The Court of Souls?_Volume 2_Agent of the Realm?

by Andur

  “Well, then how do you suggest that we get near that fortification? I suggest that we use Adea and Lidith, a.k.a. Beth, to bore a hole through the enemy army. Once we get to their installation, it will be a repeat of our last battle. We can even put down some beacons to summon help from the other realms,” Shade explains.

  Didn't I see a scene just like that in some movie a really long time ago? What do we have teleportation for? Our enemy is using it all the time to show up where he pleases.

  My thoughts derail the idea that I could actually be a character in some brain-dead fantasy world. I wonder if the multiverse is big enough to play out every stupid Hollywood scene in one of its versions. This new discovery about a wholly separate multiverse should certainly allow for that.

  But I am getting sidetracked. “I am far more concerned about that big, oozing rift in space right next to their superstructure. You noticed that it's spitting out even more spirits by the second? Seems like they are getting reinforcements… a lot of reinforcements.”

  Shade shrugs. “Yeah, that's one of the collision points between the two multiverses. A mana storm that got strong enough to rip a hole into the fabric of space and time. There will be more of those once the shit hits the fan. I am not sure how the collision will play out, if the multiverses collide and one or both get annihilated, or if they merge is up to speculation.”

  “That's no good. I don't want the multiverse to get destroyed,” Elona mumbles. She absent-mindedly corrects her hair.

  Shade reaches for her hand and smiles. “Don't worry, Sugar. That worst case scenario is very unlikely. It would mean that both multiverse collide dead centre. It's far more likely that we'll sheer off each other. Once that happened, the tear will close on itself. We could also use Yggdrasil to repair it. I only mentioned the possibility for the sake of completeness.”

  I bristle with anxiety. “So, why don't we open a portal directly into their base? It has to be possible.”

  Shade purses his lips. “The idea is sound, but we have nobody on the inside. They have a strong inhibition field, which makes aiming the portal complicated. I don't think that we can manage it on the fly with our available resources.”

  Hah! I think that I am ahead of Dad for once! Though my idea is stolen, but who cares? “So why don't we use their own methods against them? Let's place the equivalent of cornerstones around their base. We can use the stones to triangulate their position without ever getting close to the focal point, just like they did with Newerth's academy. The base isn’t moving, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “That's so simple that it could actually be my idea,” Dad mumbles and scratches his cheek while he studies the map, already calculating numbers in his brain.

  Marcus decides to enter the discussion with a snort. He followed the discussion in silence up until now. “Maybe it was your idea. We aren't sure from where the spirits got their knowledge about portals. Their know-how seems to be up to yours, or at least up to your double. The technology seems to be standard practise for them.”

  75. ~Crawl.~

  “The narrow path that 'uncommon' people will take, that the Lord wants you to go down, that really is the ultimate way to go.”

  The Journey to the Afterlife

  Pyramid Superstructure

  Seria

  Using the citadel to teleport all of our forces directly to the enemy base was a good idea. But as it happens with all good ideas, they only sound good and shouldn’t be taken for granted until they were put to the test.

  The bridge shudders and I reach for the metal framework which encloses the console in front of me. Holding onto something was a smart thing to do. Otherwise the impact would have flung me across the room. Marcus wasn’t quick enough and ended up kissing the frontal screen. Luckily crystal based technology is resilient enough to withstand a lot of abuse. Like people banging their heads against it.

  I hurry past Dad to help Marcus to his feet. “I don't think that we were supposed to materialize right inside their superstructure!” I complain to Dad after taking a look at the status screen. Shade promised that he would be extra careful with aiming the ship’s exit point.

  Dad doesn't pay attention to me or the others. He stands with confidence in the centre of the room and doesn’t show any kind of remorse. “A minor miscalculation. Nothing to be worried about. It's actually beneficial to our attack strategy.”

  Beth shakes her fist at Dad. She was also thrown to the ground, but it doesn’t look like she sustained any injuries. “Beneficial my ass! I know your skills! Such a mistake is beneath you. You did it intentionally, despite everyone voting against it.”

  Her fierce expression gives me the shivers and I remember that Beth is one of the few people who dares to stand up to my father. I am actually a little surprised that she went along in giving us her help so willingly. She reasoned that her lack of resistance is because she has only bad options to choose from. Probably she thinks that my parents are the lesser one of two evils.

  “The troops are on the move.” Mom gestures at the screen and it comes to life, showing us a representation of the pyramid… at least of what’s left of it. Shade landed us directly on one of its lower corners. This pyramid’s design is very similar to the one we encountered first.

  Buried deep in the pyramid’s centre is something like an engine room. One of the corners functions as the command centre, while the others are reserved for minor functions. Unfortunately the pyramid doesn’t show from the outside which corner is reserved as the command centre.

  I call it a pyramid. But to be exact, it’s base is an equilateral triangle. So what we are facing is a tetrahedron.

  “Tch! We didn’t hit their command centre. Ah, it only was a one in four chance. Winning the shell game was asking too much,” Dad hisses, punching his open palm with his fist.

  So he really tried to ram the command centre intentionally!

