“The Final Door,” Fyodor explained, “is what drives us, Grant. It is our ultimate goal. Everything we do in Sanctuary - well, everything most of us do - is about finding it. All the exploring, all of the books and writings…” he trailed off, staring blankly into the forest before letting out a shaky laugh. “It only just occurred to me that it must all be gone by now. All the research we gathered, all the conclusions we made, all gone. Destroyed by that… thing.” He was silent for a long moment, head bowed, before he looked up at Grant and gave a weak smile. “Well, as I was saying, if we had made it to next week, you would have seen the map room. A huge underground complex, painstakingly designed over hundreds of years, walls lined with notes and theories and writings we gathered over our entire existence here. It was where I spent most of my time… thousands and thousands of hours… so much work, lost.”
Grief and despair flickered through his eyes for a brief moment before the centuries-old sorcerer noticeably quashed his emotions, an almost unnatural calm falling over his face.
“Apologies,” he said, voice strong and steady despite the weakness still evident in his body. “I was beginning to indulge myself, wallowing. It is vital that you all know everything I do.
“The Final Door. According to Ed’s recounting of his encounter with that survivor, and the evidence we have gathered since, the Final Door is a very special portal. Where it is, we do not know, and where it leads, we are uncertain. What is clear, however, is that in one way or another, it is the means by which we may leave this world and return to Earth. Whether it is a direct portal, or grants us some form of power, or the source of this world that we can unmake… theories abound, with no firm answers as to what to expect when we are there. But we know it is our salvation.
“The survivor imparted to Ed what remained of the research that our predecessors had performed, but sadly, a lot of it was lost in the chaos caused by the plague . We had hints, maps, theories, but few solid leads. It was a solid base though, and we have expanded upon what we were left and uncovered dozens upon dozens of threads, disparate pieces of evidence, traces of those who came before us, unusual worlds that may hold further discoveries. The door's existence is a certainty, but the sheer number of portals makes locating it a mind-bogglingly large undertaking.” He sighed. “However, things have changed. Where before our efforts were slow and steady, the assault on Sanctuary has forced us to find the door or die, or so Ed believes.”
“Why do you say that?” Lei asked, frowning. “I mean, obviously that monster is terrifying, but what are the odds it finds us again? Why can’t we just flee to another world, establish our own Sanctuary?”
Fyodor chuckled mirthlessly. “You are forgetting that this monster has violated one of the core tenets of our world. For the first time, a monster has not only been able to use a door, but in doing so, they destroyed it. Do you have any concept of the power it takes to destroy a door? No, of course you don’t, because we have never been able to. All of the Forsaken together could not summon enough power to scratch a door, let alone blow it to pieces. This thing has capabilities beyond our comprehension, and we cannot simply sit idle. There are many doors, yes, but I would be quite certain that the beast has the capability to track us down, somehow. Our saving grace is that we are spread out, although…” He frowned. “Ed’s message said that he was teleporting us separately. How is it that we are together?”
Grant’s heart began to pound, uncertain of what to say.
Should I tell them I did it? He asked Ki. How much power would it take to make us all end up together like we did?
Not as much as you would imagine, Ki responded, but the unusual part is that you were able to recognise the intent behind the spell and weave your own as quickly as you did. I would recommend telling them, but disguise it as an instinctive reaction, rather than deliberate attempt.
Not that far from the truth honestly - I really wasn’t thinking clearly when I did it. Not to mention I definitely didn’t mean to drag Lei and Tamiko along as well, I barely know them.
Grant cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah, I… I think that may have been me,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t really know what was happening or what I was doing, I just panicked and didn’t want to be alone, and then my magic was reacting, and then it was reaching for something and I felt it find someone, and then someone else, and then we were teleporting and we were all here and… yeah. Sorry. Although I guess it’s better than ending up alone?”
Fyodor quirked his eyebrow. “Huh. I wasn’t expecting you to have done that. Rather an advanced feat for someone as new as you - but regardless, well done and thank you. I definitely prefer having some company.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” Tamiko chimed in, studying Grant closely. “He’s more capable than you would think. He was able to block that thing’s attacks better than most, I saw him. Quite impressive.” She smiled at him predatorily.
Grant shifted side to side. “Yeah, again, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just reached for my Source and… bam, a shield. Although it still fucked me up quite a bit,” he added hastily, trying to downplay his actions.
