by Adam Witcher
Despite his terror, Isaac had an idea. But could it really be so simple?
He stuck the knife out and held it steady. A point of light formed at the tip, barely visible at first. But despite it being stuck in plain air, he felt it catch on something. Quickly, he dragged the knife downward, feeling it tear through some aspect of reality that he couldn’t see. It left a trail of purple light behind it.
“No!” Scorpius resumed his pursuit.
Heart pounding, breath steady, Isaac made an oval that was roughly as large as the ones he’d seen before. The borders of the portal glowed brightly. Eventually, he brought the knife to where he’d started and completed the oval. Immediately, the portal opened, and he could see what was on the other side.
But what he saw didn’t seem possible.
It was his own home.
The sight was so welcome that he tried not to question it. Instead, he jumped through, hoping that he would never have to return to this horrible place ever again. Scorpius shrieked behind him, but it was too late. Isaac made it through.
4
Isaac hit the wood floor of his house and remained there for several minutes, hoping his perceptions weren’t deceiving him. His living room, his bookcase, his furniture—It was all there. He was really home.
The portal still remained, and he stared through it at the hellscape he’d just escaped. Scorpius stood on the other side, unmoving, glaring. Could he not pass through it? Was that why he’d pulled the elves through the portal instead of coming through it himself?
He needed to close the portal, but he didn’t know how.
He took the knife again, its glow faded from depleted magic, and tried to cut along the outside of the portal again. Nothing happened. He examined the dagger more closely and saw something sticking from the bottom of the hilt. A small hook. He’d subconsciously noticed it before but hadn’t thought much of it, just something to hang it with. But maybe there was more to it.
Carefully, he flipped the blade upside down and stuck the hook into the portal’s border. This time it caught. He pulled downward slowly and felt a faint buzzing like the closing of a zipper. Eventually, he made it all the way around, and the distant lands disappeared. The purple outline faded slowly, and the grimacing monster behind it disappeared.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Now that he was back in his own plane of reality, he never wanted to leave again. First, he rushed to his kitchen and poured three glasses of water down his throat. It tasted like heaven. Then he made himself the biggest ham and cheese sandwich he possibly could and stuffed it down his throat. Finally he returned to his living room.
He stood and took a moment to enjoy the familiarity of his home. It was modest in size, but he made up for it in decor—all of it stolen, of course. Small golden statues of elven deities, leather bound books, exotic textiles from distant lands.
The house was uncharacteristically ostentatious. It looked more beautiful than ever. On the occasions that Aerin came over, she teased him about his bearskin rug and gold-rimmed toilet seat, his hand-knit dwarven bedspread that depicted warriors battling a dragon. They didn’t suit his personality, but he loved them anyway. Isaac wasn’t materialistic by nature, but these were treasures, relics of sweet justice from his early days as a criminal.
Before turning to scamming elves in the street, he’d been an accomplished burglar. He’d had a solid operation: wander the streets looking for elves mistreating their human servants. Those were always worthy targets. Most of the time, he’d try to find the servants later and split the loot, or at least sell it and split the cash. Ultimately, though, burglary had proved too risky. The three nights he’d spent in Avalour Penitentiary convinced him it wasn’t worthwhile.
He went to his bedroom and tried to relax on the dwarven bedspread. He rubbed his eyes, trying to push away the images of tentacles wrapped around him. Now that he was somewhere safe, he again tried to understand what the hell was going on.
His simple life no longer felt simple. Thoughts jumbled together. Head spinning, he sat up. His thoughts were interrupted by voices outside—human voices ripe with anger. People were chanting.
Gods, what now?
He stood and went to his front window. Some kind of protest was going on in the street outside. Humans stood in a massive crowd, cacophonous roars permeating the night. Night? He had no idea how long he’d been on the other side of the portal, but he supposed it must have been the better part of the day. Humans thrusted torches and farming tools in the air, livened by shouts from a man on a stage further down the street.
Intrigued, he went outside to investigate.
Isaac was immediately struck by an atmosphere he’d never sensed in Homoken. The air was thick with unrest and danger. Could the portals have opened here, too? Did anyone he knew get taken? He’d seen some of the tentacles’ victims, but the battlefield was too chaotic to remember specifics. In his memory, they were all elves.
Suddenly, Aerin crossed his mind, and his heart surged with anxiety. Surely she’d been safe at home, but he desperately needed to know for sure.
He had to be careful. If the humans were this riled up, the elves would be on high alert, especially in Whogaarden. He went back into his home and swapped his grey shirt and burlap pants for black equivalents, rounding things out with a hood that covered most of his face.
He approached the crowd slowly and tried to understand what was happening. As soon as he rounded a corner to the main street, he saw it was his neighbor, Darrow, standing on a platform and furiously speaking to the crowd. The butcher’s fat cheeks glowed red in the firelight.
“For too long we have lived under the shadow of the elves!” He screamed. “The Gods have spoken and shifted power away from them. We must now fight for our right to no longer be second class citizens!”
The crowd screamed in agreement.
