Heretic mage, p.2
Heretic Mage, page 2
part #3 of Paranoid Mage Series
“It’s supposed to be empty,” Gayle said. “But it’s not safe either. Nobody really bothers with it.”
“Sorry, big man. I don’t remember anything interesting about it.”
“I guess I’ll have to find out myself, then.”
“Don’t!” Gayle pleaded. “If something happens to you we’ll be stuck in a cave!”
“That’s a fair point,” he conceded. “I’ll do something about that before taking any risks.” Risk was the main reason he hadn’t checked up on Portal World Six any earlier, despite building his bunker relatively close to it. Portal Worlds were dangerous, he’d already seen that, and he hadn’t seen any point to indulging what was ultimately just curiosity to find out.
Portaling Gayle out of the cave to the surface was probably a reasonable way to handle things, if he did it just before he and Lucy went into the portal world. At this point it seemed obvious she didn’t have a homebond, since they probably hadn’t expected him to be able to abduct her.
Not that he’d expected it, either.
Another minute or so brought him near the actual portal, to judge both from the underground mana currents and the magical constructs that popped up on the edges of his perception. He stopped there and used his portal anchor to scout further ahead. It’d already proven that it was hard to detect, and the worst that could happen was that it would be destroyed. Which was bad, but not as bad as an actual injury.
The odd thing was that the spell forms didn’t seem to be wards. They didn’t look like what he’d seen set up around various GAR places, anyway, especially since they seemed to be along the interior of an underground cave system. A partly flooded one, at that.
Though calling it a system might have been overselling things somewhat. It seemed a somewhat large cenote that had been walled over in the past – he was pretty sure he could make out the signs of earth-magic worked stone – that linked up with an underground stream. In all, he could probably call the cenote cave a temple, as every inch of the wall was carved. Or had been carved, at some point; the wet stone had done a pretty good job of eroding away anything recognizable other than a few human-shaped silhouettes.
Despite that, there was no recent sign of human presence aside from the enchantments themselves. There weren’t any personnel, no small outpost with teleporters. He hesitated to call it abandoned, because everything seemed too neat and tidy for that, and he knew that enchantments didn’t last forever, but it seemed empty at the moment. Whatever caretakers there were seemed to be gone at the moment.
Perhaps responding to an emergency elsewhere. Like a lava-filled outpost in the Deep Wilds, perhaps. Though the lack of guards was itself unnerving, like the portal world could take care of itself. Or those within it could, like with the dragonlands. He’d have to be on guard and ready to leave at the slightest twitch.
The portal was in the center of the cenote, but it looked completely different to his senses than any of the portals he’d seen before. If the other portals were generally holes held open by a magic framework, this one was ripped open and pinned in place. Quite literally. A mana-dense shard of some material had plunged out of one side of the portal and lanced into the ground, burying itself several feet into the rock.
Calling it something really undersold the menace the material gave off even through his spatial perception. It wasn’t like it was malevolent as such, but it had several planes and angles terminating in edges so sharp that he swore they cut the mana flow itself. Not to mention that the fundamental nature of space, that thing he could only feel in the vaguest terms, seemed distorted in close proximity to it. Maybe it had cut through into the world, rather than being a proper portal.
As a consequence, it leaned drunkenly at an angle to the floor, rather than being oriented properly up and down like the other portals he’d seen. The other side of the portal was traversable, but the weirdness of the space seemed to persist inside, so he wasn’t really looking forward to going in himself. It was obvious that despite what he had thought, this really wasn’t the same as the other portal worlds.
While he was studying it, he realized what the magical constructs around the cave were for, since they weren’t wards. Somehow, the mana outflow from the portal was being contained and redirected downward into the ground. Or rather, into the water. He was baffled as to why, but it at least explained the relatively lower mana levels aboveground.
Mana confinement and redirection enchantments were actually something he could use, but that would have to be some other day. He had an emergency to deal with and couldn’t spare too much time gawking. Callum pushed a vis thread through the portal, into the empty area he could sense on the other side, and teleported the focus through.
Immediately he ran into issues. The portal bobbled as usual, but his attempts to re-stabilize it were only partly successful. The recirculation network and the mana intakes kept collapsing, and while the primary portal structure did work it was highly strained, on the verge of destabilizing itself. For a few moments he ignored the surroundings as he wrestled with the portal anchor, ready to teleport it back if he couldn’t get it to function right.
When he did set up a teleport framework around the anchor, he realized the problem in a sudden flash of insight. The space was different there, and while his manually created constructs conformed almost without any input from him, the ones created by the enchantments were static. They couldn’t adapt to the differences, so they just failed. It was a weakness in the portal anchor setup he hadn’t anticipated, but then, he hadn’t really known how different the portal worlds could really be. Under the circumstances, and considering that his spatial perception really didn’t tell him much, Callum opened a portal to see what the portal world actually looked like for himself.
He blinked at obsidian and ash.
Rather than eternal day or eternal night, portal world six was dark, yet everything was still clearly visible. Not that there was much to see. Jagged spires of mana-rich obsidian thrust into the air in every direction, smooth and glassy except where they came to wickedly sharp points or edges. Flakes of what looked like ash drifted down from a featureless sky, landing on the flat obsidian of the ground and the tilted spires, yet failing to accumulate there.
