by Lee Isserow
Light shone out from the wellspring as the coin hit the water, and Rafe was glad for the distraction. He felt Jules's hand wrap around his wrist, and the two of them were engulfed by shadows before the Circle could send their reinforcements down to the cave.
The three of them stepped out of the darkness in an alleyway just off a main road.
“Where are we?” Rafe asked, as he poked his head out to get his bearings. A giant London Underground symbol stood on a plinth at the centre of the road, stone steps on either side that led down beneath the city streets. “Bank,” he said, answering his own question. “Why are we here?”
“This is where they wanted us. Got a call as soon as I spoke the words to the damn coin.”
“What's here?” Ana asked.
“Might be a coincidence,” Jules said, knowing it was unlikely, “but when the Circle first approached me, it was through a door just a block over next to Mansion House.”
“It's a coincidence,” Rafe confirmed. “Circle throws doors all over for new recruits, usually by places of magickal interest or wealth, just to make a point of how important they are. . .” He looked dead ahead out of the alley, at a monolithic stone building that stood right in front of them, at a junction between three steady streams of traffic.
It looked to Ana as though it might have once been white stone, and at the peak of the two towers high above it was still white for the most part. But the columns at the upper level had long lost the alabaster sheen, and the closer they were to the ground floor, the more they were stained brown, as if they had absorbed a hundred plus years of car fumes. The whole building felt like it stood as a testament to what one's lungs might turn into when subjected to high smog levels.
She couldn't take her eyes off the imposing facade. There was something so familiar about it. “Hawksmoor?”
The word came from her lips without her knowledge, but Rafe's nod indicated that she was correct.
“But, it's not another wellspring. . . there are only five of those. . .”
He shook his head. “Not a wellspring, but it is of magickal significance.”
Ana realised she had seen the building before. Not with her own eyes, but with the eyes of a man she had borrowed the memories from.
“The zoo.”
“Zoo?” Jules asked, “bears and lions and giraffes-zoo?”
“Mystical animals, ones that can't be allowed to roam around. . . slimy things, creeping things, marrow suckers and skin melters and the like.”
“Fun,” he sighed, and he looked away as someone started speaking in his periphery.
“Why would they need this to happen at the zoo?” Ana muttered to Rafe.
“Think about it. . . If your plan is to tear a reality apart and use it to create a new one, why stop there at playing god?”
“You mean playing deity?” Ana scoffed.
“Figure of speech. . . You start a new world, you'd want to populate it with animals, right? And mundane animals are dumb in comparison to the magickal ones. . .”
“Okay.” Jules grunted, as the instructions came through. “I said okay, we're heading over now!”
He killed the call and led the way out of the alley, crossed the road and walked around to the front of the church.
“I'm not going near anything icky,” Ana muttered.
“You won't have to,” Jules said, with a deep breath and crack of his knuckles. “I can do this from right here. . .”
He closed his eyes and interlocked his fingers, placed the knuckles between his chin and nose. His eyelids burst open, pupils and whites completely obscured by an ebony sheen, as he took control of every shadow that ran through the train tunnels and sewer lines beneath the streets.
The darkness crawled through the realms below their feet, tore through the entrance to the zoo, and washed over the myriad cages and glass cases that contained all manner of mystical beasts and critters. Each of them found themselves engulfed in darkness. And by the time it was gone, every single one of them was dead, and completely devoid of blood.
“Do you hear something?” Ana asked, her gaze darted around the streets that surrounded them. It wasn't the rush of traffic, that was being held up by lights. It was an organic sound. . . like the rush of water. But, of course, it was not water.
A torrent of thick, dark ooze geysered out of the sewer gratings around the church. It burst out from the ground, rivalling the height of the building it had sprung from, with a melange of colours from red and green to black and blue, and every shade in between.
The shadows swum around each of them and held the blood in place, in three street-side pillars that flanked the church.
Jules unlinked the fingers in front of his face, and placed his palms facing out. He turned on the spot, and as he did so, the blood pillars began to streak along with his movement. His adept created a thin sheen of blood that was sandwiched between shadows, completely encapsulating the three of them and the building. It was a grand cylindrical tower of dark, swirling fluids, cut off from the outside world. He raised his hands up and closed off the cylinder with a dome at the top, which blocked out the sun.
Five coins were thrown against the wall from behind them, each was absorbed into the shadows. They were instantly caught up in the flow of the blood, and whipped around the current surrounding the building. Light streaked through the darkness, it got faster and faster, as if the coins were burning up, fuelled by the blood itself.
They became brighter and brighter with every passing moment as the magick held in the wellsprings was finally unleashed, diverted through this act, ploughed into the ritual that required more blood than any of them had ever seen in all their lives.
“Good work,” said a distorted voice from behind the three of them. It belonged to one of the men who had thrown the coins, he stood proud with a shrouded face, and smiled with a thousand different mouths that shifted and shimmered between one another. The speaker was flanked by two others, also shrouded. All of them seemed far too happy to be in a giant prison of darkness and blood.
