Stormfront

by John Goode

  “Do you understand there is a crack somewhere in your body that will only get larger if you use magic? The chances of that are much greater in combat, which you were just in.”

  “I have no such crack,” Adamas replied, sounding a little less sure than he had.

  “Yes, sire, you do.”

  That was the amethyst. Crap, what was her name? Sili something.

  “Silica,” Hawk supplied mentally.

  That was it.

  I glanced over at him, and he gave me a small smile. There was a lot we needed to talk about, but neither one of us wanted to miss anything.

  “So you’re going to support my son’s lies?”

  “Father, it is not a lie,” Caerus added. “She did an examination of you. Don’t you recall?”

  “Of course I do!”

  Well, he’d just told a pretty bad lie.

  “Then why did you sneak out and take troops with you?” Ruber more demanded than asked.

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  Wow! This was going downhill fast. I struggled to my feet before the argument turned into a pretty bad episode of Jerry Springer: Geological Edition.

  “Okay, let’s all calm down,” I encouraged, feeling my legs threaten to buckle under me. “Fighting with each other isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “Well said,” Olim said from behind us. “We are wasting precious time.”

  It took an enormous amount of self-control not to snap a pretty angry “Then why didn’t you stop it?” at her, but that wasn’t going to fix anything. I was starting to understand that they suffered from the same thing I did when I was using the power. All of this was beneath them. It probably came across like the petty squabbling of children to them. Suddenly why they were so nasty made sense.

  Hawk asked the gems, “Can we table this until we figure out if Oberon is here?”

  “He’s not here,” I answered without thinking. “When I had my powers on, I looked at the castle. No one is here.”

  “You don’t have your powers?” Demain asked way too eagerly.

  Dammit.

  “I always have my powers,” I said threateningly at her. “I just choose not to broadcast them right now.”

  “That was a bad recovery,” Hawk thought at me.

  “Shut up. Mean Girl Witch threw me for a second.”

  “What matters is that the capitol is empty, so we win,” I said aloud, trying to steer the conversation back to you know, the war and everything.

  “As I tried to point out before,” Caerus huffed.

  “I am aware of what you told me,” Adamas snapped. “I assume that was a backhanded way of testing if I remember the conversation?”

  “I was pointing out that if anyone had listened to me in the first place, we could have avoided all this.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” Olim said, stopping the argument before it began. “We need to find where Oberon has fled.”

  “This room is full of mental energy,” Ruber said after doing a 360. “But I’m not a Sender. I can’t trace their destination points.”

  “I can handle that,” Demain announced; she snapped her fingers and waited.

  A rumble from deep below us shook the floor. We all took a step back just before a mound of dirt burst out of the tiled floor. Seconds later two very familiar floppy, white bunny ears poked out. They were attached to an equally familiar rabbit. “Is it safe?”

  “Milo Farnsworth!” Demain snapped. “I have summoned you. Present yourself now.”

  The child-sized white rabbit slowly climbed out of the hole. Everyone but Demain held their breath because he looked like he was ready to dive back in at the first sign of, well… anything. “O-of course, my liege. It was just… there was supposed to be a battle.”

  “There was and we were victorious,” the Red Queen replied testily. Which was not exactly the truth, but not a bold-faced lie. “I need the Woogie here now.”

  “Of course,” he said, bowing as he stepped backward into his hole. “I’ll be right back.”

  And with that he and the hole were gone.

  “The Woogie?” I asked, making sure I understood what she had said.

  “His full name is Woogigan Loran Brilliantra. His title is the Archmage of Aponiviso, but most refer to him as the Woogie.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Because he seems to think it is funny.”

  “How good is this mage?” Ruber asked suspiciously.

  “Good enough to teleport in without you noticing,” a voice replied from way up in the shadows that obscured the ceiling.

  We all looked up, expecting a wizard of great importance to come floating down in a ball of light or some crap. Instead a small dragon, no bigger than a full-grown cat glided down on the tiny bat-like wings on its back. The same purple as an oil slick, the Woogie had iridescent scales that changed colors with the movement in light. It landed in front of Demain and bowed deeply, which looked comical coming from something so small.

  “You bellowed?” I liked him already. From the smirk in his thoughts, so did Hawk.

  “You will respect me, lizard,” she snapped, gritting her teeth.

  “I did,” it replied with mock surprise. “Didn’t you see me bow? Should I curtsy as well?”

  Before Demain could respond, the tiny dragon completed a perfect curtsy. All he was missing was a tiny prom gown. And tiara.

  Demain decided to ignore his behavior. “The gemling says there are dimensional energies in this room. I need them identified.”

  “Gemling?” Woogie asked, looking around. “Did I miss a gemling arriving when I wasn’t looking?”

  “She is referring to my sister and myself,” Ruber interjected. Patiently. Much too patiently.

  The Woogie looked up at Ruber and made a face. “Hold on.”

  He flapped his wings furiously. Slowly they lifted him off the ground like some kind of lizard helicopter. He didn’t stop until he was face-to-facet with Ruber. “You are not a gemling. You are a sentient ruby that has been imbued with the life force of previous generations.”

