BTIV - Chapter 1

Micah’s brow furrowed slightly as he tapped the blade of his knife against his chin. He stood in the center of a large room, three concentric circles of runes drawn on the metal floor. The outer layers were already carved in, the steel filings carefully swept away before he filled the etchings with quartz powder, but as complex and alien glyphs grew closer to him, they were replaced by chalk markings.

He tucked his knife under an arm and summoned the ageless folio. Above him, footsteps pattered back and forth as Eris and Esther played some sort of game. Micah didn’t know if they were sparring, training, or just goofing off, but their constant movement had been a distraction for hours. Periodically, Drekt would calm the girls down, usually by giving them another task, but that almost made the sudden bursts of noise even more distracting. As soon as Micah got used to the clatter of weapons, everything would change.

To his left, Tellivern snorted, obviously dissatisfied with the noise and distraction from up above.  Ravi had long ago left the two of them alone after Micah had to shove the inquisitive panther away for the third or fourth time.  Now, the second floor of the tower was largely silent outside of the sound of their companions filtering down from above.

For a minute, Micah debated heading up the staircase to talk to Trevor or Drekt about keeping the girls under control, but it barely took any time for him to dismiss that urge.  They might be able to calm them for an hour or so, but chastising the teenagers wouldn't change the fundamentals of their situation.  Their team was buried deep underground in the laboratory of one of history's greatest villains.  He had spent a day or two after seizing the scepter and the crown securing the area, but that wasn't enough for Micah to feel truly safe letting them roam free.

Outside the tower, the oppressive darkness was only broken by the flashes of light from the citadel's defense system.  Even after years of training with rituals, Micah could only understand about half of the runes that protected the ancient building.  He made sure to scan as many of them as possible, committing them to the ageless folio for later inspection, but that still left corona of light that pulsed from the defensive wall, occasionally flashing brightly with little notice.  Despite days of research, Micah wasn't any closer to finding a pattern or reason behind the strobes.  As best he could tell, they only existed to frustrate and mock him.

Another peal of laughter and patter of feet above him set Micah's teeth on edge.  Instead of closing the folio and heading upstairs, he closed his eyes tightly, willing his jaw to unclench as he blew out a frustrated lungful of air.  The girls had been cooped up in the belly of the mountain for so long it was only to be expected.  Hells, that was half the reason he was so wound up.

Days had stretched into weeks without sun touching his skin.  There wasn't event the sound of the breeze rustling through branches to provide some sense of normalcy.  Instead, the eight of the were trapped in the absolute silence of a tomb.  Worse, the alien art and danger of their surroundings kept any of them from truly relaxing.

Everything from the frescos in the hallways to the architecture of the tower itself screamed warnings at them.  Of course, it didn't help that he had some idea what the traps and enchantments could do.  The daemons and monsters carved into the wall seemed to follow his movements with hungry eyes the entire time Micah tried to study the tower.

He was going stir crazy.  There was no doubt about it.  Of course, outside of Tellivern and Drekt, he was the best equipped to handle the situation of anyone in their party.

As much as he wanted to yell at the girls.  To punch a wall or scream at the invisible sun and moon, Micah knew better than to vent his frustrations.  It would only unsettle those that were relying on him, and it wouldn't accomplish anything.

What he could control was the ritual in front of him.  In principal, it wasn't anything special or strange, just a teleportation formation.  The trick came from making one strong enough to send their entire party across the soot clogged ocean to where he'd planted a beacon in the base of the guild house.

The distance alone was a problem.  The folio kept track of exactly how far Micah had traveled, but it kept giving strange results for their altitude.  He had heard from some of the ship captains that the world was round, but Micah had never really put much thought into what that actually meant.

Now, he found himself wracking his brain as he tried to remember the math he'd learned in a previous life in the Royal Academy of Pereston.  Trigonometry had never seemed terribly important or interesting compared with magical theory and advanced combat casting, but here he was, the only skill he needed was the one he had neglected.  By now Micah had eclipsed every one of his instructors except the literature and mathematics professors, but he'd happily trade a dozen points of attunement to ask them one or two more questions that hadn't seemed important at the time.

Tellivern shifted slightly, moving its head to tuck its nose into an alabaster side.  Its movement drew a quick look and a smile from Micah.  The entire scenario brought him back.  As much as he preferred his new reality of working together with his brother and Drekt, there was something nostalgic about spending long hours in silence with the stag, trying to perfect the runes he'd need to finalize some important ritual or another.

With a sigh, Micah slapped the folio closed.  His mind was spinning in circles as he tried to double and triple check his calculations.  By now he had a pretty good idea as to most of the variables that would impact a teleportation.  Unless the Gods themselves had moved the stars, or fiddled with the environment he knew the distance, relevant constellations, and humidity.  All that was left was for him to commit to the correct runes regarding relative altitudes, and then he'd be ready to carve.

The book disappeared from his hands, and Micah walked to the ritual circle.  He looked the intricate carvings and chalk drawings over one last time before dropping to his knees.  A brush of a hand here and a scrape of chalk there, and he moved another pace to his left, repeating the process of finalizing the last minute changes to the formation.

