by DB King
“Indeed it is,” the man said, extending a hand. “Try and stand up, young Alec. I won’t blame you if you can’t. Most men would not just be unable to rise after a feat like the one you’ve pulled off—they’d be dead.”
The words brought Alec back to the present moment. Weakly, he raised his head, gazing across the courtyard as he tried to spur his limbs into motion. Eleira lay a short distance away, glancing nervously at Archmage Diamondspear and whispering in low tones to another figure who knelt over her. Alec recognized Tanuin’s leathers, the long blonde hair of the elvish ranger.
“Is she alright?” Alec asked. The words burned his throat; tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “Eleira, she—”
“Eleira has done even better than I could have predicted,” Uriel Diamondspear explained. “As have you, young man.” He scowled. “Despite disobeying my instruction not to enter the House of Doors.”
Alec looked down. “What...what’s going to happen to Eleira?”
“Eleira?” Uriel shook his head. “You both entered the House of Doors.”
Alec’s heart sunk in his chest. “But—”
Uriel put up a hand, cutting him off. “But how could I deprive two talented young mages the opportunity to hone their abilities?” His face softened, smiling. “I can’t say I didn’t disobey my tutors as a lad, after all. Consider your injuries punishment enough. But Alec,” Uriel glared at him. “The world won’t be quite so forgiving. Keep that in mind the next time you go running off.” He stuck out a hand. “This realm is safer now that you’ve removed the primary threat, but I’d rather not remain here for longer than necessary.”
Alec smiled, relieved. He reached up and took Uriel’s hand. As he did, a spark shot up his arm, like touching a doorknob after rubbing socks on carpet. The sharp spike of pain sharpened his senses, took away his weariness and allowed him to rise.
What remained of the Queen Spider lay in a heap at the far end of the courtyard. Almost none of the beast had survived the blast of pure magic Eleira and Alec had summoned—only a few charred bits barely recognizable as arachnid limbs remained.
Alec’s eye was drawn to the two small satchels laying on the ground in front of the Spider Queen’s corpse. Black ichor trickled from their surfaces, though the liquid did no damage to what was inside. Had those been inside the monster?
Eleira rose shakily to her feet, barely conscious, supported by Tanuin. The elvish ranger looked more thoughtful and compassionate than Alec had ever seen him, and he felt an absurd stab of jealousy as the older elf allowed Eleira to throw an arm over his shoulder. Why should he feel that way about Tanuin? Especially after that searing moment of togetherness the two had experienced.
It faded away the more he tried to think of it. Perhaps touching the powers of the Archon, even briefly, moved one’s memories out of the mortal realm into something greater and longer lasting. Alec felt that if he concentrated on that fact, he could almost unravel the mystery of where the Archon had ascended after his labors were done. But no matter.
No sooner had Alec regained his footing than someone clapped him on the back. He turned to see Maimonides behind him. The gnome wore a strange-looking pair of spectacles with thick glass frames over his eyes, and his grin was as wide and eager as ever.
“Well, well. Look who survived.” The gnome chuckled, his voice crackling with pride. “Well done, lad. You did it. You achieved the Greater Elemental forms!”
Alec’s triumph died on his lips. “Archmage Diamondspear,” he said, turning to the older man with a despairing expression. “We didn’t stop him. The man, your… he got away…”
Uriel and Maimonides shared a look.
“No one’s perfect,” the Archmage said with a shrug, gazing at the carnage-strewn battlefield around him. “Least of all Baldir.”
Before Alec could ask another question, his attention was caught by a shimmer in the air. Trystara stepped out of a portal, her shapely feet bare against the grass as she lowered herself to the level of the courtyard. The demoness took one look at Uriel Diamondspear and giggled.
“Spiiiiiders!” Trystara purred, gesturing with both hands at the corpse of the Spider Queen and her hundreds of crispy minions. “All my stomach can hold, remember?”
For a moment, Alec considered talking her out of it. But he’d had more than enough excitement for one day. “Knock yourself out,” he said, giving the pile of arachnids a weary hand gesture.
