Portal Mage - A Viridian Gate Serial Adventure #1

Hey everyone. Wanted to share the first episode of a brand new VGO short story, called Portal Mage. And, as a thank you for supporting me, I'm making it available to Patrons at every level! This one is a collaboration with D.J. Bodden, author of the VGO EU series, the Illusionist. Unlike many of the other VGO stories out there, this one is unique in that it takes place well after the events of the main series. Nearly sixteen years later, in fact. Time for a little glimpse into the future...

JJ just wanted to drink his Western Brew and read yesterday's reports. 

Instead, he gets pulled into a raid boss fight that threatens to raze the city of Harrowick. If that wasn't enough, his superiors have saddled him with an apprentice, but the new kid is something V.G.O. hasn't seen in sixteen years. Life in the Archives is about to change.

                                        Portal Mage Episode One: Into the Breach

I had a cup of Western Brew in my right hand and a sheaf of reports in my left as I stepped into Harpock’s familiar buzz—that’s the Harrowick Portal Command Center, for those not of the Mystica Ordo. It’s a small but very secure room buried beneath Harrowick Keep.

The usual suspects were clustered around the rune-inscribed sandstone control table. Mad Marley, the senior controller, was on pads one and two with the heaviest passenger traffic. Jeniffer H, my main squeeze, had pad three. Most of the city’s cargo would go through her. Tonto was on pad four. He was only a junior mage, so he was backup and overflow for Jen and Marl. 

As for me, I was the oncoming Mage of the Watch, a Level 52 Portal Mage at the time.

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I’d tell you all about my general skills, class skills, and a few other abilities I’ve picked up along the way, but then I’d have to take a Hexblade to you and send you to Skálaholt. Portal mages are the first line of defense between regular citizens and the big bad eldritch that lurk in other realms, so most of what we do and can do is classified.

The three portal mages’ attention was focused on the to-scale blue hologram of the city that floated over the runic inscriptions, encased in a dome of rippling magic, like a soap bubble.

“Go ahead, Ankara. Three crates of palm mesh, glassware, and pottery approved for arrival on pad three.”

“I have a 9:30 inbound with three live Balrigons to that pad, Stone Reach. You’ll have to wait.” 

“Do not start sending the passengers, New Viridia! Please acknowledge my transmission!”

“I cannot have sea sprites there with fire elementals, and I don’t care if the client paid for express handling. Next time, schedule your transfers!”

“Tonto! Hey, Tonto!” Mad Marley said, snapping his fingers. “Those idiots are coming through anyway! Take my feed from Empuriabrava East to pad four. Let’s see how much they enjoy walking halfway across the city.”

All the while, red blemishes and sparks appeared on the dome as my colleagues rejected unauthorized transit requests. Dozens of green ports opened and closed, and corresponding green arrivals, both cargo and passengers, flashed into the holographic city. They faded to blue as the quantum energy dispersed, all of which, like the bubble, was invisible to non-magical eyes.

“Boom!” Jen said, thrusting her fists in the air. “One shipment of Affka redirected into space!” She gave Tonto a high five.

I chuckled and took a sip of my coffee. Everyone liked making things hard for the Affka dealers. Affka addiction was nasty, and it affected Travelers, Citizens, mixed descendants, and monsters alike. All in all, though, this was a typical morning in Harpock.

I gave the heavy wards etched into the walls a reflexive once-over—containment failures were no joke—and then I walked past the control table. I gave Tonto a wink. I nudged Jen in the shoulder with my elbow and got a smile if not her full attention. Mad Marley gave me a nod. Then I was out of the noise and into the small office set aside for the Mage of the Watch. 

Darkside was behind the desk, and he had a visitor, some kid wearing a rough tunic and shoddy pants. I rolled my eyes. The uncomfortable clothes were what my generation of Travelers had started the game with, but there hadn’t been a new Traveler in over a decade. 

