David Wells - Linkershim

He tried to walk but his legs wouldn’t do as he wished, so Jack and Jataan nearly carried him, easing him down carefully. His muscles were cramped and stiff, sore and disobedient. Once in bed, he relaxed a bit, but the pain mixed with his dehydration and hunger made the thought of sleep seem impossible until Lita started casting her healing spell. A few moments later he was out.

He woke hungry and thirsty. Fortunately, Lita and Jack were ready, offering him a cup of water and a meal as soon as he opened his eyes.

“How long was I gone?” he asked between a drink and a mouthful.

“Almost three days,” Jack said.

Alexander felt a little thrill of fear race up his spine. He’d become lost in the firmament.

Chloe buzzed into existence, floating over his plate in front of him. “We thought we’d lost you, My Love. I was so worried.”

“I’m sorry, Little One. Thank you for coming to get me.”

“I didn’t even know if I could do that, but we didn’t have any other choice. No matter what we did, you wouldn’t wake up.” She started to cry.

“Hush, it’s all right, you saved me, Little One.”

She floated down and landed on his knee, struggling to stifle her tears.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“I didn’t … you found me,” Chloe said. “When we couldn’t wake you, I sent my mind into yours and immediately found myself in the firmament. I vaguely remember the first few seconds being disorienting and confusing. I called out for help, but then I was back in the Valley of the Fairy Queen with my family, living as we have for thousands of years. It felt so natural, so real, that I didn’t even realize it wasn’t. I would have stayed there if you hadn’t broken your link with the firmament and forced me to return.”

“What happened, Alexander?” Jack asked.

“I got lost in the firmament,” Alexander said. “It’s hard to explain. I was in a place of such profound peace that I didn’t want to leave. Time had no meaning … I was simply content to be. Even now, I feel a longing to go back there, like I’m being called home.”

“Well, don’t,” Anja said. “You almost died, just like I said you would.”

“I know,” Alexander said quietly.

“Any contact with Siduri?” Jack asked.

“No. In fact, once I got to this place of peace, I forgot all about him.”

“Maybe you ought to give it some time and some thought before you try that again,” Jack said.

“You’re not going to try that again, are you?” Anja asked.

“I have to,” Alexander said. “Siduri is too important to ignore. He can help me master my magic and he may be the key to destroying the shades once and for all.”

“But it almost killed you,” Anja said.

“I’ll be more careful next time and I have some experience to build on, but Jack’s right, I need to think about it for a while before I try again.”

Several bandage changes, followed by further healing spells, followed by sleep, brought Alexander to the moment he’d been silently dreading. He was on his feet, his leg strong enough, though still a bit tender, his weapons and armor in place, Luminessence in hand. Jataan and Anja flanked him on either side with Lita and Jack well behind them.

Alexander looked to Jataan and Anja in turn; both nodded. He willed the door open, dimming the light in the room to almost nothing in the same moment. Silence and darkness. Alexander breathed a sigh of relief, bringing the light up a bit. Jataan peered outside, listening for any hint of a threat.

“I believe they’ve gone,” he said.

“Good,” Alexander and Anja said in unison.

“Keep an eye on the door while I have a look around,” Alexander said, going to his magic circle.

His leg gave him a few jabs of pain when he sat down to meditate, but once he’d cleared his mind, he slipped into the firmament easily, bringing his awareness into being above his head. He floated out the door and up three levels to the open-sided corridor they’d followed into the underdark, then to the door he’d opened, using only his aura vision to see. A steady stream of insects was moving into and out of the room, but the ones coming out were all going toward the main entrance, away from Alexander and his friends.

He floated toward the way they’d come in. The corridor was littered with the well-picked-over corpses of dozens of overseers, some insects stopping to search for a last scrap but most crawling over the stripped bones without pausing. At the next open door, about half of the insects turned into the underdark, while the rest continued on toward the entry hall.

He floated to the balcony and found a garrison of soldiers setting up behind a shield wall that warded the threshold between them and the entry corridor. The bugs had reached the shield and a few seemed to be stationed on the balcony, but the rest fanned out like search parties taking every viable pathway into the underdark.

Alexander drifted through the shield and into the enemy forces assembling beyond and found them wanting. While several of the ranking overseers were Acuna wizards, most were little more than organized thugs. Palace guards or even Lancers would have been better suited to the task, but the overseers had jurisdiction over the city proper and they weren’t about to give that up, even if it meant losing many of their own men.

Alexander could see the fear in them. They whispered stories of how the first group of overseers to venture into the underdark had never returned. Officers talked of plans, but the men looked nervously through the shield wall at the enemy, as inhuman and impersonal as it could get, flowing by like a river, ignorant of strategy, impossible to negotiate with, driven only by hunger and instinct.

He snapped back to the fissure and began exploring in the direction of the well of memory. The main pathways along the chasm wall were collapsed, broken in multiple places for several thousand feet. He floated through the dark as a ball of light, inspecting the open-sided corridors cut into the chasm wall but found none leading away from the fissure that were intact for any significant distance.

That left the underdark. He returned to the fissure and searched the area, looking for passages out. Finding three, he followed each for a distance. One wrapped back around in the wrong direction. Another ended in a cave-in. The third eventually led up a flight of stairs and connected to a hallway that seemed to be the underdark’s version of a road, long and straight and well-supported. More importantly, it looked intact for quite a ways in both directions. Alexander returned to his body and opened his eyes, closing the door to the Wizard’s Den, just to be safe.

“There were a lot more bugs than we thought. Fortunately, they’ve branched out in the other direction.”

“That might complicate getting out,” Jack said.

“Not nearly as much as the regiment of overseers camped at the entrance.”

“I take it the bugs did win,” Jack said.

“Very much so. Most of the overseers are terrified. Fortunately, all of that is happening back there. I think I’ve found a way through. Try to be as quiet as possible. I’ll keep our light to a minimum; I don’t want to draw the bugs’ attention.”

They slipped out of the Wizard’s Den under a very dim light from Luminessence. Everyone followed closely behind Alexander, taking great care to make as little noise as possible.

The fissure had opened a crack in a nearby wall. Alexander slipped through it and into a large room that might have once been a public bath. Bringing his light up to examine the art on the walls, he revealed a continuous fresco of fair-haired, frail-looking creatures tending to the lands and forests around them. They were depicted as wielding great magic for the betterment of the world they’d chosen to act as stewards for.