The enormous portal hummed ever so slightly, and the colors seemed to pulse from the center, shifting in tone just enough to catch the eye. Looking around it, Olivia couldn’t help but conclude that the destruction had originated from it. The buildings closest were mere rubble, and the level of destruction decreased in a wide circle. Back near the cavern entrance, the buildings were almost totally intact, and some of the tall ones even had thick glass still in the upper levels; perhaps they reflected the portal’s light, and that’s what Morgan had caught sight of down the road.

“I don’t see anything moving in the cavern,” Morgan offered, his eyes strangely black, almost like you could see into some bottomless depth.

“How good is that vision spell? Can you see through walls?” Bronwyn asked, leaning on the tall black spear Morgan had loaned her.

“I think I could pick up strong Energy signatures behind normal walls, but no, I don’t have x-ray vision.” He chuckled as he continued to scan around.

“Do you think this goes to another world?” Olivia asked. She knew they didn’t know but was curious about their opinions.

“No idea. I’ve been teleported a few times and walked through one portal. The one I walked through took me to that gargoyle world.”

“The Summer Queen creates portals, but you can see the destination or at least some hint of it when you look through them,” Bronwyn added.

“Well, I walked through a similar but much smaller portal to get into the dungeon at the academy. It was also a lot more colorful and frenetic in its shifting of colors.” Olivia sighed and continued, “I don’t think our experiences will tell us where this portal leads—we don’t have enough data.”

“Well, if it’s a dungeon, we can probably leave once we get in. The dungeon Issa and I went to allowed you to leave from the entry area. Of course, the Crucible wasn’t like that, but we did find ‘escape tokens’ at one point.”

“The Proving Grounds were similar, though I was given a recall item before even going in.”

“So if it’s a dungeon, we might or might not be able to leave easily,” Bronwyn snorted.

“Again, our data set is too small,” Olivia muttered, walking around the portal, wondering if something was different on the other side. The pulsing disc took twenty strides to get around, and she’d started near the middle. There was more rubble and a shimmer in the air on the backside, though no pulsing colors. “It’s one-sided! How fascinating!”

Morgan walked around and reached out a hand before Olivia could say anything, waving it through the shimmery air. “Nothing,” he said.

“You dolt! What if it had pulled you through?”

“Well, the Energy is almost non-existent on this side versus the front side; I felt pretty good about the risk,” Morgan said, and Olivia realized his eyes were still affected by his spell.

“Fascinating,” Olivia said, and then she took out one of her sketchbooks and started drawing the portal with an angled view. When she finished, she walked over to Morgan and said, “Can you draw what it looks like on both sides? Or at least try to sketch what you see?”

“Sure,” Morgan took the box of colored pencils and then the sketchbook. He moved to the side of the portal and sat down on a big chunk of rubble. Olivia moved over to Bronwyn, still leaning on her spear, staring into the portal.

“Any thoughts?”

“I think we should try this portal. This world feels—I don’t know, empty.”

“Well, we’ve only seen a small piece of it, and most of our time has been spent in an abandoned city. It makes sense that it feels empty, no?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just my gut.” Bronwyn’s wild, red hair was half obscuring her face, and Olivia smiled, moving so she could peek under it. Bronwyn chuckled and pulled it back, fixing it into a ponytail. “I don’t like this world,” she said suddenly.

“Is it more than just wanting to get home? Something here is bothering you?”

“Yeah, it feels dead. I know it’s not; there’s Energy, small animals, giant creepy insects, and it makes sense the grass is all dormant for winter, but something is just bugging me. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch.”

“Here,” Morgan called, standing up with Olivia’s art supplies. When she looked at his drawing, she saw the pulsing, colorful waves of Energy that Morgan had added to her portal. His talent was a little surprising; Olivia hadn’t thought he’d be artistic. The backside of the portal didn’t radiate any Energy, just some spillage around the edges.

