For the second time that night, Sebastian hit the ground at neck-breaking speed. In fact, he was sure something cracked in his chest upon his unceremonious drop through the tunnel. His tenuous connection to the elements fled him in his terror, so his body struck harder this time around. To make matters worse, Astrid wasn't even there under him to break his fall. Instead, he felt her crumple across his legs, crushing his knees and shins into the rocky floor.
His breaths wheezed, his head spinning, but he twisted towards her frantically. "Do you still have that knife?"
She groaned, shoving him away from her. "Ever so chivalrous. I am perfectly fine, by the way, thank you for asking."
Sebastian stood, his battered joints creaking ominously. He stared up at what remained of the ceiling, a gaping, jagged hole that still dropped pieces of mud and stone atop them. "What do you think—humph!"
Astrid clamped a dirty hand over his mouth, effectively cutting off the rest of his question. "Do you want the entire realm of Belsynen to hear us?" Her accusation whispered harshly against his ear. "For once in your life, quit talking!"
His words died in his throat, her fingers over his mouth suffocating them. Right. There were scary creatures out there hell-bent on murdering them. Or capturing him. Neither one of which he was eager to see to fruition. He nodded his head, and she released him, silently pressing something cool and sharp into his palm. Its edge cut into his thumb. She must have snagged another blade at some point. He could scarcely imagine when she had found the time.
There was no sign of light from above. Not even the merest blip. Which could only be a positive thing. Perhaps the floor had also swallowed those intimidating warriors. They had looked much heavier than both him and Astrid combined; the fracturing ground couldn't have supported them all. Those fae creatures had been tall enough to make Captain Matthias look like a mere shrimp caught by the most inept fisherman of Eilibir.
He flipped the blade around in his grasp, nearly slicing a wound across his wrist, and then turned back to where he thought Astrid would be.
He didn't say anything, though. He didn't really have to. Not when he caught sight of Astrid and her tilted, stupefied expression. It flickered uncertainly across her face under the soft glow illuminating from the tunnel opposite them.
"Walls shouldn't glow," he murmured, now staring at it as well.
It wasn't the entire wall, to be fair; only a slim part of it shimmered, a quiet glow in the shape of a curved arch that reached about three meters tall. It wavered, the stone beyond it nearly translucent, a glimmering mirror that reflected nothing but that ethereal shine.
Behind him, Astrid hesitated as the glowing archway expanded, pulsed, exhaling as if on a human breath.
"Curse the Skies."
It pushed outwards, wavering like a reflection in mottled glass. Splashes of color sparked against the shadowed tunnel walls. The earth beneath their feet groaned. Astrid made a soft sound that sounded halfway between a gasp and one of Abel's choice swear words. Sebastian met her gaze, and though her cheeks had paled, she patted the noisy ground with her boot in the same manner a mother would pat a crying newborn. Sebastian wasn't sure that was going to soothe it.
Still, it somehow called to him.
Come. Find me.
It sounded like the bodiless voice of Queen Davina's Monverta.
Sebastian stepped closer, the beauty of the dancing archway calling him nearer. Not a mirror, he realized now, but a passageway. A door, perhaps. It sang to him, a tune that reminded him of Astrid and the time she had hummed in his room.
"What are you?"
He dragged half-way back into reality, one toe in and one foot still yanked out, when Astrid called out to him. Her voice sounded oddly muffled.
"Seabass, I don't think you should touch—"
Too late.
Curiosity overrode all other beliefs he had previously held for self-preservation. His fingertips pressed into the cool tunnel wall. Except it wasn't cold; nor was it sturdy like stone should be. The glowing arch rippled under his touch like he was nothing more than a pebble tossed into the Ember Sea. It was a vibration beneath his hand that tingled his skin. The humming in his brain rose in pitch until it was so high that he swore it would fracture his skull into a useless bag of bone shards—
The wall disappeared.
Sebastian's scream fell with it, dissolving into an awed gasp as the tunnel that had surrounded him transformed into an impossible vision that he had only ever read about and certainly should not exist anywhere on Mount Halum.
Sebastian stared into it.
