by J D Cowan
“You what?”
“Relax. It is timed, not set by detonator. You’re too valuable for that. It is set for a week. Long enough to do what we need. If you live, we will return here, deactivate it, and you will be rewarded for your efforts. Be obedient, and you’ll live. Simple.”
He placed his hand against his heart. His beats were the same as ever, but a small scar ran along his skin. She didn’t lie. She didn’t need to.
“What about the boy?”
“Yes, him as well. You are a team now, after all.”
“Crazy witch!” he shouted.
“What does it matter, Mr. White? You’re both still being paid. No one will miss you should you expire. But enough. Now we will take our trip through the Mirror Gate and begin the final phase.”
Matthew winced at her words. No one would notice if he disappeared. But Jason had been chosen as well, and that didn’t sit right. No kid should be pulled into this—whatever this was.
“Mirror Gate?” Jason whispered.
“What’s this mirror thing, Marguerite?”
“Look around you, Mr. White.”
He peered into the dark, the shadowy shroud momentarily letting him see through.
Each of the walls, except the one with the large door behind him, had full-length mirrors covering them. Eerie reflections danced against their surfaces, masked by the black sweeping the room. Shards of glass glinted against the floor. That was all he could see, but he couldn’t help but feel that something else was in there with him.
After a pause, Matthew leaned his wrists against the rope. It felt like a Prusik knot against his back, though there was no way to tell. He needed to get the rope around his shoulders off. As Marguerite Stohl went on, he used the darkness to flip his hands out from behind his back and under his legs to his chest. He pulled backwards with his elbows out. None of the suits noticed.
It wasn’t tied as tight as he thought it would be.
“The Mirror Gate,” she said. “This is the way to the kingdom, Mr. White. This is the final test. This is where we separate the men from the boys. Now, have you gotten those ropes off yet?”
He blinked. The ropes around his wrists slid free.
“She’s trying to lure you in,” Jason said. “Just get out of it!”
Matthew pushed down against the ropes around his shoulders and pushed his arms up. He’d been in tighter spots before. He fell loose and threw them off his shoulders.
Almost immediately, a stream of mist swirled out of his body and to his side. It was the boy. Matthew leaped back up as Jason now appeared at his side.
“I expected you to be faster,” Marguerite said with a heavy sigh.
Jason raised his fists. “Now you’re going to tell us what these things are.”
“Please, Jason.” She waved one delicate wrist and the light dissipated from it. “There is no need to be uncouth.”
“He’s right,” Matthew interjected. “We’re going to find out what these are, and she’s taking these bombs out. Now.”
“I already told you! You are wearing the Gemini Bracelets. You, Mr. White, are wearing Castor. It allows you to transform your form to air or liquid. There may be more than that, but I do not know. I have never seen its full potential.”
Matthew mouthed his confusion. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean that you are the first to use them in my lifetime.” She nodded to the boy. “It is the same with yours, Jason. That one is Pollux. It allows you to enhance your physical capabilities beyond your limits. But it is based on your limits.”
“My limits,” Jason mumbled to himself.
“Stuff it,” Matthew interrupted. “That doesn’t explain why you’re doing all this. What happened to the other people you gave these bracelets to?”
“At your feet.”
She raised a hand, and a new small flame erupted out of the tips, illuminating the room. Stained white and yellowing slabs like stones painted the dimly lit room. Jason recoiled at the sight. Bones.
“My God,” the kid whispered.
“A small price to gather the relics. I will take you back to my home where we will find yet another of them. Jason will lead me straight to it. His dreams are the key.”
“What is all this, Mrs. Stohl? You know what those dreams are?”
“Not only do I know, but I finally have a guide who will lead me to the seed: You. The Great Sorcerer King truly smiles upon me.”
At the front of the room, Marguerite threw her hand against the mirror behind her. A purple glow shone from the solid surface. Small ripples ran across the large slab, running from the floor to the ceiling like fuchsia waves. Before Matthew could react, a weight crashed against his back.