Trystara pounced on the corpse of the Spider Queen. She took one oversized limb, nearly burned all the way through, and cracked it backward as if breaking open a crab’s leg. “Good meat in there!” the demoness growled, her long tongue slavering at her fangs.
“I think it would be best for all of us to leave the courtyard,” Uriel said dryly, “while your familiar avails herself of the spoils of battle. Maimonides, could you…?”
“On it,” the gnome said. Maimonides pushed a small lever on the side of his glasses, and a glimmering portal opened in the air on the other side of the courtyard. “Let’s get out of here, Urry. I know this place brings back bad memories for you.”
It seemed as if everyone was in a hurry to jump through the portal and make their way back to safety. Alec could see the floor of the House of Doors through the oblong tear in the air, and knew that safety was only a few steps away. But the mention of bad memories brought his concerns to the fore. There was no way he could leave without getting some answers.
As the sounds of Trystara’s chewing echoed through the courtyard, Alec turned around to face Uriel Diamondspear.
“That man,” Alec said, stopping the party in their tracks. “Baldir. He looked just like you, Uriel. A younger you. He said he was your son.”
Maimonides made a pained look, his eyes entreating Alec to stop. He would not.
“We entered the forbidden door,” he said, straightening up to his full height. “We found out your son was living as a prisoner in the House of Doors—”
“My son is dead, Alec,” Uriel said mildly.
For a moment, Alec hoped it was true. He hoped that what he and Eleira had seen, had fought, was some sort of phantom conjured up by the House of Doors. But one look in the Archmage’s eyes, and he knew it wasn’t true.
“But I saw him,” Alec said, looking to Eleira for confirmation. The elven girl met his gaze, an unreadable emotion in her eyes that might have been more than mere familiarity, then nodded. “Was he lying when he said he was your son, then?”
Uriel sighed heavily. “No. He was not. That man you saw is my dead son.”
Alec felt his eyebrows furrowing together. “He seemed very much alive to me, Uriel.”
A short, flat laugh escaped the Archmage’s lips. “Yes, well. I’m certain he did. This place… certainly you’ve noticed by now that it bears a passing resemblance to the Northmund Estate.”
Eleira shrugged off Tanuin’s arm, coming around to stand next to Alec. She looked at her feet and clenched her fists. “Archmage Diamondspear,” she said, tears starting to well in her eyes. “I disobeyed your command not to come to the House—”
“Worry not, child,” Uriel waved a hand.
The elf girl relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief. Alec wrapped a hand around Eleira’s waist. To his surprise, she not only failed to rebuff him, she leaned against him for balance with a faint smile.
“It was much more than a passing resemblance, Archmage,” Alec said, holding Eleira.
“It is the Northmund Estate,” the elf girl said. “Isn’t it?”
Uriel nodded. “Indeed. This place is something like a time capsule. A small piece of the world the way it existed eighteen years ago—when my son was still welcome in the House of Diamondspear. When the future seemed full of so much potential. Alas. Take a look around, both of you.”
They did. The estate within the House of Doors looked every bit as stately as the real one, but Alec became aware of the note of melancholy weaved into every brick and blade of grass. Uriel’s melancholy.
“Baldir was killed soon after the time you’re looking at right now,” the Archmage said sadly. “But before he was killed, he was given information. Important information that may very well save our world.”
“Or doom it,” Maimonides interjected.
“That is right. As such, the decision was made to keep Baldir—this Baldir, who both is and is not the deceased heir to the house of Diamondspear—within this enchanted realm, preserving that information. And now, both that information and my son are in the hands of our enemies.”
It was a sobering thought. Everyone grew silent, contemplating exactly what that might mean. A group of mages had tried—and failed—to recruit Alec to their plan. Now they had the heir of the Diamondspear bloodline, his magic, and whatever information Uriel had tried so hard to keep sealed away from the world. What might their plans be? And why did they want Alec to be part of them so badly?
