The portal traversal was completely disorienting, every possible image of either realm twisted and curled together into a great swirl, though Ryza maintained her daug’maker and knew her body was not being so contorted. Other than a charge on her skin that made it prickle, her general sense of touch only felt the wind and the temperature change.
The other side of the portal was intense and jarring, and immediately she activated the slowing sight as she felt her balance totally thrown. It took her more clicks than she could’ve imagined to focus on anything worthwhile out of the morass of confusing input, but just barely she stayed upright, legs spread wide from several wobbles, and eyes even wider at what greeted her.
A debris-strewn, blood-stained, rocky cliff was immediate, framed by a hazy yet bright, pale orange sky with a shrouded horizon, making it all feel cramped and tiny. The air was moist, musty, and acrid enough to burn the lungs — it was not exactly warm, but the freezing cold she’d come from made it a stark contrast.
Meanwhile, exclamations resounded from the other two Taldecs, who had not fared as well in keeping their balance. Daexo had fallen to a knee and Aerion had dropped almost face-first on the platform.
She had little time to process or lament what hell they’d come to, because only a stone’s throw away was a cluster of the horned demons in their suits — five of them — though one had his helmet off, revealing a gaunt, too-small face and a head with a tragically-thin layer of hair. As the one Ryza had first killed outside Many Sands, he had on earrings of red stone.
They had clearly not expected the Hamaleen to come through, but they noticed very quickly, one pointing and shouting generically, while the helmetless one cried out something not quite intelligible but what she was soon certain was, ‘shoot them dead’ or the like, as quickly they were turning and raising their weapons…
It was only when those weapons were half-raised that Ryza truly got her bearings and ‘caught up’ to a world completely alien to her own. But she understood ‘targets’ in that internal Slowseer language quite well. She picked out the one most threatening and brought her own rifle to bear, dropping to one knee for stability and cocking the hammer of pinched flint; by means of inner lever workings, this also dropped the frizzen over the priming pan and deposited powder by way of a little metal box container that was part of the frizzen.
Ryza aimed for a helmeted head and pulled the trigger as the demon was still only pulling back a hammer… shockingly, the bullet failed to go where she expected, embedding high in the carapace above his eyes and she guessed even above his forehead. The soldier felt it and was shaken, his thumb releasing the hammer just prematurely before it cocked — the unintended shot came up massively short.
It was something she was noting even as she was cycling her rifle’s cylinder with a hand and pulling back the hammer for another shot — thanks to the misfire and the time it would give on the first target, she swung her rifle over to the other lining up a ready gun at Aerion. Ryza crammed in the time like mad, hurrying the shot, aiming low, guessing the best angle to get the headshot she needed and barely getting the barrel pointed before pulling the trigger.
The bullet took him at the weak point right between the eyes — there was a mild jerk, then his rifle dropped and he began falling forward, his suit making it almost a gentle dive.
The other three targets had reacted slower and did not have a shot ready, though Ryza knew she could only hope to stop one. She cycled, aimed, and took the shot with precise care, once again right before her enemy would fire. A flash, a crack resounding through the air, and another bullet shattered the eye of a helmet, the demon’s hand perhaps trying to rise and touch the wound, but he was falling backward and senseless before it could.
After the shot, Ryza did not even try to beat the others to their triggers. She dropped and dove forward to try spoiling any enemy aim, planning on sliding onto the gravel into a prone firing position. She was aware of Aerion and Daexo just lining up shots. She hoped they’d be accurate.
A bullet whizzed over her head as she had a surprisingly easy drop to the ground thanks to a lighter state of gravity. Daexo meanwhile fired from a knee almost simultaneously with a shot exploding at the stock of his gun in a spray of splinters, him reeling back with a cry — his hand had to have been wounded. The other bullets she failed to track perfectly, but one shot from either Daexo or Aerion caught the helmetless one in the abdomen, which set him clasping a hand to the wound and stumbling away with a curse, eventually dropping.
Almost leisurely, Ryza beat the first demon she’d fired at to his second shot, which he’d nervously arranged while moving sideways in the span of mere moments since. His thumb was just on the hammer when a bullet edged between a gap and blew through his neck, a misjudgment again due to movement and angle but fortunately quite effective enough. The demon stumbled a bit with the gun in one hand and a hand to his neck, making strangled noises.
The last unwounded combatant was clearly panicked, but despite what he faced he did not fail to gear up for a shot, whether due to that panic, training, or both. Ryza felt little pity for slave-takers, and the fire in everyone’s blood seemed too hot and quick to stop. She mechanically cycled to her fifth shot and put it right between the eyes of her enemy again, before he even touched the hammer. He dropped something like a slowly-lowered sack.
Ryza cycled to her last shot immediately, then trained the rifle around looking for any remaining threats. The demon shot in the neck faced them and was trying to raise his rifle with one hand, but never managed it before falling to his knees, then to his face, spent.
One of their huge mounts had interposed itself between them and the helmetless fallen one, growling and in a protective stance. It was quite a sight, as it was also helmetless and so the first she’d seen of them in their natural state. It had short, bristled-up fur and a toothy, short snout ending in a big, black nose, with brown-yellow eyes and triangular ears currently pressed down and back in agitation.
Ryza slowly stood as she called behind her, “Are you alright, husband? Aerion?” She coughed after, throat irritated by the air.
