He swallowed. That could mean no good thing. Trouble was just beyond that dark archway for him.
Tollin mulled over that for a moment. He wasn’t in the mood for a fight—he rarely was. Perhaps—hopefully—this was a time for wits, not a show of strength.
‘Watch your head in there.’
He spun on his toes, confronted with a familiar face. What a relief it was to see his Golden Girl; his Guide standing where no-one had been and shimmering light like a ghost of a sun.
The sight brought a smile. ‘Well! Didn’t expect to see you here!’ He kept his voice quiet.
‘Just came to wish you good luck.’
He stepped nearer, drawn. ‘Good luck? Should I be worried?’
There was the suggestion of a grin, just barely noticeable through the shining gold that obscured her features. ‘Not in the slightest.’
His raised a brow. ‘Smells like trouble in there. I will remind you it was at your suggestion I came back to the Realm so soon.’
She shrugged, and said in a way very similar to how he’d have done, ‘Yeah, well, nothing you can’t handle.’
It was his turn to smile. ‘If I scream I expect you to come running.’
‘Always will, mate.’
She gave him a friendly little wave, then disappeared into golden dust. Tollin watched the sparkling, shimmering cloud blow away on the wind, letting her slip through his fingers. She’d encouraged him in this. Hit couldn’t be his doom. Grimly he turned back to the chamber and squared his shoulders.
‘Right…’
Once he stepped into the darkened chamber, his eyes were quick to focus. Yet it was almost unnecessary for there was steady artificial light coming from somewhere.
A worrying smell hung in the air; a scent of smoke and fabric and sweat.
Reluctantly, Tollin followed the footprints, moving deeper into the darkness. His nerves tensed. He smelled danger.
And dragon.
The scent fired up his instincts, encouraging him to turn and flee. He didn’t like dragons. They were a nasty bunch. Much too selfish, and lazy, and irritable, and greedy, not to mention lustful and speciesist.
Pity he shared their genes.
Tollin went on, down the slope towards the steady light, nerves wild. There came a sudden groaning of tortured machinery and Tollin started, nearly tripping over a broken piece of rock. Someone had demolished part of the wall. And recently. The edges of the stone still smouldered hotly.
‘Blimey…’
Hopping from debris to debris Tollin landed just outside of the broken opening. As far as he could gather, a doorway—and perhaps a very complicated one—once barred most from simply abusing the room beyond. Whoever was inside had either been impatient enough or not clever enough and had taken care of things by simply smashing straight through.
Tollin made a face.
Another noise from within, metallic and unhappy, tightened Tollin’s spine. He could see a shadow now. Big splashes of coppery blood slicked the floor, tracked about by bare feet. Tollin took some comfort it was human footprints, not dragon. It didn’t give him much comfort, however.
The shadow suddenly straightened.
‘Do not think that I cannot smell you.’
Tollin swallowed. ‘Well, I wasn’t exactly trying to go undetected.’
Silence for a moment. ‘Why don’t you step into the room, little Half-Breed?’
Oh, why hadn’t he brought a weapon?
‘Rather stay out here, thanks.’
A chuckle. Tollin tried to judge how severe his foe’s wounds were by the blood on the ground. Rather bad, from what he could gather. That could be the deciding factor in a fight.
There was a growl from within, decidedly not human—Tollin’s throat tightened. Being the inferior species—and being so painfully aware that he was—was making him jumpy.
‘There are not many of your mixed blood left in the Realms, boy. Not outside of the world of Chrystilla, of course. Now, tell me, which one are you?’
Tollin shifted uneasily. He decided honesty was the best policy. ‘They call me the Traveller.’
‘Ah, yes, I know that name,’ the voice purred. ‘You are the real one. I understand that now. You have no idea how that confused me. I do not appreciate a creature that can be in two places at once.’ He turned. ‘You did not escape Solvareta. You did not kill my father, that’s impossible. Even with the girl’s help.
‘It makes sense now. It must be the will of my father’s creation to bring me in the path of another Traveller. A different time. You are lucky or I would exact my revenge. I very much wanted to meet you after hearing such praise. From your gifted friend. Someone who spoke of you with an almost worshipful attitude.’
