“One last note, it looks like,” Remmy said, catching the note and holding the small, wrinkled piece of parchment up for them all to see. He took a closer look at it, then began to read aloud:
“It’s time to make your choice. Come to the beach to confront me and go home, or return to the Chasm to live out your lives on Tyntala. Your time is limited, I cannot keep these portals open for long.”
“I need to say somethin’,” Lorenza said. “And you three need to listen to me. I would have preferred to do this properly, but apparently we don’t have much time. I know how you kids think. I know you’re going to go to H, and I’m not going to stop you—but I can’t come with you. I need to take care of arrangements for Nivin,” she said, hugging his body closer to her. “And I need to take care of Tyntala as its new viceroy.”
“But Lorenza—” Rialta began, her voice cracking.
“Please don’t,” Lorenza said, offering Rialta one last sad smile before turning toward the portal back to the Chasm. “Please understand, I love you very much, Rialta. And so, you have to understand that I just—I can’t go with you. I can’t have anyone else’s…”
Lorenza trailed off, apparently unable to finish the thought. She stopped short of the entrance to the portal to the Chasm. She did not turn back to face the trio as she addressed them. “If there’s even the slightest indication of foul play, you three give him hell. Do you understand? Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain,” Lorenza said, nodding to Nivin’s body.
“Understood,” John said resolutely.
Lorenza nodded, then stepped forward through the portal, and vanished.
“You heard her,” John said. “We need to go. We don’t have much time.”
“Right,” Remmy said, stepping toward the portal.
“Rialta?” John said. He offered Rialta a hand, which she took, and brought her to her feet.
“Look, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am about all of this,” John said, “but Lorenza was right. We need to move forward. We need to honor the sacrifices of Sera and Nivin. We need to go—”
“I know,” Rialta said, forcing her tears down. There would be time for mourning later. Now was the time to demand answers from H. Now was the time to go home. She stood up, clenching her fists as she walked toward the portal to the beach. She looked at John and Remmy over her shoulder.
“Are you two ready?” she asked.
They nodded and stepped up on either side of her.
With one unified stride, the trio crossed over the barrier through the portal. For one fleeting moment, everything went dark—and then the world resolved around them. They stood on a ledge overlooking the beach. Gray clouds dominated the sky above, and a gentle but persistent snow fell across the sand. Rialta felt a tangled mix of anger and nausea as she looked down toward the dock. An old man wearing a long, gray cloak stood alone near the shore on the beach below them.
“We can do this, Rialta,” John said, following her gaze. “At the end of the day, no matter what he’s capable of, he’s just a man. Just a fallible human being like the rest of us.”
Rialta nodded and stepped out ahead of John and Remmy, her wand drawn. Instead of walking down the path, she leapt forward off the ledge and dropped down onto the beach with a dull thud, then stood up and walked toward the old man. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re this H person,” she said. Remmy and John followed her example, both of them leaping down at her side.
The man turned around, and Rialta lowered her wand as she looked at him. Whatever she had been expecting after all this time, this was not it. She had anticipated someone with an impressive stature. Someone wearing a gloating, evil sneer. Anyone other than the frail, tired old man that stood before them. There were giant, dark circles under his eyes; it was entirely evident that he had not slept properly in years. His back was hunched over, and when he walked toward Rialta, he moved with a pronounced limp in his step. He stopped nearly thirty feet away from them, leaving a wide-open patch of beach between them.
“Correct,” H finally replied. His voice was wheezy and quiet, almost as if he had not spoken in several years.
Rialta clenched her teeth. It took every ounce of her will to keep from attacking him on the spot. But if what he had told her was true—if he really intended to let them go back home— attacking him now would doom them all to exile forever, even if they managed to prevail.
John, however, had apparently not given this notion as much thought. In one fluid motion, he took a step forward, snatched a dagger from his belt, and hurled it toward H.
“John, no!” Rialta shouted.
“This is not productive,” H said calmly, and he held a hand up in the air. The dagger slowly came to a stop, then fell from the air, landing at H’s feet. “I am much older, much wiser, and much more powerful than even the three of you put together. You will not defeat me in a fight. Blocking physical attacks requires nothing more than a few seconds of concentration, John. And Rialta, you are an accomplished mage for your age, but I’ve been studying magic since half a century before you were born. Your powers are useless against me as well. Remmy might be able to amplify the effects of your spells, “but not so much that you could hope to defeat me. I think it would be in your best interests if we all agreed to forget about a fight.”
“But you killed our friend,” Remmy said, his voice trembling.
“Indeed,” H said, his eyes drifting down to the sand. “Perhaps not directly, but I am responsible for Nivin’s fate, and Sera’s before him.” His voice cracked as he spoke.
“How can you pretend to be remorseful?” Rialta shouted, her voice gravelly with the effort of choking back tears. Rage and sorrow flooded through her in equal measure as she stared at H. “How dare you?”
