“That package,” grunted one of the guards. “It’ll need to go through the scanner.”
Farmer nodded.
“Of course.” He placed it in a plastic tray, which then travelled along the short conveyer and through the scanner. His eyes never left the face of the female guard who sat watching the screen. Finally, the box emerged out the other side and the woman gave a nod. With a grin, Agent Farmer retrieved his package. “Mind if I open it here?” he enquired of the Secretary.
“If you must. But be quick about it.”
He did so, tearing the box open and removing the device. He took the earpiece from his ear and threw it into a nearby bin, before replacing it with the new one. It looked different, sleeker.
“New model,” he explained, noting the inquisitive stares.
“Well, if that’s all, let’s be off. I’m missing pan-seared scallops for this…”
***
Noise. The creak of the opening door. Footsteps. New voices. Slowly, painfully, Alann opened his swollen eyes to see what fresh torment awaited him.
A man stood there, flanked by agents. This man was older, his hair long-since turned grey. Lean, hawk-like, with an air of authority. When he spoke, it was with a cultured accent. And an air of impatience.
“So, you’re this ‘Woodsman’ of whom I’ve been told. I must say, it looks as though you’ve had a rough time of it. Things might have gone a trifle easier had you co-operated.”
Alann replied, his voice hoarse, throat dry from lack of water.
“I can only reveal what I’m allowed to reveal. I can only insist that I am not a threat.”
“I see.” The man stood there, judging him. “Unfortunately, your insistence means little to us in these times. The days of a man’s word being taken as gospel are long gone.”
The Woodsman sighed.
“That’s a shame. I would that were different.”
“As would I,” the man agreed. “My name is Jonathan Andrews. I am the Secretary of State for Defence for the British Government. And I’m here to witness your confession.” He glanced sideways at Agent Evans who stood hiding bruised knuckles behind his back. “My man’s somewhat ‘traditional’ methods have failed, it would appear, to extract anything of worth from you. So we must resort, it seems, to other means.”
At his words, a suit came forth bearing a syringe of clear liquid. The very same chemical, Alann had no doubt, that had rendered the woman, Nikki, so insensate. Was this it? Was he about to betray his lord and his friends? Reveal everything before its time?
He tested the handcuffs once more. Was the metal starting to give, finally, after hours of surreptitiously straining? Evans took the needle with pained fingers, testing that it was clear by squirting a jet of the liquid, then advanced towards the bound Woodsman.
“Let’s see what you’ve been so desperate to withhold…” he murmured.
Just as he was about to draw near, just as he was about to plunge that needle into Alann’s skin, a great klaxon sounded out from the corridor, echoing within the confines of the small, tiled room.
“What’s that?” demanded the Secretary. “What’s that racket?”
“Fire alarm,” grunted one of the suits.
“Well, deal with it!”
Three of the agents left the room, leaving only Evans, the Woodsman and Andrews himself. Evans turned his attentions from the door, back to his prisoner.
“Now, where were we?”
Alann smiled.
“We were at the part where I escape.”
With a grunt of superhuman effort, he snapped his restraints.
***
A flurry of those drug-coated darts, and Alann rolled out of the way, the volley slamming into the wall behind him, one of the darts hitting an antique grandfather clock smack in the face and shattering its priceless glass façade.
Quick as a flash, he leapt to his feet and ran towards his assailants, even as the trio of agents hastily reloaded. Seeing that he was upon them, they dropped their pistols and lunged to the attack. Trained men, burly men, men in the peak of physical condition and honed to become weapons in and of themselves. Yet years of desperate battle against vicious foes had forged the Woodsman into something more.
Even as they struck out, he was no longer there, instead within their guards, tripping them, winding them, causing them to look like childish amateurs as they fell, tangled and confused, upon the sumptuously carpeted corridor floor. Yet he didn’t kill.
He had made a promise.
Even as he had escaped from his binds and launched himself at the gobsmacked Evans, he had pulled his punches, simply batting that foul syringe away, before sweeping the leg and rendering the man out cold. The terrified Secretary of State he had left untouched as he’d fled out the door and into the maze of corridors without.
