Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator
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“We make the gold-ones ragi,” Bhaal growled. “Their paa is strong but their kaa is feeble.”
Vulcindra swung around to stare at the Lokori. “Ragi?” She straightened and brushed back her dark hair. “Dolem kenja duthic seeja Dreel bol-dah das Ragi?”
Bhaal sniffed and made a dismissing gesture. “Jeh. Goreth Ragi.” She flicked out a finger which flared golden, and a single shining talon of force snapped into being. Her glowing gold eyes narrowed. “Ega Ragi.”
The dark woman tilted her head. She pushed out her lip. “Interesting. I can pursue that later. Did the Daergons perchance manage to get a gate locked on inside the defenses here?”
“They’re getting people in here somehow,” Sarai put in, her gaze tracking to Bhaal. “I never saw exactly where they came from, but I can guess fairly close.”
“Show me,” Vulcindra said.
She slid off pallet to the floor. She reached out across the raised dais toward her mother. “Give me Bannor back please.”
Kalindinai sighed and held out her arm. Sarai took hold of the band and Bannor felt her will press into him. There was a moment of threads spinning and disorientation and he was again looking out of Sarai’s eyes.
Vulcindra eyed Sarai. “You there, Boy. Do not synchronize her again.”
“Huh?” he said.
“You’ve already caused abnormal growth in that child. Don’t make it worse. Her body isn’t stressed for it at any rate.”
It sounded like she knew what she was talking about.
“Bhaal,” Wren said. “Can I get you to go with them?”
The Lokori looked up from examining where Octavia had finished sealing her wounds. Her gaze went to Sarai. “I go.” She reached out toward the tangled mess of silver tatters that had been her armor. With a hum and a gurgling sound the metal flowed up her arm and encased her body in a smooth unbroken sheen.
Wren slid off the pallet with a thud and Vera dropped to the floor with her, silent as usual. “Jan stay here, they might need us back here fast and you can summon the others. Dane you coming?”
The auburn-haired ascendant glanced at her mentor. “Jan, I better.”
Janai frowned. “You be careful.”
Daena gave her a hug. “I will.” She turned and moved to stand with Wren.
Corim slid to the floor and took his shaladen off his arm, forming it into a blade. He stepped to one of the Kriar Seargas who was sitting against the wall. They communicated silently for a few moments, and the gold male rose to his feet. He nodded to the other Kriar and they stood as well. Corim also spoke with the valkyries who moved to join Daena and Janai.
“Lady Arabella,” Corim said. “I know you still aren’t fully recovered. Perhaps you will dress and be ready to leave if necessary.”
The woman nodded and rolled off her pallet with a grunt. Mercedes and Wysteri assisted her toward the treatment chamber.
Kalindinai moved to stand with Wren.
Seeing everyone assembled, Sarai moved into the corridor, nodding to the valkyrie guards in the doorway.
Vulcindra followed. Bhaal stalked behind her like a shadow on silent feet. Wren and Vera came behind them.
“Vera, are you sure you want to come on this?” Wren asked in a low voice.
“I come,” the tiny woman said. “I must. The dark one is true G’Yakki, the first and eldest of our kind. She must be watched when she is in the world.”
“Oh my,” Vulcindra said, looking over her shoulder. “An admirer. I thought she had the feel of one of my children.”
“What, no denigration for her youth and ignorance?”
“No. I favor my children—even if many of them don’t accept me.” She glanced back at Vera again, red eyes calculating. “Their hearts are mine, even if their honor is not. This is Loric’s little Vera is it not?”
“It is.”
“And she’s been training you. So, it was my own teachings that made you strong. I guess I find that more palatable.”
“And why exactly again are you helping us?”
“I’m bored!” Vulcindra declared. “And much as I am loathe to admit it—I get goodie points with my lover and Koass. Those are not to be underestimated.”
Wren sighed.
They came to the broken metal wall that sealed the corridor. Sarai started to step through but Vulcindra dismissed it with a gesture. A single swing of her arm tons of metal turned molten, and in a fiery gust of hot wind disintegrated and rumbled into nothingness.
Sarai stared at her.
Vulcindra waved her forward.
They retraced their steps back up the corridor where Wyyr and Sarai fought. The stone was rippled, pocked and torn, rocky debris cluttering the floor.
Vulcindra walked with her hands behind her back. She kicked a chunk of rock out of her way. “Such a messy child.”
They reached the intersection where the two walls had prevented Sarai’s escape. The hall reeked of battle. The walls crusted with the dried remains of Sarai’s vicious conflict. Gaea had removed the bodies but not the bloodshed.
She pointed to the right. “They had to have come from there.”
The dark elder glanced to the area indicated. She dismissed the left wall of metal with a backhanded flip of her hand; the rigid surface crumpling and vanishing in a shriek of potent energies. She banished the last of Wyyr’s constructs with a flick of her finger. Behind them Bannor heard the Kriar muttering. There was no doubt Vulcindra was a scary creature, an untamed force of nature and just as whimsical.
