by CM Raymond
Hannah sat up and pulled Gregory into a hug. “Damn, I could almost kiss you!” She gave one of his cheeks a squeeze. “But you’re a dad, which makes that kind of gross.”
Gregory’s face burned red, and he pushed his hand through his kinky dark hair. “Yeah, well, I’ve been known to—”
“No time for shits and giggles, G. We gotta get back to work.” She nodded into the distance.
The evil creature that had once been the Founder was staggering backward, barely able to hold off Sal’s attack. In an act of desperation, Ezekiel made the only defensive move he could manage. He opened a rift in the sky. It was small in comparison to the others but large enough to allow a herd of Skrima to pass through.
Hannah’s eyes grew wide as she watched Sal grapple with the creatures as if they were made of clay. Clumps of bloody red alien goop flew in every direction. She had never been more proud of him, but it wasn’t enough. While he was distracted by the Skrima, Ezekiel managed to find his footing.
A blast of white energy took Sal out of the sky.
Hannah screamed, then launched herself at her mentor.
His smirk turned to a snarl as her attack landed. Hannah, consumed by anger, didn’t even use magic—her hands and feet doing more than enough damage. She pummeled him again and again—breaking through his magical shields, knocking aside his counter attacks, pushing him back toward the rift.
His face turned as he realized he had underestimated his student.
With a punch to his chest that could have split stone, Hannah knocked the old man to the ground. She didn’t stop to think—she knew nothing more than the need to end this.
Hannah’s eyes flashed red as she raised her hands and used her magic to call a giant rock toward her. It was one of the first spells Zeke had ever taught her. She gripped it tight, prepared to use it, to smash the life from the man she once called a friend.
“Hannah wait.”
The voice behind her was familiar, but she barely heard it.
“He’s not himself,” the voice continued. “Look at his body, it’s the Skrima. They’re making him do this.”
Hannah faltered, her grip on the stone weakened. She looked down and saw the creatures, half burrowed into his body.
“We can still save him.”
Hope.
The voice offered hope. That was enough to break through Hannah’s anger. She dropped the stone and turned to see Julianne behind her. And next to her were the others: Abbey and Astrid and Arryn. They had all come to help her. Then the look on their faces changed to horror.
“Fools!”
Hannah spun back toward the broken man on the ground in front of her, but he was no longer there. He stood on the edge of the rift, a smile across his face.
“I knew you’d never have the strength to do what was needed,” he shouted. “This weakness will be your undoing—and it will bring about the end of Irth.”
With that he leaped through to the other side. The rift shuddered, then began to close.
“No!” she shouted. She moved without a second thought into the rift, reaching her hands through the hole in the universe before it shut forever.
The force threatened to crush her, but she raised her hands calling on all the power she had in her. In all these last months of closing rifts, she had never been called on to keep one open.
It nearly finished her.
She could see a red glow on the other side, she struggled toward it. Behind her was a green field—her friends were shouting but she could barely hear them.
She pushed harder, and it was here, between the green world and the red one that everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A pair of bright green eyes stared down at Hannah as consciousness returned. She thought Laurel had miraculously come to her aid, but then, as her headache subsided, she recognized the face of the Arcadian druid.
“Arryn?” she asked. “What the hell happened?”
Arryn kept her hands planted on Hannah’s shoulders. “I’m performing a healing spell. We thought we lost you for a minute, but you’re tougher than you look. Or rather, you must actually be as tough as you look.”
“Tough, sure. But reckless as well.” Hannah saw Astrid standing over her. “Jumping into that rift as it was coming crashing down—that was the craziest thing I ever saw.”
As the knight spoke, it all came back to Hannah.
Ezekiel. His betrayal. Her desperate attempt to hold the rift open long enough so that she could follow him through and end this madness once and for all.
She laughed as she pushed herself up on her elbows. “If it was crazy for me to jump through, then what are you all doing here?”
Astrid smiled. “Being reckless as well.”