“I’m fine,” Aerion muttered.
After a vehement curse, Daexo replied, “Lost a finger. Probably two. Damn them.”
With teeth clenched, Ryza swallowed her despair at such news, as well as her urge to go to him. “At least it is your off-hand.” She intended it as making light, as was their way, but it sounded wooden to her, and her voice broke slightly. Hurriedly she added, “You two, train your weapons and cover me.”
The demon being ‘guarded’ managed to bark some clipped command, which caused the mount to whine, dip its head, then back away. With another command, something with ‘return’ in it, the beast made more whining noises, but it soon trundled away, down the cliff and out of sight.
Ryza saw the demon lying face up, his eyes on them, one hand clutching his middle with the other wrapped around a rifle that he had on the ground. The hammer was uncocked. Ryza glanced behind her and made brief eye contact with Daexo, nodding her head at the fallen demon to effectively say ‘cover him,’ then she — carefully, in the strange gravity — walked over to the decline of the cliff where the beast had gone. It wasn’t moving fast as she caught sight of it.
She intensified the slowing sight, aimed, then made a loud whistle, which caused the beast to turn its head back up toward her. She put a bullet between its eyes with her last shot, causing the briefest of yelps before it jerked, pitched, and then hit the ground, rolling and sliding further down before slowing at a rocky cropping, body twitching.
The demon nearby spoke some angry curse at her, and she heard Daexo say, “Don’t even think about it, scumsack!”
When Ryza turned, the fallen demon had only shifted his gun somewhat closer to him, wincing and wheezing from the effort. He’d been shot high in the gut, a lucky or very accurate shot that looked to have caught him dead into the middle seam of the armor. Any other gut shot would’ve hit the plates and not been so severe. It was likely the lead had broken up inside and ended up fragmenting some into his lungs, judging by his breathing. He was certainly on his last legs.
Scowling at Ryza, the demon spat breathlessly, “No mercy in you noki savages, is there? Pontsekú nokieun kessa le-” He was interrupted by his own cough, which made him squeeze his eyes shut in pain and try to control it, little spatters of blood spraying out of his mouth in the effort.
“Don’t act so surprised,” Ryza answered. “You were trying to send him back to a camp or settlement, which would bring investigators here. Right? If you had just told him to heel and wait, perhaps I’d have spared him.”
“Her… I was sending her home… you kessa.” He spat on the ground, spit mixed with blood.
Ryza regarded him wordlessly for a moment, then began casually changing out her rifle’s cylinder, which was a laborious process of unlatching, twisting, and pulling the empty cylinder off a central core and replacing it. She had noticed it getting harder to do with time, and wondered if she should oil it…
“What happened here?” Aerion asked.
The demon turned his sneering face over to Aerion, showing bloody teeth. He might’ve been holding in a laugh. “Your mother let us all take turns. A wild one — messy — but she loved it.”
A shot ringing out surprised Ryza, almost enough to make her jump. The demon had a bullet blow through his forehead, causing him to go still almost immediately. Ryza turned her head toward Aerion, but he was not meeting her eye, cycling the cylinder on his gun and turning to walk away without a word, stumbling once from almost losing his balance.
Daexo exchanged a look with Ryza, shrugging. He had a cloth hastily wrapped around the bleeding wound at his hand; he’d been using the top of his hand instead of his palm to rest the ruined stock while aiming the gun, which still seemed functional. The bullet had not damaged the barrel.
Ryza quickly finished with her rifle’s prep, then slung it over her shoulders to proceed to Daexo and take his hand, undoing the cloth to survey the damage. His pointer finger was gone entirely, blown off at the knuckle, and the middle finger and associated knuckle were shredded up, with bone showing. Glints of lead. She took a deep, calming breath and took off her backpack to retrieve a surgical kit.
“I might make it a day or two,” Daexo joked. “At least I can get my affairs in order.”
Worried, not much in the mood, Ryza just stared at him as she pulled out the kit. He didn’t deserve a glare — was hypocritical from her — but she couldn’t help it. He’d taken lots of wounds over the years, but he’d never been mauled, never lost something.
An exclamation came from Aerion, along with an almost whispered, “Look at that… impossible…”
Almost in the opposite direction as their facing coming through the portal, a glowing, bright yellow star could be seen through the irregular orange haze of apparent clouds. As Ryza watched, she got a definitive sense of movement headed down to the horizon, which meant… they were rotating around it extremely fast? But it reminded her more of a moon at such a speed.
Ryza’s eyes flashed up to higher in the sky based on a vague memory of her perceptions since arriving, searching closer to their original facing, and there it was. Another star, tiny but bright, and less yellow or glowing. Two Lightbringers? Ryza just shook her head at the absurdity of it all.
“I don’t think that’s natural.” Daexo had not taken his squinting eyes off the fast-moving one, and she could feel his farsense splayed out by its feel passing through her. He seemed haunted.
“What do you mean?” Ryza asked as she pulled out a small wooden decanter of Hospital-derived, diluted antiseptic. “How could it not be? Are you sensing something?”
Daexo shook his head slowly, his expression sour. “It’s just… wrong. Like this scene, like the air, like every movement. Like everything here.”
“I think he’s right.” Aerion was still staring at it as well. “It doesn’t make sense for it to be a real star. Or maybe it is, and impossible things are normal here. It's no surprise to find ill things in this hellscape. They’re probably endless.”
