by Daniel Ruth
“Unless what?”
“I suppose if they were outside the ten dimensions it could prevent him from accessing that bond. I mean, if it can keep gods and demons out it should do the same for their influences.”
“Sounds like we have some preparations to make,” Conrad said thoughtfully. “However that wasn’t why I had you come and it certainly had nothing to do with the presentation you slept through.”
“I don’t really need an hour long song and dance routine,” I snorted. If I had someone waste more of my time I may just scream. “Any chance you could get to the point in ten words or less?”
“Fine,” Conrad smiled grimly. “We need you to be our ambassador to the world next door.”
“That’s twelve words,” I said faintly.
Conrad knew what he was doing because that shut me up and got me focused. The others around me also had a chuckle at my expense. I glared back at them half-heartedly. Needless to say, when Conrad restarted the presentation, I paid attention.
It started slowly. Apparently, it was a report of a permanent portal in some country named France. I think they make wine or something. Obviously, it was one of the other circle locations we had tried to locate and neutralize before the Primary portal was opened. The city looked a lot worse off than ours. From a distance, it appeared that half the buildings were destroyed, either by fire or lightning.
“Why are they so badly hit,” I asked, absently tapping my fingers. Okay, I am incapable of staying silent that long.
“Paris is a city with an ancient history,” Jeremy offered. “Huge tracts of it were historical monuments. That means the very little use of modern materials and building techniques. Our city is mostly durasteel and plasteel. Cheap, yet the closest thing to you can get...”
“Outside the military,” I interrupted mockingly. I had heard that refrain so often it was almost a joke. It seems that if it was too durable or effective the military claimed it for their own private use.
As the video moved forward, it only got worse. Bodies lay in the streets, along with wreckage from broken lev trains and shattered floaters. My eyes widened a bit in surprise as I saw a brontosaur wandering the street and then a pack of velociraptors run by.
“Don’t they have any shifters in the city? They love those things,” I pointed out.
“Our city actually has the highest supernatural population in the world,” Mei interjected from where she was grimly watching. “It was considered an experiment to demonstrate that peace was possible between the races.”
“I hadn’t heard that.” I was a bit surprised. I had kind of assumed that every large city was like this. That explanation actually made more sense.
“I bet they wished they had more shifters now,” Beth snarked.
“Beth!” snapped Jeremy. Apparently, he didn’t want to disparage the dead. Still, I agreed with Beth, they backed the wrong horse on that one.
“Does that include the highest vampire population,” I asked glumly.
“Yes.” Right, well the city may still live to regret their choices as it turns into a stereotypical horror setting. Wow, it gets more like home every day.
“I don’t see any demons or other supernatural horrors,” I prompted. “I thought you said the military was prepared?”
Conrad waved his hand and the sensor on the projector conveniently fast forwarded to something that looked like a short section of a blocky bridge. A side angle showed it to have an archway on each side. A wide deserted road ran in a circle around the construct which also had at least five avenues leading to the circle. Every arch had the familiar glow of a portal in the middle. The opening was a fraction the size of the Primary gate seemingly constrained by the archways. It was in the center of a mere five ley lines, the veritable rivers of energy were easily visible in the image and I was surprised to see they followed the roads. “Ours was. Theirs... not so much. This is from a few weeks ago and we have since sent as much aid as we can spare, but the cities that had these permanent portals were his pretty hard.”
“Vatapi turned the Arc de Triomphe into a freaking dimensional portal,” Jeremy shouted in surprise. The rest of us ignored him. I didn’t know what the big deal was, though the architecture looked like something I had seen in one of the old comedies.
“Probably all historic cities were damaged, due to the same issues,” Mei said.
“I heard Venice sank and is now a giant whirlpool around the portal,” Beth interjected excitedly.
“Where did you hear that,” Conrad questioned with a glare. “That’s classified!”
“Seriously?” Beth mocked the much older man. “The global net is damaged, not gone. If you know how to route to the parts still up, you can still get news, despite the blackout the military implemented.” Jeremy looked somewhere in between proud and embarrassed. “Keeping an entire city disappearing a secret is a joke.”
“Derek’s holo terminal is old, but these days that just means it's less likely to blow up. He’s also hardened it from interference,” the private eye explained sheepishly.
“With school out, all I have to do all day is study,” she shot a dark look at her brother. “And try to help the hackers connect the global net together.”
“I thought you were spending all that time practicing your psionics,” I asked. I spent most of my time in the basement, so this was all news to me.
“I do that while I work on other stuff,” the little girl explained. “I only need to dedicate all my attention on a new skill for a day or so. Then it gets easy enough to do in the background.”
I nodded and smiled. She really was a gem. I may have woken her skills but she obviously had a lot of natural talent. It still made me sad that her brother was wasting his talents. I am pretty sure he was almost as gifted. Maybe I should take her hunting for dinosaurs when she masters the psi energy blade.
“She has a point,” Mei sighed. “All the packs know Venice is gone. They know about Rome, Budapest, Damascus and... well, let’s just say the only one your fooling is yourself. People know the world has changed.”
