“Your help is most welcome.”
Tabitha, looking unsettled, gripped the tips of the battle mage’s fingers and gave a half-shake. “Well, I must admit that your words the other day unsettled me. If we at the school can reinforce our worth with the wider public, it can only be advantageous for us in the long run.”
“Thank you,” Chloe said.
Tabitha made a half-attempt at a crooked smile, then reached into the folds of her cloak. “There is also this. Something I found in the library that might aid you in your quest.”
She handed Chloe a small piece of aged parchment covered in scrawled script and the diagrams of motions for an incantation. In the corner of the page was a sketch of a rippling rift with figures emerging from its depths.
“The tale of the Nether Realm is legendary,” Tabitha explained. “For the school to play a part in the second chapter of the tale is something few will live to bear witness to.”
Chloe smiled and gave her thanks, studying the document carefully and absorbing as much of it as possible.
When she finished, she set about readjusting the positions of the mages. She placed the younger mages in the center, with the mages on horseback on either side and in a thin line in front. She positioned Tabitha alongside her, Gideon, Molly, Holly, and Lindsay, who had proven her worth and now looked fit for the part with her gold staff in hand.
“Okay,” Chloe murmured, satisfied that everything was ready. “Here goes.”
Chloe closed her eyes and found her jackalope familiar. The etheric barrier around them seemed to bend and warp, swimming into amorphous shapes as the jackalope guided it toward Chloe. She felt the power of the etheric coursing through her, every fiber of her body tingling.
She concentrated fully on her task, remembering the scribbles and instructions on the corner of the ancient scroll. She opened her eyes and pointed her hands at the clear space in the sky, imagining a rift opening, moving her hands in the sequence she had seen on the parchment.
Sparks shot from her fingers, and her hands and arms glowed with power. She sent the sparks away from her body, raining into the air as though she were grinding steel across metal.
She waited for something to happen. She waited for the tear to appear, the first sign of a rip in the fabric of reality. A crosshair that might indicate where the world ended and the etheric began.
But nothing happened. After several minutes of trying, she stopped, realizing suddenly that she was out of breath.
“I don’t understand,” Chloe said, withdrawing the piece of scroll and scanning it again. She had followed every instruction, and nothing had happened.
What was she missing?
Try again, KieraFreya said. Sometimes when a door is rusted, it just needs a little extra push.
Gideon offered Chloe a mana regeneration potion and she drank it greedily, nervous about having close to two hundred bodies waiting for her to act, including the forty or so from the school who intensely disliked her.
“Come on…” Chloe muttered, focusing once more. The jackalope returned, swiftly pulling the etheric toward her. She stared at the sky, begging KieraFreya to get involved. She felt the goddess trying to do what she could, but it seemed impossible. Sparks flew, but nothing happened.
It was just as Chloe was about to give up again that an eagle cried out. The call was loud enough to echo around them, drawing the eyes of the mages to it.
The bird was easily double the size of any eagle she had ever seen. It sped across the sky from over the canopy of trees, moving like one of Ben’s arrows loosed from a bow. Its streamlined shape tore through the sky toward the party.
“What the…” Gideon muttered.
Before anyone could respond, gigantic wings started beating. The very air around them pulsed with a sudden change in temperature as the winds grew warm. Following the trajectory of the eagle was a creature so big that Chloe had to take a second look.
The dragon appeared as if from nowhere, materializing over the trees. Each beat of its wings sent waves of air that squashed the canopy as it raced after the eagle, smoke billowing from its mouth and trailing behind.
The eagle darted low, coming so close to the crowd of mages that many of them ducked in fear. As it passed near Chloe, she saw a familiar glint in its eye.
“The Wrangler,” she breathed.
Gideon’s mouth fell open.
The shapeshifter pulled up at the last minute and sped into the sky. He climbed ever higher, finding the space in the clouds and vanishing from sight. The dragon followed the eagle.
All around them, Chloe heard cries of fear. The mages had signed up to open a rift, but a dragon? That hadn’t been a part of the deal.
“Stand steady,” Chloe called, her voice authoritative. It boomed around them, drawing the attention of the mages as the dragon disappeared into the clouds. “We do not cower from our enemies. Stand steady and wait. The rift is near.”
They waited in tense silence. They could hear the dragon somewhere above them. The clouds swirled and blackened, the smoke from the dragon’s throat darkening their hue. Occasionally they could see the two creatures through breaks in the clouds.
And then the eagle was diving. It plummeted from an immeasurable height, dropping so fast that Chloe thought she could see the air rippling behind it. The dragon was on its tail, mouth swelling with flame as it readied for the blow.
A split second after the dragon belched its flame, the eagle made a ninety-degree turn, speeding back toward the group. The dragon used its momentum to tear after it, the air behind now wobbling like tarmac during a heatwave.
“This is it!” Chloe exclaimed, realizing suddenly what was happening. “Prepare yourselves!”
The dragon was a dark blur now, and a sound like a speeding plane thundered around them. The eagle slowed, hovering in the air in front of the dragon’s path. The dragon grinned excitedly, summoned its flame, and shot a column of fire from its throat.
