Chapter 4

  Hitasa and Dalex waited in line next to one of the food distribution centers outside the resistance headquarters in Drakko Square. When they reached the head of the line, Hitasa watched as Dalex tucked a packaged meal into the small backpack he would be carrying for their journey. The idea that the food from the distribution centers could be preserved in a way that it would go months or even years without rotting was a marvel, but Hitasa was starting to wonder if they needed a bigger backpack.

  There would almost certainly be sources of food on the Gaia Zeta side of the Waterfall Portal, but they didn’t know what peril awaited them in that other world. They might have to survive off these packaged provisions for weeks on end if they were on the run, being hunted by beastkin armies.

  Dalex slipped another meal into the bag. The backpack could probably hold two or three more of the packages. Each package might feed one of them for a day.

  Luckily, the combat and all-purpose gels could handle most of their other needs. Weapons, shelter, tools, and almost anything she could think of were accessible at a word or sometimes even a thought.

  “Ring,” Hitasa said, “check the list. What are we forgetting?”

  A peppy voice from above Hitasa said, “All planned items are accounted for, and stores of molding gel are at their maximum limits.”

  Hitasa heard Dalex mutter something about “astral mortar” as he put another meal in the bag. She ignored him.

  “Thank you, Ring.”

  During the battle for Batulan-bar, Ring had suffered damage, thanks to one of Jean Castreier’s signature spells. Luckily, while the device holding Ring was not salvageable, Dalex had been able to retrieve another personal defense drone from his starship and transfer Ring’s mind into the new device.

  It was still difficult for Hitasa to believe that Dalex possessed such a thing as a starship and that he had come from a world farther away than Hitasa could comprehend. At this point, she couldn’t deny it was true, but her logical mind rebelled at the idea. How could a man like Dalex actually exist?

  She watched him again as he grabbed another package of preserved food from the distribution center next to him. He carefully set it in the bag and then looked up to see her staring at him pensively.

  He grinned sheepishly. “What?”

  Hitasa shook her head, “Nothing. Just waiting.”

  And then he grabbed a fifth package and slid it into the bag. Hitasa thought the backpack would be close to overflowing by now. But then he put a sixth box inside.

  Hitasa cocked her head to the side. “How much can that thing hold?”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? Come, check this out.”

  She approached closer and he held the opening of the bag wide for her to see inside. Hitasa started as a face looked up at her from the depths of the backpack. Seventh. She was standing in a room like a closet at the bottom of the bag, several yards below where the backpack should have ended. Hitasa felt an unnerving chill as she stepped back from the bag and looked under it.

  Truly, it was just an ordinary backpack. She peered inside again as Dalex inserted a package into the mouth of the bag, handing it down to Seventh who took it and stacked it in a pile towards the corner of the room she was in.

  “There’s only one thing you can’t say right now,” Dalex said.

  Hitasa opened her mouth, “It’s bigger on—”

  “No, stop!” Dalex interrupted. “You can’t say it. I call this my bag of holding. You were worried we weren’t taking enough stuff with us, weren’t you?”

  “Indeed,” Hitasa said, thoroughly impressed by this “magic trick” as Dalex would call it. She was sure Seventh could explain the scientific principle of how it worked. “How much food are you thinking of packing?”

  “I was thinking we’d get to a hundred and then decide from there.”

  They both looked up from the bag’s opening at the same time. Their faces were only inches apart. Hitasa smelled the fragrance he had picked up in Ulenbeter before they had visited the tailor’s shop together. His scent reminded her of the forest after rain. A moment later, they each realized they were staring at each other too intently and they both stood up.

  Dalex cleared his throat and said, “Want to lend a hand? It’ll go a bit faster.”

  Hitasa nodded and walked up to one of the openings on the distribution center to request the same preserved meals it was making for Dalex. She glanced at him with her eyes and caught him glancing at her too.

  When he looked away, Hitasa let out a little shiver. This was going to be an interesting journey.

