GODSWAR: The Spear of Athena, Chapter 19

Our heroes had just left Mick's world...

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Chapter 19.

"By the Mothers, I am absolutely weary of this endless journey to world after world," Quester buzzed, trying to scrunch himself farther under the little overhang of rock that currently protected them from the downpour of chill rain. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a grumble of thunder followed a few seconds later.

"We all are, Quester," Victoria snapped. Then she sighed. "My apologies. But yes, I am sure we all are. Yet we have no choice. As I understand it, even if we wished to, we cannot go back."

Urelle, sheltered in the farthest corner of the overhang, nodded, dark circles under her eyes visible against her earthwood-colored skin. "It's a one-way jump through each part of the Seal. The only way to get back to any of the ones we've been to before would be to get back home and start again." Then she frowned. "Well… no. Maybe not. I've been to those worlds, and I have some feel for their natures, and there are at least parts of them I became familiar with, so it might be possible to…"

"I don't think any of us want to go back. Certainly not to most of them," Ingram said.

That is definitely an understatement, Quester thought to himself. The first world had been bad enough, then they'd found themselves in a colder wasteland, dominated in the distance by a massive palace or perhaps small hill with more than a passing resemblance to a skull, and other hostile creatures hunting them. Then the beautiful world with the cheerfully murderous blonde demon-girl, Mick's world… well, the latter hadn't been so bad… but the others! A forest deep and primeval where even the bushes had tried to attack them; a great desert, with flat, red-brown sand broken by towering mesas, where two beings battled with such unspeakable power that the mesas shattered and the ground rippled like water; a dusty, sterile plain before a black-walled city, whose dust began to rise up into armies of the dead; a rolling prairie, green and gold and harmless, whose night gave birth to floating, barely-discernable monstrosities like gigantic mantles of darkness concealing crystal teeth and blades.

The latter they had only escaped with the help of one of Ingram's two remaining Extreme Luminance Flares; the incredible brilliance of the flare had kept the things at bay until Urelle could open the next Seal… at which point they had found themselves in a storm-tossed sea… "I have lost track, even, of how many we have passed through," he finally said aloud.

"Forty-seven," Urelle said. "Forty-seven different worlds so far." She pointed slowly. "And the way out of this one is over that way, about four hundred yards." She was, of course, pointing out into the storm, where visibility was currently about ten yards. Water was now pouring in sheets off the top of their overhang – fortunately they were on a small raised section of the ground, so it wasn't getting wet there… yet.

Ingram squinted into the storm, then pulled out a set of goggles and put them on. "Ugh. Not a good idea right now, even ignoring the rain. Ground drops off fast in that direction, and I'll bet you there's some real flash flooding going on."

She nodded. "I'm going to try to rest, then." Ingram put one of their camp blankets around her, and the younger Vantage fell asleep in moments, despite the rocky ground, the chill, and the storm.

He saw Ingram's concern mirrored in Victoria's eyes. "She is weakening," he said after a moment.

"We haven't had a chance for decent rest for at least two or three days, and she's the only one of us who can open the Seal," Victoria said in agreement. "She needs to rest, and not just under a blanket in a rainstorm."

So does Ingram, he thought to her, as he simply nodded, letting his antennae bob assent.

I noticed. He is wearing himself out trying to watch out for all of us. Why?

Quester thought back on the traces of thought he occasionally got from his friend. Lingering guilt, I believe. He still feels we would not be here, in this danger, without his personal mission having dragged us here. A foolish belief, of course – if we are right, you or Urelle, or possibly both, were already targets of Ares. But, he gave a sensation of scent and pose that he knew she would see as a fond smile, young and earnest humans seem to often be prey to such noble foolishness.

Victoria hid a quick smile, gazing at Ingram as he sat watching over Urelle. Yes, you have that much understanding of us. But even you and I are in need of some rest. We cannot keep moving at this pace much longer.

Then we must hope the next world will offer us some form of respite. This one seems to favor drastic shifts of climate – chaotic and potentially deadly.

As if the thought had been a trigger, the rain ceased sheeting down; there was no slow diminution of the rainfall, but an absolute and instant cessation, and late-afternoon sunshine streamed across the landscape.

Ingram's description had been accurate; the bank they were on turned to an extremely sharp declivity only a few yards from the path they had followed to their current refuge. In the distance they could see hills and cliffs; they were clearly on the side of a valley or canyon, perhaps half a mile wide. In the absence of rainfall, they could hear the roar of a river below.

Quester ventured out to take a better look. Rank, tough grass covered the banks, with low bushes or stunted, wind-shaped trees also clinging stubbornly to the earth and rock. Anything that lives here would have to be adaptable and extremely resilient, he thought.

