by Scott Duff
“Ow!” I yelled. My left foot was suddenly and seriously on fire! My attention shrank swiftly down into my body and just as suddenly, I was falling out of the air. My arms flailing as I dropped as if I could flap them like wings and fly. Kieran was laughing at me by the time the Stone decided to slow my fall about eight inches from the ground. He laughed harder when it dropped me on my butt those last eight inches while I shucked my shoe off to examine my burning foot.
“There’s nothing wrong with your foot, Seth,” Kieran said, his amusement obvious as he squatted down beside me. “I just had to get your attention before you got too lost in the ward. Ley wards have more depth than you’re used to.”
“There are more of those things here,” I said as I examined the bottom of my foot anyway, then glaring at him. “That hurt!”
“It was meant to,” he said, still grinning. “Could you tell how many?”
“’Bout three hundred,” I said as I pulled my sock back on. “They’re moving this way, too. I think I felt a slit in space that they’re coming through, near the back of the fence. What the hell are they, anyway?”
“Don’t know. Could you sense any intelligence in them?”
“Not really. I mean, it just felt alien to me. Sorta insect-like. ‘Find the fires, burn the fires out.’ Didn’t make sense to me.”
“Do you think you could do it again and not get lost?”
I thought about the feelings I got when I connected to the ward as I put my shoe back on. I was… giddy, I guess. Intoxicated, maybe. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can avoid that this time.”
“Good,” he said and stood up. “Once you do, I need you to let Ethan in when I call. He’ll push and you just let the gate open. Okay?”
I looked up at him through the hair that’d fallen in my face in my graceless landing, not quite understanding. “Just let the gate open. Right.”
He grinned. “You’ll understand when he gets there. Peter will be with him.” He stuck his hand out to help me up. I took it and he hefted me up effortlessly.
I inhaled deeply as I stood, relaxing, letting go of the ghost of the pain of my burning left foot and connected to the lines again. Shifting my awareness out into the ward again, I felt for the scurrying little things searching for fire and found them instantly. They were closer, some of them mere yards away and slowing. The count was up—they were coming through that tiny crack in space.
I looked down at Kieran as I rose into the air with the power of the ward again.
“They’re coming.”
Chapter 35
“Eth’anok’avel, Seth’Dur’an o’an,” Kieran called aloud. The words buzzed in my brain and shook my bones. He packed his power in them and they had the force of Names of the Arcane I had yet to see. And still I knew that the second word was Peter’s Name. “We have need of you. Will you come?”
Before he finished speaking the Names, I could feel Ethan probing, first through the anchor then through the gate. It was a curious differential. Through the anchor, he was Ethan as I’d always known him, an echo of myself with a huge shadow behind him. Through the gate, he felt like, well, he felt like the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse, the red one, War, full of fury and wrath. He pushed on the gate slightly, so I willed it to open for him. I was pleased when it opened, slowly but without protest.
I watched from twenty feet in the air as Ethan and Peter coalesced in front of Kieran from nothing. Just freaking amazing.
“What was that?” exclaimed Peter. “Where are we? What happened?”
“Why is Seth flying?” asked Ethan calmly, looking up at me.
“We’re in the Pacthome,” answered Kieran. “Seth opened the door for you. He connected to the ward through the leys.”
He snorted and said, “You gotta be kiddin’ me. You did not teach him that.”
“Nope,” Kieran said, shaking his head.
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Peter shouted, moving in between the three of us, but further away from me. I did not blame him at all.
“Oh, sorry, Pete,” said Ethan. “Kieran called us for help. That really strong sense of ‘Hey, You, Yeah, YOU! PAY ATTENTION!’ that you had? That was Kieran using your True Name. He created a connection between us doing that, but since you didn’t know how to use that connection, I just picked you up and dragged you along.”
“You mean we were just summoned?” he asked. “Like demons?”
Kieran chuckled. “Not quite.”
