[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]
I plunge through the portal, entering the Lesser Rift.
Stepping through a wound in reality never gets any less unsettling. No amount of familiarity or practice prepares you for the cold, oily feel of forcing your way through colliding dimensions. I’m not sure that I want more familiarity with these unnatural scars, but if I’m ever going to find Tem, then this practice is invaluable.
I shudder on the other side, abruptly wishing that I had a bar of soap and a hot bath. The compulsion to scrub myself clean is nearly overwhelming. I rub the feeling back into my fingers, and my mind drifts back to the supplies on Ash’s boat. When I’m back out, I’ll buy every cleaning agent known to man. If I return in one piece.
Memories of my visit to the Greater Rift come screaming back, and I find myself ducking in fear, my eyes instinctively searching upward to scan the skies for threats. Nothing presents itself, and I recall dimly that even Tem was shocked at beholding the monstrosity floating through the skies. The chance of seeing another behemoth, particularly in this smaller, less dangerous Rift, is almost nil.
Nonetheless, I slip behind a dull grey boulder flecked with black quartz and get my bearings. Breathing soft and low, I crouch down for dubious cover while I take stock of my surroundings, looking over the utterly alien black and green landscape. Where are the reds and oranges from the last Rift? I had no idea they possessed such variety.
There. Something catches my eye off to the right. I stop my frantic scanning, locked onto the prone shapes that don’t belong in the Rift. My hands are shaking as I approach, sick to my stomach with the certainty of what I’ll find.
Humans. Dead humans.
I creep closer, on the watch for oncoming monsters, but even as my eyes roam around the environment to scout for threats, my attention remains fixed on the bodies of the fallen. They are wearing matching, pale blue robes. Scabbards with a simple crest: a river flowing through the outline of a sharp, deep canyon. Light armor to protect their vitals. I swallow hard. I think I’ve discovered what happened to the missing town guards.
Their armor didn’t do any good against the Crimson Crabs. The metal is torn apart like a cheap tin can after a rabid dog chews it open to get a treat. Deep, bloody gashes cover them in patterns that are all too familiar—they match the shape of the claw cut on my leg.
I count the bodies, closing their eyes and covering their wounds with the tattered edges of their cloaks. Five fallen. My own eyes squeeze shut for a moment as I honor the heroic dead.
I wonder if they patrolled the town in pairs? The new thought energizes me, breaking me out of my sudden, morose bout of lethargy. Maybe this doesn’t have to end in tragedy. If these brave men and women came in here to stop the monster incursion, operating as a six-person squad, then maybe there’s one more guard still alive somewhere out here. He or she might need my help.
I borrow a spear from one of the deceased guards, murmuring a few awkward words of apology for stealing from the dead, and march onward. From what I’ve learned about Rifts since my first unwitting delve with Tem, there’s usually a source of power deeper in the Rift. If I can find it and destroy it, then the portal will close shortly thereafter—ideally, I’ll destabilize it but still have enough time to get back out.
I tilt my head side to side, cracking my neck. I don’t want to risk getting trapped inside. There’s no other way to make sure everyone is safe, though. I have a task to complete.
As I look for hiding spots, darting from outcropping to outcropping, I’m struck by just how empty this place seems. Did all the monsters already invade the trading village? Did we already do the hard extermination work? Hope begins to blossom in my heart, but I cut it off at the roots. There’s nothing more poisonous than dearly cherished hope that doesn’t come to fruition. I have to deal with what is, not merely with what I want.
Unlike the Greater Rift, this Rift doesn’t feel as oppressive. I’m able to breathe more freely. The sky is full of chaos above, but it seems strangely subdued. Perhaps a lesser Rift is limited, somehow, in a way the Greater Rift is not. That was vast, primordial, unbound. This is merely big and scary, but I don’t get the terrifying sense that simply standing here puts my soul in constant danger of being devoured. That doesn’t mean that I’m not keeping watch for more monsters, though.
Rolling hills to my left fuzz into mist. The world of the Rift ends over there. I am sure of it. Before me, rugged cliffs rise without the usual prelude of foothills. Unnaturally sheer and smooth, the cliffs appear impassable except for a narrow outline of a trail threading its way up the slope in endless switchbacks. I hope I don’t have to walk that path.
I turn to the right, taking in the vista, and stiffen in fear as my [Manasight] picks up a new threat. Crouching low, I sneak through the crags as I work toward a visual. I stop on the edge of a narrow canyon, surveying the Rift from my perch.
