by K. Panikian
When he’d discovered that the dragon’s tonic made him immune to fire, he’d immediately known what he wanted to do.
Chernobog’s plan could wait. There would be time enough to find a portal to the magic-less world later.
Right now, he wanted revenge on the Varangians. And he would get it.
Bonus: “Found gate. Bringing tigers.”
“Welcome to the Sikhote-Alin Mountains! And thank you for choosing Tiger Eco-Tourism for your tour group. This week, as we explore Sikhote Alin, you will see wondrous things!
“The territory stretches along the Sea of Japan and consists of a number of mountain ranges, stone massifs, and plateaus separated by deep valleys and numerous rivers.
“We picked you up today in Terney, and you will return here every night to your hotel.
“But during the day! Such adventures await you!”
Very listened to the guide speak as their small bus bounced along the gravel road. Her eyes blinked heavily. She felt jet-lagged and now, a little bit carsick.
Owen, sitting beside her on the bus bench, listened avidly to the guide talk.
They’d arrived in Russia the morning before, in Vladivostok, and then had flown to Terney, a little bit more north along the coast, to meet the tour group.
Very’s internet searches on the flight from Montreal to Vladivostok revealed that it was going to be too difficult to travel in the region unsupervised. If they wanted to visit the site with the meteor craters, they needed an authorized guide or they would run into trouble with the local authorities.
And speaking of, her ears perked when she heard from the front of the bus, “On February 12, 1947, one of the largest meteor showers in recent history occurred in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains. The Sikhote-Alin meteorite exploded in the atmosphere and, as it fell, rained tons of metal in an elliptical region, creating a giant crater, and many smaller ones too.”
That was what they were there to see. They needed to find out if the 1947 meteor explosion created a gate to another world, a world full of magic and monsters, and possibly, a dragon?
Very remembered a few months earlier, when she found out about the parallel world and her family’s role in keeping it secret and separate. She’d always known she and her family possessed magic, but never why. Now she knew it was to defend against the magical monsters of the parallel world, Terra Novum, so-called by its human inhabitants.
Very was descended from a magical Varangian cohort, lost in time on Terra Novum, and Owen, her partner, was blessed by Mesyats, the Moon God, to become a wolf berserker when he invoked his sword.
A sword which they had to leave behind at the hotel this morning.
Very elbowed Owen. “What if we find the gate? We didn’t bring our weapons.”
Owen turned his head to look down at her, his brown eyes twinkling. “We just landed. We have no idea where the meteor crater is. We can’t go anywhere without an official guide. I think we’re all set for today.”
Very smiled sheepishly back at him. She was a take-charge girl. The fact that they couldn’t go into the mountains and tramp around on their own really chafed at her.
“—the Asiatic black bear, the Amur leopard, and the Amur tiger!” the guide concluded triumphantly.
Very sat back in her seat. They had a long day ahead of them. There were a handful of other tourists on the bus and several guides. The tour paperwork said they wouldn’t visit the meteor crater until later in the week, but she and Owen needed to be there sooner. What to do?
Across the bus, she caught a glimpse of a slim, black-haired man. He, too, lounged low in his seat, staring out the window and ignoring the guide. His forearms were crisscrossed with a network of thin, white scars.
Very, curious, poked Owen and then slid across the aisle to sit next to the man.
“Hi!” she said brightly. “I’m Verena! But please call me Very. Are you one of the guides?”
The man, who had dark gray eyes, looked steadily at Very and then nodded.
“Great! I’m so excited to be on this trip! It was a last-minute thing you know, with Owen’s school schedule.” She waved across the aisle at Owen, who rolled his eyes and continued to listen to the guide at the front of the bus.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing the meteor explosion sites,” Very continued. “Do you know which day we’ll go to the craters?”
The man looked intently across the aisle at Owen and then back at her. Shrugging, he turned away to look out the window again. Very frowned. A woman sitting behind her hissed to get her attention and Very reclined in her seat.