Hannah nodded, glad she wasn’t alone in this foreign place. And foreign it was.
She had been fighting creatures from this strange world for almost two years now, but even that couldn’t prepare her. They had been right to call Hyrrheim hell.
Hard red soil spread around her as far as her enhanced vision allowed her to see. The land wasn’t ruby red or fire red or even blood red, but rather a bleached, sickly thing, like the lips of a newly dead man. No mountains broke the horizon, but the ground rose and dipped with tiny hills and valleys.
The air above them offered little solace from the dirt. Dark clouds blotted out any sight of the sky—day or night, it was impossible to tell. The little light that broke through shared the same anemic color as everything else.
Julianne sat ten feet away, holding her staff across her lap, deep in a state of meditation—what she was hoping to find was unclear.
Hannah turned to ask Astrid about it, but the woman’s eyes focused on something coming over a small ridge in front of them. The knight’s hand reached for her rope, and Hannah jumped to her feet.
But instead of an invading army of Skrim, the young sailor from the North came into view.
“So you followed me through as well, huh?” Hannah asked as she relaxed her fists.
“Of course,” Abbey answered. “Although I’m not sure my experience on a stormship will do us much good out here. It’s desert as far as I can see. No sign of vegetation or Skrima—or your Founder.”
“Not to mention,” Arryn broke in, “that the rift collapsed when you passed out. You held it open long enough for us to follow you through, but there’s no trace of it now. Any chance you could open it again?”
Hannah considered the request for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so, not without some direction. Closing them is one thing, but opening one? I wouldn’t even know where to start. Even if I could manage to tear open a hole in the universe, there’s no telling where it would lead. I could just as easily drop us off in the middle of space.”
“So it’s settled then,” Astrid said. “If retreat isn’t an option, then advancing is our only course. In any case, this is not a defensible location. If we need more rest, we should find a better place to do it.”
“No, I feel fine,” Hannah said. “We can all take a nice rest once we end this. Finding Zeke is our number one priority.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Abbey asked. “It’s not as if there are stars we can follow. And the old man didn’t exactly leave a trail of breadcrumbs.”
“We don’t need stars.”
They all turned to see Julianne, her eyes opened, the white fading from them. “And I’ve found something far better than breadcrumbs.”
Abbey laughed to herself as she walked, and Arryn couldn’t help but inquire. “Um… what’s so funny?”
She gave a little shake of the head. “Nothing. Well, I mean nothing huge. I was just thinking about how much we all have in common.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure,” Abbey answered. “I mean we’re all young, badass women who have risen out of some terrible situation to become warriors for justice on Irth. Not to mention the men.”
It was Arryn’s turn to laugh
. “You mean that nearly every one of us has some guy tagging along who is mostly adorable and sometimes completely unbearable?”
“I can only speak of Dustin,” Abbey said with her own chuckle, “but seems pretty consistent.”
“And don’t even get into the parent issue,” Arryn continued. Her stomach curled into a knot as the words sped across her lips. She waved the comment off. “Forget it.”
Abbey gave her a quick jab to the shoulder. “No way. I mean come on. The last thing anybody should want to be in this world is the parent of a hero. They get two-to-one odds of survival. Most of our parents are dead and buried or missing. Makes us who we are, really. Makes us strong and hungry for seeing redemption come for others.” They walked in silence, the two women thinking of the parents lost. Gone but not forgotten. Abbey was grateful to still have her father. “There is another thing we share. You and I and Hannah, really.”
“A hot pair of legs?” Arryn asked.
“Of course. Well, we don’t share a hot pair of legs, we each have our own. But we are also Arcadians.”
Arryn pulled a canteen out and took a long drink, and then handed it over to her new friend from the north, who did the same. Arryn couldn’t be sure, but she would swear that Hyrrheim had ten suns, each of them hotter than Irth’s own. If they were up there, they had remained unseen through the dancing red haze. Sweat dripped down her brow. “You’re right about Arcadia. And you and I, we really had it the same. Our parents got us the hell out of there anyway they could. My mom and your dad.”
