Portals of Infinity: Book Two: The God Game

by John Van Stry

  “Sure, I don’t mind. How long until you think the tide turns?”

  Joseph looked at me and I shrugged, “If it’s like my home sphere, about three or four hours from now?”

  “Okay, lots of time.” With that she stripped down to her panties, dove over the side, and swam for the shore, Cenewyg stripped to his boxers and followed.

  “So, think he’ll have any luck?” I asked Stephanie as we watched them climb out of the river and start to hike inland.

  “Oh I’m sure she’ll use and abuse him,” Stephanie laughed.

  “That wasn’t actually what I meant,” I said shaking my head.

  “I know,” she said grinning at me. “Dez knows how to handle men, whatever it is that’s come between them, it’s going to take a lot more than a walk and a brief roll in the grass for her to forgive him.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll stop acting like a putz if she does,” Joseph said coming over and sitting down by us, “sleep with him that is.”

  “Any idea why he doesn’t like Joseph?” I asked Stephanie curious as to what she’d say.

  “Oh, he just has problems with the proper natural order of things,” she said with a smirk.

  “Natural order?”

  “Women being in charge obviously!” She laughed.

  “Umm, yeah.” I said as Joseph laughed with her.

  “Cen grew up in much more ‘chauvinistic’ times, back when women on your home sphere weren’t allowed to do much, and were expected to listen to men. He used to have an issue with strong women, he’s gotten a lot better about it, but still has issues with men who accept women as leaders.”

  “Yeah, he sees us as weak and not very masculine.” Joseph grumbled.

  “So you told me,” I said looking out over the railing back towards the ocean. “So how far do we have to sail? Any idea?”

  “It’s pretty far, a couple of weeks if the winds are right, more if they’re not.”

  “Where are we sailing to?”

  “Well, Cen already seems to know; we’re sailing to a gap between this land,” she waved her hand at the area around us, “and a neighboring one. It’s pretty narrow and the water can be pretty rough. Just past that is the gate to the next world, one which we really want to sail through as well.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Stephanie shrugged, “Ary’s blocked it I guess. Sure we’ll figure it out when we get there.”

  I nodded.

  We talked for quite a while, not really discussing anything in particular until Dezba and Cenewyg returned.

  When they returned, Cenewyg looked rather pleased with himself and Dezba just smiled. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, it meant, but figured I’d hear about it eventually. I hoisted the anchor and Joseph sailed us back out into deeper water and then we headed east, with the shore not far off on the horizon.

  “So did you and Cen make up?” I asked Dezba much later that night when the others were below decks eating.

  “He thinks so,” she said with a smile.

  I shook my head. “Any idea what he’s up to?”

  “Nope, not a clue. Whatever it is, he’s not saying. He definitely knows something and isn’t sharing it, he’s way too smug.”

  “Do you think he’s just doing it to rub it in our faces when this is all over, or that there’s going to be trouble?” I asked softly. Personally I felt the later; I’d seen too many schemers in my young life.

  She frowned, “I’m not sure. He’s done stuff like this before, and that’s the angle I’m playing with him, that I’m trying to get him to share the secret with me so I can be in on it too when he surprises everyone with his superiority.

  “But this time? This time he’s a lot more serious about it. I don’t think he just knows where we’re going, but I think he knows what we’re going to do.”

  “Well, look on the bright side,” I said, “at least it’s been an easy trip since we got past Ithaca.”

  “Way to jinx it Will,” Dezba grumbled at me. “Just for that you can sleep by yourself tonight!

  The storm hit ten later days, as we started to get near our destination. It started out bad and only got worse as time went on.

  “We’re going to have to head for land!” Joseph told me after the second day. “This isn’t a natural storm and if we stay out here, we’ll all drown.”

  “I’ll go tell the others,” I said and slowly made my way across the pitching deck to go below. I was surprised that Joseph was even still able to sail the boat, considering that two of the sails were in shreds and the mainsail wasn’t looking all that well. The boat itself had held together, thankfully, but it was taking a serious pounding on the waves and I had no idea how much longer it would last.

