Somewhere in the lands between, a typhoon like no other beat against the ground. For leagues around the land was sundered, what little life existed on the plane was snuffed out. A typhoon that would normally continue for thousands of leagues had hovered in the same spot for several days, as if held in place by forces beyond comprehension. Lightning cracked through the sky, sunlight failed to pierce all but the eye of the storm. A spot of tranquility, where a few lucky animals had taken refuge, shivering. Yet... beneath their feet, laid a cave system where a group of beings stood at alert. Guarded on all sides by towering soldiers in full plate of armour stood a mage dressed in gold and imperial colours, with motes of light flickering all around them from the protective wards present on them. If even the cave was to collapse, the mage's wards wouldn't blink. If his heart was to stop, for the imperial line was cursed by weak hearts, the wards wouldn't hesitate to manually beat for him. For he was an imperial scion, and this was standard protocol.
"We're ready, my liege," said a small green man dressed in shabby looking adventurer clothing, flanked by a dozen others in similar wear. Their features were discongruent with their attire. Perfect teeth, clear eyes, and strong muscles rippled under their clothes. They kneeled before the imperial scion.
"Rise, my envoys," commanded the lord, his voice echoing throughout the cave system, audible over the rumble from the storm above.
"The empire knows not where the portal will open. The vile church of the other side must not know our plans — and you all know what to do should you be discovered too early in the mission," the scion paused. "We thank you for your service."
The mage then tapped a ring on his finger, and a scrappy looking bag appeared. Inside it were two boxes, both with self-immolate runes carved within, in case they ever fell into enemy hands. One contained a small blue pearl, the size of a pinky nail, yet covered in an uncountable number of runes... it hummed with power. The other, contained thirteen capsules and thirteen plain coins that had a reddish tint to them. He passed them to the leader of the expedition, the goblin kneeling before him. He then withdrew four bracelets from his sleeve, keying them to the mana signatures of the 13 before him, and passing them to the four envoys who would be at the center of the formation. "I've also charged each bracelet with the single greater spell you've chosen: fireball, mass heal, illusion ward, and return chronos. While unrealistic that a goblin tribe may possess such powerful artifacts, without your mana signatures they will be irrechargeable, and not be scrutinized too heavily if they fall into enemy hands."
"It is time," said a second mage who was manning a dull grey crystal mounted on a metal rod at the edge of the cave. Said rod was dead center in the eye of the storm raging above. The squad of Goblins convened around him, while he slowly said an incantation and retreated from their presence. The crystal began glowing, while the metal rod got hotter and hotter, before it too started glowing.
"Farewell my liege," said the leading goblin, as the rumble of the storm above increased in volume and intensity. The rest of the imperial party retreated a hundred steps down from where the Goblins stood. Soon, the rumble was joined by a booming sound, not unlike the imperial war drums. This boom slowly increased in tempo and intensity, as the eye of the storm above disappeared and it began discharging its energy in the form of a thousand lightning bolts, all aiming for the metal rod. The crystal on top went from glowing to shining, and from shining to blinding, illuminating the cave as if it was a small sun.
CRACK.
In that instant, the barrier between the two realms cracked open, and a vast suction between the two occurred, swallowing the 13 Goblins and the small sun in a fraction of a second, while the latter trembled and cracked as the shield it powered was battered and eventually torn apart by the void between the realms.
And then... there was silence.
The typhoon above sighed in relief, as it was finally released from its chains... yet it was smaller. Barely a tenth of its original size, it continued on its path. Below in the cave system, the imperial party was clad once again in darkness. The metal rod laid shattered on the floor, alongside a smouldering lower leg of one of the envoys, a hand, and one envoy who had sent the lower half of their body but failed to send the top half. A pool of warm blood forming rapidly as their insides became outsides.
"Shit!" yelled the second mage, while rushing forward with the soldiers.
The imperial scion stepped forward, and was suddenly beside the top half of the goblin who had been rended in two.
