Arkk stared at the crystalline archway with a mild nervousness. He couldn’t stop sweating. Granted, part of that was Agnete at his side, running a little hotter than normal, but at least a little came from worries over what might come through that portal.
The former orc homeland was a wide and, as with all of the Underworld, desolate place. A few days of labor had rebuilt some of the ruins around, providing shelter and, more importantly, fortifications around the portal. Flying, lightning-spewing machines wouldn’t take them by surprise again. Not to mention, Arkk was present and completely ready to cast slowing spells, explosions, haste spells, and whatever else might help bring such an opponent down enough for Agnete, Claire, or Dakka’s crew to dismantle them.
The most unnerving thing about the situation wasn’t the thought of monsters on the other side of the portal coming through. It was that he might not be able to return if something went wrong. Zullie had assured him that nothing would. They had effectively tested shutting down and reactivating the Fortress Al-Mir portal both in rescuing Olatt’an’s expeditionary team and a few times since then just to make sure it hadn’t been a fluke.
But, while the portal was inactive and the orc homeland portal redirected to the Anvil, Arkk would be entirely cut off from his home world.
A thin membrane of translucent liquid stretched across the interior of the archway. Arkk felt a prickle of magic against his skin, not unlike the sensation of walking into a spiderweb. It wasn’t pleasant. Was that normal? It hadn’t happened when they had rescued Olatt’an. It could just be a product of stress-induced imagination.
He exchanged a glance with Agnete. The flame witch stood stoic and impassive as always, but the embers in her eyes betrayed a hint of the same anxiety that he felt.
“Worried?”
“Excited,” she said, her tone flat. Maybe it wasn’t anxiety then. “Though, perhaps I am somewhat concerned. I don’t… I wanted to know why I am the way I am ever since you told me about the Burning Forge. Why or how I was chosen, who They are, what reasons They have for creating purifiers like me. But now that we’re here, ready to step foot into the world of my patron, I feel like I’m not sure I want to know. What if the answers are lacking? Or nonexistent. It isn’t like we’ve had an audience with the Cloak of Shadows here. The gods might simply not wish to speak to mortals.”
Definitely anxiety then.
Pressing his lips into a thin smile, Arkk nodded, understanding Agnete’s mix of emotions. Frankly, he had been feeling roughly the same since encountering Vezta for the first time. Or, maybe even before then.
“Isn’t that just life?” he said, not quite meaning to say it aloud. Agnete looked over at him, making him shift in mild discomfort. He bought a moment of thought by clearing his throat. “I mean, why are any of us here? Why am I the first to stumble across the fortress in a millennium? Would a massive war have broken out if someone like Hale had come across it or am I at direct fault for that? Or you and Vrox—you probably would have destroyed it, right? What might the world have looked like then?
“Answers might… No, whatever answers you get, if any, will undoubtedly be disappointing compared to any expectations you have built up in your mind,” Arkk said. “Based on what I know of the Pantheon, none of them operate on human-level thought. Listen to the Protector talk of the Lady Shadows and how she doesn’t understand that living beings are different from the shadows she turned them into.”
Agnete’s black lips twisted into a tight frown. “If you mean to comfort or reassure me, you are performing poorly.”
Arkk chuckled, clapping a hand on Agnete’s shoulders. It burned a little, even through her clothing, but not so bad that he pulled back. “I guess I’m just saying not to worry too much about it. Regardless of what answers you find, if any, you have a place here with us.”
Agnete’s frown softened somewhat at his words, prompting him to give a firm and hopefully reassuring squeeze of her shoulder before letting go. He tried to subtly waft his hand behind his back to cool it back down. Judging by the faint smile that graced her lips, he wasn’t too successful.
“A place here,” she mused. “I believe that is a line I have heard coming from ramblemen and bards more often than not when their stories involve people uncovering uncomfortable truths.”
“Langleey got the occasional bard but I was always more interested in stories the adventurers, mercenaries, and bounty hunters had to tell. And learning what little magic they could teach in their short visits to the village.”
“Really? Didn’t just copy one of their lines?” she said with… teasing in her tone? That was unusual. Agnete must have been feeling quite excited. Or anxious. Both.
The conversation trailed off as a ripple spread through the portal. The shimmering membrane, looking like a vertical pool of liquid silver, shifted and spread out into a view of yet another world.