Now, glancing left and right as the agents on the floor moaned and strived to right themselves, Alann relied on his woodsman’s sense of direction. That corridor, there, with the great painting of some famous Admiral bedecking its wall. He made for it, turning the corner. Shit! A group of agents crowded the corridor further down, barring his way and levelling their tranquiliser guns. Alann growled and flung himself out of the way, barging open a door with a shove of his shoulder and charging down the fresh corridor it revealed.
Voices behind him. He might outrun his pursuers, but not their flying darts. He needed to hide for a moment, get his bearings. Another door, to the left, and he tested the knob. It was unlocked. He opened it and slipped inside. The room was dark. Holding the door slightly ajar, he watched as the group of agents flew past, still hunting him, heedless of how close he was. He breathed a sigh of relief as their voices receded down the corridor.
Then he jumped as a fresh voice spoke out from the darkness.
“Took your time.”
Spinning on the spot, Alann whirled, ready to deliver a knockout blow, but at the last instant he pulled his punch. Instead, he reached out and flicked the light switch, revealing a large room with a mahogany meeting table, Fleur-de-Lys wallpaper and a sculpted Georgian fireplace. And a figure.
“Elerik?”
The Farmer laughed and pointed to the ID card that hung from the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
“Agent Farmer, to you.” He frowned as he observed the Woodsman’s bruised and bleeding face. “Been enjoying their hospitality, I see,” he growled, his voice taking a darker tone. “At least in the Games of Pen-Merethia we were allowed weapons to even the odds…”
“They’re scared of the unknown,” Alann explained. “There’s a lot going on that they don’t understand. And I admit, I was stubborn.”
Elerik stared.
“Even your enemies get the benefit of the doubt.”
“They’re not our enemies.”
The sounds of approaching footsteps and urgent voices from down the corridor. The click-clack of tranquiliser guns being made ready.
“Tell them that.”
The Woodsman glanced at the communicator in Elerik’s ear.
“You’re in contact with the Dragonship? Get us out of here.”
“Hold your horses, my friend,” the Farmer smiled, dragging Alann away from the door and towards the centre of the room. “We’re not here to get you alone. Our orders are to find and retrieve Evans and the Secretary of State for Defence. It’s time the British were made aware of what’s really going on.”
Alann’s turn to stare.
“You could have told me that sooner…”
“You were somewhat out of reach when the decision was made,” the Farmer laughed, as agents burst in through the door and stood there, guns levelled, looking confused as one of their number conversed with the fugitive prisoner. “Besides, you had everything well in hand.” He raised a finger to his earpiece. “Draconis; now would be a good time.”
The agents made up their minds and fired, but then a flash of pure and blinding white that caused everyone to screw their eyes in pain, followed by a rumble o
f thunder that shook the very paintings from the walls. The taste of tin upon the tongue. And the sound of tranquiliser darts pinging harmlessly from polished steel.
The light faded. One of the agents rubbed his eyes, staring in ever mounting wonder.
“Holy shit…”
“Someone call for reinforcements?” bellowed Arbistrath with a laugh, the whine from his hoisted cannon building as it charged a non-lethal burst of concussive power. “Tulador Guard, move out!”
All about him, Guardsmen stomped forth, weapons levelled, the servo whines of their powered armour filling the air as they advanced upon the hapless agents.
***
“What’s happening out there, man?”
“I’m not sure, Mr Secretary, but if we stay in here till reinforcements arrive, we’ll be fine.”
The library doubled as a meeting room, a long table running down the centre of the book-lined room. The great, thick oak doors were fastened shut, Evans having drawn the heavy bolt to lock them. There was no way the enemy could get in here.
Surely?
Shouts from the agents in the corridor outside. The sounds of shots – live fire, now, the tranq darts forgotten in their desperate defence. The high-pitched zings of ricochet. Urgent voices over the radio in Evans’ ear.
