by Steve McHugh
“Why was Mammon here?” Mordred asked.
“The dwarves and elves helped fight against the devils,” Dralas told them. “When it was done, Mammon was placed here because there was nowhere else to put him. Instead of this place being a prison for many, it became a prison for two. Well, three if you count me.”
Layla looked at the watch on her wrist. It was black and able to withstand a blow from a hammer, although she wasn’t really sure what the point of such a thing was. “We’ve been here a few hours,” she said, feeling a nervous anxiety build up inside of her gut.
“Let’s go see if they’ve figured out how to work the realm gate,” Chloe said.
“You staying here?” Mordred asked Dralas, who appeared to be far too large to fit down the stairs.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I’ll just wait for you all to return.”
Mordred, Chloe, and Layla descended the stairs to the floor below, where they found the rest of the group in the room with the realm gate.
“Anyone got good news?” Mordred asked.
“Define good,” Zamek said with a slight sigh. “We can’t get through the realm gate,” he explained. “There aren’t enough runes carved into the gate to actually give us the power we’d need to link two realm gates.”
“Can we get the power?” Layla asked.
“We can, but it’ll take time,” Zamek said.
“Is there good news?” Chloe asked.
“We can get picture and sound,” Irkalla said. “Zamek identified the missing runes, and he knows the runes on the realm gate he was working on in Greenland.”
“You were building a new realm gate?” Tarron asked. “Oh, yes, sorry, I remember now. This is still taking some getting used to. I’ll go back to sit with Dralas—I don’t think you have time to explain my being here to your friends.”
“I’ll join you,” Irkalla said, making sure it sounded like he had exactly zero choice in the matter.
Remy had found a comfortable chair and waved his hand in their direction. “Scream if anyone needs something.”
“I’ve thought of a problem,” Chloe said. “Time here and time in Greenland are different. What happens when we activate the gate and we can’t fully link them?”
“The gates link and synch at the same time,” Zamek said. “So, what you see here and there are moving at the same time, which will be the time in the Earth realm as that’s the center of all the realm gates.”
“So, time directly around the realm gates is always the same?” Layla asked. “It’s why when we walk from the Earth realm to here, we don’t fall over because time moves differently.”
“This has been fascinating,” Remy said from the corner of the room. “But has the big gate started glowing yet? Because I’m not sure I can stand another conversation without needing to take a piss.”
There was a swoosh of power and Zamek scrambled back as the realm gate changed from nothing into a mass of color, and then Zamek’s workshop back in Greenland appeared.
Tommy and Diana stepped into view as Nabu hurried to get to his feet. “Damn it, you scared me,” Nabu snapped. “I was trying to get this thing to connect to another realm gate.”
Nabu had been the Mesopotamian god of wisdom and was an och, a species so rare he might be the only one left. He brushed down his white shirt and black trousers before running a hand over his smooth chin.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Layla said.
“What’s wrong?” Tommy asked. He’d grown a large beard in the last few months and had been horrified to find it flecked with gray.
“Avalon is on the way to attack the base,” Layla said, before going on to explain further.
“I’ll go warn the others,” Nabu said when Layla had finished.
Diana growled, the werebear beast inside her straining to be released.
“Please be careful,” Layla said. “I got the impression that it won’t be a small force.”
“We’ll evacuate who we can,” Tommy said as the sounds of an explosion made the walls shake. “Looks like they’ve started.”
Diana transformed into her werebear form. “Be careful,” she told everyone. “That means you too, Remy.”
“If you die, I’m going to be really pissed off,” Remy told her, his eyes moist, his jaw firmly set.
“Get to Shadow Falls,” Tommy said as the hair on his body grew and he transformed into his werewolf beast form.
“You too,” Mordred said as the realm gate flickered before powering down.
Zamek sat still for several seconds as he tried to get the power to restore, and punched the gate when it didn’t, breaking off a piece of it.
“So, what’s the plan?” Remy asked.
“We get out of here,” Layla said. “We get to our friends.”
“And we make Abaddon pay,” Chloe finished for her.
“My kind of plan,” Mordred said.
Everyone left the realm gate room and walked back up the stairs to find Tarron, Irkalla, and Dralas.
“Right, we need to find a way out of this place,” Layla said. “Tommy and Nabu mentioned Shadow Falls.”
“What is that?” Tarron asked.
Layla shrugged. “A realm, but I’ve never been there.”
Mordred stepped forward. “I have. Looks like there’s info in my brain that you need, but I can’t tell you that this will be fun.”
Tarron stood and placed his hands on Mordred in the same way he had done to Layla a short time earlier. Thirty seconds later, when Tarron had finished, Mordred walked away while Tarron screamed for a good ten seconds, although it felt a lot longer to Layla. Mordred kept his distance, but looked over to see how the shadow elf was doing. When Tarron finished, his face was pale and sweat dripped from his brow.
“You okay?” Mordred called out.
Dralas knelt beside the shadow elf, giving Layla the impression that there was more to their relationship than just jailer and prisoner.
“What did you do?” Dralas demanded.