The group of men fell upon them, punching and pushing them forward. Matthew tried to change his body, but couldn’t concentrate. A guard flew past his face and slammed into the mirror on the wall to his right. It fractured with the impact. Jason punched away as they pushed and grabbed him. The guards herded the pair toward the large mirror.
“Welcome to the greater world,” she said.
Marguerite’s men shoved Jason and Matthew into the Mirror Gate, following after. The group whipped through a wind tunnel into the narrow space. Stars streaked by their path at an insane velocity. The men around him screamed.
Their suits burned to cinders. A few caught ablaze at a deeper level—their skin and bones crisped. Their screams were the worst. Flecks of ash sprinkled into the tight tunnel as the flames incinerated them.
Matthew’s skin burned too. He held to the bracelet, its cool sensation cutting through the ripping heat. His clothes burned to ash off his back, and his skin curled as if on fire. Beside him, Jason yelled. The boy also held fast to his bracelet. The two of them were going to cook alive.
Marguerite, however, merely watched them from the front. She giggled over the mayhem behind her, unaffected by it all.
“In seconds we shall be home!” she shouted over her shoulder. Her voice sounded strangely metallic and muffled in the small space. “Here we are!”
The flashing tunnel illuminated pulsing plum darkness in their path. It started as a pinprick and grew within half a second to the size of a humpback whale readying to swallow its next meal. It consumed them just as fast.
The force of a brick wall hit Matthew. The wall wrapped him in a coat of purple fog. Then it simply evaporated.
He kissed night air, and it burned against his steaming skin. They had reached the other side.
Matthew struck the tiled stone floor with a dead weight, screaming the whole way. His lobster red skin laid naked for all to see, his clothes charred away to ash. The boy lay still a few feet from him.
The last thing he needed to see was another corpse. This world killed enough: it didn’t need to take more kids. Not like this, alone and scared. He wouldn’t let it.
Matthew ignored his pain and climbed along the stone floor on his elbows. Jason didn’t move. His red skin smoked.
“Jason!” Matthew forced out through the pain. “You’re still in one piece.”
Matthew shook Jason’s shoulder. The boy became intangible and dragged forward as if magnetized. He disappeared again. Stunned, Matthew stared a second before remembering this was part of the bracelets’ abilities. They worked here, too. Wherever here was.
Most of the men that had followed them through became little more than ash and bones. The harsh air was black and thick. However, some were not dead. In fact, they were no longer men at all.
Where Matthew and Jason lost their clothes, these men lost their skin. Without it, they also lost their humanity. Flesh had burned away, revealing green skin and flashing narrow eyes like . . . a lizard. They stood tall and muscular with scaly faces, long noses, and lashing tongues. Their tails were long, with man-shaped hands and scaled feet with claws far sharper than nails. Hunched backs and long limbs told him that they were probably never humans to begin with.
Lavender mist smoked from their ski
n, and their lungs breathed deep. Their scales shifted with every hard breath. The lizard men looked down on him with hunger.
The journey left only one individual untouched. Marguerite still wore the same dress with the same perfect face. But her eyes had changed. A mad reflection glinted off the moonlight from the open balcony before her. The monstrous snarling smile she showed him was worse than anything he had experienced so far.
“Mr. White,” she said. “You have passed Phase Three.”
“We’re not in the building anymore, are we?”
“Thank the Great Sorcerer King, we are not.”
They were in a similar set up to the small room from earlier. Three mirrors lined the long wall behind him, but they were decorated far fancier than the previous chamber. They looked almost medieval, these walls. The stone craftsmanship, the weaved tapestries, the long carpets, and the musty paintings on the walls, revealed a place entirely different than Serenity City.
He wanted to ask so many questions. A large ship like those he had seen in old storybooks passed by the balcony behind Marguerite. It sailed not on water, but flying up in the air. His questions caught in his throat.