“Aleksei is Udege. His people are native to this area. He doesn’t speak English.”
Very nodded and looked out the window again. But inside, she wondered. She had the ability to speak and understand all languages, thanks to a previous blessing from the gods. She knew that Aleksei understood her. Did he not want to talk about the meteor explosion?
The Udege man, silent and somber, continued to ignore her. His black hair was long and tied back from his thin, sharply-featured face. He was slim but firmly muscled, from what she could see of his forearms and shoulders. And he was obviously trying to ignore her, even as she sat beside him.
The tour bus pulled over onto a mountain overlook and all of the visitors climbed out, taking photos with their phones and meandering over to the souvenir tents perched on the side of the highway.
Very pulled Owen aside and said, “I think the quiet man, Aleksei, knows something about the meteor crater.”
Owen looked at her seriously. “The Udege man? Of course, he does. That’s his job, to give tourism groups like this the appearance that they work with the local people. But he doesn’t want us here.
“He might need a job, but he’s not going to welcome us to any secrets the natives possess.”
Very agreed, thinking. She had a feeling Aleksei knew exactly where they needed to go. She needed to convince him they were not threats, and in fact, they were there to help.
A few hours later, she had her chance. The tour bus stopped at the gate to the national park and while everyone listened to the instructions on how to avoid negative encounters with the wild tigers, bears, and leopards, Very sidled away until she found herself beside Aleksei in line at the water thermos refill station.
“You must go up to the meteor crater site all the time, right?” she asked brightly. “What’s it like? Have you ever seen anything unusual there?”
Aleksei stared at her again, not saying anything in response.
Wagging her finger at him, Very said, “Nuh uh, I know you understand what I’m saying. What’s up there?”
Aleksei shrugged. He said in heavily accented Russian, “There are some holes in the earth, yes. You will get good photos for your Instagram account.” He turned away.
Very stared after him, grinning. She knew he understood her.
She skipped over to Owen, talking to the guide who was always on the bus mic and asked, “Is it possible to get a private tour?”
The guide stared at her, bewildered, and she clarified. “You’re doing a fabulous job, totally. It’s just that we’re only interested in the meteor site.” She patted Owen hard on the back.
Clearing his throat, Owen said, “I’m obsessed with space stuff. We were in Chelyabinsk recently visiting the meteor sites there. I dragged Very here next, hoping we could see the site where the meteor struck in the 1940s.”
The guide’s eyes cleared and he shrugged. “That part of the tour is arranged only by Aleksei. I can inquire?”
Very elbowed Owen again. He coughed and cleared his throat significantly. “We’re willing to make it worth your while.”
The guide grinned at them.
THE next day, Very and Owen followed Aleksei through the darkly lush, green forest. The helicopter had dropped them a couple of hours earlier and since then, they’d followed Aleksei deeper and deeper into the mountain range.
The trees and plants around them appeared wholly alien
to Very and she asked Aleksei a million questions. The yew trees grew tall and smelled of pine and sweet berries. The air felt humid.
Eventually, Aleksei softened toward them and dropped the terrible Russian accent, acknowledging that he understood their words just fine. He told them to call him by his nickname, Alyosha, and he promised them they’d be at the crater site soon.
He shared that he worked for the eco-tour group only sometimes, when money was tight at home. Otherwise, he was in school in Vladivostok, studying engineering.
Owen asked if they were likely to see any tigers, but Alyosha told them, no. The tigers would hear them coming and would hide; humans were not their normal prey. Very felt slightly disappointed. It would be amazing to see a tiger in the wild.
The Amur, or Siberian, tiger lived almost exclusively in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains. There were only a few hundred of them left in the wild though, victims of poaching and deforestation. Alyosha told them the tigers mostly ate boar and deer, though if tourists were foolish enough to hike in the hills with a dog, they would see that tigers also liked to eat canine companions. Very grimaced.