Finally, after the better part of a half hour he stood up a second time, slapping his hands together to clear off the chalk dust.  Micah's mouth moved wordlessly as he looked over the concentric circles, reciting the names of the runes as his mind linked them together creating a mental model for the ritual that would utilize them.

He nodded, removing a vial of quartz dust from his pocket and dropping to his knees again.  His knife clicked against the stone floor, its enchanted blade shaving chunks of stone from the ground as he carved one intricate rune after another, connecting them in the flowing alien script that powered the runic magic.

About halfway through the circle, Micah stopped, twisting his head to either side in order to pop his neck and release some of the pressure that had built up from hours of work on his hands and knees.  Then, in order to give his aching hands a bit more respite, he began pouring the quartz dust in the carvings he had already made.  The magical substance flashed as it adhered itself to the trenches he had shaved into the rock.

After about ten more minutes of simple work, Micah ran out of runes to fill.  He popped his stopper back in the glass vial before returning to the runic circle.  At some point the noises from above him had stopped.  Maybe the girls were tired or maybe they were eating or sleeping, Micah had no real way of knowing for sure.  He had been so wrapped up in his work that he couldn't even tell when the sounds had stopped.  All Micah knew for sure was that he had blessed silence as he went back to work finishing the formation.

It was a good thing too.  The formulas that went into selecting each room grew more complex as he kept working.  His first circle had been quick, barely an hour to finish the loose and simple runes.  Now, near the absolute center, a curve where there should have been a line or a dot where there should have been a dash was the only thing standing between him arriving safe and happy at his home and being spit from Elsewhere over the roiling ocean.

Even without the distraction of the girls, the math was causing pressure to build in his temples.  Micah had already resigned himself to a brutal tension headache before he finished the project, and the more he worked the more certain that fate became.

Finally, after almost three more hours of grueling work, Micah dropped his carving knife with a deep sigh, standing up to survey his handiwork while massaging his cramping hand.  The runic carvings covering almost every surface of the room represented days of research and work.  Not quite an unparalleled masterwork, but still one that only a couple dozen humans currently alive could replicate.

Tellivern snorted, drawing Micah's attention to where the stag had stood.  It cocked its head inquisitively at him, and Micah shot his friend a quick smile.

"Yeah buddy, we're about ready to go."  His throat hurt from dehydration and disuse.  Micah had lost all track of time while he finished the carving.  He could check the ageless folio to see how long he had spent crouched over the sinuous runes, but that seemed wrong.  Almost like cheating.

The deer flicked out its tongue, swiping a flash of pink across its nose while maintaining eye contact.

"Of course," Micah said with a nod.  "You can go and get everyone whenever you want.  I need to make sure the rest of the quartz is set before I start placing the reagents so it'll probably be ten to twenty minutes before we're ready to go, but I think we're on the same page.  The sooner we can get out of this cave the better.  I swear that I've been cooped up down here so long that the darkness itself has started to whisper to me."

It chuffed, cocking its head to the side inquisitively.

"No," he replied with a chuckle.  "It's not the artifacts.  The crown and the scepter are powerful but I'm pretty sure they don't have a soul fragment or anything like that in them.  Dakkora wanted powerful tools, not something that would take over her soul in the middle of a moment of weakness or something like that.  This isn't a bards' tale to caution children about the corrupting power of magic."

Tellivern stared at Micah for a second before silently tapping the outside of the ritual circle twice.

Micah coughed, trying to cover his embarrassment as he struggled to respond.

"Okay fine.  The artifacts aren't a cautionary tale about power, but maybe the ritual magic is.  It certainly has a tendency to seduce and promise untold power only to lure them into casting spells above their capacity.   I know from experience it is easy to get in so far over your head that death is a merciful outcome."

"Now go on," he continued with a quick shooing motion.  "I need to finish off the ritual circles and as much as I like having you wake up from your midday nap to judge me, it's preventing me from getting any work done.  The sooner you bring the rest of the party back the sooner we can head home where you can eat some actual grass rather than hay for the fiftieth time straight."

The stag's hooves clattered on the stone floor as it spun around and practically pranced out of the room.  Micah rolled his eyes at Tellivern's antics before looking back to the runes.  He unstopped the quartz vial, gently pouring it out into the glyphs before leaving the room and returning with eight lengths of wood, soaked in fragrant oils and embedded with rare minerals.

One by one he placed the small logs on their ends before leaving the room a second time and returning with a number of candles made from the tallow of rare and powerful monsters.

By the time Drekt returned, leading Eris and Esther followed a couple steps behind by Trevor, Leeka, and Ravi, Micah had just finished placing all of the reagents.  Drekt nodded in Micah's direction as Tellivern brought up the rear.

"Are we ready?" The big man asked, pointing at the multiple glimmering circles of runes.

"I think so," Micah replied, stretching one last time to work the kinks out of his kneck and back.

"The equations are beyond complex, but I've double checked them four or five times.  Between my arcana skill, and the amount of power we'll be able to pump into the ritual, it should get us home.  More or less."