“Regardless, as Tamiko says, it's impressive,” said Fyodor, slowly getting to his feet and brushing off the attempts to help him. “In any case, that is what the Final Door is. We have been searching for a very, very long time, and we felt we were getting close - in fact, now that I think about it, I find it distinctly possible that that is the very reason we were attacked - someone may have triggered some kind of failsafe system.” He brightened at the notion. “That is encouraging, if true. Anyway, there are many more subtleties and questions about the door, but much of that is wasted speculation now that we have been separated, as we have no way of contacting the others or following any of the leads we have discovered, and likely ever finding them again, barring extreme luck. Ed said that he placed us in the most promising areas to continue the search, which brings me back to this forest.” He looked around, squinting. “If I am correct in my assumption, this is one of the more recent leads that had been discovered, by Ed himself. He found the ruins of a hut or building of some kind, and writings talking about the path to a different, unique portal building. We must find the building and decipher the directions.”
“No, we must not,” said Kyra firmly. “First, you must rest, and we will look for this ruin while you do so. You seem to have forgotten that only a few minutes ago you had a fucking hole in your stomach.”
Fyodor chuckled wryly then winced at the sensations. “Trust me, I haven’t forgotten,” he groaned. “Fine, fine. I’ll just lie down here for a few minutes. Grant should stay here for his own safety - I don’t recall what dangers lurk in this world, but I’m sure they exist. So be careful. There should be enough residue magic in the ruin to locate it, and I assume that Ed did not deposit us too far away.”
The three others nodded sharply before splitting up and disappearing between the trees. Grant took a seat beside Fyodor, who was now supine on the soft, mossy ground, eyes closed.
He took the opportunity to study the environment in more detail. It had been a long time since he had been to a rainforest, not since a family vacation as a kid. He remembered loving it - the strange animal noises, the incredible trees, the vines, even the humidity, which he normally hated, somehow added to the experience and became a welcome, exotic sensation. But this rainforest… it was different. Not just physically, even though the trees did seem larger than normal, and the ground was blanketed quite uniformly with the green moss he was sitting on, but the whole experience was just wrong. The oppressive sensation he had felt since arriving was still present, with no apparent cause or direction, but it was unmistakably there. He was curious if it was just him that felt it as the others hadn’t commented on it, whether it was somehow related to his second sight enhancing his perception or something else. He opened his mouth to ask Fyodor about it, before his enhanced instincts screamed a warning at him and he rolled to the side.
There was a high pitched buzzing, a thud of impact, and then silence. Grant reached into his Source and imbued himself - getting rather good at doing that quickly, if I do say so myself, he thought - before flipping to his feet and preparing to attack.
Unnecessarily, it turned out, as Fyodor had apparently rolled over and brought his fist down square on the attackers head, crushing it against the ground and giving Grant a good look at their foe. He recognised it instantly as a huge, slightly bloated mosquito, wiry, striped legs and thorax, wings, and several long, razor-sharp, bright metal needles forming the proboscis. It was twitching even in death, legs and wings fluttering and jolting slightly as blood began to ooze underneath Fyodor’s fist. He looked up at Grant, eyes sharp, pain seemingly forgotten.
“I remember what’s here now,” he said grimly. “We need to find those ruins.”
Kyra, Lei, Tamiko, move quickly. We must find the ruins and regroup there as fast as possible. This area is infested with nippers.
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Fyodor and Grant were sprinting across the forest floor together in a different direction than the other three had gone, enhanced senses working overtime as they dodged stray branches and, occasionally, another giant bug. Fyodor’s telepathic message seemed to echo oddly as it radiated through the trees, as though the forest was trying to impede their communications. Luckily, Fyodor was too powerful to let anything stand in his way, and they soon got back telepathic messages of panic and understanding from the three explorers.
“What are nippers, exactly?” Grant asked, beginning to pant slightly as he tried to keep up with Fyodor’s breakneck pace without imbuing himself with a suspicious amount of power.
“Problematic,” Fyodor replied, eyes darting everywhere in anticipation of an attack. “Large, hardy bloodsucking insects. Individually, not much of a danger, even to someone as young as you. But a full infestation can contain thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of them, and they’ve been here long enough to change the environment. I should have seen it straight away, but my head was spinning and I allowed myself to be distracted.”
