Brace For the Wolves

by Nathan Thompson

  "Noted," I nodded. "That's it, though? There's no other way to travel between worlds?"

  "Actually," Breena began nervously. "There's one more. Well, two more. The first way is if you have enough raw magic and a device that has everything you need to live inside of it, such as food, water, air and other stuff. You can use that device to ship yourself across the blackness between worlds and reach a new location. Or if you're a creature that doesn't need most of that stuff, like an Icon, then you can just use your raw power to do the traveling. But it will seriously drain you and you'll be vulnerable to anyone who realizes that you made the trip. Again, that's why any Dark Icon who might be traveling that way is laying low for so long. I'm not even sure anyone actually travels that way, but it's theoretically possible, so I'm letting you know just in case. But the second one's the one that worries me." Breena's eyes darted around nervously. That was pretty unusual for my little companion. Because whatever else may be true about her, she's not exactly subtle.

  "The last way is through the labyrinths," the little fairy said finally.

  "The what?" I asked, remembering the old Greek minotaur myth.

  "There are certain locations on each planet that form connections to the other worlds. They're like hallways," Breena continued. "Hallways full of monsters."

  "Really?" I asked. "What kind of monsters? You mean like the kind I fight on Challenges?"

  "I mean 'all kinds of monsters'," Breena specified. "Including many kinds we haven't discovered yet. You can find almost anything in the halls between worlds."

  "Wow," I replied. "That sounds a little scary. Do they ever leave those hallways and enter our worlds?"

  Breena nodded.

  "Some scholars think that's how some Challenges are formed. That monsters invade from the hallways. I think that's only partially true, because then we'd be discovering far more unique monsters every year. There's some weird stuff in those places, Wes."

  "Okay," I said, concentrating. "But just to clarify, they can come here, to Avalon?"

  Breena nodded again, unhappily.

  "Every single world that Stell monitored had a hallway linking back to Avalon. I think even if we beat off the Horde and handle this place, we won't truly be safe."

  "Can the hallways be closed off?" I asked, trying to stay positive.

  "Stell could close them," Breena affirmed. "Or at least blockade them. I never found out how. But she was able to keep all of the hallways under control in our part of the Expanse. But since I can't do it, I can't teach you," she complained.

  "Alright, no problem," I placated. "One problem at a time. Do you think the monsters here all came from those hallways?"

  "I don't know," Breena admitted. "Maybe? But there were large groups of them, apparently, so they clearly traveled through together. That's almost impossible to do through the hallways without risking something dangerous noticing your group and taking a giant bite out of it. They could have gotten help traveling between worlds, but the only group famous for doing that, other than... the Starsown…" Breena began to trail off.

  "... is the Umbra," she finished, wide-eyed. "Wes," she added. "I just remembered something. About Cavus."

  "What, Breena?" I asked worriedly.

  "The Umbra, according to the stories of Stell’s people, subdue worlds in two ways. The first way is to do what they probably did to Stell's homeworld: show up in a large group and devour everyone on the planet except for maybe a handful of slaves, and do it so thoroughly so that no one, even the surviving slaves, ever really remembers anything about that world but a handful of legends. They only do that when they are sure they've isolated that world from outside help, though. Other worlds that aren't as isolated, they are said to draft help for. Some Umbras keep slaves and other minions. And it's said that others try to tempt people on other worlds with power, so that those people will either help the Umbra conquer that world, or help them conquer a different one.”

  "Like Cavus did," I said slowly. Cavus had attacked us by relying on Rhodes' people to both distract us and summon him to the world. "But Cavus didn't summon an army to us. An army summoned him."

  "Right," Breena nodded. "Legends said the Umbra could travel to other worlds, but they do so differently than the Starsown. They can't bring their whole bodies over nearly as easily, but their consciousness can travel much farther. I wonder..." She paused, thinking. "I wonder if they travel by contacting people on other worlds, teaching them power, in exchange to be brought over to the new world."