Fingering the gold chain on her neck, Vulcindra strolled forward, crimson eyes glowing in the dim corridor. She touched some of the crusted blood on the wall and glanced back at Sarai. “You do good work.”
She moved her spread hand over the surface of the rock, fingertips brushing the irregular surface. She shifted to the right and felt around some more.
“It is—ah… here.” She made a coming gesture and a thin cylinder of rock a little thicker than a thumb crackled and dislodged from the surrounding material and hovered in the air. She stepped back and the floating core of stone settled in her palm. She studied her prize for a few moments. “Third-order one-way sub-ethereal portal,” she murmured more to herself than anyone else it seemed. “Passive stabilization with a time-space worm-distortion for spying.”
“Can you close it?” Kalindinai asked.
“I could,” Vulcindra said. She held up the cylindrical chunk and nibbled a fingernail. “The signature of the portal suggests this is not being generated by a planet or ship bound gate system. It is very well stealthed with heavy tracking countermeasures. My surmise is the backside of this portal leads back to Fabrista Homeworld.” She glanced back. “Wouldn’t it be fun if the origin is the Daergon stronghold? I mean we know this can’t be coming from where Koass and the others are fighting or they wouldn’t be spying so actively.”
“You said it was one way,” Wren said. “What good does that do us?”
“Because child,” Vulcindra tossed the cylinder to her and pushed up her sleeves. “Gates are my favorite toy.” She made a swing of her arm and a circular section of the wall sparkled. The opaque granite began to hum and vibrate, after a few instants the material turned pale and rippled. In a moment, it became like a churning surface of water and through it what looked like some form of railed platform and beyond a dimly lit chamber in which creatures moved.
The dark elder rubbed her hands tog
ether. “You may laud my brilliance now.”
“Damn, this is great,” Corim said. “But we can’t assault the Daergons with this tiny team.”
“Perhaps I misunderstood the politics of the situation,” Vulcindra said. “If this is indeed the backyard of one of the ruling councilors, isn’t all we need to do is find proof of Baronian collaboration?”
“That’s certainly part of it,” Corim said, glancing back to one of the Kriar with them. The male nodded. The other male and female with him straightened up, their dark eyes showing support for the idea.
“Good,” Vulcindra determined. She raised her hands and her white garments spun away to replaced by a black robe of shadows that looked almost identical to what Vera wore. Her skin turned black as coal and the burning red of her eyes became a faint glimmering beneath her hood.
Vulcindra’s voice became an eerie whisper that seemed to issue from every direction at once. Even inside the shaladen Bannor felt himself shudder. “I shall prevent detection,” she hissed. She gestured to Vera. “Su’Ko—dalad hara tumi.”
The little woman stiffened. She looked at Wren for a long moment then nodded. She reached into her sleeves and pulled on some gloves and pulled up her mask.
Vulcindra raised her hands and in a glare of red light, a curved sword sheath and a dagger appeared in her fingers. She tossed them to Vera who caught them. The little woman slid the sheaths through her sash and arranged them. She checked each of the blacked blades, that hummed as they were loosed in their sheaths.
“Vera?” Wren said. “You can’t fight Kriar. I can’t fight Kriar!”
The little woman’s expression turned stony. She put a hand on the blonde ascendant’s shoulder. “I go not to fight.” She tightened her fingers. “I go to kill.”
“No. I should go with you. I can be quiet.”
Vera shook her head. “We call you.” She pulled up her hood and nodded to Vulcindra.
The dark elder turned to look at Wren and raised her chin.
She made a hand sign to Vera. The tiny woman slipped close.
The dark elder did a series of gestures, her fingers leaving trails of light as it moved. The two of them grew more and more translucent as she continued. Bannor saw their threads winking out, and even their life-force grew dim. In the space of a breath they had become completely invisible even to his thread senses.
The gateway rippled once and then again, the only indication that the two had passed through.
“That woman sooo creeps me out!” Daena muttered with a shudder.
“Damn,” Sarai muttered. She looked to her Mother. “This could end it. This could be the root of the whole thing. We need to risk it, don’t we?”
Kalindinai chewed her lip, rarely being an indecisive woman. “It’s the break Koass was hoping for and we’d be idiots to pass on it.”
“Can we do it though?” Wren asked. “Even with killer queen leading the way?”
“Couldn’t you blow the place to pieces with that Starholme thing you do?” Sarai asked.
“That is so dangerous, and I promised Marna never to use that power against the Kriar.”
“But they’re rogues…”
Wren gritted her teeth. “I know that.” She looked to Bhaal. The Lokori had been silent the whole time. She was staring at the reflective surface of the gate. The illumination cast dancing reflections on the surface of her skin and armor.
“Well, regardless, I must go,” Corim said. “Seargas, I assume the same for you?”
The three Kriar nodded.
“Decide,” Bhaal murmured.
Sarai looked back to the gate. A black hand had extended from the watery surface and was making a come-here gesture with its finger…
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* * *
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I am the intangible shadow, the scything
horror with no name. I have lived a
thousand lifetimes and the blood of my
victims would fill a sea. Good and evil are
mere concepts. The only things that matter
in the universe are survival and satisfaction.
