Jeremy squinted at the sunlight flashing at him through the swaying limbs. His eyes did not have time to adjust to the bright midday sun after the dim, fire-lit dungeon before he and the rest of the squad were herded away from the portal and into another containment area. It was also cordoned off by rope and was just the right size for them all to stand in while a woman instructed them to remove their uniforms and place them into bags held by people in hazmat suits.
There had been radio communication from Mwai to Warner, who kept the people on the other side of the portal informed of the proceedings throughout the entire operation. They knew to prepare for boots that still had the sludge from the experimented-upon imps in the treads and uniforms with splatter.
Jeremy followed the orders to leave his gloves on as he removed his helmet and his jacket. But before he got to his boots and pants, where the sludge from the corpses had actually gotten on his clothes, he paused to pull the notebook out of his pocket. There was a guy with a bag collecting the camera and other equipment from the soldiers. Jeremy used the flurry of activity as everyone stripped to rip out the extra copy of the spell from the scroll and tuck it into the waistband of his boxers. Then, he dropped the notebook into the bag with a smile.
Once they were left in only their boxers, they were herded into a large tent set up around several decontamination showers. Which meant the boxers were going to go, too. Jeremy watched one of the guys from Sargeant Warner’s team emerge from the shower in a pair of gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt.
“I almost didn’t believe we would be back.”
Jeremy glanced over to see Ashford looking at him.
“It actually was not too bad.” Ashford continued. He nodded over Jeremy’s shoulder to where a medic was performing a healing spell on McGraw’s arm. “Only one injured. The disease wasn’t much of a problem.”
So far, at least. They were still in the middle of decontamination, and they had been wading through the nasty stuff. Jeremy hoped the guy didn’t jinx them. He did agree that it had not been so bad for such an unknown situation, though. But they’d been lucky that everything inside was killable with a bullet.
Ashford scratched his chin and frowned at Jeremy, which made him realize he should probably respond. “Yeah, it went pretty well.”
“Neat trick you pulled with the shields, or whatever it was you were doing back there.” Ashford held his hands up to mime a shield over his head, like the one that Jeremy put up to prevent the imp from jumping on him.
“It came in handy,” Jeremy nodded. “You guys really should learn some magic like that if you are going to keep going into dungeons like this.”
“Are we really going to call them dungeons?” Ashford mused with an amused twist of his lips. Mwai came up behind him and slapped a hand on his shoulder. He’d already gone through the shower and was now dressed comfortably with a towel slung around his neck. Jeremy would bet he probably shouldn’t be interacting with the people who had yet to be decontaminated, but he certainly was not going to say anything.
“We have no idea if we’ll go into more of them, but we certainly don’t understand them yet, so we probably will,” Mwai said. “The whole structure fell apart behind us, but the portal is still there, so they have to figure that out. Could you show us how to make that shield like you did back there?”
The soldier running the showers pushed open the tent flap and called for someone else to go in. Jeremy lifted his hand and took a step in that direction. To Mwai, he said, “Sure. I’ll just need something to write with.”
It wasn’t too hard to make sure the piece of paper with the scroll spell stayed intact. Jeremy had to hand over his boxers to be put into a plastic bag, to go off and be burned probably, but the guy didn’t stand there and watch him strip, so he was able to tuck it into part of the outside structure of the free-standing shower where it remained until he stepped out, toweled off and changed into the set of clothes provided. Then he tucked the paper into the pocket of the sweatpants and pushed out of the tent.
Hale had appeared beside Mwai, who now waited with a notepad and pen.
“We need to go over to the portal so you can tell me if there is anything different about it,” Hale instructed. Mwai nodded and held out the notebook.
“Write down the instructions for the shield.”
“I think of it more as a barrier,” Jeremy told him as he took the notebook. Then, he drew out the runes and handed it back. “Just visualize these runes while thinking about a barrier. That’s all there is to it. You actually don’t have to visualize the runes. You just have to visualize the barrier – if you haven’t figured it out yet; magic turns out to be as simple as just visualizing that something will happen – but visualizing the runes will make it more foolproof.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.” Jeremy nodded. “Imagine a ball of fire, and you get a ball of fire.”
“They’ve been making it sound like a whole ritualistic mess that can blow up entire cities if you get it wrong.” Mwai frowned at the runes and shook his head.
“Some stuff is definitely like that.” Jeremy thought back to the spell that started this whole thing. “But not simple stuff. Although it can backfire, so it’s good to practice.”
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Mwai gave him an assessing look, then nodded. “Got it. Thanks for your help on the mission. It went more smoothly because of your help.”
“And I need his help…right now.” Hale butted in, waving Jeremy along as she turned and marched away. He followed, picking his way carefully over the forest floor in the slippers they’d given him, which were less than ideal for trekking through all this nonsense. As they walked, Hale spoke over her shoulder.
“I need you to look at the portal ASAP because we want to know what you see right after the structure within the dungeon collapses.”
Apparently, they really were calling it a dungeon. McGraw already seemed to have gotten the word out to everyone.
“Just like before, our instruments did not pick up anything,” Hale chatted as they walked. Everyone had removed their hazmat suits now that the contaminated clothes were packed away and milled about doing who knows what. “They’ve finally given up on trying to use the electromagnetic wave scanners, but we’re still keeping an infrared camera on it to see if there’s anything there.”
