Rick stares blankly at the mess in front of him. Half a dozen barrels of chemicals, with warning labels indicating corrosive materials, mana poisoning hazard, and, just because it wasn’t dangerous enough, flammable substances. He glances at Bill Gadwall, who is scratching at his salt and pepper hair and peering at the barrels and pinching the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “I’m sorry Bill, I thought our duties were guarding a door.”
“Oh no, Rick. We’ve been promoted to hazard detail, on account of that complete cock-up in Asqualia. If those brutes down from that barracks on the third floor weren’t already dead, I’d be lining up to kill them myself for this.” Bill is now dressing himself in a power armor set with magical shielding to prevent most of the mana poisoning. Rick couldn’t help but notice the fabric was frayed, the particle counter for free radical mana wasn’t working, and the plating looked a little too thin to keep him from getting dosed with aetherial energy. Which was a gift from work that would keep on giving, in a way he didn't want.
“Bill, this is bullshit. We aren't hazmat detail.” He's putting on his protective gear, nevertheless, because the dragon with an enthusiasm for murder has requested they perform this duty, after getting annoyed at the lack of disposal of post-processed ore. “This isn’t in my job description, and I’m pretty sure I feel a tingling sensation already.”
“That’s anxiety, not mana exposure,” Bill assured him. “Besides, I’m more worried about the not-suspicious leaking fluid these barrels are filled with,” he pointed at a dribble of a green fluid coming out of the top of the barrel and put his aether counter to it. It failed to detect anything, so either it was broken…or they weren’t going to live long enough to collect on retirement benefits. “Well, shall we?”
Rick sighed reluctantly and grabbed the barrels with the forklift, while workers casually avoided the area on the processing area. Rick glowered at the indignity of this job. He was a security consultant. Working with a murderous diva dragon, who had just gotten herself beaten six ways to Sunday a couple of months ago, and weighed on her mood every single day. Luckily, his skill base was more than just guarding a door, and he guided the barrels onto a trolley for transport. “So, the verdict on our new duties?”
Bill shrugs lightly. “Beats guarding a door and waiting for the dragon on the other side to torch me. You’re so young Rick, this should be new and exciting! You smell that powdered mana crystal in the air, that’ll clog your lungs and give you magical cancer? That’s the exposure of vibrant life!”
“Magical cancer isn’t a thing. It’s like you were home-schooled, Bill,” Rick sighs as they guide the trolley through the factory, past busy workers, someone nearly getting crushed by a destabilized crystal falling from a cave wall, and three guards trying to contain a Narwellian shrieker. It looked like a bat, on steroids, and as big as a small car. They end up getting lacerated for their efforts chasing the bothersome critter away from the mithril deposits. Rick saw all this, and identified about twenty different MOSHA violations in the span of thirty meters.
And it’s probably an undercount. “So, Bill, how is your life?”
“Rick,” Bill said with a contented sigh, “Every day that I don’t end up as a disposable minion or a faceless victim of the Talons army that throws guys at problems like they’re cannon fodder, is another day I’m closer to retirement on a tropical beach. Life is peachy. Life is grand.”
“Doesn’t seem very grand for thirty Euros an hour,” Rick replies while guiding the trolley past a spill of a viscous substance. He did not want to get dissolved by an ooze sitting in waiting, and no sooner had they passed by, than there was a scream as a man slipped in it and the creature tried to strangle him. The nearby chemical shower, however, made short work of the dissolvable threat, with the worker offering a prayer to some strange deity. Rick carries on his cumbersome task as if this is completely routine. “I mean, honestly, there’s trillions of Euros here in this cavern section alone. Val could retire! We could all retire! Hell, we could solve all the world’s energy problems with this mine, with the amount of crystal here.”
“Except, crystal doesn’t grow on trees Rick,” his surly counterpart points out. “It’s getting harder to find. We’re tapping out of easy places to find it. Now, if I believe King’s nutty theory, it’s all tied to the great Goddess Gaia. Ya know, the Valkyrie that died a few thousand years ago, and in her wake, she became one with the world. The crystals are her blood and essence, nurturing the planet with life and energy, and a load of other five-dollar words.” He even tapped a crystal jutting out for emphasis, and it made a slight ringing sound, and glows blue in the dim light of the tunnel.
“But, that part is true! There was a Goddess Gaia! A six-winged silver dragon who saved the world!” Rick protested. “I read it in a book!”
“Was it a book with very few words, and very big, colorful pictures, and designed for a six-year-old at bedtime?” he responded with a smile. Rick stammered at this, he couldn’t believe the old fogey could be so dismissive. “Boy, you’re young, Rick. You gotta understand, there are no gods out there to protect us. We are very much on our own.”
