“You can craft a portal of your own!” Zorea said in amazement. “Look at these elements; blood of the enemy, portal stone, new moon… These must be the ingredients that are required to open a portal.”

“Or perhaps these are just the elements that the System I’m using—the System we’re using—needs to create a portal, rather than these being elements fundamental to portal creation for any mage. Don’t forget, the System seems to have requirements that are not necessarily the same as those one might expect from other magic systems. Remember the potions, and how strange the ingredients seemed to you, as an experienced healer?”

“Oh right,” she said thoughtfully, then she frowned. “When you saw the enemies go through the portal on that night during the first stage of the battle, the night Grimdir died, do you remember if it was a new moon then?”

Saul shook his head. “I can’t remember the phase of the moon,” he said. “But I do remember there was a bloody handprint on the stone—Grimdir’s handprint.”

“Blood of the enemy. Was he their enemy, then?”

“I guess he must have been in some sense. Without knowing who the two warlocks that escaped were, and what it was that actually led to the strange circumstances around Grimdir’s death, we won’t be able to answer that question.”

Warning: Blood of the Enemy (Time Limited)

Time expiring

The now-familiar little hourglass with the gleaming golden sand appeared again, indicating how long they had before the time-limited element of the magic ran out.

Saul and Zorea leaped forward to stand next to the Anvil.

“There’s not much time,” Saul said. “I’m going to craft the Sigil.”

He selected the option, and immediately the Anvil glowed brightly with a rush of pale white light. There was a hum. Then the platform on which they stood vibrated with the sound of great rumbling gears far away.

Then, on top of the Anvil’s crystal surface, a Sigil appeared. The shape of the Sigil, gleaming and circular, rose out of the crystal like a great structure rising out of water.

The very crystal of the Anvil itself seemed in that instant to become liquid. The surface of the Anvil swirled like thick fluid, and steam and heat rose from it as the Sigil emerged.

But the Sigil was not quite able to fully emerge from the liquid crystal of the Anvil.

“You need to help the Sigil to finalize its manifestation,” Zorea said suddenly, her voice full of conviction. “You need to put some of your own energy into the process to finish the magic.”

Saul stepped forward, uncertain of how to proceed. In this new timeline, the idea that he had some kind of magical energy of his own was new. He did not operate on that basis; instead, he drew his power from the System.

Back in the old days, in his previous timeline, he’d been an anchor, one who took the gathered force of other people’s channeled power and pushed it into a spell. Channelers had been concentrated into the Prism Academy, which Saul had set up in the building that had been the Citadel of the Bright Dukes before the Faction Wars.

The power channeled by the mages in the Prism Academy had been amplified through the Prism into a mighty, unified resource for Saul and the other mages of the imperial army to draw upon.

But he knew the principles of channeling, and so he stepped forward with those principles in mind. He would try.

The Sigil was struggling to emerge fully from the surface of the crystal Anvil.

Saul took a deep breath and placed his hands above the Sigil, palms downward, not touching it. He concentrated on opening himself up to the power of the universe, the strange, unknowable raw energy that flowed through everything and could be used to power magic.

“No, not like that!” Zorea said immediately. “The Sigil needs your energy, not some energy from outside.”

“But I don’t…” Saul began, then stopped.

Of course, he did have magical energy. He knew that, deep within himself.

He had always known it.

Many people had magical energy of some form. Perhaps everyone did. There was a uniqueness to magic, an individuality, a kind of signature that every mage who used power had. That uniqueness was the signature of the mage’s own magical energy.

Suddenly, Saul realized how close he’d come to seeking out the power that came from the gods, the Seven Elemental Deities who had betrayed him and who he was sworn to destroy. All power from outside was granted to humans through the intercession of the Seven Elemental Gods.

What would have happened if he’d succeeded in channeling energy from them? Would they have detected him? Would they have become aware of his presence?

The whole point of the System was that he could access magic and power from a place that did not come from the gods, so that he could remain in the world unseen by them until the moment he was ready to meet them in battle and avenge himself upon them.

Just because he wasn’t using their energy, just because he and the gods were not aware of each other’s presence, did not mean that they were not out there.

Quickly, he put up a barrier between himself and that external energy, and instead dug deep within himself to seize that power that was his own, the unique personal magic that guided his spells.

That magic was not from the System, it was not from the gods, it did not come from outside, but from within himself.

The cold stung the inside of his nostrils, and he smelled snow and clean air as he drew long, slow, deep breaths and dived down into himself, accessing his own personal power.

“That’s it,” Zorea said quietly by his side as he found it and brought it to the surface, willing it out into his hands. “I can feel your power. That’s your own magic. That’s what this Sigil needs to finish being crafted.”

A moment later, there was a surge of warmth through the palms of Saul’s hands, and a faint, dark blue radiance surrounded his fingers. The strange light dripped from his hands, like thick, luminescent liquid, and fell on the emerging Sigil.

The effect was dramatic. Like thunder rolling far away, the distant machinery boomed and then fell silent. The blue sparkling power from Saul’s hands mixed with the gleaming white light from the Anvil, and merged with the dark, shimmering blood red of the emerging Sigil.

