by Gabi Moore
Chapter 12
“I don’t mind the climb,” Dion spoke to her, “It’s the time it consumes. We’ll spend more time on the stairs then we will fight those creatures.”
“Imagine how bad it must have been doing this in armor,” she replied. “Think about wearing another sixty-five pounds of chainmail and plate while you’re climbing the stairs. Also, you’d have a metal sword in one hand and a matching shield in the other. I think we have it easy.”
“Notice the curve of these stairs,” she told him as they crossed from one level to another and made for the next stairwell. “There is a slight bend to the right in each one. Can you guess what that might be?”
“They wanted to make it easier to get from one level to the next?” Dion asked her.
“No, they wanted to give the defenders an advantage. The stairwells always curve to the left. Most people are left-handed and it gave them an advantage in swinging a sword. The attackers needed to hit the defenders with an off-handed sword blow, while the defenders’ target had a direct line to swing a sword.
Dion almost corrected her as nearly every one he knew was right-handed until it dawned on him that it might not be true in this world.
They continued the climb to the level still under control by the tower’s defenders while Bernice rambled on and on about the tower and its history. It figured with prominence in many of the kingdom epics and she recited lines of poetry where the tower was mentioned. Dion admitted it was a quite a construction accomplishment. The tower was built when the techniques were very crude. Most of the blocks were hauled by carts and horses from the nearest quarry, which was twenty-five miles away. Angles were calculated with a square and compass.
Dion and Bernice arrived a few minutes on the sauna level behind the guards. The instant they walked into the room, which was sectioned off like the others, they heard a loud noise at one end. It reminded him of someone pounding on a door. Dion looked down the hall formed by the partitions and saw the guards attempting to hold the door with a pile of broken up furniture and wood.
Whatever was on the other end of that door was not happy. It was a thick door, just as all the other doors inside the tower were. This one still had its military function and was covered in steel studs and held together with metal hinges. It shook constantly as something began to force it loose from the frame. Dion could see plaster fall from the walls from the shock waves created from the impacts. In between the slams to the door, he could hear the snarls and grunts of large animals. Had he not known about what was on the other side of the door? Dion wondered if they were up against a herd of boars.
“It won’t hold this time,” one of the guards said to the man who acted as sergeant. “And we won’t be able to retreat fast enough either. I suggest we break out those pikes.” He waved to the wall where a row of spears with ax blades attached sat at the ready.
“If you use those pikes, you better know what you’re doing,” Bernice yelled at the defenders. “A few of them turned around to see who addressed them.
“Do any of you know how to use them?” she yelled over the sound of the pounding on the door. “If not, you better grab them and run to the next level. I don’t know what’s behind that door, but it sounds pretty mean.”
She walked over to the pikes and picked up a few of them. She grabbed three and turned back to the other men. “Come on, let’s go downstairs, I can show you some basic bayonet drills, they work the same!”
A few of the guards picked up the pikes and joined her. The rest tried to shove their weight against the doors, which were under attack by the creatures on the other side.
“Everybody to the next door!” Dion finally yelled. “I’m going to try something, if it doesn’t work, take the pikes downstairs and use them if you have to!”
The guards responded to Dion and Bernice’s commands. They didn’t hesitate to abandon the door. The crew hadn’t made much progress anyway, as the doorframe began to crack. They ran to the stairwell that led down and waited. In a few more minutes, the horde would be through it. Dion let them run past him and planted his feet in the middle of the hall, ten feet from the door as it began to break open.
He began to concentrate, to feel his own time circle from where he’d traveled to reach this new world. He felt his mind reach out to the world he called home and make contact with the elementals over there. He searched out what he needed and made the request for them to come and help him. The response was intense and Dion knew he’d reached them.
He opened his eyes and saw the door push open and a furry hand emerge from it. It was full of claws that looked very sharp. Then another furry paw came from behind the door as it pushed open. The furniture and boards holding it in place were pushed backwards by the combined force of whatever was on the other side.
Dion looked to his rear. The guards and Bernice waited to see what he would do. He turned back to the door. It began to open as the boards broke away from it and the furniture barricade moved back.
However, this time there was one significant change in the tableaux in front of him.
The ghoul cleaners were there. They stood at attention in their work uniforms ready to go into action. Dion didn’t know how effective the small creatures would be, most were no more than five feet in height. All wore the standard mirror shades to protect their eyes from light. The shopping mall where he’d found them had used the ghouls all over the place, but their home and loyalty was to the element of earth. As the door began to swing open and the first of the furry creatures emerged, Dion realized he had to let the ghouls decide how best to take care of his problem.
“We are under attack by what’s on the other side of that door,” he told the ghouls. “I need you to prevent them from getting past this level. Also, I need them sent back to the other side of the door and the same door secured against them.”
One of the ghouls nodded and turned to the others to make sure they’d received the order. The ghoul cleaners never said anything and Dion couldn’t figure out how they communicated to each other. But they had understood the instructions and were ready to carry them out.