“But you went back,” Abbey said. “It’s crossed my mind once or twice to return to my motherland, but it feels, well, disconnected from the real me. The only home I truly feel is Holdsgate.” She kicked a red rock and watched it bounce toward their lead walkers. Finally, she asked, “Why’d you go back?”
Arryn nodded for a second in time with her steps. “I needed to. Like we said, Justice. I wanted to find the people who made me an orphan, I wanted to make them pay. But I got back there after Hannah had liberated Arcadia from Adrian. I mean, the shit was still hitting the cart, if you know what I mean, but I could still see all kinds of potential in Arcadia. I fell in love with what it could be and the people who had a vision for her. It all drew me in, gave me something worth fighting for.”
“Sounds nice,” Abbey replied. “I’ve always been an outsider in Holdsgate. I’m always the Arcadian who knew more about coal forges and anvils than I knew about the very place of my birth. After this is all done, you should take me there.”
Arryn clapped. “It would be my pleasure. Maybe we will swing through the Dark Forest while we’re at it.”
“Speaking of similarities, what about these two…” Abbey nodded toward Hannah and Astrid, lost in their own conversation.
“You think she could kick her ass?” Arryn asked.
“Which one?”
“Astrid,” Arryn clarified, raising a brow.
“Astrid, kick Hannah’s ass? Are you kidding me?”
Arryn couldn’t help but laugh. “Usually, yes. But right now, I’m as serious as a hemorrhoid at a funeral.”
“Gross...and weird…”
Arryn ignored her. “Don’t get me wrong, I still have my crazy girl crush on Hannah, but I saw Astrid fight. She’s good. Really good. I mean, no one is going to call me humble when it comes to my skills, but Astrid...she’s one bad mother.”
“We’re all really good. That’s why we’re here. That’s what that old crow of a wizard wanted to get rid of us all together. But Hannah’s reputation precedes her,” Abbey shot back.
“We’re all really good. At a lot of different things. But you have to place a bet, who do you bet on?” Arryn asked. And then she added, “Come on. Just a little road trip game.”
“Hannah before or after the infusion of amped up goddess blood?” Abbey asked.
“Before.”
Without hesitation, she blurted, “Hannah.” Then she thought. “With or without Sal?”
“Without.”
She paused for a minute and then slapped Arryn on the shoulder. “Still Hannah.” Abbey laughed to herself. “One more question. Is Parker tied up over a flaming vat of Skrima piss?”
Arryn stopped, bending at the waist she laughed loud enough to draw the attention of the women ahead of them. “Good one. But, who’s gross now?”
“We all are,” Abbey answered.
“I’m going with Parker over the bubbling Skrima juice.”
“Then I’m going to give that fight to Astrid. As far as I have seen, Hannah is so freaking whipped.”
The girls laughed until their sides hurt and then fell into a silent march, each of them surveying the landscape. Hyrrheim was awesome, in a terrible way. The muted red ground ran off toward the horizon with a mind-numbing sameness. Every so often, a blip nearly as far out as Arryn could see rose up on the edge, where red dirt met pink sky. As far as she could tell it was an old-world building from the days before Hyrrheim had been beaten into submission.
“Irth could be like this,” Abbey whispered.
Arryn rubbed her arms, as if she were suddenly cold in this stifling environment. “Having grown up in the Dark Forest, it’s hard to imagine anything but life growing up in every direction. But there is nothing but death here. Reminds me what we’re fighting for.”
“Hell yes.” Abbey’s brow knit as she thought of her home to the north. “Arcadia might be my motherland, but Holdsgate is my home. And we’ve been fighting like rabid animals to secure peace in the land. We’re driven by love for what the old folks call sted.”
“Sted?”