This one was unlike anything he had seen before. The Underworld was a desolate wasteland, much like a desert or the Cursed Forest. The Silence looked like a lush forest; though colored strangely, it hadn’t been anything out of the norm. His world had a whole variety of landscapes and biomes from mountainous forests to sweeping planes and wide oceans. Perhaps that was why those gods had fought over it all those years ago. The variety.
Then again, he had only seen very small slices of both the Underworld and the Silence. They could easily have more variety further out.
But the world before him now was…
It hardly looked like a world at all.
It was a landscape dominated by a monstrous edifice of gears, pipes, and towering metal buildings. Massive stretches of moving pathways snaked back and forth between, through, and around the buildings, carrying an endless stream of glowing rocks, metal ingots, and manufactured creations that Arkk couldn’t begin to name. The pathways fed the materials into hulking machines that belched smoke and hissed steam. Elsewhere, giant arms made of grime-covered metal and bristling with tools moved with precise, eerie efficiency. They lifted components from the pathways with exacting accuracy, assembling intricate devices that whirred to life as soon as they were completed.
Sparks flew from grinding wheels. Furnaces roared with an intensity that could only be matched by Agnete at her highest, though he couldn’t feel them from this side of the portal. Small, boxy carts zipped along narrow rails as they carried more materials throughout the world. Black tar spewed from the open end of a pipe in brief yet intense spurts. Flames at the top of narrow towers burned bright, lighting the horizon.
There were creatures there as well. Monsters, more like. High in the air, he could see a pair of those lightning serpents patrolling about, the crackling electricity on their backs was blatantly obvious against the black clouds in the sky. Neither seemed to have noticed the open portal just yet.
Other creatures moved about. He was pretty sure that they were living beings… but they could well be more artificial constructs. Human-like creatures fully enclosed in tight-fitting suits. They carried tools that emitted a multitude of lights as if they were covered with dozens of tiny glowstones. They seemed to oversee the operation of the machinery around them, walking along on high catwalks that crisscrossed above, around, and between the moving pathways and turning gears.
There was so much to see, so much movement in every speck of Arkk’s vision that he felt utterly overwhelmed. Every time he looked back over a spot that he had already moved on from, he saw something new there. One of the buildings was even moving on massive treads like it was trying to copy a Walking Fortress.
He was far from the only one overwhelmed. It took effort, but he dragged his gaze back to his employees. They were all staring, most with wide eyes and equally wide mouths. The only ones somewhat unaffected were those who had been part of Olatt’an’s expedition. They had obviously seen the other side before and even they still stared.
Agnete started to step forward. Arkk held her back with a much firmer hand on her shoulder.
“Let the lesser servant go first,” Arkk said, looking over to where a servant bubbled and glopped. One of its eyes burst, only to be replaced by a fresh one. In the new eye, he saw mild resignation as he gave the command for it to move forward.
The moment the servant crossed over the threshold, the entire atmosphere on the other side changed. First, mounted atop a massive moving gantry, a spherical orb rushed through the air. A single ray of off-yellow light danced in the smoggy air. As the gantry came to a stop in front of the portal, metal plates on the orb constricted, tightening the beam of light to a thin ray that swept over the lesser servant.
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The eye-like orb stared for just a moment.
Spinning red lights lit up at the corners of every building, several of the nearby mechanical arms and moving pathways jerked to a stop, and the two lightning serpents turned and plummeted from the sky. The more human-like figures on the catwalks stopped and turned toward the portal, stared for a moment, and then immediately took off in hasty sprints toward the nearest building.
Arkk didn’t even get a chance to try to pull back the lesser servant before a bolt of electricity splattered it across the smooth surface on the other side of the portal. The serpent that hadn’t fried the servant slithered through the portal high in the air. It opened its metal maw as lightning coursed up and down its spine.
But it didn’t get a chance to attack. The portal structure was low enough that Dakka, leaping even in her armor, managed to bisect it with her scythe. The two halves crashed to the ground.
If the serpents had any sort of self-preservation instincts, the second one didn’t show it. It came through the portal on the tail of the first, stopped over the assembled crowd of soldiers like the first, and promptly got bisected by Raff’el’s scythe as he copied Dakka’s attack. With Dakka’s team here, it seemed the greatest threat they posed was their bodies landing on someone.
“Excellent work you two,” Arkk called out. “Keep ready. We don’t know if there are more.”