  “I didn’t say I was a gemling.”

  I knew that tone. Ruber was losing his patience.

  “Well, good, if you had, you’d have been lying.”

  Before Ruber could say or do something incendiary in reply, I called out, “Dimensional energies?”

  The Woogie looked over at me, and I knew instantly he knew I carried the seed. I had no idea how he could tell, but from the way he raised one skinfold—he had no eyebrows, but the skinfold served the purpose—he knew what I was hiding.

  “Dimensional energies indeed,” he said, still staring at me. “Two portals opened here recently; one by a Sender, the other by a Being.”

  “You didn’t even check,” Ruber stated icily.

  “I checked when I arrived,” Woogie said finally, looking away from me. “Didn’t you?”

  I swear I thought I heard Ruber growl.

  “Now the Sender opened a portal to—” he waved his dragon claws around for a second “—the Wolflands.”

  “You didn’t cast a spell,” Ruber accused.

  Woogie shot a sidelong glance at him. “I know. Impressive, right?” Ruber’s color began to intensify, and Caerus floated closer to her brother to calm him down.

  “The Being opened a portal to—” This time the dragon did cast a spell; the blue-and-green glow cupped in his claws lit up the air in front of him. He squinted his skinfolds and peered up and a few feet in front of him. A nasty-looking scar made up of dark red and sickly yellow-gray light had appeared. Disconnected patches of blue and black flashed into being and disappeared, the only proof another side to the tear existed. I knew without question that someone had torn a hole in reality and hadn’t bothered to do a proper repair.

  “That’s what you do when you use your power without thinking about what you’re doing,” Hawk thought at me.

  Jesus, that looked bad.

  “Oh, well that�
�s different,” Woogie proclaimed thoughtfully; his tone had changed, all his banter and sarcasm driven out.

  “Where does it go?” Demain asked.

  “To the Banished World, Can’t remember the name. Dreadful place if I recall….”

  “Earth?” I asked, my stomach lurching at the thought of my dad and Jewel in trouble.

  “That was it,” Woogie said, praising me like I was a slow kid who got an answer right on the board. “Very good.”

  “He’s on my world,” I said out loud, staring at Hawk, panicked.

  “How recent are the portals?” Hawk asked, ignoring my freak-out.

  “The one to the Wolflands? I would say at least a week, maybe more. The one to Earth? No more than two days, possibly within the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Oberon plays his hand very well,” Adamas noted. “No doubt your mother is being held in the Wolflands while another force has been sent to Earth to draw you and the seed out.”

  “So then we need to split up,” Olim stated.

  “No!” I snapped instantly. “That’s how we die. We split up to search the big spooky house and they pick everyone off one at a time. Glinda wants us to split up.”

  “As long as the queen is being held hostage, Oberon has the advantage,” Demain said to Hawk. “Unless you’re willing to let your mother die.”

  I could feel Hawk’s heart ache with fear and anger.

  In the pause Olim spoke again. “I have no idea what spooky house Kane is talking about, but the choice is obvious; we need to attack both fronts simultaneously.” She leveled a stare at me, and I knew she’d been testing our strategy when she’d mentioned splitting up.

  “Do you know the damage magical creatures could do in a single day, much less two? Athens could already be destroyed.”

  “Undoubtedly that is true,” Woogie said in that logical, teacher’s voice. “But those magical creatures, if there is more than one, have been there two hours at most.”

  “You said the portal was at least a day old.”

  I felt Hawk’s flash of understanding.

  “The time difference. The Being opened the portal without a Sender to do the facilitation.”

  I understood all those words separately; when Hawk used them in his sentence, I was lost after Being.

  Hawk felt my confusion and explained. “When a Sender opens a portal or is present when another Sender opens one, he or she syncs the traveler with the destination world’s local time. That way, time is passing at the same rate for the traveler on both sides. That’s what the Senders did for me.”

  “However, if a portal is simply torn open, the time differential can be quite substantial,” Woogie finished.

  “Wait,” I interrupted. The information coming from Hawk’s mind was too much to get into my brain all at once. “Ruber and I fell through a random portal. How much time has passed since I left?”

  Woogie seemed to do some math in the air, his little arms moving numbers only he could see around. “Since you passed through the Nothing… I’d say less than four days.”

  What? I’d been here for months.

  “How did you know we passed through the Nothing?” Ruber asked.

  Woogie just winked at him and looked back to me. “Nonetheless, the prince is right. The Being that sent Oberon to Earth two days ago did not use a facilitation point, so he has been there two hours at the most. Conversely, every day spent here will be another hour for him.”

  “So we can do both,” Hawk said quickly. “We go to the Wolflands and rescue my mother and then deal with whatever Oberon sent to your world.”

  “No,” I said quietly. “A couple of hours is the difference between my town being wiped out of existence or not.”

  “She’s my mother!” Hawk cried.

  “I know,” I said calmly. Where was this coming from? I should be freaking out, but instead I was completely under control. “I’ll take Ater and Ruber with me to Earth and slow down whatever Oberon has planned. You take everyone else to the Wolflands and then meet up with us when you’re done.”