It was Tanuin, Alec’s ever-reliable friend, who broke the awkwardness. “I leave you two for only a short while,” the elven ranger said, looking down at them both, “and you get caught up in world-altering events. Even brought down a Spider Queen—speaking of which, these are for you.”
He held the twin satchels from the Spider Queen’s corpse. Tossing the first to Eleira, he heaved the second at Alec, whose reflexes allowed him to catch the sack just in time. He opened it, and gasped at the contents.
“Why—it’s gold!” Alec laughed, sticking his hand inside. Gold coins and rare gems glittered within the satchel, shining with all the colors of the rainbow. This much money could make one a lord of pretty much any kingdom in the world—and allow Alec to buy a mansion in several other kingdoms to vacation in whenever he got bored. From the look on Eleira’s face, he could tell hers carried a similar bounty.
“For defeating a rare monster like the Spider Queen, a rare bounty must be dispensed,” Uriel said sagely. He made it sound like one of the underlying laws of the universe. “I believe there is something of particular interest at the bottom of each of your satchels…”
What? How could Uriel possibly know that? Alec dug deep, and came up with a scroll of narrow parchment clutched between his fingers. Narrow writing covered every square inch of its surface, in a language he’d never seen before. He looked to Eleira for confirmation of what it said, but from the elf girl’s confused look, she’d never seen the language, either. Very curious, Alec thought.
“I can’t read this,” Eleira said wonderingly. “And there’s not much I can’t read, which means this confuses me to no end.”
Uriel chuckled. “These scrolls contain something quite advanced,” the Archmage explained. “I’m certain that one of your first tasks upon entering the Academy will be to decipher the runes to claim the power given to each of you by defeating the Spider Queen.”
Both Eleira and Alec gasped. “The Academy? That means…”
The Archmage laughed kindly. “That’s right. You’ve both achieved the Greater Elementals—which means you are ready to take your Academy examinations. Obviously the both of you will need a bit of a break after this… unfortunate detour, but I’ll make the necessary arrangements at once.”
Alec hadn’t pulled any magic into himself, yet it still felt as if fire flowed through his veins. They’d done it! They were going to be accepted into the Academy! Alec and Eleira would be students together, learning together—training to prepare for the challenges that were coming. The fact that he’d have to conceal his ability for natural magic seemed only a small issue in that moment. Surely such a thing wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility.
With a nod, Uriel stepped through the portal and was gone. At Maimonides’s prodding, the rest of them left the courtyard behind—abandoning the fragment of memory that had once been the home of Baldir Diamondspear.
As the group stepped into the portal, Trystara bit into what was left of the Spider Queen’s head, happily chomping down on the remains of the battlefield’s combatants. She’d missed the entire conversation, happy as a clam to gorge herself at last.
* * *
After the disorientation of the strange, twisted copy of the Northmund Estate, the lobby of the House of Doors felt firm and stable beneath Alec’s feet. Maimonides’s portal closed behind him, the faint odor of ozone the only sign that it had ever existed at all. Alec looked behind him at the eighth floor of the house, where the rectangular door stood closed at last.
He felt no voice calling to him from beyond that door. No siren song in his head. His thoughts were his own, at last.
As the party made their way out of the House of Doors, Alec grabbed Eleira by the arm. “Hold on a second,” he said, his heart hammering in his chest.
He’d caught more than just Eleira’s attention. Tanuin stopped mid-stride as well, breaking away from Maimonides and Uriel as the two conversed about the different strands of time magic. For a moment, the elven ranger’s face showed only confusion, then a sly expression tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll send Maimonides’s box back up the chain when the rest of us get to the bottom,” he said, giving Alec a little nudge. “You two relax until you feel like coming back down to the manor. I’ll tell Uriel and the others you were feeling dizzy.”
Eleira looked as if she wanted to correct him and say she felt fine, but Tanuin withdrew before she could. The ranger walked swiftly to the uncovered doorway, casting a solitary wink back in Alec’s direction as he departed.