He couldn’t see any others, but he could only see one side of the portal. There could be an entire swarm of them behind the portal or more on their way. It wasn’t like he could see all that far with the massive buildings and columns of black smoke. The red spinning lights were still running and none of the humanoids had returned, still hiding. If Arkk could just convey to them that he had come in peace…
With a small sigh, he summoned up another lesser servant and directed it through the portal. It didn’t die instantly, which he took as a good sign, though that mechanical eye mounted on the gantry stared and stared. He had it move around a little on the large circular platform that surrounded the portal. It was about the only space on the other side that wasn’t in motion.
“I’m going to take a quick step over, just to see what I see,” Arkk said when the servant managed to survive for a good three minutes. He took a breath and chanted a brief spell. “Xel’atriss Pargon Bankorok Santak Pargon.”
A swirling void wrapped around Arkk, curling tight against his skin. It let him see out, but it was a bit hazy. This was a perfected version of the spell that had taken Zullie’s eyes. It called upon Xel’atriss, Lock and Key’s dominion over barriers and separation to effectively cut Arkk off from the rest of the world, though only partially. It should keep him safe—it worked on most magic and all physical weapons—though they had never actually tested it against lightning. Or the shadow scythes, for that matter.
Testing it was, unfortunately, a bit dangerous. With it wrapped around his skin, there wasn’t much margin for error. If something pierced the shield, it would pierce him too. He couldn’t even have Priscilla use it to test stronger weapons against her tougher body. Thus far, no one had been able to cast it without instantly collapsing aside from Arkk. The drain on their magic was just too great. And he couldn’t cast it on anyone else, it was a personal spell only.
At least she had worked out a better incantation. It wasn’t as short as Electro Deus, but it wasn’t as long as modern magic.
The moment Arkk stepped through the portal, he staggered in shock.
There were three things that the barrier did not stop that they knew of. It didn’t stop light, allowing him to see. It didn’t stop sound, allowing him to hear. And it didn’t stop air, allowing him to breathe.
All three hit him at once.
The lights, he had expected. There were flashing and blinking lights everywhere in the other world, on buildings, on catwalks, on the moving pathways, and on the machinery. Flames topped tall towers and massive furnaces ate raw ore, belching out sparks and more flame.
The light of the gantry’s eye settled over him, though it did nothing to attack or flee. It simply watched.
While he had expected the lights to be a little more intense, he hadn’t expected the sound.
The noise was overwhelming—a cacophony of clanging metal, hissing steam, and the rhythmic thumping of pistons. Arkk clapped his hands over his ears, but with the barrier in place, he couldn’t quite seal the sound off. Not that he expected it would have helped. The whirring of movement around him and the crackling of electricity somewhere beyond where he could see was noisy to the point that it surely would have made it through his hands. The entire place vibrated like it was some kind of living being. A massive mechanical cat purring loud enough to shake him apart. To top it all off, a truly deafening whining drone heightened in pitch before falling and then rising again, incessantly whining as it oscillated.
And even the sound was nothing compared to the smell.
A potent blend of metallic tang, caustic musk, and acrid burning coal and hot metal. Arkk had once thought that being in the Darkwood alchemist’s workshop had been the worst smell he had ever experienced but even Morford’s most potent concoctions were like flowers compared to this. The smell alone left a greasy, oily feel that lingered in the back of his throat. The occasional whiff of sulfur in the smoke only made his nausea worse.
Arkk wasn’t sure how long he stood there, gaping in shock at the sounds and smells. It could have only been seconds and yet, staggering back into the Underworld coughing and sputtering, it felt like it had been an eternity since he breathed fresh air. The air in the Underworld wasn’t exactly the kind found on a crisp morning in a lush forest and yet he couldn’t get enough of it.
He fully emptied his lungs, canceling the protective spell as he did so, and drew in a completely fresh breath of air until he couldn’t breathe in anymore. The air was stale but somehow oh-so-refreshing.
“Are you alright?” Agnete asked, looking concerned.
“Fine,” Arkk said before breathing a few more times, just to make sure he wasn’t about to throw up. “I don’t know that we can…” He trailed off, breathing again. Air certainly was nice, wasn’t it? He steadied himself and shook his head to try to focus.
“I don’t know that we can do anything over there,” Arkk continued. “It’s worse than the Silence. The air is vile. I’d rather stick my face over a forge’s flume and breathe nothing but that for a week than take another breath inside that place. And the sound…” He wiggled a finger in his ear, opening his jaw as wide as it could before he heard a popping sound.
