Manifestation: the Coming Dark/Chapter 10

The first thing I noticed about the portal was that it was bigger than it seemed. What had seemed to be just a thin window was in actuality a swirling vortex of water. The next thing I noticed was that it was cold. Shuddering to suppress the chill, I turned to Sigarin, who stood beside me in the swirling mists.

"Is it usually so cold?" I asked.

"This is mild," Sigarin laughed. "When we first learned to make world gates, many of our men had to be treated for exposure and others for severe burns. The elemental balance is disturbed in the void, as it is at our destination. We should be prepared for anything."

"Disturbed?" I asked. "Why is it that the powers have any sway there at all?"

"You must remember that The'Galin is a created being," Sigarin said, stopping and wiping tendrils of mist from in front of his face. "He did not start off in control of a world. He took this one as he seeks to take ours. This is another of Lorithia's many worlds."

"Lorithia's many worlds? So there are other creators than Lorithia?"

"The multiverse is a vast place. There are as many creator gods within it, as many pantheons, as many worlds, as you see stars in the night sky. And many more besides. Some of these are close to our own and familiar. Some are shades of our own world where some different event pushed things in another direction, and some are so alien that we would never know them to be worlds if we could even survive on them in the first place."

"How is it the citizens of K'eld Alorin know so much about this?" Xander asked, stopping for a moment to catch his breath. We were lost in the depths of the mist now and I could not see the world on either side. I had only my sense of linear direction, a combat skilled honed over two decades, to assure me I was still heading in the correct direction.

"When we started our work on combinatorial magic as De'me'thar outcasts, we began to realize that much of the world was not as it seemed. That even the richness of Drakel heritage did not begin to see the truth of the world. We created the world gate not as a way to combat The'Galin, though it serves us well for that purpose; we created the world gate so that we might explore beyond the limits of Lore."

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked, pulling up short myself.

"For 450 years, give or take a month or two."

"The Drakel of K'eld Alorin have been using extraplanar magic for 450 years?!" I asked, astonished. "No wonder the gateway to the K'eld was never found. It must be protected by misdirections and magics of the likes we have never seen."

"There are those in the K'eld that work with energies and magics totally alien to Lore, magics unlike anything on our world has ever known."

In the distance ahead, I could see the mist beginning to thin and rays of a watery grey light poured through.

"The exit is just ahead, I think." Even as I said it, I could smell a mildewy dankness that for a moment I could not identify, and then with a growing sense of undead began to recognize.

"It smells of a crypt," Xander said, giving voice to my own observations.

"Yes," Sigarin said. "This is one of the more pleasant-smelling localities. That smell means that there is death here but not undeath. Keep that in mind."

I thought about this for a moment, but try as I may, I had a hard time finding light in Sigarin's proclamation. As exciting as the thought of leaving the world might have been, the actuality was now upon me and it was something else entirely. I faced my almost certain demise and worse my almost certain damnation to the ranks of the living dead. Not even my service to the Water Lord could be counted on to prevent that foul fate. Though it might save my soul from knowing the new uses to which my flesh might be put.

"Ready," Xander said or asked. It was difficult to tell if it was an interrogation or a statement of his own.

"Absolutely," I answered. "Let's go..."