“Hold still, husband,” Ryza said as she poured the watery solution over Daexo’s wounds. He did not flinch or make noise, but his jaw clenched from the sting.
“And now the damn portal,” Aerion said in annoyance. It had shrunk down and down to less than half its size, which meant it was floating above jumping height, as it always seemed to stay consistent in its center.
“It doesn’t matter nor is it a surprise. We were prepared for that possibility, which was why we rushed in.”
“What about his wound? The gods only know what floats around in this soup we’re breathing in. I feel sick already.”
“I’ll manage,” Daexo replied with a grunt. “I’ve survived a lot worse.”
“Are you joking? This is quite literally the worst any-”
“Enough, Aerion!” Ryza commanded. “Focus on what we can control. Do you still have Deros’s scent? Let me take care of my husband while you do what you do best. Alright?”
Nodding curtly to her, muttering something incoherent other than ‘stink,’ Aerion turned away to begin sniffing at the air, making disgusted noises and sometimes full-on gagging fits every time.
Meanwhile, Ryza sat down on an uprooted log with Daexo, to clean and dress his wound, eventually applying pressure through layers of clean bandages to ensure the bleeding stopped. She knew there were embedded pieces of lead, but she was not capable of dealing with it. Such things had been hammered into the heads of Taldec Azakan: don’t dig around in wounds. Let the body heal by its own mechanisms. Get them to a Hospitaller. The last was the thing she was worried about, but infection rarely claimed the Blessed if one took precautions and didn’t tempt fate.
The world began to darken a shade and redden significantly as the ‘fast star’ fell more and more toward the horizon, the two sources almost seeming to combat in the shades of orange and bronze they created. When she finished with Daexo, she became aware of another shape that had seemingly materialized in the dampened glow — a massive orb in the sky with a ring around it top to bottom, most of it in shadow but for a brightened yellow crescent, apparently lit by the slower star’s beams.
She must’ve made a noise, as Daexo looked up from his bandaged hand to see and marvel. “By the gods above…”
Aerion returned to their vicinity carrying an extra gun among other things, glancing over the way they were looking. “Ah, you see it, too? Glad I’m not going mad.”
“I don’t really understand what I’m looking at,” Ryza replied, “but I’m content to leave it alone if it leaves us alone.”
Sniggering about it briefly, Aerion grabbed the damaged gun lying by Daexo and replaced it with the one he brought. Then he regarded Ryza soberly as he set about removing the cylinder from the gun. “Deros’s scent is here. As is the scent of his spilled blood, mixed with everyone else. The latter disappears down the way, but… as far as scents go, I have a trail, moving fast on foot. Anything else is mixed with demons and beasts. And the imprint of wagon wheels.”
He paused to sigh, sniffle, then rub his nose with a sleeve. “My guess is he got away in the midst of some crazy altercation. Patched up his wounds somehow, probably hiding with the aid of the fog. I think these guards were left here from a crew that came in after the fact, transporting wounded in a hurry. By the way, there are… two beasts a little ways down, tied to posts. They didn't react much to me. They’re like large, furry froul but with two horns. Pack animals I think.”
“But what happened here?” Ryza asked. “It reminds me of that detonation we were a part of. Any chance of that?”
Aerion shrugged. “I smell the use of gunpowder, but I think that is mere gun use. Probably not.”
“Wrongness,” Daexo offered. “Something demonic happened here. I don’t know what chaos feels like, but this is the way I imagine it.”
“Chaos?” Aerion looked around suddenly as if he expected daggers to rain down on him.
“It’s like a residue, an echo, fading over hours. Maybe it isn’t harmful by now, but it was very thick and intense earlier. It’s not the same as that portal, as I thought before. It’s separate… it was flowing from here to the Hamellion side.”
“What keeps the portal open, anyway?” Ryza asked.
Daexo’s eyes shifted over to it, and he shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. If there’s something there I can’t bloody well pick it out from the constant, glaring intensity of the makar’osa. Just like it drowns out the sense of discord when I’m closer to it. Hell, if it hadn’t reduced like it did, I might not even feel the difference from here.”
“It is no surprise that an effect to bridge worlds would be powerful.” She left a pause as she studied the great crystalline ring. The sphere had shrunk to two meters or less. “We’ll follow the trail. It’s that or wait and hope for this to open back up. Better to catch up with Deros and go from there with what to do.”
Aerion nodded as he tossed down the gutted remains of the damaged gun, cylinder in hand. “I could use a positive. I’ll never let him out of my sight again.”
Ryza had a faint grin at that. “You’ve stolen those words from my head. Let's get moving. I want to see about these pack animals.”
In something a shade better than twilight, they made their way down the rocky cliff, though there was a worn dirt path to follow. The terrain was all in colors of rust, yellow, and brown, but a pervasive dust of rusty orange coated everything, and she realized a great portion of it was actually frozen fog droplets stained by the same color. In some places, it became a murky sludge. Despite this gunk, there were bunches of strange plants thriving, usually in dark green shades, and spidery trees with dark brown, almost black bark.
Seeing down the cliff very far was impossible due to the fog, but it looked very gradual, as if they were atop a generally gently-sloping mountain, albeit with occasional crags.
