by K A Faul
Linh’s mouth formed a large “O.” “You think I was following along armed to the teeth the whole time? Nope. I lost your pack, and then when I spotted the group coming back without you, I surprised them and demanded Captain Tightbutt tell me where you were.”
Mina shook her head. “Thomas told a wereraven where to find a werewolf on her Rite of Passage? Someone check the temperature in hell. Between that and him heaping praise on me, I just don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Thomas told me about what happened and swore the other wolves to secrecy about the intruding wereraven. They all were worried about you, so they agreed. Anna begged me to make sure you’d be okay. So I flew back to one of my weapon caches near the edge of the forest and then flew back because I was kind of worried about well…” Linh gestured to the dead Hunter. “This sort of thing, I guess. Plus, I felt bad because these jerks managed to sneak up on you. I should have spotted them.”
“It’s a big forest. They must have been watching us from far away until they decided to go after us. Wait. What did you say? Weapon caches? What are you? Some sort of raven assassin? You just have piles of guns hidden all around the state or something?”
Linh shrugged. “You never know when you’ll need some gear.” She winked. “But no, I don’t. I didn’t trust you wouldn’t get into some trouble on your Rite. I stored a few extra toys somewhere I could get to them quickly. It’s hard to fly with the big gun, but, you know, it was an emergency.” She shrugged. “Mostly, I didn’t want to go through all the trouble of making a new best friend. I’ve put in a lot of time getting you to where I need.”
“Priorities.”
“Exactly!”
Mina pulled her friend into a tight hug. “Thanks for saving my ass.”
“Always.”
“So, you think everyone will keep their mouth shut?”
Linh shrugged. “You know all of them better than I do, but they did seem pretty worried about you, and even Thomas was all polite and stuff. Even called me Linh instead of Nguyen.”
“Okay, I guess I better get into the cave. I don’t think you’ll be able to come with me. The next part involves a trip to Esper, which requires some special magic.”
“Well, I’ll tag along for at least a little bit. Consider it the price of saving your life.”
Chapter 27
Mina and Linh stepped inside the cave. Inky darkness swallowed the light farther in, but just as Thomas had mentioned, wooden torches lay in a pile a few feet away from the entrance to the door, along with a pile of metal plates and flat rocks, which she realized were flint upon closer inspection.
“They really need to grab a preservation amulet that lets you keep something other than clothes,” Mina mumbled as she picked up her torch and handed it to Linh.
“You’re wishing you could have brought along a lighter?”
“Yeah. Hold that while I get this started. I kind of wondered why Thomas had us practice this crap during training.”
Linh eyed the torch. “Did you ask him? It doesn’t seem like you to take an order without questioning it sixty different ways.”
“Of course I asked him. He just gave me a speech about being prepared. I feel kind of bad about snarking at him so much. After what happened, I guess he was righter than I was about how dangerous a Rite can be.”
“Not like he predicted Hunters.”
Mina shook her head. “Nope, but who the hell could have?” She frowned. “I guess if we have the True Breed, it shouldn’t be shocking that other people have their rogues.”
Linh nodded. “One of the reasons I like Golden Oaks. Things are simpler there. Werewolves tend to be straightforward.”
“Annoyingly straightforward, but yeah, straightforward. Now let’s get some fire going.”
About a minute and several flint strikes later, Linh held a burning torch, and Mina grinned from ear to ear. The werewolf grabbed a new torch and lit it on her friend’s torch.
Mina smiled at her torch. “You wouldn’t believe how long that took me when Thomas was training us.”
The pair moved deeper into the narrow cave. Their footsteps echoed, mingling with the sounds of dripping water.
Linh chuckled. “I’ve always been kind of annoyed with the whole on-the-job training method my flock uses, but I’m beginning to think it’s genius compared to the whole ‘wander the woods on two worlds and let some crazy Hunter get you’ method of your clan.”
“Not to mention the manticores.”
“You fought a manticore? What the hell? Nobody mentioned that. You think they would have led with that.”
“Nope. I haven’t. Not yet at least.” Mina waved her free hand. “Thomas did on his Rite, though. He brought it up as something unexpected that could happen.”
Linh grimaced. “You sure you want to go to Esper by yourself? I mean without the pack, if you run into something like a manticore, you’re screwed.”
“If I see one, I’ll just run away. Look, Esper might be weird, but people and normal non-killing machine creatures live on it, so it can’t be nothing but death every few feet.”
“There are places on Earth that are almost death every few feet.”
“Yeah, but… I can hope.”
Linh sighed. “Guess I’m worried. This whole thing has already gotten so out of control. I almost feel like you’re tempting fate or something.”
“Another way to look at it is that I’ve already gotten all my bad luck out of the way.”
“You actually believe that?”
Mina shrugged. “I hope. I kind of feel like… I have to do this at this point.”
“What do you mean? Is this just about proving yourself to jerks like Garett?”
“No, nothing like that. Three of the pack got seriously injured. I want to finish this both for me and them. They believe in me. It’s weird to have so many people who believe in me who aren’t my family or you. Hell, even Thomas has my back now.” Mina shrugged. “I feel like if I run, I’m letting everyone down.”
