by Gabi Moore
"Get back to work!"
He walked over to a station that was covered in papers and monitors, and waved the two of us over.
"They don't understand why you are here. That or they do, and your celebrity is giving them pause. You hear to save the world?"
I had to close my eyes and swallow.
"Readouts."
"Sure. Well, right over here you can see that blip you're talking about."
He was pointing to a veritable cliff in data.
"I'm sorry, but that doesn't look much like a 'blip' to me"
He laughed, which managed to make me uncomfortable again, though the laugh clearly transformed into a cough by the end of his fit.
Just a bit of a joke, but I can see you're in no mood for it."
He scrolled the panel outward, with a wave of both hands. The entire picture panned out, and I could see how my initial ‘cliff’ was part of a much larger picture.
The data on the screen looked like a long and protracted crash of some sort, followed by an unexpected and sharp rise in something. The cliff itself was nothing more than the other side of that sharp unexpected rise. Beyond the cliff, and into the present moment, there were no patterns, only chaos.
"As you can see, from the data there are a number of reasons why we might be more than a bit surprised at your visit."
Turning to the side, I saw that a young scientist with curiosity in his eyes that could not be dismissed was peaking over to see what was transpiring between myself and the lead technician.
Erol, on the other hand, was absolutely stricken dumb. He was giving his entire attention to the screens, instruments and papers.
The technician pointed at the monitor with his nicotine stained fingers, and began to explain.
'This huge fall you see here is the data which caused the evacuation. We are calling this the destabilization of our ecosystem, due to the approach of the void. The readings center geographically around the capitol itself, while the outer forests are relatively unaffected. Of course, over time, we suspect that those too will become inhabitable."
"Inhabitable?"
"Well yes. We don't have extended data to work with, but there is a very grave risk for all those who stay within the contaminated area."
Finally, Erol spoke up.
"You mean this area."
The scientist grinned, showing his yellow teeth to the two of us.
"Sometimes, my boy, you need to make a decision about your priorities. For us, this data was more important, and I'd say since your arrival, we may have not thrown our lives away after all."
"What do you mean by that?"
This time the reply came from me. The scientist's tone grew more serious, and he brought his arms together over his chest in a resting position.
"Well that answer is pretty easy to manage, though I think you two would have a better job of providing the details yourself."
He pointed at the screen once more.
"If the destabilization had maintained its course, we would have reached some level of critical threshold by now, if not within the next four or five hours. The problem is that since just before you showed up, that downward trajectory has been halted. Now, thing's aren't exactly getting better, but if you were to take an average of these peaks, I'd say that we have reached some level of stabilization."
He paused again, and leaned back against the table, then he opened his hand out to both sides, indicating both his team, and himself by his gesture.
"Now you've seen your data. You come in here anticipating a modification which has been proven, and I'm lead to believe that you had something to do with that. Now, I've seen your memorials in the Capitol. I know what you're capable of, and I know that you have a history of involvement in questionable activities."
He shook his head.
"But I'd say that the people in this room, myself included, would be more than interested in knowing what it is you are up to, considering it may just indicate the salvation of our race."
I blew him off.
"Nothing that spectacular, I can assure you."
Of course, he didn't buy it, but I didn't have the time to explain everything to a team of scientists. I looked at Erol, and made eye contact.
"You get everything you were looking for?"
"Well, of course, but the problem is that we need stabilization. The portal needs sacrifice in order to continue to open."
I felt like slapping him.
“Gods damn you, Erol, for not knowing how to keep your fuckin' mouth shut."
"They are scientists! Don't you think it's a smart idea to let them in on what's going on? Maybe they will be able to help."
"It's not a regular portal... is it?"
The lab tech was already putting the pieces together. I let out a sigh, and decided to let this one go.
"Rift, technically speaking. The whole point is to take the portal and maintain it indefinitely."
"Oh, I know what it is all right. I just didn't know that someone would be foolish enough to try and do something like that."
This got under my skin.
"Foolish? You were thanking me a minute ago."
"You have no idea what kind of external factors could be involved in something like that. You may have immediately stabilized the situation, but there's no telling what will happen as a result."
He shook his head back and forth as though he was fully realizing something tragic in his own mind.
"That's dark magic... dark magic indeed."
"Look, hate to break up your little pity parade, but while you're sitting here looking into a mirror of your own doom, I'd rather take a chance on making some kind of change..."
My self-righteous tirade was interrupted by a cry outside of the library that sounded like a mixture between the wail of a banshee and a quake. The lab tech shrunk into himself, and stared with wide eyes at the data on the screen.
The needle was oscillating furiously; each dip lower than the last, and each peak more perilous.
"It's coming," he whispered, another cigarette compulsively shoved between his lips.
I didn't wait around for any explanation. I only grabbed Erol by the collar and yanked him toward the door.
"We're leaving. Now!"
