by HDA Roberts
It took a while to make real progress, but as my senses started to seep further and further into the substance of the Gateway, I was able to get a firmer grasp on its nature. I couldn’t tell you much about the structure of the thing, or how it had been made, but I could recognise a kind of Dimensional Magic, though the impressions were often fleeting.
Eventually, after enough prodding, I could finally feel where the Gate was sealed shut. If I had to describe it, I would say that the Gateway felt as if it were pinched shut; like a tear in a piece of cloth being held closed by a clip.
Grommit guided my mind past the Gateway and onto the Barrier, pushing me at its edges, helping me get a feel for the structure of it and how it worked (not that I could ever know for sure, but I eventually got a fairly good idea, enough to break it, anyway).
Once Grommit was happy that I had a good grasp on the shape of the Gate and its obstruction, he showed me how the passageways were normally opened. It wasn’t even hard, just a simple application of Will to the centre of the Gateway to slide it open like a curtain, along with a little strand of Magic to provide the construct with power. An Adept could have used it (if he could have found it, that is).
You understand, the Cat said eventually, his sending practically glowing with satisfaction and more than a little relief.
I hope so.
He dropped to the ground and stared up at me.
Barrier strong. Friend stronger. Keep pushing to open until you get through. Once start, don’t stop, maybe die if you do. When in Homeland, head north. She will be there waiting for you. Return same way.
You aren't coming? I sent back.
No. Not welcome. Besides, protect the family. Foolish brother always getting in trouble with mates of women. Needs watching.
I laughed and knelt next to the cat. I rubbed his ears and he purred again before sliding against my leg.
Thank you, my friend. Stay safe, okay? I sent.
Talk like about to die. Stop. Believe. Live or I will be... upset. Find soul in afterlife. Scratch you.
I laughed again and stood.
With Grommit’s warning in mind, I made sure to cast some shields, but then I relaxed my shoulders, took a deep breath and reached for the Gateway.
Grommit vanished as I began. I tried not to take that personally.
I started very slowly, gently pulling at the edges of the Gateway, trying to get a mental grip on the blockage so I’d know where best to apply my Will. It took a bit, but I finally found my spot, right in the centre of the Gate, where the forces pinching it shut coalesced.
I focussing my mind down to the tiniest point of power I could manage, and started to push, only gradually increasing the pressure as I met greater resistance.
A glittering spark of energy appeared just above the stone, growing brighter and brighter as I increased the amount of power I applied.
The Barrier held firm, barely even flexing, so I pushed harder and then harder still. The Spell started to fight me, adjusting itself around my Magic, trying to spread out the force I was applying. But it could only bend so far, and eventually it started to fray. As I felt it begin to give, I pushed even harder, narrowed my focus even further... and it finally started to tear.
The Barrier tried to repair itself, to reform around my assault. Power flowed into the wound I’d created, attempting to stabilise it, but I threw in even more energy, and the tear became a full breach.
The Barrier still tried to close itself up, still fought, but it was too late. I gathered my Will, and shoved it right at the opening I’d made, launching it like a spear. I lodged my power in the closing hole and expanded it, wrenching and tearing, twisting and pushing like Hell's own drill-bit, gouging my way through the combined power of two Fairy Realms.
The spark had become a juddering line, flashing and flaring as opposing energies and Wills clashed with one another. A terrible whine started to come from the centre, right at the point where I was pushing the hardest.
At long last, I felt something creak, then finally crack. The Barrier buckled, its attachment points tearing free one by one until at last the Construct could take no more, and the Barrier exploded.
Naturally, the collapsing energy only had the one place to go, and it all came vomiting out through the Gateway I was standing right in front of.
My shields caught it, though it was a close-run thing, and the trees around me fell by the dozen, quickly set alight by the energy. I winced at the damage, but there wasn't much I could do except draw the heat out of the fires, which stopped them cold (so to speak).
That had been costly, though, and Grommit had been quite right. If he'd brought me here before my fight with Myrddin, I wouldn't have had the power to get through at all. I was down by almost half, and I hadn’t had that much in my whole Well before Camelot.
Wait... did that mean Grommit knew what was about to happen? Had he known I was getting a power boost? He'd said I wasn't ready, but did that mean he knew that I would be? I’d ask him, but I doubted I’d get a straight answer. The best I’d probably get would be ‘Fairy Magic’, and that was no explanation at all.
Well, a problem for another day.
Now that the Barrier was gone, it was no trouble to connect with the Gate and apply the energy needed for it to slide open. It appeared as a slim oval of dark purple light, shimmering gently in the night. I wasted no time and stepped straight through, into Unseelie.
I emerged into a forest clearing that was almost identical to the one I’d left in Wales, right down to the shape of the terrain and the black stone that housed the Gate. The ground was a bit harder, a bit more rocky, but there was the same abundance of evergreen trees, though these had black bark and their needles were just that bit sharper.
It was also morning there, and the sun was different, dimmer, with a baleful red tinge to it.
