A Prison of Worlds (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 1)

by Daniel Ruth

  I did neither one. The creature would be dismissed once its job was complete. Any action I took could only delay its departure. Not to mention result in serious injury. Most likely mine. As it was, it stood silently, more a statue than a living being, in front of the elf. She was nodding, as if she was part of a conversation that the rest of us weren’t included in. Soon after she waved her hands and the cracks in the walls of the universe flexed and moaned again, as if to a tune I suspect only I heard. The elemental quickly shrunk, as its essence was pulled through to the elemental plane.

  As the accumulated energy began to dissipate and I saw Estella blink and come out of her meditative state I walked over. “Did that go well?”

  “Yes, the elements are truly kind and were glad to help...” she broke into an ecstatic monolog about how wonderful the creatures were and the joys of being one with nature or some rot. I zoned out, but let her ramble for a minute. She had done something more useful than anything I could do at the moment and deserved a little of the afterglow. More importantly, I needed a second to calm down.

  “Um, Miss Estella?” Apparently Mat didn’t know or care to indulge the crazy elf woman. “Could you tell us what you found?”

  “Oh, sure,” she paused to gather her thoughts. “There is indeed a cavity below us. It appears to only house the central circles.”

  “Which are those?” the young officer asked eagerly, though obviously a bit dismayed that there was anything to be found.

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t know anything about circles and my partners know even less.”

  Mat stood frowning at this. I imagine he was wondering what to tell Conrad. I intervened, “If it was the ones in the center then it was the gateway circle at the least. Also, the secondary protection circle survived and was at least active long enough to hold off the sludge until it solidified.”

  “Can you tell anything else?”

  “Not really, I think it’s safe to say most of the energy was used in that final meltdown, but some of the circles may be able to draw off the nexus enough to trigger something.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “There probably won’t be another meltdown, but I wouldn’t call it safe,” I offered, as I walked to the area the elemental had submerged. “The very fact that you have a portal circle there means that at any time someone, or something can reopen it. The circle master was very proficient, so it’s likely he keyed it to himself, but even so I think it’s safe to say you don’t want him sneaking back this way.”

  “But it’s buried. What are they going to do, stuck a hundred feet underground?”

  “Do you honestly think that a mage that can open a door between worlds is going to be stopped by a little bit of rock, or... whatever we’re standing on?” I scuffed the gray glass-like surface under our feet.

  “Damn, what are we going to do about this?” Mat appeared a bit frustrated at the lack of closure.

  “Conrad knows. We talked about this possibility. Anyway, we’re done here. How about a ride home?”

  “Or how about you drop us off at that lovely blighty area,” interrupted the brightly colored elven girl. I was mouthing ‘blighty’ to myself as she continued. “Derek promised to escort me on my errands.”

  “You want to be dropped off in the Blight?” asked Mat dubiously. “I don’t know, it’s not as bad as it was a week ago since someone bought it. The gangs are gone at least...”

  “Who bought the land?” I asked in puzzlement.

  “I don’t know. The city was overjoyed to sell the land. We were worried about the homeless and gangs resettling in another part of town, but it hasn’t happened yet. I hear whoever it is, they are setting up private enforcement agencies to keep the peace.”

  I rubbed my temples. That couldn’t end well. It sounded like a power play by an independent. I also doubted Vincent Fiero would be overjoyed to hear this. Given the consideration that the vampires appeared to be on a recruiting run it may not be promising for the existing residents either.

  “There’s definitely fewer badly dressed people, but Faramond almost got crushed when one of those big floating machines dropped part of a house on him,” Estella volunteered.

  “They are already having the construction barges drop the new prefabs? They must have money to burn if they’re moving that fast. If your friend was almost hurt I should check to see if they are using proper safety guidelines,” Mat replied worriedly.

  “Brutus probably just couldn’t read the big flashing red signs,” I inserted, causing the elf to pout. I found it amusing that Mat was more willing to be involved with the Blight now there was no gangs shooting missiles roaming the streets. It was remarkably sensible. “So can you drop us off?”

  I was now actually curious to see my old haunt. It wasn’t just that I wanted to see if the old besieged bookstores were still there, but it sounded like things were changing very quickly there. The timing seemed suspicious, considering everything else going on, but it really didn’t seem to be Jin’s standard operating procedure from what I had heard of from Mei.

  “Sure, why not? It’s closer to here than your house, shouldn’t be an issue.”

  Mat dropped us off into a world gone mad. The Blight had transformed completely in the few days I had been gone. Huge floating cranes and barges blocked out much of the sunlight in their slow majestic path above the expansive construction zone. Down on ground level, blocks had been cordoned off with huge red warning holograms. If Faramond had ignored this lightshow and had a house land on him then he really was as much as an idiot as I thought he was.

  Most of the buildings had been leveled or removed, many over excavations, pipes and conduits that appeared to be ready for hookup. Obviously these were plumbing, pipes, and power. One entire building to our right was gently floating toward one of these empty lots. The crane above it occasionally emitted a flickering light as the tractor field made an imperceptible correction.

