by Clayton Wood
Darius stared down at Kyle, now only a few feet away, his blue eyes suddenly hard.
“You don't have a choice.”
Kyle froze, feeling a chill run through him. The way Darius had said it – cold and hard, almost cruel – there was no doubt that he meant it. Kyle felt his anger slip away almost instantly, replaced by something even more powerful.
Fear.
Darius stared at Kyle, the runes on his black armor pulsing lazily, a blue glow flowing from rune to rune in random patterns. The man's cold eyes held Kyle as if they were needles pinning a moth to a board. Then he turned away, continuing up the hallway.
“Come,” Darius growled, not even bothering to see if Kyle was following behind. Kyle watched the man stride up the hallway, swallowing in a dry throat. He thought briefly about staying where he was, of defying Darius – Ampir – once again, but knew it was futile. Darius was right, of course...Kyle didn't have a choice. The only way he'd ever get home was through Darius. He was, in effect, the man's prisoner.
Kyle stepped forward, following Darius. This time, however, he allowed himself to lag behind, no longer making any attempt to walk at the man's side.
That, at least, was his choice.
* * *
The long spiraling hallway ended after a few long, silent minutes, terminating in a nondescript wall. Kyle had maintained his distance from Darius for the remainder of the walk, refusing to even look at the man. He could hardly believe that Darius had been capable of such a betrayal; after all, Darius had protected them – both as a bodyguard and as Ampir – from harm at every other juncture. Of course, Darius's escape from the Arena, and his heroic defeat of the Dire Lurker and the Dead Man, seemed diminished by the knowledge of his extraordinary power. Had Kyle known that Ampir himself had been there the entire time, their capture – and escape – would not have been nearly as harrowing.
When Darius reached the end of the hallway, he stopped by the wall, turning about and watching Kyle as he reluctantly trudged up alongside. Or rather, ten feet away or so. Those blue eyes regarded Kyle silently for a long, uncomfortable moment. The man's expression, as usual, was unreadable. Then he turned back to the wall, putting his hand on it. His armor lit up, runes on his forearm glowing blue just as they had in the Gateway before, the light fading quickly. The wall in front of them rippled, a hole appearing in the center, then widening. Beyond, Kyle saw another gray stone wall some five or six feet away, with a granite tiled floor leading up to it beyond the rift. Darius stepped through without hesitation, then turned, gesturing for Kyle to follow. Kyle hesitated, then stepped through, feeling a sudden rush of warm air as he did. The air – oddly sterile in the hallway and Gateway before – was suddenly sweet, bringing to mind late spring afternoons in his mother's flower garden. He inhaled deeply, feeling invigorated despite himself, then glanced at Darius; the bodyguard – Kyle had a hard time thinking of him as anything but – was standing in front of Kyle, facing him silently.
Kyle frowned, feeling uncomfortable under that intense gaze. He glanced past Darius's shoulder, at the nondescript stone wall only a few feet away. Overcome by curiosity, or perhaps the sheer pleasantness of the air around him, he momentarily forgot his anger.
“Where are we?” he asked, then gestured at the wall in front of him. “What's this?”
Darius said nothing, but his eyes shifted, now looking over Kyle's left shoulder. Kyle frowned, then turned around.
His jaw dropped.
They were standing on a wide, stone-tiled porch perched at the base of a mountain, staring out at a lush valley lay far ahead in the distance. A small city could be seen in the distance, perhaps a half-mile away, white buildings with golden roofs shining under the light of the sun above. Looking upward, Kyle saw a brilliant blue sky, puffy white clouds floating far above their heads, the sun's rays peeking out from between them. A long staircase led from the porch to a lush garden some twenty feet below, with two large stone water fountains flanking a wide stone walkway.
Kyle stared out at the wondrous sight, his eyes sweeping across the landscape. Then he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned about, and saw Darius standing at his side, gazing off into the distance.
“This,” he stated, gesturing with a broad sweeping motion of his arm, taking in everything around them, “...is my home.”