  Marcus curses and wipes his nose. His hand comes away bloody. Looks like he kissed the screen a little harder than I thought. “A little warning would have been appreciated.”

  I cast a quick healing spell on Marcus and use the chance to poke his damaged pride. “You are lucky that your parents aren’t here. What would they think if they knew that you are among the battle’s first casualties?”

  He snorts. “I am far from being a casualty. And my parents would say that this whole operation is one, single, improvised clusterfuck! It’s bound to go wrong, beginning with the fact that we are supposed to catch someone who can give us some answers regarding the spirits. Are Ishaan and the others already on their way?”

  I take a short look at the status screen. “If this is correct, then they are already on their way to the engine room.” Which means that we are late. Ishaan, Tisha and Doreen decided to lead in the charge to take control of the pyramid’s energy core. We are hoping that the pyramid has something to do with the tear between the multiverses. If so, then shutting down all of the pyramid’s function is surely a good step.

  “Then it’s time to join the party!” Shade smiles and vanishes in a flash of light. Mom and Beth sigh in unison and pull a disappearance of their own. If they follow the plan, they should join our forces in a separate attempt to take the command centre.

  Marcus pulls himself together and smiles at me. “Are you ready for our part of the plan?”

  I hug him and take a close look at the coordinates which are displayed on the screen. By studying the first pyramid, we found out that the important areas have an inhibition field that makes teleports over long distances almost impossible. The most one can achieve is short range teleportation.

  So we can’t simply teleport into the command centre and shut down their portal. At least we suppose that they have one. There should be a throne with a gate right next to it. If we charge in from the front, our target will simply step through the gate as soon as he realises that we are winning. It will be a repeat of our last attack.

  Someone has to sneak around their defences a
nd shut down their escape route. This task fell to Marcus and me. For that purpose I teleport us right into one of the ventilation shafts which are leading towards the throne room. The world changes from one moment to the next and we appear horizontally in a narrow, dark tunnel.

  Gravitation takes over and I land flat on my back with Marcus above me. We fell not much more than ten centimetres. Enough to hurt if you are unprepared. Hadn’t Marcus stopped his fall, he would have crushed the air out of my lungs. “You definitely like it when I am on top,” he whispers.

  “Not in the least! The best position is when you are chained to a bed and I can have my way with you,” I respond.

  With effort, I shimmy around and pull myself forward. The ventilation shaft is just big enough to crawl. “It’s humiliating to go through all this effort,” I complain and summon a weak light globe. It’s enough to see ten metres ahead of us. Much better than the eerie twilight we had to endure earlier.

  A look at my hands shows me that the tunnel isn’t just narrow, but also dirty. My hands are black from the dust and there are countless little pebbles everywhere. “Geez… I’ll have to burn my clothes when this is over. Don’t they have some kind of drone to clean the ventilation shaft?”

  “I can’t complain. Your butt made a nice imprint back here. If they ever search this tunnel to find out how we got in, then they will have no problem to prove that it was you. They just have to take your three sizes!”

  Marcus stays silent for a few minutes while we crawl forward. Then he chuckles. “I know that I was the one who told you to put on armour, but a skirt would be a real price right now.”

  Seriously? I growl and drop to my belly.

  “What?”

  “Crawl over me and get going. If your male brain can’t ignore my butt, then you have to go first! We are on an important mission!” I reprimand him.

  Marcus grumbles and crawls over me to take the lead. On his way he makes a point of placing both hands on my behind. “It isn’t my fault. You are the one who waved it in front of my face in the first place!”

  After a lot of shoving and pushing, he is finally in front of me. So I find myself facing a similar problem. I like his ass. Damn! That’s why most armies don’t allow units of mixed gender. It distracts from the task at hand.

  Suddenly Marcus lets out a curse and light flashes in front of him. Sparks fly and something squeaks, then silence returns to the tunnel. I try my best to see what happened, but all I can see is that Marcus is holding a dagger of light in his hand. “What happened?”

  “Nothing! I just encountered a very big rat. Seems like these tunnels are dirty for a reason.” He pushes forward, past a big… thing! It blocks almost half of the tunnel.

  When he is past it, it’s my turn. Now that I am closer, I get to see evil beady eyes, one of them poked out by the dagger. What the creature lacks in vision, it more than makes up with large, yellow teeth. Teeth which don’t belong to a rodent, they are of the pointy kind. Oh, gods! And it stinks! I hurry to force myself past the body, which is about one metre in length. “That’s not a rat! Rats don’t have spikes on their tails! That’s some kind of mutant! Or a miniature spirit!”

  “I suggest we get out of here fast. I don’t think that we will stay undetected for long if there are more of these creatures. Blasting our way past them is bound to alert someone. And I don’t want to think about why this tunnel is so dirty.”

  I return my attention to the dirt and the countless little pebbles which are lying everywhere. “Ew! Why did you have to say it!?”

  “Don’t forget to watch our back! I don’t want one of those things to get a taste of your-”

  “No!” I turn around and send the light globe flying into the darkness. When it’s clear that there is nothing as far as I can see, I let out a sigh. This mission is quickly making its way to my top ten worst infiltration jobs ever!