White light flashed bright and then faded within the Anvil, and the sense of flowing power in Saul’s palms eased. The Sigil emerged fully and hovered a little above the surface of the Anvil before coming to rest on the gleaming slick surface.

“You did it,” Zorea said. “You crafted a portal sigil.”

Saul nodded slowly. “How did you know what was missing?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I felt it. I just felt it very clearly. I guess that must be an evolution of my ability to sense magic.”

Above the Sigil, new words appeared.

Crafted: Portal Sigil (Time Limited)

Select: Apply Portal Sigil to Eastwood Clearing Stone

Again, the hourglass appeared, reminding them that they had very little time to activate the Sigil. Less than a minute, Saul guessed.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A sudden doubt struck him.

“What are you waiting for?” Zorea asked.

“I’m wondering where the portal will lead,” Saul said. “We have not considered the consequences of activating the portal again. Who knows what we might unleash…?”

“You have to activate the portal,” Zorea urged. “Perhaps you’ll get to choose where the portal leads? But you can’t come this far and then decide not to activate the Sigil you’ve crafted!”

“You’re right,” Saul chuckled, and then he remembered an old saying of Braz Karak’s—a saying which, though true, had always annoyed the analytical, strategy-focused mind of Saul the battle-commander. “Sometimes, you just have to roll the dice.”

Select: Apply Portal Sigil to Eastwood Clearing Stone

The option glowed brightly as Saul selected it, and then was replaced with:

Portal Sigil: Activation Successful

Select: View Map to Transit

“View map?” Saul wondered.

He selected the option. To his surprise a very clear map of the area the System had called Eastwood Clearing appeared. There, in the middle, was the portal stone, and there was now a red symbol on the map.

Around the clearing were three other red dots, evenly spaced at different points around the clearing.

“This is like the map we saw when we were traveling back after the battle, when we first gained the Squad magic,” Saul said. “These red circles represent places we can travel to.”

“But the red circle on the portal must mean we can travel through that?” Zorea hazarded. “I’m not sure how much use that is, I mean, we can travel back anyway?”

Saul smiled and selected the circle furthest from the portal stones. There was a smooth transition, and then he and Zorea found themselves back in the snow.

He saw no signs that the portal stones had changed in any way. Zorea wanted to examine them, but Saul urged her to mount up.

“Come on,” he said. “I want to try something to answer your question.”

She did as he asked, climbing on the back of the raptor and riding off toward the road by his side, casting a glance back now and then toward the Eastwood Clearing.

When they reached the road, a good mile from the clearing, Saul stopped. It was dark under the trees, and he activated his Light Globe spell before looking through his System options.

Sure enough, as he had expected, there was something new.

Select: View Map

When he activated the option, the same style of map appeared in front of him. He was pleased with this. Only in the Workshop had he ever seen this map before. The fact that it could appear in the physical world outside of the Workshop was a welcome development.

The map was not flat, not a two-dimensional representation of land on paper. Rather, it was like a three-dimensional model of the land around them that floated at around waist height, as if they were looking down at a tabletop. The map was small, about three feet square.

Zorea and Saul gazed down at the beautifully rendered vista of dark, snowy trees and rugged mountains, with the narrow gray road running through the forest and a little dot of silver light showing where they themselves were. At the edges of the map, fading away at the edges, were the beginnings of the sheer slopes of the impassable Sawtooth mountains.

“We’re looking at the whole northern forest region!” Zorea said in amazement. “It’s so beautiful, like a living model. And there, look there, in the clearing.”

Saul smiled. He had already seen it.

In the clearing, there was a single red circle. He focused his attention on it and was immediately presented with an option.

Select: Travel to Eastwood Clearing Portal

Grinning, Saul dismissed the option, but he looked at Zorea in triumph. “I’m glad you talked me out of waiting,” he said. “There’s no sign of any portal in the clearing for anyone else to use. The portal does not lead anywhere. Instead, it exists for us to use if we ever want to travel back to northern Xorn quickly!”

“And I see the answer to my earlier question now, as well,” Zorea said with a grin. “When we were transiting back from the Workshop, we had the option to go to various places in the vicinity of where we’d originally left from. Now, those options are gone, but if we want to we can swiftly travel to the portal. Presumably, there is no limit on the distance we can travel from.”

“I imagine not, or if there is a limit on the distance, that distance will be very large.”

“Do you think there are others?” Zorea asked, as they rode on down the dark road.

“Other portal stones that could be activated? Yes, no doubt there are,” Saul said. “I never knew of any in my old timeline, but that does not mean they did not exist, just that the knowledge of them was lost. The portals must be a very ancient magic known only to a few. Somehow, the warlocks rediscovered the secret, and my System is also able to access the magic as well. Yes, I fully believe that if we can find and reactivate them, we will be able to unlock a network of portals that we can use to travel all over Keldor in an instant—and perhaps beyond Keldor, too.”

Zorea smiled, gazing into the snowy darkness and thinking of the potential ahead of them as they rode back to the village on their raptors.

* * *

They returned to the village well after dark.

Brand, who had been overseeing the rebuilding of several smashed huts in the vicinity of the palisade wall, was glad to see them, and was fascinated by the discovery of the portal magic. He made them promise to show him as soon as it was light.