Kyle nodded mutely, a warm, gentle breeze massaging his scalp. He glanced at one of the stone water fountains below; it had a tall statue of a fish in the center, its mouth agape. Water shot from that mouth high into the sky, spreading outward in all directions, then falling in a dozen small streams back to the ground. Each stream curved through the air as it fell, undoubtedly under the influence of magic, creating a twisting mid-air waterfall around the fish statue. The streams flowed back into the wide bowl of the fountain, only to be sucked up by the fish statue once again.
“Did you make that?” Kyle asked, pointing to the fountain. Darius nodded. “You sure like fish,” Kyle observed, almost hypnotized by the endless flow of water. He never would have pegged the surly bodyguard as a marine enthusiast. Then he frowned. “Hey, it looks the same as those fish in that tank.”
“They're blinkfish.”
“Oh,” Kyle replied. “How'd they go extinct?” he asked. Darius said nothing, staring at the fountain for a long moment. Then his mirrored visor appeared out of thin air, hiding his blue eyes.
“Blink,” the bodyguard ordered. Kyle frowned, his eyebrows furrowing.
“What?”
Darius lunged forward suddenly, right toward him. Kyle lurched backward in surprise, closing his eyes and throwing his hands up to protect himself. He cried out, falling onto his rear on the hard stone below. Then he opened his eyes, realizing at once that Darius was no longer standing in front of him. In fact, the man was nowhere to be seen.
“Come on,” a voice shouted from below. Kyle scrambled to his feet, rubbing his bruised posterior with one hand. He glanced about, but still couldn't see Darius. Then he turned, looking down from the porch, and saw the man sitting on the edge of one of the fountains twenty feet below – and some fifty feet away – his arms crossed about his armored chest.
“How'd you...?” Kyle asked. Darius gestured for him to walk down the stairs, and Kyle did so numbly, descending step-by-step down the stone stairs until he was only a few feet from where the man stood.
“The blinkfish,” Darius stated, “...is the only known creature that can create bridges across spacetime.”
“Bridges across what?”
“Teleportation,” Darius clarified.
“Oh.”
“When I was ten, I finished my training as a Runic, and started my graduate studies as a Battle-Runic,” Darius stated. Kyle's eyebrows rose.
“Wait, ten?” he exclaimed. Master Owens had said that Runics and Weavers – in Ancient times as in the present – were only allowed to graduate when they turned eighteen. Darius smirked.
“I was...different,” he explained. “Anyway, it was mandatory to choose a mentor for a year of research, so I chose a man named Renval.”
“The guy who invented teleportation,” Kyle recalled. Kalibar had mentioned about Renval in the Tower library long ago, a few days after they'd first met. Apparently Renval's father had been ridiculed for his obsession with teleportation, and Renval – a well-respected Runic – had hidden his own passion for continuing his father's research.
“No, that was me,” Darius corrected. “Renval had already spent twenty years researching teleportation, reading his late father's notes, and searching for a clue as to how it could be accomplished.” Darius shook his head. “He got nowhere.”
“Wow,” Kyle mumbled. Twenty years was a long time...having nothing to show for it must have been devastating.
“When I first started working with him,” Darius continued, “...Renval could only see a little kid, an inconvenience to be suffered. He set me to doing simple, mind-numbing tasks...like copying textbooks. I used magic to make quick work
of it, and spent the rest of my time bored out of my mind.”
“Like school,” Kyle observed. Darius ignored the comment.
“Renval's uncle had been a naturalist,” he continued. “Searching the world for new species. Renval enjoyed tropical fish, so his uncle would often send shipments of rare specimens from across the seas. Renval had several tanks in the basement of his lab, and one day, a shipment came in, a fish I'd never seen before.”
“Let me guess,” Kyle ventured. Darius nodded.
“A blinkfish,” he confirmed. “It was tiny – a fraction of an inch from mouth to tail, just as you saw. I watched it as you did, floating motionless in the water, then darting forward a few inches through that huge tank, moving so fast it was impossible to track. It kept doing that, standing still for a long time, then moving in the blink of an eye.”