Larger sights lay beyond the ship and into the night. Mountains spiraled into misty tops, and bright lights slipped through the sheet of white fog below the beaming moon. Buildings and towers lined the ridges ahead. A city.
He tried to speak but his words caught on his trembling lips. How could any of this exist?
Above the distant mountain range, the black shape of a fortress climbed hundreds of feet into the raven capped night. Dozens of deeply embedded square and round towers, echaugettes, and turrets had been grafted onto the monstrosity. A large barbican marked the front, but the gothic-like height of the fortress itself caught his attention, stretching into a faintly purple abyss of a cloudy sky. A presence in that place sent chills down his spine. Try as he might, Matthew struggled for the words.
He opened his mouth wide before he spoke. “This is—”
The lizard men seized his arms and legs. Their grip crushed him as he thrashed against their hold.
“Quiet, meat!” one of them hissed in his ear.
Marguerite waved to him as they dragged him and Jason down the dark hallway. The woman blew them both a kiss.
“Welcome to Tyndarus, Mr. White. You are now a member of the Greater Kingdom.”
Chapter 4
Magic City Mageuopolis
The rags on Matthew’s body itched. He had been given a ratty shirt and pants to wear over his naked form after he was thrown in a cell. Their captors gave the boy the same. The cramped area was no bigger than a bedroom. The stone walls and floor and the complete lack of natural light assaulted his senses. Dampness ran through his bones and caused a chill that went beyond simple weather.
Torches burned on the wall outside his prison cell. Orange outlines of armored lizard men shifted back and forth down the thin hall. Matthew had to wait in the cell for the night. Tomorrow one of those flying ships would take them to the leader of this place: the Great Sorcerer King. Matthew sat on the bench and watched the long shapes of the lizard men pass him by. They had not said a single word since throwing him in here.
He was more concerned about Jason. He knew that Jason was okay, the bracelets had formed a link between them, but they both had those bombs inside of them. The kid had to be terrified.
Matthew held Jason’s clothes between clenched fists. What kind of monster dragged helpless teenage boys into her messes? He didn’t even know where they had been taken to. Tyndarus did not exist on Earth. It was no historical location he could think of, either. But he had to get the boy back home and get that bomb out of him.
Flying ships, a mountain mist city, and man-shaped lizards combined to make this a sick fever dream. The lizards especially attracted his attention. Now he knew why the heat had been so high in the facility. A harsh purple air hovered across the armor and bracers of the lizards. That must have been why the damp mountain air did not harm them. That fuchsia mist had opened the Mirror Gate back in Serenity City. Marguerite used it. If anyone could explain all this, it was her.
He clutched the spare clothes tight. They needed a plan to get out of this place.
The glistening, wet stones of the cell stifled his thoughts. They must be underground. The lashings of the torchlight made it appear like the flames moved on their own. He flinched and looked again. They were moving.
In the left-hand corner of the cell, two small stones in the corner of the wall slid backwards. A pair of eyes poked through the abyss.
“Ay!” the voice whispered.
Matthew tilted his head. A guard passed the front of the cell, oblivious to any noise. This intruder had clearly done this before. Matthew kneeled down beside the opening with his back to the wall. He caught a closer glimpse of smoky grey eyes and long hair through the small opening. The visitor was a woman.
“Hello,” he said plainly. “Come here much?”
“Are you from the other world?” the woman asked.
Her silky voice slunk through his thoughts like a strong drink. He resisted the urge to look into her eyes. He had more to worry about than getting a date. Thankfully the guard was halfway down the hall now. No one could see her except him.
“I suppose I am. My name is Matthew. What is yours?”
“Ordopha,” she replied. “Do you wield the Gemini Bracelets?”
“We do have the bracelets. Are you with these lizards?”
“Hardly.” She pushed back a few more stones to allow more room for her to fit through. “I‘m here for you.”