  "That sounds rather Faustian, and kind of stupid of people," I said, and luckily Breena seemed to get the reference about Faust. "Why would you accept power from something that wanted to eat your world?"

  "I don't know," the little fairy said. "This is just me guessing. They might have a different way that they go about their conquests. All I know is that when a single Umbra attacks a world, it usually brings some kind of help. Different legends reference different kinds of help: slaves, personal armies, or contracted allies." She glanced uncomfortably at Virtus' secured skull on me.

  "So what you're really getting at," I sighed, "is that there might be an Umbra on this world, too."

  "I... I don't know, Wes." Breena hesitated. "I mean there's still a lot about the Expanse that Stell and I don't know. But the Starsown and the Umbra are the only two traveling races we've ever heard about that can bring large groups of people safely between worlds."

  "Then why hasn't an Umbra attacked us yet?" I asked plainly.

  "Maybe it's sealed?" Breena asked. "When we searched this place, we only found three things: ghosts we couldn't help, a shelter we could maybe use, and something deep within the ruins that compelled us not to disturb it. I think the Avalonians managed to seal their conquerors deep inside with them. That's why all we've seen of this world has been empty ruins."

  It felt like there were probably holes in that explanation. But I'd need more information to determine that. I'd have to ask Virtus when he had recovered or the little ghost when she was more stable.

  At any rate, though, we had arrived to a new location. The blackened ruins and dead trees gave way to another clearing. Here, the loose dirt was replaced by white cobblestones, showing a paved road.

  Up ahead was a large, white, wall, different from the classical Greek architecture that had covered most of Avalon. The massive bricks were taller than I was and several times as wide, and they were fitted tightly together, with the seams practically invisible between them. They stretched out as far as I could see in both directions, and I couldn't find the roof of the building no matter how much I craned my head back. That was odd, I realized. Something like this should have been able to stand out during one of the breaks in the treeline.

  Don't look, a voice said in my mind, then repeated itself. Don't look. Don't look.

  No wonder Stell never really checked this place out. I'd have already been long gone if I hadn't already gotten something to show for all of this.

  "Why is this place in better repair?" I asked out loud, trying to shake the creepy voices out of my mind.

  "Stronger place," the little ghost chose to reply. "Better building. And better maintained. Don't go in," she added, slipping a bit into her old, frightened speech patterns. "Bad things are in there."

  "I have to go, little ghost," I replied patiently. "We need to free Mister Sergeant, remember? And the others? And so that you can have names again?"

  "The bad things are in there," the little ghost replied. "The very bad ones."

  "Right," I nodded. "And someone needs to take care of them. That's my job now."

  I just hoped I was strong enough.

  This whole scenario had caught me in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, I was down here to try and find the means to get strong enough to where I could drive off the howler Horde outside of the shelter. On the other hand, I had been wondering if whatever creatures lurked below here might be an even bigger problem for me. I had to push past my hesitation though. We had already gained
more weapons from doing this, and at least Karim, Weylin, and Eadric were running around in actual armor and gear now. In fact, we had gathered so much loot earlier that we could probably start arming all the refugees, not that they had any combat experience.

  But I got the feeling Virtus could fix that, if he got his body back. Furthermore, the thousand-year old warrior was a force-multiplier all on his own. Counting him, I've run into a total of two people that had successfully taken me down in a one-on-one fight. And Cavus was the other one.

  That thought brought back more of my confidence, and probably a good bit of arrogance too. I put away my hesitation and took another look at the massive white stone wall ahead of me. I thought I might have seen the outline of a hidden door, but when I got near it, something made me hesitate.

  Turn back, an unknown voice said in my mind. Turn back, run and hide.

  My hand shivered. I tried to fight it down.

  "Mister Dragon?" the little ghost suddenly spoke up.

  "Yes?" I asked. "And why do you call me that name, little ghost?"

