Paul Thompson - Nemesis

"How much longer?" Takara asked anxiously.

"I don't know exactly-the unit's never been used before. It has no settings to compare to."

Eladamri grabbed Belbe by the hair and jerked her head back. "Hurry," he said. "If I find out you're delaying-"

"You're delaying me now," she said. He released her.

The remaining rebel fighters placed themselves between the doors and the portal with drawn swords. Sivi tried to take her place beside Medd, but he gently pushed her away.

"I'm still good enough to fight with you!" she said. Her words were slurred and her movements shaky.

"You've had a hard knock on the head, Sivi," Medd replied. "You can hardly stand. Go with Eladamri. He needs someone to protect him."

"I won't leave you here to die!"

A third powerful impact caused more debris to shower down from the heights of the Dream Halls. The heavy shocks caused the portal unit to topple over. Belbe let out a yelp of horror.

She and Takara returned the device upright.

Takara was concerned. "Is it damaged?"

Belbe ran the test commands on two sides of her control unit. All the responses were normal. "No! But we'd better brace it- another fall could ruin everything."

Outside, Crovax was reeling. The battle with Volrath had depleted his strength, and the effort required to raise and move several tons of flowstone strained him to his limits. He gathered his power for a fourth attack, but he couldn't finish it. The giant battering ram froze inches from the doors when Crovax passed out. He pitched face down on the floor. No one attempted to catch him.

Greven closed the visor on his helmet. "Tenth Company, to the right! Sixth Company, on the left. At the double, charge!"

Hurrahing, the soldiers swarmed against the doors.

The feral shouting from the storming troops chilled Belbe's artificial blood. She tapped in the final coordinates, and the transplanar unit whined loudly. The portal locked onto a destination, and an image formed, filling the square top to bottom, side to side.

Weeping silently, Takara walked toward the portal. "Is that it? Is that Dominaria?"

The scene through the portal was of a verdant plain, green in the lush growth of summer. A few trees dotted the rolling savanna. The sky was blue-not so blue as the open portal, but a warm, living shade never seen in Rath's gray skies.

Eladamri was transfixed by the beauty of the view. "Is that it, Avila?"

Belbe didn't notice what he called her. "It should be."

Four hundred men pushed and pounded on the sagging doors. Medd, Kireno, and Shamus clasped hands. The interlaced hinges of the right-hand door began to squeal as the metal was torn apart.

Takara could stand it no longer. She pushed Eladamri aside and ran at the portal. Where she touched it, the image distorted in concentric ripples, like a pool of water after a pebble falls in. Then she was gone. Half a second later Belbe saw Takara's back as she ran through the chest high grass, away from the open portal. Away from Rath.

"Go, Eladamri," Belbe said.

"Not yet. I have something for you."

"What?"

The upper hinge gave way and crashed to the floor. The right hand door slowly fell, twisting the lower hinge as it went. Soldiers and guards, fired by their success, didn't wait for the door to fall, but clambered over it. Kireno shouted a Vec war cry and ran at them. Shamus followed, leaving Medd alone to ward off attackers trying to reach the portal.

Kireno stabbed two soldiers before they could leap clear of the door, but more poured over the sides, and he was soon enveloped in hostile blades. He traded cuts with foes on two fronts for several breathtaking seconds, then he was cut down from behind. A swarm of Rathi soldiers trampled the fallen rebel and overran Shamus. The nimble young Dal drew off at least forty guards as he retreated to the wall. He fought on, killing two and wounding four before the press became too great. He was impaled on no less than six swords at once and pinned to the wall. The soldiers drew back, leaving Shamus dead at the base of one of Volrath's pilasters.

"Eladamri, hurry!" Belbe cried. She wasn't armed, but she was prepared to use her considerable skills to safeguard his departure.

She watched the elf remove the wooden fetish from around his neck. It was a knobby little carving of a sprite, an ancestral spirit revered by elderly elves. Eladamri wasn't religious. The fetish had another purpose.

He snapped the figure's waist. The fetish was hollow. Inside the cavity was a small glass vial, closed with a cut glass plug and sealed with wax. It was the vial left in Avila's bed the night she died.

Medd shouted several words to Sivt, who was also unarmed but ready to defend the portal. She watched as Medd was engulfed in a storm of swords and shields. He died as she looked on, but he bought his leader a few more precious seconds.

Belbe backed away from the melee until she bumped into Eladamri. "What are you waiting for?" she cried. "Go! Will you go?"

"After you, Avila."

This time she heard him. She looked at him with genuine pity. "I can't go," she said.

He looked quite calm as he pulled the plug from the vial and flung the contents at her. There were only a few drops of death elixir in it. Most of it hit her armor harmlessly, but a single droplet landed on her cheek.

Belbe's hearing instantly failed. Her vision blurred, and when she wiped her eyes with her hands, she smeared the tiny droplet across her face. Her muscles locked, and searing pain shot through her entrails. An ordinary person would have died the moment the elixir touched her, but Belbe's powerful systems had more resistance. She was doomed, and she knew it. One by one her bodily functions folded up, ceasing to work. She was already deaf. Her vision was contracting to a narrow point.

Sivi lurched into her line of sight, and Belbe saw Eladamri push her backward into the portal. The bucolic scene of another world rippled, then settled to show Sivi on her back in the tall grass. She stared back through the portal at the two elves.

Belbe's knees failed. She slumped to the floor facing the portal. She shivered violently as her borrowed life fought with the toxin. Her lips parted to speak, but no sound came out.

"For the peace of my soul and yours, this had to be," Eladamri said. With a final knowing nod, he stepped through the waiting portal.

Greven and his soldiers had reached the transplanar device. One zealous guard tried to follow Eladamri by jumping into the portal, but there was not enough energy left to effect his transfer. Sixty pounds of the man landed in the grass beside Sivi- head, shoulders, one arm, helmet, part of a breastplate. The rest of him, a singed stump, fell back on the floor of the Dream Halls.

Its power exhausted, the portal shut down. The pristine image of the plain where Takara, Eladamri, and Sivi had escaped faded into murky gray mist. Belbe, pale as death and with tears streaming down her face, could just make out the words on Eladamri's lips.

"Farewell, Avila."

When order was restored to the Dream Halls, Greven had his victorious soldiers line up by companies, facing each other. There they stood at attention until Crovax, recovered from his faint, entered the hall. The dead rebels were laid out for his inspection. Crovax gave them a cursory glance. Their souls were long departed, and so were not available to him.

Ertai skulked on Crovax's heels, anxiously searching for Belbe and the portal device. Looking past the evincar, he saw Belbe kneeling on the floor a few yards away, her head slumped to her chest. Disdaining the evincar's displeasure, he ran ahead of him. "Belbe! Belbe!"