H offered Rialta a sad smile. “I don’t pretend. You are within your right to condemn me. You are more than welcome to hate me. That is to be expected. But if I may be pragmatic, I do not think any of you truly intended to discover my motivations or exact revenge on me when you came here. I think it was your intention to return to Ro, which brought you here, was it not?”
“Fine. If you’re too much of a coward to give us a straight answer, we might as well make this all about business,” Rialta said. “Prove it. Prove we can go home, and we’ll hand over what you sent us to collect.”
H nodded, then turned to the dock and waved a hand through the air. A shimmering mist began to form beside the dock, and slowly, the very same ship that had brought Rialta, Remmy, and John to Tyntala reappeared on the beach. It looked precisely the same as when they had left it to head to the Chasm, only now there was a series of chains and locks secured around the upper deck and access to the throttle.
“There’s no fuel to get us back home,” Rialta said, noting the absence of the large crates that had been there when they first left Ro.
“But there is, and you’ve got it in your backpack,” H said.
“The emerald and the scroll?” Remmy asked.
“Indeed,” H responded.
“But how?” Rialta asked. “It took a massive quantity of fuel to get us here. How could such a miniscule amount of fuel get us back?”
“The creation of portals between dimensions is a very strange and mysterious type of magic,” H said. “The quantity and character of fuel required to create a portal is vastly different depending on which way the portal opens. It just so happens that you’ve been collecting the materials that I need to create a portal from here back to Ro. Do not underestimate the abundance of mana in those objects, Rialta. Even the smallest objects can contain untold amounts of power.”
“And what exactly is in it for you?” John asked. “You’re just helping us go back home out of the kindness of your heart, are you?”
“I don’t believe any of you are foolish enough to think that,” H said. “No, I sent you to collect the necessary elements to create this rift between worlds because I wish to go to Ro as well.”
A lingering silence fell between the four of
them.
“You can’t be serious,” Rialta said. “You want to go with us?”
“I am deadly serious about wanting to go to Ro,” H said, his eyes suddenly very wide.
“But why?” Remmy asked.
“Because that is where her father sent my children,” H whispered, pointing at Rialta. “It was a matter of leverage with him, you see. He sent them to Ro, and me to Tyntala. As a grandmaster mage, I was to explore the magical properties of this world and report back to him. My reward for this work was to be reunion with my family. But naturally it was all a lie…”
Rialta was hardly surprised to hear about yet another one of her father’s transgressions, but she felt at least a twinge of empathy for H. “Is that really what this was all about?” she asked. “You just want to see your kids?”
H simply nodded in response.
“But how do you even know they’re still on Ro anymore? How do you know they’re even alive?” John asked bluntly.
To Rialta’s surprise, H smiled. “The safe transportation of humans between dimensions may be an incredibly difficult magical feat, John. But rudimentary communication or the teleportation of small, inanimate objects between worlds is no challenge to someone as skilled as myself. I know my children are alive and thriving on Ro because I manage communication and insight into foreign realms without issue. I’m surprised none of you worked out this fact for yourselves. How else would I have managed to bribe that foolish Jack character into sending you here in the first place? I told him exactly what I needed and paid him plenty of gold for his troubles.”
“So this is it, then?” John asked. “We hand over the emerald and the scroll, and then we just… go to Ro together? And we go our separate ways when we get there? We just forget we ever met you?”
“That’s the plan,” H said, nodding.
John and Remmy looked at Rialta. She nodded and removed her backpack, withdrawing the emerald and the scroll. “Before we give these to you, we need to discuss—”
H’s hand twitched. Rialta yelped as an unseen, unrelenting pressure crashed onto her, forcing her down to the ground. Remmy and John likewise fell at her sides. Rialta desperately tried to fight the spell, but no matter how she willed her body to move, she could do little more than writhe on the ground. She assumed the spell was equally effective against John and Remmy, as neither of them seemed able to budge an inch from their positions beside her.
“What is this?” John grunted.
“A spell to keep you still as I prepare the ship to return to Ro,” H said, summoning the scroll and the emerald to him with a casual wave of his arm.
“So—so you’re going to let us go when you’re done getting it ready then? Right?” Remmy asked nervously.
H sighed. “No, Remmy,” he said. “I will be going to Ro by myself.”
“We had a deal!” Rialta shouted. “If you’re going to go to Ro, you must take us with you!”
“Not possible,” H said simply. “I’m afraid you’ve all caused a bit too much trouble during your time on Tyntala.”
“What are you talking about?” Rialta asked.
“That little stunt you pulled with your brother, the former viceroy,” H said, his voice admonitory, as though Rialta had let him down.
“Who cares about that douchebag?” John shouted. “Rialta was right to put him in his place.”
“Hah. Being ‘right’ is rarely the same as being ‘smart,’ John,” H said.
“What do you mean?” Remmy asked.
“Think about it, Remmy,” H said. “If I’m able to look into the events of other worlds, don’t you think the king’s legions of grandmasters are doing the exact same thing?”
Rialta groaned. If she had been able to slap her forehead in frustration, she would have.