“Not his fault,” Tarron said. “All that pain, and suffering, and hurt, and rage, hate, anger, fury. All of it in your mind and heart for centuries. How are you alive? How are you not a gibbering wreck on the floor? What you underwent at the hands of the blood elves, at the hands of people who called you friend, it broke you.”
“I know,” Mordred said without emotion. “I was there.”
“How’d you come back?” Tarron asked.
“Mario.”
“What?” Tarron asked.
“Zelda too. Little bit of Final Fantasy. Some Halo. Oh, and I got shot in the head which removed the blood curse marks screwing me up. But other than that, video games helped.”
Tarron continued to stare at Mordred before speaking. “There’s an elven realm gate in this Shadow Falls place. I knew the realm as something else. A shadow elf realm. Whoever named it Shadow Falls presumably knew of its origin.”
“We never knew if it was a sun-elf- or shadow-elf-created realm gate,” Mordred said.
Tarron laughed, although it seemed bitter and unpleasant to Layla. “Sun elves can’t make them. It was always one of the bones of contention between our people. We figured it out and kept the information to ourselves.”
“Explains why there haven’t been new ones popping up all over the place since the civil war between your peoples,” Remy said.
“Can you make one?” Chloe asked.
Tarron nodded. “In theory, yes. It’s just some rudimentary elven writings. In fact, working with Zamek, we might be able to combine the dwarven gate that he found with an elven gate. It was something being worked on before I was put in here.”
Zamek’s eyes lit up. “That would be an exceptionally interesting idea.”
“No, it really isn’t,” Remy said.
“The problem with elven is that it’s only readable by elves,” Tarron continued, ignoring Remy. “I guess you would call that a weird idea, but it’s knowledge that is only passed on by linking minds. And w
e didn’t usually link minds with anyone who wasn’t elven.”
“Okay, so we link minds,” Zamek said. “And then we should both be able to work on this realm gate.”
Layla looked over at Mordred. “You okay?” she asked.
Mordred smiled. “I will be.”
Layla looked back at Tarron, and a horrible realization dawned. “To activate the gate, we need a death.”
No one looked like they were particularly fond of what Layla was suggesting. All except Tarron, who was smiling.
“That’s really creepy,” Mordred said. “And I know creepy. No one is dying here today.”
“I’m happy to see that Layla’s memories are still taking on my own,” Tarron said. “It is always a longer process with non-elves. You’ll probably find that they continue to creep in for several hours or maybe days.”
“That’s nice and all, but where do we find someone willing to die?” Remy asked. “And don’t anyone say from one of us.”
“You have a bunch of lives left,” Irkalla said with a slight smirk.
“Piss off,” Remy said, coughing into his hands. “Sorry, it’s a dreadful affliction.”
“Technically we only need blood,” Tarron said. “No one needs to die here. The death was only ever used to activate a realm gate because it was a way of killing prisoners.”
“You used prisoners to activate realm gates?” Chloe asked. “That’s more than a little messed up.”
“Not five thousand years ago it wasn’t,” Tarron said. “And we can’t get anywhere without leaving this prison to find someone who we can use as a sacrifice.”
“I’ll say it again for anyone hard of hearing,” Mordred said. “No one is being sacrificed today.”
“How about if we all bleed a little?” Chloe asked. “How much blood do we need?”
Tarron thought about it. “A few pints,” he said eventually.
“Okay, but who’s going to get cut that badly?” Layla asked.
“I can draw the blood out,” Mordred said. “Blood magic can force something to bleed a lot, more than it usually would. It’s not going to be a fun experience though.”
“Mordred,” Layla said, placing a hand on his arm. “That’s a bad idea.”
“Blood magic is addictive,” Tarron said.
“Yes, I know,” Mordred almost snapped. “I don’t like using blood magic anymore, but needs must and all that. Just get the realm arranged, and then we’ll activate it.”
“Everyone get comfortable,” Zamek said. “I think this could take a little while.”
4
LAYLA CASSIDY
It felt like a long time had passed since Zamek, Harry, Irkalla, and Tarron had gone down to the realm gate. Dralas had shrunk to be just seven feet tall and followed the others down after only a short time, leaving Chloe, Layla, Mordred, and Remy up near the entrance to the prison.
Remy took the spiral staircase up a floor to have a look around, and Mordred reluctantly followed him in case, Layla presumed, Remy locked himself in a room or got into some other kind of trouble.
Layla thought about everything that had happened over the last six months since her mother had returned from the dead, and her father had been taken into custody by her allies. It had taken Layla some time to get her head around the idea of realms all being linked to Earth, and that all the mythological places were real and out there somewhere. The fact that it was now second nature to her would probably have shocked the Layla of only a few years ago. But then a lot had happened in those years, and Layla was now a very different person from the one she had been at university. She looked down at her metal arm and thought, in more ways than one.
“You okay?” Chloe asked, taking a seat beside her.
Layla smiled. Chloe was one of her closest friends and, like Layla, an umbra of incredible power. Chloe wore a long, dark-blue coat, hiding the multitude of tattoos that she had over her body. Her arms in particular were a homage to pop culture. Chloe had shoulder-length blonde hair and several diamond studs in both ears. Umbra, like most non-humans, healed quickly, and Layla knew that the second the earrings were removed the holes would close. Layla wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Chloe without them.