The Gateway aperture snapped shut and vanished into the stone as soon as I was clear. Before doing anything else, I reopened the Gate, just to make sure that I could, and that the Barrier hadn’t sprung back up or anything.
Thankfully, the Barrier was still gone, and I could find no trace of it. Satisfied that I had an escape route, I pulled a compass from my bag and consulted it. Grommit had said ‘north’, so I followed the needle and turned to my left, where I could see a ridge of black mountains, capped with white snow.
With a direction to hand, I wrapped myself up in a cocoon of Shadow and was soon airborne. Once I got high enough, I took a moment to get my bearings and fix the location of the clearing in my mind. That was my only way out of this place, and if I lost it, I was stuffed.
The Gateway was in a broad valley, which stretched for a hundred miles between two lines of massive mountains thousands of feet high. The clearing was a few miles east of a paved road made of dark stone, cut through the forest and connecting two tunnels; one in the mountains to the north and the other in the range to the south. Once I was certain I could find my exit again, I started following the road, seeing as it headed north anyway, and roads generally tended to lead to places with people. I wasn’t stupid enough to actually go into the tunnel (that seemed like asking for trouble), but I did my best to try and follow the line it would take under the mountains.
One thing that worried me was that I couldn’t catch so much as a glimpse of ocean, not that I could see past the mountains. But I couldn’t smell salt on the air, either. Even the rock underneath me was different, darker than the stones of Evelina’s fortress. Goodness only knew how far away from her I was.
I climbed higher into the air, pushing myself above the peaks, trying to get a better view.
I spotted some birds giving me the stink-eye on my way past and changed course to give them a wide berth. They were majestic-looking creatures, with midnight-black feathers, except for their bellies and throats, which were white and red, but they were also huge! Their bodies were longer than a horse, with beaks and claws that could have pierced metal without any trouble, much less my soft hide.
All thoughts of the birds (and just about everything else) fled my mind, though, as soon I slid over the peaks and had my first look at what lay beyond. I found myself looking down on a wide, circular basin, like a colossal crater, bound on all sides by mountains, with only a handful of slim passes through the otherwise impassable walls of rock. At the centre, where five rivers met, was a city, and what a city it was!
It was huge, probably on par with Greater London, surrounded by agricultural land, forests, parks and lakes. It sprawled across the plain at the centre of the crater, protected by massive walls manned by thousands of warriors and practically covered with war-machines. There were thousands of buildings, getting taller and taller as you approached the centre of the city, where there was a colossal edifice, towering above all the others. It was a conical tower built of black stone, maybe a mile wide at the base and two miles high, far slimmer at the top than the bottom. There were hundreds of floors, the edges rimmed by countless galleries, gardens, turrets and plazas, decorated by thousands and thousands of statues, fountains, mosaics and tapestries.
It seemed to be the template for the city’s buildings, as the urban sprawl was full of similarly-shaped spires, though they were much smaller. Each was different and yet beautiful in its own distinct way, covered in its individualised statuary and ornamentation; some were even floating above the river, sliding along, un-tethered to the land.
It was truly a Magical place, unlike anything mankind had ever built (or likely ever would). Magic practically danced along the streets, moving the boats, the carts and the houses. Tiny golems could be seen, dealing with garbage and keeping the place tidy, attending to the parks and the other places of relaxation, not that there seemed to be too much of that going on at the moment.
It was truly a beautiful place, a jewel in an imperial crown. One could look at it and even forget that the realm was at war.
But then I saw what was going on at the passes, and that sense of awe vanished.
Each was blocked by colossal fortresses which stretched from one side to the other, built from the local stone and merged with the living stone of the what I was calling ‘the crater’s’ wall. Thousands of Sidhe garrisoned each one, and they were all fighting the Hyde.
Mage Sight let me see those battles in terrible clarity, and they were bloody affairs, with thousands of Hyde and Sidhe being cut down to join thousands more already dead or dying in the muck below.
The Sidhe fought like Demons, slaughtering Hyde like men possessed, but there were always more, so many more. The valleys leading into the crater were packed with them, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, covering the landscape down to the plains beyond like scum on a pond.
Beyond those valleys... all I could see was devastation. Forests had been reduced to stumps, settlements to ruins and farmland into trampled wasteland. The only sign of life were the huge, sprawling camps where the Hyde gathered for their assaults and replenished their numbers.
I shuddered at the horror of it all and forced myself back onto the task at hand. I had a job to do. Seeing the city, I knew that Evelina was nowhere nearby. I trusted Grommit, so I had to guess that I’d simply been sent towards a different 'she' than the one I’d been expecting.
At least that ‘she’ wasn’t hard to find.
Queen Adriata was standing out in the open, at the apex of that immense tower, her power blazing like a lighthouse beacon.
She stood alone, at a heavy stone railing, watching over the battles.
I angled towards her.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. If invading was a simple matter of flying over the mountains, then they Hyde would have done it ages ago.
The already dim sun dimmed further and my eyes went wide as a truly titanic amount of lightning came blasting down at me the instant I cleared the peaks of the crater.