“Change the environment how?” Grant darted to the side, fist connecting with the body of another bug and sending it whizzing through the trees as it tried to right itself, only to slam into a distant trunk and slide to the ground.
“The moss,” Fyodor said simply, pointing ahead.
Grant looked and noticed for the first time that the lush, comfortable green moss that blanketed the ground had begun to change. Patches of blood-red liquid were beginning to seep out from beneath the soil, and the surface was bulging as lumps of something unknown moved underneath the covering, reminding Grant of when he used to tease his cat by moving his feet underneath his quilt. The lumps slowly began to move towards each other, merging and congealing as they met, and the moss began to split as they began to swell, some of them big enough to contain a human. Grant had a sick feeling that the nippers he had fought so far were far from the strongest of their kind.
I’ve found it! Lei’s voice suddenly rang out in their minds. I’ll begin preparing the defences, hurry.
Along with the message came a sharp, strong pulse, coming from behind them and to the right, in the direction that Lei had originally set off. Grant and Fyodor immediately pivoted, and Fyodor’s feet began to glow to Grant’s second sight as he began to manipulate his Source in some way that Grant didn’t recognise or understand, and Fyodor soon began to increase the distance between them as he bounded forward with every step. All Grant could do was grit his teeth and increase the amount of power that was circulating his body, trying to keep up with his companion.
A high-pitched buzz filled the air to their left, and Grant’s eyes widened as for the first time he laid eyes on the real danger the nippers posed.
The bug that now flew towards them was multiple times bigger than the ones that had already dogged their path, with just the pulsing, swollen thorax at least as long as Grant was tall. Spindly, thorn-covered metal legs hung loosely in the air, each twice as long as its body, and the insectoid wings sliced effortlessly through trees metres thick as it flew towards them, heedless of any obstacles in its path. The metal proboscis was even longer, and the insect’s body had also begun to incorporate metal in places, the vulnerable cracks where segments of the body and legs met guarded by plates of dull grey steel, each plate shimmering with magic to Grant’s eyes.
It darted forward, legs rising as it drew closer to Fyodor, razor-sharp needles beginning to drip with some kind of venom as it prepared its attack. Grant opened his mouth to yell out a warning, but was too slow as the creature’s suckers made contact with Fyodor’s stomach.
There was a dazzling flash of red, searing Grant’s eyes and blinding his vision once more. Ozone filled the air and the hairs on Grant’s arms stood on end, beginning to crackle with static electricity before suddenly lying flat again. Grant rubbed at his eyes to clear them - it can’t be good for my eyes, constantly being blinded like this, he thought - before stumbling slightly as he tripped on the smoking, charred husk of the insect. Looking around, he saw that whatever attack Fyodor had unleashed had bounced around the forest, seemingly targeted at the shifting lumps that gave birth to these monstrosities. Rings of burnt moss and splattered gore now covered the ground where the lumps had been, and as Grant turned around, he saw that the same was true for as far as he could see, in every direction.
Impressed, he turned back to Fyodor, ready to compliment him on his efforts, before his heart lurched. Fyodor was swaying slightly, eyes unfocused, face as pale as a ghost, and a small trickle of blood ran from one of his ears. Whatever that spell was, it clearly had taken far more out of him than he could handle in his weakened state.
Grant leapt forward as he began to fall, catching the burly Russian and desperately trying to mimic what he had seen the others do before, pushing his Source into Fyodor in an attempt to speed up his healing.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered, desperately trying to force his magic to conform to his will. But despite his depth of power, and the few lucky feats he had managed to accomplish in the last day, he was still a novice, and his efforts amounted to nothing. He looked around desperately, trying to think of what to do. He had to get Fyodor to safety. Despite the fact that he had only spent a week with the man, he felt closer to him than many of his friends back on Earth. The Russian had been an endless source of humour, comfort and knowledge through his training, and he refused to let him die surrounded by these nasty, shitty bugs. Cursing under his breath, Grant attempted to swing Fyodor over his shoulder, but his imbued strength was beginning to fade, having already been pushed beyond the limits of what he had been warned was possible.
But who was to say what was possible for him?
Grant closed his eyes and reached for his magic. Grasping it firmly, he stopped the imbuement of his body from fading away - and began to add more. Moving as quickly as he could, he increased the flow of power to his muscles, forcing them to accept more and more energy, far more than he had ever imbued himself with. But then he kept going.