But soon, there was no more darkness. There was no more blood. There was only the light.
Chapter 43
No longer anywhere on earth
When the light receded, the six of them were no longer standing in London. As far as they could tell, they were no longer anywhere on earth.
The ground beneath their feet was thick with green and purple wild grass that looked unlike any grass Ana had ever seen before. There was a light breeze on the air that carried the scent of something close to cinnamon, but the grass did not move with the wind. It seemed to snake around of its own volition, brushed up against their legs as if each blade was a curious puppy investigating the visitors to their home.
Trees towered over them, their peaks so high that it looked as though their uppermost branches disappeared into the clouds above. They too appeared to move contrary to be breeze, and arced down with curious lilts as they inspected the newcomers. Although Ana was sure there must be trees of a similar size somewhere in the Natural World, she had never seen any with her own eyes that had such an impressive girth, with trunks that she reckoned were close to five metres wide.
Flowers peeked out from in between the grass and behind the trees, their stalks bent as if they were hiding from the strangers. It all reminded Ana of the section of Alice In Wonderland in which Alice was shrunk down and bullied by the foliage. . . which she knew was an inappropriate thing to be thinking of when the world had very possibly been destroyed to create this new place, full of apparently sentient plant life.
“Move!” grunted the shrouded man, who acted as though he were the leader of the three.
“Where's my family?” Jules shouted. “You said I'd get them back when this is done!”
“Yeah, but this ain't done. . .”
“Where are we?” Ana asked.
The leader of their captors scoffed, and his compatriots did the same. “Don't you know nothing?” he cackled.
“N
o,” Ana huffed. “I don't 'know nothing', I know things. . .' She trailed off as she stumbled over the double negative. “I just don't know where we are. . .”
Jules took a moment to look around, at the abundance of nature, unspoilt by man's desire for expansion and conquest and dominion.
He knew exactly where they were.
A reality, laid over the top of their own.
Created by one of the most powerful magickians in all the lands, to hide something even more powerful than himself. The most powerful magick that had ever existed on earth.
“The ethereal forest. . .” he muttered.
“Give the man a prize!” the leader scoffed. “Now move it!”
“Or what?” Rafe asked, with a sly smile. As much as the men knew what Jules was capable of, they had no idea that Ana was one of the most powerful adepts he had ever met.
As if she knew that was her cue, Ana threw fingers in their direction. A crash reverberated out across the forest, originating where the three men were standing.
But they appeared to be unfazed by the crack in reality―for as much as the crack was heard, it did not physically manifest.
She looked at one hand, then the other, and threw them towards the men again, another massive crash rung out―and still, there was no harm done to them.
“Are you quite done?” the leader scoffed.
Ana was not. She recalled a casting she had seen when Rafe was under attack at one of the church grounds, and put up her fists as if to physically fight, and set her intent as she did so. Her fingers shot out, the tips met to create a horizontal plane, then her hands slid towards one another, fingers of the right going straight up through those of the left, as she tried to take control of the plethora of plants beneath their feet. With a twist of her wrist, she closed her right fist again, shot it through the fingers of the left, and stretched her digits out towards the plants she intended to make grow and restrain the three men.
But her casting had no effect on the plants.
The men practically fell about with laughter.
“Is she trying to manipulate sentient plants?!” one of them gasped, between guffaws.
“Girl don't know nothing 'bout magick,” another chortled.
A rage bubbled inside Ana's gut, and she pursed her lips, clenched her fists, tried with all her might to keep the anger bottled up.
“Don't bother tryin' again, girly,” the leader of the three spat at her. He glanced at Rafe and Jules in turn. “You neither. You don't know this world, you don't know the magick, ain't worth the bother trying to piss us off and failing hilariously, y'hear?”
Despite all three of them burning with a desperate desire to fight, to overpower their captors, to return to their own world, they knew there was no way to do so. Not at that time. Not while they were unfamiliar with how their magicks operated in the new place.
Reluctantly, they each nodded in turn, and the leader signalled for them to move onwards, to trek across the plains of sentient plants and flowers, trying to ignore the soft moans and cries whenever their footfall broke a stem or crushed a blade of grass―which almost ever step appeared to do.
They walked deeper and deeper into the forest, until they came to a clearing. The grass was shorter there, still a bright and vibrant green, short stalks moved with curiosity as the bipedal giants lumbered towards them. At the far end of the clearing was a large cave entrance, at least as high as a double-decker bus, and twice as wide. The cave itself appeared to be at the base of a sheer face of rock that went straight up, high into the sky, and as far as they were able see to the left and right, as if it were a solid wall of stone that marked the edge of the forest.
“In,” the leader grunted.
“What's in there?” Ana asked.
“End of the line. Big ol' monster that needs to be killed.”
“Why don't you just kill it yourself?” Rafe growled.
“Why would we go to the effort, when we've got you just hanging around. . . that's what you do most of your jobs, ain't it?”
“You don't know a damn thing about me.”