A warm, humid breeze swept across his cheeks, wafting a salty scent with it that smelled of sunshine and seaweed. It smelled a bit like Eilibir but not as fishy. Fresher. He pressed closer. Crunch. The tip of his nose smashed into the original stone wall that was now, somehow, invisible and yet still solid enough that it left Sebastian's nose stinging. Sebastian pulled back, surprised, and blinked. The tropical vision remained, however, even when he reopened them. His nose stung—it was most likely bleeding—but pain was nothing compared to the mystery before him.
An illogically tall tree trunk stretched into the azure sky, the base so skinny and curved it seemed improbable it could hold up the wide, fanning leaves. They folded overhead like a vibrant green canopy.
Only one word came to mind. No matter how illogical it sounded on his tongue. "Soleita?"
Slim fingers wrapped around the wrist connecting him to the archway. His head jolted at the contact, forehead bouncing off the hidden barrier. No, he wanted to say, let me go back! But the touch felt familiar. Dazed, he glanced down, the foreign fingers strangely elongated as if their owner had pushed them into water and light was causing the image to bend at odd angles. It was as strange as it was beautiful, which reminded him of a girl with hair as bright as the luminescent sea creatures rumored to swim around the shores of Soleita, a girl who spoke of murderous, giant earthworms with unparalleled glee.
Memories of Astrid, the tunnels, and the massive fae warriors filtered back to him and, summoned with them, his fear. Someone shouted; he wouldn't have been surprised if it was him. He fumbled for what he hoped were Astrid's fingers, trying to grasp his way back to her and the tunnel. What if he could never get back? A spike of panic froze him in his flight, just long enough for a melodic voice to entice him back to the Soleitian vision.
The words carried from the palm fronds.
"Saviour of mortals and creatures of seven."
His heart pounded, fingers burning hotly.
"Redeemer and sinner can rise Earth or descend."
Sebastian knew the words with the familiarity of a song he had heard a handful of times. His neck veered towards the voice as dark clouds gathered along the horizon. The palms twisted as the calming breeze picked up into a howling gale. Sebastian's hair whipped back and forth across his forehead, eyes watering from the force of the wind.
Somewhere, a woman screamed.
The scream cut off as abruptly as a man appeared in front of Sebastian. Dark, smooth hands gripped his shoulders. "You must be a fool, boy."
"Y-you...you can touch me." Sebastian gaped. "But this can't be real. I'm not in Soleita!"
As if to prove him otherwise, the man shook him so hard that Sebastian felt his brain rattle against his skull. The man's greying eyebrows pinched, his green eyes narrowed as they bore into his own.
"Who is your anchor?"
"Anchor?" Sebastian shook his head. "I'm hardly a ship—"
The man slapped him across the face. Sebastian spluttered, jerking back, reaching out a defensive arm to prevent another unwarranted attack, but...his arm wouldn't move. In fact, he could not so much as flex the muscles of his hand that he had pressed into the archway. He frowned at it.
"Why can't I move?" Sebastian's cheek still stung from the slap, but he met the man's stern gaze. "Get me out of here!"
"You are stuck in the portal's in-between." The man's grip on Sebastian's shoulders tightened. "You are a fool. You have no anchor, and yet you attempted to travel. Fool."
Sebastian pursed his lips. This man must be crazier than Norham because it simply was not possible. "Please. Just get me back to Halorium."
Something in the man's expression twisted. He spat at Sebastian's feet. "Halorium." He swore. "Who are you?"
"I—"
Their skin was almost identical. The rich color of darkened honey. An heirloom of Soleita, the village children in Eilibir used to taunt. Something on the inside of the man's brown wrist, the one pressing into his left shoulder hard enough to pin him to whatever barrier Sebastian was stuck between, snagged his thoughts.
An image of a feathered quill, inked black into the man's skin, the edges blurred with age.
Sebastian's breath caught in recognition. "The Black Quill."
Alarm rippled over the man's smooth face. "Carissénas." His grip slackened as he staggered backwards. "I see it now," he murmured. "You share the face of my priestess." He took another step away, palms held out. "Go back at once."