  "Because you're a dragon," the little ghost said simply. "And because I just realized something. You're strong enough, Mister Dragon. Mister Sergeant wouldn't have given up if you weren't."

  I didn't know what she meant by that, because 'Mister Sergeant' had knocked me around the block like he wanted to give me a free tour of the neighborhood by hitting me around with a hammer. But then I decided I needed all the encouragement I could get, so I went back to looking for a way into the large stone building. Then I realized I was being an idiot again.

  "Hey Breena, Karim, Weylin, Eadric. Anyone else who has more experience than me. What do you make of this?"

  "We've seen this before once," Breena admitted when she flew back over my shoulder. "We weren't really focusing on the architecture at the time, but we could tell that there were powerful wards all around the stonework, and that it had been weakening. But we heard the same freaky voices you heard, so we just reinforced the place with our own wards and waited until there was a less risky time to examine it further."

  "Did that time ever come?" Weylin asked, seeming curious. Breena just snorted.

  "Not really. There were always Trials and Tumults and civilizations and worlds to manage. And Challengers to train," she added as she glanced at me. "Occasionally we'd poke around the area with divination magic but still, we saw nothing other than the wards. We weren't even sure the ghostly voices we heard were real." She looked apologetically at where we all thought the invisible ghost was hovering.

  "Not your fault," the girl said quietly. "I had to drive others away. I didn't want them to look."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I don't know," she replied after a moment. "Now that I'm with you... my old reasons don't make sense. I don't know what's changing."

  "Hmm," Karim said as he walked closer to the giant wall. "Faint script again. Even more obscure than the writing at the clearing near where the refugees are."

  "Can you understand it?" Breena said as she buzzed over. "We saw it before we started learning the alphabets on your other worlds, so we never had much chance to compare."

  "Not really." The dark-skinned mage shook his head. "I'm only recognizing one letter out of every hundred, at best. But the letters resemble those used in script magic that restricts, impedes, or compels to avoid. But those same letters appear to be facing in every direction."

  "I was afraid of that," Breena said softly.

  "Wait, wait," I said, hoping I wasn't actually catching on. "Are you saying that the only magic here you recognize is designed not only to keep things out of this building, but to also keep things in?"

  The wizard nodded.

  "I'm afraid so. It's possible I'm wrong, but I wouldn't count on it. In fact, it's as if someone had tried to write ‘Stop, stay, and go away,’ in every language they knew, all over this structure."

  "That would explain the lingering whispers too," Weylin spoke up. "I hadn't been sure, but it feels like there's a rhythm to them." He cocked a pointed ear upward as he said that, stepping around. "They happen at certain steps... like beats to a song."

  "Alright," I said. "So that's at least two types of magic in place, script and song. What about the stonework, Eadric? What's it say to you? Do you think you can make any message behind it?" I almost winced as I said that, because unlike songs and written script, buildings were not words.

  "Yup," the dwarf nodded. "That's actually pretty clear engineering."

  "Really?" I asked, relieved that I hadn't asked a stupid question. Or at least a very stupid one.

  "The whole thing says ‘go fuck off and die.’ No, that's not quite right. ‘Go fuck off or you'll die.’ There you go." He started pointing at the wall, in a way where I wasn't sure if he was being an asshole on purpose or not. "You can see it here in the massive, dozen-ton stone blocks fastened closely together. They did that because they don't want you to just walk through the barrier. And they built it this high so that no one would step or fly over it, and this wide so that no one would just walk around it."

  "Thanks," I said sarcastically.

  "And they built this hidden door right here, because they were idiots," Eadric finished, gesturing at the same space I had been staring at before. "That or the guys still working on the other side needed a way to leave for lunch. Or," he considered, stroking his thick beard, "maybe they wanted something to get in once, and then never leave again."

  That was not a comforting thought.

  "Wes," Breena began. "Are we still sure this is a good idea?"

