No Regrets

by Jan Stryvant

  "Something about his world was dying, that they had found a way to transcend death but they needed to find a new place and came here so they could study other worlds."

  "Talk about your vague statements!" Rowan laughed.

  "Well, he did say it would take too much time to explain it all."

  The First spoke up again, "We can discuss this later. Right now we need to focus on this gateway control. We know it can lock portals…"

  "Assuming it still works," Sean interrupted.

  "Yes, well, if it doesn't work, we may just want to see if we can enlist Mahkiyoc's help to make it work."

  "I don't think he'd like that much, Dad!" Estrella said with a smirk.

  "I don't care if he likes it. Our goal, our only goal, is to put an end to these invasions of our territory. Mahkiyoc's people caused this problem, so he can help us put an end to it. If he can't," the First shrugged, "then we really don't have anymore use for him, do we?"

  Ξ

  Prince Talt looked across the cleared field from beneath the trees. There was a large building set into the side of the mountain here. One of those smooth ones that had been constructed by the ancients, the race that some legends said they had conquered so they could rule here.

  The trip here had been a difficult one; they had been attacked by several monsters along the way. Monsters of a type he'd never seen before. Their skin was as hard as metal, and the damage they did when they attacked was considerable. But they were slow, and several of them moved in such a manner as to make it seem that they were injured.

  Destroying them had taken a great deal of time and effort, and Prince Talt had lost a fair number of his bonde and råge in dealing with them. He'd even lost a pair of raseri who had thought to engage one of the monsters when it looked like it was mortally wounded.

  The next problem they ran into was just an hour ago. Apparently the ley-lines here had gotten so powerful, that any of his wizards that stepped on one was immediately rooted to the spot and burned to death.

  He'd lost almost half of them before they discovered the cause of the problem and he'd sent them back. He himself had decided that it might be best for him to not set foot on the ground and had stayed on his mount.

  But he was here now and looking out across the cleared field at the building. He wondered what his next step was.

  "Rreyan!" Prince Talt said, turning to one of his ridders.

  "Yes, my Prince?"

  "Go up there and see if you can find a door."

  Rreyan gave a small shake as his eyes widened. But he knew better than to disobey, and carefully, if not confidently, he strode out of the trees and made his way towards the building.

  Prince Talt watched, waiting to see what fate awaited his ridder as Rreyan continued across the open ground. Surprisingly, nothing happened to him, and he stopped before the building, looking at it.

  "Call out and see if anyone is there!" Prince Talt ordered.

  "In the name of Prince Talt! Show yourself!" Rreyan called out.

  After a minute of no response, Rreyan started to feel more confident. Going over to the spot that looked like a door, he pulled out his sword and, using the pommel, beat on it several times.

  "In the name of Prince Talt! Open!" he called out again. After another minute of silence, Rreyan turned back to Prince Talt and shrugged. "It would seem, my Prince, that there is no one here."

  Prince Talt opened his mouth to order Rreyan to try and find a way inside, but then stopped and closed it, thinking for a moment. He had been ordered to come here and find the master of the ley-lands.

  He'd done that. But he could clearly see there were no answers to be found here. There was no one here he could ask questions of, no legendary figure of knowledge. If he spent time here trying to get inside—something he hadn't been ordered to do—he would be missing out on the feeding the others were now no doubt taking part in.

  Besides which, there was still the problem with the lions. If he hadn't lost his tracking demons in that fight, he could have gotten back on their trail and tried to kill them. But he had, so he couldn't.

  Truly, his best option now was to return to King Sladd, report all he had learned, and then take his place in the queue to invade once more.

  "Come, Rreyan," Prince Talt said, waving his hand. Turning his mount around to face his two lords, he waved for them to turn their mounts around as well.

  "We're done here. There is no master here to speak with, if there ever was. Let us return home."

  Ξ

  "How much farther is this gate?" Grism grumbled.

  "What, getting tired already?" Trevor joked.

  "No, I'm just bored. That village last night? Hell, that thing was tiny! And now we don't get to do anything until when, a day or two? How long after we resupply?"

  "I didn't know you were in a rush, Gris," Jessie said, glancing back at him as they slowly jogged along.

  "The more of them we kill, the less of them there are," he said. "And the less of them there are, the less people will die. I mean, really, we finally get a chance to pay them back, and we're just hitting small towns? Why don't we go hit one of their cities?"

  "Because Esti told us they don't have any cities."

  "Also," Trevor added, "there's only forty of us."

  "Well, maybe we should go tell the First we want some more! So far this has been easy! I want a challenge! I want to kill their leaders! Their princes! Their kings!"

  "Pick it up! Company!" Tycho, who'd been doing the rear guard with Krista, yelled as the two of them came running up from behind.

  "What?" Trevor said, looking shocked, but they all picked up the pace immediately to match Tycho's.

  "We got a large group coming up behind us on those demon-horses! I think it's a prince and a bunch of lords! The rest of them are all on foot, and they're running!"

  "You had to jinx it, didn't you, Gris?" Jake grumbled.

  "Great!" Grism laughed. "Let's find a place to ambush them!"