“We can’t stop them! -kssh- The armour, the bullets just bounce off! -kssh- Fall back, fall back!”
More of the cacophonic booms that had been shaking the entire building since the incursion had begun. Then the voices over the radio were silenced. They stood there, the agent and the Secretary, looking at each other, seeing the same fear and confusion they felt in themselves written upon the face of the other. Then they jumped, as the double doors buckled and splintered beneath the force of some great impact.
Shakily, Evans drew the pistol from his holster. He checked the chamber. Live rounds. Whatever came through that door would be feeling 9mm lead in its gut. He levelled the gun.
Another impact and the doors burst open, revealing figures striding in, resplendent in shining silver armour, like some knights from legend, leaping from the history books and into the heart of present day London. Evans fired, one, two, three bullets. Sparks leapt as the rounds ricocheted harmlessly from the steel chest of the lead figure.
Useless.
Despondent, Evans lowered his weapon, seeing no point in wasting more ammunition. The intruders filed into the room, the floor shaking beneath the weight of their armoured footsteps. The lead figure, Evans’ target, smiled even as he chomped on a cigar.
“Best decision you’ve made all day, my friend.” Another figure, rendered small by his lack of steel armour, strode into the room and stood by his side. The armoured warrior glanced down at the newcomer. “Are these the two?”
The Woodsman nodded, face battered and bruised, his voice hoarse and weary.
“That they are, Lord Arbistrath. That they are.”
***
What would mortal eyes perceive from this vantage point? Was what he observed beyond the spectrum of visible light? Perhaps it was. Perhaps such would be for the best, for how could any mortal mind view what he regarded and have its sanity not simply shatter like a dropped mirror?
This was the Realm of the Elements. The home of the Avatars.
The last time he’d been here, he’d been but a man. Then the Avatars, taking the risk that their actions might wreak untold damage upon the fabric of space and time, had sent him back to the real world, suffused with a direct link to their very own power. Now he had returned to this strange and otherworldly place.
He hovered there, high in what passed for air in this place, a swirl of purple and red colours at his back, and looked down upon this strange elemental kingdom. Once upon a time, back when he had first undertaken the Journey, before Those Beyond the Veil had corrupted him and turned him into Invictus, Stone had thought the realm of the Avatars to be underground. Did that not make sense? He had ventured behind a waterfall and fallen, fallen such a great distance before landing in a place of stone and darkness that seemed to be deep down within the bowels of the Earth.
And yet it wasn’t. Looking out now, he could see how wrong, how naïve he’d been. For the lair of the Avatars wasn’t constrained by such limits as space and time. It existed in its own dimension, a pocket universe, a balcony above the grand theatre of reality from where the Lords of the Elements could observe the drama of life as it unfolded.
There, the kingdom of the Avatar of Earth. A harsh, stony and forbidding land of rearing peaks and plunging valleys, to the untrained eye Earth’s realm looked desolate and devoid of life. But Stone’s eye was far from untrained. There was life there, in abundance, but not as man might know it.
His keen telescopic vision picked out spirits of the ground and underground; gangly-limbed Knackers clung to the rocks, climbing here and there like obscene parodies of both man and spider. Packs of Kobolds roamed freely across wind-blasted plateaus. Other creatures that Stone had yet to meet in person, yet could see now, clear as day, his gaze penetrating rock to reveal a vast network of tunnels beneath the surface of those craggy peak; things that stalked, things that slithered, things that bounded upon two legs like man. Things that looked like gnomes, goblins, trolls.
A similar scene played out before his eyes as he turned his attentions to the realm of the Avatar of Water. Rivers and streams converged from the mountains of Earth’s realm, till they fed into a vast lake, an ocean rather, that lapped against the craggy edges of the cliffs. This was Water’s domain; a vast and deep expanse of briny sea that swirled and crashed; maelstroms, whirlpools the size of which could swallow Britain in its entirety; storms that walked the surface of the water upon stilts of lightning; great tsunami-like waves a mile high that smashed against the resolute and unyielding cliffs to explode in an eruption of spray and foam.
