by Deck Davis
“Yeah? It broke my heart when you told me about your mum and dad. Honestly, Jake. Your mum…I always missed her. We were never close. I wasn’t much of a brother, and even before I came through the portal, I was always away travelling. It was only when I married that I settled down a little. Imagine if I told you that I was your uncle? You’d think you had family again, except you wouldn’t have, because I live here, and you live back home.”
It made sense. His uncle never being around. All this time, he thought he’d been travelling somewhere, but it turned out that he was in Sarametis.
“Hang on, I still don’t understand this. You’ve been in Sarametis for how long, now?”
“It’s been ten years since I was last on Earth. When the portal first opened, it let me come in and out. I used to stay here for weeks at a time. Then months. Then, I came here for six months, as a vacation. When I went to head back home, the portal had closed, and I was stuck here for good.”
“But back home, all your bills are still being paid. How’s that possible?”
“When Jessica died, the life insurance paid out. I had half a million sitting in an account. I set it up so that my bills would be paid automatically. It’s not hard.”
Jake could sense that Faei and Solly were feeling a little awkward, from the way they fidgeted around. Faei put her hand on Solly’s shoulder and started to lead him away. “We’ll be over here,” she said.
“Why did you never try to go home, Cason? You’ve been here all this time, and you never tried to find a portal?”
“I didn’t want to. There’s nothing left for me back home.”
“What about mum? What about…what about me? When they died, I had nobody.”
Cason gave a solemn nod. “I didn’t know they died. Honestly, lad, if I had…”
“No. You wouldn’t have come back, so don’t give me that shit. Even when I turned up here and you knew who I was, you weren’t going to tell me.”
“Not at first. The only thing I have back home is bad memories,” said Cason. “Living here was like having a different life. A different past. Sure, I once told Faei when I was drunk that I used to have a family.”
“And now?”
“And now, lad, there’s only one portal left. And we don’t know when it’s gonna close.”
Jake looked around, and realized that Cason was right. The three portals to their left and right had closed, leaving only one left. It was the largest one at the far end of the room. Blue energy buzzed around it, and it gave off a faint hum.
“If the others closed, it won’t be long until this one does,” said Cason. “You need to go.”
This was his only chance, but he still had so many questions for Cason. A lifetime’s worth of things he needed answers to, yet he didn’t have time. Part of him just couldn’t believe it all. How could Cason be his uncle? How was it possible?
Yet it made sense. Most of it, anyway. He’d never met his uncle. He was always away, always travelling. Jake knew about the accident, of course. Mum had told him.
The portal flickered. Was he imagining it, or was it getting weaker?
Time to go. Now or never.
Or should he stay here?
No. This wasn’t his home. Coming here had been an escape because he hadn’t been able to stand the thought of working toward his future. Of going to college, meeting a girl, everything seemed too much effort. But that was why he couldn’t stay in Sarametis; he would just be running away from life.
“You can come with me,” he said to Cason.
His uncle shook his head. “The portal won’t support us both.”
“How do you know? Your portal stayed open for ages, didn’t it? Maybe this one will. Maybe it’ll let us both go through.”
“It’s weak, lad. Isaac isn’t as good a mage as whoever made my portal. Only you can go.”
The portal gave a bang, like a power socket doused in water. Blue sparks burst off it. The hum seemed to grow quieter.
“You have to go,” said Faei.
She and Solly were with him now. Faced with all three of his friends, the first he’d met since Elliot, emotion started to overwhelm him. He didn’t like it. He started to pray for the numbness to return.
“You realise I’ll never come back,” he said to Faei. “We’ll never see each other again?”
She nodded.
Was that a tear in her eye, or was he imagining it? He decided not to point it out. Instead he grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. They clung to each other for almost a minute, before she pushed him away.
“You don’t have long,” she said.
“You’ll find the cure for your parents,” Jake told her. “I know you will. Thank you, Faei. I would have been dead within a week of getting here if it wasn’t for you.”
Then, he faced Solly. The mage had been quiet all this time, evidently feeling a little awkward. He stuck his hand out toward him. Solly grabbed out, and they shook.