Then both Eleira and Alec stood alone in the great ruin, just the two of them.
Eleira looked him up and down, her gaze hardening the way it had so many times from the other side of the breakfast table. “I suppose you want to chew me out for running off, is that it? It’s my fault all of this happened—if I hadn’t been so desperate for power, I never would have listened to that door and its strange singing. Is that what you want to say?”
Alec shook his head. “Not at all. I’m... I’m glad you took the initiative, Eleira.”
This clearly wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. Naked shock shone on the elf girl’s face, and it took her a moment to recover. “You’re glad I made you chase me into that crazy place?”
Despite himself, Alec laughed. His nerves were aflame with anxiety, but he projected an outward air of calm. “If you hadn’t, we’d never have learned the Greater Elementals. We wouldn’t be going to the Academy. And…”
He trailed off.
“And what?” Eleira asked, taking a step closer.
And that amazing thing we did with magic would never have happened, he wanted to say. That glorious, intimate, incredible moment of contact where we held hands and slew the Spider Queen. That made all of it—all the rest of it —worthwhile…
He opened his mouth to say it. She puckered hers as if she expected a kiss.
“...and Uriel would never have found out Baldir escaped,” he said instead. “He’d still be running around out there, only we’d have no idea.”
It was impossible to ignore the disappointment in Eleira’s eyes. The embers of that strange mingling of magics still burned in her eyes. He wished he wasn’t such a coward. That he’d have the guts to say what he meant…
“That’s true,” Eleira said. “Also, we’d never have done this.”
She kissed him.
The world lurched beneath Alec’s feet as her lips met his. It wouldn’t be the deepest or most passionate kiss of Alec’s life—those would come much later, once his youth deepened into full manhood. The brief contact of Eleira’s lips against his was a bright, burning spark compared to the long embers of intimacy he would one day experience.
But to Alec, in that moment, nothing could have been more perfect.
Eleira broke the kiss first, gasping. Her brown eyes sparkled as she brought her fingers to her lips, as if she could still feel the contact between them.
“Eleira,” Alec said, his heart slamming against his ribcage. “That was... that…”
/> The elf girl smirked. “Don’t be mistaken,” she said, giving Alec a little punch on the shoulder. “Just because I like you doesn’t mean I’m going to go easy on you. We’re rivals. You might have learned the Greater Elementals first, but I’ll bet you all the gold in those sacks we got from the Queen Spider that I will translate my scroll before you figure out the first line of yours.”
Oh yeah?
“You’re on,” he said. “Only I want to bet something else.”
Eleira batted her long lashes. “What?”
He grinned. “Another one of those kisses.”
Eleira giggled and turned away. “Then you’d better get to work, monk boy!”
She left him standing in the lobby of the House of Doors, every muscle in his body tensed with bliss. The echo of her kiss remained on his lips, like the warmth beneath a blanket after a long night’s rest.
A sizzling sound in the air behind him was all that warned him of Trystara’s arrival. “Where is everyone?” the demoness asked, looking around the lobby perfunctorily. The leg of a spider protruded from the corner of her mouth, pressed into service as a toothpick.
“They’re on their way back to the manor,” Alec said in a dreamy tone, grinning at his demoness. “I just, uh, needed a moment to compose myself…”
The demoness strode forward and ran a long nail over the side of Alec’s mouth. “Uh huh,” she said, laughing. “You know if you let that little elf girl distract you from your studies, she really is going to surpass you at the Academy, right?”
Alec laughed. “I won’t let that happen.”
Trystara shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll be happy to help you, human—as long as you keep feeding me those juicy spiders. I hear there are nests a hundred years old hidden in some of the Academy’s walls.”
As the two of them walked into the sunny day, the demoness regaling him with tales of crunchy arachnids, Alec’s heart felt lighter than it had been in a very long time. He’d saved his friends, alerted the world to a threat in the making, and met Uriel Diamondspear’s criteria to apply to the Academy.