They stopped outside the rope, which once again prevented anyone from getting too close to the undulating blue energy.
“As you can see, it has not changed visually,” Hale said.
“The overlay looks the same, I think,” Jeremy told her. The runes looked the same as before, although he would have to compare them to their notes to be completely certain. But the color of the overlay remained the same, and there was still a single glowing ring around the entrance. He cocked his head to the side.
“Do you think it would still be possible to go through it?” He asked. “Even though there is nothing on the other side now.”
“We don’t really understand what is on the other side,” Hale countered. “It might not be nothing. Could just be empty space from the way you all described it.”
“If it’s just empty space, then that is nothing,” Jeremy huffed. Hale side-eyed him and shook her head in disbelief.
“There could be plenty of stuff in the empty space,” She argued. “And all that structure had to come from somewhere. It’s not like it suddenly appeared out of nothing.”
Jeremy hummed in agreement. “What do you think the purpose of this thing is? Like, does it just exist to pump out monsters into the world? That doesn’t make much sense to me. There has to be a reason why it is here….why that space is connected to this area.”
“Those are questions I don’t even know how to begin answering.” Hale sighed, and she held the clipboard against her chest so she could fold her arms over it. “And maybe it doesn’t have a purpose. I mean, magic is now real. Maybe everything doesn’t have an explanation.”
“Come on,” Jeremy scoffed, turning toward her with raised brows. “You’re a scientist. You can’t think like that. Magic just seems magical to us because we don’t understand it yet. I’m sure everything works within certain rules. We just haven’t figured them out yet. I’m sure that the dungeon is here for a reason. You just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Hale turned toward him as well. “You know, you’ve got a pretty intellectual perspective of all this. What did you go to school for?”
“Oh, I dropped out. Never finished my degree, so it doesn’t matter.” Jeremy waved her off. “Have you tried throwing a rock through it?”
“What?”
“A rock.” Jeremy bent down to root around in the blackened earth until he found a rock about the side of his fist. “Have you tried to throw a rock into the portal?”
“Uh?” Hale tapped her fingers against the clipboard. “No. Why would we do that?”
“Or what about a camera?” Jeremy tossed the rock into the air and caught it as he thought. “Send a robot with a camera in there like they do on Mars and stuff.”
“We tried that originally,” Hale said. “But there were some issues with controlling the robot through the portal, so it didn’t work out.”
Jeremy hummed again in thought. Then he drew his arm back and tossed the rock at the blue energy. Instead of being absorbed into the plasma-like entrance, it passed through as if the undulating energy was a hologram, then landed on the ground with a soft thud and poof of ash. Jeremy brushed his hands together to knock off some of the black soot on his fingers from picking up the rock.
“Huh,” he said.
“That’s noteworthy.” Hale propped the clipboard against her stomach and jotted something down. She checked her watch and made a note of the time next to whatever she wrote. “Thanks.”
“So, the structure on the other side collapsed, which caused the entrance to…what…close?” Jeremy mused. “Maybe it is closed for reconstruction.”
“Or maybe it is fading away.” Hale countered.
“Guess we’ll find out.”
Mwai gathered everyone by the tents as they were getting ready to leave for a quick debriefing. After, they climbed into the trucks once again and rambled back down the road. This time, the bumps in the road that jolted Jeremy violently out of his seat felt more taxing, but he did not have the energy to feel irritated by the ride. The rest of the guardsmen were even more energetic than when they first climbed the road early that morning.
This time, they also tried to draw Jeremy into their conversation. They asked questions about how to produce the barriers, what other spells Jeremy knew, and how on earth he ended up going into the dungeon with them in the first place. He showed them how to make a barrier and how to fill their cupped hands with water, then figured they could figure out the rest themselves for now.
When they got back to the command tent, Mwai was swept away by Captain Byrne and others who wanted a full report, but the rest of the squad was left to their own devices for the rest of the day. Jeremy picked up his wallet, room key, and other stuff that they’d stored in the command tent for him and headed straight for the hotel room, intent on taking a nap.
The room was empty, aside from Atticus. She materialized out of some dark corner to leap upon the bed and look haughtily at him while she stretched. He sat down beside her and brushed his fingers over the little claws that poked out of her toes as she stretched.
Now that he was back in his room and this morning was over, he no longer felt tired. He could not believe it had only been half a day because, in his mind, he’d been preparing for something much more. But it was only midday now, judging from how high the sun was in the sky. He did not feel much like going to sleep.
Instead, he stood and went over to Zanie’s bed to see where she’d left the book. It was right where one might expect, in the top drawer of the bedside table. One of the cardstock signs that had been left on their pillows when they first came into the room to inform them of the hospital’s green energy policy poked out of the top. Zanie must be using it as a bookmark to hold the place where she needed to continue scanning, so Jeremy made sure not to remove it as he started flipping through.
He settled on the other bed, piling all four pillows behind his back and crossing his stretched-out legs in front of himself to get comfortable. Atticus curled up into a little black circle beside his hip. On his thigh, he placed the piece of paper with the spell from the scroll so that he could look between it and the book. Then he started from the first page and began flipping through to look for the runes in the spell.