A dog-like beast with hunched shoulders and spotted brown fur stalks by me. Its focus is elsewhere, however. It prowls through a tangled maze of sharp-edged ravines and jumbled boulders, its black, spikey mane standing up in a bristling display of aggression. I look ahead to track its prey, and the sight of a bleeding, shuffling figure in pale blue robes freezes me in my tracks as my heart skips a beat.
Gripping my spear with the blade angled up and ahead of me, I break into a panicked run. “Hey, ya big mangy mutt! Leave that guard alone!”
Hackles rising, the monster turns to face me. A long snout full of curved teeth opens wide as its jaw distends. The pony-sized dog-thing—perhaps a form of hyena, I wonder—howls with the lust of the hunt, then bounds toward me in high, arcing leaps. Its heavy muscles ripple under its matted fur as it launches over piles of stone and rushes at its new prey: me.
I plant the butt of my spear in a crack in the stones, summoning my mana. Leveraging my burgeoning understanding of willpower and intent, my thoughts turn toward sturdiness and unyielding defenses. Maybe I can stop its charge.
The mana feels slick and unresponsive, like I can’t get hold of it to shape it to my will. Panic makes my hands shake at my repeated failure. I have no real resonance with the concept of an indomitable bulwark. I’m not a [Shield Warrior] or a [Stalwart Defender]. Mikko would be a better fit to pull off a desperate move like this, despite not having a defensive Class.
Gritting my teeth, I force a poor connection anyway. It’s horridly wasteful and inefficient, but I don’t have time to come up with a better plan. My mana spools out of my channels and suffuses the spear as best it can just before the slavering beast arrives.
Snarling with instinctual superiority, the hyena glows with virulent, pulsing mana in my [Manasight]. Its Skill ignites, and it surges across the final several dozen paces between us in a terrifying flash, its maw wide with the anticipation of consuming me.
I brace for impact.
A massive boom echoes throughout the Rift. My entire mana pool gushes out of me like water dumped out of an upended bucket, draining me instantly. The raw, crudely-shaped energy funnels into the spear, momentarily strengthening it. The force of the collision rips the weapon from my grasp; as soon as it leaves my hands, it explodes into ten thousand splinters.
The shockwave of the sundered spear flings me backward a dozen paces, flipping me over and smashing me into a rock. My chest compresses on contact, and dull snaps like twigs breaking underfoot sounds out as a few of my ribs cave in. I bounce into the air, hit the ground hard, knocking the wind from my body, and tumble away from the beast.
Pain inundates my entire body. A white line of fire and torment traces along my rib cage, making each gasping breath pure agony. I fumble for my knife, recalling in a daze that I tucked away in my belt at the last moment before the hyena slammed into me and my world shattered into a thousand fragments of pain and confusion.
I hiss in a sharp breath, forcing myself to crane my head and look, fighting off the wave of pain and nausea that accompanies the movement. The monster drags itself toward me on three legs. The last one is missing, torn from its body by the force of our collision. A gaping hole in its chest is pouring blood, but it’s not dead.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
How? That’s the toughest monster I’ve ever fought solo. Despite the stabbing pain in my side with each ragged inhale, my breathing accelerates as the beast drags itself closer. I’m still in the thick of things. Our fight’s not over yet. I grip the hilt of my glass knife more tightly, watching the hyena’s slow, inevitable advance, and prepare for the end.
A flash of sky-blue catches my eye. A silver sword sings.
Hope rises in my chest for one glorious moment as I watch the final guard’s courageous attack. Then the blade bounces off the hyena’s thick fur. The monster unleashes a low, rumbling growl and spins, lashing out at the guard with its intact foreleg.
I wince, expecting a spray of gore, but the monster slips on the loose scree without the support of its missing leg, and the swipe goes wide. It resets itself with a snarl and strikes again. My eyes grow wide with shock; the guard sways like a flexible tree in the wind, her long blond hair trailing behind like the waving branches of a slender willow. She avoids the claws, smoothly flips her grip on the sword, and rams it point first into the monster’s now-exposed throat.
This time, the blade bites deep. An arterial jet of blood soaks the ground blue-black. The blood sizzles, eating at the rock where it lands. As before, the guard twists out of the way of the threat gracefully, not caught in the spume of the beast’s lifeblood, and she crouches in wait, her hands lifted up in a martial stance.