Yet also calm lagoons; oases within the depths, sheltered against the worst of the unceasing storms by natural barriers of luminous coral. Gazing down with green eyes, Stone could see creatures swimming to and fro in those areas of placid water, frolicking and playing, oblivious to the scrutiny from above. Water-nymphs – mermaids, they had been called, by grizzled sailors of the past – swam and sang and played; bare-chested women of dazzling and ethereal beauty. Some had the traditional fish-tail in the place of legs. Others, simply webbed feet, allowing them the freedom to move on land as well as in the sea. The voices, even from up here, high in the air, were melodious, babbling, beguiling; like water gently trickling over the smooth pebbles of some crystal clear and sunlit forest stream. Hypnotic.
Glamour, it was called, a gift possessed by many of the spirits that Stone had encountered over the years. Mortals were very susceptible to it. Stone less so; especially with him knowing the true nature of those spirits that played and sang with so little care. Water-nymphs were vicious things, of teeth, claws and terrifying speed. Stone had little doubt that many a sailor had been lured to the rocks over the centuries, lulled into a dreamlike daze by the siren-sound of their haunting songs, before being torn to pieces by black claws.
Other things dwelled down there alongside those nymphs; larger things that lurked in the depths. Even Stone’s immense powers of perception struggled to penetrate the endless gloom of the ocean. He could just make out a shape swimming past, leagues beneath the surface; eight vast tentacled limbs, each stretching out many hundreds of metres; an eye, the size of a tennis court, gazing back up at him with inhuman intelligence. A beak, powered by ancient muscles of iron-strength, fully capable of tearing through the hull of an ocean-going ship to reach the tender morsels within.
Turning his immortal gaze from that harsh and watery realm, Stone flew on, till the waters beneath him gave way to a vertiginous plunge, the spray falling, falling, further and further to disperse into space. At the bottom of that miles-long drop, a fierce orange glow, so bright in its intensity that even his mighty eyes had to squint against the sun-like glare. Yet it was the gap, the void, that interested him
now. For this seemingly empty space was far from it.
Nebulous clouds of myriad colours floated hither and thither. Rainbow lightning flicked from horizon to horizon. Glittery trails zipped in great and looping circles; sometimes alone, oftentimes in groups, as the Sylphii, the spirits of the air, flitted and played their immortal and giggling games. Green eyes focused in, watching their antics. The Sylphii, fairies in the common tongue, were like women in miniature; perfectly beautiful in appearance, with slender limbs, milky skin, long wavy hair and fluttering butterfly wings. Theirs was the domain of grace, speed, lightness. When the shaman summoned forth the Falcon Sight to lend incredible speed, it was these creatures upon which he called. But as with the nymphs, Stone knew that the playful-seeming Sylphii possessed a darker side; they were capricious, flighty and prone to fits of spite. Only the strong-willed could call upon such spirits and get them to keep their side of the bargain.
Many had been the student shaman that had called upon their speed, only to find themselves abandoned mid-task, borrowed speed gone, and along with it the spirits’ toll in strength.
Stone dropped like a comet, clouds scattering in his wake, surprised Sylphii giggling and shrieking at his passage, attempting to follow him down on glittering trails of light. From below him, beyond where the waterfall ended, past the realm of rainbows and clouds, furnace heat rose up, washing over his face in waves of rippling air that threatened to dry out his eyes and singe the eyebrows from his very face.
Luckily, he was beyond drying, beyond singeing.
He slowed his descent, till he hovered there, some hundreds of metres above a kingdom of fire and rock. Great lakes of burning flame, penned in by shores of obsidian rock that glowed but could never melt. Volcanoes reared, from their tops spewing streams of molten magma that flowed like incandescent treacle. Stone shook his head as he took in the sight. Any man from Earth might look upon this realm and think immediately of the Hell of Christian legend. But far from it; where Hell was a realm of sinners and evil deeds, this place was the opposite; a land of supreme purity, the fire purging all it touched till nothing remained save the toughest, the most resolute.
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