Tollin frowned. ‘And which of my devotees would that be?’
The dragon chuckled. ‘Pretty little thing. Bit of a fighter. Had…surprising power for her size. And species.’
Tollin frowned. That didn’t really narrow it down much. Either way, he wasn’t sure he liked the way this dragon spoke.
He took a few cautious steps forward. He didn’t know who this beast was referring to, but concern still welled nonetheless. ‘I do certainly hope you treated any friend of mine with the courtesy she deserved…’
The dragon chuckled. ‘With exactly as much courtesy she deserved.’
Tollin felt his skin crawl. ‘If you laid one finger on her…’
‘What?’ laughed the dragon, ‘she is so far beyond your reach, Traveller. Five-hundred years too far away. You be a good boy and I’ll let you see her. We’ll all go back together. You and your little girl will open Solvareta and we’ll all come marching back here. My father will know exactly what to give those Myrmidons.’
Tollin’s eye widened. Five-hundred years? Just what had he missed?
‘So,’ he said slowly, stepping further into the light, ‘just where and when are you planning on going?’
There was another groan of machinery and the dragon cursed. Tollin edged closer, looking about as much as he dared. It was all so advanced, all so ancient. It sent the hair rising on his arms.
The dragon was hunched over a glowing, rounded panel. His movements were frantic. Just visible was a gaping hole in the man’s side. It turned his stomach.
‘In a hurry to leave?’ he asked.
Noel whirled round. His eyes held a wild, injured, animal panic. Tollin braced himself. Creatures in such situations were never stable. Or logical.
‘How does it work?’
Tollin raised a brow. ‘Sorry?’
Noel stepped nearer. ‘How does this machine work?’
It was a struggle to remain where he was. ‘Haven’t the faintest.’
Noel lunged forward with more speed than Tollin was capable of—yet another irritating feature of being only half dragon—and grabbed him by the arm. The momentum from Noel’s shove smashed Tollin into the panel.
Still out of breath, his eyes darted down to the console beneath his hands. Noel expected him to use this? He’d never seen such a device before, and if Noel, who no doubt had greater knowledge, didn’t know how to use it, what hope did Tollin have?
‘I’m not entirely sure what you want me to do,’ he said neutrally.
Noel let out a broken, pained breath. ‘Open a portal to the Time Realm!’
Tollin’s brows arched higher. Time Realm? He tapped his fingers on the shining surface before him. Sloping ancient letters, hard to read, stored somewhere in the distant corners of his mind, a language he knew but not used.
He hadn’t a clue what to do.
And if he didn’t do something soon he was a dead duck.
Noel’s eyes were burning into him with the heat only a dragon was capable of. Tollin felt his mouth go dry.
‘Right, well!’ He frantically scanned the instruments before him, mind whirling, attempting to look as in control of the situation as he possibly could. ‘First we have to know what time it is you wish to return to!’
Noel
swore, grasping his dripping side. ‘It doesn’t bloody matter!’
Tollin heard his throat click with a swallow. ‘Right.’ He ignored the dials he’d mentally—and perhaps incorrectly marked time—and turned to the next line of controls. He glanced towards the rounded viewscreen, sweating.
‘Hurry it up!’ Noel roared.
Tollin held up his hands. ‘All right, all right! Don’t get your knickers in a twist!’
What had Andrew done? How far had he gotten in cracking the code? What if he simply mucked it all up trying to stall? As much as Tollin liked to assume he was the smartest person in any given room, this was proving a test to that theory.
He growled. The controls just didn’t make any sense. One couldn’t just…leave from here! There was no transporter, no dimension crosser, no jump machine of any kind capable of jumping a being to a different Realm.
He looked up to Noel’s damaged reflection in the panel. Surely he knew that! Unless he was so injured it was affecting his mind. It was the only explanation.
You need a weapon…Come on, Tollin, think! He’s going to be on you in seconds!
