I trailed Amethyst and Max as they walked into Kerioth hall, straight through the hole the demon had come through. Ash fell softly from the ceiling and fires still burned here and there. It looked as though only certain portions of the building had burned— maybe it had something to do with magic.
The mages weaved through the hallways, following a path of destruction left by the demon. Corpses lie strewn along the path. Students.
We came to a stop outside what looked to be a shop. Machines like the one at my home lined the walls, materials stacked in random heaps. This must be where Dad worked at the university. But where did the demon come from?
I looked at Max and Amethyst. “Did this breach already close?” I asked Max shook his head and pointed to a corner of the room. A strange line squirmed in the air, stretching from floor to ceiling. It didn’t really have any visible physical form to it. The breach refracted the light around itself, as if it were made of glass.
Amethyst looked at me gravely. “Before you go through,” she said, “We need to give you full disclosure.”
“About what you did to my Dad?”
“Yes. That’s part of it.”
She looked at the breach.
“Nobody actually knows what’s on the other side of this thing…” she said, trailing off.
“It’s very possible crossing would be suicide,” finished Max. “It could be full of more demons. Or worse.”
Amethyst looked over at him. “Since demons can live there, there’s probably food, water, and breathable air, but that’s about it. For all I know we’re stepping into Hell itself.”
I looked at the breach and took a deep breath. I didn’t really have anything else to do at this point. “I don’t care,” I said. “I’m going to find whatever is opening these and stop it.”
Max raised his eyebrows and side-eyed Amethyst before looking back at me. “Before you do, you need to know the rest of what Dr. Xander’s plan entails.” He looked at Amethyst.
Her face squirmed a little. “Amber. We… I…” she looked at the weapon strapped to my back. “I bonded Dr.— I bonded your father’s soul to Occidae. I’m sorry.”
I stared at her blankly. “Oh.”
Amethyst’s pursed lips turned into a frown. “Oh? Oh!? Amber, I tied your Dad’s immortal soul to an inanimate object!”
I fiddled with the strap holding Occidae to my back. “Yeah, I guess that’s illegal… but is it really wrong?”
“Yes it’s wrong!” she exploded, her face contorting. “We’re playing with things we don’t even understand!”
“Then why did you do it?” I asked flatly.
Max put a hand on Amethyst’s shoulder. “Your dad asked Amethyst to do it because only a soul could power Occidae.”
Amethyst shook her head. “Of course we had to intern with him. Amber, your dad’s reaction to the very idea of a demon was to build a weapon powered by municipal power plants.”
I nodded. “Sounds about right.”
We paused for a moment. In the silence, I could hear distant sirens.
“That’s our cue to go,” said Amethyst, and walked off to another corner of the shop.
I turned to Max. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I understand why Amethyst needs to come with me—she’s the only one that can undo the bond, and she’s kind of on the run now for making it. But why are you coming?”
Max stared at me blankly. “Maybe the police won’t suspect me, but it won’t take the forensic specialists long to figure out I powered the spell. Maybe I wouldn’t get the death sentence, but I would still be looking at life in prison.”
He smirked at me.
“Besides, how could I let you two go through alone? A braid of three cords is stronger than two.”
Amethyst was back from the corner. “How heroic,” she said sarcastically. She was holding hiking backpacks that she had grabbed while we were talking. She handed handed them to Max and I, then shouldered one that had been sitting on the floor. “Dr. Xander was awfully prepared for an emergency,” she said, pointing to the bags. “He insisted Max and I each keep bags filled with supplies at the shop. The one I gave you is his.”
I swung Occidae to my front and put the backpack on my back.
“I thought he was just paranoid,” said Max.
“You make a lot of enemies as a defense contractor,” I said. I nodded towards the breach, which was still squirming like some kind of worm. “So. How do we go through this thing?”
“A good old-fashioned lever,” Max said, walking over to a corner and grabbing a metal pipe. He jabbed it inside the breach. It let out a strange squeal and writhed. Max wrenched the breach open with the makeshift tool, then dropped the pipe in horror. Amethyst took a step back. “That looks so wrong,” she said, a strange look on her face. I peered inside the breach. The squirming line had parted to reveal a large passageway, the same height as the line. It looked like—flesh. Not raw muscle, but a membrane, like the inside of a throat or intestine. It extended back from the opening into obscurity, the light from the room failing to penetrate farther than a few meters. I peered around the back of the breach. There was nothing but the empty corner of the shop behind it.
I looked back from where we came. The sirens had stopped, and now the building was starting to fill with voices.