The longer he looked, the more it hurt his eyes trying to figure out exactly what he was seeing. It was like time wasn’t passing, or a single moment was repeating. The sight was so weird that he almost lost control of the portal anchor while he was distracted. Apparently his interpretation of the GAR information about Portal World Six had been off-base.
Given how strange it was, he wasn’t going to go in there himself without testing things. He cast about and found some sort of rodent nearby, and promptly teleported it into the portal world. It froze, looking around in short jerks of its head, but it didn’t keel over or get attacked. That cleared up most of Callum’s worries, even if Six was a very strange place.
“Okay Gayle,” he said, after teleporting the rodent back to the surface and reclaiming the portal anchor. He was having issues keeping it open inside Six, so he couldn’t use it too easily at the moment. The question was whether the same would be true for his gut-portal, or whether his body’s vis would prevent the issue. “I’ll open a portal for you but I advise you not to wander too far.”
“What? Why not?” Gayle sounded a little affronted. It was better than the quaver of fear from before, something that had made Callum feel exceedingly guilty, but he had to wonder if she really understood what was going on. Though to be fair, he was pretty sure she was quite sheltered.
“Well, it’s the middle of nowhere. I’m sure you’d rather not have to try and hike to civilization yourself.”
“Oh.”
“Lucy, you’re with me.”
“Sure we all can’t stay together, big man?”
“I don’t think Gayle wants to go where we’re going,” Callum said, and opened a portal between the cave they were in and the wilderness just above said cave. It was a bleak December day, so it wasn’t exactly enjoyable, but it wasn’t like it was dangerous either. Gayle practically fled out of the opening though, and he wondered if maybe she was slightly claustrophobic.
Lucy, weirdly, tried to follow, but Callum reached out and teleported her over next to him. She stumbled and gagged from the disorientation of the trip, and he winced at how rude it was to do that without saying anything. He’d only been targeting himself and people he couldn’t or didn’t want to warn, and he made a note to himself to try and retrain his impulses.
“Jeez, warn a girl before you do something like that,” she admonished, once she got ahold of her stomach. She didn’t seem to be as badly affected as the Connors had been, though whether that was due to his improved control or her more robust vis he didn’t know.
“Sorry, Lucy,” he said, though there hadn’t been much choice. “I’ll need you to follow me.”
“Into Portal World Six? You think that’s a good idea?” She asked doubtfully.
“It may not be, but I think it’s necessary.” He threaded his vis back into the portal world and opened a passageway for himself and Lucy. “Please?” He added, offering her his hand. She stared at him a moment, as if weighing the idea, before taking his hand gingerly and letting him pull her through the portal.
Inside the portal world it was considerably stranger than he’d anticipated even after his preview. It smelled of cold ash and hot obsidian, although he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to say he knew those smells before he stepped through into Six. Nevertheless, he had a deep impression that was what he was smelling, though the air itself was neither hot nor cold.
The sky was not really a sky, but more obsidian spires, jutting into view from various angles, their origin hidden by the haze of ash that drifted downward. He’d put them in a clear area not far from the portal, but in every direction razor-edged obsidian sprouted from the ground, almost seeming to move from the corner of his eye. It was completely and fully creepy, with no sound but the faintest noise of water coming through the portal, but his perceptions didn’t catch anything alarming so he kept a firm grip on his nerves.
“I tell you what, big man, this is the weirdest place anyone’s taken me for a date,” Lucy said, glancing around with wide eyes. The sound of her voice was weirdly insulated, not exactly muffled but more as if it didn’t travel past a few feet.
“Well, I thought our first one ought to be more dramatic than dinner and a movie,” he said, though he wasn’t really feeling the banter. Instead he kept a close eye on the tangle of fae magic superimposed on Lucy’s body. If he was right, then being denied access to any of the mana that came from Faerie would choke it off, and the native mana of Six might even actively corrode it.
If he was wrong, he’d have to deal with Ferrochar to get it removed. That wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he refused to worry over it while he was in the middle of his first idea. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.
“Well, you sure know how to pick ‘em,” Lucy said, staring around at the falling ash and the brightly-lit darkness. “Why did you feel the need to come here, anyway?”
“To hide out from anyone that might be looking for us,” Callum said, which was only half a lie. “Pretty sure that nobody can track us into here.”
Considering what the surrounding space did to his portal enchantment, he suspected any other enchantments that he might be missing would be similarly impaired. His gut-portal, thankfully, did seem to be stable, though Callum suspected that was because of the vis insulation. Something that Lucy didn’t really have.
That meant he still had a connection back to where Gayle was standing out in the scrub, frowning and shivering when he opened a small portal to check on her. With her bubble, all he could tell was that she was there. Callum wasn’t heartless, so he grabbed a camp chair and some blankets, dropping them next to Gayle.
“Thank you,” Gayle said, and Lucy snorted, poking him in the side.