Below, the slope became a cliff-face, dropping a hundred and fifty feet to end in foaming white and red-brown water. Glancing upstream, he could take in the expanse of the rugged landscape and guess that this canyon drained quite a large area. "It will not subside for at least a few hours, I would think," he said, glancing back at Victoria. He focused more elements of each of his faceted eyes in the direction outward from their shelter. Four hundred yards…

At about that distance, there was an island in the middle of the roaring torrent, one about fifty yards across and a few hundred long. That, most likely, is where the Seal is.

"The question," Victoria said quietly, "is whether we let Urelle sleep, and risk some other drastic change to the weather that will hinder us, or force her to act now, and find some way to cross the river."

"I hate to wake her up," Ingram said, coming up behind them, "but… I don't know. It was a howling blizzard when we first arrived, then it switched to a tropical storm in half a second, now it's calm and sunny. I wasn't measuring intervals, but I'm guessing both of those were about two hours between changes."

"If that holds, I do not believe the water will have subsided nearly enough in that time," Quester said, knowing his scent would emphasize his belief. "We could not tell due to visibility, of course, but if the same torrential rain fell over a wide range, then it may be six hours before the surge from the distant parts of the mountains reaches us, and of course, that from the progressively nearer parts of the watershed will reach here that much earlier."

Victoria, lips tight as a ruled line, stared narrowly down at the water. "I cannot argue. I think we should at least let Urelle rest for a bit longer, but we cannot wait too long."

Ingram nodded. "Then let's at least clean up a bit, get ready to move."

Quester scouted up the mountain slope and found a stone catch basin that held fresh rainwater, filled their water containers from it, and came back down. By the time he was done with that chore, the others had finished their own.

Ingram leaned down, gently touched Urelle on the shoulder. "Urelle, sorry – but we've got to get moving."

The young woman blinked, eyes barely opening, then forced herself upright. "What… It's sunny. How long did I sleep?"

"A total of an hour," Victoria said. "I'm sorry, child, but the changes seem to be about two hours apart –"

Urelle yawned widely, but nodded. "I understand. No telling what the next change will be. It was the same? The rain just stopped without warning, like the blizzard shifted to rain?"

"Yes," Quester said.

"All right." She followed them to the edge of the cliff, looked down. "So that little island?"

"It had better be," Ingram said, "because otherwise it's somewhere in the middle of that torrent."

"I can fly myself out there," she said, obviously thinking out loud, "And maybe I can carry Auntie or Ingram, but I couldn't do both."

"And I believe I could fly or, to be more accurate, glide myself there from one of the higher points here," Quester added, "but I cannot carry more than my own gear without my glide becoming very precipitous."

"Aunt Victoria? You don't have anything to fly with, do you?"

"I might. Let me see…" She opened up her pack and began digging through it, pulled out a large case that she opened, showing an assortment of bottles and paper packets that Quester assumed were magical scrolls or sheets. There were quite a few empty spaces, however.

"Oh, Balance." She shook her head, gazing at the empty spaces, one in particular. "That's what happens when you retire; you stop keeping up the stores as much as you might. I remember now, I used my last flight enchantment… oh, it must be many months ago, before we left, when the workmen had to repair a hole near the peak of the roof. So alas, no, I don't."

"Could you ferry Victoria over and then come back and pick me up?" Ingram asked.

Urelle hesitated. "I… guess I could…"

"Maintaining the airwing enchantment is not easy, is it?" Victoria asked. "And it must be far harder to do so when carrying a passenger. If you did that, would you have enough strength left to safely open the Seal and be ready in case the next world is also hostile?"

The answer was so plain on Urelle's face that even Quester needed no words to interpret it. "No," Urelle admitted. "I would have to rest for a while. It will be touch and go even doing the trip once, carrying someone."

"And we can't afford to rest long," Ingram murmured. "If the weather shifts back to rain again, that island may be submerged in minutes."

Quester found himself gazing at Victoria as she carefully closed the large wooden case and stuffed it back into the bag that seemed far too small to hold it. "Victoria… Ingram… could you not, perhaps, go into one of our neverfull packs?"

Victoria's eyebrows rose in wing-like arches of surprise, while Ingram just blinked. Then the two of them burst out laughing.

"Oh, now, that's so brilliant. Obvious, yet we were missing it!" Ingram said, still chuckling. "We can't bring our own neverfulls into the others with us, of course; can't overlap the manufactured spaces that way. But sure, then you and Urelle only have to carry a couple extra bags which don't weigh nearly as much as even me, let alone Victoria!"

Victoria nodded her approval. "It will be a bit tight for me – none of us have so little in our bags – but I can manage. Let us hurry, then."

