Chloe considered this. The power that was required sounded far too immense. Greater than anything she’d ever conjured.
“And this must be completed by a single mage?” Chloe asked, eyes finding Gideon’s.
The Wrangler’s face creased into that warm smile. “I never said that.”
“Chloe and Gideon can do it,” Veronica said excitedly. “And I’ve got magic too. Can’t we all work together to do this?”
“I’m afraid it’ll take even more than the three of you,” the Wrangler said. “The last time access to the Nether Realm was attempted was three hundred years ago, and the effort did not end well.”
“What happened?” Talbot asked, his curiosity about the history of the land piquing his interest.
“A great gathering of mages,” Abe answered before the Wrangler could continue. “It was legendary.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to sing.
“When two dozen mages doth gather below
The clouds and the rain and the sleet and the snow
A harrowing tale will soon come to pass
Of mages who tried, and they failed in their task.
But two dozen mages was not what it took
Another two dozen it would take to shook
The land when they broke into realms that had passed
Four dozen mages now failed in their task.
But hearken o’er there on the hills far ahead
Another two dozen gallop in stead
They raise horses high and hold up their staffs
Another two dozen to fail in their task.
Now eighty young mages, well, some young, some old
They grasp the etheric, a task oh so bold
To break into that where they want to bask
A realm they can’t reach when they fail in their task.
And so it’s the rub, the next dozen do come,
They make up near hundred in heads with the sum
And there it now comes, a true test of cast
A hundred now fail in the mages’ grand task.
The Nether Realm’s broken, it’s guarded and true
And never grant access for me or for you
The horrors are hidden, though one crack remains
That fateful day filled with the dragons that came.
They snuck through the doorway and into the air
And hovered and flew and breathed flames in their hair
The dragon which birthed from the Nether Realm cracks
Flew over the forests and never came back.
So there lies the story of brave and of true
A horror now passed when the dragons did flew
The mages all burned and reduced to ash
Though a hundred did try, they still failed in their task.”
“That’s haunting,” Therese said, her eyes shimmering in the firelight. “And it’s true?”
“To a large extent,” the Wrangler replied. “The truth is that dragons existed on this plane long before the Nether Realm was breached. It just so happened that on that day, the disturbance in the etheric drew them close. There’s something about great amounts of power that draws them from hiding.”
“Dragons…they’re real?” Chloe asked.
Abe sat forward in his chair. “Oh, they’re real. Particularly this far north in the world. Their nests can be found in the mountains, but it is rare we glimpse them these days. Their breed is ancient.”
Chloe tried to imagine them. Dragons. Real dragons flying overhead. Great winged lizards with breath of flame soaring above them all and raining hellfire. It seemed almost impossible.
More impossible than a hundred mages trying to open the portal to Nether Realm? KieraFreya thought.
Have you heard of this realm? Chloe asked.
I have. A prison for the gods. A place of banishment and reprimand. Used rarely, and all but lost to the general knowledge of most. I wonder why they threw Shikora in there?
A desperate move from a desperate god trying to keep you in pieces? Chloe wondered.
KieraFreya agreed.
“So, in order to free KF’s horse, we have to break open a portal to another realm?” Veronica asked, trying to get her head around it all. “If a hundred mages failed, what hope do we have?”
The Wrangler sat up in his chair, taking a slow sip of his drink. The house was warm now, the sweet smell of ale and leftover food filling their senses and making them drowsy. If not for the realization of what they had to do, they would all have hit the floor by now.
“Each generation learns from the mistakes of the last,” he said. “If a hundred mages fail, you try two hundred. The task is not impossible. The door opened, just not enough.”
“And when it does open?” Chloe asked. “How do we know that no other dangers will come forth? It sounds like this has never actually been achieved before. If the rumor of dragons coming forth from the portal holds any kind of truth, who’s to say other worse things won’t follow?”
The Wrangler shrugged. “These are the risks we take in the search for knowledge and hope. The world has been unbalanced since the fracturing of KieraFreya. For thousands of years, the balance has been disturbed, and darkness has been leaking ever more into the zeitgeist of our times. Without the restoration of the fallen, the world will never be at peace.”
“He’s right, y’know,” Ben said. “On every step of our journey, we’ve encountered darkness. Black mages, skeletons, trolls, thieves, assassins, and more. Every single step. With the world shaken by the arrival of the blessed, it’ll only get worse. If we can’t restore balance, how will the world survive?”
“But we can’t do it,” Huk chipped in. “We don’t know two hundred mages. How are we going to find them all?”
Chloe looked at the Wrangler and Abe, a smirk on her face. “We’re currently in a room with an ancient guardian of the forest and the king of the largest city in Obsidian. I think we’ll be able to find two hundred mages. Maybe even a few other classes with a useful pool of mana, using the right communication channels.”
Abe stared at the Wrangler, clearly caught by Chloe’s mention of the man being ancient, a goofy smile on his face. Then he seemed to realize what Chloe had said, and his mouth dropped open.