For a heart-rending second, Chloe thought the flames had consumed the bird, but then she saw him diving toward the ground, finding his way toward her. He flew at an impossible speed, stopping just as he reached Chloe and transforming in mid-air into the Wrangler.
“Now, Chloe!” the Wrangler wheezed, pointing at where the air wobbled around the dragon. It hovered in the air, its wings beating loudly as it confusedly scanned for the bird it had been chasing.
Chloe aimed her power at the air around the dragon, the start of a tear that would become a rift—as long as Chloe’s power worked.
Chloe closed her eyes, sparks once again raining from her fingertips. She shot them forward, the power making its way into the sky, irritating and blinding the dragon, who screeched and roared in frustration.
But something had started to happen. The sparks found their way into the rippling air. A small slit began to form, opening like a blinking eyelid. She called to the mages, requesting their power to help. The next thing she knew, dozens upon dozens of beams of power found their way into the air, each line connecting with the rift as it slowly began to open.
Chloe grimaced as she focused every ounce of energy on keeping the doorway open, her mana bar slowly dropping as the dragon finally abandoned its post in front of the rift and flew up into the air, its eyes trained on the mages below.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The rift slowly began to part, and impossible folds of air widened to reveal something beyond. Chloe could hear strange noises coming from the rift.
The very air around them changed as it inched apart as if fingers were clawing open a broken elevator door.
The dragon rose higher, hovering above them all now, its mouth alive with flame.
“Tabitha! Can you do something?” Chloe roared above the din of magic bolts and the beating of wings.
Tabitha called a sharp command. Immediately the mages from the Mage’s School turned their attentions to the dragon. Without uttering a word, they focused, their spells turning to the crystal blue of water.<
br />
A net began to appear above the heads of the gathered mages, the strands made from cool water that dripped and soothed those sweating beneath. When the dragon loosed its flame, it was met with nothing but the hissing roar of steam rising and clouding the air above them.
But Chloe could see none of this. She could hear it all, but her focus was on the rift which, once the school mages had turned their attentions away, had begun to slowly close.
“Change of plan,” Chloe shouted. “Mages back to the rift, please.”
Tabitha rolled her eyes. “If she could make up her mind, it would be great.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “The next time I want to prevent my comrades from being roasted by dragon fire, I guess I’ll ask someone else.”
The mages directed their spells back at the rift, and it began to ease open again.
Gideon let out a cry of effort from beside her. His face was pained from the energy spent holding the rift. “What’s the plan for the dragon? We can’t keep getting distracted like this. We barely have enough energy to hold it.”
Chloe heard the colossal steps of Gelda from behind her. “Leave it to me,” she said.
Gelda wove between the lines of mages, finding a clear space where she could operate. The dragon in its rage and fury had swooped back into the air and now plunged toward the mages.
“Blueballs!” Gelda called, summoning the toffet to her. He ripped his eyes from the dragon and sprinted over on all fours. “I’ve got a job for you, kitty.”
Blueballs looked at her curiously.
“Here, climb.”
Gelda laced her fingers together, bent her legs, and created a launchpad. Her stony muscles glistened in the dazzle of the surrounding magic.
“One…”
Blueballs placed a foot in the makeshift stirrup.
“Two…”
They both coiled.
“Three!”
Blueballs jumped at the exact moment Gelda threw her hands into the air. The toffet arced high into the air just as the dragon swooped by, its jaws snapping.
Blueballs grabbed the beast’s thick neck, gripping tightly and adjusting himself until he was safely straddling it.
Shifting to compensate for the added weight, the dragon roared and beat its wings harder, the wings’ membranes almost knocking several mages off their feet.
And then it was back in the air, twisting and writhing furiously, distracted and determined to rid itself of the toffet now slashing his claws into the dragon’s tough flesh.
“I think it’s working!” Lindsay called, surprised laughter decorating her voice. “I think it’s opening!”
“It is!” Holly shouted.
Gideon laughed between grunts of effort.
Chloe saw that they were right. The tear in the sky fissured its way toward the ground, cracking like ice down the side of an iceberg. The air moved in waves and the door parted. Mouths dropped open in awe as they saw what lay beyond the rift.
“The Nether Realm,” KieraFreya gasped.
“Almost there!” Chloe called, doing her best to ignore the cries of the toffet and dragon locked in deadly battle. “Just a bit farther!”
A sudden screeching cry filled the air around them. Chloe looked away from the rift to where the dragon had landed. It was doing its best to shake Blueballs from its back, its enormous tail whipping around and smashing their barn to shards.
The dragon snapped at the toffet, its dagger-like teeth missing the creature by inches. Chloe could see a gash at Blueballs’ side, though he fought like nothing had happened.
There was a blur of movement from beside her. Before Chloe realized it, the Wrangler had transformed into a warg twice as large as any she’d seen. Its furry back was striped with black and brown, a great hunch across its spine from which its powerful front legs extended and pawed at the ground. It bounded toward the dragon.
“No! The rift!”
In the split-second Chloe’s attention had been diverted, her energy hadn’t been on the doorway. Her eyes widened in alarm when she saw it slowly begin to stitch back together. She narrowed her eyes, focused on the doorway again, and shot her magic forward.
