Simple Things, page 19
part #13 of The Valens Legacy Series
"We might as well find out," she said and started forward.
Sean padded on after her, looking from side to side. He could feel it every time one of his paws stepped on a ley line; they were so heavily charged up here. They were still in their leonine forms, as it was easier going on four legs than on two.
"I think I smell somebody."
"I thought you said there weren't any demons up here?"
"Not a demon. This smells, well, it smells like a cross between a fey, an elf, and almost a lion, I guess."
"If you say so," Sean replied, then sat down as they stopped before the metal door.
"Is that made of iron?" Estrella asked, putting a paw on it.
"If it is, I'd love to know how they kept it from rusting," Sean said, shifting into his hybrid form, then looked for a mechanism to open it. "Maybe it has to do with all the ley lines running into the blockhouse. They're so thick here, it's almost making my fur stand on end. This place must really light up when there's an open gateway."
"What manner of demon be you?" a disembodied voice asked.
"We're not demons," Sean replied, looking around for a speaker as Estrella shifted.
"If you're not demons, how have you managed to come here?" the voice inquired.
"Through one of the open gateways. I was fighting one of the groups of demons trying to invade my lands, I got a little carried away, and here I am. What's your story?"
"My story?"
"How did you come to be here? I'm guessing you're not a demon either, so did you come through a gateway as well?"
"What? Oh, no, I've always been here. Well, I've always been here as long as this place has existed, I guess you would say."
"You know," Estrella interrupted, "this is interesting and all, but do you think we could come inside and sit down while we talk? There was a large group of demons chasing us, and I'd rather not be standing out here if they should show up."
"Oh, right! Please, come inside."
Sean heard the metal door unlock and, pulling it open, he waved Estrella inside and pulled it closed behind him.
They were in a short hallway made of the same stone as the walls outside. It was dimly lit in the same manner everything else seemed to be, and a door opened at the other end, as the one they'd entered through locked.
"So how long have lived here?" Sean asked as he headed down the hallway, with Estrella following him.
"Time in this place has lost its meaning to me; I was here when this was built, as I was among those who built it."
"That's a long time," Sean said as he thought about it. "What do you do here?"
"Abide mostly. It would seem I am the last of my people, of my kind. Take the stairway on your left; it will lead you to me."
"And here I thought I'd had it bad," Estrella said with a sigh.
Stepping through the door at they end of the hallway, there was a staircase to his left, so Sean led the way up. The steps of the stairway were made of something that looked like white marble; at the first landing things started to get brighter, and there were even some traces of muted colors on the walls.
The stairway let out into the back of a large room, which had a nice-looking white carpet on the floor. The walls were covered in a combination of screens that appeared to show the outside world, and artwork, some of which contained colors other than the never-ending black and grey that seemed to consume this world.
There were tables and furniture set out around the room; it looked very much like a large living room, though at the far end, near a long window that dominated the far wall, there were several large consoles with seats before them. One of the consoles faced in their direction, and behind it sat the room's sole occupant.
They looked, well, they looked human, which was the biggest surprise of all that could have awaited them. Sean was expecting some sort of strange-looking being or monster, yet here was what looked to be a man wearing a white robe, with long gray hair. His skin had a bit of a grayish tinge to it, not quite matching his hair, and while it was hard to judge as he was sitting down, Sean suspected they'd see eye to eye if the man were to stand.
"My name is Sean. This is my mate, Estrella," Sean said and gave a small bow. "It's a pleasure to meet someone other than one of those demons for a change. I take it, then, you’re the Ley Land king?"
The man smiled. "Is that what they call me these days? I've had so many names, it's hard to recall them all. To the others of my kind, I was known as Mahkiyoc."
"So, what are you?" Mahkiyoc asked.
"We're lions," Sean said. "I'm a male, Estrella's female."
"Ah, sexual dimorphism. I haven't seen that for some time now. I noticed you're possessed of the ability to shapeshift as well?"
"Only between three forms, two of which you’ve seen; the third we don't seem to be able to do here."
"Interesting," Mahkiyoc said. "The rules of this reality are different in some rather profound ways."
"Who are you, and what is this place?" Sean asked, looking around.
"I would hear your story first," Mahkiyoc said.
"Why?" Estrella asked.
"Because it has been far too long since I've talked to another intelligent and reasoning race. I don't even bother trying to talk to the demons anymore. They're dull, uninteresting, and boring, as well as violent and vicious. Besides which, a portal will be opening shortly, and as those are my primary interest still, I would hear what you have to say before I find myself occupied for the next five daers."
Sean nodded; they were the guests here, and he might as well be polite. After all, they had come here looking for help.
"The lions, whom I represent in my homeland currently, have been fighting the demons every time a gateway has opened to our world for tens of thousands of our years. Humans, whom they feed on, have become very numerous in the last several thousand years, due to our protection. Somehow the demons learned of this, so of course the demons are gathering in record numbers to try to break through our protections, to feed on the humans we protect."
