I - A Devil
Overhead
A good night’s sleep would help Daniel far more than sympathy,
Eleanor knew. But sympathy was all she
could offer him right now. He looked
like he was dead on his feet as he led them through the maze of broken granite
outcroppings. He seemed to have only a
vague sense of his own surroundings, but his link with Virricul meant that he
had to be the one to head the group in order for the sword’s watchful eye to
alert him of any trouble ahead. The
exhaustion showed on his face and in his every movement, but Eleanor didn’t
need to look at him to know that he was suffering.
It might help if he would stop to rest more often. She had unsuccessfully asked twice already
this morning if they could stop for a break, but he could tell that she herself
wasn’t really tired - that she was asking for his sake. Daniel could sense Eleanor’s thoughts and
feelings as well as she could sense his, even if he wasn’t really sure why or
how.
Eleanor understood all too well what had caused their
psychic link - the two of them were soulbound.
It was a process of connecting two people on such an intimate and
spiritual level that they could feel each other’s feelings and sometimes even
read their thoughts. Soulbinding was a
powerful and complicated magic, and only the most formidable wizards were
capable of creating such a link between two people. Yet somehow, Eleanor had managed it without
any understanding of magic at all.
Despite having neither the proper magical training nor any inclination
towards the magical arts, she had unwittingly initiated the binding between her
and Daniel out of sheer instinct.
They had been soulbound for a year and a half now, ever
since just before they passed through Venture Gate into the Fifth Realm. Eleanor had used her link with Daniel to help
rescue him from the dangerous forests of Ghost Valley. Afterwards Provost Alva, the head of the
Academy of Magic, told her the truth of the inherent power she somehow had
inside of her. In all the time that has
passed since then, she had never managed to bring herself to tell Daniel about
how she had soulbound them without his consent.
Nor had she found the courage to tell him about the promise she had made
to Alva to return to the Academy of Magic to accept training to become a
wizard.
Passing through the magical gates that connected the realms
was a one-way journey. A person could
only move forwards through the sequentially numbered realms, unable to cross
backwards through the gates until they reached the Eleventh Realm. Entering the land called Skyrealm granted a
human traveler the ability to freely pass through all of the gates, backwards
and forwards. Eleanor had promised Alva
that, once they reached Skyrealm and completed her ‘forward-quest‘, she would
immediately turn back and return to the Academy.
Alva had even assigned Oka, their friend and an aspiring
wizard himself, to ensure that she kept her word. Oka’s very presence on their journey was
based on the two conditions he was given in order for him to be allowed
admission into the Academy of Magic.
Along with ensuring Eleanor‘s return, Oka had to learn how to read.
Unlike Eleanor who was a fellow Realmsborn, Oka was not
bestowed with the gift of Realmspeak at birth.
Realmspeak was the oral and written language used by all humans in The
Realms, including the humans who came from the Otherworld, like Daniel. Newcomers all enter The Realms at the same
point in the First Realm, and every human who is ever in the First Realm is
granted the same realm gift. They can
speak, hear, read and write the language of Realmspeak. Even for newcomers who arrive there from the
Otherworld, a place of many different languages. For them and realmsborn alike, Realmspeak
instantly becomes as instinctual as if it were their native tongue.
Even those who were born in Cherry Landing, such as
Eleanor, are born with this gift. She
was able to read and write Realmspeak for as long as she could remember. But humans born in other realms were not
granted this gift. Oka, who was born in
the Third Realm, learned to talk in Realmspeak as he grew up, but could not
know how to read it unless he was instructed.
Illiteracy was not much of an issue in the simple town of Commonstock,
where Oka grew up. But when he applied
for entrance into the Academy of Magic he was refused, despite his tremendous
aptitude in the magical arts.
In their time wandering through the Fifth Realm, Eleanor
and the others had been attempting to instruct Oka on how to read
Realmspeak. He made decent progress at
first, but as the months went by he began to grow frustrated and resentful
towards his companions, all of whom had gained their literacy by means of
passing through the First Realm. Oka
spurned their attempts to tutor him, and for the past year wandering The
Labyrinth, his studies had slackened.
Nevertheless, he has held fast in his determination to deliver Eleanor
back to the Academy, whether she intended to return willingly or not.
Fortunately, the Eleventh Realm was still very far away,
and Eleanor had plenty of time to decide what she was going to do. If Daniel was still searching on his
knowledge-quest by then, she wasn’t sure if she could bear to leave him. But she couldn’t ask him to go with her back
to the Fourth Realm - to forgo his mission to find out why he was brought to
The Realms. If Daniel knew about the
promise, or about Oka’s role in bringing her back to Ghost Valley once they
reached Skyrealm, he might make a rash decision as she knew he was capable of
doing from time to time. Eleanor knew
that she had put off telling Daniel about her promise for much too long. She just needed a little more time to decide
what to say to him.
