Xsing cast a rune at the giant pipe in front of them, then several into the Veil around them. Eventually he said, “Unfortunately, no. Six energy signatures out here fit my models. They vary in strength but not quality. I can only speculate. But Lyyll could not traverse through something that size, while I’m told energy entities do not have a fixed shape and size and can fit into small spaces?”
“You’re saying the Greenworld one should be bigger?”
“Perhaps? Unless the size we perceive is not physical but metaphysical.” Somehow the droop of his eyestalks managed to look uncertain. “As so much else in the matrix surely is. I have no useful data.”
For another minute, they all stood and stared at the shining pipe stretching from the mists on one side into the mists on the other. We traveled through something like that. Between worlds. And now we’re going to cut it.
“Five to one odds it’s a hell,” Jasper pointed out.
Silas tossed demon find at it, with no results. “We could locate the next one, and compare, come back…”
Darien thought he could read the stress in Silas’s voice. He has to keep us together in the Veil, construct five circles, hold back the contents of five hells, and then still have the strength to take us home when we’re done. “How far to the next one, Professor Xsing?”
Xsing tilted his head, one side then the other, his eyes peering off into the dimness, hands raised and glimmering. Eventually he said, “I cannot tell. This matrix space is fascinatingly unique. Distance does not appear to be linear.”
“So we could be walking for hours? Days?”
“It better not be days,” Silas said tightly. “If that happens, we’ll have to leave the Veil and then come back, hoping to find a different point of entry.”
Darien turned back to the portal, watching it suck down another wisp of power. Hell gate? Greenworld? “We’re here now. Let’s take this one down. I’m good with five to one odds, and losing the Greenworld gate would be bad but not a disaster,”
One by one, the others nodded.
“My part first.” Jasper shrugged off his pack. “Build the blades, power them, then Silas can wrap the containment around them.”
It was a plan of sorts, anyway. The best they’d come up with over dry bread and cheese.
Jasper rummaged in his bag and dug out a piece of white fabric and his chalk. Following their rough plan, Darien and Silas took two corners, Grim and Pip set teeth into another two, and they stretched the fabric out on the not-ground, creating a blank canvas about ten feet long.
“Six-foot blades should do it,” Jasper muttered, squatting beside the long edge. With quick but careful strokes, he drew a shape and wove in his runes.
Giant scissors. We’re going to give demon worlds a haircut. Inappropriate giggles bubbled against Darien’s lips and he gritted his teeth to keep them from escaping.
When Jasper was done, he reached a hand toward Darien. “Power now,” he said as their fingers connected.
This, at least, was easy. They’d done it a dozen times or more, melding their strength and building a magical form. The Veil didn’t make the process harder, although as they formed the huge shears and lifted them from the fabric, a sliver of gold energy came nosing by and sparked against one side. Darien caught it before the construct could warp and sucked it into the spell, the flavor dry as dust and sharp like a static spark. We’ll use any help we can get. He tucked the added power into the edge of one blade.
“Move the shears over there.” The way Silas’s voice came across distant and thin, as if on the other side of a big room, told Darien he was using more focus and power than he realized. Whatever it takes. Demons begone.
With Jasper’s guidance, they moved the shears over to that pipeline of energy, setting them into place, blades ready.
“I’ll need to pass under it, to draw the containment circle,” Silas said, shaking out his larger white sheet.
Pip jumped up, grabbed a corner of the fabric, and ran forward underneath that humming power, whirling on the other side. Through the cloth clenched in his teeth, he said, “Didn’t hurt me. Tickles though.”
“Don’t do that,” Darien protested. “You took years off my life.”
“Someone had to be first,” Grim said. “The puppy beat me to it.” Taking another corner, he strolled under the pipeline and turned, tightening the fabric.
Lyyll and Xsing helped lay Silas’s canvas out flat, bracing against the pull of Pip and Grim. Silas glanced Darien’s way once, then stooped and touched chalk to cloth. Twice, in scribing his circle runes, he had to go to his knees and crawl under the energy cable. Both times, Darien saw him shudder but keep working. Whatever that felt like, it hadn’t slowed Silas down.
When the circle was done and locked, Silas backed up two steps and fumbled for Darien’s other hand. “I’ll bring the walls up now. See if you can keep those blades steady inside it.”
With a word, the circle sprang into being. Jasper’s magic, melded with Darien’s, faltered at the rise of the barrier, but Darien caught it and wrapped it in his own, stabilizing it. All together now. Silas’s magic, mine, Jasper’s, working as one. He lifted the blades just enough to be sure he had control, then said, “Ready. I think. As I’ll ever be.”
“Walls are up,” Silas said, “but the gate tunnel pierces them. I have no idea if the circle will hold. Lyyll, Xsing, Grim and Pip, you might want to back off a distance, for safety.”
Xsing said, “If there’s an energy leak, I don’t know what distance would be safe. And I want to see this.”
Lyyll said, “I am taking mental notes. This is not part of our magic system.”
Strain was audible in Silas’s voice as he said, “On your heads, then. Darien, whenever you’re ready.”
Whenever you’re ready. Change the world. Kill your friends if this goes wrong. Or save them all. He froze, holding his breath.
“We do this, or we go home,” Silas said more softly. “To their Home, that is. And then ours, if we’re very lucky. And still face the demons.”
Do it.
Darien pulled as much power as he could from his core and slammed the blades shut across that shining cable.
Bright white light flared from the breach, hitting the walls of Silas’s containment, as the ends separated, then whipped out of sight into the mist. The flare hurt Darien’s eyes, then was gone. Power jumbled through him, an ebb and flow of half a dozen flavors, his and Jasper’s and Silas’s and dust-dry and others, and then a flash of backlash tumbled him onto his ass. Blinking back tears and pink after-images, he looked around at darkness.
Where did they go? For an instant, he felt alone in the universe. Then a flare of familiar green lit Silas’s long fingers and brightened the space enough to see Jasper and Pip and Grim and the rest gathering around him.
He cleared his throat. “Well, that was groovy.”
Silas laughed. “Only to you. Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He pushed to his feet, boosted by Silas’s hand under his elbow. “Everyone else?”
“Headache,” Jasper said. “But no worse than ordinary backlash.”
Darien dusted his hands on his thighs to hide how they were shaking. “Now what? We assume that worked?”