Seisi's bed was so much harder than hers - the lumpy mattress poked her legs, her neck was going stiff, stretched as it was. But his arms were still safely wrapped around her body, and his closeness was as comforting as it was warming. Trueth opened her eyes, despite her fuzzy vision she noticed a baby-blue blanket tickling her chin where she had been expecting frilly coverlets and a comforting male body. Somebody had wrapped her tightly and it was that blanket she felt around herself, not the arms of the man whose attentions she kept spurning... . Her cover started to whimper and Trueth jerked into a sitting position.
Her movement had loosened the blanket and a cautious peep into the cocoon revealed a bright eye blinking back at her. A soft woof convinced her it had been the small black dog sharing its body heat, not her man. All this was a bit much to take in before she had her first cup of the morning. The thought of coffee made her realise how thirsty she was. And how exhausted she felt.
Slowly, she shifted her buttocks on what was no mattress either, but solid ground strewn with spiky pebbles. Her head swam and she forced herself to scan an unfamiliar greyish environment. An environment that contained quite a few bodies in different poses and postures.
Bodies?
She shot up from her resting place, the dog tumbled from the folds of the blanket and complained loudly.
Her limp company did not react.
Queasy with tension, Trueth tiptoed towards the closest ragdoll, a teenage boy with ginger frills falling into his freckly face. He wore nothing but boxer shorts, but that was not why he seemed familiar. At least, he was still among the living, faintly, but visibly his chest was moving. Close by, another boy, most likely his twin was lying with similar attire. He too was alive. She exhaled and allowed her muscles to relax their stranglehold on her body.
She took stock of her surroundings, there were more sleepers, all of them in nightshirts, pyjamas, some had progressed as far as dressing gowns and slippers. Their attire was not the problem; the number of people was. There were far too many of them for her to be able to share her powers and wake them from their slumber. Assuming she could do that at all. Trueth once more scrutinised the nearest sleeper. And remembered where she had seen him.
In Avebury.
She checked the others, most of them appeared to be vaguely familiar. Four of them were more than that, those she had not only seen but spoken to: Myrtle, Damien, the girl from the souvenir shop and the landlord of the 'Whacky Bramble'. The man had lucked out; he obviously liked to sleep in the nude. Trueth shivered and bent down to grab her blanket to drop it over the publican. While doing so, she noticed the toes of her bare feet peeping from under the hem of her pyjama bottoms that were sadly sagging again. She hitched up her trousers and surveyed more of her surroundings.
There was not a single blade of grass in sight, just solid stone and a wall built from even more substantial chunks of minerals rising on their side. Not into the skies, for there were none. She could not work out what was up there; a greyish mist was hiding it all. Their environment felt oppressive as if they had been enclosed in a gigantic bubble inside a mountain.
What was this? Where was she? And most important, where was Seisi?
I am here, a welcome warm voice sounded in her mind. I am trying to establish how to seek access.
Access to what? She projected from the depths of her foggy mind.
Join me and see, he responded. 'Dog?' his voice called from further down the wall.
Trueth followed the canine carefully picking its way between the still figures. The stone obstacle solidly remained at her right, no crack, no moss, no mortar showing. Just solid, polished rock. Forbidding and unyielding. So why was there an old-fashioned broom jutting out of the rock face a few metres above them? Seisi was standing underneath, his face close to the surface of the wall, as if he was trying to decipher something.
Getting closer, she could see two sets of inscriptions. She also saw something else on the ground. Human Bones. Interspersed with the humanoid remains of what must be a different species. Something larger than humans, warped and with a lot more teeth. Pointy teeth. And horns.
She sped up and joined Seisi.
He was studying a text in faded cursive script, smeared onto the rockface. Next to it was some more modern writing. Early sixteenth century was Trueth's guess. It also appeared to be in Latin, a language that had never been her strong point. Still, her degree in anthropology might be good for something after all.
'What does it say?' Trueth pointed at the Egyptian scribbles. 'Couldn't they use hieroglyphs? Easier to read?'