Today however, there was little conversation during their
travel. Oka was in one of his dark
moods, and had not said more than a few words to anyone all day long. Albert had been making less-than-helpful
suggestions such as burning their way through the foliage and suggesting that
they vote for a new leader besides Daniel.
At first, Eleanor had tried to explain why Daniel needed to be in
charge, but it was clear that their newest companion was not interested in
listening.
Even Immy was not her usual talkative self. She and Oka had had yet another argument
during breakfast, and it ended when she angrily threw the remnants of her brown
stock stew at the irritable initiate.
Daniel and Albert had to separate them, as it nearly came to blows. As the day wore on, tempers had cooled, but
so had the atmosphere within the party of travelers.
Spirits were very low.
The morale of the group had suffered a steady decline over the past
several months, as their time in the Fifth Realm dragged on seemingly without
end. Back in May, they ‘celebrated’
their first anniversary of entering The Labyrinth, and here it was now in
October, with no escape in sight.
The only way for them to leave the Fifth Realm was to find Jester
Gate. Unfortunately, Jester Gate looks
exactly like Venture Gate, which they have stumbled onto on three separate
occasions. Venture Gate was the portal
which brought them here from the Fourth Realm, and which for now, was unable to
carry them back. The only thing that
could deliver them from The Labyrinth into the Sixth Realm was Jester’s Gate,
and its elusiveness was trying even Eleanor’s patience. Just a few days ago, Eleanor had marked her
17th birthday - the second birthday she had spent here in the Fifth
Realm. That night, Daniel had solemnly
sworn to her that she would not have to celebrate her next birthday in this
gloomy land.
It had been drizzly on Eleanor’s birthday. There were thick clouds and a misty haze on
and off for the past week. Autumn was
quickly forming in The Labyrinth, and if it was anything like the previous
year’s, the adventurers were in store for another damp, dreary fall, followed
closely by a brutally cold winter. All
the more motivation to find their way out of here.
Finally, sometime after the sun set behind the thick layer
of clouds, Daniel called the day’s traveling to a halt. Sighs of relief came from everyone in the
party, including Eleanor, who felt her pack burdening her shoulder like a great
lead weight. As Oka knelt down and
focused himself to create a magical campfire, Eleanor began sifting through her
pack, searching for the ingredients for their modest supper.
Daniel was utterly exhausted. It had been a miserable day, and they had not
made very good time. It didn’t matter
much, he supposed, since they couldn’t be sure that they were even traveling in
the right direction. The area did not
look familiar to him, however, and that was a good sign that they were on the
right path. They had been on the wrong
path now for far too long.
He had hoped that his exhaustion during the course of the
day would help him sleep better tonight, but now that they were making camp,
Daniel bitterly noted a feeling of restlessness already creeping into his
body. He was hungry, but he knew that
supper would do little to diminish his appetite. With their traveling rations run out long
ago, the party had been forced to subsist on whatever they could find. Daniel’s intuitive knowledge of realm botany
helped spot edible plant life, and Virricul’s eagle-eye would spot for them the
occasional small warren hare for a bit of meat.
But given the sparse pickings here in The Labyrinth, they were forced to
conserve their food and water supplies as much as possible. Breakfast was usually adequate to give them
the strength for a day’s travel, but supper was almost always very light on the
protein, and sometimes had to be skipped altogether. Fortunately, a fresh supply of tasteless but
edible brown stocks unearthed yesterday had replenished much of their food
reserves and so they could afford a few gulps of Eleanor’s stew before bedtime
tonight.
Eleanor was preparing the stew in a small tin pan which
they had had since she and Daniel left Cherry Landing. Daniel saw that she had fatigue in her eyes,
but she labored intently on adding some flavor to the fibrous stalks boiling in
a bit of water over Oka’s magic fire.
She carried a few herbs they had unearthed, along with a set of bottled
spices which they had found on the badly mutilated body of a vole shark’s
victim no more than a few weeks ago.
The new spices had rekindled the party’s interest in meal
times, and everyone seemed to have a favorite.
There was a red-colored spice which had a somewhat sour taste which
Albert preferred. The green spice was
extremely bitter, and only Oka seemed to like it. Alas, it was the most abundant, and so was
almost always included in the stew.
Daniel and Immy both enjoyed the tangy flavor of the gold-colored spice
while Eleanor’s personal favorite was the sweet brown spice. Eleanor was determined to experiment with the
various spices along her supply of herbs in order to find a combination which
everyone enjoyed. It was proving to be a
formidable culinary challenge for her.
As Eleanor worked on her latest recipe, Albert gazed out
into the misty hills that lay ahead of them, groaning in frustration.