  “My, humans certainly have changed over the years,” the elf said with a mild hint of respect. The fact that she didn’t say ‘you humans’ depressed me. I just had to face the fact that my secret ID really sucked. Maybe I should start wearing glasses. That seemed to work in the movies. Of course, I doubt too many superheroes left foot long bloody teeth behind either.

  “Yep, don’t you miss the days when humans wore stinking hides and clubbed each other with sticks?” I would have teased her with references of dinosaurs, but I am not sure she would have understood. If I hadn’t lived here for over a year absorbing the monster movies I doubt I would have either.

  “I was a little too young to be allowed to go to the less well-developed roots at that time.” Now I was unsure if she was joking or not. I shrugged.

  “I assume Odin has evolved past the bloody hide stage of the wardrobe,” I asked. A rather nasty look was thrown my way. I assume this verged on impinging upon her religion.

  “We don’t have much reliance on science, but I haven’t seen anything here we don’t have already through magical means.”

  “Mystic plumbing?”

  “Fine, the Dvergar do have a construction guild that includes plumbing. I don’t really count that as science though,” she almost whined. “The waste products go straight to a hell dimension though so it’s not all science.”

  “Don’t the demons mind?”

  “It’s not any of the main ones. Just a tiny dimension we conquered way back. I don’t think there’s anything left in it. Living at least.”

  “Why not use Hel’s dimension,” I prodded. She looked at me oddly and mouthed ‘Hel’. Perhaps there was a different pronunciation for the goddess of death. Her eyes widened as she deciphered what I said and she snorted with laughter.

  “Oh my goodness! That... that would be priceless. Pumping shit to the land of the dead! Ancestors preserve us,” she broke down into giggles while covering her mouth at her own vulgarity. “I suspect that might just break the treaty.”

  “What a way to start Ragnarök,” I in
serted, inspiring another snort of laughter.

  “Bah, that is just a legend the Sidhe started after the war to make the gods look bad. A couple of prophets spewed some vague doom and gloom tripe and suddenly Loki is destined to start the end of the world. I read that prophesy in school, there’s nothing even resembling that.” She kicked a simulated cobbled stone out of the way in a disgustingly cute fit of pique. “As if Urd would allow her shiftless father to drag us into war. Besides Thor and Loki wouldn’t be able to continue their drunken adventures together if the world ended.” She pinched her eyes closed and massaged her brow and whimpered. “So embarrassing.”

  Ah, Urd was the death goddess’s official name. I suppose it made more sense than naming the land and goddess the same. While we had been talking, we had been walking along the unblocked streets. The lots we passed more often were completed buildings. The architecture definitely was not modern, at least not as I have seen in the better parts of town. I had been stuck in the city for the last year so that is all I had to compare it too. And the movies.

  There had been a very aggressive retro age movement centering the early twenty-first century. Jeremy and I had spent many days sitting and watching old movies from that era and the rest of the world was caught up in that trend as well. The style of the buildings wasn’t that period either. I paused for a minute the survey the corner and it finally came to me.

  “This is early twentieth century,” I exclaimed.

  “It’s definitely less shiny than the rest of the city. Fewer straight lines too,” Estella volunteered.

  “Are these cobblestones?” I wondered aloud to myself as I stomped one foot on the road below us. “I saw a few movies about old New York, way back before the bombings, it sort of looked like this.”

  “Why are they recreating the dirt and grime?” the Álfar asked.

  Sure enough, these brand new building and cobblestones were pre-stained with blemishes and soot. While nothing looked old or broken down it certainly didn’t look new. It looked lived it.

  “It had to be the vampires,” I stated authoritatively.

  “I still haven’t gotten over those things,” Estella interrupted. “Have you noticed they aren’t all ravaging beasts?”

  “Yeah, boggles the mind...” I paused to give her a sideways glance. Sure enough, she was smiling at me. Well, smiling more than usual. “I mean... no, all vampires I have ever met have been merry old gents with sticks up their asses.” Was I actually getting worse at keeping secrets?

  “Anyway, only the vampires would be nostalgic over this time period and be pricks enough to include all the things that the people of the time didn’t like. Hopefully, one of the geriatric old souls didn’t like seeing lines to the local soup kitchen or we’ll be seeing more authenticity than we can stomach.”

  “All the old people I met always remember the good things and forget the bad parts,” she said uncertainly. As some sort of magic elf, I had to wonder how many old people she had met.

  “Trust the vampires to bring forward all the burdens of the past along with an idealized version. I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t decide to obsess over the Victorian age and then decide to import Jack the Ripper.”

  “Who’s Jack,” Estella asked, somewhat confused.

  “Never mind,” I sighed. I missed Jeremy. He got my jokes, or at least pretended to.

  One of my bookstores was actually in this area. I stopped our drifting progress and actually looked for it. Frowning, I noted there was only an empty building at that location.

  “Looks like they already have these buildings allocated for businesses,” the elf mentioned while pointing. Sure enough, above the building I was ruminating over there was a holographic advertisement.