My satisfaction—not yours…
—Vulcindra Skybane,
Empress Ascendant, 1st Alliance
Sarai stared at the beckoning hand. This was poorly timed. She knew it. Bannor knew it. The whole group hummed with it. Even Bhaal, the unstoppable Lokori that feared nothing, looked dubious. Kalindinai gripped her hair in uncharacteristic frustration. Corim, ever the calculating man, paused for two heartbeats before thumping one of the seargas on the shoulder and leaping into the gate.
His watery distorted silhouette appeared on the other side, turned and stepped out of view. The three Kriar Seargas, two males and one female, glanced at one another and followed him into the gap.
“Damn, I’m so tired of this spit,” Wren growled. “This could end it. I’m going.” She leaped through.
Daena shrugged. To the girl, it was just another adventure. She leaped in behind her.
Kalindinai, Bhaal, and Sarai stood alone in the corridor. Vulcindra’s hand pulled back through the gate. She obviously didn’t expect them to come.
The blue-haired Lokori looked at them with a tilted head.
“Why don’t you go, Bhaal?” Kalindinai said. “It’s more war, right?”
The female’s expression remained flat. “Mother say to guard sister-to-be. I do.”
“Damn it,” Kalindinai said. “I don’t know which is more dangerous, going after them or staying here.”
Sarai stepped close to her mother. “Don’t you always say the enemy in front of you is half as deadly as the one behind you?”
The Queen brushed back her dark hair and stared at her daughter. “Yesss.”
The third princess stared at the gate. “Then let’s go.”
“You’re pregnant—this is very risky.”
“I was here and nearly got kidnapped. There’s a difference?”
Kalindinai tilted her head back and growled. “Gah.” She pointed her staff at the gate. “Go.”
Sarai turned and leaped into the shimmering icy surface of the gate.
To Bannor, seeing through Sarai’s eyes, the threads of the universe kinked around them. For an instant, a billion stars and nebulae whirled past them and vanished as they clanked down onto the metal grillwork on the far side.
Bhaal landed beside her an instant later. The two of them stepped back and watched as the queen emerged from the surface of the shimmering portal like a phantom, translucent at first, her crackling body solidifying before dropping to the metal panels in front of the pulsing Kriar travel machinery.
Breath making plumes in the icy air, Sarai glanced around the gloomy chamber lit with a faint greenish light. She wrinkled her nose at a raw caustic scent lingering in the heavy air. A rhythmic trembling, more vibration than sound, hummed through the surroundings, rising and falling like the breathing of some gigantic beast. They stood on a railed platform raised a few paces above the floor in the center of a circular area sixty paces across. Tendrils of mist swirled down the ramps to a crystalline-looking floor where strands of colored light twisted and writhed.
Rubbing her arms against the cold, Sarai glanced to her mother and Bhaal. Where were the others? She stepped to the ramp and looked up. The ceiling rose at a steep angle to a point some twenty paces overhead where a black globe protruded down into the room. Filaments of milky looking material hung from the sphere extending to points everywhere overhead, creating a shifting illumination as tiny beads of light flickered along the fibers.
Sarai summoned Xersis into blade form and padded down the ramp, gaze scanning the strange environs. For her, it was the first time being inside the constructs of the Kriar. She stepped off the metal grating onto the clear-glassy surface of the floor. The material wasn’t hard like rock, feeling more like cork or soft wood in the way her boots pressed into it.
She paused at the bottom as Bhaal and then Kalindinai came do
wn behind her. The Lokori brushed past Sarai and leaned around the ramp, a black armored body lay face down in the space underneath, white blood pooling around the helmeted head and shoulders.
The Lokori led the way around the central spire that served as the hub of the room. Other portals that obviously looked into different locations were spaced around the cylindrical construct. A fourth of the way around Bhaal pointed to another body, this one still twitching from the lethal blow that had robbed the creature of life, but had not yet stilled its limbs.
Sarai breathed a sigh of relief as they found the rest of the group gathered together on the far side. Four more guards stationed at other points of the room all lay crumpled, these it appeared had tried to fight or escape from the positioning of their bodies.
Vulcindra stood a little back from the others, turned so she could observe the corridor that lead out of the chamber. The woman seemed to have grown since crossing into this place, her silhouette easily equal in height to burly Corim, who was frowning at something one of the Kriar seargas was showing him. Wren stood next to Vera brow furrowed, rubbing the back of her neck and looking around. Next to her, the little G’Yakki had her thumbs in her sash and her head down as though a great weight were pressing on her. The other two Kriar were also looking at a device and seemed to be conferring about something they were seeing in it.
Corim looked up as they approached.
Bhaal flinched and frowned at him. Her claws extended with a rasp. She sniffed and turned away to study the rest of the room. Obviously, telepathy still bothered her.
Vulcindra glanced back down the hall.
The three Kriar scattered to take care of the bodies.
Wren thought. She leaned down to look at Vera, but the little woman kept her head down and her face concealed by her hood.