I walked towards the grotesque opening. “Well, I suppose we don’t have a choice,” I said, stepping over the pipe and into the breach. Max grabbed the pipe and followed after me. Amethyst followed last, disgust still visible on her face. She switched on a flashlight. The breach squelched uncomfortably under our feet. The membrane was more springy than firm, so it felt like walking on a trampoline. Suddenly, the breach closed behind us. We would have been enveloped in darkness if not for Amethyst’s flashlight.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” muttered Amethyst.
I pushed forward, plodding through the strange tunnel. I sniffed the air. Strange. No meaty scent, no organic odor. Just normal air. Not fresh, but not noticeably stale either. We continued in silence for a few moments, then stopped abruptly. The passageway ended, a dark crease running down the wall we had run into.
“This must be the other side,” said Max. I held up a hand, motioning for him to be quiet. Were those—voices?
“Get ready,” I whispered. “Whoever opened this is on the other side.”
Amethyst fumbled at her side until she pulled out a pistol. Max did the same. I opened my own bag, and sure enough, there was a pistol near the top. I swapped it for the depleted .50 caliber on my thigh. Occidae didn’t even have a visible trigger, so I’d have to use this until I figured out how to use that. Max stepped forward, gripping his pistol in one hand and the pipe in the other. He handed the pipe to me and stepped back, gripping the pistol with both hands. I let Occidae hang by my front using the strap and placed the pipe in the crag.
We were silent for a moment. I could still hear the chatter of voices over my heartbeat. Amber and Max breathed heavily beside me.
“It’s them or the police,” Max whispered to Amethyst. His nervous tone made it sound like he was trying to reassure himself instead of Amethyst, but she nodded anyway. She looked towards me.
“We’ll go on your count,” she said.
I turned towards the crag again and gripped the pipe tighter.
“Three,” The chattering outside continued. “Two,” My knuckles went white. “One,” I braced my knees. “Go!” I yelled, wrenching the fleshy crack open.
Surprised faces stared back at us from the other side. People in black robes stood frozen in place, some of their jaws agape. They stood inside a simple tarp tent, messing with some kind of map laid flat on a table.
“Feds!” One of them screamed, before grabbing what was on the table and running. It flopped behind him awkwardly. The robed figures all booked it in different directions like cockroaches under a light. They dived into breaches similar to ours, arranged in a circle around the walls of the tent. Before I could even draw my own pistol, the tent was completely deserted.
“I guess that works,” Amethyst said, a flabbergasted look on her face. “We’re not dead.” She stepped from the breach onto the grass inside of the tent, followed by Max. I stepped over and yanked the pipe onto our side, the breach closing again.
The pipe fell softly behind us. I glanced at it for a moment, then picked it back up. You never know when you might need a metal pipe.
Max walked around the table, looking at all the breach lines in the tent. “This can’t be good,” he said, his face creasing with worry. “It’s too… organized. And didn’t that one guy have a map?”
Amethyst shrugged. “Quite frankly I am too busy being not dead.” I would like to continue being not dead, so let’s not hang out here,” she said, walking towards what looked to be the door of the tent. She opened the flap, and I squinted as sunlight poured into the room. The three of us stepped outside.
Amethyst and Max both let out soft gasps.
Before us was raw nature like I had never seen. Green extended in every direction until it met the bright blue sky at the horizon. Unfamiliar trees towered all around the clearing we were in, riding rolling hills and guarding countless streams. Smooth mountains towered in the distance, evidently rounded by age. A fresh breeze playfully tousled my hair, carrying faint, unfamiliar scents.
Amethyst looked up into the sky, and her jaw dropped. She could barely manage a grunt, and just pointed. Max and I swiveled to look where she was pointing. “What?” we cried in unison.
I didn’t recognize it at first. A big ball of blue and green hung in the sky, streaked with white. I stared, not sure what I was looking at. Some kind of planet, it seemed. It was huge—or at least it took up a lot of the sky. It was familiar.
“That’s the mother-fricking Earth!” yelled Amethyst hysterically. I stared. She was right. I was expecting something so different that I didn’t even recognize it. A surreal sense of vertigo hit me as I realized I wasn’t on the right planet. It was like swimming around in a lake and suddenly being unable to touch the bottom with my feet. The sense of vastness hit me like a wave. The ground beneath me felt unstable, as if gravity would be gone any moment and I would suddenly fall back to Earth.