“Guess you aren’t a wild mage anymore,” said Jake.
Solly beamed. “The college are going to be eating their words within a month.”
“I hope they are! Good luck, buddy.”
“One last thing,” he said to Faei. “When I’m gone, can you find all the other prisoners in here and let them go?”
“Well, thanks so much for telling me. I was just going to leave them here to rot,” said Faei, sarcastically.
Finally, he faced Cason.
“So, uncle,” he said. “I guess this is it.”
Cason nodded. He looked at Jake with a seriousness that he’d never shown before.
“It means a lot to me,” he said. “Seeing you. Meeting you. I know I won’t be coming back with you…but it means a lot.”
“It means a lot to me too,” said Jake. “But there’s something I really need to know.”
“Okay, lad…”
“Well, it’s like this.”
“Go on…”
“I need to call the bank and pretend to be you so that they’ll send out new bank cards, but I need to know your favorite color to get through security.”
“You’re spending all my money?”
“Well…you don’t need it, and I have plans now, so yeah.”
“It’s green,” said Cason. “That’s my favorite color. Like the skin on a cock imp’s arse. Now get the hell out of here, before that portal closes.”
Jake headed toward the portal. The blue energy bristled and sparked on his approach. The hum grew fainter, but every so often the portal banged, and took him by surprise each time.
When he reached the portal, he was about to take one last look at his friends, when he stopped.
If he turned around now, he wouldn’t want to leave. He just had to suck it in, and go.
And with that, he stepped through the portal.
There was a blue flash. Colors faded. The air around him was silent. He wondered if the portal had broken; if Isaac had summoned it wrong, and if he’d walked into some expanse of nothingness.
Then the colors exploded back. He felt himself falling, and he couldn’t help flailing his arms and legs. He landed on solid ground. A chill gathered around him, and gradually, he saw where he was.
He was back in the warehouse. The portal had worked, and it had taken him back to where this had all begun.
He almost couldn’t believe it. He was home!
Tiredness washed over him. He laid down on his back and stared up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes.
And then he heard footsteps behind him.
Elliot. It must have been Elliot. Maybe his buddy had been coming back here all this time, to look for him.
He opened his eyes and got to his feet. When he turned, he saw that the portal was flickering to a close. There, in front of it, half-dead and ready to drop, was Isaac Shackleton.
Isaac wheezed. He took two stumbling steps. Blood dripped from his lips. His chest was splattered with crimson stains.
He kneeled down at the ground, and picked up a long, metal pipe.
“Hello, boy,” he said, then coughed and spat up blood.
Jake reached to his belt to find his own dagger, but it was gone. He put his hands in his pockets, but his potion vials weren’t there. He looked around. He needed something to fight with.
Then he saw it. Over by the wall, in the shadows, was his baseball bat. He’d brought it with him on one of his trips to the portal for self defence, and he’d left it here. Thank god for foresight.
He ran over and grabbed the bat. Then, he turned to face Isaac. He wondered why the sorcerer wasn’t using his spells; maybe he was too hurt, perhaps his mana was drained.
Whatever the reason, he was hell-bent on killing Jake.
Isaac raised his pipe and then charged as fast as his ruined body would allow. He took stumbling steps, barely enough to call it a jog.
Jake sidestepped out of Isaac’s way. Then he raised his bat and lined up his shot.
“This is for Mum and Dad,” he said.
He swung the bat. The crack it made when it hit Isaac’s skull would have been sickening, but Jake reveled in it. Isaac slumped to the ground and lay there motionless. Jake stood above his body and took short breaths. The adrenaline flowed through him, his pulse pounded.
He waited. He waited for Isaac to stir or to try and get up, but he didn’t. Isaac Shackleton was dead.
And now, the portal was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
One Month Later
He stood in the dark room and held his hands out in front of him. The red light glowed on his skin and showed cuts and scratches he’d earned in Sarametis that hadn’t quite healed yet. He almost didn’t want them to, in a way. They were a reminder of his time there. Of Faei and Solly and Cason.