“We found the delivery system for those curses,” I said, noting the odd reverberation quality in my voice that the ward caused. “These bugs are flooding in through a slit in space in the back of the house. And they’re not exactly easy to see, even through the ward.”
“Can you see where the other end of the hole is?” Kieran asked me.
“No, it’s barely more than a slit in reality,” I said concentrating on the patch of space, watching a cricket-like thing with six legs crawl out of the tiny slash and fall to the ground. “If they weren’t crawling through it, I don’t think I would have seen it.”
“Ethan, would you go with Seth and see if you can plug the hole into this dimension, then see if you can determine where the other end goes without endangering anyone. We’ll be moving this once we’ve killed all the bugs and I’d rather no one have a backdoor in.”
“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Ethan said, turning to me again and looking up. “It would be easier if you were down here, though.”
“You think I’m controlling this?” I asked, crossing my arms. “Kieran shot me out of the sky the first time. Thought he burned my left foot off.”
“You got lost?” he asked, rising up to face me. That was kind of weird and unnerving. I still had a lot to get used to. “What was the last thing you remember before Kieran burned you?”
“Find the fires. Burn the fires out,” I said.
“Was that from the bugs that Kieran and Peter are hunting?” I nodded. “You didn’t get lost,” he said with a grin. “You got caught, which unfortunately is a mite more dangerous. Getting yourself lost means you could probably find yourself again in time. Getting caught means you’re caught. And you’re there until someone comes along and pokes you with a stick. Or you die, whichever comes first. So it’s probably not a good idea to play with this sort of thing without Kieran or me around until we can teach you a few things, okay?”
The look of horror on my face tickled him. “Puh-lease! You’re a duck in water! Just be careful about what you do when we’re not around. Now are we doing this from here or are we going over there?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I feel like I’m already there anyway. What exactly are you going to do?”
He chuckled at the question then abruptly disappeared from in front of me, reappearing in front of the slit. I felt the rise and release in pressure on the leys surrounding us and mimicked his action, appearing at his side on the ground. The number of bugs in the area was high, maybe about a hundred though I didn’t bother to actually count them. It was creepy having them so close. They were moving toward the gate unhurriedly. Apparently, their numbers assured them somehow, but I didn’t want to reach down into their psyche to figure out why.
“There’s a fifth version here,” I said softly as I mapped the bug. “This one can fly. Looks a bit like a dull-red hornet. One of ‘em is coming through the opening now.”
Ethan squatted down near the rip, staring down into the grass. A small space in front of him became slightly occluded for a moment, then out popped a dull-red flying insect reminiscent of a wasp tumbling to the ground. Just before it hit, it started buzzing its wings and took flight, fumbling through the air. It landed on Ethan’s knee, unnoticed while he stared into the channel it came through. I couldn’t sense much about the conduit except a vague feeling of familiarity. Maybe if I wasn’t intimately connected so strongly to so much land…
“I think we’ll have to close the other end first,” said Ethan, brushing the
red wasp-thing off his knee and standing. “I can’t see where it ends and just ripping the conduit off could cause more than a few problems there. Kir du’Ahn said we weren’t to endanger anyone.”
“Yeah, but why would we care if someone who’s trying to kill us gets hurt?” I asked. The idea didn’t bother me in the least. At lot of people had already died because of whoever was doing this.
“Collateral damage,” Ethan said turning to me with his eyebrows raised. “What if this ends in a basement in New York City? It could suck up three or four skyscrapers before anyone could do anything about it, providing anyone could in the first place. Not everybody that got blown into dimension-less space would be part of the problem. That’s a lot of innocent lives. And the resulting explosion from the translation of energy would affect several worlds. Possibly blow up half the planet.”
“Guess that’s why you’re doing this instead of me,” I said quietly, awed by the thought. Ethan grinned at me.
“You say that as if I’ve done this before. This is theory we’re workin’ with. It’s entirely possible that end will simply seal itself instantly.”
