by Riley Storm
It was a tear. It had to be, a rip in the fabric between her world and the Abyss. But she’d never seen so many creatures come through before. They often came alone or in pairs. But seven? The last time a group that large had come through…
Anna swallowed hard. Why did this have to happen on her first patrol?
She froze for several long seconds, but there was really only one thing she could do. Bringing her staff up from where it was slung across her back, she pointed it back to the south and cast a spell.
A little sprite, a magical spell containing little more than information shot away from her staff, headed on a direct course to the Watch Master back at Winterspell. It would warn them that an incursion had been spotted, and also impart the details she’d put into the spell, including the size.
“We go,” she signaled with her hands, and the six Apprentices dove down to investigate, each of them bringing their chosen magical instrument to hand. Many chose the traditional wand, or the slightly thicker and longer rod, but Anna preferred to use the staff. It was an excellent secondary weapon on its own.
They dropped to the snowy ground in the opening, forming a triangle with the group of figures and the shimmering rift. Anna regarded the magical opening warily, for it didn’t look like any rift she’d ever read about. But there was little time for that. Her team had been spotted.
“Go back to where you came from!” she called from the back of her mount. “This territory is protected by Winterspell, and you are not welcome!”
The figures arrayed in a line in front of her were all human-looking, but that meant little to Anna. Any creature from the Abyss could resemble a human, even if their natural forms were anything but. A simple spell would rip that disguise away from them, however.
She leveled her staff and poured power into it. A purple light shone from the tip, bathing the unknown creatures in its rays. Anna waited, but nothing happened. The group stayed human, looking at her curiously, but overall unharmed. It was then that she noted several of them were young, little more than children.
What is going on here? Who are these people? What are they?
“We mean you no harm,” one of them said, stepping forward. “We do not want to fight you.”
She studied him. He was tall, broad of shoulder with thick straw-blond hair. Muscles bunched in his arms as he waved the young behind him protectively. She noted that and felt a certain admiration for him, but also another surge of suspicion.
Faeries only cared about themselves, not others.
“Who are you?” she called, playing a hunch. “Why are you here?”
One of the witches spoke from her left, voice twisted with hatred and surprise. “Patrol Leader?”
Anna turned her head slightly, fixing the speaker with one eye. “Use your brain, Apprentice Bowen. My spell did not decloak them. It did not even faze them. Whoever they are, they aren’t Faeries.”
“They came through a rift! They must be evil. We need to send them back. Now!” Bowen said, raising her wand.
Making a split-second decision, Anna shook her head. “No. You will not attack them, that is an order.”
The other Apprentice—senior in experience to Anna, but not leading this patrol—shook with anger, but did not attack.
“You speak our language, but you don’t know who we are?” the same male called back. He sounded confused. Lost.
Anna frowned. “You are speaking our language.”
The figure straightened, jaw dropping open in clear surprise. He turned and spoke softly with the other two adults quickly before facing her yet again.
“My name is Damien,” he said, holding his hands out wide. “May I come near?”
Again making a decision on the spot, Anna gestured for him to approach. There was something about this Damien that made her feel relaxed. As though he wasn’t a threat. She could sense his power, evident in the way he walked. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was confident in his ability to defend himself.
But he wasn’t going to attack her. Anna didn’t know how she knew, but she just knew he wouldn’t. Not her, nor any of her patrol. Unless they gave him reason to. She turned a warning eye on Apprentice Bowen, making sure the woman didn’t do anything rash.
“Why are you here, Damien?” she asked. “Where have you come from?”
“From my world,” he said, blue eyes settling on her evenly. “Where are we?”
“You are on Earth. In the Appalachian Mountains, to be exact,” she replied warily, unwilling to give out more information than that. “What planet do you come from?”
“Dracia,” he replied.
“You should go back,” she told him quietly. “Earth is not for you.”
Damien looked down. “We can’t,” he said, shoulders slumping slightly, a sight she found painful to witness on such a proud, strong man.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he told her, lifting his chin. “There is nowhere to go back to. It’s gone. All of it is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Anna wasn’t liking what she was hearing.
“Overrun. By an enemy the likes of which we have never seen. I am the last of my kind to come through. The portal is going to close after me.”
Anna lifted her eyebrows, glancing pointedly at the still wide-open portal. “It doesn’t look very closed to me.”
“I know,” Damien said. “But it will. I assure you.”
Despite his words, it wasn’t hard for her to realize that he too was worried by the fact that it hadn’t closed yet, either.
Just what was coming through after him?
And what was already here?
Anna didn’t know what to do. This was way beyond her pay grade.
Chapter Three
Damien
Try as he might, keeping his calm was proving hard to do. The last thing he’d expected to see upon crossing the portal was anything that looked like him.
Earth. She said this was Earth. I’ve never heard of it. Yet we speak the same language. We look identical!
