy staring Feldspar down.
The massive shape raised a pair of great clawed arms. Energy patterns scorched the air around its mighty bridge-cabled fingers.
Feldspar turned his head and regarded Zeke and Harbinger with an arrogant smirk.
“Sayonara suckers,” he said.
The great Tozzk-like shape lashed out with a clawed hand. A force like a battering ram knocked Zeke and Harbinger tumbling back onto the rocky floor of the cavern. And with something like a crack of thunder, the sizzleport closed.
Zeke scrambled up, shook his head to clear it. Then stumbled as another tremor rocked the cavern.
“The port’s closing,” Narissa called. “It’s weakened the whole cavern!”
Pieces of speleothem were dropping all around them. Zeke stared at Augie and Narissa, exchanged a glance with Harbinger—then looked at the empty space where the port had just been.
“Vee,” he whispered.
She had been inside the gate when it closed.
“Vee!” he yelled, but the only answer he got was more rumbling and cracking and arms grabbing him and voices telling him they had to go. When they dragged him into the tunnel and the cavern’s main ceiling gave way, he was still screaming her name.
Twenty-Four
By the time they emerged from the cave and back to the valley, Zeke at least no longer had to be dragged. They made it to a wide finger of rocky shelf over the water and collapsed, all except Qaant Yke, who took a position on a nearby boulder, standing like a silent sentinel.
Zeke dropped on his back and stared unseeing at the sheer granite face rising up from the shelf, trying to contain his distress. It wasn’t working.
Up on the ridge, in the waning light of sunset, Zeke saw the outlines of a pair of writhing bodies and massive wings, peering down at them, then taking to the air.
Harbinger saw them too. “Dragons,” he announced. When the b
easts swooped in to investigate, however, they recognized—or probably smelled—Qaant Yke. They glared at the alien, backed away with a few mighty flaps of their wings and took off again for the heights. “Seems they don’t like seafood!”
“Who cares what they don’t like!” Zeke exploded, pounding his right fist against the rock and sending a powerful jolt of kinetic force in all directions. “We can’t just leave her in there!” He pulled himself up on the trembling ledge and prepared to punch the cliff face.
Narissa jumped up. “No, Zeke,” she said, limping to his side and taking his arm.
But Zeke was having none of it. When he hit the rock, the quaking nearly threw them all off the edge.
“Hezekiah Travers!” Narissa shouted—then delivered a roundhouse kick to his leg and toppled him. Zeke landed hard on his back, and she pounced, pinning him with her knees. “Knock it off!”
He struggled, but Narissa was stronger than she appeared.
“I’m not letting you up until you calm down.”
“We can’t—”
“We didn’t,” she said, grabbing him by the shoulders. “She’s not in there. When the gate closed, Vee was already somewhere else.”
“Great,” Zeke grumbled. “She could be anywhere. Did you see the halo on that gate? It was just like the one at XARPA—the one that Tozzk attacked us through. She could be anywhere in the multiverse!”
“No,” Narissa answered. She turned on her knees and released him. “The halo at XARPA was orange—that’s the wavelength that pierces the membrane. This one was blue. It didn’t come from as far. Vibeke’s local. We just have to find her.”
Zeke felt his rage, along with his strength, sluice out of him. He rubbed his bruised knuckles.
“How do you know?” he asked, sitting up.
“I can’t tell you how,” she said. “I just see it.”
“How do you perceive it?” Harbinger asked. “When you say you see it, what does it look like?”
She shuffled over to where Augie sat and settled to her knees and leaned into him.
“It’s hard to describe,” she explained. “All my life I’ve looked at things through the lens of mathematics. It was how I understood the world, the universe, myself. It’s how I took your ideas, Zeke, and made them real. But now—since we went into that cavern—it’s more than just a way of understanding. I actually see it now. The complex relationships, the patterns of existence, expressed in terms of pure numbers. So when I saw that gateway, I saw more than just its color. I saw the math that made it work.”