Kyle frowned, remembering the tiny fish in the aquarium he'd seen earlier. He wanted to ask Darius if those were the same blinkfish Renval had owned, but, as this was the most he'd ever heard Darius say in the last month or so, he stifled the urge to interrupt the man, not wanting to give the taciturn bodyguard any reason to clam up.
“I must have stared at that fish for weeks,” Darius continued. “I spent more time studying that fish than anyone alive – even Renval's uncle, who had discovered it. It took that long for me to realize the fish wasn't just darting forward...it sometimes moved to the side, or even backward. The blinkfish was too small to see if it was using its fins to move, so I did the obvious.”
“What's that?” Kyle asked, nothing obvious coming to mind.
“I created a gravity sphere around it,” Darius replied, “...trapping it in place.”
“Oh,” Kyle mumbled. It was obvious, he supposed, but only after Darius had mentioned it. Kyle recalled his failure as a Weaver, and wondered again if he had any real talent in the magical sciences. Memorizing runes and making lots of magic weren't very useful in and of themselves, not without skill in using magic.
“The fish darted right out of it,” Darius continued, seemingly oblivious to Kyle's sudden despair. “As if it weren't even there. So I deduced that the fish had either nullified my gravitational field, or it wasn't swimming at all...it was teleporting.”
“Ohhh,” Kyle breathed.
“Right,” Darius replied. “Luckily, with my...gift, I quickly confirmed that the fish wasn't nullifying my gravitational field. So, over the next few weeks, I figured out how the fish was teleporting, and mimicked the pattern.”
“That's how you invented teleportation?” Kyle asked. Darius smirked again.
“It wasn't that easy,” he countered. “First of all, the blinkfish masked the teleportation patterns with other, nonsense patterns sprinkled in between...a tactic I used later with the runes on my armor. And the patterns were always slightly different, depending on where the fish was at the time – and which direction it was traveling in.” He stood up from the edge of the stone fountain, turning around and facing the fish statue. It was over eight feet from water-spouting mouth to underwater tail...far larger than the pipsqueak of a fish it represented.
“But,” Darius continued, “...I did figure out that the fish moved the same distance every time – regardless of direction. So I assumed that the changes in the fish's patterns had something to do with current position and direction of travel only. And I was right; when I finally tested one of the patterns on one of the books Renval was having me copy at the time, it worked...sort of. Only a blinkfish-sized piece of the book moved, and only a few inches away at that. But it proved that my theory was correct.”
“How did Renval find out about it?” Kyle inquired. Darius turned away from the fish-statue, stepping onto the stone walkway, then starting a slow walk away from the stairway they – or rather, Kyle – had walked down. Kyle joined the bodyguard, for the moment forgetting his anger toward the man, walking at his side.
“The book I had taken a chunk out of was one of Renval's father's notebooks,” Darius answered. “He was furious when he found out about the damage, and would have had me whipped if I hadn't revealed how I'd done it.” He shook his head at the memory. “At first, Renval was...unconvinced. But after a demonstration...”
“Funny that you ruined one of his father's books on teleportation by teleporting it,” Kyle observed. Darius smirked.
“Renval said the same thing,” he agreed. “And when I told him how I'd figured the patterns out, he nearly crushed every rib in my body embracing me. After that, I never copied another book; we worked together, Renval and I, spending the rest of my year with him attempting to create a runic machine that could duplicate the blinkfish's power.”
“The red crystal on the dais,” Kyle breathed. It had been there in his dreams – Ampir's memories – all along. A single red crystal embedded in a circular stone dais, the device that had teleported Ampir's son to Earth over two thousand years ago. It was all starting to make sense now.
“That was an advanced prototype,” Darius countered. “The initial prototypes were far less sophisticated. By the time I was done with my research year, we'd managed to teleport a stone some ten feet or so. I left to continue my Battle-Runic training, and Renval was already well on his way toward perfecting the technology.”
“Did he show everyone?” Kyle asked. After all, Renval's father had been mocked for his obsession with teleportation, and Renval had been forced to study the matter in secret. If he'd been Renval, he would have run into the streets, shouting at the top of his lungs. And pointing and laughing at his father's critics. But Darius shook his head.