Her long platinum blonde hair fell from her shoulders and down past her filthy shirt. Long lashes and soft lips scanned him over, oblivious of his eyes running across her slight form. How long had he been alone in the fake apartment? Finally, she broke the quiet.
“Is your partner injured?”
Matthew waited for the lizard man to pass before he spoke again. “No. The problem is that the trip through the mirror really hurts. It burned off all our clothes and quite nearly our skin. Many guards didn’t make it through.”
“Oh my. I hope he is well.”
“He’s a tough boy. He’ll be fine.”
“A child?”
“He’s fifteen. He can handle it. How come I can understand you? Do you speak English?”
“English? No. I am speaking Neronian. Is that what you call it? English?”
He dodged the question. “What do you know about those Mirror Gates? We need to get back through.”
“All the magic in Tyndarus comes from the Great Sorcerer King himself. He’s the reason those gates work. To get through you need his magic to activate them.”
“Where do we get magic?” the voice in Matthew’s head asked.
“Jason?” Matthew inquired. The woman was about to question his sudden exclamation, but he put a hand up. “You’re awake? How do you feel?”
“I feel like I fell through a paper shredder. But I heard your conversation. What should we do?”
Matthew pursed his lips. The girl had come from somewhere close by, and he needed to have a conversation with her. But he also had to worry about the lizard men noticing his departure. The boy probably wouldn’t like he what he had to do.
“Get out there, Jason. I’m going to follow her and gather info. You need to stay in my place.”
The boy thought on it. He groaned and clutched his forearms. “Okay. I’d prefer not moving anyway.”
Jason drifted like smoke out of Matthew’s head and solidified at his side. He was totally nude.
“Oh my!” Ordopha said, turning away.
“Whoa, where are my clothes?”
“Here.” Matthew thrust the clothes the lizards gave him into Jason’s chest. “Your old ones burned up. It doesn’t look like much survives a trip through the Mirror Gates.”
As Jason changed, Matthew explained his idea to follow Ordopha. Jason looked so much like him in the dark that it was doubtfu
l the guards would notice the change. The boy agreed.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I need a few more winks anyway.”
Ordopha leaned in again. “You are so much alike. Are you brothers?”
“No,” they said at once.
Matthew watched the bars. “Alright, the lizard is coming back. Show me the way, Ordopha.”
The two disappeared into the tight tunnel, leaving Jason behind. Shallow pathways barely bigger than the span of Matthew’s shoulders twisted on like a labyrinth. The winding tunnels led downward and splintered off in many directions through the dark. Ordopha climbed onward without pause as if she knew this place far too well.
“Where exactly is this prison?” he asked. “Is it above us? Below? I have no idea where we are. I saw mountains and a large castle outside earlier.”
“That is because we are in Mageuopolis, located in the northern mountains. No one can enter this place without magic. The Great Sorcerer King’s power prevents it. Here he hides and builds his forces for his eventual conquest of Tyndarus.”
“Tyndarus is a land?”
“It is the name of our world.”
His lip twitched at the knowledge. That crazy woman brought the two of them to a whole new world. He didn’t want to believe it, but nothing else explained all the insanity. Ordopha kept speaking as he pondered their situation.
“All magic flows from Nieto himself. He is called the Great Sorcerer King because it is his life-force. He is like a god. Magic comes from his very bones.”
“Magic being real aside, I always thought it came from spells or enchantments. Fairy tale stuff. I’ve never heard of it originating from one being.”
“That depends on what you believe Nieto is. He comes from the stars themselves. We had no magic before he arrived thousands of years ago. This city, those ships, and the relics would not exist if not for him.”
“You mean he invented the Gemini Bracelets?”
“No. But he did bring them to Tyndarus. Please stay still.”
Matthew stopped. He couldn’t see Ordopha, but a hard slapping sound pounded ahead. Torchlight burst into the tiny crevice and bathed over the girl and nearly blinded him. She climbed forward and disappeared into the light.