“Is there anywhere we can go?” he asked, trying to push aside all the curiosity he had regarding the unforeseen similarities between their two peoples. “Shelter. We came through in a rush, we don’t have many supplies.”
He hated to ask for assistance, but the options were limited. The dragons had scattered upon exiting the portal, and the constant winds in the mountains had already obscured much of the tracks they’d made in the snow. As it appeared, he was in charge of this last little group, the only one that had remained near the portal.
Rokh must have taken the others somewhere, but Damien didn’t know where.
“Is this all?” the woman—and she most definitely was a woman—said. Short, thick around the waist with curves in all the right places. His dragon had been admiring her figure since the moment she landed, stalking it in his mind, eagerly pushing him to get closer.
He couldn’t see much of her face, her eyes concealed behind a set of goggles that reflected much of the light. Watching, he saw her thick lips compress into a thin line, rosy-red cheeks tightening as well. Damien decided it wasn’t a look that suited her. This woman needed to smile. He wanted to make her smile.
Why do you care what she has on her face? You need to find shelter for the young, and then you need to go find Rokh and turn this all over to him.
“There are more of us,” he said reluctantly. “They came through before me, they must have scattered into the mountains. I don’t actually know where they went. Mostly young.”
Something in the woman’s body language reacted to his last sentence. Did these people have the same sort of protective desires over their offspring as his did? Could he perhaps play off that to try and find them somewhere to stay?
“How do I know you’re not a threat to me? To us?” the woman asked.
“Just the same way that I don’t know the same about you,” he replied calmly. “I don’t. You don’t. We can only trust our impressions, and what the oth
er person is saying. I haven’t lied to you. I have no reason to. In fact, I’m more curious than anything else.”
“Curious?” she said slowly, as if not expecting that as an answer.
“What do you look like under the mask?” he asked. “Are we truly the same in appearance? We speak the same language after all. Doesn’t that make you wonder how and why that is?”
The woman paused before speaking. Although he couldn’t see her eyes, Damien knew she was giving him a long, thoughtful look. He could tell by the slight cock of her head and the general pose of her body.
After several long heartbeats in which he began to wonder if he’d made a mistake, she reached up and slowly peeled the goggles off, revealing to him that they did look the same.
He also found himself staring into a pair of the most beautiful brown eyes he’d ever seen. They were dark, so very dark as to be noticeable. Her pupils were tiny under the sun’s bright light, but it didn’t matter.
Damien stood still, unable to look away.
His dragon was going berserk on the inside. The moment he’d locked eyes with her, it had erupted, trying to call to the sky, to blast the mountain air with lightning and thunder as it proclaimed…what was it trying to proclaim?
“How many of you are there?” the woman asked.
Grateful for something other than the growl of his dragon to focus on, Damien thought back to the escape. He’d not been paying a lot of attention, too irate that he’d not initially been picked to stay and fight. Then he’d been battling the Infected. By the time he’d gotten in the clear, everyone was through. How many had there been?
“One, maybe two hundred,” he said quietly.
The woman yelped in surprise. “Two hundred? What do you expect me to do with two hundred of you?”
Damien’s being quieted as he thought the number over as well. “That’s all that remains,” he informed her. “Two hundred people, from a planetful.”
“By the Furies,” several of the other women said, looking at each other as they realized what he was saying.
He wasn’t familiar with the exact words, but Damien recognized cursing when he heard it.
It was tough for him to stay calm for long, because every moment his thoughts strayed from the catastrophe that had struck his people, they landed back on the woman in front of him, and his dragon leapt back to life. The war of the wills wasn’t something he had ever struggled with before, but Damien was being put to the test now, containing himself from doing something rash.
“Please,” he said, putting his pride to the side, thinking of those too young to fend for themselves, those who would be affected by the cold in the mountains, who could not shrug off the cool temperatures. “We won’t be a burden. We can work for it. We’ll help out. Whatever we can do. Some of us have abilities that may be of use.”
The leader of the group frowned. “What do you mean by abilities?”
Damien thought about it for a moment, then smiled. He knew the perfect way to show her. Moving slowly, he turned to his right. Gesturing with a hand, and using a bit of mental effort, he waited while the air shimmered.
The creature—he had no idea what it was, as they didn’t have them on his planet—shook its head and stamped at the ground, much the same as the airborne mounts the women had flown in on.
“You can use magic?” the leader asked warily, looking around, eyes darting from shadow to shadow as if she expected to suddenly be attacked.
“Magic?” he asked. This wasn’t a word he was familiar with. “I am of the Storm clan. The air, the clouds, the winds. They respond to me.”
The group of women talked quietly among themselves. “All of you can do this?” the leader asked.
“Some. Others are of Fire. Some are of Jade, who can control the land. Others are Frost, they can shape the snow and ice of the mountains.”
“But you. You cannot use fire?” she asked, pointing a finger at him.
“No. Only the skies,” he said.
