The top of the volcano was a sight to see. Without any clouds to block the view, it seemed like the entire island was visible from the snow-dusted peak. Several dome-shaped buildings which Waia identified as observatories were scattered around the dormant caldera, their once-white sides now covered in graffiti following their abandonment.
Waia pointed to a spray-painted message particularly high up on one of them, which read: ‘WE’RE IN CHARGE NOW’. “I made that one a couple years ago, before things settled down. Lots of people have started making the trip up here after this place was abandoned. It’s starting to become a rite of passage for people on the island, I guess.”
Quet pulled out a stone, held it out over the pit of the caldera, and squeezed. The stone emitted a faint pulse of silvery light before quickly dimming. “Yeah, there’s some residual portal magic up here. More recent than I was expecting. Gimme… bu-buh…” She made a quick estimate of the caldera’s circumference. “Ten minutes to set this up.” She pulled out several additional stones and got to work laying them around the pit.
The other four waited by a nearby observatory while Quet walked around the pit. Inside the building, the barest skeleton of a camp had been set up, only to be seemingly abandoned soon after. It appeared that the band of monsters who had tried to conquer the island had faced more resistance than they were anticipating, and had gone back after realizing how hard their job would be.
Waia used a rusted ladder on the side of the building to clamber to the top while Mark, Horan and Omet stepped inside. Waia’s boots shaking the outside wall produced a faint echo inside the one-room building.
Mark leaned against a wall. “Well, this is our last chance to back out. I haven’t seen much of the Down below, but Horan says it can really ruin your day.”
“Honestly?” responded Horan. “Can’t really get much worse than dealing with an army of smart Joeys. Hopefully. I would assume.”
Omet shrugged. “Well, we can’t exactly turn around now. Besides, how hard can this be? We’re four Primoi and a Mark, we’ve got this handled.”
“Alright, but I’m gonna request for that to be put on your gravestone.” Mark decided to head outside and watch Quet work.
-
Waia climbed to the top of the observatory and sat at the top of the roof, one hand resting on the telescope. Now that she was comfortable and in a good spot, she used the afternoon sun’s position to figure out where north was.
Even with the clear weather and her superior eyesight, Waia could only just make out Honoka’a, brushing up against the blue expanse of the sea.
Waia looked over at Quet, who was only about a third of the way through laying out her network of stones. A short distance from the observatory, Mark was sitting on a rock and watching the Aztec work. Waia decided that she had enough time to do a little something, pulled out her sketchbook and started drawing the vista in front of her.
This always helped her think, just observing and recreating a view. But this time around, that extra space for thought wasn’t particularly welcome. She wouldn’t be there for some time, it seemed. What if the Joeys came back? What if something happened and the town didn’t have her to keep it safe again? What if Ivy was there when it happened? The other Primoi on the island could only cover for her so much. What if there was a-
Waia shut her book and put the pencil back inside the spiral binding. That was enough anxiety for one day, thank you. As much as she would have liked to keep the memory of the scene, now was not the right time to do it. There was just too much going on.
She heard a foom come from behind her, followed shortly by the faint sound of “It’s… ali-ive!” coming from Quet. Turning around, Waia saw that the rim of the volcano’s caldera had been swallowed up by a slightly luminous green concave disk, like an impossibly large neon tarpaulin. Dozens of pinpricks of more intense green surrounded the portal, thin lines of light feeding into it. Waia took a photo of the village before sliding down the roof to the ground. Maybe she could draw it later.
Quet hurried inside the observatory, followed shortly by Mark and Waia. “Alright everyone, we’re good to go. And things are actually looking up for us. The portal’s green, the color of my own personal thaumic resonance. That means that I actually had enough to open a normally-functioning pan-connective gateway instead of just recreating the portal opened by the Joeys. So, that’s lucky for us.”
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Mark looked at the other three Primoi in the room, who seemed just as confused as he was. “...Lucky how?”
“Right, right, simplify.” Quet slapped her forehead. “Apparently, I could make a portal that can take us anywhere in the Down Below, that’s the regular kind. I was expecting to just make one that could only take us to where those Joeys opened it up.”
The other four nodded acknowledgment. Waia limply raised an arm. “Can we go to where the Joeys are anyway?”
“If we know where exactly in the Down Below they are, yeah.”