Chapter 19
Sprinting up the stairs was to be endured only with minor tremor. The ground itself was in revolt, and it seemed as though the central location was not too far away from our current position.
Erol stumbled to the floor, and yanked on my hand. I held onto him, turned around, and grabbed him with both hands. Yanking him to his feet, we pushed past the end of the stairwell, and into the main floor of the library.
Books had fallen all over the floor, and the doors hung wide open. Outside, a fierce wind blew and for the first time, I began to be truly afraid. I paused for a moment, and realized that my fear was magnified, as I was actually concerned for Erol's welfare, and doubted as to whether or not he'd be able to manage to get through the chaos that was growing outside. I turned around and looked at him.
He was pale, and his eyes were bewildered. His mind wasn't present, and he was struggling with some internal revelation. I knew that this had been too much for him. There was a reason why humans didn't come to the Fae Realm, as a general rule, but this whole experience was only pushing that boundary further.
"Look at me."
I grabbed him again, and held him close to my face.
"I won't be able to protect you once we're out there. We need to get to that portal, and you need to get your head together. Do you understand?"
The whole library shook as we stood there. I saw focus come back into his expression, and a nod come from his head.
"Good. It's time to go now. Just follow my lead, and we'll do what we can."
I let out one final exhale while we stared at one another. I wanted the eye contact to be significant; to provide him with the help that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to provide once we got outside.
&nb
sp; "Those men downstairs are ready to die. I've seen it in the eyes of men before. You can join them, or you can follow me, but I'm not going like that."
With that, I spat on the floor, and set my brow into a glare. Blood and adrenaline returned to my entire body, and I sank into a predatory state of consciousness. Anything I had left in the past was now called to the present. There was no more room for dispossessed states of depression or powerlessness.
I broke out into a sprint, and didn't look back. I had given him the only warning he would receive, and that was more than most would have received. The rest was up to him.
The rush of the wind whipping past my face as I ran toward the door brought a sensation of elation. The doors themselves slammed to the side, as though the environment itself was frightened of my approach. The blue lights underneath the surface of the hover discs wavered eerily on the ground beneath them. In the distance, I could see the darkness approaching; it was headed straight for the Capitol.
"The portal!"
I hopped on the hover disc, and ducked down toward the ground to reduce the drag on my body. They didn't make these things to go extraordinarily fast, but if you knew what you were doing, there was an override switch available on the bottom of the disc. The switch is pressure sensitive, which means that if you want to get going, you have to be in a position to physically handle yourself. Most of the populace doesn't engage in risky behavior like this, but there are a number of youth that have caught onto the secret, and hold races in the older, more abandoned districts.
My hair whipped behind me, and I watched as debris flew beneath my transport. I thought about Erol, but I couldn't risk looking backward to see if he was all right or not. The environment was moving by so quickly that I had to keep my eyes on the road. To divert my attention for only an instant would mean a fall. At this speed, it would not only be painful, but I might actually do some serious damage to myself.
Narrowing my eyes, I squinted into the distance. Everything around me was growing darker, with the storm. The darkness that came out of the skyline and moved toward the portal held the same qualities as the tentacled creature from the hell realm. This time, it was projected against a sky that was only lit by faerie fire. The resulting atmosphere was a soft glue glow coming up from the Capitol. The light pushed upward through gradients of darkness into the stars of the sky. Between the stars, and the ground, a clear outline of inky black tendrils stretched toward the Capitol building.
The sight was so awesome, that I nearly ran into the side of the hedge which outlined the garden courtyard of the capitol. The hover disc spun wildly in the wrong direction, and I ducked down and clutched at both sides of the disc with my hands. I lowered my gaze and stared at the nearest fixed point possible. The fixed point in my vision was a bright source of blue light just outside of the Capitol building, some twenty yards away.
The portal was there, but something was wrong. Two figures were outlined by its light, and the approaching darkness from behind. My wild crash was so taxing that I couldn't be sure who was there, or if I had seen anything at all. Keeping track of the details around me was low on my list of priorities.
Spinning still closer, I slowed, and stumbled off the edge of my disc. My body hit the ground, and I skidded toward the outer ring of the Portal's light. My body burned once more from the scratches and burns that seemed to perpetually cover my skin. I bit my lip, and struggled to focus my eyes. I was acting on impulse. There was no room for forethought any longer.
To keep the portal open seemed to be an invitation to destruction of unknown magnitude, but to allow it to close would mean the end of the Fae Realm -- or at least the complete destruction of the Capitol.
A pair of figures walked over toward me.
Though my vision was blurry, I was still able to see the two of them approach. The details were lost to me, but seeing the gait of one of them, I knew it was Thane. Worry and fear consumed my body.
"Thane!"