Movement was a process to adjust to — Daexo almost tripped once by pitching forward too hard while going down, and Aerion moved much slower than Ryza’s tastes from struggling mightily with it. Judging from his hesitancy, he must’ve fallen once or twice. Ryza for her part adjusted quickly. She was lighter, felt almost as if she were floating. Paradoxically, walking felt easier and slower at the same time.
The beasts were as tame as could be, though they watched the approach of the Taldecs curiously. They had two curving horns up at the top of their skull and their almost rat-like face ended in a large, black nose. They were twice the size of froul and had shaggy fur of brown and black.
Near the posts, the dirt path curved and widened then turned into a full-on paved road of perfectly-fitted concrete triangles. It appeared brand new.
They found saddles and harnesses nearby, some of the packs of supplies removed but much of it simply left attached. Ryza decided they’d take the beasts for riding purposes, so they stripped down the saddles significantly of the various saddlebags and attachments to make it more viable. She found a bag of feed of some kind, a greenish-brown grain product. The animals piqued up from her opening it up, so she gave them a couple of handfuls, just to start the relationship off on the right foot. Their little ears and tails seemed to flick happily.
As Deros’s trail was not nearby, they first returned to the portal vicinity and deigned to take a few odds and ends such as spare cylinders and the somewhat rarer entangling gun the helmetless soldier had.
Aerion led them down the mountain slope close to where the dead beast was, past rockier dirt-strewn terrain into more and more pockets of weed tufts and yellow-brown carpets of what she knew to be grasses. They were rare in the north of Hamellion with its prevalence for vast fields of deep-rooting shrub, if any vegetation at all outside of river valleys. The pack beasts seemed quite interested in them, mildly grunting about passing them up.
Progressively as they got farther from the portal, their ears kept popping as if from the altitude changing, but far more quickly than mere descension would cause. It didn’t get easier to breathe but harder, or more accurately, less comfortable. She was certain that the air was not getting thinner, but thicker. It did warm slightly, however.
They trekked on for hours through the terrain, avoiding any unusual, potentially dangerous land features, such as dips where the icy sludge collected. There were large, tall trees with claw-like arching branches and roots, with spiny, dark purple leaves they couldn’t trust weren’t demonic abominations of some kind. The beasts weren’t interested in them, that was certain.
Wildlife could be heard to exist — strange calls in the distance. Something like birds, and a few times they thought they saw ghosts of movement above indicating flyers. There were shrill, staccato hoots coming from somewhere, completely alien to their ears. Commonly there was some sort of grating continuous buzz sound, and often nearby, though hidden as always by the fog. Ryza threw a rock in the direction of such a noise once, which quieted it.
Once, they all caught sight of something suddenly launching from a boulder, two hands in size with fluttering, iridescent wings carrying it off. Vaguely insect-like, white in color, it made her skin crawl. She chided herself for that.
I’ve survived the harshest wildernesses and seen every creature imaginable. Eaten them, even. I can handle this.
The giant orb stayed where it was, and the slow star seemed to as well or moved exquisitely slowly. Perhaps only two hours after the fast star set, it rose directly under the giant orb, soon creating such glare in the haze that the former disappeared. As the fog had been reduced, the star could vaguely be seen to rise from a distant, mountainous horizon into a sky that it had turned vibrant pink.
They paused as the new light illuminated things to some degree. Down from the mountain, she saw a road curving around and then cutting through… a forest. She only had the vaguest memory of one from childhood, and the sheer scale of what she beheld made her memory seem lackluster. The trees were massive and tall, with black bark and vast, thick canopies of leaves in dark shades swaying in the wind, though the haze made the color hard to judge at distance. As such, the illusion initially was that they were red and orange.
Both of the men made nonverbal sounds of awe. Ryza turned to look back up and saw that the fog had indeed been pooling up to the peak, as she had suspected. It swirled up to it in a languid maelstrom.
It’s from the portal. Unnatural. Though it has a powerful control in place, it cannot help but still play havoc with the weather.
“How’s the trail?” Ryza asked, turning back to Aerion.
“Huh?” Aerion tore his eyes away from the alien vision to look at Ryza and blink watery eyes. He cleared his throat, then coughed. “Gah… this air… yes. The trail. Leads toward the road. Hopefully, he’s following it.”
Daexo was scowling. “I haven’t been saying anything hoping it would clear, but… the wrongness. It seems to go the same way. It might be following him.”
Ryza stared back at him. “What? How? What could be following him?”
Daexo had no words this time. He just clenched his jaw in a frown and shook his head again. She’d never seen him so disturbed, she was sure.
“Well,” Aerion said with a weary sigh, “we better get a move on if we want to catch him and find out. We’re not even down the damn mountain. He has quite a head start and I can tell you he isn’t moving slowly at all.”
Ryza took a deep calming breath, then nodded. The men started off, Daexo with the lead of the placid pack animals.
Looking out over a forest canopy, Ryza briefly saw a great, winged shape soaring over and into it. It had definitely been bigger than a man. She expected no less in the hellscape they had been stupid enough to come to.
I hope it doesn’t like red meat. At least I’d be the first choice — I’m the reddest of all.
With that maudlin thought, she set off after her two men, setting her mind sharply to watch over them for the threats of an alien world she’d led them to. One had been mauled permanently already, and that was quite enough.