  ***

  Once everything was packed, Seventh flew out of the bag and they ran one final inventory. Everything was set. While they waited for night to fall, Hitasa and Dalex checked in with Metsa and Dava again to see if they needed anything before Dalex left, but, for the moment, the matron elf and weathered beastkin hunter required nothing new from their powerful ally.

  When one of the few intact clock towers in Batulan-bar struck midnight, Dalex slung the “bag of holding” over his arms and around his back. It was time.

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  Hitasa, Dalex, and Seventh activated the stealth functions on the armor each of them wore and Seventh used the matter transmitter to instantly move the little party of three into the skies above Ulenbeter. Even in the dark, Hitasa could see the slope of the hill on which the city was set. Almost all of the lights had been extinguished. Even around the Waterfall Portal, where Hitasa knew thousands of soldiers and publicized mages had likely been gathered, not a single lantern glowed.

  At first, Hitasa worried that some natural catastrophe had befallen the city. Batulan-bar was far enough away from Ulenbeter that they might not have felt a gaiaquake strong enough to shake the capital of Gaia Eta. But then she realized she was looking at a protocol she knew well. Large enough towns and cities were taught that, in the event an enemy dragon came to attack, they should extinguish all lights to make it harder for the dragon to spot them from the air.

  It seemed Ulenbeter had taken that protocol and applied it to a different airborne enemy.

  “That’s smart,” Dalex said, catching on at the same time. “But unfortunately, not smart enough.” He turned in the air to face Hitasa. “Do you know how to cast perception spells?”

  “Ring taught me all about image intensification and infrared vision,” Hitasa answered.

  She activated the night vision function of her armor and the world was suddenly tinted green. When she looked down, Ulenbeter popped into view more clearly. It was no longer just a silhouette. She saw the contours of the walls and the layout of the streets. When she switched to infrared vision, the city burst into spots of yellow, orange, and red. She saw the body heat from masses of soldiers patrolling through the streets and heat radiating out of residents’ homes. Through thermal vision, the area surrounding the Waterfall Portal was a churning cloud of warm light. The plaza appeared to be occupied by at least two thousand armed defenders.

  She looked back at Dalex and then froze. There was another person floating next to Seventh, someone Hitasa hadn’t been able to see earlier without her night vision enabled. The newcomer looked like a human woman with long red hair and the horns of a goat to each side of her scalp.

  “You didn’t tell me we were bringing Balgoth!” Hitasa said.

  The demon wasn’t outfitted in the benefine armor Hitasa, Dalex, and Seventh were wearing, but she was still hidden by some sort of cloaking field. Seventh had probably picked her up with the same matter transmission beam that had transported them all to Ulenbeter. She was floating next to Seventh in one of the little molding gel bowls Dalex liked to use to move people around.

  Balgoth shifted her stare from the city to Hitasa. “Dalex is not allowed to adventure where I cannot witness it.”

  Dalex himself was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Allowed? Why did you bring her?” Hitasa asked.

  Dalex shrugged. “I don’t know. I just like having her around.

  “You’ve heard her music by now, right?”

  Dalex looked away from Hitasa. “A couple songs, yeah.”

  “And you’re telling me you liked what you heard?”

  “I thought it was funny.”

  Hitasa shook her head. Although she wasn’t opposed to bringing the demon along in other circumstances, this seemed like an unnecessary extra element on an otherwise tight mission.

  “Seventh is going to keep an eye on her and make sure she comes through alright,” Dalex said. “Let’s make straight for the portal. They shouldn’t have any idea we’re here.”

  Hitasa felt glaringly conspicuous floating over the city, but she knew she was invisible. Her armor’s stealth could defeat any kind of improved seeing, hearing, or smelling. As far as Ulenbetter was concerned, she and the others did not exist.