The ground quaked once more beneath my body, and as I stood up, a thunderous crack sounded through the air, as a marble edifice broke into pieces and fell to the ground. Struggling to my feet, I sprinted the final distance toward the portal. Thane received me with open arms, and I dove into him.
"Thane, I heard that most of the officials are over with the Wilder Fae. I don't know what to do, but we should find a way to warn them."
"Shh..."
He stroked my hair, and held me against his body.
"Don't worry about a thing. You did great."
"Great? Thane. I had a dream about you. I think something really bad is happening. We really need to get out of here. Come on, if we all work together, I think we may be able to unweave the magic of the portal before it expires."
"Expires?"
"That's what the Wilder Fae said, when they scouted me. I thought you knew about that."
I pulled him toward the portal, but he resisted. Then it became clear to me; Thane did not want to close the Portal. I shook my head back and forth and made eye contact with him.
"This place is going into the Abyss, Thane. Take a look around; your idea isn't going to work. Not like you had hoped anyway."
Thane pulled his hand away, and the other man that was with him came up behind me. I saw Thane's eyes narrow at him, and the man stopped, just short of my body.
I bit my lip and stepped out to the side of the two of them.
"What's going on, Thane?"
I watched as he put his hands to his face, and took a deep breath to compose himself. When he had finished, he had attained full on political composure once more. He could have been going to a press release for the wedding of the minister's daughter. Seeing him change so drastically within the context of the deteriorating environment around us gave me chills.
I began to back away from him, unconsciously moving toward the portal.
My movement toward the portal seemed to put the other man on edge once more, but Thane held up a firm palm.
"That won't be necessary, Xavier. Our Agent-in-the-Field is an experienced Veteran. She knows how to handle herself. Likely even better than you."
Thane's vote of confidence was a nice thing to experience, but I was still caught behind the wall of bullshit he was busy erecting with his pretentious attitude. Looking forward into the future, I was entirely uncertain as to the intentions that Thane might have, but I could be certain of two things. Firstly, he was resuming his position as a militaristic expression of the Fae Government.
At this point, I couldn't be certain whether or not this was a sanctioned activity or not, but knowing Thane, it probably wasn't. His newest boy toy, Xavier, was likely in this for whatever prestige Thane had managed to convince him existed for him at the end of some rainbow of service. For all of the care that I felt for him, I fucking despised Thane. However, now was not the time or place to proclaim whatever mixed feelings I had for him.
Secondly, he wanted the portal to remain open, which made him a very dangerous man.
The fact that he wanted the portal to remain open meant that he was willing to sacrifice any and all life in order to achieve his goal. If the portal required any form of regular sacrifice, that also meant that he would be willing to kill, or order the death of people in order to pursue his goal. Likely he would have Xavier here to that work for him.
My mind was spinning out at a thousand miles a minute in an effort to get a hold of every aspect of the situation. I was in the middle of processing all of this information when Erol showed up on his hover disc. He was scratched to hell, and obviously had taken a number of falls himself on the way over. Thane caught my line of eyesight first, and then followed my gaze to Erol's approach.
"You know him?"
"He's a researcher... from the library."
Thane shook his head, and smiled.
"I could always tell when you were lying. You know that's a skill you really ought to either brush up on or forget all together."
His smile was smooth as silk as he
walked out to greet Erol.
"So the man of the hour approaches... I don't believe we've met."
Fucking Thane. All I could do was sit and stare.
The apocalypse was nearly approaching, and yet here he was, practically sitting down for tea with some fucked up human who couldn't even manage to operate a hover disc.
I walked over toward Erol to try and position myself in such a way that I might be able to protect him if something went wrong, but Thane already had me beat.
"Erol, is it?"
He nodded, guileless and far too honest for his own good.
"I just wanted to tell you how much we appreciate the efforts that you have made in come over here. You must feel like a very brave explorer."
Even Erol was having a bit of difficult swallowing what Thane was dishing out. I watched him look over his right shoulder toward the approaching storm. Rain was already falling down over us, and the wind was picking up to a point where the rain actually stung my skin almost as badly as the abrasions left from the ground.
"Don't you think we ought to talk more once we go through the portal?"
Erol's words rose high over the sound of the wind.
I tried to cut him off, or to redirect the conversation somehow, but Thane had already leapt at the opportunity. I watched as he offered Erol a hand so he could get off of his hover disc, like a princess descending out from a pumpkin.
"Right you are my friend. This place is in grave danger, and we need to do everything in our power to amend the situation. I just want you to know that the whole Fae Realm owes you a debt for your unflinching service in the face of this most perilous situation we face."
There was nothing to be done.
Thane would slaughter him right there and leave him bleeding on the steps of the capitol.
Whatever elder gods ushered forward from the depths of the abyss in the form of this storm would approach, and the rest of the dimensions would fall into chaotic disarray. I knew that I had to act out, but the end was already in sight.
"Did Aria tell you about the sacrifice?"
