Rise of The Mortokai

by D G Palmer

  Out of the corner of his eye, Gydion could see Sayyidah begin to cast. Although he had not returned the more obviously dangerous fire school of magic to her, Earth and air still had its own offensive capabilities. He knew that he should have dealt with her first but, even though he knew that she wasn't Sayyidah, she still had her face, she was a part of the woman he once called wife.

  The stalactites and stalagmites suddenly broke off and darted toward the arch mage but they smashed harmlessly against his protective shield. Sayyidah screamed with annoyance at her failed attacked but seeing Baelthorn beginning to lose his battle against the void she quickly set about casting another spell. As she finished the intricate motions the ground shook.

  Chunks of the surrounding cavern came away from their resting places, molded together to form a huge rock golem in front of Sayyidah. She immediately ordered it to do her bidding and it charged at her enemy.

  He heard the booming steps of the golem closing in on him. Gydion hadn't been able to reinforce his shield after Sayyidah's initial attack, so all he could do was stand his ground. He knew he had taken a gamble hoping that Baelthorn would be easy pickings in his weakened state for the banishment spell but the so-called God still had more power than the arch mage had anticipated. Then Gydion felt the force of the golem as it slammed into him and sent him flying across the cavern. The spell was broken.

  ‘Enough of these games!’ Baelthorn's anger reverberated around the space. ‘You have truly vexed me mortal, now you will suffer for it.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Although it had just been a flying visit, Daniel was more than happy to of had the chance to say a proper goodbye to his parents and show them that he was safe and unharmed. He wondered how his mum was handling the whole situation. They had talked before about him going to Oxford or Cambridge and even mentioned universities in America, although she wasn’t keen on that idea saying that it would be him moving to another world, but now he literally was moving to another world.

  A world with different rules. A world with two suns. A world where magic existed.

  ‘This is it,’ announced Daniel as they arrived at the innocuous blue door in Bloomsbury square. He grabbed the old knob but couldn’t turn it to gain entry. ‘We just have to find out to get it.’

  Tina looked sceptically at the dilapidated door with its flaking paint job and rusty door knob. She was about to ask her son if he was sure this was the right place when she suddenly slapped her hand over her mouth as a wrinkly faced, knobbly nosed, sharp toothed little man in a three pieced suit with pin striped pants and a bowler hat came pushing through them.

  ‘Excuse me, excuse me, coming through,’ he said.

  ‘Out of the way,’ Finn and pushed Daniel aside.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Daniel said to the hobthrust.

  ‘Quite all right,’ the creature replied tipping his hat. ‘If you’re looking to use the FTN, you’ll need to get a ticket from the ticket booth.’ He pointed to the red phone box on the corner of the nearby park.

  ‘Ticket? No, I already have one,’ replied Daniel. He took the ticket, Fungal gave him, out of his pocket. Whereas the first ticket he had used to get to Ariest was gold, this one went through a kaleidoscope of metallic colours.

  The well-dressed hobthrust stared at the ticket, then at his own gold ticket and back to Daniel’s. ‘That bloody Fungal.’ He grumbled. ‘I was the first to use his damn fangled contraption, but do I get any thanks or recognition for it? No! None!’

  He continued to mutter as he touched the rusted door knob with his ticket. It instantly turned gold and gleamed as if it were brand new. Daniel and Finn winked at each other as they witnessed the secret procedure. The hobthrust then entered the previously old looking door and it slammed shut behind him before it reverted to its previous rundown state.

  Once the episode was over, Tina could breathe again. ‘What the hell!’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ laughed Daniel, ’I reacted the same when Trinity showed me the one at school but I had to use a gem to... wait a minute. That’s right! I had to use a gem to see it. She said that humans couldn’t see them anymore because we stopped believing,’ he said as he turned to his mum.