Alyosha led them up, through the forest and then stopped. Waving them behind him, he whispered, “Wait here for a moment. I’ll be back.”
He slipped off into the trees.
Very wiggled her eyebrows at Owen and they both snuck off the path, following the Udege man.
They kept him in sight, his black hair visible in the green forest, as he walked about fifty yards into the trees and then stopped to kneel. When he ducked out of sight, they sped up. Then they saw why he knelt.
At Alyosha’s feet rolled a giant Amur tiger. On its back, paws in the air, its huge body vibrated in a purr. The tiger’s fur was pale orange with dark gray and black stripes. Very and Owen froze. Alyosha rubbed its white belly and murmured something to the tiger.
“You’re lucky I’m here,” Alyosha grumbled, glancing up at Very and Owen. “Next time I tell you to stay on the path, please do so.”
He rose, patting the tiger on the head gently. “This is an adult male tiger and he weighs almost 400 pounds. He’s not friendly. Do not approach.”
Alyosha knelt again and pressed his forehead to the tiger’s, pausing for a long moment, then he stood and walked back to the trail. The tiger complacently watched him go.
On the path once more, Very asked, “How did you do that? Why didn’t it attack you?”
Alyosha turned, leading them up the mountain path again.
“How could you pet it? What’d you say to it? Did it understand you?” she continued. “What did its fur feel like?”
Alyosha finally laughed. “It knows me.” He said, rubbing a hand over his chest, “I have a certain, ah, affinity for tigers, you could say.”
He nodded his head at Owen. “The same way you likely have a certain, ah, affinity for wolves.”
Owen looked at him sharply.
“Yes, yes, I can see it in you.”
“But he doesn’t have his sword,” Very questioned. “How can you see it?”
“It’s engraved on his spirit. He doesn’t need the sword to transform, though I understand it makes things easier.”
Owen looked shocked. Then he rubbed his chest thoughtfully. “I was wondering that, actually. There have been a few times that I felt it coming, even though I was nowhere near my sword.”
“What?” Very asked. “You never told me!”
“Well, you don’t have a great history of responding well to magical surprises,” Owen reminded her gently.
Very closed her mouth with an audible click.
Alyosha looked back at them, smirking.
Very ran to catch up to him. “Does that mean you turn into a tiger? You’re a tiger berserker?”
Alyosha wiggled his hand back and forth in a sort-of gesture. “We don’t call it that here. Here, if you are possessed by an evil tiger spirit, it’s a bad thing. It’s called going ‘amok’ and usually ends with violence and death.”
He continued. “Men who are amok are crazed and full of rage. They do terrible things.”
They walked silently for a moment.
“There are some people, however, that can access the Tiger Mountain Spirit. Those people walk the line between control and amok quite carefully.”
“There are more of you?” Very asked.
Alyosha answered cautiously, slowing again. “These mountains attract the ones who walk the line.”
Owen came up to pace beside them. “We’re not asking you to reveal any secrets about other people. We just need to see the crater. Then we’ll leave you in peace.”
Alyosha nodded and they kept walking quietly.
FINALLY, they reached the flattened peak of the ridge. Ahead of them, the trees fell away to reveal an elliptical scar on the landscape. A deep crater carved into the earth, with steep sides and a jumble of rocks at the bottom.
Very shivered, feeling a flash of déjà vu. The crater they’d previously investigated in Russia had been covered in snow, but the similarities were clear. The scraped-out, raw look, and the feeling in the air of something supernatural.
Very started to climb down the steep slope and Alyosha grabbed her arm. “You’re going into it?” he asked, alarmed.
“Yes, why? Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”
Alyosha looked at her like she was crazy. “You can’t see the energy signature? That whole crater is glowing blue. We don’t ever go down there.”
Very cleared her throat and sat on the edge. “So, let me tell you a story...”
When she finished, Alyosha stared hard down into the crater. “It’s a portal to a magical world of monsters,” he said slowly. “And it’s open?”