“Oh, God,” I whispered, swallowing a softball-sized something, suddenly feeling extremely anxious. “What do we need to do?”
Ethan looked back at the tear, inhaling slowly and exhaling just as slowly. “Well, I think the best move would be for me to ride the tunnel almost to the end then jump out. If it’s somewhere I’ve been I’ll be able to recognize it there, otherwise I won’t be able to tell at all. Then I’ll be able to squeeze that end shut while you close this end. The tunnel itself can just fall away into the in-between places to be used like cholesterol in the blood.”
“Okay,” I said, scratching the side of my head. Awareness of the land didn’t give me that kind of understanding of the universe. All I could really do was tell where Kieran and Peter were. “First you’ll have to explain how to close a rip in space. It’s not like I can just grab a needle and thread and sew it up, is it? That I could do. Well, with cloth anyway.”
“No, not quite that simple,” he answered, glancing around us at the bugs. “Seth, tie me into the ward with you, please. These bugs are making me nervous and I’d like to see how they’re grouping.”
It did seem odd that they arrayed themselves in crescent-shaped perimeters around the two groups of us. I pushed my awareness out to Ethan and watched the positioning of one bug change slightly in the grass nearby. They were aware of something, then, but they couldn’t see what or exactly where.
“A collective intelligence?” I asked.
“I don’t see any evidence of that,” said Ethan. “Did you?”
“No, but I also wouldn’t really know what to look for, either,” I admitted. “And I don’t feel anything directing them.”
“I think they’ll attack as soon as I go in,” said Ethan ominously. “I don’t know what to do here.”
“What we need to do,” I said matter-of-factly. “First you show me how to close this end, then we do what you said. We’ll deal with the consequences as they happen.”
“All right,” Ethan said, nervously. “That’s as good as anything, but realize it’s going to take me time to get back here. You’re gonna be on your own till then.” He looked at me, concerned, as he poured the concepts I’d need to close the rip through our connection. The ideas were fairly simple; most far-reaching concepts sound simple in the beginning. It’s when you start thinking about putting them into practice or thinking about their ramifications that things start to get really complicated. I needed to reach into the hole some, cut the conduit loose, then use the bit I had to plug the hole up and let this dimension heal itself, sorta like tying up an umbilical cord. Two spells. Shouldn’t be too terribly hard.
“Be careful, Ethan,” I said, looking around at the creepy things. “At least I know what I’m up against.”
“You got a point there,” he said nervously. “Let’s get this party started, then.”
He jumped into the hole in reality. The bugs on this side of the house converged on the portal en mass and the Stone flared to life, creating the armor as well as a solid cube of force around me. I jumped into action, shoving my awareness into the conduit with the full force of the ward. There was no way to judge distance in this dimensionless space so where to cut the conduit was a guess. I fired Ethan’s spell to cut just as I felt him leave the tunnel. Grabbing the cauterized edges, I pulled just as the first wave of bugs hit the Stone’s shield wall. They couldn’t see the barrier but they could definitely feel it. I pushed power into Ethan’s second spell to force the hole shut and glue it together.
An ice pick of pain shot through my head: Ethan. I lost my grip on the spell and the short tunnel. Ethan was in trouble and hurting badly, but there was nothing I could do right then. I tried to block out his pain and force myself back to my tasks. Forcing all the power of the land to stop the flow of matter through the hole, I reached through again and grabbed the edges. Someone was trying to reassert the conduit and he was very strong. Stronger than me apparently, because I couldn’t pull the edges back in again.
The Stone hummed in warning as it started sloughing off layers of its outside shield. All the bugs on this side of the house were on its perimeter, slamming their curses onto the shield wall and exploding them instantly using the ley lines for fuel. The Stone wasn’t going to be able to keep this up forever. Then I felt the bugs on the far side of the house heading this way. They gave up on their game of Blind Man’s Bluff with Kieran and Peter. They had an active target now: me.