“But the crystal has to come from somewhere. Many academic journals suggest that sufficient aetherial energy can cause a mage to transcend! Gaia may have been the first, and she’s not dead! Because the Followers believe she will return in a spire of crystal, spanning from the depths to the heavens!”
Bill snorted as he guided them down a turn, across a bridge that had guardrails that were a little…loose. He shied away from the edge and tried to ignore the creaking metal sound as they crossed. “Look, Rick, Gaia’s dead. The gods are all dead. Or at least all the ones people think exist in some form or another. You should make peace with that fact.” he waited for another cart laden with crystal ore to go through an intersection and waved to a heavyset wargen who grunted and adjusted his hard hat and his protective suit.
Poor bastard must’ve been hotter than hell in that thing, why didn’t he shift to his human form?
“Look Rick, want my advice?” Bill asked as they navigated down a sloped tunnel, with a flickering light making this place a trip hazard with the occasional power cables taped down on the floor. Yet another MOSHA violation with arcane conduits sparking nearby. “Get out of this life. Go home to your kid and wife, and go back to academics. You’re an egghead bigger than Nigel. This isn’t the way you want to live your life. How’d they rope you into this, anyway?”
“Don’t laugh, please,” Rick sighed as he shook his head and pursed his lips before proceeding. “Student loans.” He pushed the cart over a ramp, past the sparking wires. This place wasn’t dangerous enough with the murderous dragon running the place. A cadre of Talons in their full armor sets jogged by, wheezing and out of shape–they’d be in shape in a month, to replace lost personnel that quite frankly, would not be missed.
Well, not by him and Bill, at any rate. He's breaking out in a sweat in this suit, while Bill seems to not be affected. And he’s awfully quiet. “You didn’t laugh. Thank you.”
“Seriously, student loans? That’s how they hooked you?” Bill asked, his face tilted toward him with a glint in his eyes.
"No, actually." He sucked in his breath. "My kid. There were...medical expenses."
"Abigail? Ah jeez, Rick, of all the stupid places to work, to take care of that kind of thing," Bill sighed. "Well, better than the rest of the poor sods who bought into the ‘we’ll change the world, we’ll make a sacrifice so others live better lives’. Or some other sad jazz like that.”
“Well, you know, they’re like marriage. ‘Till death do you part’ or something like that,” Rick grunted as he pushed the cart over another small hub of earth, toward the lower area of the tunnel. They should be just around the corner from the transport elevator, but Bill took a right instead of a left at the intersection. “Bill, why are we going this way?”
“I’m not driving this thing another half mile, dealing with inspections, or worse, having the off-chance to run into Davos over in the officer area,” Bill grunted as he took a turn to drive the heavy cargo transport. “We’re gonna take a shortcut.”
“Ah, shit. Davos is here?” That man was a monster and a half, and the fact that the Talons–or Val–employed him now, meant that bodies would continue to pile up. That man wasn’t human, and Rick had seen him once, and it utterly terrified him. The way he looked at you, like a predator, filled him with this crawling anxiety that made him want to flee in utter panic. “You know what, anytime I can avoid the officer’s area, is a day I don’t court death. Where are we taking this?”
“To the teleportal.” Bill doesn’t elaborate, but Rick can’t help but notice there’s a ringing in the air. He glances at the mana crystal veins dotted along the wall, and they’re glowing eerily bright. “I hate Davos. I hate that walking war crime with every heartbeat of my existence, Rick. I would happily kill that man, because he makes Val look like a saint by comparison. And Val is no saint.”
“No one’s been able to kill him. You’ve heard the stories. Some Valkyrie almost split him in half six years ago, and he still managed to survive,” Rick says worriedly. “And do you want to be speaking that loudly about him?”
“Listen, Rick, Val can hear everything we say, so when I speak frankly, I don’t mince words. She just laughs, because she knows I’m not stupid enough to cross a line. She knows my stance on that psycho.” Bill clenches his fist as he punches an access code into the door panel, and the door slides open to the teleportal transport chamber–normally reserved for ore transport to locations unknown, and run by Magitech Industries in a very clandestine manner. “There are two kinds of people in this world that worry me. The first, are people who want the world to change. The second, are people who want the world to burn, and smile as the ashes drift by. Val is the former of those two. Davos is the latter.”
“Yeah, but–I just don’t get it. He’s an utter demon. Why’s she use him?”
“Hell if I know, Rick.” his associate guides him to place the cargo on the platform, but instead of dialing out, he dials a phone. “Hey Darlene, I need a favor. Dial the platform down here on B6 in the mine. I got some stuff to get rid of.”
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
There’s a loud explicative from a high-pitched woman on the other end, and even steadfast Bill flinches at this noise. “You pain in my ass, William! You owe me takeout, I’m already clocked out!” she roared over the phone.