The woman turned her back on him to talk. Damien wondered if she realized the vulnerability she was showing by doing that, or if it was a gesture of trust. These women had powers he couldn’t understand, however, and he wasn’t about to attack them.
Though that one woman seems like she’d like me to try…
He’d seen the anger on the face of one of them from the very start but had done his best to avoid looking at her. Given the situation, not antagonizing any of his would-be rescuers’ race seemed prudent. Not now, when they knew so little of the world they had just come to.
“What are you willing to offer in exchange for shelter and food?” the woman asked finally.
Damien hesitated. “I am unable to make any sort of formal agreement,” he said at last. “I am not in charge.”
“Well, who is? Bring him here then.”
He winced. “His name is Rokh. Of the Fire clan. But I’m not sure where he is. He came through first and has led the others somewhere into the mountains.” He shrugged helplessly, not knowing what else to say.
“Are you a man of your word?” she asked, the question catching him off guard.
Judging by the looks from the other women, they hadn’t been expecting it either.
“I am,” he said, drawing himself up straight, wondering where she was going with things. “My name is Damien, and you have my word we will not harm you.”
The woman studied him some more. He wondered if she was just unsure of what to do, or if she was normally this careful and thorough about making a decision.
“I cannot take you freely, Damien of the Storm Clan. There’s just too much we don’t know about you. If you come, you will come as my prisoners for now, until we can ascertain more about you and your powers.”
Behind him, he heard the others hiss and stiffen.
“Easy, Altair,” he rumbled, knowing without looking that his friend would be the most incensed of their little group at being told they were prisoners. The other storm dragon would want to fight, to show this woman that dragons were no one’s prisoners.
“But she said—”
“I heard what she said,” Damien growled, taking control of the situation. “Now listen to what I say. Calm. Down.”
The others had made him go talk to the strange women when they had appeared out of the sky. If they couldn’t handle the decisions he was making, that was too bad for them! Damien wasn’t about to go making enemies out of the first people he’d met upon coming through the portal. That was just stupid.
“Think about it from their side of things,” he said. “They don’t know a thing about us. Why should they trust us?”
“Why should we trust them?” Altair muttered angrily.
“Because we don’t have a choice,” Damien said softly, fighting to ignore the pain in his own voice. “And because, as strange as this sounds, I trust her.”
Altair said something in response, but he wasn’t paying attention. The woman was waiting on an answer from him, and he needed to give it.
“Very well,” he said. “We will come peacefully and do as you say.”
Please, he thought to himself. Don’t make this be a mistake. Please let these people be trustworthy and good.
Chapter Four
Anna
“You can’t be serious? We’re just going to believe him?”
“Yes, Bowen,” she said, dropping the title as her anger at the other Initiate mounted. “I am. The Coven can decide if I made a mistake. Not you.”
Some of the others in her patrol shifted uncomfortably, but to Anna’s surprise none of them tried to fight against her decision. She hadn’t expected that from them, or from Damien and his group. Things were going smoothly.
Perhaps too smoothly.
“Stay here,” she said abruptly to her group. Without waiting for confirmation, she walked toward the tall man, eyeing him warily, sizing him up and down. He was tall, an impression that only continued to grow as she neared him. Correction, he’s very tall.
As she came closer, his eyes followed her, as bright as the sky on a clear day. What was he thinking, how was he feeling?
“Come with me,” she said, pointing at the portal.
Damien’s jaw visibly clenched, but he nodded. They walked over to the circle. She couldn’t see anything on the other side of it. Not the rocky mountain walls that formed the end of this little nook in the range, nor wherever it was he’d come from on the other side. She walked along its length, then stood to look at it from the side.
It was barely visible, razor-thin.
“Shut it down,” she said.
Damien hesitated.
“Now.” She tried to put some more steel into her voice.
“I can’t,” he said helplessly.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t make it.”
Anna pointed at his group. “Well who did? Get them over here.”
Damien shook his head. “They’re all on the other side,” he said, bowing his head. “They had to keep it powered so that we could escape.” He frowned, looking the rift up and down. “They said they would close the portal after we were through. The feedback was supposed to destroy them and the room they were in.”
Anna was still processing everything he’d said when the reality of it hit home to her. She gasped. “They were going to sacrifice themselves?”
The big man’s face hardened unhappily. “Listen, Miss. My entire world is gone. Hundreds of millions of us have fallen to these creatures. On the other side of this portal lies Fortress Glacis, a frozen wasteland of a settlement at the very northernmost part of our world. We were forced back there. Maybe two hundred of my people survived to come through. Asking twenty-four more to lay down their lives so that we may escape wasn’t so big a cost to us.” He looked away. “Not anymore, at least.”
Anna’s heart was breaking as he spoke, and every instinct in her screamed to reach out, to pull him into a hug, to tell him she was sorry, that she hadn’t truly understood the scope of what had happened to him and his people.
“You’re not lying about any of this, are you?” she asked softly.