Quester noted that Victoria not only divested herself of her own bag, but of a few other items, which also had to be kept outside of the neverfull packs; he verified this with her bracelet, finding that attempting to put it into his pack met with resistance, as though he were trying to push through a sheet of slightly stretchy steel.

With the other two members of their party packed invisibly away, Urelle and Quester were able to make it to the little island – although the updrafts and downdrafts were quite tricky, and Quester was glad to find himself on the solid ground again.

Victoria popped out of Quester's pack, once opened, and sighed as she stretched. "That was the tightest I've had to fold myself in years. I think the last time must have been when we were smuggling ourselves into Yaniltan, packed into shipping crates."

"I don't think you've told me that one, Auntie," Urelle said. "Oh! There it is! The Seal's right here!"

"Thank Myrionar for that. I suppose I haven't told that one, now that I think of it. Perhaps later."

"We look forward to it," Ingram said. "You and your friends got into some… interesting adventures."

"Yes," Quester agreed. "The one about the wizard who duplicated himself, especially."

"Later!" Urelle said sharply. "Let's get this over with!"

Quester jumped at her tone, as did the other two. Seeing how she stood, arms hanging just a touch too heavily, he realized the young mage was even more tired than she had admitted. "Of course," he said, and they gathered around her.

Once more the subliminal feel of tension, a sense through the link of the invisible gold-fire beauty, then the wrenching dislocation as the Seal hurled them across to the next destination …

*****

Quester half-carried Urelle forward through the metallic corridors as Victoria and Ingram tried to slow the advance of the multi-winged woman who had simply materialized before them, proclaiming that they were offenses against the Creator, anomalies and abominations to be cleansed. Though her face held a distant, disinterested expression of peace, she radiated utter lethal determination.

And that shockwave of green energy she radiated nearly killed us all.

"A… little farther…" gasped Urelle. "The seal… just through the door…

"Understood," Quester said, trying to sound calm and certain as always. Privately, he was terrified. I do not know if she even has the strength to open the Seal once more.

This made the fourth universe they had been forced to flee as swiftly as they had arrived; first it had been another blizzard, but this one so fiercely cold and savage that they could barely see each other and the damp remaining from the prior world had turned almost instantly to frost; they had been fortunate to be able to reach the seal, despite their climate-spelled clothing.

From that to a desert, all-encompassing, filled with red-gold-gray sand as far as the eye could see, and beneath those sands monstrous things so huge that they rivaled the tales Quester had heard of the Great Dragons themselves.

The last had been perhaps the worst, a place where they’d gasped for breath within a wrecked vessel of alien design, air leaking into a black, star-speckled void as a gigantic ship loomed ever nearer, projecting a barely-visible beam that turned other drifting hulks into a red-shimmering liquid that was drawn inside, a beam that was eating away their own ship before Urelle had found and wrenched open the way through the Seal.

The metal door slid open before them, revealing a circular room with no other obvious exits. But Urelle sighed with relief. "There! Put me down, Quester, I have to start!"

Ingram, Victoria, fall back as quickly as you may. I will seal the door behind you and hope it will at least slow our adversary.

Coming! The distant sound of explosions. Lady's Name, this thing is tough, but I think that slowed it a bit!

Victoria and Ingram dove through the door and Quester hit the controls to shut it; Mother's Memories suddenly crystallized, told him which control would lock the portal. Yet these memories tell me nothing of what our foe is, or even where we are. Why? Why are they so arbitrary?

"There!" gasped Urelle. "Almost ready…"

A tremendous blow struck the solid metal barrier, denting it inward. Then a golden shimmer appeared in the room.

Nest and Mother, it's coming in!

"NOW!"

The four of them lunged together, and even as the passionless destroying shape fully materialized, the world once more dissolved in light and distortion…

… and tumbled out into a dim-lit alleyway, high brick walls on either side, dented metal bins of unfamiliar design mostly filled with trash and odd black bags spaced along its length, each not far from a metal door set into the nearby wall. Quester winced at an onslaught of smells ranging from those of garbage in various states of decay to strange, metallic-chemical tangs and the odor of many, many people.

"Are you all right, Urelle?" Ingram asked.

There was a pause that made all of them gather around the girl, but after a moment she forced herself to sit up. "I'm… not hurt. But… I can't do that again, Auntie, I just can't until I rest!" Tears spilled down Urelle's face, a shocking loss of her usual cheerful or determined control. She sounded years younger, a child who had reached her absolute limit of exhaustion.

"Then you won't have to," Ingram said emphatically. "We'll find somewhere you can rest. Somehow."

Victoria looked around slowly. "Not perhaps the most attractive setting… but I must say, I appreciate not having been either assaulted or endangered by the very environment in the first moments. The temperature is moderate, at least."