“It’s from the old tongue,” Abbey answered. “Those who were born during the Madness use it. The closest translation would be something like family-place. A home that is so deeply connected to us that we assume it is one of our own. A member of our family.”
“Well, the Dark Forest is sted for me. So is Arcadia. And I’ll be damned if I let this mad magician and a bunch of fucked up aliens take it from me.”
Abbey smiled. “I think we just found something else we share in common.”
Ahead of them, beyond Hannah and Astrid, Julianne had stopped and turned to face them. Her eyes faded from their pure white.
“Is there trouble?” Hannah asked as they reached.
Julianne smiled. “Trouble is always a possibility.” She turned and nodded toward the horizon. As Abbey stared at it longer, she realized that the rocks standing in their path were not random stones of Hyrrheimian landscape. Instead, they were the carefully stacked wall of some kind of hellish fortification. The mystic rubbed the red dirt from her forehead with the back of her hand. “We’ve found her.”
“Lilith,” Hannah whispered as if only to herself. She turned to the rest of them. “It’s time for you all to meet a friend—Irth’s greatest weapon.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When Julianne was a student at the Mystic Temple, she had heard plenty of stories from her mentor about the Founder—including several tales about the mysterious Oracle. Selah, her master at the time, didn’t know who or even what the Oracle was. Ezekiel was less than forthcoming about the topic. But Selah did know that her name was Lilith, and that she was a being of immense power who was directly responsible for creating the Age of Magic. The legends even told that she knew the Matriarch herself.
After the fall of Adrien, Hannah took her team and ran off in some quest of Ezekiel’s to save the Oracle, and in doing so saved the world. But that was all the detail the old man would share, and Julianne watched them go before returning to her duties as the Master of the Mystic Temple.
She knew that Lilith wasn’t human. But now, standing before the Oracle, even Julianne was shocked.
“That’s Lilith?” she finally choked out. “Are you sure?”
Hannah’s smile was grim as she stared up at the creature. They had found her in the middle of the ancient temple. Thick chains held her suspended in the middle of the room, arms and legs pulled apart,
shaping her body into a large X. “Sure I’m sure. I created her. Well, the body anyway. With a little help from your star pupil.”
As the shock cleared, Julianne began to recognize Hadley’s handiwork in the design. Lilith was what the young man would consider “well proportioned.” Her skin was red, like the dead Skrima surrounding them and she had a pair of curved horns sticking out of her black, almost crystalline hair.
But despite the fact that her body was clearly a hybrid of the two worlds, she was perfect.
And she still looked near death.
“Something tells me that thing covering her is not part of the original design,” Abbey said as she stepped closer.
“More of this world’s handiwork,” Astrid added. “They look like the mind-fuckers, but not quite the same.”
The warrior was right. Blood red tentacles wrapped around Lilith’s body, like a kind of evil moss that had embedded itself into her flesh. They were veiny and covered with tiny needles that sunk deep into Lilith’s skin. The vines spread nearly everywhere, but they were most thickly congregated in the center of Lilith’s chest. The growth emitted a faint bluish glow that pulsed at a rhythm faster than Julianne’s heart.
“Whatever it is, it’s evil.” Hannah’s eyes were on fire. “Let’s cut it out.”
“Wait.” Julianne put her hand on the young wizard’s arm. “We don’t know what harm that could do. Let me try to speak with her first.”
“How do you even know anyone’s home?” Arryn asked.
Julianne smiled. “I know because it was her that drew me here. Her mind reached out to mine when we first arrived.”
“She could do that?” Astrid asked. “Her arms are as thick as mine, I’ll give you that. But with this creature on her—it’s clearly sucking the life from her. She’d have to be a being more powerful than any I have known to maintain her mind under this torture.”
“We don’t call her the Oracle for nothing,” Hannah said. She turned to Julianne. “Do it, but we’re pulling you out if things get weird. This could be another trap. I’d give my life to save Lilith. Technically, I already did. But Irth still needs its master mystic.”