“What’s with the newbie clothes? He pick those up in a vintage store?” I asked Darkside, ignoring the kid. He was probably some apprentice mage who’d been sent to see how real magic was done.

“Hey, JJ. He’s a special surprise for you. Higher-ups want you to take him under your wing.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

I don’t do trainees, or kids in general. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything, but the Mystica Ordo and I agreed years ago that there were better uses of my time. 

I tried staring Darkside down for several seconds, but the cheerful jerk didn’t blink. “I’m a bit senior to be training a kid who hasn’t gotten his character class yet.”

“You have the duty, don’t you?”

“I’m still three minutes early. Your duty, your problem.”

“The kid ported into Harrowick about an hour ago.”

“So did hundreds of other people.”

“He didn’t come through one of the landing pads.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “Inside or outside the bubble?”

“Inside, without setting off any alarms.”

The “bubble” was the sphere of control we mages of the Mystica Ordo maintained around the regional capitals of Eldgard and West Viridia, and a few more places besides. It kept the riffraff out. Having someone slip through the bubble didn’t just threaten our transport fees, it put lives at risk. “Whose sector?” I asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Tonto’s,” Darkside said. I clenched my jaw and started to say something about the position of the junior mage’s head relative to his ass, but Darkside stopped me. “Before you go and yell at the kid, I already ripped him a new one. Then I apologized because I reviewed the logs. There’s nothing there. The watchmen who found our poorly attired friend said he fell from the sky.” 

“Are you Jumpin’ Juniper?” the kid asked me, speaking for the first time.

“That’s Senior Mage Jumpin’ Juniper, novice,” Darkside said sternly.

“Just call me JJ,” I said, tapping the roll of reports against the desk. “How do you know my name?”

“I was given a quest to find you,” the kid said. He was young, thirteen at the outside, and he had a funny accent, like someone from the Pacific Islands, back when those still existed.

A quest. That probably meant Overminds, the gods of V.G.O. Of all of the classes that dealt directly with Overminds—which were few and far between—Portal Mages fell just behind high priests and Champions.  Darkside and I looked at each other. “I’ve got this,” I said.

“Thought you might,” he said, smirking. “You want to go over last night’s log, or should we—”

A flare of magical activity in the control room made me, the kid, and Darkside jump. I spilled some of my Western Brew on the floor, splashing the hem of my black robes. “Aww, man!”

“We need some help in here!” Mad Marley shouted.

I slapped yesterday’s reports onto the table, set my mug next to them, and ran after Darkside and the kid. 

The whole dome had turned crimson red. Mad Marley had the city on lockdown. Even so, yellow marks the color of molten metal flecked the western part of the shield, and they were getting wider.

“Talk to me, Marl,” I said, throwing my hood back. 

“Nothing you can’t see. I have multiple inbounds,” Marley said, hands pushed together in a triangle and sweat running down his face. Jenny was chanting a support spell, and Tonto looked like he was about to pass out. “They’re pushing hard. Haven’t seen something like this since the Vog invasions. I think it’s cross-space and cross-realm.”

“Could be,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder to give him access to my significantly larger Spirit pool. “Dark, you’re on the small ones.”

“You got it.” He’d always been better at the Multi-Tasking skill than I was.

“Jenny, I need you on the north and northeast. Someone’s trying to slip through while we’re distracted.”

“What?” Tonto said, losing his focus, and his Spirit hit zero. He fell forward and bounced his head off the control table.

“I’m on it,” Jenny said. “I’ve got Tonto’s slack, too.”

I activated my Still Mind skill to keep from losing my temper. I’d told them Tonto wasn’t ready. It wasn’t his fault. It was just too soon.

“Breach! Massive breach near the fish market!” Mad Marley yelled. A glowing disk the size of a tea saucer was on its way to becoming a dinner plate, and it had a void black center.

“Focus on your tasks,” I said calmly. “This one’s on me.” I closed my eyes, sensing the flow of aether, and placed my palm over the breach like I was sealing a physical leak. I activated Remote Sensing.