I caught sight of one of the scorpion-looking ones scurrying toward me in the grass about twenty feet out, its barb held high and ready to attack. With the faint glimmer of an idea, I pushed energy into the power structures of the curse on its tail and watched it bloom fully in the little insect. Just shy of three seconds later, it exploded leaving a two-inch scorch mark in the grass.
This could work. I created four funnels of shield energy with the Stone’s help, wide vortices of energy that spun down to three-inch ends that terminated at the tear. It would be easier if I could wait until all the bugs were around me, but I didn’t feel that confident. Pushing my awareness into the conduit, I waited until the tunnel was passable but not complete. When I felt that, I pulled the land’s plug from the hole and reality started escaping again. Then I dropped the Stone’s cubic shield.
Whether the bugs were sucked out or blown out, I really didn’t care as long as they went in the wide end and out the skinny one. As each one passed into the tear, I lit its ass with power. I felt the occasional explosion within the conduit, but once the bugs exited the other end, I couldn’t sense anything. After about twenty seconds, there wasn’t a bug within fifty yards of me.
I heard a faint call, Little Brother, as I reached back into the conduit. I felt something big coming through and I didn’t know what to do. Indecision lasted about three seconds. I started scrambling for the cauterized edges from my previous cut when Ethan arrived through the hole in space, standing in front of me.
He wobbled in place for a second. “Ow,” was all he said before he fell face forward in the grass bouncing slightly. Another something entered the conduit as I found the edge. This one felt big, bigger than Ethan, and angry but I lost the sense of it when I fired Ethan’s second spell, pushing as much power and intent into fusing this reality closed as I could muster. The ice pick pain in my head evaporated. When it seemed like the spell had nothing left to do, I let go of it and ran to Ethan.
He’d been soundly beaten, his face and arms a bloody mess. I pushed in through the anchor to look at his other side and it too was damaged. Whatever had done this was aware of his dual nature, either before their contact or after. He’d once said to heal himself he’d have to go “home,” which meant getting him to this in-between space with the rest of him, but I couldn’t force him there and he wasn’t conscious to do it himself. I needed Kieran and he was on the other side of the house hunting for bugs. There we
re less than thirty left. Twenty-seven to be exact with only nine on the other side of the house. They weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere anymore, going back into their circular containment pattern. Apparently, the loss of their brethren confused them.
The ward gave me a feeling of omniscience as well as omnipotence. I knew it wasn’t real, though. Still, I knew I could push enough energy into the bugs to make them explode and not allow any to triangulate on my position. I could diffuse the flow through enough of the lines to the cloud where it was coming from. I started exploding them randomly with mini-lightning bolts out of the sky, directly on top of them. When none were left, I fixed my attention of Peter and Kieran and shifted them to me through the ley lines. I got the definite feeling that if Kieran hadn’t known it was me, I’d have wrenched my back, figuratively speaking, trying to pull him. Or worse. But they came and Kieran was kneeling opposite me by Ethan in a flash.
“Ethan,” he called, his voice deep and commanding, his hands on Ethan’s chest pulsing fast with blue healing energy. “Go home. Rest, recuperate. Come back when you can.” Ethan took in a deep breath and let it out in shuddering gasps, then disappeared. In my cavern, I shifted one of the batteries closer to the Pact and pulled out a small line of power. It took me a moment to figure out how to change the color to blue, but that turned out to be a simple matter of intent, then I started feeding it through the anchor slowly.
“Damn it!” Kieran shouted, slamming his fist into the ground that Ethan had just evacuated. The land felt the force of the punch, which meant so did I. Kieran was… really strong. The blow had a shockwave. “When I said endanger no one, I meant him, too!”
“We both knew that, Kieran!” I yelled at him, angry now. “He left the tunnel before it ended. He didn’t go in. Whatever it was that attacked him did it from outside of reality while he was trying to close the tunnel.” His aura was bright with concern, anger, helplessness, and fear.