The portal traversal was completely disorienting, every possible image of either realm twisted and curled together into a great swirl, though Ryza maintained her daug’maker and knew her body was not being so contorted. Other than a charge on her skin that made it prickle, her general sense of touch only felt the wind and the temperature change.
The other side of the portal was intense and jarring, and immediately she activated the slowing sight as she felt her balance totally thrown. It took her more clicks than she could’ve imagined to focus on anything worthwhile out of the morass of confusing input, but just barely she stayed upright, legs spread wide from several wobbles, and eyes even wider at what greeted her.
A debris-strewn, blood-stained, rocky cliff was immediate, framed by a hazy yet bright, pale orange sky with a shrouded horizon, making it all feel cramped and tiny. The air was moist, musty, and acrid enough to burn the lungs — it was not exactly warm, but the freezing cold she’d come from made it a stark contrast.
Meanwhile, exclamations resounded from the other two Taldecs, who had not fared as well in keeping their balance. Daexo had fallen to a knee and Aerion had dropped almost face-first on the platform.
She had little time to process or lament what hell they’d come to, because only a stone’s throw away was a cluster of the horned demons in their suits — five of them — though one had his helmet off, revealing a gaunt, too-small face and a head with a tragically-thin layer of hair. As the one Ryza had first killed outside Many Sands, he had on earrings of red stone.
They had clearly not expected the Hamaleen to come through, but they noticed very quickly, one pointing and shouting generically, while the helmetless one cried out something not quite intelligible but what she was soon certain was, ‘shoot them dead’ or the like, as quickly they were turning and raising their weapons…
It was only when those weapons were half-raised that Ryza truly got her bearings and ‘caught up’ to a world completely alien to her own. But she understood ‘targets’ in that internal Slowseer language quite well. She picked out the one most threatening and brought her own rifle to bear, dropping to one knee for stability and cocking the hammer of pinched flint; by means of inner lever workings, this also dropped the frizzen over the priming pan and deposited powder by way of a little metal box container that was part of the frizzen.
Ryza aimed for a helmeted head and pulled the trigger as the demon was still only pulling back a hammer… shockingly, the bullet failed to go where she expected, embedding high in the carapace above his eyes and she guessed even above his forehead. The soldier felt it and was shaken, his thumb releasing the hammer just prematurely before it cocked — the unintended shot came up massively short.
It was something she was noting even as she was cycling her rifle’s cylinder with a hand and pulling back the hammer for another shot — thanks to the misfire and the time it would give on the first target, she swung her rifle over to the other lining up a ready gun at Aerion. Ryza crammed in the time like mad, hurrying the shot, aiming low, guessing the best angle to get the headshot she needed and barely getting the barrel pointed before pulling the trigger.
The bullet took him at the weak point right between the eyes — there was a mild jerk, then his rifle dropped and he began falling forward, his suit making it almost a gentle dive.
The other three targets had reacted slower and did not have a shot ready, though Ryza knew she could only hope to stop one. She cycled, aimed, and took the shot with precise care, once again right before her enemy would fire. A flash, a crack resounding through the air, and another bullet shattered the eye of a helmet, the demon’s hand perhaps trying to rise and touch the wound, but he was falling backward and senseless before it could.
After the shot, Ryza did not even try to beat the others to their triggers. She dropped and dove forward to try spoiling any enemy aim, planning on sliding onto the gravel into a prone firing position. She was aware of Aerion and Daexo just lining up shots. She hoped they’d be accurate.
A bullet whizzed over her head as she had a surprisingly easy drop to the ground thanks to a lighter state of gravity. Daexo meanwhile fired from a knee almost simultaneously with a shot exploding at the stock of his gun in a spray of splinters, him reeling back with a cry — his hand had to have been wounded. The other bullets she failed to track perfectly, but one shot from either Daexo or Aerion caught the helmetless one in the abdomen, which set him clasping a hand to the wound and stumbling away with a curse, eventually dropping.
Almost leisurely, Ryza beat the first demon she’d fired at to his second shot, which he’d nervously arranged while moving sideways in the span of mere moments since. His thumb was just on the hammer when a bullet edged between a gap and blew through his neck, a misjudgment again due to movement and angle but fortunately quite effective enough. The demon stumbled a bit with the gun in one hand and a hand to his neck, making strangled noises.
The last unwounded combatant was clearly panicked, but despite what he faced he did not fail to gear up for a shot, whether due to that panic, training, or both. Ryza felt little pity for slave-takers, and the fire in everyone’s blood seemed too hot and quick to stop. She mechanically cycled to her fifth shot and put it right between the eyes of her enemy again, before he even touched the hammer. He dropped something like a slowly-lowered sack.
Ryza cycled to her last shot immediately, then trained the rifle around looking for any remaining threats. The demon shot in the neck faced them and was trying to raise his rifle with one hand, but never managed it before falling to his knees, then to his face, spent.
One of their huge mounts had interposed itself between them and the helmetless fallen one, growling and in a protective stance. It was quite a sight, as it was also helmetless and so the first she’d seen of them in their natural state. It had short, bristled-up fur and a toothy, short snout ending in a big, black nose, with brown-yellow eyes and triangular ears currently pressed down and back in agitation.
Ryza slowly stood as she called behind her, “Are you alright, husband? Aerion?” She coughed after, throat irritated by the air.