“Run. Mana surging. It’s gonna attack,” I croak as loudly as I can, forcing the words of warning out through bleeding lips and my bruised throat.
She glances at me, surprise etched on her face, but she backs off from the monster as it gathers a final swirl of energy, ready to kill itself to take us out.
A quick series of steps brings her to my side, where she peers at my tattered tunic and lacerated chest with concern. She probably thought I was dead already—and truth be told, I’m likely still on death’s door. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, as though she’s getting ready to run away and leave me to die. Then she growls, low and guttural. She gestures to the beast, points at her throat, and shrugs helplessly.
“I’m out of mana,” I hiss at her between gritted teeth, annoyed at her dilly-dallying as I glance back at the hyena. “Get us behind that rock. Shield us.”
She nods curtly, grabs me under the shoulders, and drags me to the indicated rock only a moment before an explosion of mana ripples out from the hyena. The detonation is deafening; I slap my hands over my ears too late, wincing at the ringing. The suicidal blast shatters stone in the wake of its passing, sending stinging shrapnel in all directions and lacerating my face. Our rocky shelter cracks under the onslaught, but absorbs the worst of the explosion.
As the dust settles, I instinctively reach for my [Manasight] to scan the area for additional threats, but nothing happens. I’m drained bone-dry, as parched as a sun-baked desert, and I’ve already used my last mana draught. I’ll have to rely on this unknown guard to keep us both safe. Thankfully, she seems like the vigilant type, since she’s still alive.
“What happened? Crabs hit your squad? How did you get away?” I ask. Part of me shies away from reopening such a raw wound, but I need to know what happened—and if she’s willing to help me finish the job. I’m not in the right shape to close the Rift solo.
A stormy look crosses over her face. She peeks over the rock to see what happened to the monster, then smiles at me grimly as she confirms it's dead. She points to her throat, where a jagged, angry red scar looks newly-formed, and growls in frustration, shaking her head.
“Health tonic. Belt pouch,” I grunt, trying to roll over and reach the pouch pinned under my body. Every movement feels like raking hot coals over my fractured rib bones.
The unnamed guard puts a hand on my shoulder, stopping my struggling, and unclips the pouch for me. She digs through it for a moment, withdraws two tonics, and tears up a bit as she stares at the high quality potion. A deep, rattling breath seems to stabilize her mentally. She bites on the cork and yanks it out with her teeth. With a hard glint in her eyes, she greedily gulps one of the precious draughts. Her hands are shaking as she downs the bottle, but by the time she reaches the end of the tonic, she seems to have regained control of herself.
“Ahh, many thanks, stranger,” she rasps, swallowing a few times experimentally with a hand to her throat. “Bloody crabs overwhelmed us. Cut my throat. Drained the rest dry and left only empty husks.”
Favoring me with a tight smile, she pops the top off the other tonic and gently tips it down my throat. I almost choke on the healing liquid, but fortunately I don’t spit it out. The sharp knife edge of agony is slightly blunted by the healing tonic. I still need a [Healer]’s ministrations, but I’ll live. That’s better than I expected a few moments ago, so I can’t complain.
“Thank you,” I gasp when I finish drinking. I squeeze my eyes shut, collecting myself for a few moments before I smile. “If I may ask, how did you survive after all the crabs overran your team?” I ask, struggling to sit up with my back against the crumbling rock behind us.
She takes pity on my feeble attempt and hooks me under the armpits again, pulling me to a sitting position. The movements are still painful, but the tonic mutes the worst of it.
She steps back, hand on her hip. She sniffs. “Got a Skill to stop bleeding. Had to burn my best Skill to flee, though. I wish I could have taken them all with me, but I was always better at running away than saving people.”
“You saved yourself. And you saved me,” I say quietly, hoping she won’t take offense to my awkward comfort. “I know it’s not the same as saving your friends, but it means a lot to me all the same. If you don’t mind me saying so, I haven’t heard of a lot of town guards with Skills for getting away. You must be a specialist.”
“Not wrong. I wasn’t always a guard,” she says, her eyes downcast. With one finger, she taps her left cheek, showing me a spiderweb of scars. “Learned a lot about guards when I was on the other side of the law. Used to run away a lot. One day, I got in more trouble than I could handle. That’s how I got my escape Skill, for all the good it did me.”