  ‘How could I not believe,’ Tina replied with a shrug. I’ve been getting glimpses of things since your father first told me but I didn’t pay it much attention and put it down to tricks of the mind. But now I’ve seen Gydion do things, heard about my son doing things and seen stranger things on tv. It’s gotten to a point where it would be harder not to believe.’

  Finn grinned at Tina’s admission. ‘Once we pass this door, you’ll have your eyes well and truly opened.’ She touched her ticket, the knob turned multicoloured and together they all entered the Faerie Transit Network.

  THE SOUND OF PISTONS and gears being turned by the rhythmic escapes of steam immediately greeted them upon entering the fantastic transport system. Finn was her usual giddy self, the way she got around all engineering marvels, much the same way Daniel got when he came across books he hadn’t read before. Eric and Tina were astonished by what they saw.

  ‘How could something as vast as this have been built without anyone knowing?’ Tina stopped Eric before he could answer her question. ‘Don’t bother, Eric, I know. Magic.’

  ‘Maybe the excavation and hall area,’ Finn corrected, ‘But these moving stairs, all this brass work, the mechanisms, the cogs and gears, would have been done by my uncle Quinn,’ she said proudly.

  The warrior turned builder looked around the hall in wide eyed amazement. ‘This place is pretty impressive,’ Eric said, ‘there’s no denying that.’

  Tina’s wide-eyed amazement matched that of her husband. Not because of the architecture of the hall, she had hardly taken any note of it, but by the multitude of creatures that were filling it. All manner of beings great and small milled about the great space; some made their way to the train platforms, others to the exit and some were just admiring the British Museum FTN station, just like tourists.

  Daniel suddenly saw a face he recognised. ‘Waldo! It’s me, Daniel. I made it back after all.’

  ‘Waldo? -I’m-not-Waldo,’ the selkie replied in its rapid speech. ‘My-name-is-Aldo.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’

  ‘Are-you-trying-to-say-that- all-selkie-lookalike?’

  ‘No! It’s just that... you two... with that moustache... kind of... do.’

  ‘That’s-because-Waldo-is-my-brother,’ Aldo replied before walking off.

  Daniel stood there with a dumbfounded look until Finn tapped him. ‘Isn’t that Lowack? He should know where Fungal is.’

  ‘Yes, I do know where Fungal is,’ Lowack replied when the group approached him, ‘but he is busy and doesn’t want to be disturbed.’

  ‘But surely he’d want to see his special freedom pass holders, so we can thank him again.’ Daniel thought that having the kaleidoscopic metallic ticket might carry a bit of weight but he was wrong.

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ Lowack’s reply dripped with envy. ‘I’m Fungal’s assistant and I still have to buy my own tickets to get to work.’

  A scoundrel knows a scoundrel and, unlike Daniel, Finn was a proud scoundrel. She had a better grasp of the kind of character Fungal was and Finn knew that he wasn’t the kind of person to just give away two valuable unlimited tickets just to say sorry. Not for free anyway.

  ‘We’re actually here to pay the rest of what we owe for the passes. You didn’t really think that he gave them to us for free, did you?’ Finn said with a laugh.

  ‘Fungal would sell anything for money,’ agreed Lowack.

  ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to sell you,’ Finn continued to play up her role.

  ‘Well, actually, there was this time...’

  Daniel looked over the shoulder of the hard-worked assistant and saw a door open behind him. ‘Here comes Fungal now.’

  Beside the boggart laird was a tall robed man with a long half-goatee beard. He was bald except for t
he two long braided sideburns he sported. He bent over to discuss one final matter with the boggart before Fungal produced a small coin bag and placed it in man’s open palm. He had full finger rings on his first and middle fingers and once he was satisfied with the weight of the bag, he secreted it into a hidden pocket in his robe. Business concluded; the tall man was about to leave when he felt he was being watched.

  ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Eric Mondragon. So, this is where you ran off to.’

  ‘And what brings you here, Radek Zislaa?’

  ‘Business,’ came the short reply. ‘I barely recognised you. These humble garbs are a far cry from the gold and silver regalia you used to wear.’