“I’m fine,” Aerion muttered.
After a vehement curse, Daexo replied, “Lost a finger. Probably two. Damn them.”
With teeth clenched, Ryza swallowed her despair at such news, as well as her urge to go to him. “At least it is your off-hand.” She intended it as making light, as was their way, but it sounded wooden to her, and her voice broke slightly. Hurriedly she added, “You two, train your weapons and cover me.”
The demon being ‘guarded’ managed to bark some clipped command, which caused the mount to whine, dip its head, then back away. With another command, something with ‘return’ in it, the beast made more whining noises, but it soon trundled away, down the cliff and out of sight.
Ryza saw the demon lying face up, his eyes on them, one hand clutching his middle with the other wrapped around a rifle that he had on the ground. The hammer was uncocked. Ryza glanced behind her and made brief eye contact with Daexo, nodding her head at the fallen demon to effectively say ‘cover him,’ then she — carefully, in the strange gravity — walked over to the decline of the cliff where the beast had gone. It wasn’t moving fast as she caught sight of it.
She intensified the slowing sight, aimed, then made a loud whistle, which caused the beast to turn its head back up toward her. She put a bullet between its eyes with her last shot, causing the briefest of yelps before it jerked, pitched, and then hit the ground, rolling and sliding further down before slowing at a rocky cropping, body twitching.
The demon nearby spoke some angry curse at her, and she heard Daexo say, “Don’t even think about it, scumsack!”
When Ryza turned, the fallen demon had only shifted his gun somewhat closer to him, wincing and wheezing from the effort. He’d been shot high in the gut, a lucky or very accurate shot that looked to have caught him dead into the middle seam of the armor. Any other gut shot would’ve hit the plates and not been so severe. It was likely the lead had broken up inside and ended up fragmenting some into his lungs, judging by his breathing. He was certainly on his last legs.
Scowling at Ryza, the demon spat breathlessly, “No mercy in you noki savages, is there? Pontsekú nokieun kessa le-” He was interrupted by his own cough, which made him squeeze his eyes shut in pain and try to control it, little spatters of blood spraying out of his mouth in the effort.
“Don’t act so surprised,” Ryza answered. “You were trying to send him back to a camp or settlement, which would bring investigators here. Right? If you had just told him to heel and wait, perhaps I’d have spared him.”
“Her… I was sending her home… you kessa.” He spat on the ground, spit mixed with blood.
Ryza regarded him wordlessly for a moment, then began casually changing out her rifle’s cylinder, which was a laborious process of unlatching, twisting, and pulling the empty cylinder off a central core and replacing it. She had noticed it getting harder to do with time, and wondered if she should oil it…
“What happened here?” Aerion asked.
The demon turned his sneering face over to Aerion, showing bloody teeth. He might’ve been holding in a laugh. “Your mother let us all take turns. A wild one — messy — but she loved it.”
A shot ringing out surprised Ryza, almost enough to make her jump. The demon had a bullet blow through his forehead, causing him to go still almost immediately. Ryza turned her head toward Aerion, but he was not meeting her eye, cycling the cylinder on his gun and turning to walk away without a word, stumbling once from almost losing his balance.
Daexo exchanged a look with Ryza, shrugging. He had a cloth hastily wrapped around the bleeding wound at his hand; he’d been using the top of his hand instead of his palm to rest the ruined stock while aiming the gun, which still seemed functional. The bullet had not damaged the barrel.
Ryza quickly finished with her rifle’s prep, then slung it over her shoulders to proceed to Daexo and take his hand, undoing the cloth to survey the damage. His pointer finger was gone entirely, blown off at the knuckle, and the middle finger and associated knuckle were shredded up, with bone showing. Glints of lead. She took a deep, calming breath and took off her backpack to retrieve a surgical kit.
“I might make it a day or two,” Daexo joked. “At least I can get my affairs in order.”
Worried, not much in the mood, Ryza just stared at him as she pulled out the kit. He didn’t deserve a glare — was hypocritical from her — but she couldn’t help it. He’d taken lots of wounds over the years, but he’d never been mauled, never lost something.
An exclamation came from Aerion, along with an almost whispered, “Look at that… impossible…”
Almost in the opposite direction as their facing coming through the portal, a glowing, bright yellow star could be seen through the irregular orange haze of apparent clouds. As Ryza watched, she got a definitive sense of movement headed down to the horizon, which meant… they were rotating around it extremely fast? But it reminded her more of a moon at such a speed.
Ryza’s eyes flashed up to higher in the sky based on a vague memory of her perceptions since arriving, searching closer to their original facing, and there it was. Another star, tiny but bright, and less yellow or glowing. Two Lightbringers? Ryza just shook her head at the absurdity of it all.
“I don’t think that’s natural.” Daexo had not taken his squinting eyes off the fast-moving one, and she could feel his farsense splayed out by its feel passing through her. He seemed haunted.
“What do you mean?” Ryza asked as she pulled out a small wooden decanter of Hospital-derived, diluted antiseptic. “How could it not be? Are you sensing something?”
Daexo shook his head slowly, his expression sour. “It’s just… wrong. Like this scene, like the air, like every movement. Like everything here.”
“I think he’s right.” Aerion was still staring at it as well. “It doesn’t make sense for it to be a real star. Or maybe it is, and impossible things are normal here. It's no surprise to find ill things in this hellscape. They’re probably endless.”