Linh sighed. “Promise me you won’t try to take on any weird Esper monsters by yourself.”
“Sure. That should be easy enough.” Mina narrowed her eyes. The farther they walked, the more the flickering shadows on the cave walls receded. “Am I crazy or is it actually getting lighter in here?”
“Nope, it’s definitely getting lighter. Think someone’s ahead?”
“I hope not.”
“I’d turn into a raven to surprise them, but I’ve got a torch.”
Mina shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. The guy you took out only talked about one other guy. I think we’ve cleared out the Hunters from this forest.”
“So it’s not a Hunter, just a fire-breathing dragon?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s been that kind of day.”
The cave began to widen. A few more minutes of travel brought them into an illuminated cavern. No dragon confronted Mina and Linh, but they now understood the source of the light.
Mina narrowed her eyes as she took in the portal in the center of the room. Stone stairs led up to what appeared to be a jagged hole in reality, or at least, that was the only way she could think to describe it. A soft white outline surrounded the portal, and glowing stairs started on the other side, leading up into a dark emptiness.
She took several steps to examine the portal from different angles. From what she could see, it was flat and disappeared when viewed from the back.
“Woah,” Linh said. “That’s not something I’ve seen before.”
“Yeah. Here’s a way to Esper without the help of an angel.”
“And you guys don’t use it for anything more than the Rite of Passage?”
Mina shrugged. “What are we supposed to do with it, invade Esper? Bet Garett would love that plan.”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” Linhlaughed.
A metal torch rack stood near the entrance of the cavern. Mina and Linh set their torches there.
Linh jogg
ed toward the portal and up the stone stairs. “Esper, huh?”
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” Mina said. “You have to—”
The wereraven reached out with her hand, and Mina yanked her hand down. Linh glared at her.
“Without the proper magic, the portal will shred you,” Mina said.
“Oh. Good to know.”
Mina pulled her into a hug. “Don’t try and touch strange magic portals, idiot.”
“Oof. I’ll take that into consideration next time.” Linh looked back toward the portal. “You’re planning to go through that? The shredding hole?”
“I’ve taken something that allows me to go through,” Mina said. “This weird magic mushroom in the forest.”
“So, you’re high right now? You wolves party even harder than I thought.”
“Well, it’s a magical mushroom not just a magic mushroom.” Mina frowned. “A magical magic mushroom?”
Linh furrowed her brow. “Okay, I’m following you. Mostly. Sort of?”
“Look, yeah, it made me see some things, but it does something else. Lets us travel through the portal. I don’t know if it only works on wolves. Anyway, I have to take another one on the other side to get back.” Mina shrugged. “What were you doing, trying to touch some weird portal anyway that you didn’t know anything about?”
“I’ve never been to Esper. I didn’t want to take a vacation or anything, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look around. My Messenger training doesn’t involve Esper.” Something unusual appeared in Linh’s eyes, envy. “Only Far Callers go to Esper.”
“To be honest, I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m sure you’ll get to go someday.” Mina walked back to grab her torch.
Linh stood. “Why do you need that?” She nodded toward the portal. “Looks like you have some light in there already.”
“There’s some sort of weird-ass monster in there that sucks your life and can be fought off with light.”
“Okay, forget all that bitching about on the job training. I’m definitely appreciating Darius’s training methods now.”
“It’s no biggie. I go through, grab what I need on the other side, and come back. From what I was told, my elders will be waiting for me when I get out, and it’s a more straightforward trip out of the forest than to the cave where we got the mushrooms and this cave.”
Linh gave her a one-armed hug, leaning to avoid the torch. “Good luck. I wish I could go with you. Not just to sightsee but because I worry about you.”
“I wish you could come, too, but you already saved my ass once. Take pride in that.”
“Don’t I know it.” Linh shook a finger. “Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid. Just grab your next batch of magical shrooms and return.”
“When do I ever do something stupid?”
Linh grinned. “Not that often, just every day that ends in a ‘y.’”
Mina winked. “It keeps things interesting.” She took a deep breath and then walked to the stone steps. “I hate to say this, but you should get the hell out of here the minute I’m through the portal. If my dad and his buddies catch you here, there will be a lot of trouble.”
Her friend offered a salute. “I’m out of here as soon as you’re out of there.”
Mina walked up the first few stone steps and stared into the illuminated stairway of light leading into the abyss. “Yeah. This isn’t weird at all.”
Chapter 28
Mina closed her eyes and took a deep breath before stepping through. She felt… nothing.
She’d expected something: pain, coldness, a burning sensation, anything, but nothing touched her skin, and no sound reached her ears.
Mina’s heart kicked up as she didn’t even feel like she was standing on anything, but when she looked down, a translucent glowing step stood beneath her feet.
Dense patches of points of light dotted the firmament above. Stars maybe, or maybe not, but Mina found it easier to think of them that way.
Mina gripped her torch tightly as she looked up the seemingly endless staircase that stretched into the void. Farther up, the light of the stairs dipped as shadows slithered or floated over them.