Saul was also keen to explore the new power, and so at dawn the next morning, they activated the map and selected the option.

The effect was remarkably simple. With a smooth sensation of being pulled along through the air, they transitioned from the village of Harkin’s Holdfast to the portal, and stepped out into the snow of the clearing.

There was a faint shimmer of red light around the stones, but that faded quickly, and once the light had faded there was no suggestion that anything had changed. The two old, weathered stones leaned toward each other like a monument to some old, forgotten time.

“That’s amazing!” Brand exclaimed. “How do we get back?”

Saul chuckled. “We walk,” he said. “The portals are a one way system, Brand. But it’s not too far back to the village.”

“Next time, we should try taking the raptors through,” Brand suggested. “Then we could ride back quicker.”

“It might work,” Saul said thoughtfully, “but the effects of magic on animals can be unpredictable, and I wouldn’t want to risk a raptor in the transit unless we had to, or at least without having some idea of what the effect might be on the beast.”

That began a discussion of the use of magic on and around animals, and soon Brand and Zorea managed to draw Saul into talking about his approach to working with magic alongside cavalry regiments and troll hordes in the old days of his former timeline.

* * *

The discovery of the portal magic, while exciting and full of potential, did not have much practical application just yet, given that the clearing was only a few miles from the village.

In the future, as and when more portals were discovered and activated, the possibilities for fast travel around the world were, indeed, very exciting. Even at the moment, the ability to travel quickly back to Harkin’s Holdfast might prove useful once they left, but while they were in the village, that potential remained unexplored.

As the weeks passed and winter drew on toward its end, Saul was impressed by the cheer and resilience of the villagers.

They rebuilt their homes, repaired and improved their palisade, and caught and tamed new groups of the wild mountain goats that were the foundation of the villagers’ diet throughout the seasons. They filled in the trenches, dug over the ravaged ground, looted the corpses of the warlocks and their thralls and buried the remains of their enemies in a deep grave in the forest, as far from the village as was practical.

Harkin’s Holdfast felt renewed and lived in again. The crow of cockerels, the bleating of goats, the chatter of chickens, and the clang of Rork’s hammer were once again the sounds that heralded the dawn as winter eased its grip on the land. The spell of baking bread, roasting meat, and woodsmoke again floated in the air in the evening.

A detachment of soldiers were put to improving the road that led south. Harkin’s Holdfast was the northernmost village in all of Xorn, and though it was isolated from other parts of the realm, that did not mean that merchants and travelers did not come here.

The Xornian villagers made a particular kind of cheese from the milk of the mountain goats that could not be produced anywhere else, and charcoal made from a certain hardy shrub found only in the northern forests was particularly prized by smiths in the lowlands and borderlands of Xorn, as it burned slower and with a more even heat than other types.

These crafts had been largely put on hold as the tensions increased with the warlocks. Now, as the approaching spring mellowed the harsh weather, the charcoal burning began again, and the cheese-making building near the back of the inn was restored.

One day, Captain Jerryl came up to Saul and laid a hand on his shoulder. Saul was standing on the palisade wall, looking thoughtfully southward. It hadn’t snowed for five days, and the sudden spring was sending green shoots up through the black earth and coating the trees in a wash of green from the new buds.

“You’re thinking of traveling, my friend?” Jerryl asked quietly.

“The winter has passed,” Saul replied. “There’s work for me to do in the south.”

“And the queen’s summons too, of course,” Jerryl added.

“That too,” Saul agreed.

After a silence, Jerryl spoke again, somewhat hesitatingly. “And there is your greater mission.”

Saul looked at the captain and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I need to continue to build my power and prepare for my final challenge. But also, I realize now that part of my job here is to challenge the tides of fate, to try to stop the Faction Wars that destroyed so much that was good in Keldor.”

“You don’t believe the saving of the Holdfast is enough on its own?”

Saul shook his head. “Many things happened to trigger the Faction War. The destruction of this village was the pebble that started the avalanche, but there are other pebbles out there that could still cause the same effect by a different route.

“I know the future, Jerryl, and so I must do my best to prevent that avalanche from beginning. I must use my knowledge for good, I think. I believe that’s why my new timeline began here, of all the places it could have begun. I found myself right at the point of fate, at just the right time to stop the pebble from rolling. So, yes, I’m thinking of traveling. The next pebble to be stopped is in the Borderland villages, in a town called Jillin. That’s where I will go, once I’ve seen the Queen.”

Jerryl nodded. “I know Jillin. It once was a prosperous little town, but nowadays, I believe it has fallen into disrepair. Good luck to you, Saul. For myself, I will stay here at the Holdfast for now. General Spearman will return to the Queen’s Castle later in the spring, but he and his men are still needed here for the reconstruction effort. We’ve come far, but there is still a great deal to do.”

“I’ll take Brand and Zorea with me,” Saul added. “They would not be separated from me, I think, nor I from them.”

“Very well,” Jerryl said. “May you find what you seek, Saul.”

He slapped Saul on the shoulder, looked into his eyes for a moment, then smiled and turned away.