“Hold still, husband,” Ryza said as she poured the watery solution over Daexo’s wounds. He did not flinch or make noise, but his jaw clenched from the sting.
“And now the damn portal,” Aerion said in annoyance. It had shrunk down and down to less than half its size, which meant it was floating above jumping height, as it always seemed to stay consistent in its center.
“It doesn’t matter nor is it a surprise. We were prepared for that possibility, which was why we rushed in.”
“What about his wound? The gods only know what floats around in this soup we’re breathing in. I feel sick already.”
“I’ll manage,” Daexo replied with a grunt. “I’ve survived a lot worse.”
“Are you joking? This is quite literally the worst any-”
“Enough, Aerion!” Ryza commanded. “Focus on what we can control. Do you still have Deros’s scent? Let me take care of my husband while you do what you do best. Alright?”
Nodding curtly to her, muttering something incoherent other than ‘stink,’ Aerion turned away to begin sniffing at the air, making disgusted noises and sometimes full-on gagging fits every time.
Meanwhile, Ryza sat down on an uprooted log with Daexo, to clean and dress his wound, eventually applying pressure through layers of clean bandages to ensure the bleeding stopped. She knew there were embedded pieces of lead, but she was not capable of dealing with it. Such things had been hammered into the heads of Taldec Azakan: don’t dig around in wounds. Let the body heal by its own mechanisms. Get them to a Hospitaller. The last was the thing she was worried about, but infection rarely claimed the Blessed if one took precautions and didn’t tempt fate.
The world began to darken a shade and redden significantly as the ‘fast star’ fell more and more toward the horizon, the two sources almost seeming to combat in the shades of orange and bronze they created. When she finished with Daexo, she became aware of another shape that had seemingly materialized in the dampened glow — a massive orb in the sky with a ring around it top to bottom, most of it in shadow but for a brightened yellow crescent, apparently lit by the slower star’s beams.
She must’ve made a noise, as Daexo looked up from his bandaged hand to see and marvel. “By the gods above…”
Aerion returned to their vicinity carrying an extra gun among other things, glancing over the way they were looking. “Ah, you see it, too? Glad I’m not going mad.”
“I don’t really understand what I’m looking at,” Ryza replied, “but I’m content to leave it alone if it leaves us alone.”
Sniggering about it briefly, Aerion grabbed the damaged gun lying by Daexo and replaced it with the one he brought. Then he regarded Ryza soberly as he set about removing the cylinder from the gun. “Deros’s scent is here. As is the scent of his spilled blood, mixed with everyone else. The latter disappears down the way, but… as far as scents go, I have a trail, moving fast on foot. Anything else is mixed with demons and beasts. And the imprint of wagon wheels.”
He paused to sigh, sniffle, then rub his nose with a sleeve. “My guess is he got away in the midst of some crazy altercation. Patched up his wounds somehow, probably hiding with the aid of the fog. I think these guards were left here from a crew that came in after the fact, transporting wounded in a hurry. By the way, there are… two beasts a little ways down, tied to posts. They didn't react much to me. They’re like large, furry froul but with two horns. Pack animals I think.”
“But what happened here?” Ryza asked. “It reminds me of that detonation we were a part of. Any chance of that?”
Aerion shrugged. “I smell the use of gunpowder, but I think that is mere gun use. Probably not.”
“Wrongness,” Daexo offered. “Something demonic happened here. I don’t know what chaos feels like, but this is the way I imagine it.”
“Chaos?” Aerion looked around suddenly as if he expected daggers to rain down on him.
“It’s like a residue, an echo, fading over hours. Maybe it isn’t harmful by now, but it was very thick and intense earlier. It’s not the same as that portal, as I thought before. It’s separate… it was flowing from here to the Hamellion side.”
“What keeps the portal open, anyway?” Ryza asked.
Daexo’s eyes shifted over to it, and he shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. If there’s something there I can’t bloody well pick it out from the constant, glaring intensity of the makar’osa. Just like it drowns out the sense of discord when I’m closer to it. Hell, if it hadn’t reduced like it did, I might not even feel the difference from here.”
“It is no surprise that an effect to bridge worlds would be powerful.” She left a pause as she studied the great crystalline ring. The sphere had shrunk to two meters or less. “We’ll follow the trail. It’s that or wait and hope for this to open back up. Better to catch up with Deros and go from there with what to do.”
Aerion nodded as he tossed down the gutted remains of the damaged gun, cylinder in hand. “I could use a positive. I’ll never let him out of my sight again.”
Ryza had a faint grin at that. “You’ve stolen those words from my head. Let's get moving. I want to see about these pack animals.”
In something a shade better than twilight, they made their way down the rocky cliff, though there was a worn dirt path to follow. The terrain was all in colors of rust, yellow, and brown, but a pervasive dust of rusty orange coated everything, and she realized a great portion of it was actually frozen fog droplets stained by the same color. In some places, it became a murky sludge. Despite this gunk, there were bunches of strange plants thriving, usually in dark green shades, and spidery trees with dark brown, almost black bark.
Seeing down the cliff very far was impossible due to the fog, but it looked very gradual, as if they were atop a generally gently-sloping mountain, albeit with occasional crags.