For once, words fled him. Sebastian could do nothing but stare at this man. A man who had assaulted him, mocked him, and yet Sebastian felt a compulsion to call out to him. Because he had called him carissénas, had seemed to recognize Sebastian as belonging to another, and Sebastian knew nothing.
This was madness.
"Wait! you can't—!" Sebastian wasn't sure what this man couldn't do, however, so he said instead, "You claimed I was stuck!"
For a split moment, the tropical landscape flickered out of focus, the dark tunnel wavering back into existence, throwing Sebastian back into its black abyss before lightening once more with the return of palm trees and sunlight. The Soleitian man reappeared, though his edges bled and ran together like a painting that had been left in the rain.
"Another's blood calls for your return."
And Sebastian felt it, then. The demanding tug on his navel. "Astrid."
With a somber sigh, the man inclined his head. "Her blood runs with deceit and greed. Do not allow it to taint your own, carissénas."
It was the last word Sebastian heard as a screeching hum flooded his eardrums: carissénas. Sebastian clung to it as the void dragged him backwards, and it was the voice of his mother who repeated it back to him.
O O O
Astrid had never thought Sebastian to be a particularly heavy weight, but when the luminous tunnel finally released him, he fell into Astrid with the force of a battering ram. In fact, the only thing that kept her upright was Matthias. Her captain had found her with his impeccable and annoying sense of timing as soon as Sebastian had been half-way absorbed by the unearthly archway. Now, he caught her with both hands under the arms and lowered both her and Sebastian to the ground.
The cut she had sliced into her palm stung sharply. She realized she was still grasping it around Sebastian's fingers, clenching so tightly that her blood was dripping from his own, limp hand.
"You can let go now," Matthias said. "He's only in shock."
She looked at Sebastian, his head in her lap. The usual pallor to his bronze skin made her want to check his pulse. And there it was—fluttering madly beneath the thin skin of his neck.
When she moved to untangle her hold from his, he cried out and jerked upwards so abruptly that he nearly whacked his head into her chin.
"Carissénas!"
The sound echoed off the tunnel stone. Astrid remembered the Scribal word; Sebastian had told her it meant dearest one. The same name the elvish intruder at the Saviour's Toast had called him. An endearment, according to Sebastian. But it sounded anything but loving now.
Sebastian scrambled to his feet, tripped on his own boots as if the floor had just moved beneath him, and then fell backwards against the opposite wall. His chest heaved.
"Soleita," he said. "I was there. It was real. I—" His gaze jumped from the now dimming wall to Matthias and his own hands before it came to rest on Astrid, pupils so wide that he looked demented. "Another's blood calls for your return."
It sounded like he recited the words from another's tongue. Astrid glanced at Matthias, an eyebrow raised in alarm, because if whatever had happened to Sebastian had damaged his brain, then the fisherboy would certainly collapse under the weight of an identity complex.
As helpful as always, Matthias simply clicked his jaw.
"You brought me back." Sebastian held out his bloody fingers towards her. "This is your blood. You're bleeding. It was your fingers. You—"
For some reason, a warmth brushed up her neck. "It was nothing. Calm down. You weren't truly in Soleita. You were here. I could see you the whole time."
Which was a half-truth. There had been a few moments where he had become so translucent she was sure she could have thrust an arrow through his sternum and it would have harmlessly passed through it. In fact, the only way she knew he had remained whole was because her fingers had wrapped around his wrist so tightly she was sure she had crushed his bones.
Now, Matthias offered a low cough as if he were about to interrupt, but Sebastian beat him to it.
"It was a portal. A portal, Astrid! You must know Thaddeus Currel, the alchemist who pioneered the studies of travel by way of doorways torn into Earth's natural elements, but his hypotheses never worked until..."
He stared back at the archway. Its glow had dulled as if Sebastian had been feeding it the light before it had decided to throw him up.
"But of course." His cheeks flushed from the speed of knowledge that was surely whirling through his addled head. "Portals were forgotten, weren't they? Because of the Purge. They've existed all this time." He fixed Astrid with a skeptical look. "How did you know how to get me out?"
For a short moment, Astrid allowed herself to gape at him, trying to catch up to the rapid velocity of his thoughts. He truly looked deranged: his black curls were windswept. The strands not stuck to his damp forehead were sticking up atop his skull like beacons for all things utterly ridiculous.
