by Mark Albany
Just as I was starting to lose my nerve, I felt the ground shaking beneath my feet. It started out as the gentlest of trembles, but it grew in intensity until all I could do was grip the table, losing my link with the orb and the other two, my eyes opening as I looked around.
There was a flicker of motion in the orb, something dark and massive, but it quickly disappeared as Aliana and Norel both seemed to lose the connection with it. The room started shaking hard enough that there was nothing we could do but hold onto the table and each other for balance.
Just as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped, leaving the three of us looking around as the world went silent once more.
“Earthquake?” I asked, breathless. I’d never experienced one, but from what I’d read, the sensation of the earth roiling up in rebellion beneath you was as terrifying an event as what we’d just experienced.
“Impossible,” Norel said, shaking her head. “We’re too far from the places in the world that have earthquakes.”
“Then what was that?” I insisted, but Norel’s eyes were closed. She was reaching out into the world with her power. After a few seconds her eyes shot open, a look of panic on her face.
“My wards!” she gasped, looking around at us. “They’re all gone!”
“Gone… How?” I asked, but when I looked at the two women in front of me, there was no answer forthcoming. I knew for a fact that placing a ward required a good deal less strength than taking one down, even through subtler means than just tearing them down with brute strength. Norel wasn’t the kind of person to protect her house with anything but the maximum of her abilities, which already overpowered pretty much every other mage in the city. Hell, the empire.
I looked toward the outer wall of the room, feeling a sudden rush of power crashing into it like a wave, sending pieces of brick and rock flying all over the place. Norel raised her hands just in time—I watched as a massive piece of the wall stopped just inches away from my nose before dropping to the ground with a clatter.
A very familiar face appeared in the middle of the rubble. Familiar to me, I realized, but not to Aliana or Norel, since neither had actually looked into her eyes before.
She was smaller than I remembered, barely five feet tall, with a petite build that accentuated the curves her black robes did very little to hide. Pale skin, long, luxurious black hair done up in a loose braid. Freckles on her cheeks. When she saw me, her full red lips opened in a smile.
“Well, now, there you are, my darling,” she said softly, easily picking her way through the rubble simply by pushing it aside with a flick of her hands. “You never reach out to find me, forcing me to hunt you down through less traditional methods. And we were having so much fun the last time.”
Aliana turned to look at me, a confused expression on her face.
“It was nothing like that,” I growled, gritting my teeth for a moment before turning to face the djinn again. Her attentions, however, were turned to the two women I was with. She tipped her head sideways and pouted.
“You know I don’t approve of you spending your time with women of unsavory tastes,” she said, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t want to be one of those women who restricts their men’s actions through jealousy, but you are just making it too difficult, my love. You provoke me and think I won’t act out? It’s like you don’t know me at all.”
“I don’t know you at all!” I protested, taking a step forward, reaching down into my power. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about?” she mocked, tilting her head like she was speaking to someone who was slow in the head. “I’m saying that you are mine, mortal, and I don’t care for who you spend your time with.”
“That’s not my understanding of it,” I growled, reaching down into the depths of my power. It seemed a bit more eager to jump into action than before.
The djinn sensed it and reached out with her hand. I could see shadows with no apparent origin forming on her face as I felt invisible fingers wrapping around my throat. She took a step forward, forcing me a step back in turn.
“What are you?” she asked. Aliana and Norel quickly jumped to my defense, but the djinn flicked her wrist in their direction, sending Norel flying across the ruined room to land in a heap some ten feet away. Aliana, daggers in hand, seemed more resilient to the djinn’s power but was still stopped dead in her tracks, growling as she tried to push past with limited success.
“What are you?” The Djinn hissed, pushing me back step by step until I felt a wall touching my back, keeping me in place as she came closer. The tendrils were wrapping tighter and tighter around my neck, and I could hear my head pounding faintly. A shot of anger rushed through me. Why did I have to answer her questions? This wasn’t some dream she could manipulate to her advantage. This was the real world, and this time, I could fight back.
I opened my eyes, which I realized had fallen shut as consciousness had started to slip. It came back with a rush, though, as I took a step forward, pushing the needles digging into my mind away as the fury started to burn hot inside my body.
“Oh,” the djinn grunted, a look of shock and a bit of fear crossing her face as she saw her grip on me slipping. “A rogue mage. How interesting.”
I smiled coldly and took another step, which left me less than a foot away from her. I pooled the power in my body into my right hand, the smile never leaving my lips as I watched her take a step back, her confidence faltering.
“Wrong,” I said. “I’m your worst fucking nightmare.”
With that, I flooded all the power I had into my hand and hammered my fist into her with a roar of exertion. She raised her hands, putting up a quickly-mounted defense that was very nearly enough to deflect all the power I threw at her in a single blow.
Almost enough, but not quite.
It shot through her defensive wards, sending showers of sparks all across the room as she was pushed back a few steps before stumbling and falling over.