Isaac froze. Rebellion? That was quick. Throughout his time in Avalour, he’d never heard humans speak like this. Many humans even saw themselves as inferior to the elves. He couldn’t have been gone for more than half a day, how had things changed so quickly?
He kept pushing through the crowd, heading vaguely in the direction of Whogaarden. As he kept moving, he kept listening.
“Their own goddess has spoken against them! Saldana has condemned the elves. The age of their dominance is at an end!”
The crowd called out in agreement. Isaac was tempted to stay and see this through, but first he needed to visit Aerin, and eventually Edwin too. He kept pushing through the crowd until he made it to the other side. He then crossed the canal into the elven districts.
Whogaarden was quieter than he’d ever seen it. Gone was the feeling of decadent safety. A few guards patrolled the streets, but nobody else did, and they called out at him each time they saw him. He ducked into shadows to evade confrontation. The guards didn’t look angry; they looked terrified, as if the sign of one human in their district meant that more were coming to stir up trouble.
Humans appeared to have been here already. The once-immaculate streets were littered with debris. Homes were vandalized, depictions of elven gods and goddesses stripped from their facades. Sections of handrail had been thrown into the canals. It was even more disheveled than Homoken usually was.
After a series of close calls with frightened guards, he finally reached Aerin’s mansion. He watched from a shadowy alley down the street as three different guards patrolled the perimeter. They were thick and burly, each armed with both a crossbow and a great sword. Hector had spared no expense in hiring them.
Hector.
He wondered if the mayor had gotten away from the tentacles. And if he did, had the city discovered his betrayal? Did anyone care?
There was only one way to find out. He took a deep breath and watched the guards. They lazily followed the same path around the building. Wendig manor faced the canal directly, two stories tall with a premier view of the city’s typically most beautiful district. The upper story had a balcony that wrappe
d all the way around it. One of the guards was posted there. The other two were at ground level, where Aerin’s room was found on the side nearest him. They walked side-by-side, ignoring efficiency in favor of companionship.
Isaac, situated in an alley and facing the buildings right side, waited until they walked in the opposite direction, then took off running to a closer alley. He barely managed to squeeze in before the top-floor guard turned the corner and looked out at the street where he’d been.
Isaac peaked around once again. The two bottom-floor guards were waiting right out front.
He needed a distraction. A few discarded glass ale bottles lay near his feet. On a normal day, he wouldn’t dream of finding garbage in Whogaarden, but today was anything but normal. He picked them both up, stuck an arm around the corner, then threw one bottle as hard as he could toward Wendig Manor’s front left side. It smashed, and all three guards jolted. They stared at the spot where the sound came from.
“Who’s there?” One of them called out.
Isaac took the other bottle and prepared his next throw. If he could get his arc right, he could lob it over the top and into the alleyway on the opposite side of the manor.
He took a deep breath and launched it.
There was a satisfying shatter as it landed where it was supposed to. The two guards on the bottom floor ran to the opposite alley.
Isaac seized his opportunity and dashed into the nearer alley. When he reached Aerin’s window, he tapped on it four times—his identifying signal. He heard hesitant movement inside as Aerin’s silhouette moved toward the curtains.
Come on, come on.
She peeked through the curtains, and a face of desperate fear became one of relief. She threw open the window.
“Isaac,” she said, much too loud. “That’d better really be you.” Her eyes were reddened like she’d been crying.
“In the flesh,” he said, trying not to betray his nervousness. “Can I come in?”
She moved out of the way and Isaac dove inside, feeling the relief of her carpet beneath him.
She threw her arms around him, and he returned the gesture.
“Where the hell have you been? I thought you were dead! Dead or gone forever into one of those…” She didn’t know what to call the portals.
“Take a deep breath,” he said. “Because I don’t know if you’re going to believe this.”
He told her everything he could remember, from the old woman to his escape through the portal.
“You’re kidding, right? My father, evil?” She played it like a joke, but it wasn’t convincing.
He nodded. It didn’t seem like the most noteworthy part of the story, but it was her father, after all. She seemed to think this over.
“I knew he was a jerk, but my gods, he tried to sacrifice you?”
“To be fair, if he’d caught me in bed with you, he’d probably do that anyway.”
She ignored his joke.
“I’ve… I’ve found some things throughout the years that I haven’t been able to explain,” she said, her voice shaking, eyes darting between him and the floor. “Strange books, remains of what seemed like rituals. I never thought much of it. When you grow up around stuff like that, I guess it doesn’t seem all that weird. And nobody ever talks about dark magic around here. He must have been practicing this stuff all along. But he’s the mayor. How could he get away with it?”
“No idea,” Isaac said. “But he’s not alone, apparently. Maybe the entire government is in on it. Or was in on it. Now I imagine they’re in the stomachs of weird, interdimensional tentacle monsters.”
“Did you see them there? Him there? On the other side of that portal? Do you know for certain they went through it?”
He considered that.
“I saw a lot of elves, but you’ll have to forgive me for not checking their name tags.”