“It seems like a lot of Energy. Hmm, one second,” Olivia said, closing her eyes and reaching out with her inner eye, feeling for the threads of Energy around the portal. When she touched them, they felt violent and raw, and their weight promised to scour and tear apart her pathways if she tried to pull them in. “Wow! This portal is incredibly dense with Energy, and it’s attuned to something I can’t process. What about you guys? Be careful! I think it’s dangerous to try to cultivate!”

She watched as Bronwyn and Morgan closed their eyes, and she saw Morgan’s face grimace slightly, then he released an explosive breath, saying, “Dammit! I can’t pull it. Even my Vortex Core doesn’t want it.”

“It’s nothing I can work with,” Bronwyn added, shaking her head. “Let’s just vote. I say we go through it.”

“Well,” Morgan looked from Bronwyn to Olivia, then said, “I think it’s up to you guys. I can recall, remember? I don’t have the same risk going through this that you two do.”

“I want to go through it,” Olivia said, then she glanced at Bronwyn and added, “I just want to make sure it’s not suicidal. Let me have a piece of fruit, will you?” Bronwyn shrugged and handed her a large, gray, and yellow-spotted melon. Olivia gave it to Morgan and said, “Since you can recall, can you try pushing that melon into the portal and pulling it back? Try not to let your hand or fingers break the plane.”

“Interesting idea,” Morgan said, taking the melon, which seemed much smaller in his large, long-fingered hand. He stepped toward the portal and gingerly reached out, letting the melon’s rounded rind slip past the portal’s swirling surface. The colors got brighter where it touched, and Olivia heard a crackling vibration that seemed to come from the spot, but then Morgan pulled it back, and the melon looked exactly as it had before, no worse for the experience. “Seems fine,” Morgan said, handing the fruit to Bronwyn.

“Well? Do we try it?” Bronwyn asked, taking a step forward.

“Let’s go through together if we do,” Morgan said, moving next to Bronwyn.

“Alright,” Olivia said, looking around the dark, dead city. “Hopefully, we won’t be going from the cookpot to the coals.” She took Bronwyn’s hand in hers, noting that her skin was smoother with fewer callouses. She saw her friend take Morgan’s hand, and then Morgan counted down from three, and on one, they all stepped forward into the center of the portal.

Olivia felt a vibrating tug as her foot crossed the portal’s plane, and then she felt like her entire being was being pulled down a drain to the center of the world. Less than a second later, it was over, and she stood on a smooth marble platform, looking down a long stretch of stairs that descended into a cavernous abyss. Bronwyn’s fingers were still in her hand, and she looked to see both Bronwyn and Morgan looking about, eyes wide with wonder.

The darkness surrounding the platform and the extending stairs was profound and deep, though, in the extreme distance, little twinkling lights reminiscent of stars in the night sky winked and flickered. Morgan stepped to the platform’s edge and looked down the steep marble staircase. “There’s a building down there, floating in the darkness.”

“What is this? A strange world? A dungeon?” Bronwyn moved forward to peer down the stairs also. Olivia looked behind them, confirming what she’d suspected; the portal was nowhere to be seen.

“I don’t know, but it looks like there’s only one way to go.” Morgan started forward, and Olivia moved to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait, let’s observe for a minute, those stairs are narrow, and I don’t see a railing. What would happen if we fell? It’s like we’re floating in space.”

“Clearly not; this is no vacuum,” Morgan said, but he stepped back and waited.

Olivia noticed his eyes grow dark again, and he looked around in a circle, then focused on the stairway. They all watched for a few minutes, but nothing changed, and finally, Olivia relented, “Alright, let’s go; agreed?”

“Yep,” Morgan said, starting down the steps, and Bronwyn just looked at Olivia and shrugged. Olivia followed after Morgan, noting how he held a hand to the hilt of his shiny sword that hung on his belt, and, for the first time in ages, she pulled the staff she’d bought in Tarn’s Crossing out of her storage ring. In the academy, she’d come to learn that it wasn’t a great focus, but it made her feel more secure when she used it as a walking stick on the narrow, steep steps.