  Going below, I found Stephanie laying on her bunk moaning. Her, Cenewyg and Dezba had all gotten very seasick and had been throwing up for hours.

  “We have to make shore,” I told Stephanie.

  “No, keep going,” she gasped.

  “We have no choice. The boat isn’t going to last much longer and Joseph is positive that this isn’t a natural storm.”

  Stephanie groaned, “I was afraid of this.”

  “What?”

  “We have to pass by a whirlpool guarded by a god. Or at least that’s what used to be here. Either that’s changed, or one of the local gods decided they didn’t like having so many champions in their domain.”

  I took her canteen and filled it with water, then did the same for the other two, then went back on deck to help Joseph. I was glad he was sailing the boat, he was a lot better at it than I was.

  “Crank the main sail down and lash it,” he yelled to me. “And if you can’t do that, just cut it loose.”

  “You sure?” I asked surprised.

  “We’ve got too much wind to beach it safely, it’ll tip the boat. Be ready to cut the other sails loose when I tell you.”

  I nodded and did as he told me. Even in my champion form dealing with the mainsail was tough, but at least I could dig my claws into the deck to hold on and get decent footing. He had me cut the foresail loose not long after that, there wasn’t much really left to it at that point anyway.

  The jib had a rather large hole in it, but with the winds we were getting it didn’t seem to matter. I could hear the sound of the breakers before I saw them, even over the sounds of the wind and the storm. When we hit them the ship was tossed around worse than it had been, and the ship shook heavily and I heard a loud cracking noise as we jerked almost to a stop as we hit bottom, then a wave picked us up again, slammed us forward, then down, then the foremast split and I was too busy cutting the rigging, to pay much attention to anything else until I got thrown off my feet as we jerked rather hard to a stop.

  “Get everyone and get off the ship!” Joseph yelled at me.

  “What about this?” I said pointing to the last few pieces of rigging holding the mast to the boat.”

  “Leave it, the ship is lost! If we don’t get off it soon, we’ll be dead!”

  I left it and followed him below decks; there was water everywhere and more coming it. I grabbed what I could, got the others moving and up on the deck. The ship heaved every time another wave hit it.

  “Take Stephanie and swim for the shore, then come back and take Cen. I’ll take Dez when you come back. Got it?”

  I nodded and waited for the next wave, then jumped in as it passed.

  The swim to shore was rough, but not as rough as I was afraid it would be. I dropped Stephanie, who was still groggy and sick, on the beach above the waves and swam back out. That turned out to be almost impossible and I lost several claws climbing back up onto the boat when I got there.

  While getting hold of Cenewyg the port hull broke off as the next wave hit us and tossed both him and me over the side while Joseph jumped with Dezba and started to swim for shore.

  To be honest I almost left Cenewyg there and let him drown, but Stephanie’s fears came to mind at that moment and I swam after him, got his
head above water and struck out for shore as well, coming out of the surf a hundred yards down from the others. When I finally got back to them with Cenewyg, Stephanie was actually sitting up and drinking from her canteen.

  “Well at least the rolling stopped,” she said with a grimace.

  Dezba just groaned and Cenewyg tried to throw up again.

  I looked out to where the boat was, but didn’t see anything.

  “Broke up on the rocks,” Joseph told me. “If we’re lucky, some of the stuff on board will wash ashore.”

  “And if we’re not lucky?” I asked.

  “Then we’re gonna get real hungry and thirsty. We can’t ration their water; they’re still dehydrated from being sick. At least they won’t be wanting any food for a while.”

  “Well, let’s move further inland and see if we can find some water and a better place to wait out the storm.”

  Joseph nodded and we gathered everyone up and got going.