“Okay,” she said. “Those must be shades.”
Mina swallowed and started up the staircase. Each movement disoriented her. Even though she could feel her legs rising and falling, she felt no pushback from the stairs. She just didn’t fall.
“Huh. The light of the stairs doesn’t seem to bother the shades.”
The shades swarmed ahead of her, a few zipping her way but jerking away as they closed on her.
“Don’t like my fire, assholes?”
Mina glanced over her shoulder. Shades swarmed behind her. Now that they were closer, they resembled shadows less and looked more like opaque darkness swallowing light. The writhing, contorting shapes didn’t outline humanoid or animal shapes or anything she could identify.
More and more of the shadows flitted around her now. The light from the stars dimmed.
“Okay, time to hurry the hell up.”
Mina hustled up the stairs, only not breaking into a sprint because she was afraid of falling off the side into the endless abyss below. Even a quick glance down roiled her stomach.
The dark swarm grew around Mina, but the stairs continued up into infinity, with nothing to indicate she was getting any closer to Esper.
“Come on. Where’s the damned exit?”
The twitching mass of swirling darkness blocked almost all the stars now and even more of the stairs in front of her. Her torch only kept them a few yards away from her. Her heart thundered at what might happen if it went out.
Mina swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.
“Plenty of wolves have done this in my clan. It’s not a big deal. I’ve never heard about someone getting swallowed on the way to Esper.”
Mina moved from jogging to bounding up the stairs, keeping her eyes focused on the stairs to compensate for the lack of resistance. The shades had now formed an almost solid sphere of darkness around her.
Then it vanished, and Mina almost slammed right into a cave wall.
“What the hell?”
Mina shook her head and slowly looked around her. Instead of the growing mass of hungry shades, she only spotted moss and dripping water. For a moment, she wondered if she’d returned to Earth, but when she looked back at the portal, she didn’t see the stone stairs, and the jagged stalactites and stalagmites of the cave were larger. Glowing vermillion moss covered the walls.
“Yeah, this is Esper. Already weird. Whatever.”
The cavern itself was vast compared to the one in Washington, stretching so high that the torchlight didn’t reveal the darkness. A smaller pile of torches, flint, and steel lay on the ground, and Mina wondered if they’d been restocked recently, or if nothing on the Esper side came and messed with the cave.
The Initiate took a deep breath and doused the torch against the ground. The soft, eerie glow of the moss was more than enough to highlight the cave walls, and she spotted normal light at the end of a narrow tunnel leading away from the portal chamber.
Mina made her way down the tunnel, the red moss growing less dense the closer she moved toward the cave entrance. Unlike with the Earth cave, it only took a few minutes of walking to get to the entrance.
Light assaulted her eyes as Mina emerged from the cave. She blinked a few times, and when her eyes finally adjusted, she was struck by the eerie combination of difference and banality the forest around her presented.
The trees were different, not being familiar species of Douglas fir, spruce, or pine, but not exactly glowing trees with faces or anything. She didn’t spot a single floating castle in the sky.
A few birds sat on a nearby tree limb, watching her. Their bright scarlet and cyan plumage stood out in the green-brown background of the forest, but they didn’t look alien, just slightly out of place.
Mina took a deep breath and tried to reach out with her mind. Nothing. Sh
e blinked and tried again. She didn’t have any more success than on her first attempt.
Esper animals, it seemed, were beyond her ability.
“That’s just great,” Mina muttered. “Just when I’d gotten used to relying on the power, too.” She shook her fist at the birds, and they flapped away. “You better run. Mina Golden Claw is here, Esper!”
After a few minutes of taking in her surroundings, Mina felt comfortable she knew where she needed to go. Thomas had been detailed in his description of the terrain and possible landmarks. She started walking. This wasn’t a tourist trip; this was a Rite of Passage.
Ten minutes of walking brought Mina her first sight of something more exotic than glowing moss: a few four-winged birds fluttering through the air.
“That’s cool.”
They proved resistant to any attempts by Mina to communicate with them. She found that less cool.
It didn’t matter. No manticores or dragons ambushed her. No spellslingers showed up to demand she give them a tooth in payment. It was just a forest, and if there was one thing Mina understood, it was forests.
“Time to shift and pick up the pace.”
Mina stifled a yawn, still in wolf form. Her first day and night in Esper passed without anything significant happening. The occasional strange noise or animal passed, and once she heard several large thumps she could only assume belonged to something giant and angry, but she made herself scarce and never had to face the true source of the noise.
She curled up beside a fallen log, missing the banter of the pack and hoping they’d already run into someone who could help them.
Maybe it was a mistake coming here by myself, but it’s kind of relaxing.
Mina lifted her head and inhaled deeply. Familiar, yet off. That’s how everything in the Esper forest seemed to her. Still, one thing was different, the sheer amount of life.
Plenty of animals lived in the forests surrounding Golden Oaks, but they were still lands touched by the hand of man, rather than the more primal forest around her, filled with wild game and trees that probably hadn’t been even looked at by a woodsman.