Tollin tried to keep himself as relaxed as possible. Nothing to set Noel off. He had no weapons. His only luck was that this room was much too small for Noel to transform. That and the fact Noel seemed to be mostly held together by sheer will and stringing viscera.
‘Be clever,’ the disembodied voice of his Guide whispered. Tollin squared his jaw and nodded.
‘I’m afraid it’s impossible,’ he said at last.
‘What?’ Noel growled. ‘Impossible. That boy may not be a jumper but he is powerful. He’s strapped to that chair now. This place must work!’
Tollin didn’t turn round. ‘Yup! Won’t work. Not from here, anyhow. You’re stuck, I’m afraid. You’ll need to jump if—’
Noel’s voice went velvety soft. ‘Then you jump me.’
‘Ah. Afraid no can do. I’m not a cabbie.’
The last thing he needed was a power hungry dragon loose in something known as the Time Realm. He didn’t even know what such a Realm was—but what a bloody mess that would be!
‘Wait a mo, how did you end up stuck anyhow? You said “send you back”!’
Coppery blood dripped to the floor from Noel’s jaw. ‘That is irrelevant!’
Okay then, worth a shot.
Tollin swallowed again. Noel began to retch, spitting more blood onto the ground. An alarming amount. Tollin stepped back to avoid it splashing on his shoes. Maybe he wouldn’t have to fight Noel at all. Maybe Noel would just bleed out and die at his feet.
Tollin watched in mute horror as Noel doubled over, roaring. He could have sworn he heard bones snapping.
When Noel’s head swung back up, Tollin felt his stomach drop. Something was definitely wrong. Daemon wrong.
Noel’s eyes were black. His skin was now sinking into a mottled grey, too similar to dead flesh for Tollin’s liking. Black veins bulged and writhed. He had something inside him. Something all too alive and alarming. Tollin felt his slight advantage suddenly disappear.
‘If you for a moment think that I am going to take you anywhere, you are gravely mistaken,’ he repeated firmly.
Noel let out a frustrated growl. ‘You will! I will make you.’
Tollin shook his head. ‘No.’
He barely had enough time to scramble out of the way as Noel lunged. The dragon crashed against the control panel with alarming force, cracking the stone base. He couldn’t force Tollin to jump—as far as he was aware of—Tollin had actually never tested that theory.
One of Noel’s arms went swiping out, nearly clipping Tollin across the chest. It was enough to take him several quick steps back. He had to do something. Come on, Tollin, think!
The dragon stumbled, slightly off-balance from his attack. Desperate for anything, Tollin kicked up a piece of sharp rock and caught it in his palm. He chanced a glance down. Little red crystals glinted from inside. He grinned. It was exactly what he’d hoped it would be; with a little encouragement, this beauty would light up like a temperamental firecracker.
He slid his knife from his belt with his other hand. Wasn’t much, but better than nothing. Yet, considering Noel’s appearance, physical wounds didn’t seem to be making much difference on his condition.
Tollin ran through his options. There wasn’t much space in the small room for him to manoeuvre, but anywhere else Noel would have the space he needed to turn and then Tollin would truly be sunk.
The dragon was rounding on him again, teeth bared.
Scanning frantically, Tollin’s eyes fell to the broken doorway: A large crack ran from the pillar, splitting up to the ceiling. Must have been from Noel’s forceful break-in. It was all he had.
Tollin directed his retreat towards it. He was well aware that this could go wrong in a number of ways. Most scenarios ending with him being buried alive—or horribly mutilated.
The dragon lunged with alarming speed.
Tollin dodged out of the way just in time, diving the opposite direction.
Crack! Noel smashed into the entryway, body crunching. Tollin whirled round at the same moment and hurled the chunk of volatile rock after him. There was a terrible bang! and stone and dust went exploding every direction.
Tollin threw himself to the ground, arms over his head, as he felt the entire structure shake around him. Noel’s cry was drowned out by a dreadful crash of rubble.
Tollin winced. That must have hurt.
He lifted his head in cautious optimism, at least he had not been buried beneath tonnes of rock. On wobbly arms he pushed himself up to glance at the aftermath of his work.
