by Jae Vogel
Chapter 11
“What were you doing there?” It was Bernice again. Dion turned to face the older women who had a keen sense of observation. She was close to the color of the Mahen sisters, but a few shades lighter.
“I was communicating,” he told her, not knowing what else to say. Dion had no way to know what the locals thought about elemental manipulation, so he let it be.
“Are you one of those guys who can work with a sphinx?” she asked him. “I haven’t met too many. Adepts, I think you’re called, right?”
Not knowing how to answer her question, Dion told her ‘yes’. He waited for a reaction.
“Never could see the reason for fooling with those things,” she told him. “I’ve had neighbors swear they can guard your house and more, but what kind of natural force comes in so mixed up? Face of a human, wings of a bird, body of a lion. It’s as if someone couldn’t make up his or her mind what kind of creature to construct. I always said they were built by a committee.”
“Now a dragon,” she said, “they have character. You always know where you stand with them even if they look at you as food. You feed them on a regular basis, work with them, play with them and they’ll look after you. If I were allowed, I would take the one I used to work with home with me. Can’t do that because of the regulations. They aren’t allowed off the base, even though you bond with them after a while. I was so close with some of the females I cared for they would even let me approach while nesting. Most people would never even consider being near a dragon when it’s nesting, too dangerous and a good way to get cremated.”
“You sound quite the expert on dragons,” Dion laughed. “It sounds like you miss them.”
“I do,” she continued. “People never liked getting too close to them, but they liked the air shows we put on once a year. It was really something to see a whole pack of dragons flying in formation around the base. They could roast an entire barbecue on the ground. Folks would ask to get their picture taken with them, but we couldn’t do that, too risky for anyone to get near a dragon unless they’ve trained with it.”
“Here,” she told him, as Bernice pulled out some pictures from her purse. “These are from right before I retired.”
She let Dion see the photographs of her standing next to an enormous lizard with wings that almost covered the both of them. The lizard was her military spec dragon, which she trained from the moment it hatched. Bernice went on to tell him the dragons had long lifespans and she personally taught her replacement how to work with the beast.
“She sends me updates every few weeks,” she finished. “And the dragon is quite fine.”
“So anyway,” she changed the subject, “just what is upstairs in this tower that the sister is worried about?”
“I’m not exactly sure myself,” Dion told her. He looked across the table and saw the form of his uncle starring off into space.
“Uncle Seth,” he asked him. “What is up there in the tower you let in from the abyss? You’ve talked of Queen Lilith and her Azuroth, but you haven’t been too specific about what we’re up against.
“She waits at the gate, always trying to get through to any time circle she can find,” Seth Bach described. “I don’t know where she comes from, or how long she’s been there, but anyone working the abyss has to find a way to keep her under control. I thought we had her boxed in, but she found a way to get through when we weren’t watching. She managed to bring through some minions called the Azuroth with her and we have both of them to contend with now. At least they’re not very powerful, but there are enough of those things to be a nuisance. The aether grandmaster was supposed to find a way to send them back, but she has yet to return.”
“What about the ones out at the front of the gate?” Dion asked him. “How did they get out there? Kiley claims they are a different species.”
“I have no idea how that batch got through,” his uncle said. “I hope the elemental grandmaster gets back soon enough because if she doesn’t we will have to deal with both groups without any help. That is not a prospect I look forward to.”
“And you have no idea where the grandmaster went?” Dion asked him.
“Not a one. She was here one day, the next she was gone. She said something about needing extra help and that was the last conversation I had with her.”
Something didn’t seem right about this whole affair to Dion. According to his uncle, everything he’d suffered through over the past year was from the efforts of his uncle to get him to the tower from the other world and return Queen Lilith and her horde back to the abyss. But he wondered how much his uncle was telling him was true. What if he was holding crucial information from him? It was strange that his uncle had worked so hard to keep him away from the elemental grandmasters back in Ohio, yet claimed he needed Dion’s help.
What if Queen Lilith was far more dangerous than he allowed everyone to think? It would explain all the obstacles he’d put in his path. His uncle wanted to make sure he had the right fortitude before he put him against the things upstairs and now out in front of the tower. Dion tapped his fingers on the table and thought it all over. He didn’t like what it all added up to, but there was nothing he could do about it right now.
Dion’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of men who ran out of the stairwell that led up wards to the next level. There were two of them and he recognized them as the security guards from the mall. They were guarding the tower’s upper levels against the invasion. Both of them looked exhausted, which meant they ran all the way down the tower without the elevator. One of them nearly tripped over a chair as he made his way to the great table. He was surprised by so many outsiders in the great hall.
“Word with you, ma’am,” the other guard managed to breathe out as he reached the table. He looked direct at Kiley Mahen. His face was flushed and his uniform covered in sweat.
“You look exhausted,” she said to the man. Kiley leaned over the table and handed him a glass of wine. “Go ahead and talk, I need to hear.”
He drained the cup in one gulp. “Thank you,” he said to her. The guard turned to Kiley. “They broke through, but we’ve been able to stop them.”
“How far did they get?” she asked him.
“Right over the sauna,” he told them. “They caught us off guard. We finished securing the stairwell from the nursey and they calmed down. We heard some noise up there, but not enough to get excited about. So I had the men stand down and take a break. I thought they might be tired out after that last rush and wouldn’t try anything for a few hours.”
“I was wrong.”
“About fifteen minutes ago, they slammed hard against the door and knocked the barricade loose. I had the men fall back to the level below it. We secured that door, but I knew it wouldn’t hold them for long, so I kept falling back, locking doors behind me as I went. We went through the living areas and school floors until we got to the sauna. The door is smaller on that level for some reason, so I had the men use what bits of furniture we grabbed on the way down to secure it the right way. We finished blocking it up the best way we could the very moment we heard some noise in the level over it. They’re still trying to get through, but I believe we’ve held them for the moment. There isn’t much else I can do other than get the pikes out and distribute them to the men.”
“I don’t want to go that far,” she told him. “Why didn’t you take the elevator down?”
“It all happened so fast, I didn’t have a chance to call the operator. Besides, the elevator is at the sauna level. If we use it, the shaft will be open and I don’t want to give those things any opening to the inside of the tower. I know they’ve been scared to climb down the tower on the outside, but they might not be so scarred of it on the inside.”
“You did good,” Kiley approved. “Take your time about returning to the sauna.”
“We have to get back up there. It’s important we’re there because one man less means that floor has fewer men to secure it.”
“I’ll go with them,” Dion spoke up from his place at table. “They can use help up there. And perhaps I can summon something to assist them if they can’t stop the advance.”
Kiley Mahen turned to Dion’s uncle and gave him a puzzled look. “My nephew can work some of the basic elements,” he told her. “I don’t think he can send them back without the grandmaster help, but Dion can do some basic work to assist the guards. It sounds as if they could use it. Until the Aether Elemental Grandmaster returns.”
“I suppose they can use the help,” She responded.
Kiley looked in the direction of Dion’s parents. “So long as it’s alright with them.”
His mother nodded. “I trust Dion to make the right decision,” she said to her. “I’ve done my best to raise him with an understanding of his abilities.”
As Dion began to get up from the table, he heard the voice of Bernice Cosmo. “I’ll go too. You could use someone up there with a little field experience.”
They headed up the stairwell just behind the two guards who’d rested from the trip back downstairs.
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 fiend
ish 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. Dion 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.