"Hoc ens restitue" he chanted, and a blinding glow impacted the goblin below him, mending flesh and regrowing limb. Yet the goblin did not stir. The scion bent down and checked their pulse, finding none. That was when the first soldier arrived and started performing CPR, manually compressing the chest of the goblin who had very much been dead a moment earlier. This action returned blood flow to the brain and other organs, nourishing them and preventing ischemia.
One compression. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seve-
"Move," commanded the scion. The imperial heir was no stranger to heart problems, and placed both hands on the goblin and delivered a finely calculated shock. The heir then checked their pulse and for breathing... and it had returned. He nodded to the rest of the party, which sighed in relief. It was then that he noticed the goblin in question had one of the four bracelets he had passed out earlier. His face turned into a frown — they would need to make do without the fire spell and without one of the four leaders.
The soldier who was doing compressions took off their cape and covered the lower half of the goblin — for heal spells did not regrow clothes. The soldier continued to monitor the goblin, pleased as her green flush returned from the sickly pale of a few moments ago.
"The teleport was largely a success, my liege," reported the other mage. "It looks like only one loss on entry, and past expeditions have us expecting something similar on exit."
"Let's hope the mass heal is good enough to patch up any wounds they incur," the scion said.
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There was absence. The absence of sound. Of light. Of existence.
Then the absence was gone.
And the nausea began.
In unison, thirteen shapes fell to the ground. Their leader looked around whilst in the process of dry-heaving. At least one of his colleagues had already lost their special anti-nausea lunch. Several had lost a limb or two. Three were missing a torso or lower half, with blood already pooling on the ground. At least all fifteen of them were there. Wait. Fifteen!?
"Contact!" the leader yelled, while activating the mass heal on his bracelet. A warm glow branched out all around him, rapidly healing missing limbs, cuts, and reviving at least one goblin who groaned and started moving. It failed to take to the other two mutilated goblins on the ground. It also healed the two humans amidst their party — the ones who were just jumping into motion and drawing their weapons.
"Kill them!" barked the human who looked like a shabby soldier while stabbing the recently revived goblin who was still stunned from having both legs cut off and then regrown. The soldier's stab was true, snuffing out the goblin's life.
"Motherfucker!" yelled the small goblin to the left, who jumped on the soldier's back and ripped his throat out. In the moment of confusion the second human swung his sword to cleave the goblin on his ally's back, before his swing was cut short. He gurgled, a look of confusion on his face as an arrow stuck out of his neck.
"Shit, Sami!" cried the small goblin as he jumped off the dead soldier towards the goblin lying at his feet. He leaned over Sami's body, tightly holding his hand, before he started sobbing.
"I can't believe it... not even five minutes in and we've already lost three companions," the third in command said rounding up by their leader.
"It might only be one, Jin," said the leader. "You know our lord was where we teleported, he'd revive anyone caught on that side."
"That's true, Nauk. Though there's no guarantee that they didn't get diced in the rift between the two realms rather than when entering," replied Jin. Jin had walked over to each body, or what remained of it, paying his final respects. "Let's do their rites anyway," he said.
"Nir and Hab, I want you two on lookout while we prepare," Nauk commanded to the two most proficient scouts of the group. "I want at least one of you up in the trees keeping an eye on things."
Nauk withdrew three coins from the satchel on his back. He placed one coin on Sami, one on the other goblin who had failed to revive, Athuuk, and finally, on Zeri, whose legs were the only thing to make it through the teleport. Jin stepped forward to each in turn, retrieving their pouches containing personal belongings, and handing the belongings off to one of the more burly Goblins. The others in the group collected body parts and piled them beside Zeri's legs. Nauk paused by the two slain humans, quickly looting their bodies for anything valuable before spitting on their corpses and bringing them near Zeri's legs.