“If you fall, just do your trick where you turn your body into air and fly back up,” Bronwyn said from behind her.

“I suppose that might work. Thanks, Bron.” She felt a comforting squeeze on her shoulder, and Olivia was suddenly glad that Bronwyn was there with her. Morgan was pleasant and competent, but his attitude about this whole situation was a little troubling—it was like he was trying to brute force through it. Of course, he was worried about Issa and anxious to get back to her, and Olivia couldn’t really relate to that. She’d never been so single-minded about a person the way Morgan was with Issa. She sort of pitied him while at the same time feeling envious.

The descent was steep, and Olivia stopped counting steps somewhere in the two hundreds. Still, they finally reached the enormous white marble building and the expansive marble landing that stretched from the base of the stair to the flat, white marble double doors in the face of the structure’s wall. Olivia estimated half an acre of marble lay between them and the edifice. The building itself had to be a dozen stories high with a footprint that would put modern national capitols to shame.

“This feels like a dungeon,” Bronwyn said.

“Have you ever been in one?” Morgan asked.

“Not in person, but in plenty of VR games. I mean, this isn’t a world. Maybe it’s the house of a demigod or something; I don’t know.”

“Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of something like that,” Olivia said. “What if some powerful being dwells here and doesn’t want visitors?”

“Why leave a portal open, then?” Morgan shrugged. He started walking across the marble expanse, and Bronwyn followed him. Olivia sighed and brought up the rear. They’d covered about a third of the distance when a soft grinding sound resounded around them, and Olivia saw a square of marble rotate to reveal a statue on its reverse side. Looking around, she saw that more than ten other squares had done the same, and they now stood at the center of a ring of marble statues. Morgan’s lifted his sword into some sort of fighting position, and Bronwyn circled to put her back to his, her spear pointing out.

“Those don’t look friendly,” Morgan observed, and Olivia had to agree; the statues wore the shapes of nightmares. Segmented bodies, scythelike legs, dozens of appendages along their spines with needle-like stingers, and all of them easily double the mass of even Morgan.

“Well, now’s the part where they should start moving and attacking us …” Bronwyn started to say, and then the marble surface of the statues cracked and crumbled away, and the black, glistening creatures within began to writhe and glide over the smooth flooring toward the trio. “I hate always being right,” Bronwyn groaned.

#

“I don’t understand what I saw, to be quite honest,” Oylla said, looking at Alyss and the auburn-haired Ghelli. What was her name? “Ah, hmm, Adeya, was it?”

“Adaida! Is Olivia all right?”

“Right, yes. Thank you for your help in locating her; yes, she was alive. She was with two others of her kind. I’ll tell you more, but first, I’ll need both of you to assure me that you’ll keep this knowledge to yourselves. Can you vouch for this student, Alyss?”

“You might have asked that before you used her connection to Olivia to scry,” Alyss said primly. Then she cleared her throat and continued. “Yes, of course. Adaida, it could be dangerous if Olivia’s detractors knew of her situation. We need to keep this quiet for now. Do you understand?”

“Of course! I wouldn’t do anything to put Olivia in danger!”

“Good,” Oylla said, then she turned to Alyss and continued, “She’s on a world that is quite distant. My connection was very brief, even as I poured all of our Energy into it. It would be a rather monumental task to open a portal, but even if we wanted to gather the required materials and participants for such a ritual, I’m not sure it would be wise. When I glimpsed Olivia and the people she was with, they stood before another portal.”

“What do you suggest?” Alyss asked.

“Olivia’s nothing if not resourceful. Let’s give her some time to figure things out and make her way back to us. We’ll do another scrying in a few days. In the meantime, when people, including her professors, ask, she’s on a special assignment for me. Understood?” Oylla looked each of the women in the eye until they nodded their understanding. “Excellent. Back to your studies, Adaida!”