As Dion watched, the ghouls tore apart an expensive piece of furniture in front of them. It was a small cabinet the guards hauled down from the upper areas to use as a barricade, but never had the chance to put it in place. In seconds, the twelve ghouls each had a board and turned to face the first one of the Azuroth horde as it ran screaming at them.
The first ghoul hit it hard with a wooden board. As the Azuroth came at it, the ghoul slammed the board directly into the thing’s stomach area. Dion assumed it was the stomach area because, although the Azuroth horde ran on two legs and possessed a set of arms to match, they were covered by hair. It reeled back and bumped into the second one of its kind as it also ran out from behind the door. More came out once the door opened up, but the ghouls began to employ the boards as weapons with fiendish effectiveness. The Azuroth were sent sprawling across the hall and none of them made it past the ghouls.
The furry little demons realized they were up against a force determined and one that did not miss when they swung a board. Howling with pain, they began to retreat back to the door under the savage blows of the ghoul cleaners. When the last one was on the other side of the door, the ghouls slammed it shut hard.
Dion watched as the ghouls grabbed the hammer and nails left behind by the fleeing security guards. They formed two teams organized to perfection and began to disassemble every piece of furniture or fitting they could find. The wood was hammered into an intricate pattern designed to keep the door in place with maximum efficiency. Dion watched them finish and secure the door at unbelievable speed.
Fifteen minutes later, they were finished. The door was barricaded by professionals and the Azuroth hordes would reconsider their attempt at storming through to the other side. Dion had no idea what this Queen Lilith creature would do from her end.
The ghoul cleaners lined up for inspection in front of their accomplishment. Di
on walked up to the door and looked it over. There was no way it could’ve been secured in as good and little time by anything else.
Dion walked up to the ghouls. “Dismissed,” he said to them and they vanished.
He turned to the guards on the other end. They were speechless until Bernice Cosmo said something.
“Guess we won’t have to use these pikes after all.”
Bernice and Dion decided to take the elevator down while the guards were deployed back to the sauna and watched the door that the ghouls barricaded. Dion was tired from summoning the ghoul elementals and didn’t want to endure the long walk down the stairs to the great hall. He used the speaking tube and had the operator send the elevator for him and Bernice. She didn’t feel like a long walk down either.
And she wanted to talk.
“What were those things you summoned?” she asked him. “I thought you manipulated elements, not dwarfs with sunglasses.”
“Ghouls,” he told her. “The place where I came from used them for cleaners. They’re earth elementals.”
“Are you going to use them again? I’d like to see them in action one more time.”
“Can’t,” he told her. “According to my uncle I can only use elementals from my time circle once. Then I have to use another elemental. This means I’ll only be able to do what you saw three more times until the Aether Elemental Grandmaster appears and authorizes me to manipulate the fifth element.”
Dion leaned back on the small elevator, which was on its way down the shaft and looked up. For some reason, he had the strongest sensation someone was up there. The elevator had a little covering over the top. Most of it was open so the shaft could be seen above it
Furthermore, the few boards on top of it were perfect for an adult sphinx to roost.
“Sorry about this, kid,” the sphinx said to him as it began to saw away at the rope holding the elevator with its claw, “but once I’m paid to do a job….”
Chapter 13
Dion knew he had to act fast. The sphinx could fly back up the shaft and didn’t worry about the cable. The elevator passed the opening for one floor, but he didn’t think the next one would come up in time. Dion closed his eyes and concentrated on the air sylphs while Bernice put a hand to her mouth in shock. He found them quick since the connection with the other time circle had opened when he brought the ghoul cleaners over to this one. Now it was much easier to bring over another elemental across.
The sphinx stopped sawing on the rope when it noticed the cheerleader who stood in front of it. It reared back in confusion, as it had never seen a young woman dressed in a skimpy outfit holding a baton before. This allowed the elevator time to stop. The top of the elevator was exposed to the opening of a floor Dion and Bernice already went past. The elevator halted in place all of a sudden.
“That’s right,” said the girl wearing red, white and blue to Murph the elevator operator at the ground level. “Don’t move it again until I give you the word.” His hand was holding the crank for the pulley system, but he’d clicked the brake handle on her command.
The woman held a long bar in the center and aimed it at him. It wasn’t the size of the metal bar which concerned Murph; it was the fire burning from each end. The young woman twirled the burning bar to show him that she knew how to use it.
While the sphinx stared at the air sylph who was in form of a cheerleader, it neglected to notice the open door to its back. Nor did it notice the four other air sylph cheerleader elementals behind it in the room where the top part of the elevator had stopped. Likewise, the sphinx didn’t notice the elementals that carried large batons meant for spinning. They could bring some serious pain if wielded by someone who knew how to use them.
Such as cheerleaders.
The cheerleader standing in front of the sphinx hit it hard in the middle with her baton, which sent the creature out of the elevator shaft and into level fourteen, the art gallery. The sphinx spun back only to encounter the other cheerleaders who began to hit it with their batons. They showed no mercy.
“Okay,” the woman with the flaming baton said to Murph, “take it down one more level and allow them to get off. Wait for him to tell you whether or not he wants to use it the rest of the way.”