Mahkiyoc nodded after a moment. "That would explain what I have been seeing. I had wondered about that. Sadly, the devices I once used to peer through the gateways have degraded to such a state that I can no longer do such things until the main portal opens.
"How long ago did you come here?"
"I came here maybe ten or twelve days ago."
Mahkiyoc gave Sean a bit of a look. "There was a large disturbance at that time, and one of the large portal anchors was destroyed."
"You did hear me mention there's a war on, right?" Sean said defensively.
"The amount of energy release was significant. You're telling me lions have that kind of power?"
"And humans." Sean nodded.
"And you haven't destroyed each other yet?"
Sean shook his head.
"Amazing. And you?" he asked, turning to look at Estrella.
"I came here the last time your world passed mine. I was trying to learn more about the demons, and well, I got trapped here."
"That was over a million daer ago, yet you are still here." Mahkiyoc pondered a moment, then looked from Estrella to Sean.
"You're immortal, aren't you?"
"After a fashion," Sean admitted.
"I thought you felt familiar."
"Familiar? What, all immortals have a feel to them?"
Mahkiyoc gave a slight smile. "No. Many tens of millions of daers ago, one of my colleagues attempted to flee our plight here, to find help, when a portal opened to one of the undeveloped lands. This was back when we still had some control over what we had built.
"When the next portal opened to the land, they were gone. It was such a disappointment. But I see you here, now, and perhaps I and the others rushed to judgment."
Sean thought about what the First had once told him, about the moment he'd achieved sentience, and had a very uncomfortable feeling for a moment.
"If you don't mind my asking," Sean said, "who and what exactly are you, and can you help us get through a gateway and back to our world?"
"As I told you, I'm the last of my people. I've also told you my name."
"What he means," Estrella said with a glance at Sean, "is what exactly are you doing here? What is this place? What is going on here?"
"What is anyone doing in the space they live as they exist?" Mahkiyoc started off, then stopped a moment and a slight smile graced his face. "I suspect your question is more in regarding the world in which you've found yourself, the portals, and my place in all this. Am I correct?"
"Yes," Sean and Estrella said together as they nodded.
"It is a long story, longer than many dozens of duo-daers in the telling, but we do not have time for that now, so I will attempt to be brief. My people, my race, we wished to transcend the bonds of the mortal worlds. Ours was dying, even though we had managed to change ourselves so we would not.
"We knew of this place, a world of fundamentally different rules that violated much of what we knew, so when the proper time came, we traveled here. We then spent a long time building the machines of our greatness to harness all this world could give to us, that we might embark on our studies of the fundamentals of the many different planes, and how the portals interconnected between them. We built the portal snares, and places like this one around you, to control and study them.
"During our investigations, we made the mistake of opening a portal into a place on the negative planes, where those who live off the life energy of others exist. Many of them made it through, and we had a war. We thought we had won, but many of us perished in the battle, and we'd long since lost the ability to reproduce, something a true immortal cares little for, as the need to pass on no longer exists.
"Because we had lost so many, we didn't realize we had not scoured this new world of ours clean of all marks of the demons, and in time they returned and, fearing the inevitable, many of the last war's survivors fled through the portals, the smart ones locking their destinations so we'd never visit again."
"Can you lock the portals so they won't come to our world again?" Sean asked.
"If I had access to the facility that controls them, and if enough of it still functions, it could perhaps be done. But the mechanism has suffered much neglect over the tens of millions of daer it has been abandoned."
"When the machinery is all gone, does that mean the portals will no longer open?"
"Oh, no, the portals are a natural phenomenon of this place. All we did was tame it so they would come and go more by our whim than those of the natural order, so we could study and explore. If the world you are from is indeed the one my former colleague fled to, then it is locked into a cycle, apparently one of the longer cycles, in the hopes that one day their work will solve the problem that besets us here."
"The demons," Estrella said.
"Exactly. It is nearing time for the portal; I must make my excuses for now. You are free to roam the building, though I hope you do not depart before we can talk again. You have opened possibilities I would like to explore."
"One last question, then. The demons believe if enough material passes between our plane and this one, the gateway will become permanent; is that true?"
Mahkiyoc paused a moment, obviously pondering the idea.
"If enough energy between the two realms were to be exchanged, they would become linked, this is true. Depending on the state of the machinery we once used to control the portals, that link would last anywhere from a million daers to achieving the permanence of which they speak. That would alter the cycles of the other portal transits, of course, but the possibility exists. The same thing happened when we first came here until our world was destroyed. Of course, by then we had already learned to influence the portal system and had begun the building of our machine to control it."
"Now, if you will excuse me, I have a portal opening to study."
Nodding, Sean took Estrella by the hand.
"We'll be looking around for a place to sleep."
"I will call you when I wish to talk again."
"So now what?" Estrella asked when they were at the bottom of the staircase once more.
"I don't know. The prospect of coming back here with enough people to learn how to change things so a portal no longer opens to our world is tempting. But we'd have to kill a lot of demons first."