“I beg your pardon?”
Chapter Thirteen
“Something’s wrong,” Mia said to the darkness.
The lines of code went rogue. An inspection sheet on her laptop created line after line of its own script before her eyes.
Not an unusual occurrence, given that Praxis Ltd. had sourced the best artificial intelligence technology to drive their game to new heights of realism.
This was a technology that swallowed knowledge and intelligence into its code before taking what it had learned and generating its own instructions to grow the game larger and more realistic than anything the world had ever seen.
But this was somehow different.
Rather than a steady stream of letters and symbols drifting lazily across the screen, this was a burst of digits. Letters and numbers hurled into the code lines as though somebody had hired a room full of monkeys to smash the keys.
Mia tried to read it all, but it moved faster than her eyes could process. She picked out small lines of the code, the words doing nothing to calm her beating heart.
LAUNCH: (GOD.PROGRAMME.EXE)
#ERROR404
#ERROR404
#ERROR404
SEQUENCE_FOUND
LAUNCH_LOCATION=(X.REALM.3.4)
LAUNCH_CHARACTER=MYARIS
LAUNCH_CHARACTER=DRYANA
LAUNCH_CHARACTER=FUKMOS
*FAILED*
REBOOT_POPUP
MISSING_SEQ
LAUNCH_CHARACTER=FUKMOS
ALIGNMENT=(NEGATIVE.6)
And on it went.
“Honey?” Demetri mumbled, blinding himself by turning on his bedside lamp.
Mia started at the disturbance.
“Mia, it’s 3:30 in the morning. What’r
e you still doing up?”
He sat up in bed, face turning sour when he saw the laptop whirring away on her lap.
“You promised,” he said.
“I know,” she replied, a pleading expression on her face. “But I’ve been so close for a few days now, and I just needed a little more time to get this figured out.”
“And have you?” he asked, resigning himself to another disturbed evening, despite the fact he had to work in the morning.
Mia nodded. “Look.”
She pointed at the screen. Demetri stared blankly.
“Code.”
“Right,” she said, eyes bright. “It’s writing itself. More code than I’ve ever seen in such a short window of time.” She fought against the code, scrolling to a few key spots in the dialog. “There. See? It’s them. It’s the gods. They’re taking over.”
Demetri grunted, rolled over, and put on his glasses. He squinted at the screen, seeing the gods’ names written in red. “Fukmos 2.0? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Mia replied. “But they’re talking. Now. To us…well, sort of. They’re alive in the system, and they’re up to something.”
Demetri stared at the screen, eyes going blurry from the light attacking them and the speed of the scrolling text. “You think we should warn Chloe?”
Mia nodded. “I think we have to.”
“It’s not safe to play with the etheric boundaries,” Dryana crooned, her voice hollow and wispy. “The disturbances can be detected. Our homes unbind.”
“She’s right,” Myaris agreed. “Only the naughty know the way.”
Why do you think I’m known as the God of Mischief? Fukmos thought, his eyes narrowed.
They had been grating on his patience for days. The two sisters jabbered like schoolgirls and agreed with each other on every point.
It had been like this all their lives. Ever since Fukmos had first breathed the fetid air of the underworld. Ever since he had performed his first prank and cackled with glee.
Myaris and Dryana had been perfect targets to begin with. The perfect recipients for his wicked ways. Fukmos would lure them into lost recesses, turn them against each other, find ways to make them hurt…
For a while.
Once the girls came of age and grew into their powers, it was nearly impossible to catch them. Myaris would conjure her magic, inflicting disease and illness upon Fukmos to keep him bound in darkness for days on end. Dryana would bring the spirits to her aid, summoning her tricks and driving Fukmos mad.
When it came time to practice again, Fukmos turned to the mortals. It was easy at first, raining down mischief and delighting in the chaos it wrought. Kingdoms turned against each other, families were torn apart, best friends were at each other’s throats…
The good old days.
The days before Oella, the almighty Goddess of Love, discovered the mischief and clamped down on his visits to the mortal realm. Security was tightened, and the curtains of the etheric drew shut. KieraFreya was destroyed and left below. Life moved on.
It had taken Fukmos years to figure out the lost and forgotten paths. It was through these paths that he discovered the blessed. On them, he had discovered the girl he manipulated, and he found a way back to the mortal realm.
It was these paths he now trod with his sisters, the new guardians of his trickery assigned by his no-good father.
The portal rippled before them, all life a blur through a migraine’s lens. The very air shone, a pulse of rainbow colors accompanied by the heat of energy and etheric power.
“It’s beautiful…” Myaris breathed.
Dryana merely nodded.
“Does it hurt?” Myaris asked.
Fukmos looked at her, surprised. “Not scared of a little pain, are we?”
She shook her head. “No. I rather enjoy it. You can’t feel life without feeling even a little bit of pain.”
“So true,” Dryana agreed.