10
The power of the impact was felt by all who were close enough. It was a blow powered by magic, and the resistance the djinn had to the strike made the power unleashed all the more impressive.
“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to do,” the djinn said, her attractive features pulling into a pout as she rolled her neck. I could feel her gathering all the power she could muster into herself. I gritted my teeth, preparing my body for what was bound to be an exhausting fight.
She was whispering a few words, casting a hastily-composed spell. Vis had always told me that there were problems with using casting magic in combat, the greatest of which was maintaining your focus on a potentially volatile spell while defending yourself from attacks. Djinn appeared to be a lot better at this than most, but that didn’t mean I was just going to let her attack me without at least making her pay for it.
I gathered as much power as I could into my fists again, taking a few flying steps toward her. She looked up at me, almost annoyed at my interruption, before flicking her hand. It was a weaker attack than I knew she could deliver, but I still felt like a horse had kicked me in the chest. It was all I could do to stay standing. My attack fizzled.
Aliana and Norel followed my lead, though, seeing the djinn distracted. Aliana drew her daggers out of thin air, shouting something in elvish as she charged at the smaller woman, who raised a handful of wards to defend against the strikes with her bare hands. It was a distraction, I realized, watching as Norel closed her eyes and chanted a spell I remembered from our last battle. I saw sparks of lightning spreading across her fingers as she rubbed her hands together.
The djinn realized it too late as Norel took a step forward, screaming the last words of the spell before extending her hands. The air suddenly lit up like the sun had joined us in the ruined section of the house and an ear-splitting crack tore through the air. I could smell something acrid. For a long moment I was left blind, having stupidly watched the attack unfold. As my eyes adjusted again, I could
see that the djinn had been knocked back a few steps, blood seeping from her nose and lips due to the strength of the attack.
And if I’d thought she looked angry before, it was nothing compared to now. The djinn looked like she was about to explode as she remained on her feet, hands arcing with a yellow energy which she launched at me with a powerful burst. I raised my hands, forming the defense wards Aliana had taught me. I could feel the runes in my hand burning as the light flashed at me.
An instinctive move had me raising my hand, pushing the blast up and away. If the building had still been intact it would have torn a hole through the ceiling but thankfully, with most of the room already torn to pieces, the beam shot into the sky. I wasn’t sure what kind of damage it would do if it ever landed, but at the moment we had more pressing concerns.
Even just deflecting the attack knocked me onto my back, landing hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I turned to see what I’d fallen on, realizing it was what remained of the table we’d been standing around before the attack, trying to figure out the ring’s origins.
The djinn’s eyes followed mine, and I saw them light up when she caught sight of something gleaming in the rubble.
“The orb!” Aliana called, rushing forward. The djinn pushed her back, making a dive for the sphere of crystal. She wrapped her hands around it and for a moment, I could feel my skin prickling the way it did when Aliana opened one of her portals. Then came that sense of nausea and vertigo as the portal opened behind her while she gripped the orb in her hands.
Aliana was saying something in elvish as she reached out. I could see her power physically manifest as she gripped the portal and held it open wide enough for me to see what was on the other side. I’d never seen that before. It was like there was an actual gate between this place and… somewhere dark with only a bit of light on the horizon to break the shadow that otherwise covered the whole of the place. It was a menacing sight.
Norel was chanting again. The lightning was in her hands once more, but this time, she didn’t send it at the djinn. Well, not directly. I remembered to close my eyes and look away as the bolt arced across, lashing the orb from the djinn’s hands and shattering it to pieces.
“Grant!” Aliana screamed as she struggled to keep the portal open. I knew what she wanted me to do. It was odd, having this kind of connection with a person, but it was rather convenient for plotting strategies on the go.
I pooled my power into my right fist, feeling the runes in my hands burning as I jumped to my feet, rushing over to where the djinn was standing and hammered my fist into her jaw with a roar.
In the moment before my hand impacted, I realized she was just as surprised as we were by the opening of a portal behind her and seemed almost distracted from our actions. She was still staring at her hands, now lacking the orb, when she looked up and tried to throw up some kind of defense at the last second.
She failed.
The impact clapped almost louder than Norel’s lightning strike, or so it seemed since it was a lot closer. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was enough to send her flying through the open portal.
Aliana screamed from the effort but finally released it as the portal quickly closed behind the djinn, banishing her to wherever that darkened land was. The momentum from my strike had almost sent me tumbling in after her. I dropped to the ground, gasping for breath as I clutched my ribs. Aliana was on the ground too, leaving Norel the only one of us still on her feet. She looked disheveled, her usually perfectly done up hair a mess from the battle.
I took a deep breath, turning around to find the orb that had somehow opened a portal into that dark land. I, for one, didn’t want to end up going there accidentally thanks to that damned thing, and didn’t want any of the servants left to the same fate.
“Braire,” Norel said, panting for breath as well. “She was there. I could feel it.”