She breaks off from her story, a sourness to her voice that tells me not to pry. I simply nod in encouragement, and we sit in silence for a while. For a long moment, she stares out over the Rift, not moving. When she meets my gaze, old troubles and forgotten horrors are stirring in the depths of her eyes, staring back at me. She smiles bitterly, then shrugs. “Guards bailed me. They offered me a way to shape up. I took it.”
“I closed their eyes. I . . . I hope they find rest,” I offer awkwardly, not knowing what else to say about the other guards. Based on what she just told me, they were probably her friends, not mere fellow guards. My gut twists as I picture my own coworkers, Lionel and the Linas, lying lifeless in the sand. I don’t think I’d handle it half as well as she’s handling it, whoever she is.
“My thanks,” she says. Her jaw works as she stares back the way I’d come, a haunted expression on her face.
“I’m Nur—Zebulun,” I stammer, forgetting my cover story for a moment. If she notices, she doesn’t seem to react. “Thank you for the help with that monster. I was a dead man without your timely intervention.”
“Nice to meet you, Zebulun.”
It occurs to me that I never asked her name, just brought up painful memories of the dead. I wince. “Uh, please forgive my lack of propriety. To whom do I owe my debt of gratitude?”
To my surprise, the guard snorts with laughter. “Who talks like that? You some big shot from the capital? Name’s Qiya. Friends call me Smoke, since I’m hard to hit and slip away right when people think they’ve got me. And you’re the one who did most of the damage to that beast back there. I should owe you!”
“Does this mean I can call you Smoke?” I ask, testing the waters of friendship.
“Sounds like,” she agrees, seeming to regain some energy. She holds out a hand.
I reach up and grasp her hand. “Pleasure to meet you. I just met someone outside of the Rift named Ash. And I already have a mentor named Ember. I’m not sure how I feel about this constant fire theme in my life right now, but you’re all right.”
Smoke scoffs. “Sounds like it’s just fated to be, Zeb.”
“Maybe so,” I acknowledge, nodding slowly. I grimace, shifting my weight against the boulder so I can speak without as much pain. “Can’t say I care for Zeb, but it’s not the worst as far as nicknames go.”
“You’re stuck with it now,” Smoke says, offering me a fragile smile. I’m not surprised to see her reaction. Anything to drive the bad memories away right now. Humor helps.
“Well, Smoke, here is the sum of it,” I say, laying out everything I know. “I’m not very mobile right now, but we can’t stay here. If we’re going to survive, and if your townspeople are going to survive, then we need to close the Rift.”
She meets my eyes and nods. “I’m in. What’s the plan, Zeb?”
“That . . . was easier to convince you than I thought,” I say with a small laugh. “I was about to launch into a big speech to try to convince you. All right. We need to destroy the energy source that let the Rift latch onto our realm. Without the core—a type of mana construct—acting as a bridge between dimensions, it will destabilize and unravel in a matter of minutes. Help me find the core. I will destroy it. You seem like you’re fairly fast, Smoke. You could get back out and tell everyone what happened.”
Her jaw takes on a hard set. “That’s dumb. I’m not leaving another person in this abyssal place. Let me help you back to the entrance and escape. Tell me where to go, and I’ll destroy the, uh, target thing while you’re tended by the town [Mender].”
“The core. We must find the core,” I remind her. “Without it, any hope of living is just a forgotten dream.”
“If this is a dream, it’s one I’d like to forget sooner rather than later. So let’s go kill that core,” Smoke says resolutely. “What's the secret to disabling it? Do I need impressive abilities like yours to stop it? Hope not. My Skills are all about evasion, escape, and quick movements. I’m not fancy with grand magics, like you.”
“Ah, well, that is legitimately the first time anyone has ever called what I do grand," I say with an embarrassed half-chuckle. “But the honest answer is that I have no actual idea. I was just going to stab it and hope for the best.”
“Wait. That’s it? Stab the magic thingie and hope it works? That is absolutely the worst stinkin’ plan I’ve ever heard in my entire life,“ Smoke says, crossing her arms with a shake of her head. She stares down at me in utter disbelief.
“What, do you have a better idea?” I challenge her, strangely defensive even though I’m in full agreement with her assessment of my plan’s validity.
Smoke’s cheek scrunches up as she grins at me with a lopsided smile on account of the scars. “As it turns out, I do.”