Stone Raiders' Return (Emerilia Book 6)

by Michael Chatfield

  Dave and Deia looked to each other.

  Dave closed his eyes and mumbled something. After a minute or two, it felt as if there was a heavy pressure in the room. Jules tried to pop her ears but couldn’t.

  “Deia used to be a POE, and I used to be a Player like you. I guess that when I became a bleeder and Deia became a Player. It changed my biology, but Deia stayed the same. So, that probably made it possible for us to have children,” Dave said.

  “What are you talking about? POE becoming a Player and you being a bleeder?” Jules asked, looking confused.

  “Don’t worry about it—just know that we want to keep the child,” Deia said.

  “Okay.” Jules held her hands up in defeat.

  “Thanks.” Dave hugged Deia tight and they smiled at each other.

  A smile grew on Jules’s face. She had never before been able to tell two people that they were going to be parents. Hers was always the job of telling people when their friends and family couldn’t be saved from their wounds.

  ***

  “Okay, so what’s going on? Why the sudden visit? You sounded flustered in the private message.” Fire looked at Deia with concern as she and Dave walked into the room.

  “Well, we have an announcement.” Deia looked to her mother and father, and gripped Dave’s hand tight. She took a breath as a smile spread across her face. “You’re going to be grandparents.”

  “What? How? I’m going to be a grandfather?” Mal’s face lit up with what could only be described as joy as he moved toward Dave and Deia.

  “Yep.” Dave laughed.

  Mal had tears in his eyes as he hugged Deia.

  “I’m going to be a grandmother?” Fire asked, still in shock, looking to the two in mild disbelief.

  “Yes you are, and not just the grandmother of Dragons.” Deia laughed and tears ran down her face.

  “Woo-hoo!” Fire yelled. Tears fell down her face as her face was broken in complete joy. It turned into a group hug with everyone laughing, crying, and in a state of shock.

  “Well, looks like we won’t be too far apart then!” Fire giggled, looking down at her own slight baby bump that was now showing.

  “Well, means that you’ll be perfect for babysitting!” Deia laughed.

  “How far along are you?” Mal asked.

  “About three or four weeks,” Dave said.

  “A summer baby! I can’t believe I’m going to be a father again and a grandfather in the space of just a few months!” He hugged Deia again.

  With Elves, it wasn’t weird for your children and grandchildren to be having kids at the same time you were. With the whole aging thing, it was just part of the deal. Other societies found it wrong and weird but the Elves had come to understand it. It was part of who they were.

  “We have to tell the rest of the family! They’ll be over the moon!” Fire used her teleportation spell and brought them into her volcano.

  That night, many of the cities that could see the Densaou Ring of Fire talked of how dozens of Dragons had flown around their homes, roaring into the night sky and letting out their Affinity breath, lighting up the night sky.

  It was as if they were celebrating something.

  ***

  Bob finished reading the message from Dave, calling upon his teleportation spell before he had completely read it all. His face, in a state of shock, quickly turned to excitement.

  In a flash of light, he stood in the middle of Fire’s apartment.

  Dave, Deia, and Fire sat on a couch in the middle of the room, surrounded by a group of Dragons who had taken on their Human forms. Mal stood behind Fire, his hand resting on her shoulder and her hand over his as she looked at the happy gathering in a world of her own.

  “Woohoo! Atta boy, Dave! Nice work there, Deia!” Bob jumped and thrust his legs into the air. The gesture looked ridiculous with the four-foot-tall Gnome’s ecstatic expression.

  Dave and Deia let out a laugh that seemed to brighten the room. A festive mood permeated the air as well as happiness.

  With the Dragons and Elves, having a child was a rare and great event. Here, the Dracul clan were not only celebrating Deia and Dave’s pregnancy, they were accepting them into their Dracul family.

  Deia was much more relaxed while Dave was flustered and filled with energy. Deia’s years had allowed her to gain a maturity, that, although Dave could touch on it at times, he couldn’t hope to achieve in his current situation.