“Those mountains are going to be brutal to cross
tomorrow.” He complained to Daniel. “I told you we should have taken that pass I
saw earlier. We could be on the other
side of them by now.”
“There was a nest of cloppers in that pass.” Daniel answered wearily. He had no desire to debate Albert’s
not-so-subtle challenge to his leadership during their travels. They had tried following Albert’s suggestions
about which way to go for a time, but quickly found that his sense of direction
was almost comically inept. He seemed to
have an incredible knack for guiding them in circles, and often not very wide
circles, either.
Albert shrugged off Daniel’s reply and quickly shifted
topics. “Why are you still reading that
thing, anyway?”
Daniel had just pulled Master Circle’s journal from his bag
and opened it up at the place he had marked.
He was reading though the borrowed journal for the fifth time now, but
still couldn’t make much sense of what Master Circle’s thought process was while
he had written it so long ago.
At the time he had scribbled his thoughts into the thick
book, Harry Baum wasn’t one of the legendary Masters of The Realms yet. Back then, he was just a young newcomer who,
like Daniel, was obsessed with discovering the secret of why humans were in The
Realms. The morbid conclusion that young
Harry had reached was that some force or entity was bringing humans into The
Realms in order to facilitate the world’s eventual destruction. Being proclaimed a Master made him
effectively a genius by universal consensus, so it was difficult to argue
semantics with him. It was something
akin to Daniel debating physics with Albert Einstein.
Master Circle had claimed that his theory was the natural
conclusion of his life’s work in investigating the matter, and he gave Daniel
his old journal which contained all of his notes and challenged the young
doubter to go out and disprove him.
Daniel tried to ignore Albert’s casual prying, but was
quickly irritated to find him poking his inquiring fingers into Daniel’s bag.
“Knock it off.”
Daniel growled at him.
Albert looked up at him with an innocent smile. “Sorry, I was just curious. When are you going to tell me what’s in the
jar?”
“Nothing worth your interest.” Daniel insisted.
Daniel glanced down at the mason jar in his bag. It contained the only evidence he had to go
on in order to possibly disprove Master Circle’s destruction theory. Inside was a small growth of illuminati moss,
a luminescent fungus which only grows in the Seventh Realm, and yet Daniel had
found some in the Fourth Realm. Unlike
other plants and animals from The Realms, the moss had survived passing through
Venture Gate, and Daniel hoped that he could somehow use it to prove that
humans were not meant to destroy The Realms.
Albert smiled and shook his head. “You’re always so secretive. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just-”
He stopped suddenly and looked skyward with an alarmed
expression. Daniel looked up at him with
concern.
“What is it?”
“Did you hear that?”
Albert asked, still looking up into the darkened layer of clouds.
Daniel paused for a moment to listen, but aside from the
occasional gust of wind, could hear nothing unusual. “What did you hear?”
Albert’s normally jovial voice grew low and tense. “It almost sounds like … something’s flying
up there. Something big.”
Daniel and the others listening all cast their gazes into
the twilight. The layer of clouds was
low and very thick. If there was
something flying above them, it could easily be concealed from their view.
“Virricul?” Daniel
muttered.
Albert looked back at Daniel. “A what?
Oh, you mean your talking sword.”
There’s nothing up there but some soupy clouds. Virricul told Daniel, with a tone of
annoyance in his voice.
“Virricul says there’s nothing up there.” Daniel repeated.
“To hell with your magical buddy.” Albert said.
“I know I heard something up there.
It was a thumping sound, like the flapping of wings. What makes you think your sword can hear it
better?”
“Virricul’s not my sword.” Daniel answered coolly. “And he can detect any living animal bigger
than a rat within about a hundred yards of us.”
“How far is that?”
Albert asked quizzically.
“About 90 meters.”
Immy answered, still gazing skyward.
“Could there be something higher up that’s out of Virricul’s range?”
“It’s possible.”
Daniel admitted. “But it’d have
to be pretty enormous if Albert can hear it from that far up.”
“A firehawk?” Immy
asked hopefully. Daniel shook his head
silently.
“A dragon?” Eleanor
suggested with a breathless fear. She,
Daniel, Oka and Immy had stumbled on a dragon while trying to repair a dam in
the mountains of the Third Realm.
If there’s a dragon up there, it’s too high up to even
know we’re down here. Virricul said
inside Daniel’s head. Somehow, Daniel
found little comfort in that. It was
only through an incredible stroke of inspiration and dumb luck that they had
managed to kill the dragon back in the Thundering Plains. Out here in the open wilderness, the five of
them were sitting ducks to a creature that powerful.
Suddenly, there was a distant, but utterly terrifying sound
far in the horizon. It sounded at first
like thunder, but it reverberated with an oscillating roar that could only be
made by an incredibly large creature.