'Cursive is faster to write,' Seisi said. 'They were in a hurry. I believe the person who added the notes on Damian's scroll came this way and left a message. He was leading others through the portal.'
'This is the world of the People of the Mist?' Trueth's sweeping gesture nearly hit Seisi on the nose, but he withdrew in time.
'No, they conjured a double gate. We went through the first part, we still have to find the other one. They were concerned the demons might follow.' Seisi kicked one of the fang-filled jaws aside with his trainers. 'They might have been right.'
'And those human bones?'
'You know how quickly evil attracts weaklings, these must be the remains of human beings following the demons. I cannot imagine your people just dropped their dead and left.'
He turned towards the wall and tapped the second text. 'This I cannot read.'
Trueth squinted at the scrawls. 'Give me a mo, I might be able to work out the gist of it.' Drawing her finger along the lines, she slowly pieced together the meaning of the message. She read it again; it sounded fantastic. It was, the extraordinary content of the script was not owed to her poor Latin.
'This message is from about five hundred years ago, the time when the witch hunters scoured Europe. The survivors knew of this portal and how to activate it. But apparently it's a one-way street. So they waited long, too long, before they went.'
Trueth straightened and tried to control her accelerating heartbeat.
'Seisi, if this is true, we are stuck. How can we ever get back?'
He craned his neck, presumably to observe the broom still protruding from the wall above them. 'I have heard about one-way portals far too often to believe this anymore. There will be an exit back to the Demon World. We only have to find it. First we have to get out of here. This is not a good place. Does your text have anything else to impart?'
Trueth gulped in some air and continued to read.
'Far too many of the witches had been killed when they decided to leave, and there was only a couple of hundred who eventually sought sanctuary. I still don't understand why they left their children behind. My ancestors I mean. Oh, hang on, I missed a bit.'
She licked her lips and proceeded to read the rest. From the corner of her eye, she saw amusement lighting up Seisi's face. Sometimes she did not understand the bloke. The whole set up really was not funny. She hitched up her saggy bottoms again and read the last sentence. The meaning hit home like the kick of a mule.
'The witches did take their children. They only left behind those of limited magical abilities. They didn't deem them worthy of joining the ancestors, it says here.'
Trueth slammed her fists onto her hips, then hastily pulled up her trousers again. 'Stop giggling! We might be stranded in the middle of nowhere, which is bad enough. And these wankers are unbelievable. There's a magical genocide going on, and they leave part of the population behind, just because they didn't comply with some idiotic standards? That's so much bullshit!'
Seisi burst out laughing.
'You...,'
He wiped tears from his eyes and made placatory movements. 'I beg your pardon. I agree we are in dire straits and what these people did is unforgivable. It is also very stupid and it very obviously went wrong.'
'Wrong? Because the demons got them?' Trueth pointed at the assorted skeleton parts around them.
'No, I believe they went through. But they missed the line that eventually spawned you and they clearly must have had a lot of sun-flow. But none of this now. Does your text say something about how to gain access to the other half of the portal, for mine does not?'
'Ah,' Trueth said. Her text was equally uninformative.
'I'm thirsty,' a whiny voice said close to them.
'Me too, I need to pee, but there's no loo anywhere,' said another.
Trueth turned around and glared at the two red-haired teens. And the befuddled group of people trudging along the wall behind them. The landlord made up the rear, trying to pull a too-tight dressing gown somebody must have given him over his broad hairy chest. The scenario prompted a question in her mind. She whirled around, held on to her trousers and poked Seisi on the chest with one hand. 'Tell me, how did we get here in the first place?'
'Damian called you a catalyst. I believe you summoned the others, used their sun-flow to charge the portal and pulled them through. None of you was conscious when this happened. I had a hard time following. Your sleeping spell was most effective. Metjen lent me his strength, without him I would not have got there in time.'
The dog whimpered and licked Seisi's ankles. He smiled and patted its smooth head. 'And you were useful as well, my furry friend.'