“No,” Owen said. “It’s not technically open, at the moment. We need to find the key first. Well, if some monster had a key on the other side, then yeah, I guess it would be open.” He paused. “So probably you should assume it’s open and be careful whenever you’re in this area.”
Alyosha rolled his eyes.
“We knew not to go into the crater, but not why. The Tiger Spirits do not like it. I will have to think about what this means…” Alyosha trailed off.
Very got to her feet again. “Ready?” she asked and without waiting for an answer, climbed into the rocky bowl. She heard the clambering noises of the two men following.
The sides of the crater were so steep, she ended up sliding most of the way down, probably twenty feet. At the bottom, she looked out across the expanse of rocks and gravel. It was a long way to the other side. Alyosha and Owen landed beside her.
“Let’s split it up into thirds,” Very said, “then walk your section in a grid.” She turned to Alyosha, “You’re looking for any unusual rocks. In Russia, they were blue meteorite pieces.”
The man nodded and started picking his way across the rocks to the far side.
“I’ll take the middle,” Very told Owen.
Very paced her section, looking down carefully with every step, and lifting the larger rocks to check underneath. She toed into the dirt and scraped away tall grass. She grew hot and dirty, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
After a while, she paused on the slope to drink some water. She watched Owen pacing along and felt her heart sing. Her man, look at him go, trekking across the world for her, again. The idea that he could turn into a wolf berserker without his sword though, that was worrisome. That bore further thought. A frown line marred her forehead briefly.
She looked up when Alyosha shouted from his quadrant. He waved them over.
Grabbing Owen’s hand when he came to collect her, she stretched up to kiss his cheek. “Have I told you today that I love you?”
He smiled sweetly down at her, his chocolate brown eyes melting. “Not yet today, no,” he answered.
“Hey! Come on!” Alyosha shouted again.
When they got to his side, he pointed down at a greenish-gray rock, half buried under the grass. “I’ve never seen a rock that color befo
re.”
Very crouched and looked at it closely. Its edges were smooth and bulbous. It looked like a meteorite and it was definitely green. She gingerly fished it out of the dirt and held it in the palm of her hand. She looked to make sure Owen was ready and then paced to the center of the crater, still holding the green rock. Alyosha followed them.
As soon as she reached the middle of the bowl, the air started to swirl. The meteorite in her hand began to glow a bright, emerald green. Very held it high into the air and the crater pulsed, blue. A door in the air appeared, framed in sapphire and cobalt. Alyosha sucked in his breath beside them. Through the gate they could see a similar crater, and a similar mountain ridge. Nothing moved.
Very stepped back, lowering the stone, and the door faded from view. After tucking it into her pocket, she climbed out of the crater, sitting on the edge once more.
“So,” she said to Alyosha, “that’s the door to the other world. It needs to stay shut. Owen and I need to go through it first though; we have a job to do. Can you call the helicopter pilot to return us to the hotel so we can get our stuff?”
Alyosha nodded, lost in thought. He stood abruptly. “We will go back now, yes. But you will wait for me in the morning to fly back. I must have some time…” his voice faded as he stared at the sky.
Very patted his shoulder gently. “It’s cool. It’s a lot to take in. I get it. We can talk again in the morning.”
They trekked down the mountainside, heading for the clearing where the helicopter dropped them this morning.
Very kept her eyes peeled, but didn’t see any more tigers.
AT the hotel, entwined with Owen on the bed, Very ate noodles with one hand and with the other, searched her phone for news accounts of tiger attacks and “amok.” They were not pleasant stories.
Then she dropped her phone and the noodles on the nightstand and tripped her fingers up Owen’s deliciously muscular chest. His breath caught.
“So,” she murmured, “you don’t think I demonstrated my love sufficiently today?”
The heated look she got in response had her rising to her knees and pulling her tank top over her head. “Well, let me show you once again.”