Conrad stared at us grumpily, as if we were responsible for the secret of the apocalypse leaking out. “Fine. Getting back to the Paris portal. We tried to get a shifter through the portal and they were violently ejected. We then sent a team of humans through. They were able to enter without any resistance, but we lost contact with them minutes later. We then sent in...”
“So I build a third castle. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp,” I interrupted. Everyone glared at me.
“Too soon,” Jeremy leaned over and hissed disapprovingly in my ear, provoking a coughing fit from Mei.
“We sent in drones to reconnoiter,” he growled at us. “They sent us images of the area for about twenty minutes before a giant fire-breathing lizard destroyed them.” Mei looked at me sideways. I shrugged uncomfortably. I had an alibi, I wasn’t even in the same dimension.
“Shouldn’t the drones have gone in first,” Beth hesitantly asked.
Conrad was silent for a moment. “It wasn’t my call. I would hope they had a reason for not doing that, but I didn’t hear about it until a week later.”
“So exactly who am I being the ambassador to? I can almost guarantee you there is not a civilization of dragons in the dimension next door.”
“And you would know this how? ” Conrad asked.
“Dragons don’t live together in peace. They are incredibly territorial. At the very most there’s a mated pair at the other side.”
“And that is exactly why they want you to go there and look around.”
I looked at him in wonder. “You lose a squad of soldiers and drones to a fire breathing dragon and your first reaction is to have the ‘Professor’ go over and open diplomatic channels with the damned things?”
“There were actually a lot of other options, but missiles didn’t work,” Conrad said weakly. “Seriously, they did not involve me until yesterday. Up to then, they tried nuclear missiles,
which is why the newer videos only show a glass crater around the portal for a half mile.”
I groaned. If the dragons were like me then all a nuclear bomb would do to me on top of a portal would be to make me very angry. “I assume it tried to retaliate.”
“Yes. Fortunately, it was also expelled from entering the portal. Unfortunately, it then started to throw some sort of energy manipulation through the portal. We can’t get anything within five hundred feet without it being slagged. It seems to have set up camp on the other side.”
“Yeah, the portal must have opened up right at his home,” I sighed. “Okay, so why did you even think you needed an ambassador when you have a dragon at the gate?”
“We were hoping you would know how to deal with an angry lizard... um, dragon. It’s obviously intelligent.”
“Well, it must be if it stymied the French armed forces,” I muttered sarcastically.
“It also keeps shouting obscenities through the portal,” Conrad added dejectedly. “In English, French, German and Japanese.”
“Good grief,” I shook my head in disbelief. I suppose I couldn’t be too angry at Conrad. He didn’t shoot the missiles. I am not sure where he got the idea I could pacify dragons, but at least he asked first. “Do you have any images of this thing?”
The officer waved his hand at the controller and it skipped past various idyllic scenes of a beautiful green valley, obviously taken from a drone's point of view. A distant dot grew swiftly into a huge dragon. With emerald green scales and incredibly sharp teeth and talons, it was a most attractive dragon of the female persuasion. It was also very much an adult in the prime of its life. And pretty pissed off.
It was the same breed as Mr. Evil had been. He had been over ten millennia old. This female dragon was probably just past one millennium. Still significantly more powerful than me. While I was strong for a young dragon I wouldn’t reach adulthood for at least five hundred years. I swallowed nervously as a cold sweat lightly beaded my forehead. Was it hot in here? Stupid question since no one was spontaneously combusting. I really didn’t want to deal with another dragon, especially an angry adult one for several hundred years. Memories of a monstrous ancient dragon looming over me flashed through my mind.
Jeremy seemed to notice my nervousness and attempted to fill in the silence. “Can you show us the area now?”
More hand waving and the image shifted to a dragon roaring imprecations through the portal, its body effectively blocking the aperture. After a minute of seeing her curse and claw at a membrane that no one could see, yet evoked sparks upon contact, she moved to another angle. This allowed a nice view of a smoking wasteland behind her.
“Oh my god, you nuked her home,” I groaned. “There’s not enough gold in the world to make this right.”
“She killed a squad of soldiers...” Conrad started defensively.
“Did they shoot her first,” asked Mei in disapproval. Conrad stayed silent, which effectively answered her question.
“So you don’t know any way to communicate with the hostile... dragon,” the officer asked. “We are trying to map the known portals. Ironically, the one we have in our city seems harmless. Mostly jungle and forest with dinosaurs. Others seem to lead to uninhabited lands. A few lead to lands where demons seem to live,” I perked up in interest. We did need to track down where Vatapi had his armies. “But this is the only creature that seems capable of communicating.” That’s not promising for the demon base. Demons loved talking. Mostly so they could lie to you, but they did like the sound of their own voice.
“That really depends. How many gems can you get together,” I asked doubtfully. Did I even want to try?
“Was she casting spells or using wards and circles like the Professor,” Jeremy asked. I winced, he knew my weaknesses too well.