She turned to beseech Matthias for aid, but his sullen form sulked behind her, his face hidden in partial shadows. Utter nonsense; it had to be. Then again, had it not been Matthias who had appeared as a bedraggled phantom, his guard's cloak missing—no doubt having been consumed by the sporadically collapsing tunnels—blood pathing down his left forearm, most of it now dried and caked onto his pale skin? Had it not been he who had told her to cut herself to help Sebastian?
Her gaze narrowed. "How did you know my blood would work?"
Sebastian sounded almost exasperated. "I'm a scholar—!"
"No, not you," Astrid snapped. "I would expect you to be an odd little expert on Currel and his countless failures that only ended in his inevitable death." She appraised Matthias. "How did you know of it?"
A stiff, quick silence thickened between the three of them. Matthias shifted his weight. His booted heels clicked sharply on the tunnel floor.
"I work for you mother." His brown eyes glinted nearly gold when he looked Astrid over. "Do you think she wouldn't have known about such a passage into her kingdom? During the Purge, she had even tried to destroy it."
"And she could not?"
Matthias shook his head. "She didn't have to. For a portal to work, there must be a magical anchor on both sides."
"But the Purge destroyed magic in Rainier," Sebastian added. "There was no magical anchor here."
"Until you unlocked the queen's Monverta," Matthias finished. "But who, or what, was the anchor tonight?"
Astrid stood between them, trying very hard not to look as stunned and dumb as she felt. It caused her expression to twist into an uneasy grimace. "A portal?"
Sebastian nodded. "So, you see? I was in Soleita. I knew it."
It sounded very much like an 'I told you so.'
"There was a man there. I spoke with him, and he warned me—" Sebastian's lips clamped, and he bit his tongue—"There was a black quill on his skin," he said instead, tone hesitant as he watched her.
Only the quill will end this. Find it, salveretta. Free us all.
Great. That was exactly what Astrid needed at the moment: a reminder of the cannibal merperson and that blasted death pond. She held up a hand to silence him. It shook slightly. At least her shallow wound had begun to clot. On her next inhale, she held onto the only lifeline this new reality afforded: her training as an Iced Guard and her uncanny ability to order others about.
"Why haven't guards been stationed down here?" she demanded. "Those fae warriors must have entered from here. We must tell my mother and General Lyons at once. We don't even know if the drums are still beating."
"They're not," Matthias said. "They stilled as soon as the tunnels came down." He looked between Astrid, who was sure her cuff meant to strangle her as her spiraling emotions triggered the magic slumbering inside her, and Sebastian, who was still watching the archway with an expression she imagined Thaddeus Currel wore each time his experiments had blown up in his face.
In fact, the poor fisherboy looked rather constipated.
Matthias frowned. "I assume the destruction of the tunnels was one of your doings."
"His," Astrid said with a poor replica of her usual sly smile at the same time Sebastian rambled, "We're not sure who caused that."
Matthias's brow pinched. "To think us lucky for having two saviours such as yourselves."
Astrid grimaced against the pounding in her temples. "No need to be rude."
"Regardless," Matthias carried on, "the collapse provided an adequate distraction for my escape, and, I assume, our trespassers as well."
"Adequate?" Astrid half-laughed. It sounded quite unhinged. She cleared her throat. "You spoke of anchors. What did you mean?"
It was Sebastian who answered, which, she supposed, shouldn't have surprised her at all. Insufferable know-it-all even in the midst of having been sucked into the enemy lands of Soleita through a magical, impossible portal.
"Imagine time and space as a boat," he said. "In Eilibir, the sea would move the boat based on the rhythm and motion of the winds and tides."
"Do you have a particular point, or are you just reliving your glorified, dreary days?"
His weary sigh made her feel ridiculously cumbersome. "When you're on a boat and wish to stop at a specific point, you must set the boat's anchor. Currel's theory on portal travel was similar; a portal creates a doorway, thus two anchors are needed to start and stop your travel through it. You need to mark your beginning and your end."