  76. ~Observe.~

  “Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.”

  The Journey to the Afterlife

  Pyramid Superstructure

  Seria

  Covering six hundred metres while crawling is neither fast nor interesting. On the first ten metres someone might think that it will be easy. At one hundred metres your knees start hurting. At two hundred, I felt as if I was a mule with too much weight on its back. And at three hundred metres, we had to double back at thrice the speed to make up for lost time. That’s when I started moaning.

  Marcus took the wrong tunnel. Normally I would use his lacking sense of direction to make fun of him, but I admit that even I am not sure where we are by now. Having a map of these tunnels might be helpful. These ventilation shafts have so many intersections that my head is starting to spin.

  And there are the rats! They are the main reason for us almost getting lost. We encountered the ugly things three more times, even though we tried to avoid them. Trying to avoid them got us into trouble. We deviated from the planned path to avoid a pack of them and our little detour turned out to be more complicated than we thought.

  “It hurts, Marcus. Are you sure that we are almost there? We didn't take yet another wrong turn?” I complain.

  “No. Just a few more metres. I am sure of it,” he answers in a confident tone.

  “I hope you aren't like those men who navigate only by their general sense of direction, while having no clue where they actually are, all the way reassuring their wives that they will arrive at their destination in five more minutes.”

  He snorts as if he is hurt. “Just ten metres, love. Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel? That's our goal. Once we are there, we get bed and breakfast.”

  “Don't you mean battle and bloodbath? We still have to find a way to shut down the portal, probably by jumping right into an army of heavily armed guards.” I know that I sound pessimistic, but that's the most likely situation we'll face. The other pyramid was smaller, but it still had a big throne room with a huge staircase which led towards the command chair, a.k.a. throne. If some small outpost had space to spare for such a pompous display, then this pyramid will have it too.

  Marcus reaches the end of the tunnel and crouches down on his belly. I crawl over him to get a look for myself, pressing my nose against the grill which is covering the ventilation shaft. “Looks largely the same as in the other pyramid,” I whisper.

  “Yes, if you ignore the fact that the room is twice as big and therefore has twice as many guards,” Marcus grumbles and pokes two fingers into the grill to widen it a little, allowing us a better view of the situation.

  A figure in black robes is sitting on the throne, his back to us. Several rows of soldiers are lined up at the walls. A separate group is facing the entrance, which is closed off. The good thing is that there is no portal in sight. Either they don't have one here, or they still think that they can stop the attack.

  “I doubt that they can open a portal on a whim. At least not one that crosses the multiverse, which would be necessary to avoid being pursued by us. The magical circuitry is either embedded in the floor, or it has something to do with the throne.” He points at the throne.

  I survey the room, inspecting the ground especially. The metal plates around the throne are plain and without runes. The throne on the other hand is a piece of art, filled with fine runes and sparkly jewels. The whole thing seems to be made out of massive gold. In fact, the whole room looks like a display of wealth and power, with fine arts of fought battles at the walls and nice statues at the entrance.

  “You could be right, but there is no way to be sure. The throne could be intended to distract us from the important stuff. Magical circuitry could be hidden under the metal floor.”

  Marcus spreads the fingers of one hand in a gesture of resignation. “So what do you suggest? I don't see any chance to go down there and disassemble everything while the whole army of guards is watching us. We could ask the evil dude to stand up, so that we can take a close look at his comfort chair.”

  I chu
ckle, covering my mouth with both hands. It would be hilarious to do exactly that. We just kick in the grid and scramble out of this tunnel, all dirty and stinky, covered in rat blood. Marcus didn't manage a clean kill on the last one, so we had to crawl through the blood.

  So once we drop to the ground like a pair of dirty potatoes, since the exit of the ventilation shaft is placed about five metres up on a wall, we get to our feet and walk up to the cloaked guy. If we manage that without being overrun by the guards, we simply ask him to get up, so that we can disassemble his shiny throne. We could also ask him nicely not to run away, because we want to have a nice and civil chat with him.

  Yeah, not going to happen.

  Once I have myself back under control, I clear my throat as silently as possible. A coughing fit on top of a suppressed laughing fit would give us away for sure. “I suggest that we wait until they actually try to escape, then we blast them with everything we got. Preferably completely destroying the room. It would be best to do that while our people break in through those big doors. Then we wouldn't have to deal with all those guards.”

  “I have a feeling that we will be forced to act much earlier. If the evil dude has any sense of self-preservation, then he will open the portal and flee as soon as our people knock on the door. The last time he delayed his departure for long enough to almost get caught. He would be stupid to make the same mistake twice. I really wondered why he stayed that long if he didn't intend to fight.” Marcus shifts under me and scratches his chin, smearing the grime all over his face. Since he was in front, he was the one who had to fight off most of the rats. The one time one approached from behind us, I blasted it with a pulse of force, breaking its neck.

  I also managed to avoid touching my face, so I don’t look as bad as Marcus. He looks like he worked in a coal mine. One point for being female; no itchy beard.

  “Curiosity killed the cat. I think he wanted to know what he is up against,” I mumble.