I closed my eyes and sat down in the grass, trying to shake off the feeling. Max and Amethyst sat down beside me, evidently facing similar sensations.
After a few moments, I opened my eyes and stared at the grass. “So, if that’s Earth,” I said, then where are we?” “I know, right?” said Amethyst. “What I said about Hell was just an expression, but… I was thinking we’d at least end up in a different dimension.”
“The Moon,” Max said suddenly. He was staring back up at the sky again. We both looked at him.
“The Moon,” he repeated, looking back at us. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. The Earth is too close to us for it to be anything else. Think about how small Venus and Mars look from Earth.”
Amethyst looked at him like he was an idiot. “Dude, the moon doesn’t have a breathable atmosphere,” she said. “Or this much gravity. It’s too small.” Her eyebrows wrinkled in a frown. “It would take a conspiracy for this to be the Moon. The lunar landing would have to have been faked, and the moon we see every night would have to be some kind of projection.”
Max shrugged at her. “We already knew the landing was faked,” he said matter-of-factly. “And it’s not a crazy idea to make an optical illusion with magic. We’ve done it before in class.”
Amethyst made a disgusted face at the idea. “You know what, it’s probably just a similar-looking planet in this solar system that we’re confusing for Earth. The gravity still doesn’t make sense. I mean sure, the projection might be smaller, but what about the tides? Being near a planet this large would make more extreme tides.”
Max looked back up at the sky, then shook his head. “I do believe that is Africa. And Asia.”
Amethyst forced her eyes back upward. She looked expressionless for a moment, then her face fell in horror. “There’s got to be another explanation,” she said.
By now my feeling of vertigo had passed. I stood up, and offered my hand to Amethyst. She took it and stood up.
“What do you think?” she asked. I paused and thought. “Max is probably right,” I said. “I always thought we faked the Moon landing to win the space race, then went back and did it for real. But I guess that second part is wrong.”
She looked at me, dumbfounded, looked at Max, then back at me. “Why did I get stuck in another dimension with crazy people?” she asked nobody in particular.
“Ehrm, actually,” said Max with a mock-nerd voice. Amethyst just glared at him.
I observed their antics detachedly. They must have known each other for a while before this happened. I looked back at the tent. “We could have used that map.”
Max and Amethyst stood awkwardly for a moment, not saying anything. It was time for me to take control of the situation.
“Our bags presumably have food and water,” I said. “But we’re going to need solid shelter. This tent isn’t enough.” I scanned the horizon and began looking for anything that resembled shelter.
“I concur,” said Amethyst. “There is no way I’m going to feel safe enough to sleep without it.” She walked around the edge of the tent.
Max and I eyed the trees and mountains in front of us, but there didn’t seem much promise. “I guess if we can’t find any we’ll have to make some,” Max said. “Those trees are tall enough to make building a tree house reasonable, and I can reinforce the walls with magic.”
“We won’t have to do that!” exclaimed Amethyst suddenly from behind the tent. Max and I walked around it to meet her. Amethyst stood with her hands on her hips, looking at something in the distance. She swung her backpack off her back and began rummaging through it. Moments later she pulled out a pair of binoculars. She peered through them and pointed to a spot near the base of a mountain. “It looks like there’s some civilization over there,” she said, motioning us over. She stepped back from the binoculars, holding them in the air in the same position she had been looking through it. “Take a look,” she said excitedly. I stepped forward and looked through the binoculars while she held them, careful not to jostle them.
Some of the woods near the base of the mountain looked like they had been cleared away. A tall palisade of sharpened logs ran in a wobbly oval around squat log cabins. Smoke wafted from hidden hearths, making the sky just a little hazy above the settlement. Most importantly, there were people there—and they weren’t dressed in black. Little figures in browns, reds, whites, and blues bustled about cobbled streets.
I stepped back from the binoculars and let Max have a turn. “So no tree house, then.” he said. “You sound disappointed,” replied Amethyst, rolling her eyes.
I looked out at the village, trying to judge the distance. “We can probably get to that in about a day,” I said.
Amethyst nodded. “These are week bags, so we’re good for a while. And we have filters, so we can get water from streams on the way.”
Max pulled a compass from his bag and oriented himself towards the village. Amethyst pulled out her notebook and walked over to him to record our heading. I fished around in my backpack until I found my own compass. The needle found magnetic north, and I made a mental note of the heading.
“Looks like this place has a magnetic field,” said Amethyst. “It’s definitely not the Moon.”
Max side-eyed her. “We can worry about that later,” he said, and started walking. “Let’s just get going.”