Agnete stared at him, keeping up her usual impassive look but tainted with a hint of disappointment. She looked away, frowning at the portal. “Would it be alright if I stepped over?”
Arkk waved a hand toward the portal as Ilya found her way to his side, lightly patting his back. She could see for herself.
Agnete gave him a curt nod and, hands tense at her sides, she stepped up alongside the lesser servant on the smooth platform through the portal.
Arkk narrowed his eyes at the bubbling slop of oily tendrils. The lesser servant didn’t seem to care about the air or the noise. The traitor. It could have warned him.
Agnete, on the other side of the portal, appeared to be handling the situation much better than Arkk had. She stood straight, clearly wrinkling her nose but not hacking and coughing. Maybe the forewarning helped. Or maybe her avatarness was helping out in a way that Arkk lacked. She even took another step forward as the gantry eye swiveled over to focus on her.
As soon as it did, the other world changed. The red lights stopped spinning, going dark again. The gantry shifted, its gears twisting in a rapid spin. The orb dropped down, lowered on a series of thick black cables. Agnete tensed as the orb came to a stop directly in front of her. A glowing pane of glass on its surface constricted like an eye, staring directly at her. It waited a long moment before shifting its gaze to the portal.
The membrane popped like a soapy bubble, leaving a space in the crystalline archway.
The shock wore off quickly. He could still see Agnete if he followed her employee link. She was unharmed. So far. Several more of those lightning serpents were coming in from above, but they weren’t attacking just yet. Shaking his head, Arkk turned.
“Zullie,” he called out. “What happened?”
“I… I don’t know! It wasn’t supposed to do that!”
“Get it open again,” Arkk ordered.
Zullie hesitated before rushing up to the crystalline archway. Even sightless, she quickly found the runes in the crystal as if she could see them without trouble. She ran her fingers over the nearest before moving to the next. Calling over the Protector, she got it to lift her where she could continue inspecting the higher ones. It took a few minutes, the entire time Arkk sat tense as the serpents drew closer to Agnete.
Agnete didn’t look all that upset with the situation. She stared up at the serpents, wary but unconcerned. Flames coiled between her fingers, but she wasn’t attacking. They weren’t attacking either.
Did they recognize her for what she was?
“Nothing is wrong with it,” Zullie said as she finished the inspection. Her voice was strained, worried. Which weren’t usually emotions Arkk would have ascribed to Zullie if something went wrong with one of her experiments. Even losing her eyes, after she had recovered enough to speak, she had sounded… excited with what she had learned. “It should be active. This portal is fine,” she said, this time with some amount of relief. “The only reason it isn’t working… if it got cut off at the other end.”
Arkk pressed his lips together. Glaring at Zullie didn’t help. Both because it wasn’t a productive action and because Zullie, though she could somehow see the runes on the portal, couldn’t actually see him. “Solutions?”
“We… know the planar coordinates to the Anvil now. We could try to force a connection to a different portal just like we changed the Fortress Al-Mir-to-Underworld portal to get here.”
“How long?”
“Without you able to give me the coordinates like you did last time? It’ll take a bit… If we can scry over there… I wasn’t able to take magical level readings, but if it was like the Silence rather than the Underworld, they might be low enough that scrying works.”
Arkk closed his eyes. The crystal balls were back at Elmshadow and Fortress Al-Mir. “Get the portal connected to the fortress again,” he said, trying not to snap. “As fast as possible.”
Agnete was alright for now. The large orb hanging from the gantry had moved aside, leaving a short opening to one of the moving pathways. The serpents seemed like they were escorting her toward it, though she was somewhat reluctant to get aboard.
The lesser servant was still over there. It was still alive at Agnete’s side. For a moment, Arkk debated. He could command it to stay by the portal. Perhaps it could repair it on that end if the serpents continued to leave it alone. There was no guarantee of that given how the first servant had fared. And that assumed this portal could even be repaired. It was also his only method of communicating with Agnete. He could see her through the link but without the servant, he might not be able to direct her toward another portal if they got one working.
Agnete reached the moving pathway. She hesitated but stepped up.
Arkk had the servant coil its tendril around her leg, following her on as the pathway began moving, carrying them off through the massive machine that was the Anvil of All Worlds.