“Nope.”
“Well why not?” Kyle pressed. “He could've been rich and famous!”
“He already was rich and famous,” Darius countered. “Besides, Renval's focus was never on teleportation for teleportation's sake,” he added. “It was only one step toward completing his ultimate goal...and he didn't want to reveal his findings until he'd reached that goal.”
“Which was?”
“Origin,” Darius answered.
“Origin?” Kyle asked.
“Origin,” Darius repeated. Kyle frowned, wondering if Darius would say it again if he did. But he resisted the urge, wanting the man to continue his tale. If there was one thing he knew about the man, it was that Darius had little patience for inanity.
“What is Origin?” Kyle pressed.
“Where magic comes from,” Darius replied. Kyle frowned; he'd always assumed that magic came from people, not from any particular place. He told Darius as much.
“True,” he replied. “But where do people come from?”
Kyle's eyebrows knitted together, and he frowned at Darius. The answer, of course, was obvious.
“Earth,” he answered. “We evolved there,” he added.
“There are people on Doma,” Darius countered. “And horses, and dogs,” he added. Kyle couldn't disagree; when he'd first seen Kalibar's levitating carriage, pulled by two powerful horses, he'd wondered how an alien planet could have horses and people on it. It had seemed unlikely that they both had evolved to be the exact same on each planet.
“How is that possible?” Kyle asked.
“You tell me,” Darius replied.
By this point, they'd been walking for quite some time, the paved walkway leading them forward and downward. The garden by the porch, with its blinkfish fountains, was far behind, replaced by tall trees with glowing leaves flanking the path. Kyle glanced at one of these leaves, seeing a familiar pattern of green and blue dots pulsing on its surface. They were identical to the trees that Kyle had seen when he'd first awoken on Doma. There was a veritable forest of them here, interspersed with short grass and the occasional bush. There were, he noted, no rip-vines or killerpillers here. Before long, the walkway took a sharp turn, and the forest suddenly opened up. Kyle stopped in his tracks, the breath catching in his throat.
“Whoa,” he breathed.
The stone walkway continued forward, meeting a much wider stone road some tw
enty feet in the distance. This road was flanked by large, well-kept buildings three stories tall, their perfectly white stone walls carved with ornate patterns. Stately windows reflected the sun's rays, the light shimmering as it reflected off of the golden, metallic roofs. Beyond these buildings stood a giant, U-shaped structure, a mansion some eight stories high, its walls constructed of the same white stone as the other buildings. In the center of the U-shape, between the arms of the mansion, there was a courtyard complete with an elegant, three-tier fountain made of solid gold. In the center of the fountain stood a golden statue some twenty feet tall, of a man clad in armor from neck to toe, a silver mirrored visor obscuring his eyes. The statue's right arm was raised high into the air, gauntleted hand with its palm facing upward. A miniature island – also made of gold – floated a foot or so above that outstretch hand, only slightly bigger than the palm itself. Kyle stared at the statue, giving a low whistle.
“Nice statue,” he observed, turning to glance at Darius. The resemblance was uncanny.
“A gift,” Darius grumbled. “They insisted.”
“Who?” Kyle asked. Darius gestured outward with one hand.
“Them.”
It was only then that Kyle realized there were people in the distance. An old man stood by one of the three-story tall buildings, staring at Kyle and Darius silently. A middle-aged woman sat on the front steps of the building across from the old man, staring at something in her lap. A few people could be seen walking in the courtyard of the mansion beyond.
“Who are they?” Kyle asked. “And why are they staring at us?” Darius waved at the old man, and the old man waved back, a smile brightening his face. He sprinted toward them with remarkable swiftness; The woman, on the other hand, stayed right where she was, apparently oblivious to their presence.
“They're not staring at us,” Darius corrected. “They're staring at you.”
* * *
“Ampir!”
Kyle watched as the old man strode purposefully toward them, extending a hand out to Darius. Darius extended his own gauntleted hand, and shook the other man's hand briskly.