  Bob watched with glowing eyes as they looked at each other. Nestled into each other’s arms, they were a picture of happiness. It took some time before things wound down. Bob found himself with Deia across from him.

  “Bob, there’s something I need to ask.” Deia’s face became pinched and serious.

  “Go on, my dear,” Bob said, with a soft smile.

  “If I was to die now, what would happen?” Deia held his gaze.

  Bob sighed. His happy expression became darker as he remembered the weight of his responsibilities and the troubles that encompassed Emerilia. “If you die, then you will respawn still. However, I don’t think that your baby will be respawned with you,” Bob said.

  Deia took a deep breath. Her eyes moved from Bob to her hands. A sour expression crossed her face. “I didn’t want to have a husband for so long because I feared that having a child would stop me being able to fight. Now that I have a man I want to get married to, he gets me pregnant right when things start to look like they’re going to explode in our faces,” Deia said. Even with her words, she couldn’t stop from smiling, looking over to Dave, who was talking to a group of Dragons in Human form.

  “You’re going to need to be careful to not overexert yourself as well. That would be bad for the baby. Mana usage, no more than twenty percent of your limit in one go,” Bob said seriously.

  “Seems you know a bit about babies.” Deia looked back to him.

  “Well, I kind of made everyone here.” Bob waved his hands to encompass Emerilia.

  For years, he had worked with different cloning, fertilization, gene therapy, and DNA sequencing procedures to help give rise to the races that roamed Emerilia.

  Deia let out a small laugh and smiled at Bob, her eyes misty as her hand went to her belly. In one day, her life had changed—her future had changed. “Looks like I’ll have to be careful.”

  Seeing those misty eyes and that soft warming smile on her face as she looked down at her stomach, something seemed to have gotten stuck in Bob’s eye as he coughed roughly.

  Chapter 15: Machines That Changed the World

  Dave sat down. The last two weeks had been a whirlwind, between seeing Deia’s parents and then letting everyone else know what was going on. Then it had been back to work.

  The smithies’ hiring craze was paying off. They had nearly doubled their workforce. With the constant shifts, they were hiring more and more. Once Terra was open to more than just the Stone Raiders and some select guests, they’d be needed to work in the smithy there.

  Dave had been spending his days in the Aleph college, researching with Deia. He’d taken apart the portal, looked at Bob’s and Fire’s teleportation spells as well as the combined knowledge of how teleport pads worked. He’d even been able to get through the book that he’d gotten so long ago about teleportation.

  He had been working with Ela-Dorn on their portal hijacker: a system that could take over a portal, giving them control over it and allowing them to connect to different portals. They had been able to create a shield system that would block anything coming in that they didn’t like.

  Ela-Dorn and Dave had finally come up with a prototype mock-up.

  “I think it will work. It should work, at least,” Ela-Dorn said.

  “Well, that sounds good enough for me! Let’s go test it out!” Dave pulled Ela-Dorn along, going through the grand library and headed out toward the teleport pads. Dave entered his code that allowed them access to the Stone Raiders’ power facility.

  “Why are we going there?”
r />   “All will be revealed.” Dave smiled. They passed through the teleport pad. Dave led Ela-Dorn through the facility into a command room and through a secret door that Ela-Dorn would have missed, even with all of her senses.

  As soon as they passed through the corridor and were inside what looked like a multi-level lab, Ela-Dorn felt as if a weight had been lifted from her senses. “Wow, okay, what have you been up to, Dave?”

  “Oh, a bit of this and that.” Dave grinned, leading her to one of the labs on the bottom floor.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Ela-Dorn pointed to one of the rooms on the first floor.

  “If you’re thinking attempts at making a teleportation spell, then you would be correct. Thinking of all of the variables is a pain in the ass. The farther away, the harder it is to do. I think I’m going to have to make a magical code to take care of most of the basic stuff. Trying to figure it all out in your head is a pain in the ass and takes a really high Intelligence. Today, we’re just going to be asking a buddy to give us a ride.” Dave opened up his interface and sent a message.