My cocoon took a whole mess of hits, almost enough to blast it to pieces, but then I got a Will Shield in the way and backed it up with a Lightning Rod Spell. I could have Dispelled the cloud, or interfered with it, but I didn’t dare, not with the Hyde out there, maybe just waiting for an opening like that.
The only thing I could do was increase my speed and try not to fly over anything that might dislike having a lightning bolt dropped on its head.
The storm clouds kept pace with me, getting blacker and denser as I approached the city’s outskirts, the lightning continuing to lash out at me. If I’m honest, I probably could have taken the hits, even without my shields or my cocoon, but Cassandra's warning about never letting my guard down rang in my mind and I actually put more power into my defences.
As I flew over the city walls, the lightning petered out. For a moment, I hoped that perhaps I had been recognised, but then a great flock of those huge birds lifted from the crowns of a dozen towers, and charged straight at me. I cursed and cast an Illusion to hide myself, not wanting the creatures to harm themselves attacking me. I dropped as low as I dared and dodged around them.
Finally, Adriata turned her attention in my direction. I think she’d been responding on automatic until this point, functioning on instinct, and I could see why. This close, she looked exhausted, her posture slumped and bent, like she was carrying a great weight. Her eyes had bags under them and they lacked the spark that so defined the Unseelie Queen. She still stood up straight at the perception of an imminent threat, though, her lips twisting into a defiant snarl.
She gestured and another fork of lightning blasted out at the last place those birds had seen me. Had she been looking through their eyes? I suppose that made some sort of sense. Fairy Magic was all about nature, after all.
In any event, the bolt missed me by a clear mile, though those birds looked a bit singed. She really must have been tired for her aim to be that poor.
While she was distracted, I came in for a landing behind her and dropped my Illusion.
"Your Majesty?" I said softly, not wanting to startle her. The woman seemed to be on a bit of a hair-trigger.
I felt her cast the Fairy-equivalent of Mage Sight and turn to glare at me.
"So you've finally found a way through, my old friend," she said, her voice a resigned rasp, the voice of someone who'd been shouting orders in a losing battle for a very long time. "I promise you'll find that I won't go quietly."
"What?" I asked, speaking in my normal tone. I pulled my hood back, "What are you talking about? Your Majesty, it's me. I've come to help."
Her mouth dropped open.
"You?!" she almost shrieked.
"Who did you think it was?"
"The former owner of those powers coursing through your veins!" she snapped, darting forwards. She stepped right through my shields (which I really wished she wouldn’t do, though the only way a Sidhe gets though a Magician’s defences like that is if they mean no harm, so it wasn’t like I needed to worry... probably) and grabbed my head before staring hard into my eyes.
"Graves? It's really you? How?!" she said, her voice almost a gasp.
"It's a long story, and we don't have the time for it now, Evelina's in terrible danger. I'm here for her."
Adriata nodded, "Yes," she said, her eyes drooping, but then they widened, something like hope flashing over her face. "Yes! You might actually be able to help her... Wait, how did you get here? And how did you know what was happening?!"
I gave her as brief an explanation as I felt I could get away with and she seemed to inflate as I got to the end.
She grinned, her expression shifting from exhausted despair and back into its normal predatory glee. I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed the transition; in fact, it sent a shiver down my spine.
“Perhaps...” she whispered, almost reverently.
She closed her eyes, and twitched. I felt her Magic flow, and th
en she vanished, quickly reappearing behind me.
She screamed.
Not in rage or grief or pain, but in sheer unbridled joy. The whole city seemed to resonate with it, the power of the emotion spreading out through the very stones and into the air.
Then she came over and kissed me right on the lips, leaving me spluttering and bright red.
"You magnificent, beautiful, perfect man. You didn't just open that Gateway, you shattered the entire Barrier! We can Portal again!"
She laughed, practically capering in her glee. But then she took hold of herself, and I felt her reach out with her mind. Seconds later a dozen Sidhe appeared out of nowhere, smiles on their faces, their eyes alight with hope and growing determination. A couple looked in my direction, but they didn’t pay me much attention; they were focussed on their Queen.
"My Generals, you know what this means. Get to work immediately. Recall all the outer garrisons, assemble every warrior you can find right here; bring in every soldier, mount and unengaged man or woman, now!" she barked. Her men started vanishing as quickly as they’d arrived, until only a handful were left.
"Torrin, get to the Embassy, get Elora to start sending her Guardians, that is if she isn't already-"
Adriata stopped mid-sentence and frowned before turning to look down past the walls of the city, where a great blue Gateway suddenly opened. A double column of golden-armoured Seelie troops was soon marching through in perfect synchronicity, thousands and thousands of them, followed by a large baggage train and flanked by what looked like a dozen Dragons, complete with riders.
Adriata slumped against the railing, great fat tears running down her face, which she quickly swiped away before her generals could see them.
She turned back to me, her smile fading again.
"Graves," she said, "even with our Dimensional Magic restored, Evelina can't get to us, nor us to her because there is a Hyde Prime with her. You know what that is?"