In front of him, a photograph floated in a tray of developing fluid. Just a minute or two, and it’d be ready. He’d take it out and peg it up on the line behind him, where’d it’d join all the others he’d taken in Reaching Crest. It had taken him weeks to pluck up the courage to develop them. He almost didn’t want to, in case the film was damaged or it wouldn’t develop, and he’d have no memories of his time there.
But it had worked out. Pegged up on the looping string of rope that ran from one wall of the dark room to the other, he had photographs of Cason and his patchy beard, Faei with her flame-kissed hair, and Solly with the sunlight glinting off his bare head.
He leaned back against the counter and admired the photographs. Even in the dim red light of the dark room, the colors of Sarametis stood out. It was a place so much more vibrant than Earth. Pity he couldn’t use most of the shots in his college application.
He’d finally gotten around to applying for the photograph scholarship. He’d planned on going out and taking fresh shots for it, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the photos he’d taken in Sarametis. The problem was that they were too alien for him to use. How would he explain freakish spider-humanoids? Orbs with sinister faces in them? They’d think he was trying to pass photoshopped pictures as his own work.
In the end, he’d found one he could use. It was a photograph of a plain of dead grass. Sunlight fell down on it, and it was so strong it looked like it could snap the brittle blades. It rose into a sloping hill, on the top of which stood a shack that looked like a hunter’s cabin. There wasn’t a goblin or a banshee in sight, and it looked like it could have come from earth. Maybe. He called it ‘home.’
Would he ever go back to Sarametis? He doubted it. The portal had closed, and there was no Isaac Shackleton to open new ones anymore. That meant he’d never speak to Faei again. Never get a rude rebuke from her. He’d never hear Cason growl a curse at him, or grunt in frustration when he realized he was out of a particular herb.
For a while, Jake had a family, of sorts. Faei wasn’t really related, but he’d grown close to her. The short time he’d known her had seemed like years. And Cason…well, in the drunk, whoring, rude old alchemist, he had an uncle. Not just some vague notion of a blood relative whose identity Jake stole so he could live in his house, but a proper uncle. And that hadn’t lasted long.
Maybe it was for the best. Sarametis wasn’t home. It couldn’t be. Could it?
His phone rang, shaking him from his thoughts. He answered it, and heard a familiar voice on the line. Just hearing it made him grin.
“Long time no speak!” he said.
Despite his own cheerfulness, the voice on the other end of the line was grave.
“Jake…”
It was Elliot. He couldn’t even pretend to hide how happy it made him to hear from his buddy. He’d tried calling him when he’d gotten back from Sarametis, but his mobile was missing, and he didn’t have his friend’s number written down. After buying a new phone, he’d called Elliot’s college and asked them to pass his number to him. It had taken a while, but he’d finally called.
“How’s it going, buddy?” said Jake. “Listen, when are you back? I’ve got a hell of a lot to tell you, man. You won’t believe it.”
“I’m already back, Jake,” said Elliot.
There was something wrong with his voice. It wasn’t good.
“You’re already back? Where are you?”
“I’m…at your uncle’s house. I thought I’d surprise you.”
“I’ll be right there. I’m just in the library dark room.”
“Listen, Jake,” said Elliot. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What?”
“I went to your uncle’s door and knocked. There was no answer, and I thought you weren’t home. Then I heard noise coming from the yard. It sounded like grunting. A guy shouting, or something. And I knew it wasn’t you.”
“Whatever you do, don’t call the police,” said Jake. “They’ll ask all sorts of questions about where my uncle is.”
“Well that’s just it,” said Elliot. “I went into the yard to investigate, and I saw a rectangle of light. You know, like in the warehouse? And a guy was stood by it. He had a big beard, and he looked like he was drunk.”
Jake’s chest tightened. “Cason?”
“That’s what he says his name is. He says he’s your uncle. You better get here, Jake.”
So much adrenaline shot into his system that he almost flung the phone across the room.
“I’ll be right there,” he said.
“There’s another thing.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s got a girl with him. A redhead. And some dude who has no eyebrows.”
Jake couldn’t help the wide grin spreading across his face. He ended the call, grabbed his photos and then ran out of the dark room and into the light.
The End
Thank you for reading Steele Alchemist! I hope you enjoyed it.
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Deck