I looked up at her, dragging myself to my feet. The fight had taken more out of me than I liked to admit. No amount of training could prepare you for the lengths you would go to save yourself when your life was in peril.
I picked up pieces of the orb, looking down at it. The cloudy inside seemed to be moving, but there was nothing there. No darkness, no sign of the djinn or Braire. Nothing.
“Where was she?” I asked. “What was that place?”
“The underworld,” Aliana said softly, regaining her feet slowly as well. I moved over to help her. She smiled, taking the opportunity to press herself against me in a hug.
“Are you all right?” she asked, looking at my hand and the runes branded on it. They were still hurting, along with some bruises and aches, but I nodded with a forced smile.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, only half-truthfully. “What is this about the underworld?”
“That dark place we saw in the orb, and again in the portal,” Norel explained, finding a small piece of undestroyed wall to sit on as she played nervously with her hands. “That was the underworld, and Braire is there. That is where the ring is from, and if I were a betting woman I’d place coin on that being where Abarat is held as well.”
I nodded. From the dread I could see in their eyes, I had an idea of the kind of horrors the underworld held. I didn’t need to see them for myself in order to trust the two women that I’d been fighting alongside for these past few months.
That, and the fact that the underworld had the unpleasant connotation of being a place full of the unforgiving and vengeful dead. All sorts of stories of a place of magic and death, a prison formed by the world’s original creators as a punishment for the evildoers of the world. There were various definitions of evil, and there were a lot of different stories that told of the kind of people who were sent there, not all of them holding true to the other. They all agreed on one topic, though. It was not a pleasant place to be in.
I gulped my fears down, steeling my nerves and clenching my jaw as I spoke.
“How the fuck do we get to the underworld?” I asked, looking at the two of them.
They eyed me with a bit of annoyance. They knew full well that we had to go there, if only to find Braire, but I couldn’t help the feeling that it was something they didn’t want to deal with just yet. They wanted to put it off as long as possible, and maybe avoid it altogether.
But necessity called for action.
“Opening a portal there takes a lot of power,” Norel finally said with a sigh. “More power than we share between the three of us. The djinn was able to open it through some vestige of the ring latching onto the orb and her considerable reserves of magical energy, I think, but I doubt we’ll be able to recreate it.”
“I don’t think we’d want to,” I pointed out. “Not for nothing, but I don’t think we’re in any shape to face her again at the moment.”
Aliana nodded. “We weren’t ready for her attack. If we are to face her again, we will need to be or she could tear us apart, and there won’t be a stroke of luck from an orb to help us.”
I nodded. “True, but we must focus on the task at hand. How can we find a way into the underworld?”
Norel pushed herself up from her improvised seat. “We’ll need more magic, possibly channeled from the dark djinn herself. She was able to open the portal, after all.”
“How?” I asked.
Norel shook her head. “There are ways, but I’ll need to study them in a bit more depth before we attempt them. I think… I think it can wait for a bit.”
I nodded. The exhaustion I could feel seeping into my body was something more than just the fatigue of a long day and a hard fight. There was something else about it, like my power was draining my body of energy to replenish its stores.
“We need to eat,” I said.
“Good call,” Aliana said with a nod. “I’m fucking starving.”
11
Dinner was a quiet affair. The servants had fled during the attack, and there was no call to bring them back for the moment so we made do. Aliana and I managed not to burn what wa
s left of the place down while preparing something simple and hot to eat. Our time out in the woods had taught me that she was more than capable of making even the simplest of meals into something tasty and enjoyable, and this time proved no exception.
We ate in Norel’s ruined study, looking out into the open fields which led to a few streams and then the forest. I wasn’t sure why we were drawn here, but it seemed that we’d all agreed on coming back here with what we’d picked out to eat and drink. Maybe we were reminding ourselves of what happened, noting that it hadn’t been a nightmare or a fevered dream. Reality had set in, a harsh experience.
I finished with my soup and bread, placing the empty bowl aside as I sipped from a goblet of wine, looking out at the forest before turning back to look at Aliana and Norel. The former was surprisingly hard to read, like she was intentionally dulling our connection with some effort, wanting some distance between us. Norel was her customary cool self.
There was no attempt at making conversation, no trying to make it a pleasant time. We were here to eat and recover our spent energy. Nothing more.
I had questions. So many questions. What did they know about this underworld? Was it like any of the stories, and if so, which ones? I was aware by now that many of the stories that were shared and told in the Empire seemed to have some kind of foundation in reality, but there were a lot of personal flights of fancy mixed in the facts. I wanted to know. Hell, if I was going to be joining them, I needed to know.
It didn’t seem like there would be any answers forthcoming. I put my cup next to my bowl before quietly making my way out. I followed Norel’s maze of a house until I found one of the larger gardens. It was closed off, walls climbing high all around. It was a maze like the rest of the house, full of trees and vines. I moved through them, wanting to get lost for a moment.