  A few minutes later, a Gnome appeared in the room. “Argh, it is a pain in the ass to teleport in here. Thankfully, you have that damn coordinates sent to me, or else I might be in the wall.”

  “You just used a teleportation spell?” Ela-Dorn said, not completely believing what she had just seen.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t going to walk all the way down from my carrier now.” The Gnome grinned.

  “How is that possible? We didn’t think that a person could do it. There are just too many variables!” Ela-Dorn said.

  “Well, looks like this one has just gone down the rabbit hole of teleportation. Don’t worry, lass. There is a lot more to learn, and there are a few cheats.” The Gnome winked.

  “This is Bob, and he also won’t tell me the cheats because he wants to see what we do,” Dave grumbled.

  “What? If I gave you the answers, then it would be too easy. Though, I have to say, being used as the universe’s taxi cab isn’t all that fun.” Bob shook his head. “Though, you Humans keep on coming up with interesting new ways to do things. So, what’s to say that you don’t come up with a new way to do teleporting? Then, I might be the one using your spells to do all of this!”

  “But you can teleport from one place to another with just a spell? What is your range? How can you figure out all of the computations?” Ela-Dorn asked.

  “Well, you can’t think too complicated. When it’s just moving from one place to another across a planet, you can stop thinking about most of the variables that come with, say, a portal. It makes things a bit riskier, but reduces the cast time astronomically. Also, creating a spell formation into different areas, much like your teleport pads, makes things easier. I have one here, but with Dave’s runes, detecting it is a pain in the ass, so I figure out the rough coordinates and send myself. Then, the formation here kind of grabs onto me and pulls me into position. That way you can go really long distances with just a rough idea, and a shorter cast time from one place to another. General teleportation from one point to another in your field of vision is a lot easier. Blind casting is risky, but hell, that’s why we can respawn, right?” Bob grinned.

  “You can talk on the way. Seeder, please. I have a summoning hall to make,” Dave said.

  “Right. How’s Deia doing?” Bob asked.

  “Still stubborn as ever.” Dave smiled.

  “Okay, so with the teleportation spell, how are you moving from one spot to another—dematerialization, atomic resonance, or something else?”

  “Something else. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out eventually.” Bob smiled.

  “But—” Ela-Dorn was cut off as they left the hidden lab and reappeared in Dave’s seeder, on the bridge.

  “Bob, how do the Jukal move their ships from system to system?” Dave asked.

  “Well, there are a couple of ways. They can use the gates, basically scaled-up versions of the portals. The slip streams, which are regions around a star system which have a low and constant gravitational force, allow a ship to use their Alcubierre drives to bend space a little to create a gravitational wave that shoots them forward. Not as fast as portals, but it works for systems that don’t have the money for a large-scale portal, or gate.”

  Ela-dorn looked like a fish out of water as she listened to what Bob was saying. “Ships? Gates, solar systems?”

  “I’m going to go and test this out.” Dave grinned at Bob and Ela-Dorn.

  “Come, young one. Let us watch Dave at work and discuss the realities of Emerilia and the empire that controls it,” Bob said.

  “Don’t you mean the gods? The Affinities Pantheon?”

  “Well, have you ever heard of the people who control the Affinities?” Bob asked.

  “Well, there have been some odd changes with how the gods work. Like how they interact with one another or the POEs.” Ela-Dorn looked thoughtful, thinking on what she knew about the Pantheon, how they worked together at times and other times worked against one another. They seemed to be erratic in their actions. Though with the pattern growing in her mind, the more it looked as though they were working together to do something.

  As if they weren’t always in control.

  “I haven’t, but as you say it, a few things make sense now,” Ela-Dorn admitted as Dave attached what looked like large clamps around a portal and secured them at different points.

  “Well, the Jukal Empire controls them and thus Emerilia,” Bob said.

  “Okay.” Ela-Dorn shrugged.

  “You don’t seem that shocked.” Bob studied Ela-Dorn.