Bill just took a short, measured breath and waited for her to finish ranting at him. “Darlene, I got hazmat stuff to get rid of. I’ll do double takeout, okay?”
“Fine! And a movie!” she snapped. The phone clicked off and Bill smiled faintly. Rick let out a low chuckle.
“Girlfriend?”
“Something like that,” Bill said without breaking composure, and glanced over to the side, where something crumbled off the wall. “Ah hell, there it goes again.”
Rick walked over to see a gleam of bright blue–a mana crystal had cracked off from a vein in the wall, literal money coming out of the walls, and he picked it up, and turned it over in his gloved hand. It was ringing. And quite loudly. “Bill, what do you mean by ‘again’ exactly?”
Bill walked over and tapped the crystal. “Ever since Nigel and the genius wonder down in the labs pulled that funky artifact from Mount Syren and started tinkering, the mana has been acting funky around here. It's been glowing, cracking, growing, like it’s almost got a life of its own. It’s a little spooky.” Almost as if in response, Rick could hear something faint.
A crystalline chime sound, and he put his ear to the crystal. Bill abruptly pulled him back, and gave him a perturbed look, eyes narrowed. “Rick, seriously, you’re gonna get mana poisoning from that, don’t do that.”
“You don’t hear that?” Rick asks. Bill raised an eyebrow.
“Hear what?”
“It’s singing.” Bill made a surprised sound, and pulled the crystal away and put it up to his ear–as if he hadn’t just already chastised him for risking mana poisoning! “Can you hear it?”
Rick hasn't heard it in years. But now, it's singing again.
“What I hear, is in a few minutes, Darlene is going to make my problem go away.” Bill throws the latch to the cart, and the barrels slide out effortlessly onto the platform, while a small alarm goes off, something about a proximity alert.
“So, you don’t hear a ringing sound?” Rick repeats. It’s a hauntingly beautiful note, and he walks over to the crystal–and Bill puts an arm out to stop him. The hard creases of his eyes softened a little, and his grim look melted.
“Rick, seriously. Get out of this place. Val is on a warpath with the Conclave, Crosomer’s playing with fire, King is up to his Kingly things that I worry about, and Davos is someone trying to speed run every atrocity imaginable. You’re too good for this place. Go home.”
“But–I can’t. I need this job. For my wife and my kid–"
“Yes, you can, Richard,” Bill said sternly. “As if that weren’t enough, Val pissed off the wrong group of people in Asqualia. Two-thirds of her soldiers took a permanent dirt nap or were incapped. They were stopped by some group called The Luminaires. I’ve been around long enough to know that when that group is around, people like us are gonna get caught in the crossfire. Because from what I heard from King, bad stuff happened, and one of the kids involved fought Val to a standstill.”
“A kid?”
“Some girl, no older than my niece.” Bill glanced at the crystal sitting on the cart, still humming away. “I know we’re trying to fix the world, but there are people out there fighting for a better life for everyone. Not just the divas up top. And what Val did, was start shooting the second they invaded.”
Rick slumped. “I can’t, man, not right now.” Bill shook his head and grunted.
“Look, if I tell you to get out of dodge, you have to. Because once this is open war, all bets are off. Now, pay attention. Do you see the barrels?”
“I do,” Rick said irritably. “Why are we waiting for an incoming portal?”
Bill smiles. “Ya know what happens to the area around an incoming portal?”
“It gets displaced, Bill, I know how a teleportal works,” he states with a huff.
“Nah, see, you’re partly right. It creates a void. And when that void collapses back in on itself, anything in that radius simply ceases to be.” Rick furrowed his brow.
“No, it doesn’t, Bill! It goes somewhere! Matter doesn’t just magically get created or destroyed, it changes forms!”
“Yep, it changes to a form of nonexistence. Which means, deadly chemicals, inconvenient evidence, or annoying lawyers cease to be my problem,” Bill said with a smug smile, and promptly silenced the alarms going off on the control panel. Rick can’t stand this flagrant misunderstanding of arcanistry, he can’t let this go!
“Bill, it has to go somewhere. Which means, you’re taking all this deadly stuff, and making a dumping ground somewhere else and–why did you toss the crystal on the pile?” Rick asked while squinting at the fragment the size of his fist on the pile. All the while, the teleportal platform is charging and alarms go off. Again. And Bill turns them off again.
“Look, the crystals are acting funky, and I worry King will make it another science experiment. So I make the problem disappear.”
“But, what if something comes back?!” Rick shrills. His partner shrugs.