  "No," I replied, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. "I was never sure this was a good idea. In fact, I'm growing more and more confident that this is a terrible idea. But given our other options, that of facing monsters outside that appear to be bred specifically to kill us, and who are currently able to slowly starve us out of here, it's the best choice out of a bunch of really bad ideas." I paused, taking another moment to think. "Okay, here's what I have for a plan. We check the entrance for traps. We make sure it's as safe as possible before we go through the door. Then we look carefully around. Avalon, are you still watching the clearing to protect us from the Horde?"

  "Affirmative. The shelter's barrier remains unbreached. The hostiles have not come any closer."

  "Fantastic. When we enter this door I want you to verify that you are still able to contact me. In fact, I want you to give me a signal every minute or so, so that I can tell if we've gone out of range or something."

  "Command confirmed."

  "Great. That takes care of our biggest concern, so we're not pressed for time. At least if something does go wrong, we'll have some forewarning and Avalon can give us the fastest possible escape route out of here. Right?" I realized I was making a lot of assumptions, but Avalon relieved me with its next reply.

  "Confirmed. Data has been updated for this location. A route out can now be easily planned."

  "Fantastic," I said, still thinking as quickly as I could. "On that note, escape is exactly what we'll do if we find something we can't handle. Realistically, all we need is to find something that will make us considerably stronger, or gives us a resource that can extend everyone's time here before we starve to death. That last one probably isn't as much a problem as I think it is, but I still don't like our nutritional options out here because it still feels like we're one wrong turn away from a massive famine. But back to my point. If we find something that makes us safer, or gets us more food, and we can still leave safely, we've won. We've accomplished our main objective. Everyone understand that?"

  Three heads and a fairy all bobbed up and down.

  "Now," I continued. "If we can somehow get to the root of the problem here as well, where we can free whoever else is captive here, we're in an even better position. But our main goal is to improve our situation while staying alive. So we'll flee at the first sign of real trouble. By real trouble I mean anything we think we can't handle. That's the best plan I have.
Does anyone have any better ideas? Anyone at all, other than the eighteen-year old kid who's still in charge for some reason?"

  "Nope."

  "You've still got it covered."

  "Your plan is sound, Lord Challenger."

  "Yeah, Wes! And don't worry! If you start screwing up, we'll point it out to you! Because we're your friends!"

  Jackasses. All of them. I sighed and gave up.

  "Let's just figure out how to open this stupid door."

  Karim, Weylin, and Eadric all went to work, with Breena fluttering around their shoulders and making observations. I couldn't really make out what they were all doing, but they seemed to have the operation in hand so I took the opportunity to stay out of their way and just rest.

  "Little ghost," I said after a minute. "Can you tell me why you think I'm a dragon?"

  "Why wouldn't I think you're a dragon, Mister Dragon?" the ghost responded in a bemused voice.

  I took a moment to gather my thoughts.

  "Because I have pink flesh instead of scales, no tail, no wings, no breath weapon of any kind, blunt, short nails instead of claws, walk upright everywhere I go, sleep on my bed instead of a pile of gold, and do not kidnap or eat fair maidens," I replied.

  To my surprise, the little ghost giggled.

  "You're silly," she said. "You don't need any of that to be a dragon."

  "Go ahead and fill me in then," I said. "Tell me what it is that makes me a dragon?"

  "You just are," the little ghost giggled again. "It's written inside of you. Can't you tell?"

  "No I can't," I shook my head.

  Yes you can, Pain said smugly in my mind, and I felt a faint burning sensation run along my blood. You know exactly why she sees you as such. But deny it for as long as you wish.

  Be quiet, I said back forcefully. But I still shuddered, despite all my defiance.

  I remembered the massive black-and-red shape from my dream. Mister Annoying, my father had called him. Ignore him, my dad had said.

  Why couldn't you have told me more, Father?

  "Oh. Well, you could tell if you were one of us," the spirit said simply. "Recognizing the Pendragon is what we do."