  ‘These fit more comfortably,’ Eric said brushing aside the snide comment.

  ‘Indeed. Well, whilst you were falling from grace, I have become Archmage.’

  ‘Don’t you mean temporary Archmage?’ Eric corrected. ‘I’ve spoken to Gydion and he seemed to be in fine health, unless you know something that I don’t.’

  ‘No, no,’ replied Radek quickly.

  ‘Well, that’s good, because he will be mentoring my son,’ the proud father declared.

  ‘So, this is Daniel the Shade slayer,’ Radek said as he eyed Daniel up and down. ‘The Assembly has heard much about you.’

  ‘Did they also hear the calls for help from Murias City?’

  ‘Politics are not for the young to understand.’

  ‘Politics? They were supposed to be your allies! They fought side by side with you. Their people died along with your people and yet when they needed your help you abandoned them. I would never do that.’

  ‘Well, my little Adept, if you survive at the Mage Academy and eventually become a Master and if you one day sit on the Mage Assembly you can do as you please, but until then, I think you should learn to address your seniors with more respect,’ snapped Radek.

  ‘Now, now, this is my establishment,’ Fungal interjected, ‘and I’m the only one allowed t’squabble here.’

  Radek made a polite bow of the head to Fungal and began to dematerialise. ‘The Mage Assembly will be watching you Daniel Shade slayer.’ His eyes with their piercing gaze were the last things to vanish.

  ‘Well that wasn’t creepy at all,’ Finn grimaced.

  ‘I dinnae appreciate yous harassing my clientele. Even you, Eric Mondragon.’

  ‘Well if you had a more wholesome character then Gydion wouldn’t have asked me to make sure that your little corridor of portals was locked down.’

  ‘He never did!’ Fungal said in wide eyed panic. The corridor was central to his designs to topple Ganygu from his perch. Fungal’s crafty mind worked overtime as he tried to think up an escape. He didn’t want to reveal his true plans to Eric but he knew he needed to tell him something to placate him. ‘You can’t shut it down. I need the corridor for my new business venture. Fungal’s... Fungal’s... Fungal’s Luxury Holidays and Adventure Tour,’ he blurted out. ‘Gydion was only concerned about there possibly being a portal to Salamida and I have my team working hard to find it. Let me show you.’

  Fungal led them to the door he had entered from with Radek. He had played his part of the put-upon business owner perfectly, if he said so himself, now he just needed some visual aids to complete his hustle. And the corridor of infinite portals was just such a thing.

  Behind the door the corridor of portals disappeared into the distant. Large wooden doors with metal ring handles lined either side of the magical passage. Pixies. Lots of pixies worked in what could only be described as a production line of activity surrounding the portal doors. Some were pulling off the boards Fungal had hastily put on them when he first investigated the corridor. Some were going in and out of the portals, the ones pixies returned from were given blank nameplates to be filled in later. After a short period, the doors through which pixies didn’t return were marked with red warning signs.

  ‘See!’ Fungal threw open his arms in an exuberant fashion. ‘I have it all under control. I had a bit of trouble with reality being warped but, thanks to Radek and his exorbitant fee, it’s been stabilised.’ Fungal walked them down the corridor explaining the whole process as they went until they came to a door marked Gilprain. ‘The idea is to allow clientele to choose a destination, perhaps by questionnaire and process of elimination, all for a nominal fee, of course.’

  Eric had to admit that it was a good idea but he wasn’t totally convinced that Fungal could or would keep things totally above board. There had to be some angle but he just couldn’t see it. ‘So, you’re planning to send people to Salamida for their holidays?’

  ‘Of course not! We haven’t even found that portal yet. And when we do, it will be treated like all the other portals to hostile environments. So, as you can see, I need this corridor to stay.’

  ‘I don’t know. Gydion was quite specific about it...’