"More or less?" Trevor questioned with a quick grin.  "That sounds exciting.  Where do you think we're going to end up?  The guild basement or the middle of a razor beetle nest?  Either way-"

"We'll land in the basement,"  Micah cut him off.  "We'll probably all end up throwing our guts up from traveling through Elsewhere, but so long as no one has fiddled with the beacon I left behind, we should be fine.   More or less."

"Tell me about your homeland again," Leek pushed.  "Trevor keeps on talking about how sandy it is, but I don't think I've ever seen much more than a dozen paces of sand on the beach.  I don't think I can even comprehend the concept of a dune taller than a building."

Micah glanced at Trevor, and his brother just shrugged.

"It's a rather unique place," he replied.  "I could spend hours telling you about it, but that doesn't seem like a proper use of our time when I could simply show you."

"So we're to leave right now," she said, glancing quizzically around the room.  "Travel across the world with a snap of your fingers, just like that?"

With a flick of his hand, the ageless folio reappeared in Micah's hand.  He opened the book directly to the page on the ritual.

"I don't know if its 'just like that," he replied.  "The ritual is far from simple, but the actual teleportation will take us far enough that I strongly suspect that the rest of you will have enough time to observe Elsewhere unfiltered.  The experience will be... uncomfortable.  I would suggest closing your eyes to avoid traumatizing yourself with the experience, but while we're outside of Karell we won't exactly have eyes."

"But Micah!" Esther interjected, "I like my eyes!"

Drekt bit back a chuckle, but Trevor didn't even bother, not even bothering to cover his face as he snickered at Micah.

"Don't worry," Micah said with a sigh.  "They'll grow back.  Now enough dawdling, everyone get into the ritual circle.  We can banter once we're home."

The rest of the party crowded around him.  He pointed out each of their spots, marking eight points next to each of the wood and candles.  He cleared his throat, waiting a couple of seconds for the girls and Trevor to stop talking.  Finally once there was silence, Micah began.

He raised his right hand above his head, igniting all eight of the candles at once without touching them.  Suddenly, the entire room burst into flickering green light.

Leeka jumped in surprise, drawing a glare from Drekt as Micah began to recite the ritual, twisting his throat to accommodate the alien words.  Staccato clicks and sonorous drones ripped themselves from his throat, almost of their own accord.

An icy wind, originating from somewhere outside the room and reality itself blew through the chamber.  The candle flames danced wildly for a second before their wooden pedestals burst into pillars of light, each a different color.

The iron taste of blood blossomed in the back of Micah's throat as word after word erupted from him, degenerating from discrete but alien phrases into primal screeching sounds that assaulted the ears of everyone around him.  They dropped to their knees, hands pressed to their ears as mist began to flow from cracks in the walls, filling the room.

Fog clogged Micah's sight, lit distantly by the light of the burning wood.  Somehow, he could sense each of his friends in the circle around him, trembling like leaves clinging feebly to a branch in the midst of a windstorm.

His chant rose to a crescendo and then, with an unnatural screech that tore his vocal cords so deeply that Micah took five hit points worth of damage.  Then, his voice went silent and the lights snuffed out.

For a moment, he felt things circling their group.  Malevolent things that flowed formlessly, their malice manifesting into a collection of tearing claws and snapping mouths.

Then, all eight of them were flung like a stone from a sling.  Dimly lit tunnels stretched in every direction, marking dozens of paths carved through Elsewhere by other teleportation formations as they zipped toward the distant beacon buried in the basement of the guild house.

He could feel Esther and Eris trying to scream, but they had no mouths.  Instead raw terror pulsated off of them as one second dragged into another.  Micah could feel the ice cold of Elsewhere set in, invading his body and reaching with long prying fingers toward the very core of his being.

Around them, the tunnel shook, cracks of verdant emerald running up and down the misty pathway.  It shuddered again, minute faults in the ritual warring with the overwhelming energy he had invested in the casting.

Micah reached out, a tendril of energy that had once been a hand stroking across the thinning barriers that protected his family from the unfocused rage and energy of Elsewhere.  The tremors quieted as Micah felt his arcana skill flare.  He pushed with his mind, willing the ritual to repair itself.  Deep inside Micah, something cracked open and a warm sensation, almost a liquid flowed outward, weaving itself into the boundaries of the casting and stabilizing it.

The shaking stopped entirely, and a moment later the light of the beacon began to rapidly grow closer.  Uncounted leagues flashed past in one. two.  three seconds.

They hit a wall of gauze, an imperceptible barrier separating the normalcy of Karell from the ravening chaos of Elsewhere.  For a fraction of a moment they pressed against it as a webwork of green cracks appeared in the tunnel behind them, the energy of the spell that had cast them halfway across the world overwhelming the ritual.

Then, Micah was through, followed by the rest of his friends and family.  They spilled out into the familiar dim white light of his laboratory.

Micah tumbled forward, gasping for breath as he fell to the ground, the chilly flagstones both solid and comforting under his sweaty, trembling hands.

Behind him, Leeka retched and Esther began hyperventilating and crying.

Despite all of it, he felt a smile grow on his face.  After months and months, it was over.  He was home.