The rudest awakening since birth came to Ike as the black portal turned into a rapidly approaching gravel driveway. He smacked his face right into the rocks with a HO!, red marks sprouting up on his skin with bubbles of blood almost instantly.
Even though the world spun around him he managed to push himself off the ground and stumble around for a little bit. All around him, the world threatened to tear him apart. Massive pyres of wicked shape surrounded him. Nerinai was nowhere to be found and his voice wasn’t working, the only thing that came out of his mouth was his panting breath. In his chest his heart beat against its cage like a mad dog begging to be let free from whatever hell the witch had trapped it in.
A pair of hands gripped his arms from behind and Ike absolutely flipped his shit. The next few seconds were mostly a blur to him, but he was pretty sure he shouted, landed back on the gravel, and might have started begging for his life. Kinda stupid considering the most common threats in his life were demons who ate first and asked never, but in his defense the world looked like an evil painting that blurred and cracked.
“Hey. Hey!” Suddenly Nerinai’s face was in his, her bony hand wrapped up in the front of his robe and jerking him up from the ground.
He blinked, then his panic started to fade away. Oh god how was he supposed to get out of this one? He could only imagine how much of an idiot he looked like spinning around after dumping out of the magic portal. Blood rushed up to his cheeks, partially to spill out of the cuts and partially to flush them with embarrassment.
“I… sorry. Very sorry. Please don’t do that again.” IKE SAID
She rolled her eyes, then dropped him flat on the rocks again. He waited until his heart stopped pounding to get up, and she just put her back to him.
“What happened?” he asked.
They were surrounded by trees. Not the trim and curated trees of the monastery or the short and stubby ones from the orchard. Real ones. Trees that towered into the sky, ones with thousands of pines in eternal greens, old and gnarled ones without a single leaf. Things that existed in stories.
As far as Ike knew there hadn’t been a proper wild forest in centuries. Yet here he was, standing right in the middle of one. Totally untouched by the blight.
“I moved us.”
Ike wanted to sigh, but any sort of disrespect now might have earned him an early grave. “Moved… us. How. We were at the monastery-”
“Then everything went black, and you landed like an idiot?” Not how he would have said it. “Yes. A ritual, nothing incredibly complex. The location, maybe, but only because this place is a well-kept secret.”
“Right. Simple, yeah, sorry about losing myself a little bit there. Won’t happen again,” he said, the flush returning to his scratchy cheeks.
Nerinai looked over to him with a crooked brow and pensive little frown. “It was your first time. Many shamans vomit profusely after their first time, guardian. You did fine.”
Ike nodded until his neck hurt then looked anywhere but her. “So, where are we? This doesn’t look like the place.”
“The Black Palace, moron,” said Nerinai, totally shattering his sapling of confidence. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she just aggressively sighed and grabbed his arm to spin him around.
If the forest was impressive, the Black Palace was a awe inspiring. Wild trees were exotic things that belong in a museum, in old fairy tales that no longer applied to the wanderlust of children and were just totally surprising. But the Black Palace was massive, a building of black stone that looked deeply out of place in the very green environment. The walls, towers, and windows- which were legion here- were all designed with deeply ornate instruction and crafted to brilliance.
“That’s the gate to hell?”
“Not quite. Things won’t be so simple.”
“Of course. It’d probably be a problem if it was, right?” He looked over to her for a response or possible look of poorly hidden disgust but she was focused on something else.
The gravel under their feet extended into a driveway circling a massive stone fountain. Empty and clean. Around the fountain were carts, some covered and some spilling over with crates of every size. Dull colors of red and brown covered parts of every one, the odd piece of gold colored metal sticking out of the mess. Someone let the pack animals off their hooks to graze. A very steady line of muddy prints led away from the carts and into the woods the size of animals feet. He couldn’t see anything out there now, though.
“You sure this is the place?”
“Yes. We were supposed to be alone though.” Her voice was cold, and low, and very dangerous sounding. Whoever decided to camp out in the hidden mansion was very high on her personal shitlist and Ike made a silent prayer of thanks that she wasn't made at him.
Nerinai stalked off down the drive with her feather cloak billowing in the wind and Ike followed. He stayed two paces behind at all times with one hand on his shovel. He needed something to make him feel less like a luggage bag and more like a guardian.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Their feet crunched against the stones and as they passed the carts Ike couldn’t help but stick his nose in the mess. One of the carts in particular. There was a canvas over the top, and inside looked like a comfortable setup. If palaces could be on the move this would be one of them. Blankets covered the floor, pillows everywhere, one big fluffy bench at the back end. Someone painted the ceiling like an elaborate dance in the clouds.
Up the marble steps and onto the landing, Nerinai was silent. Ike fell into a pleasant rhythm behind her and basically fell asleep until the feather cloak stopped in front of him.
He stepped to the side, tripping over himself and coming up with some excuse when he noticed what made her stop. There was a man. The reality was about as plain as it got, the man was middle aged with graying hair and a gray suit, but it felt entirely out of place.
Ike stepped in between Nerinai and the man. “Who are you?”