Murph nodded, unhooked the brake and began to move the elevator down to the next level. When he was certain the car was level with the floor, Murph locked it in place and decided to wait and see what the woman with the metal rod wanted him to do next.
The sphinx went flying through the air and landed in front of the next cheerleader who managed to pin it down with her baton. It struggled to get up, but four other cheerleader elementals were on top of it. Another one materialized with a set of handcuffs and locked the sphinx in place.
When Dion and Bernice ran up the stairwell to the art gallery, they found the air sylphs with the chained sphinx. Dion stopped and took the sight in. The sphinx had tried to kill him and he was in no mood to be sympathetic.
“Don’t worry about him,” one of the elementals announced as she held on the struggling figure of the sphinx. “We’ve got a high school he can guard for the next three hundred years.”
“Can we go now?” one of the other elementals asked him.
Dion nodded and the cheerleader elementals with their captive sphinx disappeared.
Dion walked over to the speaker tube mounted in the wall next to the elevator shaft and yelled into it. “Murph! Is there anyone down there with you?”
“Was until ten seconds ago,” came the response. “Young blond lady with a burning metal bar. She made me stop the elevator. Are you okay?”
“We’re fine up here. Don’t worry about her, she works for me. Go ahead and take the elevator down to the bottom of the shaft, we’re walking down the stairs to get to the great hall.”
“You summoned up those women?” Bernice asked him as they walked down the stairwell. “How did you ever learn how to do that?”
“It’s a natural ability I had when I was born,” Dion told her. “Most people have some ability to work with elementals, I have more than most. But I can’t do much with them in this world and the ones I can manipulate need to be brought over from mine. Single use, too, which means I am down to two other elementals.”
“Let me know when you need to use them,” she mentioned. “I’d love to see that battle again!”
Chapter 14
When the exited the stairwell at the level of the great hall, Dion saw his uncle in a heated exchange with the three sisters who controlled the tower. Kiley Mahen, dressed in her customary black, sat in her high chair and listened to him with boredom. It was plain to everyone in the room that she had endured this before.
“You have to do something about the situation out there and up in the tower,” he yelled at her. “Eventually, they will find a way down and inside this tower. When that happens, we’ll be trapped in the middle.”
“I just found out your nephew had some of his elementals secure the door to the level above the art gallery,” she told him between claps of thunder, “I don’t think the ones outside want to risk the lighting strikes, so we can afford to wait. Besides, we have no way to know what is out there in all that wind and rain until the storm dies down. Which it doesn’t intend to do right away.”
Dion sat down next to his parents who never seemed to express much of an opinion. They were quiet people and he could hardly ever recall either of them raising their voices. His mother was on the tall side and sat next to his father, who was an inch or two shorter than his wife. Funny, Dion remembered his father told him once that they were the same height. They wore the same kind of tunics Dion noted the tower retainers wore, but they’d been here over a year and were abducted by his uncle’s men. Whatever they wore came from this time circle.
“I think this whole experience is pretty groovy,” said the woman who sat next to him. Dion had noticed Bernice wondered off to another group of women when they reached the great hall level.
“Depends on y
our definition of the term,” Dion said to her. “I don’t find it very groovy we are caught between two different kinds of demons under the command of some fiend from the abyss.”
“It’s more adventure than I have back home,” she told him. “China. China Masters.”
“Dion,” he introduced himself. “I’m sorry you had to get caught up in this mess. I can’t do much to remedy the situation until the fifth elemental grandmaster returns. No one seems to know where she went, but she’s supposed to be back soon. I hope.”
“It beats sitting in the tea shop everyday waiting for customers,” she told him. Dion noted the woman was light of complexion and had long gray hair tied into a bun.
She also had a tattoo of a star around the back of her neck, which was unique. Dion hadn’t noted any tattoos on the women from the bus or the tower. She wore a knitted top, which reminded him of the sweater worn by mountain dwellers in Peru. Dion could only speculate on the chain of events, which brought her to the bus trip.
“Always was a big reader,” she told him. “I’m working on several books at the same time, but never can get around to finishing any one of them. I’d hoped this trip would take me somewhere where I hadn’t been before and give me some new ideas. At least I’ve had my share of new experiences.”
Dion almost told her that a mad rush from the Azuroth wasn’t an experience he would wish on anyone, but kept his mouth shut. Who had brought the sphinx over to attack him? A sphinx was aether elemental and seemed to be native to both time circles.
“We have to consider the worst case scenario,” Susan Mahen spoke to her sisters. Dion was a little surprised to hear the youngest sister speak aloud.
“What do you define as a worst-case scenario?” Loris, the middle sister, asked her. “Things are pretty dire right now.”
“What happens if the Azuroth break through to this level?” she asked. “We have to get out of the tower if it’s compromised. The storm is still in progress outside, but it could lift at any minute. All the thunderclouds have to do is move on and the rain will diminish. When that happens, the other Azuroth at the front gate will pin us inside the tower. If we can’t go out, we’ll have to attack those creatures in the upper tower. I have no idea how many of them are up there. Do any of you know?”
