The Restored: Chapter Twelve

Probably only going to be two chapters this week: I wound up needing to take care of a bunch of personal stuff Monday, and wasn't able to write

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The portal was made of gray light, a shade so pale it was almost white, and as it appeared Devi gasped for breath. Not as if she had been working out, but more as if her head had been shoved underwater for a minute or two without warning, and she was only able to escape just now.

“Should hold… for about… eight hours…?” she said between panting, heaving breaths. “I think I… did it, though.” 

“Well, I should return to helping the movers evacuate my manor,” the Contractor said. “If you have failed, then I can attempt to point you to someone else, but it will be… Less opportune.”

He gave each of us a contrite bow that managed to feel somehow both mocking and serious at the same time, then turned and swept up the stairs. A second later, he transformed into a streak of red light, dissolving his humanoid form for a shape of pure aura and magic. 

Devi spent several minutes catching her breath, before she finally looked up and spoke, shaking her head as she did. 

“Fallen Void, he’s going to be terrifying once his Throne is complete. Even splitting the power apart so there wasn’t a connection at all almost killed me and ripped out my aura spark. Not even a defensive measure – I just connected slightly too deep, and it started taking it. And I’m peerless when it comes to the Wandering Path.”

She shook her head for the second time within moments, as if she were trying to convince herself that what she’d experienced wasn’t real. 

“Nobody can move from a just-created Throne to being Heir of one of the Eleven Thrones, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was able to leverage a completed Throne to rise through the ranks until he became the Heir of Greed.”

“He’s certainly creepy,” Jin agreed. “But he’s not really all that bad. He helped us a lot, after all.” 

I shot her a curious look. I wouldn’t have thought I’d have needed to tell Jin to not trust people, but apparently I did. 

“He’s not kind,” I said firmly. “He’s old, cunning, and a survivor. If he thought the long term best solution for himself and his interests was to kill us all right now, he would have done it with a smile on his face.” 

Jin stiffened slightly at that, and I wondered if the faerie-turned-love demon in her head was speaking to her. 

“He’s right,” Devi said. “But you don’t need to be as worried about it as it seems. He’s smart enough to realize that right now, making small bets is the safe play. Long term, enough small bonuses and bets add up.” 

“You’re right,” Jin said after a moment. “So… about the portal?” 

Devi straightened slightly, runes lighting up all over her body and twisting into specific shapes. 

“Yes. If I’ve managed to get it right, it should put us in an area of the Wandering Path a short walk from where the vault that you talked about was, Jin.”

Jin started to ask a question, but Devi cut her off by continuing. 

“The reason I’m not trying to portal us in directly – apart from the fact that the geography makes it difficult, is that she’s actually claimed that area. It’s really, really weird, though. She’s claimed it with a mix of human and demon magic, and it’s tied to multiple people?” 

“Alyphize,” I said. “She’s tied it to her demon, I’d bet on it.” 

Devi nodded at that and continued. 

“I can break in, but I’ll need to get closer, and we’ll be on a time limit. Which is why…” 

She waved her hand, and the swirling runes and magic peeled off her dark skin and into the air, where they formed a ring. An instant later, another portal opened in the air, this one leading to a familiar-ish looking vault – Devi’s own vault. 

“Stay here,” she told us, before heading in. 

She darted in and out several times, piling up equipment. The first thing she brought was a handheld picture camera – it was a top of the line one, only the size of a whole loaf of bread, and it even had glyph lights embedded within it to help light up what the picture was for. There was also some paper, charcoal, a set of lockpicks with a skeleton key, a crowbar, a hammer, and a miniaturized disintegration bomb. 

She looked up at us as she put the bomb down. 

“Do you think it would be worth blowing up the area? This is just a little one, meant for getting rid of about a cubic foot of material, but if I rig enough…” 

“It’s probably a good idea to have the option, even if we don’t use it for whatever reason,” I said. 

“Absolutely,” Jin said, nodding her agreement.

“Alright, let me just get some more explosives. How many do you think we’ll need, Jin?” 

“I’ve got that one,” I said, pointing to the sheet I’d handed to Devi. “There are some high yield explosives in there.” 

Devi skipped over, then opened the portal contained within that vault as well. When it opened to reveal the dozens of guns, swords, bombs, and assorted boxes of ammunition, both Jin and her eyes went wide, staring intensely at it. 

“There’s… So much,” Devi muttered. 

“You DID steal my original sword!” Jin said, whacking my stomach. “I’m taking it back. This one is terrible.” 

I walked in and picked up a slightly heavier gun than my usual ones. It was still a handheld, but it fired a twelve millimeter round, rather than the nine millimeter of my usual gun, and had a lot of kick to it. Its enchantments were also not the best. I didn’t want to call them trashy, but they were built to amplify the power of the gun, with no concern for damage. They added a lot of force, but strained the internals, and could warp the barrel. 