“How do we activate it?” Myaris asked.
Fukmos dragged a dark hand over his face. “You cut your wrists and bleed your way through. Didn’t anybody tell you that’s how you cross the etheric?”
Dryana shook her head, her expression passive. “If it must be so.”
She shook her pale wrist free from her dark garb and dragged a fingernail across the skin. Dark blood rose in lazy globules to the surface.
“There. Am I granted access?”
Fukmos couldn’t believe it. Had the sisters gone back to believing his trickery once more? After all the years that had passed, did his father’s quest for the three of them mean he once again had their trust?
He grinned wickedly. “Of course. After you.”
Dryana stepped forward, momentarily going completely white. Her body faded into the immaterial substance of the ghosts she ruled as she unfolded her arms and fell through the portal. A hideous shriek trailed after her, then shut off as suddenly as it began.
Myaris copied her sister, dragging a fingernail across her poxed skin, catching scabs and boils. She coughed into the ring of her fist, felt the blood swell, and walked forward, disappearing a second later through the portal. Another shriek accompanied her vanishing.
Fukmos couldn’t help but laugh out loud, trying and failing to mute himself with the back of his hand. His tremendous glee at his mischief spread to his cheeks as he slapped his leg, furrowed his brow, pictured the mortal girl in golden armor, and dove through the portal.
Chapter Fourteen
When morning came around, Abe was nowhere to be found.
“Abe? Abe!” Chloe called, startling the others into wakefulness as she searched the house. The doors that had appeared the night before had miraculously vanished, as had their host and Therese.
“Relax, they’ll be somewhere nearby,” Ben said. “Maybe they’re just out chopping wood, or they’re on a walk? They can’t have gone far.”
But they were nowhere to be found. By late morning, Chloe had searched as far from the house as she dared. With little confidence in her own directions within the forest, she would travel as far as she could while keeping the tiniest fragment of the house in sight.
“Anything?” Gideon asked on her fifth return to the house.
“Nothing.” Chloe was getting worried now. Not only did the majority of their plan rest on having the king of Hammersworth in their company, but she was also pretty sure the king’s guards had gotten a good enough look at the KieraSlayers’ faces to be able to recognize them if they all turned back up in the city empty-handed.
“They’ll arrest us on sight,” Chloe said, hand on her forehead as panic sank in.
“Calm down, Chloe,” Veronica said, still clearly slightly hungover from the night before. “Even if he doesn’t make it back, we can still make this happen.”
“Do you think they’re together?” Chloe asked. “Therese and Abe? You think they’re somewhere with the Wrangler?”
Ben shrugged. “They’re probably off talking about something dwarvish.”
By lunchtime, there was still no sign of any of them. Even Gideon began to worry about where they’d gotten to.
“Surely they would’ve left some kind of note if they were leaving?”
“With what, genius?” Huk replied. “Do you see any paper or pens in that house?”
Gideon blushed.
“We need to find them,” Chloe repeated. “What if people think we killed the king? If we go back without him, we’ve got no hope of getting the mages together. We’ll end up in prison for years, and I’ve served my time in prison. I don’t need to go back to the slammer.”
Veronica, Leonie, and Huk looked at Gideon and Ben as if to say, “She what?”
Ben shook his head, indicating that it was better that they didn’t ask.
“What about those extra rooms in the house? Maybe they’re in there?” Huk suggested.
“What rooms?” Chloe replied. “I looked this morning, and they’d vanished. I swear this house has some kind of magic in
it. There’s no way that table from last night could suddenly just disappear without a trace.”
“Just try, Chloe. What harm is there in looking again?”
Resigned, Chloe followed Huk’s lead. She felt foolish running her hands along the walls and looking for hidden crevices or doorways. She tried the place where she’d seen the animals disappear and found nothing. She placed her ears against the wood and only heard the forest noises outside.
The whole thing made no sense.
It wasn’t until she heard Gideon calling from outside that she felt hope return.
“They’re here!” Gideon called out excitedly. “They’re here!”
Chloe ran to the door and saw the two dwarves walking back through the trees. They were talking loudly, laughing and joking. Not only that, but they were also holding hands.
Chloe ran out to meet them, shoving Therese firmly. “Where the hell have you been? What is this?”
Therese looked down at her hands and blushed. “We’ve been out for a walk, okay? It’s beautiful out there. So much lush undergrowth in the forest. You should see the flowers and animals! It’s like another world.”
“We’ve been worried sick,” Ben said, hands on his hips. “You could’ve told us you were leaving.”
“Sorry, Mom.” Therese giggled, Abe laughing beside her. “I didn’t realize I couldn’t go out unaccompanied. No one was awake when we woke up, so we figured we’d go for a walk.” She said to Abe, “Come on, baby.”
They passed the stunned onlookers and headed into the house. The others watched with mouths agape. A moment later, something crashed through the trees. The lumbering shape of a brown bear appeared, slowly morphing back into the form of the Wrangler.
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