“Mostly claw waving and weird garbled chants as far as we can tell,” Conrad said slowly. “I suppose it could be growling...” Jeremy gave me a significant look. As if that would convince me to talk to the angry dragon lady. I really did want to learn how to use incantations, though. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to talk through the portal. She couldn’t get through and with the proper warding, I should be immune or resistant to most spells. Damn, I was going to regret this.
“Fine, if you get together enough gems to catch her interest and give me the authority to negotiate, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll need you to bring the big rock with the rune on it to my house,” I told Conrad. I had manipulated the anchor rune on my chest to slightly redefine the boundary conditions, but if I wanted to travel to France I would need to bring it with me. The last time I had left the city limits the anchor had forcibly ripped me through the ether and pulled me violently to it. Unlike my normal means of teleporting, it had boiled off the top layers of skin and muscle and left me writhing in agony for hours while they grew back.
I am pretty sure I had loosened the anchor binding a bit. Perhaps enough to even reach another country. The consequences of miscalculating had me unwilling to experiment. I would rather simply bring my anchor with me.
“There’s a problem with that, Professor,” Conrad began hesitantly. The expression certainly didn’t suit him. “We already tried to move it. It was blocking the firing solutions for the turrets.”
“And...” I prompted with some trepidation.
“No equipment we had could move it. Couldn’t scratch it either,” he complained.
“Oh, that is... I guess I should have expected that,” I said faintly. I would have to think on that.
“Were you thinking of using it as a kinetic weapon like the demon did,” Conrad asked.
“Right... like the demon did,” I echoed. “Yeah, it’s going to be tricky but I was hoping to use the demon’s stone, just like I turned it on the demon himself.” I had almost forgotten that lie. “But only if things go wrong with the um, negotiation. Probably won’t work but I should try, just in case, right?”
Chapter 7
I was sitting in my favorite chair with a book in my hand. Jeremy had finally come through with his contacts and found a real mage spell book. It was written on a very basic level so I should be able to just learn it without having to wrangle with it like I had to with the wards and circles. Sighing in contentment, I turned the page and frowned. How odd, the words were jumbled? I could have sworn Jeremy said it was in English. I was turning to the next page when I heard three slow knocks on the door.
Sighing to myself, I rose to my feet and made my way to the door. I passed the entrance to the living room on the way and saw that Jeremy, Beth, Mei, Matt, Stella and Faramond were all sitting on the couch, eating barbecued dinosaur leg and watching the projector on the wall. Hmm, ‘The Life of Brian’, I remember that. I would have to go and join them after I got the door. Oh, and Conrad was cooking another slab of meat in the kitchen. Hopefully, there would be enough for me.
I smiled and waved. They all cheerfully smiled and waved back. It was so nice to have people over for a picnic. I finally got to the door and opened in and looked out. And up. Standing in front of the house, with his long snaking draconic neck and a massive car-sized head looming over the entrance, was the dragon that had branded me and then exiled me to this city.
“Hello little one,” his deep voice sneered, as fire and smoke dripped from fangs as long as my arm. “I told you I would come and check up on my experiment.”
“Fancy meeting you here of all places,” I stammered, looking around for something to turn to my advantage. “What brings you here, did you just pop over to check on your runes?” Behind him was my ruined neighborhood. All the houses I had bought were smashed and on fire. On the other hand, there seemed to be a herd of triceratops that were presently stampeding through the streets, goring the humans that had once lived in the burned houses. All of which I technically owned. I sighed, I was sad that the housing complex was destroyed, on the bright side, my unwanted guests were gone.
“That and...” a large clawed hand approached from the side and in
stantly dominated my view. “I have come to borrow a cup of sugar.” A cup the size of a washing machine was placed in front of the door, held daintily in that monstrous hand. His smallest finger poked out at an angle at the handle.
“Right, sugar,” I frowned. That was a lot of sugar. I turned around and called out to the living room. “Beth, can you order five hundred pounds of sugar and have it delivered? And have Conrad put another Allosaurus leg on the fire, we have a guest.”
“Sure thing, is he joining us for movie night,” her tiny voice carried from inside.
“I’ll ask,” I said as I turned back to the door. I blinked. Gone was the large empty cup, instead, the dragon was holding a massive black sphere with a short fuse rapidly burning down to the nub. On its side was a radiation warning symbol with blurry words. I couldn’t actually read them, but I somehow knew they said ‘500 Gigatons’.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to have pets,” the mouth of sharp teeth growled. “They’ll have to go.”
Then there was a bright flash and the world was full of ashes.
I opened eyes with a start. I managed not to send my jerking limbs through the sides of the car or my neighbor. It took a moment to register where I was, but it came back after a second. I was in the same transport we had used to get to Conrad’s headquarters. Mei was next to me looking out over the city, absently shaking her head. The lack of the others confused me until I recalled that they were being ferried back to the house separately. The weretiger and I were heading back to the Primary portal.
“Are we there yet,” I whined. I couldn’t believe I had a new nightmare. It was bad enough I had dreams of the night I arrived if a new one was going to regularly visit my sleep I would need to put off rest even more. With the world falling apart around me, it wasn’t as if I had time to sleep long anyway.