'Why would I do such a thing?' Trueth found no answers in his vacant green gaze.
'I know not. As I said, this not our most immediate problem. There is nothing to support life here, so we must go further and do so soon. I believe this household item to be a clue.' He pointed at the broom.
'I've got a headache,' Myrtle was stumbling towards them.
Damian lurched in her wake, both of them homing in on Trueth as if she was flashing the blue beacon of salvation. 'We are cold. Where are we? What has happened? Did you bring us here? Why? Please do something.'
For the first time, Trueth felt sympathy for Metjen. And Imhotep. If this was how leadership felt, she wanted none of it.
'Do I look like Mother Teresa? I've got no idea why we are here and what we're supposed to be doing. By the way, what are you doing, Seisi?'
He had mumbled something, was making fluttering movements with his hands and rose level with the scraggly broom in the wall.
Seisi nodded to himself. 'I believe this might be the way. They wanted to make sure only those with sun-flow could enter the Lands of the Mist.' He bent over in the air, facing Trueth. 'Gather your followers.'
'Eh...what?'
Before she could do anything, the choice selection of Avebury's magical finest had surrounded Trueth, presenting her with a variety of doleful, peeved, worried and annoyed expressions.
This is what being surrounded by zombies must feel like, she thought.
'Good,' said Seisi from above. 'I believe I have found the means of activating the second gate.'
Trueth craned her neck and for the first time noticed the white outlines of a pair of hands under the broom. Both bore a stylized symbol of the sun. Trueth could only hope Seisi's interpretation of the artwork's purpose was accurate as he pressed his fingers on the images and kept them there.
She did not expect anything to happen immediately.
She was not disappointed.
Slowly, however, the wall changed, as if a second image was being superimposed on the unyielding rockface. It showed trees, bushes, meadows and skies. Pale at first, waxing stronger, the colours flowed in, and finally the little group stood right next to a gigantic opening to a central European forest, tinted with the glowing sunlight and splendid colours of early autumn. The proverbial sapphire skies twinkled above; birds fluttered through the foliage and something heavier was rustling through the undergrowth. Not far away the babble of a brook promised instant thirst relief.
The image was split. In the middle, the part of the wall with the broom and the handprints was still there, with Seisi stuck to the rock right underneath. Trueth stepped backwards; she was facing the biggest standing stone she had ever seen. It did not resemble the decayed boulders in Avebury in the slightest. It was smooth and precision cut like an elongated teardrop, drawing to a point at the top.
Seisi floated down from his lofty heights. 'This, I believe to be the real world of the People of the Mist. We must go; the gate will shut again shortly. And I do not know whether it will open once more.' He was right. The image was already fading again.
Trueth was not sure whether this would be a good idea, but dying of thirst on the rocks was even worse. She made her decision. The black dog already had. It was bouncing into the meadow, tail wagging.
'Run!' she shouted at the others. Nobody needed further instructions, and the whole group stumbled into the glorious autumn afternoon. Seisi came last, having ensured that nobody had stayed behind. For a brief moment, the drab space in front of the portal could still be seen, and then it vanished and they were surrounded by the trees of a small clearing. There was one pathetic broken stone placed in the middle of the space, so overgrown with creepers it was hardly visible. Was this the huge needle-like monument she had just passed? Nothing was ever what it seemed in the magical world.
'Should we have taken the broom? It must be a spelled object, one that actually seemed to work?'
'It does, and that's why we need to keep it where it is. It will protect this world from invaders.'
'What is this place? Where are we?'
'I do not know,' Seisi said. 'But methinks we have some explanations to do first.' He turned around and pointed at the mutinous group of the Avebury witches.
If you liked this story, please leave me a vote or a comment. Or both XD. Wattpad writers write for feedback. We thrive on it! Thank you so much. If you REALLY liked it - maybe you can tell your friends about it?
Next chapters Tuesday 22 December and Tuesday 29 December
===
This chapter is dedicated to @CRQuetzals thank you for your support of my stories!
The image is taken from DeviantArt, copyright porbital