  They floated down until they were right over the Waterfall Portal. Tents and formations of soldiers from different groups stood guard in a circle and on the obsidian platform. Many of them scanned the sky, looking for flyers, staring right through Hitasa.

  The disk covering the portal entrance was still in place. Hitasa saw ropes, chains, and other tools abandoned all around the base of the disk, evidence that the defenders had tried and failed to move the barrier. More of the obsidian around the portal had been broken up to gain better access to lower part of the disk, but no one had yet attempted to excavate its bottom edge. That risked tampering with the base of the portal itself. As far as anyone knew, the portal could not be destroyed by any means, but it would be terribly inconvenient if it fell out of its foundation.

  What the defenders probably didn’t know yet was that the disk was not actually embedded in the ground or platform. Some sort of spatial engine kept it pressed against the portal ring. Even if the portal could be detached from its foundation and moved elsewhere, the disk lock would follow it.

  Dalex pointed at the face of the disk and began, “Opens—”

  A shout rang out from the camps of soldiers below them. Distracted by the commotion, Dalex paused to look around for its source.

  “He’s here!” someone yelled. “I know it. He’s here! Daiekh means I feel my enemy. I can feel him!”

  The soldiers closed ranks around the portal. A lone beastkin with rat ears and a long tail trotted up the ramp to the top of the platform, standing in front of the disk and scouring the stars with his eyes. Hitasa recognized him immediately as the officer who had introduced himself as Erban. She had told Dalex there might be words of power capable of detecting them despite their stealth armor. Erban and his soldiers couldn’t see through the armor, but they still knew Dalex and the others were there.

  “You were right,” Dalex said.

  “You shouldn’t have shown them the door last time we were here,” Hitasa said. “They’ve been expecting us to come back and try to sneak through.”

  “That’s what I get for wanting to put people’s minds at ease. Let’s back away a bit and get a running start. The second I open the door, they’ll know exactly what we have planned.”

  They floated backward to the edge of the plaza with Seventh and Balgoth, studying the defenders’ formations. The voice that had alerted the others to their presence earlier announced that his perception of the enemy was fading. He knew they were moving away.

  “We just need to be faster than him,” Dalex said. “We’ll charge the tomb seal, and I’ll open the door at the last second. We’ll be on the other side before the daiekh guy can announce we’re coming.”

  “I’m trusting your timing,” Hitasa said.

  “Line up behind me. I’ll go first. If I get it wrong, I’ll be the one to splat on the side of the seal. On the count of three, got it?”

  “Got it,” Hitasa said at the same time Seventh answered, “Affirmative.”

  “One. Two. Three!”

  Dalex shot forward. Hitasa waited half a second and then followed. Seventh brought up the rear with Balgoth. They raced over the plaza toward the flat surface of the disk.

  A moment before they slammed into the side, Dalex shouted, “Opensesame!”

  At the same time, a number of other voices cried out.

  “Here they come!”

  “Do it!”

  “Lift!”

  The door in the disk slid open. Simultaneously, a dozen beastkin soldiers and a handful of orcs lifted a steel plate resting flat on the platform in front of the portal and slapped it across the new opening. With so many strong hands working together, they just barely got the plate in place before Dalex reached the door. They had clearly practiced for this exact moment.

  Dalex let out a yelp and failed to stop before hitting the plate. The metal rang out like a steel drum. He made a significant dent in the plate but did not pierce through.

  Hitasa, Seventh, and Balgoth floated to a stop behind him.

  “There he is!” one of the guards bellowed. “He made an imprint.”

  Sure enough, the steel plate bore a mark that was vaguely Dalex-shaped.

  “Get out of there!” Hitasa shouted at Dalex.

  She was too late. The now familiar voice of Erban Tenggas, Second Captain of the Ulenbetter Guard, rang out across the plaza.

  “Open fire and loose!”

  The army around the plaza let forth a fusillade of arrows, musket balls, and fire magic right at where Dalex still floated next to the plate, recovering from the shock of the impact.

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