She put her chin on her hand and thought.
“Well, he either got pulled through the portal or he fled the city. He hasn’t been home in four days,” she said. “I thought he was dead. My mother is already in mourning. She hasn’t left her room since.”
“Four days?” Isaac’s heart froze in his chest.
She stared at him, confused.
“Yeah, four days. Wait, when is the last time you think you saw me?”
“I slept in your room last night,” he said. “I saw you this morning.”
“Isaac, that was over four days ago.”
He reviewed his memories again. The hike up the mountain felt like it had taken three, maybe four hours. Then maybe another three waiting for lightning to strike. But almost a week?
“Time must…” He started gathering his thoughts. “It must work differently there. Gods, can you imagine if I’d stayed longer?”
She embraced him again.
“I’m just glad you’re here now.” She sniffed and smiled. “I really thought you were gone forever. I was ashamed that I was more afraid of that than my father dying. But now I don’t feel so bad.”
“So what’s happened? The humans back home looked ready for a fight.”
“They’re trying to take the city,” she said. “In many ways, they already have.”
“Uh, how is that possible?”
“The city officials are gone. Disappeared. My father, his aides, nearly the entire government was in Cormea when those things opened. The elves started to put in temporary replacements, but the humans didn’t want it. No humans were taken by the portals, so they saw it as a chance to rise up. Avalour is a war zone, Isaac.”
He paused to take that in for a moment.
“So you elves are finally getting your comeuppance, eh?” He grinned. “About time, I say!”
She forced a laugh.
“Who could ever have seen this coming? Personally, I think it’s kind of awesome. I may be an elf, but I can appreciate some proper system dismantling.”
“I’m glad you’re alright,” Isaac said. “Even if you are an elf.”
“You too, filthy human degenerate.”
They kissed, and Isaac felt a warmth he never knew he’d feel again. When they pulled away, he took a moment to look her over: her soft blue eyes, her smooth, pale skin, her ebony curls. She was clad in silk black pajamas, low cut enough to see the curves of her breasts. After all he’d been through, she looked more gorgeous than ever.
Animal instincts took over. He was overwhelmed with the desire of a man who’d been to hell and back and lived to tell the tale, of a man who knew how precious life could be.
He kissed her again, hard, and she met his passion. He took her to the bed, already feeling himself get hard, and laid her gently across the soft bed sheets.
Her hands roamed him, went beneath the folds of his black clothes and against his waiting skin. They were soft and delicate as they removed his shirt, then his pants.
As she caressed him, he tenderly removed her clothing and explored her pale skin. He ran his fingertips along her chest, stopping to feel her breasts, soft like a cloud sent from heaven.
This drove her wild, and she moaned as he lowered his face to lick and suck her nipple, moving from one to another. She reached and pulled his pants loose, then wrapped her small fingers around his now full hardness, and he moaned. He moved his mouth to the lobes of her pointed ears and nibbled them softly.
Aerin flipped him over and mounted him, her kisses never stopping. She began at his lips, then moved downward across his chest muscles, then his abs, then the head of his cock. She licked his shaft, grinning as she made eye contact. He squirmed with pleasure. She took him fully then, his entire length wrapped in the warm wetness of her mouth.
He leaned his head back and let her work, let all the stresses and horrors of the past day melt away with pleasure. It didn’t take long before he was on verge of climax, so he took her by the chin and brought her lips back to his.
He teased her with the head of his cock, made her soak him from the anticipation. When he finally slid in, her eyes rolled
back in pleasure. She rode him feverishly, her juices dripping down his shaft with each thrust. He ran his hands along her supple body, enjoying every inch of her while she lost herself in ecstasy.
When she started to tire out, he flipped her over and buried his face in her sex. Only a tuft of hair remained on her manicured pussy. He licked and teased until she was writhing and unable to contain herself. Soon she came so hard she had to cover her mouth with a pillow to keep the servants from hearing.
When she was done, he took her from above, putting her legs on either shoulder while he thrust. She moaned louder and louder as he worked, another climax building. He let her legs rest on his shoulders, then reached under her waist to feel her perfectly round ass.
Soon he felt his own climax building again, and he couldn’t delay it any longer.
They came together, their two bodies feeling as if they were fused together from the pleasure.
Afterward, they lay side-by-side, panting with relief at all the dissolved tension.
“When I was up on that mountain,” he said, “I was afraid we may never get to do this again.”
She giggled and swung a pillow at him playfully.
“Really? You were on a mountain in some crazy dimension, surrounded by monsters, and all you could think about was fucking me?”
He shrugged and smiled.
“What can I say? When you think you’re going to die, you start to think about the important things in life.”
They spoke sweet nothings for some time, not wanting to let the gravity of the situation ruin a perfectly good night, but soon the late hour and the sex wore them out and they fell asleep tangled up in one another.
5
When Isaac woke from a dreamless sleep, Aerin was already awake and sitting in a chair across the room. The Occultus Arcaneum was open and spread across her lap. She thumbed through the pages idly, stopping occasionally to examine something closely.