“Never had anything ever come back to haunt me yet, and to my knowledge, no one ever has. This is a practical solution to deleting life’s many problems.” he claps his hands together and rubs them with enthusiasm. “Now, if only I could get that gold and silver-plated monstrosity to sit around long enough on a platform to make him no one's problem.”
“Isn’t that murder?”
“Not if he’s planning on killing you first. And Davos has a plan to kill everyone and everything that isn’t him. Including those poor souls in the Luminaires,” Bill says while cracking his knuckles. “I can’t believe Val lost to a bunch of teens. She’s either off her game, or they’re that dangerous.” Rick sighs in resignation, there’s no convincing Bill on this one.
Then, he hears it. That crystalline chime again, louder and louder, over the low hum of an electrical charge. The crystal on the barrel pile lights up, even as the platform starts to activate, and the lensing appears above the rigging where the portal is projecting. Bill furrows his brow beside him. “Uh, Rick, is mana supposed to do that?”
“Something is wrong, Bill, shut it down.” he can feel a cold sweat trickle down his back, something bad is about to happen, and he can feel it. Bill suddenly looks nervous.
“I uh, I can’t. I locked out the safeties.”
“Bill, cut the power–”
“And fry everything in twenty meters when the capacitors discharge? We should run. Like now,” Bill is looking panicked, and Rick can hear something at the edges of his hearing. A voice. A whisper of something greater than anything he can comprehend.
A champion rises. She must survive.
“I’m gonna grab it!” Rick vaults over the control panel to the platform, even as the shimmer builds to a peak over the grid where the barrels are stored. He throws away the gauntlets and climbs past the safety barricade–the point of no return.
“RICK, STOP!” Bill screams out, even as he grabs the crystal, and that crystalline sound reaches a peak...
Then the world goes white…and he drifts off to the sound of a chime, ringing faintly.
***
The world is black, and Bill can’t comprehend why–oh right, the debris pile sitting on top of him.
He heaves with all his might to get the buckled metal off of him and ignores the bleeding cuts on his arms and cheek. He’s lucky to be alive, and his arcane barrier barely even stopped the impact of the detonation of the portal. “Rick! I’m coming!” he screams out, and hoists with every bit of leverage, straining all his burning limbs to get the heavy panel off his back. He pulls free and collapses forward, gasping for breath.
The room is a scene of utter chaos and destruction. Crystal is shattered on the walls, the barrels are gone, and so is Rick–but there is something very wrong with what he’s witnessing. A crystalline structure is forming from the wreckage of the portal, and it’s growing before his eyes. It’s glowing brightly, and he can hear the mana snapping into place, a strange crystalline tree reaching to the ceiling before it stops, and there’s a faint ringing sound.
Or, it’s tinnitus. But the fallout of what had happened is dawning on him:
Rick is gone. Forever.
But something had happened that should not have happened, and he hears the sound of footsteps and shouts–half the power is out, and emergency lights flicker on while he stumbles to the ground, leaning back and panting.
He’d killed his best friend. He’d taken a shortcut that had finally come back to haunt him. That mistake had annihilated Rick--a father, and a husband, and he’d destroyed him so completely, that a funeral would be pointless.
“William! William, what happened?!” King is the first person on the scene, with a flurry of brown hair and caramel eyes, and he gasps when Bill waves weakly at the totality of destruction. He has no words left and slumps, and feels tears welling up.
“Rick…was in there.” King, for the first time since he’s known him, is without words, and takes one faltering step, hand reaching out to the glittering mana crystal. “Mana crystal–started shaking–ah shit King, I killed him. He dove in to grab a stupid fugging magical rock, why did he do it?!” he screamed.
But King is not weeping. He’s frowning, eyeing the console, the destroyed platform, and the crystals. He straightens up, and brushes a bit of debris off his vest.
“William. Rick is not dead. He has discovered a new gate.” King pulls a radio off his belt and dials a number while Bill stares at him, speechless.
“He’s gone, King, you know what happens when a teleportal void forms–”
“Incorrect. The Kilnstarnoth has transformed the mana, and its interactions are different than before. It is exhibiting a new behavior.”
“King, for Fate’s sake–”
“Nigel, I need the science team. Get Greg and Karl, all hands on deck! We have a new means to find the remaining translations. We’ve opened the way–if by accident. And bring a cleanup crew.” King clicks off the radio and helps Bill up, who is in an utter daze. He smiles. “William, I believe we’ve found the answer we are looking for.”
“He’s…not…dead?” Hope returns to Bill’s world.
“No. That said, I think we are going to need another platform to…replicate results.” A piece of debris falls to the floor, almost as if on cue.
"If he's not dead, then where is he?" King has no idea how close he is to getting shot, and Bill almost reaches for his sidearm, his body quivering in fury. King puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"The world between worlds, William. And we are going to find him."