Our guides knocked on the main door as Ani and Ranch began to wind down from their morning hype. Cove was faster on his feet than I, reaching the door before I’d fully stood from my place on the couch.
Ninelithe, followed by Persephonix, paused in the entryway, glancing around as Cove or I would in a room Ani or Ranch had been in, checking for damages. There were none to discover, but rather than look satisfied, their expressions remained impassive at the realization.
Persephoenix’s purple silk robes shifted against Ninelithe’s forest green tunica as she moved, almost glimmering in the faint light. “It’s time for you to set up the portal.”
Ani, ever the brave soul, ducked under the bottom of Ninelithe’s robes and brushed against Ninelithe’s leg, letting his tail caress Ninelithe’s knee. Ninelithe jerked his leg back, though neither his face nor his center of gravity changed. Ani was unconcerned, moving to Ninelithe’s other leg. Ninelithe subtly retreated, rebelling against Ani’s affections. In the background, Persephoenix appeared slightly amused, her fangs very visible where her lips pulled back from her teeth.
Concerned, I called my cat back with a snap of my fingers. He reluctantly obliged, and I lifted him into my arms.
Ninelithe’s face twisted in displeasure as he looked down at Ani. “Your familiars are welcome to stay in this room. Someone will check on them.”
Ani nuzzled my neck, trying to bribe me into bringing him despite the hypocrisy of him abandoning me yesterday.
Persephoenix added, “As your familiars, they are also welcome to follow you. I know how strong the bond between familiar and mage can be.”
Ninelithe’s eyes narrowed and darted to Persephoenix, who met his gaze cooly.
Cove scooped up Ranch, draping her over his shoulders as his eyes bounced between our guides. “They’ll be coming with us today,” he said firmly. Persephoenix nodded her acceptance while Ninelithe spun on his heel, stalking out of the room. Ani dug his claws into my shoulders, attempting to drape himself over like Ranch was over Cove, giving me a multitude of scratches in the process.
Cove turned back toward his room to pick up his backpack when Persephoenix stopped him. “There’s no need to carry your luggage. You will have the opportunity to return here.”
Cove’s flingers lingered on the molding of the doorway as he absorbed the information. He gently pushed off. “Right.”
Where Cove was confused, I took it as another power play. A sign of their ‘generosity’ we should report when we got home of how benevolent the Agarthians were and how superior their society was.
They led us through the glittering streets once again onto the rear car of a train. We ate more of the simple foods they provided along the way, keeping our mouths shut on any suspicions we had of our guide’s intentions.
Our body language, however, was decidedly not silenced. They say that 70 to 93 percent of a conversation is non-verbal. If you’ve ever attempted to speak with someone in a language you don’t understand, you’d know how true that statement really is. We dialed that up to eleven as we communicated our thoughts.
I don’t think Ninelithe likes cats very much. Cove motioned.
No kidding. My face deadpanned. Persephoenix seemed amused, though.
Cove’s grin turned knowing and thorny.
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I shook my head. Although Persephoenix appeared amused by her husband’s disdain of cats, she’d only indicated a higher tolerance of our familiars, not a higher regard for them. Inviting them felt like playing with fire, but arguing about it with Cove here would give the two more ways to showcase their distaste for humanity.
The train took us away from the main plate and back to the outer edges, where we wound through the streets. As they had yesterday, the local Agarthians gave us a wide berth and scathing looks as we passed. Cove fell back, bumping his shoulder against mine to exchange an exasperated look. The behavior of the Agarthians wasn’t only offensive, but it felt almost childish of them. Like they were a child screaming over their bickering siblings, saying, “I’m better than you!” It was something Ember and I persisted in, but the behavior felt out of place for a race that was supposedly superior. Still, there was nothing to be done.
Curiously, as we drew closer and closer to the walls of the great cavern, I noticed the skin of the Agarthians grew lighter and paler as their eyes grew larger and darker. Their garments, too, were less colorful than those closer to the inner city. Soon, they resembled the traditional ‘gray alien’ stereotype. I filed the observations in the back of my mind as we continued, noting how the surroundings, too, grew less colorful, turning from a carefully crafted colorful city into a rough, cavern-like structure.
The discrepancies became even more evident as we entered a highly trafficked set of poorly lit tunnels expanding deeper from out of the city. The Agarthians scampered away from the spheres of light floating above us; however, we caught glimpses of their skinny, stick-like limbs as they left.
Cove and I exchanged a heavy look, though neither of us had the never to bring it up. A perfect civilization, indeed. I almost scoffed aloud. If this is what they meant by ‘no homelessness,’ I wondered what ‘no crime’ looked like to them.
The back of my neck prickled. I briefly wondered what Agartha decided was ‘poverty’ or ‘crime’ before deciding that, while I was here at least, I didn’t want to know.
Up ahead, Ninelithe’s stride straightened, and he said something in the Agarthian language to Persephoenix, who nodded fiercely.
Next to his side, Cove’s hand twitched, and he side-eyed me. He acknowledged my questioning look and mouthed later.
We walked on, using the same light spheres we’d used upon entering Agartha to reach a side tunnel. A diamond door sat at the end of the tunnel, once again engraved with the circle. Persephoenix and Ninelithe laid their hands on panels on either side and pushed open the door, allowing us entry to the room we’d be using for the construction of the portal.
They shut the doors behind us, trapping us in with them.
A crystal and candle chandelier hung in the middle of the ceiling, giving us enough light to work by. The flames flickered on the walls, casting eerie yet beautiful shadows against the striations and the inlaid stones. The spaciotemporal symbol was already carved into the floor, a strange, blue-green gem I’d never seen before inlaid in a raised silver platform.
Each of the beautiful, polished-stone walls was inlaid with the other magic-type symbols in different gems or stones. I pressed my hands against the warm and glowing amber that made up the physical magic symbol, trailing my fingers over the eternal butterflies trapped within.
“Butterflies and amber to represent physical change,” I guessed, looking to Persephoenix for confirmation, “What about the rest?”
She indicated the elemental magic emblem opposite the entry door, where blues, yellows, reds, and greens danced and shifted beneath the flickering lights. “A very special type of opal for the elements. Its colors cycle like fire, earth, water, and air,” her claws moved to point to the purplish mental emblem shining opposite where we were standing, “The stone of self-awakening, Tanzanite, used to open the third eye, for mental magic.”
Our attention all turned to the shades of blues and flecks of gold in the galaxy-like gem that was the spaciotemporal symbol in the raised silver platform. “And finally, a rare piece of carmeltazite for spaciotemporal magic. This one is a very special gem, harder than a diamond, and harvested from a multimillion-year-old meteor. We’ve noticed that carmeltazite is particularly adept at storing spaciotemporal magic, one that increases with age.”
“It certainly looks the part,” Cove noted, standing above the circle with a critical eye.
As I thanked Persephoenix for her explanation, I thought that it was a strange coincidence that the stone like space came from the stars. Fitting.
Cove knelt on the raised platform, motioning for me to do the same.
I mirrored him, kneeling on the abnormally warm silver and pressing my hands onto the galaxies formed in the stone below as Ani and Ranch sat like supervisors on the top step of the platform.
Then, we began.