Devlin normally was a patient man, or boy, according to Merlin, but his father was taking longer than normal. Out of boredom, he looked for the invisible tether and leaping eye. He reached out to the air above him when a circular medallion zoomed past him. It bounced, rolled, wobbled, and settled on the ship’s floor.
“What?” He reached for the object while reading its inscription. Golem?
A hand appeared in the air and took hold of Devlin’s outstretched wrist. Merlin! he thought. His face turned ashen. The hand was not his father’s, and it yanked him into the jaws of a dark portal.
The pitch blackness drowned him. He could not see his abductor or the animal that bumped repeatedly on his side. The spectral cold gnawed at his bones. A vise like grip held his wrist as he dangled like a rag doll hanging on the side of a galloping beast.
His shoulder had dislocated a few times. He did not know how, but it healed every time he cried out in pain. His feet never touched the ground.
Then, the animal made a sudden stop and his abductor threw him like a piece of trash into an expanding portal of light.
As the brilliance swallowed him, Devlin glimpsed a crown, no, three horns, on his abductor’s red forehead. He hit the ground, felt a snap on his back, and blacked out.
The god of chaos healed the apprentice as the portal closed. The young man would be unconscious until his return. He dismounted and dismissed the summoned beast. Araghast opened a new window in limbo and peered at Errt’s gate; waiting for the wizard to return.
Merlin leaped onto the Lotus, appearing at the front of the ship’s bow. The boy was not there to greet him. “Devlin!” His eyebrows drew together while scanning the open ocean. A metallic whirling sound behind him caught his attention. He turned and saw a “Rage Golem?”
His War Mage instinct had not dulled in his years in Errt. He quickly raised a magic shield to prevent being pummeled by his adversary’s gargantuan metallic fists.
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Rage Golems were not smart constructs. They were good at one thing; relentlessly attacking and destroying any living thing in its vicinity. Its fists hammered at the shield and at the Lotus, causing the tether to be severed. The damaged boat limped away from the door.
Merlin did not attack out of fear that Devlin was inside the Golem. The wizard wondered how a magical construct can function in Errt. Only he performed magic in this domain. His null ring glowed.
He touched the sigil on his stomach. His fingertips burned with a blue light. The sparks danced and wrapped the Rage Golem’s head in a sphere of water. Ba-dum. The orb confirmed Devlin was not inside the metal creature. Merlin curled his fingertips. The Golem’s head imploded.
The wizard said goodbye to the Lotus as it sank into the ocean. He solidified the water’s energy beneath his feet and walked on top of the water’s surface. He started the search for his son.
A moment ago.
The chaos god chuckled as the Golem went berserk on Merlin’s shield. Most wizards were not good in close combat, except for the War Mage. Araghast nodded with satisfaction. The construct kept Merlin preoccupied to close the Leaping Eyes, which made the gateways visible.
Araghast leapt and appeared next to the doors. The Gaeus entrance moved in a clockwise direction while the Errt gate rotated counter clockwise. The eyes aligned the apertures for passage to both worlds.
The god straddled the two doorways and grabbed the eyes with his hands. Dark Magic blasted from his palms and incinerated the eyes. He then placed his own untraceable seals, which gobbled and destroyed the Prison Department sigils. The two entrances slowly turned invisible.
He stepped into Gaeus and placed a random generator spell to free each door from its axis. From this moment, they would spin erratically on aimless paths and irregular speeds; never to align in the foreseeable future.
“Goodbye War Mage,” whispered the god as he stepped into Limbo.
Merlin wrapped a blue sphere in the Golem’s head.
“The mines are in place, my Lord,” greeted Retlub.
Present moment.
The warden stood in the middle of the vast ocean. His matter sensitivity was at its limit of a mile radius. He scanned the ocean’s bottom and surface, but there was no trace of his son.
“Scitte,” he cursed under his breath. The wizard looked behind him. The eyes and doors were nowhere to be seen. Did I get pushed that far away?
He touched the sigil on his stomach and the water rose beneath him. Merlin looked around him from the tower of water. He pursed his lips and used King’s sight. “Damnare!” He combined matter sensitivity and the sight with no success.
“Damnare!” He stood for a time. The wizard hoped and waited for a miracle. He teared up as he headed home to Warden’s Keep.