“Not on my watch,” she muttered, sweat falling from her in buckets. She was dimly aware of shouts from behind, coming from mages who had depleted all their energy and were now worried that there wasn’t enough power to make it happen.
“KF? A little boost, perhaps? Anything?”
“I’m doing all I can,” KieraFreya replied. “It’s nearly there. I can feel it.”
“Pass the mana potions!” Chloe cried. “Restock! This is it! Just a bit more!”
Although her words spurred on her battalion, she had no idea if they were true. When would this end? Would magic be needed to hold the rift open forever?
And what exactly were those shadowy figures within the rift that were coming toward them?
The mages who were depleted refueled, the magic was boosted. The doorway inched open, melting reality around it. Before too long, Chloe clearly saw the Nether Realm beyond, only the shimmer of heat distorting what was coming toward them.
Two things happened at once, sending several of the mages to the ground in fear.
The first was a colossal boom like a thunderclap, the sound reverberating around them and echoing in waves. The very walls of the city shook, and the ground wobbled beneath them. An explosion of light surged from the edges of the rift, and Chloe was at last certain they’d completed their task. The doorway now stood open before them.
The second was the dragon’s dying cry. Heads turned to see Blueballs and the Wrangler, their bodies dripping with the dragon’s blood as it breathed its last and stilled.
There was a moment’s silence as the mages processed what had happened. The flows of magic began to cut off one by one until there were only the rift and the battalion, a faceoff of power against power.
“We did it,” Gideon whispered. “We really did it.”
The battalion fell silent. All eyes were fixed on the rift.
One by one, mages began to glow gold. People all across the field leveled up, cheering and whooping as the notification of their quest being complete hit their menus.
Quest complete: The Rift to Nether Realm
You have unlocked the entrance to the Nether Realm—congratulations!
This was deemed an impossible task by those who came before, but you managed to unite more magic-users than the city has seen together. You have found the tear in the fabric of reality and can now access the Nether Realm.
Celebrate your victory but tread carefully. Explore the unexplored. Strange paths lie ahead, but for now, rest up a bit…
If you can.
Rewards: 50,000 exp
Chloe beamed, elated. They had done it. They had actually done it. She laughed as she was lifted into the air with the rest, her level jumping to 16, her health, stamina, and mana replenishing instantly.
All around her were cheers. People high-fived, clapped, and hugged each other. A few individuals walked over to the dragon to get a closer look at the fallen creature. Horn blasts from the city gates signaled their victory.
“Good work, Chloe.” Gideon grinned.
Chloe waved a hand. “It wasn’t all me. Nothing would have been accomplished without you and all of these people here—”
When a second horn blast came, Chloe’s attention was drawn back to the rift. The sound was rough and shrill, not made by the finely-crafted brass of the horns of the city heralds.
Her eyes widened as she focused on the shapes moving toward them on the other side of the rift. They were hundreds of yards inside of the impossible realm but were getting closer, of that she was sure.
There were more than one hundred from what she could see. Tiny figures dotted the horizon, shapes littering the sky, they moved fast, dark figures growing larger as they drew closer to the rift. Before too long, Chloe could see that they were on horseback. Several figures rode on the back of lar
ge birds. Another horn blast rang from the rift and a sudden thought struck Chloe.
Now that we’ve opened it, but should we need to, how the hell do we close it?
The first arrow fired from the rift, a black thing with dark feathers trailing behind it. The arrow struck the ground near Chloe’s feet, missing by a few inches.
“Prepare!” Chloe cried, going into battle mode.
The mages around her, who had been celebrating seconds ago, now craned their heads to see the danger, alarm on their faces as they heard the hoofbeats and saw the stream of figures pounding toward them.
Each mage tapped into the etheric, spreading their feet apart and taking a battle stance. Their hands glowed with power, determination on their faces.
“Defensive maneuvers,” Chloe called.
Gideon powered his Aqua Orb, allowing Holly, Molly, and Chloe to step inside. Several other mages who had learned similar protective spells encapsulated their comrades until the majority of the mages were encircled by protective spells.
Animalistic whooping and jeers came from the enemy as they neared the rift. Finally Chloe could see them clearly—a great wave of orcs and other foul creatures riding beasts, the likes of which she had never seen. They moved at an alarming pace, one minute racing through the darkened purple rocks that littered the Nether Realm, the next breaking through the etheric and charging toward the mages.
Chloe clapped her hands as the first wave filed through. When she pulled them apart, an ice shard stretched between her palms. She rocked back, and when she cast the shard, it shot through several enemies before stopping.
Spell after spell now fired. Chloe could feel the etheric energy around them as mage after mage cast spells to fend off the enemy. She had no idea exactly what these creatures were and had no time to cast Creature Identification to find out.
“Gideon, how we doing, buddy?” Chloe asked the mage, who had once again imbued his orb with Volt Shock. Enemies crashed against the bubble, causing the power to glitch and explode in blinding light. Chloe was aware of Holly and Molly utilizing the shadows and rocks around them to knock enemies off their steeds and finish them off.
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