  “If it is this Jukal Empire or Pantheon that is trying to assert control over Emerilia, it has little bearing on me.” Ela-Dorn shrugged.

  “They were the ones who ordered the Pantheon to attack the Aleph. They were scared where your study of teleport technology would go. They have a monopoly over trade and the trade lanes. If you could make teleportation cheap, then they would lose that. Right now, with being in your facilities, they haven’t been able to sense anything that you’re doing with teleport pads and portals. Once you start showing that you didn’t stop working with teleportation, they might try to force you to stop once again,” Bob said.

  Ela-Dorn’s eyes thinned as Dave finished attaching the last clamp onto the portal and running tests.

  A cold smile formed on her lips. “Well, they’re going to have to try a whole hell of a lot harder to try to get rid of us this time.”

  “Atta girl.” Bob grinned.

  “So, Bob, who are you? I think it would be pretty stunning to most people to see a Gnome teleporting around.”

  “Oh, me? I’m the Grey God.” Bob smiled.

  Ela-Dorn’s eyes widened. “You’re the one who saved us! You warned us about the coming forces and helped us escape.”

  “Bingo.” Bob winked. “Now, would you be interested in being an agent of chaos?”

  “I thought you were the god of balancing,” Ela-Dorn asked.

  “Well, sometimes the best way to balance things is to add in a bit of chaos.” Bob smirked.

  “What are you asking me?”

  “I’m bored most of the time and I’m always looking for friends. Would you give me the honor of becoming my friend? You are a rather interesting lady,” Bob said.

  “I have a husband,” Ela-Dorn said.

  Bob broke out into laughter, slapping his thigh.

  Ela-Dorn’s eyebrow rose as she looked at Bob, her lips pursed.

  “Sorry, just, woohoo—haven’t had someone take my words like that in some time. I’m older than Emerilia itself. I was a scientist before all of this. Playing with problems and looking at what you Humans come up with is a lot of fun.” Bob smiled.

  “Well, I’m an Orc, so I’m a bit different,” Ela-Dorn said.

  Bob waved his hand. “You all think you’re so different. I spliced you all out of the same genetic code, just some different genetic markers to look younger longer, or have
more muscle and bone density, or bigger jaws with large teeth. If you saw the other races of the empire, you’d understand what different races looked like!”

  Ela-Dorn looked at Bob in confusion.

  “He tells the truth. I was grown in a damn pod for most of my life, conditioned in a simulation to think of Earth as real instead of Emerilia. Now, let’s see if this works.” Dave opened his interface and connected to the portal’s controls. “Bob, what are your portal’s coordinates?”

  “Sending them to you with updates every nanosecond,” Bob said.

  “Thank you. Inputting,” Dave said. The portal started to come alive; runes that were visible glowed with power as the four different clamps started glowing and powering up.

  There was a whirring and clicking noise as the runes inside the portal’s rings started moving and changing.

  “Oh, that is interesting,” Dave muttered to himself.

  “What?” Ela-Dorn asked.

  “The runes and the Magical Circuits within the portal aren’t just metal blocks. They are broken up into different segments—ebony cutting up the different circuits, which are made of silver. The portal heats up the silver and forms it into the needed runes within the circuits. It’s why it costs so much power connecting a portal. They’re literally reforming their innards each time. Also, they have parts where they destroy runes, and remake them according to the positional differences of the two points. The portals exchange information about their positions and their changes. It’s why only two portals are usually connected to each other and they never close. If you shift them say a meter, they have to destroy and reform the runes they’ve made for positional information and change it. The rings that are changing go from light-years down to meters. They’re just centimeters wide, with the runes being burned out in a matter of minutes.” Dave looked over the portal as it started to make noises that told Ela-Dorn that it was online.

  Runes on the cover of the portal started to glow, coming around from under the four points where the clamps were. Slowly, one by one, the various circuits and runes started glowing. All of them moved counter-clockwise until they reached the next clamps, the portal covered in glowing runes and Magical Circuits.