He felt Nerinai touch his arm, probably to tell him to shut up, but the other man held up his hand and apologized. “Of course, you must be the guardian! And you… the Raveness.” He bowed until his head could’ve touched his knees. Both of them stepped back as he did.
“I am the retainer of the Palace as I have been for many years. I’ve seen many of your incredible lines come in and seal the gate, all the varying levels of success. I expect you will be doing the same, my lady?”
“My own way,” she replied.
“Varying levels of success?” Ike repeated, suddenly worried that he was missing some grave detail.
The butler- Ike figured that’s what he was, given the way he dressed, and the overly polite tone of his voice- smiled. A sort of ‘oh you foolish little trash rat, who knows so little about so little, of which I know so much’ smirk that still managed to be friendly. “Not to worry, sir. I am utterly certain that whatever plans the Raveness have are fully up to standards. I, for one, am incredibly intrigued to see what she does. Thrilling!”
Great. So long as the butler was intrigued, what could go wrong? And that little point about having lived through several Raveness’s, a line which stretched back centuries? An immortal butler. Ike wondered what it would be like to spend an eternity cleaning the same house, even one as big as this.
He found himself staring up at the walls of the building and snapped out of the lack of focus. When he looked back down, the butler was gone and left just Nerinai and Ike together on the landing. Oddly enough, she had her head down and hands folded together as if in prayer. Actually scratch that; that seemed totally normal for a crazy cult leader. Crazy in a good way, Ike told himself, then leaned out in front of her.
“You good?”
She looked up through the dark curls of hair hanging in front of her face. “Fine,” she bit out.
“Ok, cool. Do you, would you happen to know who that guy was?”
“Don’t worry about him.”
“Right. So we head in?”
She shrugged. Because now was the time for a lack of enthusiasm.
Despite himself, Ike drew in one last breath of that smoky fresh air and started pushing himself towards the door. For some reason each step took a concentrated effort. His body argued with a fate that his mind had already settled itself on days ago, and both were satisfied when Nerinai told them to stop.
Ike looked back at her expecting some sort of lecture on the building. Maybe she’d be so kind as to open up another box of revelations like in her tower just so Ike would have another layer of things to worry about besides fate of the blighted earth. For a minute though, she just hesitated. Staring at him.
Ike stood in the middle of the doorway like a jerk and waited. Nerinai looked everywhere that wasn’t him, while he had to sit there and wait like a moron. Eventually his patience ran thin.
“Can we go now?”
“No!”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“You are an idiot, guardian.”
Ike scoffed, more to himself than her. “Gee. That was rude.”
She just shook her head, then flew forward with the patter of her hidden feet until she was right in front of him. He started to take a step back, so she grabbed his robe and jerked him back closer. Then with her other hand she reached into her coat, hesitated again with something inside, and finally brought it out. The thing was a simple metal brooch. The Carrion Cross, carved in beautiful black metal with sharp divets that shined a little blue in the light.
Ike quickly forgot about the brooch, though. She was close enough now that he could see the purple shards in her eyes and smell the light jasmine on her neck. That kind of scared him now, and his heart veritably agreed in a rhythm of loud thumps.
She gave the metal a light pat then stepped back. “There,” was all she said, stuffing her arms back inside the all-concealing cloak and watching his reaction.
Ike stayed frozen for a minute until the worry rubbed off. He looked down at the little thing and rubbed his thumb on its edge. Just a curious little trinket. He was about to ask her what it was and why she’d given him something when-
“It’s not a gift.” Of course. “The brooch is identification, guardian, in case those inside require such a thing. Keep it on you all the time, understood? I didn’t plan for the company of others, which makes this journey much harder.”
“Yeah, understood.”
“Do you? Understand, I mean.” Her voice got dark and low again. The chill on the air was starting to nip at Ike’s toes which would have been a perfect excuse to get moving, but one icy glare from her and he didn’t dare make a move.
“Going forward I require complete and utter cooperation from you. This is not training at the monastery, nor is it playing toy soldier out in the mud fields. Do you understand? Do you have any idea how many people depend on me to succeed? I cannot fail for the simple excuse that my mudboy peasant tag along couldn’t bear to listen to what he was told-”
“Ok!” Ike threw up his hands in surrender. Whatever he had done in the past thirty seconds to piss her off so much, he desperately didn’t want to make it worse. “Absolute, total conviction. Like a monk. Right?”
Her nostrils flared with angry breathing for a few seconds until her eyes skittered away from her man-sized problem. “Yes. Correct. That is exactly what I need, so let’s please just go.”
Ike nodded and followed her into the building, shutting the great doors behind them as they went. Maybe anybody else would have been upset from her tirade, all the insults and shaming. He’d heard it all before. Maybe it stung just a little bit, but it was just a little bit, something he could ignore. The most important thing to glean from all of that confusion was the brooch over his heart. The thin metal symbol that either marked him as a target or something to be protected. Ike believed in the latter. He had to, wanted to, because the simple idea that Nerinai wanted him to live and took the time to show it meant more to him than any of the risks that came with it.