Movement was a process to adjust to — Daexo almost tripped once by pitching forward too hard while going down, and Aerion moved much slower than Ryza’s tastes from struggling mightily with it. Judging from his hesitancy, he must’ve fallen once or twice. Ryza for her part adjusted quickly. She was lighter, felt almost as if she were floating. Paradoxically, walking felt easier and slower at the same time.
The beasts were as tame as could be, though they watched the approach of the Taldecs curiously. They had two curving horns up at the top of their skull and their almost rat-like face ended in a large, black nose. They were twice the size of froul and had shaggy fur of brown and black.
Near the posts, the dirt path curved and widened then turned into a full-on paved road of perfectly-fitted concrete triangles. It appeared brand new.
They found saddles and harnesses nearby, some of the packs of supplies removed but much of it simply left attached. Ryza decided they’d take the beasts for riding purposes, so they stripped down the saddles significantly of the various saddlebags and attachments to make it more viable. She found a bag of feed of some kind, a greenish-brown grain product. The animals piqued up from her opening it up, so she gave them a couple of handfuls, just to start the relationship off on the right foot. Their little ears and tails seemed to flick happily.
As Deros’s trail was not nearby, they first returned to the portal vicinity and deigned to take a few odds and ends such as spare cylinders and the somewhat rarer entangling gun the helmetless soldier had.
Aerion led them down the mountain slope close to where the dead beast was, past rockier dirt-strewn terrain into more and more pockets of weed tufts and yellow-brown carpets of what she knew to be grasses. They were rare in the north of Hamellion with its prevalence for vast fields of deep-rooting shrub, if any vegetation at all outside of river valleys. The pack beasts seemed quite interested in them, mildly grunting about passing them up.
Progressively as they got farther from the portal, their ears kept popping as if from the altitude changing, but far more quickly than mere descension would cause. It didn’t get easier to breathe but harder, or more accurately, less comfortable. She was certain that the air was not getting thinner, but thicker. It did warm slightly, however.
They trekked on for hours through the terrain, avoiding any unusual, potentially dangerous land features, such as dips where the icy sludge collected. There were large, tall trees with claw-like arching branches and roots, with spiny, dark purple leaves they couldn’t trust weren’t demonic abominations of some kind. The beasts weren’t interested in them, that was certain.
Wildlife could be heard to exist — strange calls in the distance. Something like birds, and a few times they thought they saw ghosts of movement above indicating flyers. There were shrill, staccato hoots coming from somewhere, completely alien to their ears. Commonly there was some sort of grating continuous buzz sound, and often nearby, though hidden as always by the fog. Ryza threw a rock in the direction of such a noise once, which quieted it.
Once, they all caught sight of something suddenly launching from a boulder, two hands in size with fluttering, iridescent wings carrying it off. Vaguely insect-like, white in color, it made her skin crawl. She chided herself for that.
I’ve survived the harshest wildernesses and seen every creature imaginable. Eaten them, even. I can handle this.
The giant orb stayed where it was, and the slow star seemed to as well or moved exquisitely slowly. Perhaps only two hours after the fast star set, it rose directly under the giant orb, soon creating such glare in the haze that the former disappeared. As the fog had been reduced, the star could vaguely be seen to rise from a distant, mountainous horizon into a sky that it had turned vibrant pink.
They paused as the new light illuminated things to some degree. Down from the mountain, she saw a road curving around and then cutting through… a forest. She only had the vaguest memory of one from childhood, and the sheer scale of what she beheld made her memory seem lackluster. The trees were massive and tall, with black bark and vast, thick canopies of leaves in dark shades swaying in the wind, though the haze made the color hard to judge at distance. As such, the illusion initially was that they were red and orange.
Both of the men made nonverbal sounds of awe. Ryza turned to look back up and saw that the fog had indeed been pooling up to the peak, as she had suspected. It swirled up to it in a languid maelstrom.
It’s from the portal. Unnatural. Though it has a powerful control in place, it cannot help but still play havoc with the weather.
“How’s the trail?” Ryza asked, turning back to Aerion.
“Huh?” Aerion tore his eyes away from the alien vision to look at Ryza and blink watery eyes. He cleared his throat, then coughed. “Gah… this air… yes. The trail. Leads toward the road. Hopefully, he’s following it.”
Daexo was scowling. “I haven’t been saying anything hoping it would clear, but… the wrongness. It seems to go the same way. It might be following him.”
Ryza stared back at him. “What? How? What could be following him?”
Daexo had no words this time. He just clenched his jaw in a frown and shook his head again. She’d never seen him so disturbed, she was sure.
“Well,” Aerion said with a weary sigh, “we better get a move on if we want to catch him and find out. We’re not even down the damn mountain. He has quite a head start and I can tell you he isn’t moving slowly at all.”
Ryza took a deep calming breath, then nodded. The men started off, Daexo with the lead of the placid pack animals.
Looking out over a forest canopy, Ryza briefly saw a great, winged shape soaring over and into it. It had definitely been bigger than a man. She expected no less in the hellscape they had been stupid enough to come to.
I hope it doesn’t like red meat. At least I’d be the first choice — I’m the reddest of all.
With that maudlin thought, she set off after her two men, setting her mind sharply to watch over them for the threats of an alien world she’d led them to. One had been mauled permanently already, and that was quite enough.