  Eventually we found a nice copse of trees, and settled down inside them, it broke the wind down and gave some shelter from the storm. I then went searching for some water and found a stream not too far away and spent the rest of the day and that night making trips to fill up the canteens we had as they got empty. We had three of them, the one I had given Stephanie, because she had clipped it to her belt while sick so as not to lose it, and the ones Joseph and I had been wearing because it was too difficult to go below decks whenever you needed a drink.

  Other than that, we had the clothes on our backs, and whatever was in our pockets. Most of us weren’t even wearing any shoes. The rest had all gone down with the boat.

  When morning came, the storm had passed so I went down to the shore to look for any debris that might help us. I was able to find a few things spread along the beach. I piled them up and then waded out into the water to see what else I could find. It was still a bit murky from the storm stirring up the bottom, but I found one of our packs and a few more articles of clothing. Gathering it all up and bringing it back to our camp we had that one pack, which turned out to be Stephanie’s, two pairs of shoes, three pairs of pants, which belonged to the girls, and seven shirts.

  “Well it’s not much, but at least it’s something,” Stephanie said and dumped out her pack. “Here, might as well eat these now,” she said handing out the food that had been in it.

  I unwrapped one of the meals and wolfed it down pretty quickly, the others following suit.

  “So now what?” I asked.

  “We walk,” She said.

  “Should I go back tomorrow and see if I can find anything else?” I asked.

  “Go at first light, and don’t take too long. I don’t want to spend any longer here than we absolutely have to. If one of the local deities has decided they don’t want us here, it would be best to move along quickly.”

  I nodded and went to gather wood for a fire.

  It got pretty cold that night, remnants of the storm I figured. I ended up changing to my champion form, the fur made a definite difference with the cold. I wasn’t too surprised when a little while later Stephanie and Dezba both curled up against me, with Joseph and Cenewyg laying up against them. We had one sleeping bag from the backpack, so we unzipped it and laid it across all of us. At least it didn’t rain.

  I didn’t manage to find any other packs or food the next morning, but I did find a piece of one of the sails. It could definitely serve as either a cover or a tent, depending on what we needed.

  “Which way?” Dezba asked as I re-joined the group.

  “East,” Stephanie said and pointed.

  We were all in our champion forms by this point, because of the better endurance. It did warm up some during the day, but fortunately it didn’t get too hot. With no more food and not a lot of water, we’d have to be careful from this point on.

  When we made camp that night I went off to look for food, Stephanie had told me not to kill any cattle I might find.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re protected.” She told me.

  I shrugged and went off to see what I could find, which wasn’t much. I’m not a huge survivalist kind of guy. I did see some rabbits, but I didn’t have a bow, or even a throwing knife, just a folding knife. But I did manage to stun one with a rock long enough to grab it and twist its neck, after about two hours of trying.

  When I got back to camp however I found Dezba with a rather nice looking sheep that she was skinning with Joseph’s knife.

  “Damn,” was all I could say as I sat down and started skinning and cleaning the rabbit.

  Dezba smiled, “I learned to hunt from the best.”

  “Still that’s impressive.”

  “Well Cen helped, he drove a bunch towards me.”

  I looked around, “Where is he anyway?”

  “Went off to help Stephanie,” she grinned. “She wasn’t back with the water yet when we got here.”

  I laughed, “And here I thought he was going to help you find some food.”

  “Well, obviously he did!” Dezba laughed and returned to butchering her catch.

  Joseph had a nice fire going by the time Stephanie and Cenewyg returned with the water. .

  “Oh shit,” Stephanie said when she entered the camp and saw us.

  “What?” Dezba asked.

  “I’m getting a bad feeling. I think the sheep are protected too.”

  “Well too late for that now, we might as well eat it.”

  “If you’re really worried, Steph, you can have the rabbit I caught,” I said as I started to skewer it onto a branch to put over the fire and cook.”

  “That might be best,” she said.