I wouldn’t normally use it, for exactly that reason, but the last time I’d fought Alyphize, she’d been prepared to attack me. I needed firepower, just in case, and without the airship gun, this was my best option. 

Devi took a little peashooter, trying to slide it into her blouse without me noticing, while Jin lovingly stared at the pile of swords. 

“Hey,” I said, glaring at Devi. “You could have just asked.” 

“Sorry,” she responded, not sounding sorry in the least. 

Jin picked up the sword that she’d used before, belted it on, then left the portal. I picked up one of the largest explosives I had, an alchemy and enchantment mix. It wasn’t clean like a disintegration bomb, but it was incredibly destructive, meant for blowing up entire buildings if the need came for it. 

Fully armed, Devi shut both my portal and the one to her own vault, then we turned to focus on the first one that she’d opened in the room. She stepped in first, seemingly unconcerned, and I followed a moment later. 

Even discounting my own personal storage locker, I’d been in the Wandering Path before. It always looked fairly similar, at least to me. The ground was a smooth, glossy, off-white or grayish color. Sometimes the shade was darker or lighter, but it was always the same general sort. All of the Wandering Path connections I’d seen had contained walls within them made of the same sort of off white color, the limits of the space that the spell could stretch to. I knew that, in theory, it wasn’t required, but I’d never seen it myself. 

Seeing it now was disconcerting. The plane seemed to stretch on endlessly, and I couldn’t tell if it was close or far. There wasn’t any sort of curvature that I could see, and yet my own vision felt strangely limited. I glanced around, trying to orient myself, but there was nothing. There wasn’t a sun, a moon, or a ceiling. There was just… endless gray. The only things breaking up the monotony were myself and Devi. Even the portal was perfectly blending into the environment, to the point that I wasn’t even sure if it was still there, or if Devi would have to transport us back through a ritual. 

There was no sound, no smell , and even the air didn’t seem to have a temperature to it. It was as if the plane was perfectly room temperature, to the point temperature wasn’t even noticeable. It was more silent than a tomb, because in a tomb, the rustle of clothing, the sound of breathing, and footsteps would bounce against the metal of the walls, whereas here, they were simply swallowed up in the endless gray. 

The worst part was that there wasn’t even a pattern to the color, nor was there chaos. Everything I could see was the same gray. I knew that other parts of the realm were a different shade, and yet, the change was so gradual that even staring out across the plane, I couldn’t tell it changed at all. 

I looked down, trying to memorize the shade of gray, then looked at the gray as far away as I could, but they were the same exact shade, at least as far as I could tell. 

Jin stepped through a moment later, and Devi spoke, her voice shattering the absolutely deafening silence that hung in the air. 

“We’ll have to remember that the portal is here,” she said. “Luckily, this area’s pretty distinctive and easy to navigate.” 

“Is that a joke?” Jin asked flatly. 

“No,” Devi responded earnestly. “It’s really quite obvious. See how the ground is at the tiniest bit of an angle here? There’s a miniature bump. And over there, the gray is about a quarter of a percent lighter – we’re near a change zone. The air is also a tiny bit more humid than normal for this area of Elderglass, and our auras are only slightly tensed against the weight of the world.”

I stared at the areas she indicated, but I couldn’t see it. Even pressing my hand over the area that Devi said was a bump really didn’t convince me of anything. It might have been my imagination trying to convince me it was there because Devi said it was, or it might have been there. 

“Alright, enough, this way,” she said, marching off. I traded a look with Jin, who gave me a confused look. I just shrugged, and we headed off behind Devi. 

It was difficult to track time within the Wandering Path, and Devi kept making strange motions that she called ‘shortcuts’. I didn’t see how turning around backwards for ten steps, then turning back around and walking forwards again could possibly save us time, but she claimed that it was crucial to skip a thirty minute walk. She might have been messing with us, but I didn’t think she was. 

When we arrived within sight of the Arenamaster and Alyphize’s claimed section of the Path, it was immediately obvious. The bright red area was the size of an apartment, perfectly square and boxy, and covered in thousands of runes I’d never seen before. Devi walked right up to it, her tattoos flaring to life again. 

“Give me ten minutes and I can open a way into the area without them noticing.” 

Magic swirled off her and began to intersect with the runes layered over the red box. The strangest thing to me was that it didn’t resemble any sorcery or witchcraft I had ever seen, but felt more like the motions of a puzzle cube, moving things back and forth until they fit into the right arrangement. It could have been ten minutes, but I had no way of knowing, but when she finished, there was a ripple in the red box, and a hole opened in the defenses. 

Standing on the other side, ready to meet us with a bright smile, was Alyphize, demonic magic glowing brightly around her hands. 

“Hello children.”