Mark shot Waia a glare. “Even if we could, we’re not going to go out of our way to counterattack against the armed and dangerous monsters in their home territory. Why do I even need to make that clear to you people?”
Waia feigned offense. “Hey, who says that’s what I was suggesting?”
“Was it what you were suggesting?”
“...Well, yes, but maybe you people are just boring. You know, there’s an old saying among the Hawaiians about me.”
Quet leaned in. “Just a heads up, that portal will close by itself in roughly six minutes, so we should probably come to a consensus about where we’ll go pretty quick, since we didn’t have a chance to decide this beforehand. And if we go in without deciding, we just get spooted out somewhere random, and unless you four like being teleported into the ground, that’s not ideal.”
“Right, yeah.” Horan made for the observatory exit. “We should just head over to my dad’s house, he lives down there and can probably help us figure out a better plan.”
“Well, it’s something.” Mark followed Horan outside. “Hopefully we won’t end up in the rock-turtle forest again this time.”
-
“You know, for a crazy magic monster dimension, this place gets old fast.” Mark lay on his stomach, failing to catch his breath as he was jostled around on the back of the rock-tortoise he was lying on. If the smell of the moss-hair was any indication, this was the same one he had landed on during his first visit to the Down Below. Perhaps the two of them were connected somehow. Weren’t these things once people who died? Maybe it was someone Mark knew in life…
“Guys, I think I’ve got an iron deficiency, I’m fantasizing about having a soul bond with this turtle. I need more peas.”
“You’ve been living off of canned scraps for three years, you’re deficient in everything.” Horan pushed Omet up to stop them from hitting their head on the tree he was sitting against. “And you always say you need more peas.”
Quet weakly reached up and grabbed Mark’s dangling arm to pull him off of the Joey before it ambled off into the woods. “Yeah, actually, your diet must be all out of whack. We need to fix that before you get scurvy or something.”
Waia tried to get to her feet, only to immediately stumble and land on her face. “Okay, this is… My body is not having a good time right now.”
Horan nodded. “Yeah, portals are like that. Give it a few seconds and you’ll be fine.” He looked up. “It’s crazy that even though there’s meant to be some margin of error, we ended up in… Where’s Dad’s house?”
Mark looked up from his current seat on Quet's lap. Sure enough, instead of the two mountains framing the sky, the view above was completely empty, containing nothing but stark gray nothingness. Lamius’ home was also missing by association. “Wait, yeah, where are we?”
Horan staggered to his feet, just barely managing to maintain his balance. “Why is it, that every single time I try to do something, it either winds up pointless, or goes horribly-”
“Oh, you brought more friends.”
Taken off-guard, Horan launched himself into the air like a cat seeing a cucumber, pulling his limbs away from the source of the unexpected voice as he hovered motionlessly mid-air. Lamius emerged from the undergrowth, chuckling. “Oh, sorry if I scared you. You can come on down, I won’t bite.”
Mark disentangled himself from Quet and got up. “Oh, hey, Lamius. New guys, this is Horan’s dad. He’s cool, I guess.”
Horan lowered himself to the ground. “Hear that, Dad? Pretty high praise, coming from h-” He stopped when Lamius wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug, then continued a few seconds later without making an attempt to leave his father’s grip. “Could you please let me finish one sentence?”
Once he got all the hugging out of his system, Lamius let go. After a brief loving stare at Horan’s eyepatch, he gripped his son’s shoulders again. “Do you have any idea how much you’ve scared me?! It’s been months! How did dealing with Thel go?”
Horan thought back to the destruction of the Greeks’ home, Thel’s slaughter of several Primoi trying to stop him, and his own brush with death. “...Yeah, it was fine. Wrapped that whole thing up. Anyway, there’s an even bigger problem now, because it never stops. Also, what happened to your house?”
“Well, I’m… I’m glad you managed to stop that before it got out of hand. And I guess you can discuss the details of whatever new thing is coming out inside, once you introduce me to these new friends of yours.” Lamius turned around and motioned for the five to follow. “As for the house, we’re on it. The roof, that is. Five thousand years will do that to a property, it’s honestly a miracle that I’ve managed to keep the house together at all. There are some stairs over here.”
Omet was the first to begin following him. “So, is that tortoise thing your pet? What’s that like? What’s its diet? Hang on, let me write up a list, I’ve always wanted to do this.” They stopped and fumbled around in their pockets for a brief moment before Mark pushed them back in Lamius’ direction.