Astrid turned to Matthias. "So, what are these anchors, then?" She held up her injured hand. "Blood?"
Matthias nodded, jaw tight. She supposed he was even more annoyed with Sebastian's fishing analogy than she herself had been. "Blood of one with the elements in their veins," he explained. "It's why Currel's experiments got him nowhere. Portals cannot be used by humans—" Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Typical humans."
"Like yourself," she said.
He shrugged, placing a large hand over the wound on his left arm. "Not all of us are able to claim the bloodlines of Authors."
"But I was not bleeding," Sebastian pointed out, "and yet I got pulled through."
"Because it had already been opened," Matthias said. He eyed Sebastian. "Like calls to like. It recognized you as having blood from the other side."
Sebastian paled and turned away.
"Those fae came from Soleita, then, not Belsynen?" Astrid asked. "This man you saw, did you recognize him?"
"I—" Sebastian faltered under her stare. "I have no one besides Abel."
There was something he wasn't saying. It was there in the way he wouldn't meet her eyes, in the way his fingers fumbled with the frayed, ripped sleeves of his cloak. She was a trained interrogator, after all. Though she hardly needed to be; he was an incredibly easy tell.
Astrid crossed her arms. "But?"
Sebastian's voice went up an octave. "But what?"
Matthias tapped an impatient foot on the ground. "You're incapable of fooling this realm's weakest ant," he said. "There was something he said that you recognized. You have a face that bleeds with honesty."
Sebastian glanced at the portal. It had faded back into the stone, the only sign of it being a thin, gleaming line running along its arched seams. "He didn't give me a name, but he told me...he said I have the face of a priestess."
For a tense second, she was sure Matthias had grown so frustrated with Sebastian's lack of answers that he was going to shove him back through the portal, regardless of an anchor.
She moved so she was between them. "So, this Soleitian insinuated you came from a lineage of priestesses. Never mind how highly improbable it could be," she said. "The Soleitian priestesses have always been celibate; they give their bodies over to the spirits. For one of their own to go against that vow would be punished the same as treason."
Sebastian shrugged. "It's what he said."
"Though, even I have to admit, it would make more sense than you coming from a royal lineage." Astrid rubbed her head, pondering it. "Perhaps we need to find a different book than Royal Genealogies: the Power of Names."
"Some cultures revere their religious leaders as royal," Sebastian pointed out.
"By the Scribes." Astrid lips twitched. "One trip through a portal, and now you think you may be some important Soleitian—?" Her words trailed off, a strong sense of revelation wiping her thoughts clean. By the Scribes! The Scribes!
"Zev and Serah." She turned to Matthias. "They are from Soleita. Serah was even a Scribe from the temples, right?"
Sebastian pushed away from the wall. "Those two older prisoners who cannot speak, you mean?"
"Yes! They could know of this man you spoke with. We could figure out how the fae and elves are getting into Rainier." Astrid glanced between the two men. "Like you said, they would have needed an anchor. Someone with magical blood here, in Rainier. It wasn't either of us, so who?" She grabbed Sebastian by the wrist. "It wasn't you, right?"
He spluttered at her. "Are you serious? I was with you the whole time!"
"That's true. I suppose even priestesses cannot be two places at once."
He uttered a protest as she tugged him away from the wall, nearly tripping over his own foot. She righted him, but at least he followed her, unlike Matthias who stood so still that she, not for the first time, wondered if he had been carved from marble.
"This could be nothing."
"Always a pessimist, 'Thias," she quipped. "Besides, was it not you who knew about these portals?" she asked with a flare of innocence. "You must have surely posted guards down here as soon as magic returned. It's what I would have done, and you are the captain. So, we have mistakes to fix, wouldn't you say?"
Matthias growled at her, his teeth flashing white in the darkness of the tunnel. "That's the spirit!" Astrid said with a grin.
But internally, everything was whirling—organs, brain neurons, muscles—because, once again, everything she thought she had ever known had just been flipped head over toes because of Sebastian Fisherboy d'Aximos.
One of these days, vertigo was going to overtake her completely.
- - -
Things are getting intense! Portals, and elements, and quills, OH MY!
We love sharing our story with you, so thank you so much for reading it!