“Eager to help our friends. Eager to leave this realm. Not feeling too good about letting thousands of people possibly die.” Layla ran a hand through her hair. She’d had blue hair for as long as she could remember, and over time had changed it so that it was light blue on top and dark blue on the bottom, as if the two colors were fighting one another. She’d changed it again a month ago, and now the light-blue hair reached down to between her shoulders, with the last few inches being dark blue. She sometimes wondered if it should be the other way around, if the darkness should have won out, but the lightness was there to remind her that no matter how dark everything else became, there was light there too. It wasn’t subtle, but she hadn’t felt particularly subtle when she’d had it done.
“I know,” Chloe said. “I am too.”
Layla mentally slapped herself. “I’m sorry, I know Piper is there. I should be the one comforting you.”
Piper and Chloe had been getting serious for the last few months. Months in which Layla had been too busy to see her friends as much as she should have. She’d told herself that it was better that way, that she’d needed to focus and get stronger, but she knew that it was more than that.
“She wants us to move in together.”
Layla raised her fist and Chloe bumped it, grinning. “That’s awesome,” Layla said.
“She makes me so damn happy, Layla.”
“Good, you deserve it.”
Chloe’s mother had tried to murder both Chloe and her father, trapping them in the realm of Nidavellir. Her father hadn’t made it out of the realm alive, and Chloe had been forced to become an umbra to survive. Chloe’s mom had been killed a short time later, and precisely zero people mourned her death.
Chloe nodded and smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “If they’ve hurt Piper . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Layla wasn’t sure what to say, so she just put her arm around Chloe and hugged her. “I’m sorry I’ve been less than involved the last few months.”
“I get it,” Chloe said, rubbing her eyes with the balls of her palms. “Your mum comes back from the dead as basically a kind of demon, all because Abaddon dumps a drenik in her and forces her to reanimate. She cuts off your arm, making you use your metal-shaping powers to create a new one. And your father is a serial killer who will only work with you. That’s a whole lot of shit to deal with in a very short space of time.”
“I just threw myself into work,” Layla said. “My father would give us the names of people who were targeted by Avalon’s murder squads, and we’d go get them out of whatever situation they were in. I didn’t stop; it was like I couldn’t stop. The more I did, the easier it was to convince myself that continuing alone was better than stopping and getting my head into a healthy place. Everyone was so busy that no one really had time to take me aside and point out that I was being an idiot. Tommy tried, but I waved his objections off. Diana tried, but I think I convinced her I was fine. Even Mordred tried, and when that didn’t work, he just inserted himself into the work I was doing.”
“He cares for you,” Chloe said. “We all do. I figured letting you work through it would help long-term. Everyone has been so wrapped up in their own little bubbles that sometimes it feels like we’re all drifting apart. It’s difficult to go out and fight your enemies, then come home and have a fun old time with your mates. And, on top of that, you had the whole Jared thing to deal with, and I didn’t want to rub it in your face that I was happily seeing someone.”
“You know I’d never begrudge you your happiness.”
“I know,” Chloe assured her. “But it still felt shitty of me to be all ‘I know your boyfriend was a psychopath, but my girlfriend is awesome.’ It didn’t exactly feel like something anyone would want to hear.”
“Guys, you need
to see this,” Remy shouted from the top of the staircase.
Layla and Chloe shrugged, but followed him upstairs to a large room that mimicked the one below. Mordred stood at the far end, next to a window that Layla hadn’t seen from the outside.
“How did we miss windows in this place?” Chloe asked.
“It’s got runes around it,” Mordred said without looking back. “I think it’s some sort of dwarven thing. We found a bunch of rooms with beds, and what looks like a very old kitchen down the corridor over there.” He pointed to an archway that led to a long corridor with torches on each side.
Layla and Chloe reached Mordred and looked down over the realm. “What the hell is that?” Layla asked.
A purple mist rolled through the forest, covering the clearing in front of the prison. It appeared to be only a few feet deep, but was dense enough to hide the ground.
“There was a flash of light,” Mordred said, “and then I saw that stuff.”
“You think this is the weapon that Irkalla discovered in that soldier’s mind?” Chloe asked.
“Yes,” Mordred said softly, and Layla picked up on the fear in his voice. “And I really don’t want to go out there and find out what it does.”
“Will the runes that Zamek put up keep us safe?”
“Let’s go find out,” Remy said, sounding slightly agitated.
They met Harry halfway down the staircase. “I think we’ve got something ready,” he said.
Layla noticed the tension leave Remy’s shoulders as he relaxed. Hopefully they wouldn’t need to find out how secure the prison was from the mist outside.
Soon after, everyone was gathered in the chamber just outside the unfinished dwarven realm gate room. A large amount of elvish writing was all over the floor and walls, but before he could explain how it worked, Zamek noticed the expression on the others’ faces and his smile faltered.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“How good are your runes?” Mordred replied. “I think whatever weapon Abaddon has, they’ve just used it.”
“There’s a purple mist floating around out there,” Chloe said.