Remember when I said big, bad, and eldritch?

In the central auction plaza of the lower city fish market, just a few blocks from the East Gate, the veil between the realms ripped, and a jagged, glowing crack appeared on the ground. A pair of pale, soiled hands, with fingers as long as I was tall, grabbed the ragged edges of reality and pushed them apart. Then a second pair of muscled arms shot through, claws digging into the square like the stone paving was gravel, and dragged a spiny carapace the color of cooling lava into our world. People stopped to look, unsure of what was going on. A nearby legionary tried to attack it, and he was crushed as a third pair of arms wriggled through the gate.

“What’s happening?” I heard back in the control room, though the sound was muffled. Reinforcements from the Mystica Ordo, I thought, and I kept my focus where it belonged. My Spirit had been trickling out from supporting Mad Morley, which was saying something because my S-Regen rate was above 30 Spirit per second. It started to pour as I brought my will to bear on sealing the breach. As the bar dipped, I used Multi-Tasking to chug a Spirit Regen potion without breaking the link.

“More breaches on the north side! Karl, Shi Wen, see what you can do!” Mad Marley shouted.

I hit the many-armed monstrosity with three consecutive Level 7 Denials, and I think I just managed to make it angry. This thing was tough! It pushed up on a fourth set of filthy arms, reared like a snake, and exposed a gaping, circular red maw rimmed with fangs the length of my arm. At this point, any uncertainty was dispelled. People started to run. The creature exhaled red, fetid breath into the air, and those who didn’t get clear fast enough either collapsed, cowered in terror, or started tearing into each other like they’d been possessed by rage.

“It’s from the Shattered Realm!” my body yelled, back in Harpock, while my projection kept up the fight. I used Split Personality to chain-cast Warp, my primary damage spell, with both hands. Small explosions of disruptive energy broke the beast’s fingers, snapped its wrists, and disjointed its monstrous elbows. I laughed. Its grip was slipping. 

“Take that, you mother—whooooooa!” I man-screamed as four more hands grabbed hold of the breach. They heaved.

“We’re losing the bubble, JJ! The whole thing is going down!”

The creature pulled an additional four segments of its revolting bulk into our world. The warping of reality made the few survivors below fall to their knees, puking and scratching at their eyes. Its top pair of hands, reaching for the sky as if it were going to tear down the sun, was forty feet above the ground. It retched molten orange goo from its suckered orifice that smelled like effluent and melted everything it touched. I’d never seen anything like it in sixteen years of playing V.G.O. Just looking at it made me want to retch. Wooden stalls, stone paving, and people caught fire or melted. And then a face emerged from the maw, followed by a woman’s upper torso, naked and pale as a corpse. Long, matted black hair partially hid her face and glowing red eyes. Her forehead was pierced by a crown of giant thorns that seemed to be growing out of her. She was all wrong in every sense of time and space I knew. 

[Bellicosa] was her name. She was a Lesser Aspect of Discord, one of the many facets of the Overmind Enyo.

“JJ! Do something!” Jenny shouted into my ear.

I was doing something. I’d never stopped casting, and the aetheric resonance was making small arcs of lightning caterpillar across every exposed bit of metal within a hundred feet. I’d chugged two more Max Spirit Regen potions. The toxicity alone would have killed me if I wasn’t multi-classed as a Cleric. Bellicosa shrugged off my attempts to cast Denial on the breach. I hit her with Warp again and again, but as many limbs as I injured, more flailed through, pulling her further out. 

She was now sixty feet tall and still coming. 

The creature’s blackened shell and muscled body seemed impervious to damage, so the defenders focused their fire on the maw and the woman-shaped tongue. Flaming arrows and spells arced up from the city. She reached into a cavity in her segmented body, pulled out a wriggling, faceless infant, and threw the [Wingless Cherub] at a cluster of legionaries. The little monster latched on to a Triarius knight. It exploded, killing the woman and splashing her companions with orange ichor that burned through their armor and clothes. 