Fortunately, the sound seemed to come from very far to the northeast,
probably many miles away. Still, the
distance of the unearthly, moaning roar did not prevent all five of the campers
from looking off into the horizon in utter horror. Eleanor muffled a quiet whimper, and Daniel
couldn’t help but shudder at the eerie wail.
“Told you so.”
Albert whispered, his fear blunting his smugness.
“Maybe it was something else.” Eleanor offered. “It sounds so far away.”
“You know it was just over our heads a minute
ago.” Albert insisted, still keeping his
voice to a loud whisper.
Daniel sighed quietly.
“Even if it was, it’s miles away now.
And whatever it is, I think we can be sure that it didn’t see us.”
“How can we be sure?”
Albert demanded.
Oka spoke up for the first time. “Because if it had seen us, we’d all be dead
now.”
Daniel looked down at the sword hilt which he clung to
tensely. “Virricul, was that a dragon?”
I’m not sure. Virricul
answered after an unsettling pause. I
don’t think so. I’ve never heard a
dragon sound like that.
“Who do you suppose he meant?” Immy asked with breathless wonder. Everyone looked to her with confusion.
“What do you mean?”
Daniel asked her.
Immy looked about her companions with surprise. “Didn’t you hear him? He said ‘She‘s dead, she‘s dead!’”
Daniel looked at her, stunned. “It was just a roar, Immy.”
She shook her head determinedly. “No, I heard a voice. You didn’t hear it too?”
The others looked to each other, shaking their heads. Immy looked at them with bewilderment.
“Are you saying I’m the only one that heard that horrible
voice?”
Eleanor looked at her worriedly. “All I heard was the dragon’s roar.”
“Virricul says he doesn’t think it was a dragon.” Daniel told them.
“How the hell would it know?” Albert demanded.
“Because Virricul’s encountered dozens of dragons in his
eons of life.” Daniel snapped
angrily. “Nobody knows better what a
dragon sounds like than him.”
I can’t say definitely that it’s not a dragon. Virricul corrected him, without any hint
of gratitude for Daniel’s defense of him.
All I can say is that I’ve never heard a dragon roar like that
before.
“Well, if it wasn’t a dragon, then what was it?” Eleanor asked.
“And why do I hear it as a voice?” Immy added.
Oka frowned and lowered his head. “Perhaps it was a devil.”
Daniel glanced over at him.
“What, you mean like some sort of demon?”
“There’s no such thing as a demon.” Oka dismissed him.
Daniel shook his head in bemusement. “Yeah, well, a couple of years ago, I’d have
told you that there’s no such thing as dragons, or magic, or knobwalkers,
either.”
“It’s a new normal.”
Albert agreed.
“I’m talking about a devil.” Oka snapped irritably. “It’s an entity of living magic that they say
can enslave the mind of its victim. It
will speak to them and command them to do things, and haunt them until they go
insane.”
Immy’s eyes bulged in disbelief. “Are you saying that the devil was telling me
that I’m dead?”
“If there’s a creature trying to possess Immy, then how is
it that we would hear it as a loud, distant roar?” Daniel asked dubiously.
“I don’t know.” Oka
admitted, glancing warily at Immy.
“Maybe it’s something else.”
The momentary glimpse of fear in Immy’s face quickly turned
to her usual smirk as she responded with a sarcastic jab. “Yeah, maybe it’s the Tooth Fairy looking for
revenge on all of us. Do you really
think that you can scare me with your ghost stories, Oklahoma?”
Oka’s eyes flared as Daniel spoke up. “There’s no sense in making idle speculations
at this point. Whatever it was, it seems
to have gone, so let’s just keep extra alert for now. All right?”
Eleanor nodded loyally, and Immy chuckled to herself as she
sat back down to warm her hands near the campfire. Oka watched her thoughtfully for a moment
before returning to his own spot by the fire.
Albert continued to look apprehensively out towards the northeastern
horizon, and Daniel couldn’t help but gaze out that way as well.
“I think we should take turns keeping lookout
tonight.” Albert suggested to him
quietly.
Daniel shook his head.
“No, everyone needs to rest.
Besides, Virricul can keep lookout better than any of us. In all this time in The Labyrinth, nothing’s
ever snuck up on us while we slept.”
Albert glanced disapprovingly at him. “Well, this thing out there isn’t some
clopper or vole shark. If your little
talking sword didn’t see that thing while it was flying over our heads, what
makes you think it can see it when it’s swooping down on us while we’re
asleep?”
Daniel frowned.
“Like Oka said, whatever it is, if it decides it wants us dead out here,
there’s not much we can do to prevent it anyway.”
Glancing over at the bright flicker of the campfire, he
added quietly. “Even so, it’d probably
be a good idea if we doused the fire after supper tonight.”