His body was already churning with power, far more than he should have been able to handle, and far more than what Fyodor had warned him his body could take before adjusting more to its imbued state - but he had no choice. Gritting his teeth, he drew upon his entire Source, sending it flooding throughout his body. Pain wracked his muscles as the magic swept outwards, and he felt his bones begin to rebel against the swell of energy, but he kept forcing it outwards, willing his body to adjust, just temporarily. He was pretty sure that what he was attempting to do was beyond what any Forsaken had performed in the past, as he had been told there were diminishing returns to imbuing oneself, and that their bodies, while powerful, could give in if forced too far.
Well, fuck that, he thought to himself, white dots beginning to dance in his vision as his body struggled to hold the full force of his power. If I’m meant to be so fucking special, if I have a god in my head and all that power to use, then I’m gonna fucking move like a god.
The pain ceased. He gasped at the unexpected cessation of pressure, and opened his eyes. He jerked backwards instinctively, as he saw one of the smaller, less dangerous nippers flying directly towards him. Panicking, he raised a hand, ready to swat it aside - but he paused. It was… frozen?
No, he realised, not frozen. Just slow. Or, rather… I’m fast.
He grinned.
He knelt down, lifting Fyodor up and onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The short but buff man must have weighed a hundred kilos easily, but to Grant, it was nothing. His body thrummed with each beat of his heart, the imbuement he had performed enhancing his strength to a frankly absurd level. If he had been amazed at the strength he had felt when punching that metal pole a week ago, he was sure that his current power went far, far beyond that. He was quite certain that he would be able to pick up that same pole and use it as a baseball bat now.
But it couldn’t last long. Already, after just a fraction of a second, he felt the pain slowly begin to creep back into his body, and he felt his power begin to shiver and quake, as though it was rebelling against his usage. He had to move.
He bent at the knee, giving the nipper one final look. Its wings were still a blur, vibrating too fast even for his enhanced speed, but its forward momentum had slowed to a crawl. Deciding to ignore them from now on, he aligned his body with the origin of Lei’s message, and ran.
A sonic boom echoed through the forest. The trees blurred as he moved, faster than even he had expected. His speed of mind had been enhanced as well as his speed of body, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to move a step without tripping over, but it wasn’t quite to the same extent. He still had barely enough time to react to what he encountered, but luckily he didn’t need to worry about it. The branches and insects that he had previously been forced to awkwardly dodge now moved out of his way, the compressed air in front of him simply blowing them aside.
He wasn’t sure how far he had to go or how fast he was moving, but his body was already beginning to show the strain. He could feel his tendons creaking as he ran, his leg muscles beginning to burn and twitch as they were forced to act beyond anything reasonable they should have been able to endure. Less than a minute had passed, but the pain began to grow and grow, and already he felt like he was on fire, pushing mindlessly through the burning, thinking of nothing but reaching Lei, of reaching safety, and saving Fyodor.
Before he even realised it, he had cleared the treeline, stumbling into a huge clearing. The now red-green moss formed a large circle encompassing a field of normal grass, and in the centre lay an old stone ruin. It looked like the remains of a miniature castle, made of great white stone bricks the size of cars. Inscriptions covered the outside of the walls, clearly ancient, but some new ones were presently being carved into the empty spaces by Lei. Behind him, Kyra and Tamiko had already arrived, and they stood on opposite sides of the clearing, arms raised, power flowing freely from their hands and hanging loosely in the air. A swarm of the mosquito monsters, some small, some large, hovered around the edge of the moss, buzzing back and forth, occasionally darting forward before being repelled by a flash of light from one of the women. As Grant approached, he immediately cut off the power flowing throughout his body. Instantly, his body locked up, pain flaring through his core as the treatment he had inflicted upon his body caught up to him. He tumbled to the ground just inside the safety of the circle surrounding the ruins, and as he fell he saw Lei finish carving whatever he was carving into the castle, and slam his hand against the script. Light exploded through the clearing, mixing with the spell that Kyra and Tamiko were casting and gathering their power in its wake. A bright, opaque dome of light immediately sprung up around them, and Grant heard and smelled the searing of flesh as the nippers around them fled from the forcefield, the power emanating from it enough to burn them to a crisp.
The last thing he saw was Lei, Tamiko and Kyra rushing towards him and Fyodor, power gathering around their hands. Then darkness.