"I was thinking more along the lines o…" Estrella stopped as Sean grabbed her muzzle and, looking at her, he carefully mouthed 'he can hear us'.
Eyes widening, Estrella nodded slowly.
"Just going back home," she said when Sean let go of her.
"We have to do that regardless," Sean agreed. "Now, let's find a place to rest, and when the gateway opens, I'll see if I can fix your necklace."
"Do you think I should talk to the First and the rest?"
Sean nodded. "Now let's see where the rest of these doors lead to. Hopefully there's someplace we can relax."
The first door opened on something that looked like a library, though there weren't any books in it, just some sort of small glass plugs that were racked in the thousands. The next room looked like some sort of generic conference room, and the same for the two after that.
The rest of the doorways, except for the one at the end of the hallway, which opened on a stairway that went down, all opened onto rooms obviously meant for personal accommodation.
They took the one closest to the doorway with the staircase leading down. Sean had just closed the door when he suddenly felt warm all over. Calling up his enchanting network and the program he'd made to monitor the mana flows, he took a look at the ambient mana.
What he saw shocked him.
"The gateway's open, and I've never seen so much magical energy before!"
"Are you feeling okay?" Estrella asked, worriedly.
"A bit warm," Sean said, redirecting his attention to her. "Why?"
"Your mane is all fluffed out, and you're starting to feel warm."
Sean looked down at himself, then checked his mana levels. His body was trying to take on more energy!
"Shit."
"What?"
"I'm picking up energy, probably because I'm in the middle of all this. I need to find a place to ground before I burn up!"
"What's a ground?" Estrella asked, looking around the room.
"Something metal that's buried in the earth."
"The stairs leading down had a metal rail along the side!" she said after a moment.
Opening the door, Sean ran out of the room, opened the door to the stairway, grabbed the railing…and discovered he'd just tapped into the largest magical battery he'd ever touched in his life! He carefully let the excess mana drain into it, and then stood there, shocked, while looking at it. It was filling up, slowly, like a huge Olympic-sized swimming pool from a fire hose.
"Sean! Are you alright?" Estrella asked, giving him a shake.
"I'm…I'm fine. This place runs off the power in the ley lines, like the hellige points do! I should have realized that," Sean said a little sheepishly. "Now that I'm attached to it, I can drain the excess power out. Could you bring me your necklace?"
"Sure, let me get my pack."
Sean nodded and looked around magically. Now that he had a place to drain off to, he wasn't as worried as he'd been before. Looking at the problem, he wondered if he could make a mana shield? Something that would cut him off from the mana so it wouldn't fry him? Considering the amount of power available, he could use the power he was protecting himself from to actually power the spell.
No wonder they'd built such a strong fort over the place. It wasn't something you'd want the wrong people to get control of.
"Here it is," Estrella said, coming back.
"Thanks!" Sean said and took it from her. "If you see any large metal slugs lying around, or any metal necklaces of any type, could you leave them by me? I'm gonna work on this for a while."
"Sure thing, Sean. I'll do it after I take a short nap."
Sitting down on the stairs, Sean wedged his arm up under the handrail so he wouldn't break contact accidentally while he was off in his workshop. Then, opening it up, he dove inside. He definitely had more than enough power to fix Estrella's necklace, but maybe he could lay a few other spells on top of it while he was at it. With this much power, anything was possible, and the interesting thing about faerie enchantments and human ones were, they didn't seem to interfere with each other. So he might be able to stack them.
No Quarter
"How are we doing on ammo?" Jack asked his sergeant.
Jack's sergeant was a chief master sergeant who had more years in uniform than anyone Jack had ever known. He was also a werewolf Jack had met back when he was overseas. Jack had pulled a few strings, and Chief 'Mad Ass' Murphy was sitting in his office.
It had been a fun reunion; Murphy had been pissed as all hell, until Jack had read him the riot act and threatened to get 'the lion' from HQ down here to really tell him off.
"Right now, everyone's got exactly one magazine full, and we only have that because of what your friends up at headquarters gave us."
Jack was still getting used to Sean's ranch being called 'Headquarters', but the fact of the matter was, that's where all the commands came from, and that's were all the planning took place. So by all definitions, it was headquarters.
"How's everyone shaking down?" Jack asked, looking out at the field, where a large number of wolves were doing laps.
"They seem to be good, but it's only been two days, and the window opens tomorrow. If you think any of them are gonna make their hybrid form by then, I think you're counting chickens before they hatch. Begging your pardon, sir."
Jack snorted. "You're not here to put sugar on the bullshit, Chief. But I'm fine with that. They can go into combat in human form. I just need them to be able to go into combat."
"If we don't get more ammunition, I'm not sure how we'll be able to do even that. I'm afraid to give those guys any of the swords the dwarves are churning out, for fear of what they'll do to themselves, much less each other."
"They're still gonna have to learn eventually." Jack sighed. "Maybe we can get bayonets and put 'em on the ends of their rifles."