“Come on, big man, you shouldn’t be checking on other girls when you’re on a date.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a smile. Even if she was under some sort of weird enchantment, she was still Lucy. “Speaking of, let me get some stuff to make this more comfortable.” Even at the time he’d thought that stacking up a bunch of chairs and tables in the cave-cache was overkill, but now he was glad of it. He pulled a few chairs over, along with some bottled water.
“It’s not exactly a fancy restaurant, but it’ll do,” he said.
“Man, I don’t know that I’m ever going to get used to that,” Lucy said, reaching out to touch the suddenly-appearing chair before taking a seat. “Thanks.”
“I’d be a poor host if I didn’t provide this much,” he said, keeping a close metaphorical eye on the swirly fae magic around her. It might be fainter, but it might also be his imagination. It hadn’t been more than a minute.
“Honestly, big man, I’m just glad you got me out of there. That’s a pretty deep hole to find yourself in, you know?”
“I do know,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was going to leave you to their tender mercies.”
“I kinda figured, but until you showed up I was still worried. How’d you manage to get inside there anyway, big man? It’s not like just anyone can walk in.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “Did Chester help you?”
“I’ll fill you in later,” Callum said, hating to keep deflecting her but he wasn’t going to answer questions like that until he was sure she was clear of influences. Not to mention the portal to Gayle was still open. “Right now it’s best to just relax and hang out, weird as this place is.”
“Yeah, I don’t know how much relaxing I can get done here,” Lucy said, reaching for one of the bottles of water he’d put on the table. “It’s too quiet. And just weird.”
“It is at that,” Callum agreed. “Chock full of enchanting materials though, maybe. I might go ahead and grab some while we’re waiting.”
“Don’t let me stop you, big man,” Lucy said. “I’m happy just hanging out. At least for now. Gotta say, the bits of portal worlds I’ve seen before were way tamer than this place.”
“Portal World Six is probably off-limits for a reason,” Gayle put in stiffly, after trying and failing to ignore the conversation. She couldn’t get right up to the portal without her bubble interfering, but she was about as close as she could manage. “I don’t think you should be there at all! Let alone take anything.”
“Probably not,” Callum agreed. “But my options are limited.” Life would be a lot easier if he was just willing to steal whatever he wanted. There were plenty of soft targets, magical and mundane. But if he’d been willing to take the easy route he’d never have run from GAR to begin with.
Which meant he could hardly pass up an opportunity to secure a good amount. The sheer amount of mana-infused glass around was staggering. It probably wasn’t as good as a bane material, but for low-grade enchantments there was more than enough.
He wasn’t the first one to have the idea. Less than fifty yards away, though not visible through the jutting spires, was an area where there had clearly been harvesting going on. A relatively large spike had been toppled and parts of it had been carved out, though not all the loose material had been taken. There were chips and shavings and jagged chunks just lying around, which he swept up and deposited in his cave-cache.
Callum was considering taking the entire spike when the whispers started.
Chapter 2 – Mictlān
There was nobody around. Callum had a certain amount of trust in his perceptions, considering that he’d been able to spot basically everything within his sphere. Even fae and dragonblooded magic, while incomprehensible, was extremely obvious. So when a faint, indecipherable whispering started echoing all around them with no discernable source, he was fairly well spooked.
He shot to his feet, followed by Lucy, and wrapped his threads around them both as he prepared to teleport away. The only thing that stopped him from doing so immediately was that when he enclosed Lucy in his teleportation frame, he was absolutely certain the fae magic had begun to fade. It was working, if they could stay.
“The hell is that?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know. Gayle?”
“What is what?” Gayle replied, confused. Apparently the noise didn’t make it through the phone-portal, adding to the weirdness of the noise. He kept his metaphorical finger on the button to teleport away into his cache, but was unwilling to so do while Lucy was still under the sway of fae magic.
“I hear—” Lucy began, then stopped. There was another voice that spoke in the same unknown language as the whispers. They quieted, and someone stepped into Callum’s perception on the other side of the portal. Oddly, he wasn’t a mage, or at least didn’t have a mage bubble, but he was clearly supernatural by the vis density in his body.
“A moment of your time, young man?” The stranger called out, voice carrying weirdly through the portal space. It should have been a distant shout, but it sounded much closer.
“Only if you stay there!” Callum replied, feeling for his part like he did have to yell to push through the enveloping quiet. His instincts screamed at him to just leave, but he could practically see the dissolution of the fae spell. For the moment he had to rely on his reflexes being fast enough. They were, after all, several hundred yards from the portal entrance through a weirdly distorted space.
“Could this one tempt you into leaving the realm of Mictlān?”
“Not yet,” Callum said bluntly.
“I dunno, big man. I’m starting to feel a little weird.”
“Should I get Gayle?” Callum was glad he was used to splitting his attention, since he had three people to pay attention to at once.
“Maybe? I’m not sure…” Lucy wobbled, and Callum stepped closer to steady her.
“One points out that Mictlān is not for the living. In a single day and night, any mortal would become a whispering shadow.” The stranger said, and Callum couldn’t tell whether the man was listening to his conversation with Gayle and Lucy or not.
