by J. T. Stoll
The door opened.
“Whoa, Pieter. Hey, I come at a bad time?” It was Neil, carrying a two-liter bottle of soda in one hand and a rolled-up blanket in the other.
Vero jolted back. “Knock,” she told him.
“Haven’t done that for years here,” Neil said. He tossed the blanket on the coffee table. It fell with a thud. “Got Pieter’s sword and Gloria’s staff there, by the way. Anyways, sorry to spoil your moment. Not the first time you’ve been making out with someone when I came over.”
“Ugh, I’ve tried to forget that,” Pieter said.
Neil held up the soda. “Brought the Cactus Cooler, by the way. It’s a victory party, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Pieter said, rolling his eyes. “Get some cups.”
“It’s your house.”
“Injured, remember?”
Neil returned with four glasses of ice. He poured the soda and passed them around, leaving one on a coaster for Gloria. Vero sipped hers, glad for the sweetness.
“Get any sleep?” Pieter asked, downing half the glass in a single gulp.
“Nah, had an Army of Pwn raid.” Neil’s voice went really deep. “Flawless slaughter.”
“Wait… you got in a real sword fight, and then you played WoW?” Pieter asked.
Neil picked up the controller and took a turn at Pieter’s game. He scored a quick kill. “Mace fight, actually, and yes, that’s exactly what I did. Great way to wind down. Even got an epic drop.” Despite a smile, Neil’s eyes held heaviness, sadness.
“In other words, you’re better at WoW than real life,” Pieter said.
Neil scowled. “Hey, I would’ve got him. Eventually.”
“You had him just where you wanted?” Pieter said. “Overconfident from disarming you and knocking you to the ground? Oh, and disabling your armor was just a feint, right?”
Gunshots echoed; Neil fell to the ground and died. “I just needed another moment to think, I think.”
Vero stared him in the eyes. “You’re welcome.”
He met her gaze then immediately turned back to the screen. “Yeah, well, thanks. The AoP DPS paladin might have been MIA last night if it weren’t for you.”
Vero smiled and shook her head. It was probably a good sign for Neil to be back to speaking in gamer gibberish.
Neil turned the game off. A Panasonic logo floated around the screen. “By the way, I tried the soul armors from Jed and Dek.”
“Yeah?” Pieter asked.
“They’re broken. I couldn’t activate them.”
“Hmm… then no new recruits,” Pieter said.
“I definitely got better drops in the AoP raid. And I do remember James saying something like if he died with the armor on, it’d kill the armor, too. I think that’s what happened.”
“And the car?” Pieter asked.
Neil turned the controller over and over in his hands. “The insurance is sending out an estimator tomorrow. But it’s definitely totaled. And since it was a hit and run—that’s what we told them, at least—I might only get five thousand on collision for it. Assuming they don’t ask any strange questions about the damage, that is. Not sure if they’ll figure out that a mace destroyed it.”
That car had looked new. That meant Neil’s family might lose, what, ten or fifteen thousand dollars? With that kind of money, Vero could buy cars for her whole family. How was he not freaking out? He definitely lived in a different world.
“I still don’t get how Jed had a vehicle,” Neil said.
“Stolen,” Pieter said. “I overheard the cops talking about finding a stolen van last night. Must have been Jed’s. If we’re lucky, he’ll get blamed for the fire, too.”
“Doubtful,” Neil said. “The news this morning said that people saw a girl at the gas station, though the security footage burned with the building. We’re just lucky they’d never heard of an offsite backup. Three houses burned down in the neighborhood where you finished Jed off, and they think that the two fires are related.”
The safety of her mask suddenly seemed about as thin as the plastic that composed it. “Hey, still saved you all.”
Neil looked at the ground and sighed. “Can’t deny that.”
Pieter nodded to his friend. “So, you still hot on scenario two, save the world?”
“That was scenario three,” Neil said, voice flat and uncertain. He fumbled with the controller again. “But you think a little car accident is going to stop me?”
Someone knocked on the door. Gloria came in and sat on the couch. She looked as exhausted as the rest of them.
“How’re you?” Vero asked.
“Been better,” Gloria said. “Bill and Lisa seemed pretty freaked out about the break-in.”
“I’d be, too. At least their house didn’t burn down,” Vero said.
“Yeah, well, they were a lot more worried about their house than me.”
“Huh?” Vero said.
“Let’s just say it hasn’t been the easiest relationship,” Gloria said.
She seemed casual, flippant, but her sarcasm wasn’t like Pieter’s. Pieter joked for fun, to liven things up. Gloria sounded really dark.
“This is some victory party, yeah?” Pieter said. “You sound like we lost.”
“Well, I did manage to destroy a couple houses and a gas station,” Vero said.
“Details, details,” Pieter said. “We got the Ruachians. We’re safe.”
“Assuming the police don’t find us,” Neil said.
“No, there’s more,” Vero said.
“What?” Pieter asked.
They’re coming, little girl. They’re coming for your world. You’ve picked the wrong side.
“Jed, right before he died, said the portal was open. That more people were coming through from Ruach.”
“A bluff,” Pieter said.
“I don’t think so,” Gloria said.
“What?” Pieter asked.
“We… well, while we were still in Neil’s car, I felt something. A little like a soul armor, but really far away. It makes sense. The portal.”
Vero stood up and faced the others, full of her conviction from the night before. “Look, we’ve been fooling ourselves this whole time. All this stuff about just beating Jed and getting our lives back… we lost our old lives the moment James stepped out of that tunnel. All Neil’s scenarios, all our attempts to hide—we’ve been lying to each other, pretending that we could just slip out of this.”
Neil started, “Hey, those scenarios…”
Vero turned to him. “Were your way of manipulating us so you could live out some childhood superhero fantasy. Am I wrong?”