Quester thought it was a bit chilly, but it was certainly far superior to the places they had visited most recently.

A distant humming, whirring sound abruptly grew louder, and something flashed by the entrance to the alley. Quester got the brief impression of an enclosed metal-and-glass vehicle, running on wheels but with no immediately visible means of propulsion – magical, perhaps.

Victoria stared at that as well, and Quester became aware that the low background murmur and rumble he had been ignoring was the sound of many, many of those vehicles, as well as people. Victoria glanced around, nodded, and resettled her battle coat. "Quester, could you scout forward, if you would?"

"Of course," he said.

Cautiously he moved towards the end of the alley, trying to keep himself as inconspicuous as possible; in the dim lighting, his dark exoskeleton would help.

Finally, he reached the end and was able to get a good look up and around.

For a moment, he could do nothing but stare. This was a city – but a city he had never imagined. In every direction there were buildings, towers, seemingly faceted on every side with glass, or faced with polished stone or metal, rearing up hundreds of feet, perhaps a thousand feet or more in some cases, making the roadways beneath them into rivers of stone in canyons of glass and steel. Perhaps the Dragon's Castle stood higher than any of these… yet all of Zarathanton would be lost within the immensity of this city.

But more: the dim light came not from the sun or moon, but from lamps spaced evenly along the roadways and, in an omnipresent and majestic shimmering from nearly every one of those titanic structures. Luminance shone from within thousands, tens of thousands of those glass-facet windows, shimmered on the roadways from brilliant lamps at the front of every one of the moving vehicles, blinked and skipped and sparkled from signs and symbols on storefronts, hanging on posts, or displayed on great rectangular boards.

The people seemed to all be human – or nearly all. The mode and style of dress was wildly variable. Some wore outfits that would not have seemed out of place on Zarathan, some even wearing weapons of designs that ranged from the spare and practical to the grotesquely impractical – and the wearers, he also noted with puzzlement, also ranged from those who moved as experts in combat to individuals so obviously indolent that just walking caused them to sweat, even in the cool of the evening.

Other people wore clothing that covered the entire spectrum from odd but unobtrusive to ridiculously complex. A few inhuman figures moved here and there, one a gigantic, somewhat attenuated shape nine feet tall, wearing black, spiky armor with a full-sealed helm of intimidating design, with a huge black mace on one side and a sword on the other. Despite the forbidding appearance, people did not seem perturbed by the figure's presence; indeed, Quester saw it stopped at least twice by people, who would raise small rectangular objects towards it that would then emit their own brilliant sparks of light.

There were a few people, in what appeared to be uniforms, who had some sort of authority, directing traffic. After a few moments, he did notice that most of the more outlandish and peculiar figures were all either coming from or going to a particular direction.

He backed up into the alley again, sending the others the images of what he had seen. "I am… unable to say what this all means. I did not see anything that looked vaguely like my people, however."

"Indeed," Victoria said, looking quite puzzled. "And from what you saw, I incline to believe that there are only human beings in this area. The way that very tall figure moved appeared to involve stilts. I think it was a costume, but for what purpose, I could only guess. Perhaps there is a theater nearby and the costume serves as advertisement?"

"Perhaps. But if there are only humans on this world, that will pose a problem for me. Even on Zarathan there are those uncomfortable around the Iriistiik, and we know some of the other worlds we have encountered have people with a great aversion or fear towards beings who have insectoid features."

Victoria and Ingram nodded. "But we can't stay here," Ingram said. "Sooner or later, someone's going to open one of those doors and see us. Probably sooner; from the smell I think these might be inns or restaurants, and this is their rubbish area."

Quester stiffened as he became aware of something else: two new, stronger scents, closer than others… approaching the alley, with a touch of the smell he associated with determination and caution in humans. Someone approaches! Two someones, to be exact!

Even as he thought that to his friends, a figure appeared in the alleyway's mouth – a figure outlined against the light at the end of the alley and strangely smaller than he had expected. It was female, that much he was certain of, and from the silhouette was wearing one of the more peculiar outfits he had seen.

But that is only one person…

The problem with scent was that it was often hard to get direction. But now he realized the other smell was from behind them – the dead-end part of the alley, where it had not been before.

I don't see anything, Ingram thought. At least, nothing more than a couple of rats. One of them's white, though.

The scent is touched by that of rat… perhaps –

"Holy crap, Silvertail, that's not a costume!" the female figure said suddenly.

"No," said a man's voice from the rear, and Ingram cursed. Now there was a man there, a tall, dark-haired man, regarding them with great trepidation. "It most definitely is not… and these people are not from this world. Identify yourselves and your purpose, please," the man said. "For if you are enemies, I must call upon you to surrender; and if you are not foes of this world, you are in very great danger!"