Noel had not been so fortunate: his head was just visible, a large chunk of rock denting in his skull. Tollin’s stomach turned over at the sight. He hated it to end that way.
It was then he noticed: the entrance was gone. Tollin was trapped. Buried beneath the desert.
‘Oh, buggar.’
He scrabbled to his feet coughing in the thick air. Oh, this was not good.
It was silent for a long moment, his breathing and the shifting of settling stone all he could hear.
Yet, slowly, slowly something else tugged at his awareness. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted it: something leaking from the rather nasty depression in Noel’s skull. It was seeping a sort of black smoke.
The sight took him a wary step back in revulsion, for the smoke was clearly not just smoke. It was alive. It twisted along the floor, like some weak leech, looking tired, hesitant, out of its element.
His stomach clenched again. He couldn’t identify it and didn’t really want to. It was Daemonic, whatever it was. That was enough for him; he was not about to share this prison with the likes of that…thing.
Tollin pulled up the reserves inside of him. That deep magic which protected him from such monsters stirred in his bones, pushed up through his veins, till it glittered in gold along his skin in a protective shield. He didn’t know where it came from. It was not normal magic, and he wasn’t so sure he was in control of it, but it was there and thanks to it he’d survived so many hundreds of years.
On stiff legs, Tollin edged towards the repulsive tendril stretching across the floor. Without another thought he brought his boot down on it, grinding it into the stone. Sparks of light went dancing, sizzling the black like salt on a slug. It twisted, it shrieked, it shrivelled back towards Noel’s corpse and shuddered out of sight.
Tollin stared at the spot for a long moment; the taste of bile in the back of his throat. He sniffed and sighed, turned round in a circle and then, with a huff of breath, Tollin sat down in the sand.
He certainly deserved a break. If only for a moment—assuming he could forget the twinge of guilt in his belly at not helping. Having a tiny piece of quiet to himself, away from the rest of the world, there was something sort of relaxing—if one ignored being buried alive, of course.
It wasn’t entirely comfortable, however, for there was some feeling…as if ju
st beyond the wall of stone separating him from the mountain, something was welling. Something horrible and hungry and monstrous. He certainly hoped it would stay where it was. Something needed to stay in their stone tombs.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there in the silence, when, behind him, the glowing screen began to flash. Then filled with static. When Noel had hit it he must have damaged the viewer.
Yet, through the static, he heard a voice. A female voice.
‘H—hullo? Anyone there?’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam let out a shriek of fear she couldn’t help, as mortifying as it was. Noel was roaring on the other side of the door with the fury of a hurricane. The structure was not going hold for long. Several seconds seemed in itself a miracle.
She stood still for a moment in panic, panting, her nerves fraying to pieces with each terrible CRASH! against the metal. There was nothing to focus on besides that. Nothing to understand beyond her own doom hammering like a wolf at the door.
She’d failed. Failed at everything. Tollin was trapped. He’d not even know where she’d gone. And now this monster knew about Tollin, and it was going to kill her and do whatever the hell it wanted to get to him.
She let out a sob. ‘I’m so sorry!’
A large crack went splitting along the ceiling and black immediately began to leak in. Horrible, ugly black. The stuff that had plagued her since when she’d first met Tollin. The stuff that had taken over her body and killed Marus and had followed her to every Realm since she’d been with the Traveller. The stuff he didn’t understand.
‘Just stop it!’
Rage filled her. Why couldn’t it just stop?
And, with her rage, came an indignant light. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. Her eyes rose to the black worming through the cracks, and she glared. She saw gold.
All around her, filling her, flaring inside of her was the Light. Tollin’s odd gift to her he didn’t even realise he’d given. She looked down at her hands, fingers splayed. They were shining bright. Her vision itself was.
The sensation had not hit her often. She could only think of two other times—minus her first—where this feeling had come over her. She still didn’t understand it; if it was some species or power or magic, she had no-one to tell her. All she knew was that it lived inside of her, that she could use it, and that the Darkness could not stand against it.
Welcome Home (Alternate Worlds Book 3) Page 35