The leader scoffed. “Don't I, Rafe? Former Circle operative, ripped apart and glued back together, low on magick but rich in inventive ways of killing. . .”
“I don't kill. . . Not unless they deserve it.”
“Well this thing deserves to die.”
“Why didn't you just hire us then? Why the kidnapping? Holding a damn kid to ransom?”
“No offence mate, but couldn't exactly see you getting this far with just you and Miss Mirrors.”
“Miss Mirrors?” Ana huffed. “Really?”
“Would you prefer 'Shatterina?” Rafe asked, glibly. “Glass Girl? The Crack? Break-It-You-Bought-It Babe?”
“I am going to hurt you in ways you've never even thought were possible. . .”
“What, y'gonna marry him?!” the leader scoffed.
His associates found his statement hilarious, whilst their captives did not. He glared at them for not being more entertained.
“In!” he shouted again, with a gesture towards the mouth of the cave.
“Or what?”
The man to the leader's left allowed a cruel smile to crawl across the many mouths that shifted on his shrouded face, and burst into flames.
The man to his right threw his fingers out, and water coalesced from the moisture in the air, to create a liquid tornado around him.
It was the leader's turn to show off, and he opened his mouth to take a slow, deep breath. For the duration of the time it took his lungs to fill with air, the forest around them became deathly silent. He closed his lips and chuckled, pulled his fingers into his palms by his sides and flexed his fists. A sonic boom exploded outwards towards them, ripped plants from the earth, shook leaves and entire branches from trees, and caused stalactites to fall from the opening of the cave.
The fallout from the demonstration of his adept continued for minutes after he had shown it off, crashes echoed out from deeper in the cave as the sound rocketed through deep into the mountain.
“Any questions?” he chuckled, with a nasty grin on his myriad lips.
Chapter 44
Some unspeakable way
As soon as they stepped into the cave, darkness engulfed them, as if the threshold of the entrance was the doorway to yet another realm.
Jules was able to see in the gloom, and used the endless shadows as his eyes. He led the way and held Ana's hand, she in turn held Rafe's, as they ducked and weaved through an increasingly narrow set of tunnels that burrowed deep into the heart of the mountain.
As they progressed, he attempted to manipulate the shadows around him, and decided to keep it to himself that he was unable to do so. The darkness in this place was not the darkness of the Natural World, The shadows were not the same as those that were a part of him. But despite not being able to fully use his adept in the Ethereal Forest, he was not afraid. In fact, he was serenely calm.
Despite the situation, and despite the warning from Three, there was something in the aura of the place that felt familiar. The same familiarity that he observed with Ana. As if this place was, in some unspeakable way, connected to him.
It was at that point, deep in thought, that Jules glanced up as the tunnel appeared to open up ahead. There was a grand expanse above that seemed to go on for close to a mile. But he was so engrossed with the height, that he did not notice the drop was of a similar depth. Before he knew it, his feet had left the ground, and he was falling into the chasm below.
Chapter 45
Far too easy
Ana clasped Jules's hand as he disappeared ahead of her, Rafe grabbed hers tightly as she skidded along the path. He reached around for something to grab hold of to anchor himself―but there was nothing.
A deluge of thick shadows gushed past Ana and Rafe, and sent dust flying as it became solid, and clawed against the rock. Jules hung there, the shadows from within his gut his only lifeline. He caught his breath, placed his feet against
the wall and walked back up to the path he had fallen from. Ana and Rafe grabbed hold of him and helped him back into the tunnel, as he swallowed the shadows back down.
“How far is it? The hole?” Ana asked.
Jules turned to have a look, used the shadows as his eyes again. “Hundred feet, give or take.”
“Can you use the darkness here to make a bridge?”
“No. . .” he huffed. “Just like with your mirror cracks, I can't control these shadows.”
“But you can control the shadows inside you. Don't suppose you can spit up enough to get us across?”
He shook his head, then realised they probably couldn't see it. “No. Aren't enough shadows in the three of us, let alone me alone. . .”
“This might be dumb question,” Rafe sighed, “but do you have enough shadows to drill through the mountain?”
“Drill?”
“Through the peak. Shed some light so we can see what we've got here?”
Jules shrugged, then vocalised. “I guess, can't hurt to try. . .” The shadows burst out from his lips and whipped out of the tunnel, headed straight up for a mile until they hit rock and became solid, then began to drill straight up into the mountain.
“What about a realm flip?” Ana asked.
“Can't hurt to try. . .” Jules said, but as he attempted to summon a portal into the Shadow Realm, it did not respond to his command. “Maybe you should try. . .”
“Back in a flash.” A crack in reality punctuated Ana's sentence, as she vanished into the Mirror Realm. In a moment another crash signalled her return.
“No luck?”
“I can't see there. . . and couldn't cross.”
Glimmers of light began to appear in the darkness, dust rained down into the chasm as the shadow drill found daylight above.
Rafe watched the dust as it fell, and had a thought. “What if it's Last Crusade?”
“You mean that if you believe you can cross, you can cross?”