  "We'll get them at the gateway," Trevor said. "But we have to get there first so we can kill the defenders!"

  "Why the gateway?"

  "Because we can call for more support if we need it! That's why! Plus, I'm out of grenades! Now save your breath and run!" Trevor turned to Jessie as she ran alongside him.

  "You lead; I'll bring up the rear. I want to get a look."

  "Okay!"

  Slowing down, Trevor quickly made his way to the back of the group and started glancing behind him. It took him a moment to find a tree that was tall enough that he could launch himself up it, and using his claws, he climbed up a good twenty feet so he could get a clear view behind him.

  They came into view quickly. They weren't going as fast as the others now were running, but they were definitely going faster than his group had been before Tycho's warning. There were a lot of them. Hundreds, many hundreds, and only half of them looked like gnashers or bonde. He quickly counted two dozen ridders, half a dozen biskops, and another dozen large demons he couldn't identify from here. While he was looking at them, the one at the very front, who he suspected was a prince, started to point at him.

  Dropping to the ground, Trevor took off with a burst of speed as the tree he'd been in exploded.

  "Oh, great!" he grumbled. Apparently these djevels, or at least that lead one, knew magic. He spent the next half hour running about as fast as he could until he caught up with the others, who had slowed to a fast trot to catch their breaths. Lions were not long-distance runners.

  "I hope they can't keep that pace up," Trevor said, panting. "Because one of them is definitely a magic user, and I'm not sure how well we can deal with that."

  "What do we do when we get to the gateway?" Jessie asked.

  "Run in guns blazing; we need to kill everything there as quickly as possible. Once we do that, we need to find some good sniping positions; maybe we can get lucky and kill that guy first. But..."

  "But?"

  "But we may need to retreat throug
h that gate. There's a lot more of them than there are of us, and if they have a lot of magic, I just don't know if we have enough to take 'em on."

  "You heard him!" Jessie said. "Now! Pick up the pace! We're almost there!"

  "We are?" Grism asked.

  "We better be," Jake said, panting. "I don't know about you, but I don't think I can keep this up much longer!"

  Taking a deep breath, Trevor took off after Jessie and just followed her tail as she ran. He wasn't sure how much longer they had to go; they didn't exactly have a map after all. But the last thing any of them wanted was to be caught out in the woods by a larger force that knew the lay of the land.

  Trevor concentrated on Jessie's tail and continued to stumble along after her. Opening himself up, he reached out to the pool of power as he started to get desperate, then almost tripped in shock as he saw just how much was there! He'd never seen it so full before! Grabbing some, he fed it into his body and felt his strength quickly returning.

  "Dip into the pool!" he yelled out.

  "What?" Lyle asked, panting. "We can't do that."

  "It's full!" Trevor growled and suddenly everyone picked up the pace.

  "What the hell?" Lyle asked as suddenly they were all running again.

  "It's been so long since we've been alive that none of us thought to check it!"

  "That's good, because we're here!" Jessie yelled, and sure enough, as Trevor looked up, they were breaking out of the trees into an encampment with a small building, and a large ring just like the one they'd come here by, only this one didn't have any kind of palisade around it.

  Running in at full speed, they all spread out as they came upon the bonde who were guarding it, taking them completely by surprise. They plowed right into and over the first group, tearing them up with their claws and quickly killing them, then they shifted into their hybrid forms and, grabbing at their weapons, they started shooting everything that was still moving. The ridder that came out of the small building didn't stand a chance and was shot to death instantly.

  Five lions then ran in, and from the sounds of the gunfire, Trevor could only guess they'd found the biskop they'd suspected was stationed here.

  "Everyone! Take up position! And leave a clear lane to the gateway!"

  Just then a loud tone, like a gong, came from the gateway and reverberated through the area as a dot formed in the center of it and quickly expanded out to fill the stone ring.

  "Looks like we got here right on time!" Quinn said.

  "Quinn! Grab Tycho and get all the grenades they have!"

  "Got it, Trev!"

  Trevor turned to look at Jessie, who was already breaking them up, setting half of them in cover so they could fight the demons when they arrived.

  "Boe! Lena! See if you can set some trip lines with the grenades you have left! Jake! Go back and scout!"

  "How long do you think we have?" Jessie asked as Boe and Lena ran forward, each with a bag full of grenades.

  "Not long enough, I'm sure!"

  Turning back to the remaining fourteen, Trevor checked the positions Jessie had sent them to, and after a couple of minor adjustments, he grabbed two others and started moving and dragging around whatever they could find to improve their positions.

  "Either we got further ahead than we thought, or these people are slow!" Lena grumbled as she tied off the last grenade and ran back to her position.

  "Don't look gift horses in the mouth!" Trevor called back as they settled in to wait.

  They didn't have much longer to wait then, as Jake came running out of the brush.

  "They're close behind me! They stopped to reorganize! They're sending the cannon fodder first!"

  Jake had just made it to the cover of the small structure that Trevor was on the roof of when the first line of attackers showed up. Sure enough, it was almost all gnashers, with only a few råge driving them forward.

  Trevor immediately started to pick off the råge, as the others opened fire as well.