“What?” Remmy asked.
“Don’t you get what he’s saying?” Rialta asked. “I thought I was making up that whole thing about the king watching over this world, but there was apparently some truth to the notion after all. He’s using his mages to keep tabs on everywhere he’s been. So naturally he must know all about Edward and—”
“Lorenza!” John shouted. “But then he knows she’s effectively the leader of Tyntala! He’s going to come after her!”
H laughed. “No. No, he most certainly will not. Just because he knows does not mean he cares. Edward was hardly his favorite son, and he has no interest whatsoever in spending untold resources on controlling the fate of a world that is entirely useless to him.”
John let out a sigh of relief.
“All the same,” H continued, “after what Rialta did, I have little doubt that he will be interested in what she does from here on out.”
“So what?” John said. “Why can’t you just take us back to Ro like you promised? We’ll leave you be as soon as we get there. If the king has beef with Rialta and wants to follow her around, it’ll be none of your concern.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” H said, his voice becoming quiet. “If you are all at large, my mere association with you all, no matter how passing, will forever jeopardize my peaceful existence with my family. I will not allow that to happen.”
“What do you mean?” Remmy asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’s going to kill us before he leaves,” Rialta said, her voice quivering not with fear, but with anger. “Isn’t that right, H?”
“The death itself will be quick and merciful,” H said.
“What death?” Remmy shouted, and he began frantically struggling against their invisible bonds.
H did not answer. “Before we get to that, there’s a bit more to this magic than I had originally let on. I’m going to need you all to sacrifice just a bit more before I’ll have enough raw power to teleport back to Ro. And it’s going to require the input of all three of you.”
“What are you talking about?” John shouted.
“Another spell, I’m afraid,” H said as he approached their incapacitated forms. “The scroll you’ve found contains an ancient but immensely powerful form of magic. It’s a particularly brutal sort of spell, but deeply effective for procuring the fuel I need. The object of this spell is to recall personal memories in a very particular way. When I whisper the incantation, you should all experience a sort of shared vision,” H said, and he paused as he considered his next words.
“I should warn, it will be deeply unpleasant, this spell. I need one memory apiece. One from each of you. Do you have any preference for who I should start with?” he asked.
None of them responded.
H let out a deep sigh. “All right then. Remmy, I suppose.” Remmy’s eyes widened as he looked desperately to John and Rialta, but neither of them could offer him any more than a commiserating grimace.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry about this,” H said as he stared at the ground. He held his hands over the trio, and a deep purple aura consumed them all. Instantly, Rialta’s vision faded to black.
Rialta felt as though she were falling through a vacuum of time and space. The sensation was alien and bizarre, yet she found herself able to adapt to it quickly. It was as though she was experiencing a particularly vivid dream. The ship and the beach, her magical imprisonment, Remmy and John, H—all were distant memories. There was only darkness and silence.
And then she blinked. She was looking out onto a scene full of bright, pastel colors. She looked up to discover an open window from which a pair of curtains fluttered in the breeze. A sweet scent filtered in through it. Looking around, she found that she was in a sparsely furnished room with a rickety old mattress, a couple aging cabinets, and not much else. There were no pictures hanging on the cracked cement walls. She looked down at a musty green carpet and found she was huddled over a collection of battered toys.
Suddenly, two little hands reached out in front of her—her hands. She was grasping a figure that looked like a farmer and another that looked like a little schoolboy.
“Oh no! Oh no!” a very delicate
little voice said as her hands shook the little farmer figure back and forth. “Me cow is stuck in a tree!” With this, she reached her hands into a pile of animal figures and withdrew a cow. She held it up off the carpet for a moment, and then, with a little flick of her left wrist, a faint green light surrounded the little animal figurine. She let it go, but it did not fall. The figurine hovered in the air on its own. Rialta smiled with satisfaction at her work and watched the cow float in midair. She turned and took a little schoolboy figurine and made it approach the toy farmer. She mimed the little schoolboy looking up at the cow, then back to the farmer.
“I can get your cow down, mister!” she said as she bobbed the schoolboy doll back and forth. “I’ll just use my special pow—”
Just then, a sound like a crash shook the floor. She whipped around to face the door. A large, red-faced man had slammed open the door and stumbled into the room. Rialta’s gaze immediately whipped back to the cow toy. She made a motion to release her hovering spell, but it was too late. A burly hand snatched her wrist and held her tight. She felt a surge of panic as the man who grabbed her squeezed her harder, threatening to break her wrist.
“What the hell did I tell you about this, you little shit?”
Rialta didn’t answer. She gasped for breath in a panic.
“I said, what did I tell you?” the man roared.
Rialta recoiled from the stench of his breath—a mixture of vomit, half-digested spirits, and tobacco.
“You said I’m not supposed to do it anymore,” she answered, and she began to cry.
“That’s right,” the man said. He threw her down to the floor.
A Quest for Chumps (Departed Dimensions Book 1) Page 26