The concentration of magic had reached a tipping point where I was going to destabilize the bubble on my own. I cast Astral Projection, bringing my very being to the place instead of just viewing remotely, and drew all that excess power to me. I opened my mouth and thundered, “Omnia Nihil!” casting my top-tier class spell as she reached into the morass for another infant. Her Throw Cherub skill misfired, and the mewling infant exploded, taking her cadaverous arm off at the elbow.

And she laughed at me. 

Then she did something worse. She stared right at my spiritual projection, and her tongue-body opened from navel to clavicle, exposing a throat full of needle-like teeth in rotting gums, and it started to suck me in. 

This wasn’t going to end well. Best case, the city was going to be destroyed, and I’d lose over 40,000 XP in respawn. Worst case, this was going to be permadeath, like back in the days of the Crimson Rebellion. 

It might have ended that way, if the kid hadn’t grabbed my arm.

“What the…” I blinked, suddenly and bodily back in Harpock.

The kid had daisy-chained all the mages in the control room. Even Tonto was helping. They had their hands on his shoulders, like a group prayer, and he was hugging my arm like a lifeline.

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                                                                              Buffs Added

Eddie the Eagle (Level 1): Cast all your Spirit or Stamina into your next spell or skill. If successful, the spell or skill will be scaled linearly with the Spirit or Stamina expended. Consuming all your Stamina will cause pain if you attempt to push through. Consuming all your Spirit will cause you to fall asleep.

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It felt like an obscure pop culture reference from the 2010s. Then again, I was in a video game, and the programmers had been regular geeks before they’d turned V.G.O. into a lifeboat.

I turned back into my astral form, and Bellicosa hesitated, her vertical tongue-maw half-closed. It was like she could feel all that power ready to smack her down for good.

“Say goodnight, Gracie,” I said, and cast the mother of all Denials.

The cumulated Spirit of six mages, one kid, and what was left of my own pool cast the spell with a spell strength of over 500. The breach snapped shut like a bear trap, severing Bellicosa’s horrifying frontend from her undoubtedly worse backend. The monster’s muscled arms went limp and it fell, splatting against the ground in a wave of orange acid that melted it several feet into the ground. I felt the portal energy explode and reverberate back into the Shattered Realm. Maybe it put her down for good. Somehow I doubted it, but it’s nice to have dreams.

A wave of fatigue hit me. My eyelids felt like they were made of lead.

I sank to my knees and fell asleep.

And I didn’t dream of Jeniffer H or anything. If I did, it’s none of your business.

“Hey, JJ! Are you awake?” Darkside asked, shaking my shoulder.

I opened my eyes. We were back in the control room. The kid, Darkside, and Jen were looking down at me.

“You okay, dude?”

“Yeah,” I said, propping myself up on my palms. New portal mages—JoJo, Omniburn, and Captain Phillips—had come to replace the previous crew. The Harpock was running again. “I feel pretty good, actually. Like I fell asleep after—”

“Uh-huh,” Jen said, cutting me off. “Me too. We all felt… relaxed.”

“Anyone hurt?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

“We’re fine,” Jen said. “I sent Darkside, Mad Morley, and Tonto home. Tonto took it pretty hard, bless his newb heart.”

I nodded. I’d have a talk with him. He’d pulled through, in the end. 

She cleared her throat. “Something got through during the ruckus. Something small, but you’ll still have to chase it down.”

“I’ll get on that just as soon as I can think straight,” I said, pushing myself off the ground and dusting my black robes off. “See you at home?”

“Yeah,” she said, giving my arm a squeeze. I kissed her on the cheek and watched her go. Then I turned to the kid, giving him my full attention. “That was a hell of a skill, kid. Where’d you get it?” 

The kid stared right back at me, cold as ice, and kinda smug, too. “It’s a long story,” he said.

“Hah! Well, step into my office,” I said, waving him toward the small side room. “I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other in the days and weeks to come.”