  ‘And what about you, Mrs Mondragon? Wouldn’t you like to take a trip somewhere? Maybe to somewhere like this.’ Fungal threw open the door for dramatic affect. It wasn’t necessary, the landscape on view spoke for itself.

  Tina and the others were amazed by what they saw. It was akin to the most pristine of tropical beaches, just not in the colours you would normally expect. Fungal took note of their expressions as he ushered them through the portal into Gilprain realm.

  As they stepped onto the beach, the sand changed colour beneath their feet. It was blue under Daniel, amber for Eric, Finn and Tina had red and violet respectively.

  ‘Look at that,’ Finn exclaimed, ‘that’s pretty cool!’

  ‘Apparently the sands reflect your mood,’ Fungal, who had remained on the station side of the portal, explained. ‘I’m thinking of marketing this place as a love getaway. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Tina said as she squeezed Eric’s hand.

  ‘And since Daniel will be at the Mage Academy, you’ll have more time for just the two of you,’ Fungal added. He could see that Tina was reticent but Eric was still a little hesitant. He needed one more sweetener. He clicked his fingers and a kaleidoscope metallic freedom pass appeared in front of Eric and Tina. ‘Just in case you two ever feel you need to go on holiday or you’d like to visit your son in Ariest...’

  ‘Or if I need a nice and easy way to keep tabs on you,’ Eric added.

  ‘So be it,’ Fungal shrugged and lit a celebratory cigar.

  ‘And if, in the meantime, you find the portal to Salamida be sure to seal it.’

  ‘Isn’t this a face you can trust?’ Fungal replied, his cigar clamped within his big toothy grin.

  They all headed back down the corridor of portals towards the British Museum FTN station. Tina and Eric were already making plans for their first portal holiday and an excited Tina’s first proper visit to another realm.

  Fungal held Daniel and Finn back momentarily before whispering to them, ‘When you two have some free time come back and see me. I’ve just come up with a business opportunity that may interest ye both.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ariest never looked more welcoming to Daniel than it did now. He pulled back his hood and let the warming rays of the twin suns beat down on him without any of the fear. His trip back to Earth, short as it was, had highlighted how much he enjoyed not having to worry about the effects of being in the sun too long.

  He was excited to be back because it felt like he was about to begin a new chapter in his life. The first time he came to Ariest it had been a mistake; this time it had been his decision. This was his ancestral home, this was where he fit in, where he should be.

  Now that his parents had FTN freedom passes, just like him and Finn, he thought that maybe they might visit him here. He was sure that his mum would definitely want to see him graduate from Mage Academy, if they even had graduation. It would be more difficult for his dad to deal with, however, returning to the place where he had his darkest moment. How do you get over killing a son you never knew you had? Do you ever get over it?

>   Something else he was looking forward to was seeing Trinity again. Just thinking about her put a smile on his face. Things were never really sorted out between himself and Finn. The status of their relationship was never really laid out from his point of view. And, to be honest, it wasn’t really a talk he was looking for to having.

  Daniel turned to Finn and saw her glaring at him. ‘What?’ His hands were getting sweaty. Did she know what he had been thinking about?

  ‘What do you mean “what?”. I was asking you what you thought about Fungal’s offer?’

  Daniel had almost forgotten about that. Fungal had offered them roles as ambassadors for his burgeoning travel agency. Basically, they would go into these realms, learn what they could about it; weather conditions, indigenous people, language, currency, minerals and then report back with a viability rating.

  ‘Well, it all sounds a bit tedious to me,’ Daniel revealed, ‘not to mention a bit dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous? Where’s your sense of adventure?’ Finn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘I’ve always wanted to get out of Almedia...that’s what I planned with Crellis. But that fell through. Going to your realm really opened my eyes to that idea again. You don’t get too many opportunities to live your dream, and I’m taking this second chance to get out and make some coin, with or without you, Daniel.’

  With or without him, Daniel could see how determined she was. She was strong willed, some people would call it stubbornness, but it was one of the things he liked about her. ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea you going off to these places by yourself, but...’