"Sami, Athuuk, Zeri. From nothing we came and to nothing we return. You will be remembered," Jin solemnly said. The whole group stood, looking on their fallen companions with sadness and silence. Jin stood in front of Sami, made a complicated symbol and drew a rune in the air that slowly turned a reddish colour not unlike that of it coin resting on his chest. The coin caught fire, and with it, so did the rest of his body. But the fire was more red than usual, there was no smoke or smell, and Sami's body disintegrated without leaving a trace on the ground. He repeated this twice more, but for Zeri continued to use his magical power to coax the flame to the nearby limbs and corpses, even to the pools of blood, that vanished. Not a single blade of grass went up in smoke, but the evidence of their brutal conflict was all but erased.
Nauk stepped forward, cleared his throat and began speaking, "You all know what's next. We're going to rest here for an hour, I want all of you to channel half of your mana into the mass heal bracelet and then begin absorbing mana from the air into your core. It should take two or three days with our meager mana pools to get it back up and running." He paused, as if thinking. "Zeri was holding the fire spell bracelet, which is now lost to us. That is a big blow to our raw fighting potential, but won't be for long. As you all know, now that we've crossed over, there's no longer a reason to stifle our magical growth. You all have come from long goblin lineages of powerful mages, I expect you to continue that tradition."
The surrounding Goblins nodded, with the tallest and most burly of them all being the first to step forward. He was so tall and well built for a goblin in fact, that he could pass for a short human male. He was tentatively flexing his left hand, a hand that he had unfortunately lost during transportation but that mass heal had regrown. Fortunately it was not the hand that he had slipped his spell bracelet around. He was Thok, the fourth in command. "I come to do my part," he said, lifting his hands over the bracelet around Nauk while blue wisps of light left his palms and entered the bracelet.
Nauk gave him a small smile in return. "With our second in command gone, Jin and you are now second and third in command," he said, placing a hand on the taller Goblin's shoulder. He passed his bracelet to Thok to let him facilitate the mana addition process.
The leader then turned to the rest of the group who had begun lining up to contribute their mana. He opened his bag and retrieved the small blue pearl and one of the capsules. He whispered something into the pearl, which then hummed with power and an spoke a single name.
"Blik."
Nauk looked to the startled goblin who was second in line and was now looking slightly speechless. "Congratulations, you're the new fourth in command."
"Yes sir! I will do my best!"
"Of course. You can speak to Jin, Thok or myself if you have any questions. While I don't have an extra spell bracelet to give you, we will see you properly outfitted in due time," Nauk said. "Jin and I will be making my report into the capsule."
Jin walked over from where he was picking through the human soldier's possessions. He walked over with two medallions in his hands. "It looks like they weren't soldiers, these are adventurer guild tags. But I'm not sure what to make of their attire which looks like worn out Herulkan military attire," he said.
"Perhaps they were apart of the military at some point, maybe there was a war several years ago and these hallmarks back to them. It's also possible that they're deserters. Or pillagers from a battlefield," Nauk replied.
"I guess we won't know until we send out some feelers. Either the kingdom we find ourselves in is recovering from war, or is currently at war. Neither is ideal, but the presence of the Herulkanian armour suggests we're more centrally located on the continent. If so, those mountains in the distance could be the hellspire mountain range. They certainly match the description."
"I agree. Let's record our report in this capsule and transmit the data before we continue on."
Jin nodded while Nauk worked the intricate system contained within the capsule. The capsule itself featured a small vermilion feather floating in a vacuum sealed space. The system was designed to burn even smaller letters onto the feather. Turns out the mythical birds that grew these feathers would grow them in pairs, with the feathers linked by some strange physicality, even across different realms. The birds would exchange feathers, giving the "receiver" a feather that would reflect any damage done to the first feather — and presumably the first bird. Unfortunately, the link was tenuous at best and damage done to the feather would quickly spiral out, giving the receiver perhaps one or two seconds to see the entire message before both feathers went up in smoke. This may work for the empire, which has a detailed information network with 24/7 staffing and several runic cores watching the vermilion feathers at all times, but it certainly wasn't feasible for the away team to receive messages… not yet, anyway.
"Okay. Now that that's done, we'll spend thirty more minutes resting here and recovering mana before we move on."