  “Wasn’t this where the old bookstore was? Looks like the same business is moving in.”

  “Considering the time period they are going for, I bet they made sure they had a real bookstore. The two in the Blight were the only ones in the city.”

  Throughout our walk, we had hardly seen anyone except a few workers and a couple people in exoskeletons helping to connect the prefab blocks together. One of them seemed to be sitting on a bench eating his lunch so I ambled over.

  “Hey there. Where is everyone? This place used to be teeming with people?” I asked. As in teeming with gangs, homeless and generally crazy misanthropes.

  The fellow paused from eating his sandwich and nodded to us. “Hello. Not sure. My company is from out of town. I was told that the people were offered positions in the company that bought this place to renovate. I think I heard something about training and indoctrination.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I waved goodbye as we continued on our way. Turning to my companion, I prompted, “Did that sound as ominous to you as it did to me?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. These are good vampires,” she stated with a dazzling smile. Wow, that girl really knew how to lay on the sarcasm.

  “So why are we out here anyway? It’s been great to see the not so old neighborhood, but I think you had something specific in mind.”

  “I just wanted to see if all this new construction would disrupt the paths through Yggdrasil.”

  I thought back to the area we walked through. There were three nodes a stone’s throw away but nothing within sight of our path. “Did we pass through these areas?”

  “Most of them, just one main one left.” Nodes were pretty large weak points in the dimensional fabric. If she wasn’t referring to them then these ‘roots’ could use the more subtle gaps and cracks in the fabric. I still wasn’t sure if these roots were metaphysical concepts or just a different terminology. “Here it is.”

  I stared. Here was a prefab building that was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. Cocking my head, I started to walk around the structure trying to figure out what happened. The rear of the building began to answer my question as I noticed the entire corner area was gone, causing the building to sink down almost ten feet. These constructions were pretty strong, because even with a large part of the supports removed it showed no sign of imminent collapse. Or rather further collapse.

  Moving up to the gap, I looked closer and grinned. There were hand prints imbedded in the walls near the break. Large hand prints. I touched the tooth hanging at my neck from the fine gold chain I had attached. I had a feeling I knew which building had landed on top of Faramond.

  “Darn it,” exclaimed the elf in a cute display of dismay as she came up beside me, stamping her feet. “They put a building right on top of it. It’s going to get blown up the next time the roots come through.”

  “Can I assume that this is a Faramond shaped hole?”

  “Yeah, building came down right as he came out. Probably hurt like...”

  “Being punched through four walls? My heart bleeds for him. Really.”

  “Um, yeah. What are we going to do? This entire thing is going to come down the next time the roots come through.”

  I looked at her oddly as she said ‘we’. How did I get involved in this again? Was this a host thing or something else? “I’ll have Jeremy track down the owners. If they won’t do anything we can talk to Conrad. Where and how much do they need to leave clear?”

  “From here to over there,” she gestured from the hole in the wall to the other side of the interior wall. I stretched my senses over that area and although I could feel the normal gaps in the world I couldn’t feel anything particularly different. When these ‘roots’ were inactive they didn’t feel any different.

  “I’ll make sure they know. If they ignore me...” I shrugged to finish my thought. “I think I can convince them. Maybe. Conrad, if no one else.”

  “Great! Let’s head back now,” she strode purposely towards the front of the building. She paused, “Do you know anyone around here that would accept gold for a ride back to your home?”

  Normally I would just walk but I wasn’t sure I wanted to trek all the way home trailing a tired elf. She was less annoying than I thought she would be, bu
t I still didn’t want to push my luck. “I’ll ask the workman to borrow his... wait, he’ll only have an implant. I’ll just ask him to call a taxi.”

  I really have to get a wrist comm now that I think I can keep it from blowing up.

  Chapter 16

  Ironically enough, the taxi dispatched to pick us up was a newer unmanned model. Miss elf entered the vehicle completely without a care. I calmed my aura and stepped in with quite a bit more trepidation. When asked where I wanted to go by a pleasantly bland artificial female voice, I was able to get it to recognize my address. That was the last thing that went smoothly.

  “Wow! I have never been flying in a human vessel before,” my bubbly elf companion offered with smidge less than her usual enthusiasm. “Are you sure this is safe?” I frowned at her while looking at the shining brand spanking new interior. It undoubtedly had one of the new quantum chip churning away with information under that console. At that moment, I heard a loud pop and the ionized scent of lightning, as something gave way deep inside the car’s innards.

  “Statistically speaking its the safest way to travel,” I said fixing a smile on my face. My aura was pretty tightly under control. I could sense hers humming away in its usual vibrant fashion most mages had. As wild as it was, it could only get worse if she became too excited. “By the way did you know that 75% of statistics are made up on the spot?” I added brightly and immediately cursed myself.

  “I had no idea,” she smiled in an oblivious manner. “How utterly fascinating!” Another crackle came from the interior and the car jinked to the side. Her smile became a bit strained as the aircar listed to one side and horns sounded from several air cars suddenly finding themselves far too close to our erratic vehicle. “It is supposed to do that?”