  "There go all our traps!" Jessie growled as most of the grenades went off as the gnashers set off the trip lines.

  Trevor didn't say anything, just continued to shoot, reload, and shoot again. There were hundreds of the little bastards, and thankfully the booby traps had helped cut down their numbers significantly, each grenade cutting dozens of them down, as they were packed so tightly.

  "I wish Quinn would get back here!" Karn yelled. "I'm almost out of grenades!"

  "I told you all not to waste them!" Trevor yelled back.

  "How long have they been gone now?"

  "Fifteen, twenty minutes? Remember, it takes time for them to get to the gateway!"

  "Speak of the devil and he appears!" Jake said, laughing.

  Looking over at the gateway, Trevor saw that Quinn, followed closely by Tycho, had come through the gateway, each carrying a large crate of grenades and heading directly towards them.

  "What the…"

  Right behind Tycho, more lions and wolves were coming out of the gateway, and they were each carrying a metal shield that they stuck into the ground, hammered into place. Pulling out their weapons, they crouched down behind and started firing into the approaching enemy as well.

  "Quinn! What the hell is going on?" Trevor growled as Quinn dumped a satchel full of grenades besides him.

  "I told them we were being attacked. They came through to help us in case you want us to withdraw."

  "Withdraw? We can't withdraw! We just got here!" Trevor growled.

  "We got a prince on our tail! And no magic user! Do you really want to mess with him?"

  "Damn," Trevor swore and looked at the gateway.

  "Wait! I got an idea!" Jessie said and, turning towards the lions defending the gate, she whistled.

  "What?" Takka, the lioness in charge, called back.

  "Come up here and take our positions, then pull out when the prince shows!"

  "Why?"

  "Because he'll think you're us!"

  Trevor blinked and quickly started slinging his gear. It was brilliant.

  "You heard Jessie!" he said, turning to the group. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

  Giving Jessie a hug, Trevor jumped off the back of the building as the rest of his and Jessie's squads pulled back, and the other lions and the wolves engaged the attackers, then once they were all together they ran off, single file, into the woods heading directly away from the fight.

  "You know, for this to work, we can't let them know we're here for a couple of days," Jessie told him.

  "And we need to be far away from here, so they think we're another group."

  "Do you think they'll fall for it?" Grism asked.

  "Guess we'll find out, won't we?" Trevor said with a shrug as they continued to move quickly away from the area.

  Prince Vises Ikke looked around as his surviving biskops as their ridders and råge put their bonde and few surviving gnashers to work building a defense against any more attempts by the lions to sally forth from the gateway that was sitting there, open.

  When he'd finally forced them back through the gateway, he'd sent two biskops with their ridders and supporting bonde through to try and finish them off.

  None had returned, and he wasn't stupid enough to send any more out to be slaughtered. He knew that King Sladd didn't think the lions had enough forces to invade, but he was starting to wonder about that. True, about half of their forces had been other beastmen, the ones they'd fought numerous times before, and which, while harder to kill, could still be killed.

  But he hadn't found a single lion carcass among the bodies of the other dead beastmen when he'd personally examined the battlefield.

  Then of course were their weapons. Several of the lost Prince Spis' troops had brought back scavenged examples of these 'rifles' the lions were equipping their soldiers with, but none of them did anything here, yet the ones they'd shown up with today had worked, and worked well.

  There was more going on here than he understood. When he got back
to his castle, he would definitely be summoning his advisors. He didn't envy the king and his new plan to personally invade the jagtområder; he would be more than happy to stay here and consolidate his power until such time as things were safe. After all, if more princes continued to die, that would leave him, Prince Vises Ikke, in the perfect position to gather up their remaining lords and lands and swear them to him, personally.

  Who knows? By the time this pass ended, if the permanent gateway was not complete, he might very well go from the weakest of King Sladd's princes to the strongest. He already had his troops preparing for the day Sladd struck down Talt, whose ambitions really were no longer all that hard to see by any who choose to look.

  Gateway Control

  "The train's stopping," Peg said, looking up.

  Getting up from where he'd been lying on the floor with his head in Roxy's lap, Sean shook out his mane, picked up his rifle, and moved to the doorway as the car came out into the railway station.

  As stations went, this one looked very much like the first one. It was white, about a hundred feet or so long, with a central platform that had tracks on both sides. There was a staircase going up from the center of the platform.

  "Well, everyone out, and let's see what we're dealing with," the First said. Standing up, he motioned for the others to leave the car. Sean couldn't help but notice that the First ushered Mahkiyoc out in front of him.

  "Okay, give me a moment to put up a shield," Sean said, casting one in front of him as he moved to the bottom of the stairs.

  "Jip and Pen, check out the door on the north end," Keairra said as Sean was casting. "Di and Sash, take the one at the south."

  Both sets of lionesses trotted off. Sean figured one was probably an elevator and the other was a machine room, just like at the place they'd started at. But he still waited until they'd finished checking the doors out and returned before continuing up.

  "Peg, do you have a map for us?"

  "Yup! Next level up is machine rooms, same for the two after that."

  "Really?" Sean said and looked back as she held up her tablet.