  We cooked it all, and Stephanie ate the rabbit. Dezba, Joseph and myself ate the sheep, almost finishing it off. Cenewyg I noticed didn’t eat any of it, just some fruit he had found while looking for Stephanie.

  It felt nice to go to sleep with a full belly. I don’t know how long I was asleep but suddenly I was in Fel’s Inn and Fel was there.

  “Hi, Fel!”

  “I don’t know what you did, but one of you pissed off the god of the area you’re in.”

  “Oh no, the sheep?”

  “I don’t know, but WAKE UP!”

  I woke up instantly and jumped to my feet before I was fully awake. Dezba and Stephanie came awake almost instant after I did. Joseph wasn’t much longer after that, as Stephanie shook Cenewyg and he opened his eyes.

  “What?” Cenewyg complained.

  “We have to go, Now!” Stephanie said, and grabbing the open sleeping bag she stuffed it in her pack and took off running. Dezba and I followed immediately with Joseph bringing up the rear. We could hear Cenewyg swearing as he scrambled to his feet and followed us.

  We had been running for maybe a minute before I heard it, it sounded like thunder, but I knew it wasn’t that, it was the pounding of hooves.

  We picked up more speed and ran as fast as we could. The sound got closer and I glanced back and saw it, a large herd of cattle was stampeding towards us. They had already trampled the camp and were getting closer. I dropped back to help Cenewyg, who appeared to be having a bit of trouble. The idea of getting trampled didn’t appeal to me, but I did remember what Stephanie had told me.

  “You okay?” I yelled as I took his arm and started to help him move faster.

  “Didn’t expect this! Guess I should have eaten more last night,” He yelled back.

  The cattle were starting to catch up with us slowly. I was a little surprised we were able to stay in front of them, but the few times one got close to me I raked its nose with the claws of my free hand and it veered off.

  We ran for hours and hours, with Stephanie up ahead leading the way. Twice we crossed streams, and yet the cattle continued to follow. I don’t know how long we ran, but when the sun started to come up, I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

  “Dammit!” I heard Dezba swear and I turned to look behind us. What I saw was rather shocking, the herd behind
us was gigantic; there must have been thousands of cows and bulls chasing us. But the shocking part was the one huge bull urging them on, and they were getting closer to me and Cenewyg, who seemed to be having trouble keeping up.

  “This is my fault, I’ll deal with it!” Dezba yelled and suddenly stopped and turned around. I stopped as well and started to turn with her, a bit surprised as Cenewyg suddenly pulled away and put on a burst of speed.

  I’m sure that the idea of being trampled to death probably helped with that.

  “Keep running, Will!” Dezba yelled at me. “I’m the one that killed it, hopefully they’ll stop!”

  I heard Stephanie also yell my name at that point, so I turned tail and sprinted away after Cenewyg and the rest. Not my finest hour I’m sure. I did catch a few glimpses of the fight, Dezba was knocking them down left and right and bringing her powers to bear, but interestingly enough it didn’t look like she was killing any of them, but she was definitely laying a smack down on them something fierce.

  We topped a small rise then and could see nothing further of the fight. It appeared to have worked, either they were held up by dealing with her, or she was the only one they wanted, but by the time we got to the portal that evening, there wasn’t a single one in sight.

  “Everybody through,” Stephanie said panting; we had continued running all day, just in case.

  We all switched out of our champion’s forms and went through, I gave a last look behind me as I stepped through the gate, if the dominant species here was cattle and sheep, how come we had come through as human?

  Strange.

  Five

  “What the Hell?” Cenewyg was swearing as I stepped out of the portal causing me to stop and look a moment, then to look again; then I started to laugh. Cenewyg had turned into a woman. And a rather attractive one at that.

  “Oh right, laugh all you want, Will, or should I say Wilma?”

  I looked down at myself and was surprised to see something blocking my view, namely my chest! I put my hands up and sure enough, I had breasts. I laughed some more, then looked at Joseph next; he was now also a woman, and also a rather attractive one; actually I’d say pretty hot.