  I could feel the full force of Hawk’s reluctance, but he also knew I was right. I had to save my dad, and he needed to save his mom. “What happened to the spooky house?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s okay, all of this is a ‘creepy old man in a mask.’ We got this.”

  He smiled at me, and I felt more confident in my decision.

  “Why us?” Ater asked me.

  “Because both you and Ruber have been there before. That gives us an advantage.”

  “Kor will need to go too.”

  That was his way of saying he didn’t trust what Kor might do if he was left alone.

  “And I will also,” Demain said out of nowhere.

  Bitch said what?

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Our sister obviously tore that portal open. No one else has the power to do so. And if she did that, it means she has a vested interest in what goes on there. You will need more than two elves and a rock.”

  “Am I supposed to think you won’t try to stab me in the back the first chance you get?”

  She gave me a predatory smile. “You’re keeper of the seed; I am just a lowly witch. Remember?”

  I might have walked into that one.

  “This is a bad idea,” Hawk said, looking right into my—our—soul.

  “When all the ideas left are bad, you take the one that sucks the least.”

  “This does not feel like it sucks less.”

  I agreed, but there was nothing left to say.

  We hugged each other; I hoped it wasn’t for the last time.

  AINO HIT hard.

  The metal fist cracked Ferra’s armor and slid her back a few feet, but that was about it. As the barbarian charged at the avatar, the cracks healed, the ice reforming around her. Ferra noticed a slight hesitation from the mechanical creature before she threw her spear at Aino; the automaton was analyzing the weapon before it hit. The weapon hit the mass of gears and passed right through it, and the hole in Aino’s chest disappeared as the parts went back to their original formation.

  This was not going to be as simple as she thought.

  Aino moved, her body elongating, as the thousands of parts moved and changed her form to that of a large bat. Both wings came crashing down on Ferra as she curled up tightly and concentrated.

  Splinters of ice chipped off the block of ice surrounding Ferra, but no real damage was done. They were obviously testing each other’s defenses.

  Ferra watched the machine shift and reform, taking careful note of the pieces she had knocked off. Aino shed gears and machinery each time Ferra hit her, and each time the pieces fell to the ground and then flew back to Aino’s main mass. No matter how many times Ferra struck her, the pieces gathered and reformed.

  Aino morphed once more, and the ice block changed to a pillar, striking the creature directly under its chin. The clockwork creature’s head snapped back and parts flew everywhere again as the head separated from the main mass. Ferra formed a sword out of ice and sliced at the still-moving body. The mass moved out of the way of the weapon, compressing and changing until another head formed out of the side and moved back to the top of the shoulders.

  “I do not tire. I do not falter. I am eternal,” Aino said in a voice made up of thousands more.

  “I can do all things through Logos, who gives me strength,” Ferra called back.

  “Prove it,” Aino demanded, moving her form around the blade, effectively receiving no damage. The clockwork thing pulled back and turned its unnervingly faceless head to stare at the ice barbarian. “You are the rock; I am the river that moves around it. You cannot stop me.”

  And that was the piece of information Ferra had missed.

  Ferra paused and smiled at Aino. With a thought she dispelled her armor and sword. “That was a mistake.”

  Aino paused. “Are you surrendering?”

  Ferra closed her eyes and focused.

  Reali
zing the barbarian was not going to answer, Aino called out, “Prepare to be repurposed,” and lunged at the woman.

  The sound of dozens of pops and creaks echoed through the fabrication floor as Ferra just stood there. Seconds passed and nothing happened. When the barbarian opened her eyes, she saw the frozen face of Aino, inches from her own. Aino’s entire form was encased in ice.

  “Rivers freeze,” Ferra said conversationally. The sword she formed looked the same as the one she generally wore. However, it was far, far different. She balanced it on a fingertip and then grasped it with both hands. The singing of the corundum-hard ice echoed throughout the room as she brought it down with all her strength.

  She hit between the neck and shoulder, and Aino shattered into a million pieces. Even as they scattered, Ferra could see the gears inside shake and move, as what was left of Aino tried to reform. As each piece broke off, more ice formed around it instantly. When separate gears attempted to join the avatar’s body, they fell to the floor. The ice might have been a living being it moved so fast. It continued to grow around any scrap of metal, no matter how small, preventing them from joining. All of the pieces vibrated in place as they tried to move but were unable to.

  “A word of advice,” Ferra said as she let her sword fade away. “When in combat, fight. Don’t talk.”

  She looked down at where the floor had parted and revealed the tunnel underneath.

  Taking a deep breath, Ferra focused on the area, and it began to frost up. A sheet of ice formed across the surface, showing the almost invisible lines that made up the doors. The ice moved into the seams and then expanded, forcing the doors to buckle in on themselves.

  Within a minute they had cracked completely and fallen down into the darkened tunnel. Ferra waited a long time to hear if they hit the bottom.

  She heard nothing, which meant the car had descended a fair distance.

  Saying a prayer to Logos, she readied herself and then jumped in.

  Nothing was going to stop her from finding Molly.

  WHILE THE groups were readying themselves, Ruber took Adamas aside.

  “You cannot go,” the ruby declared in no uncertain terms.