Neil slunk in his seat. “Look, there was a real need for us…”
“A real need for us to do what makes sense,” Vero said. “We turn these things in to somebody—FBI, police, army, whoever—and tell them about the war, whatever the consequences.”
Neil sat up straight. “Oh, whatever the consequences?”
“Yeah.”
“How about you going to jail for thirty years?”
“Because of…”
“Vero, you blew up a gas station, torched some houses, and killed two guys. And we’re all accomplices. Last I checked, those were felonies, even if those men came from another world.”
She felt like a balloon that had just sprung a leak. “But… it was self-defense, right?”
“Good luck convincing a jury that torching the Trex station was self-defense.”
“But, I…” She hated Neil for it, but he was right.
“But you’re right about one thing: We’ve been thinking about this all wrong,” Neil said. “We’ve been thinking about how to undo meeting James and get our lives back. That’s not happening. Especially if James was right and Terian brings the war here. Especially after last night, we can’t just hide. I, for one, say we continue.”
Continue. As though if they did, some good would come out of it.
“Count me out,” Pieter said. “This ha
s been enough trouble.”
“Me, too,” Gloria said. “I said it that first night, I’ll say it again. I’m not a fighter.”
This from the girl who’d dropped a tree on Jed. “You’re wrong on that,” Vero said. “Timid or not, you’re a fighter. You’re strong.”
Gloria looked back at her, a flat expression on her face, her lips sealed. But hope registered in her eyes, as though she wanted it to be true.
Pieter looked up at Vero. “And you? You’ve got a good life here. Why spoil that?”
A good life. He was the best part of her life, but the rest? He’d never seen her house. He didn’t know her family. His parents might be divorced, but at least he had a dad. Pieter had grown up in wealth, she in poverty. He might have a good life to return to; she didn’t.
“Yeah, Vero? Hide or fight?” Neil asked.
She pictured that light floating in her room. She wanted it to be real, wanted it to mean something. Until now, Ruach invading her world had meant fear. Magic had meant armed men robbing her brother-in-law and stabbing her boyfriend. But if that presence had been real, that strange visitor that had wrapped her in serenity like a blanket and chased away her fears, then magic could also mean things more beautiful than she’d imagined.
How strange that she’d end up agreeing with Neil. She kept a few inches between her and Pieter. “You can try and run away. But the rift was open. See how long you can hide.”
Epilogue
The king stepped into the bright night of the Shadowlands. Remarkable. So much light. Yet so little in the ethereal realm. So utterly stark and bare of magic, the very opposite of Ruach. And above, those sky jewels! Researchers had noted them before, but no one could have sensed just how beautiful they would be.
He felt it, off in the distance, the undeniable signature of a soul armor, like a hook tugging in the back of his mind. No, multiple. Four or five. Strange, the report had only mentioned three men coming through. It was hard to tell… it had to be only three armors. Where had the others come from?
“Breathtaking,” his wife said. Radiant, she stepped out of the portal beside him.
Her apprentice stepped through then shifted them to invisible. The rest of the men came through carrying the supplies, and the portal closed. In this field, surrounded by a short fence, the king simply looked up at the sky jewels. There had to be a Shadowlander word for them. Perhaps James or the soldiers had learned it. They were the first Ruachians to truly hear words in that language.
His queen looked in the direction of the armors. “Should we intervene? It’s not that far.”
“Love, this place is beautiful,” he said. “Of all that I expected from the Shadowlands, I didn’t foresee such beauty.”
“You approve?”
“Look up.”
She gasped.
“I could get used to it here.”
The Adventure is Just Beginning
Thanks so much for reading the first book of The Rift series! The adventures of Vero, Pieter, Neil, and Gloria are just getting started.
Do you want the next book cheap or for free? Head to jtstoll.com and sign up for my email newsletter for news about discounts, deals, and future books.
And I’d love to hear from you. Please email me at [email protected] and let me know what you thought of the book.
About the Author
J.T. Stoll wrote his first fantasy story when he was five. The prose was… brilliant. The accompanying stick figure illustrations… breathtaking. The lack of complex vocabulary underlies the deeper human condition. It was terrible. His mother refuses to destroy the only copy because it has “sentimental value.”
He has always loved fantastical stories of all kinds: fantasy novels, 16-bit RPGs, superhero movies, whatever. If reading helps to escape the real world, why not go somewhere fun?
J.T. lives in San Luis Obispo County in a classy bacchelor pad. He enjoys rock climbing, software development, and cooking amazing food.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to everyone who made this book possible. Most, and more than anyone, my Heavenly Father, who makes everything possible.
Next, my parents. Mom, all those decades of proofreading my school papers paid off.
Pieter Neethling of smartrockclimbing.com, you’re a great roommate and an incredible encouragement. Thanks for lending me the awesome spelling of your first name.
Meredith Efken of fictionfixitshop.com, you made me weep bitterly with your substantive edit. The book is better for it.
Susan Helene Gottfried (westofmars.com), you did a spectacular line edit.
Jason Whited, thanks for the meticulous copyedit.
Randy Ingermanson of advancedfictionwriting.com, thanks for your encouraging words at the Mount Hermon Conference.
My alpha readers who provided feedback: Keegan, Karin, Donna, and J.K. Tizzie.
Kelsey, the cover photo turned out amazing.
Lokmenshi, thanks for designing it into an amazing cover.
To my critique group: Liz, Chai, and Katie. Write more stuff. Get published.
To Jesús for the Spanish translations. If they actually make sense, it’s definitely not because I speak Spanish.
Thanks to the girls at Starbucks in Grover Beach for the many tall iced teas needed to complete this work.
