When Rudra and his friends emerged from the portal, they found themselves on a circular platform, about twenty gaz across, with their portal on one end and another one at the opposite end. There was no visible light source, but they could see the platform and the two portals clearly. Beyond this, everything was empty. Not the black of space or a portal-void, just nothing. Nothing was there except for the platform and the two portals.

The second portal was inactive. It had four rings covered with various symbols. When they approached the portal, they found each ring could move around the portal in either direction.

“Wow, this looks like a secure locking mechanism for the portal. They found locked portals in hundreds of other ruins, but only seventeen could be unlocked.”, Rana’s words had raised hopes and crushed them quickly.

“We need to turn the rings in the right direction and match the correct symbols across each ring. There are only twelve symbols on each ring.”, Suvi mused.

“Yes, but if we get anything wrong and the portal still activates, the portal will send us to random locations. Of the seventeen that were opened, for eleven there was a clue about the patterns to be matched, for five they got lucky and for the remaining two, they were unlocked.”

“There is another problem.”, Amita spoke loudly to get their attention. She had been fiddling with the rings. As everyone turned to her she said, “Look.”, then turned the outermost, fourth, ring.

As it turned, the symbols on the fourth and third rings kept changing. Rana and Suvi groaned. Satt pursed her lips. Amita was silent. Rudra was looking at the portal they came from and the inactive portal. He muttered to himself, wondering, “Why are there two portals? Why is this one locked? And both have different design patterns.”

“Shall we go back? This seems like a hopeless task.”, Amita asked.

“Nah, it is fine. Just feed the portal some shakti and spin the fourth ring, you can let it turn fast.”, Rudra told her. Amita shrugged her shoulders and did as he said. The rest looked at him warily.

“I will not risk being sent to a random corner of the galaxy.”, Suvi voiced her objection.

“Ok, now keep quiet, I need to concentrate.”

Rudra was using his shakti and prana senses, and the noise was not a barrier to using them. He just wanted some quiet as he pondered over other issues.

With the rings, he was monitoring for changes in the symbols across the fourth and third rings as they were forming and breaking connections. He was counting on the changing symbols being a distraction and the correct symbols completing a circuit. The right combination should have got more use and given the massive energy flows needed by portals that should have left a mark, at least that was his guess and hope. Something not possible without shakti enhanced senses.

Then it happened. As two symbols connected, the energy flow differed from the rest and the energy channels formed were microscopically wider. When the symbols drifted and the connection broke, the energy flow lingered in both the symbols just a moment longer than for the others. After that, he could identify the symbols on the other two rings in short order. Then he got Amita to stop feeding shakti into the rings. While that helped identify the symbols by forcing shakti through their energy channels, with her current levels she could not provide enough energy to activate a portal.

To activate the portal the rings would need to be turned in the right direction and then the symbols matched up so that the portal’s own mechanisms kicked in and provided the shakti needed to activate it. Sixteen combinations needed to be checked, the sixth worked. The portal shimmered into existence. Unlike the previous one, this one looked like a solid shiny black disc.

“A one-way portal.”, Rana muttered.

“As long as the portal is open from this side, it should be possible to use the portal mechanism on the other side to return. The combination there would be the opposite of the one here.”, Rudra replied.

“If you’ve got it right and there is a portal mechanism on the other side. You don’t know what these symbols mean. How will you know what’s their opposite?”, Amita asked.

“I am not going.”, Suvi huffed and sat down.

“Well, I am off.”, Rudra shrugged and walked into the black disc, before the protests from the rest could catch up to him.

Rudra stood on a sphere. It was small enough that the sphere’s surface didn’t appear flat; the curve was visible. It was large enough to have a small hill, a lake, a forest and a large complex across the visible surface. The complex was a couple of square kos in size with a large garden and what was possibly the mistress’ residence in the centre, a double-storey construction. Its ground floor was hexagonal and the first floor was square, with a circular courtyard in the centre of the complex, open from the bottom floor to the roof. The garden had orchards, lawns, flower beds and water features. Hedges separated the different areas of the garden. A forest surrounded the complex with a path cutting through the forest, connecting the complex to the platform Rudra was standing.

Rudra was on a circular platform at the top of the hill. The hill was about two hundred gaz high overlooking the complex, and the platform had a portal with four rings and similar symbols to the one he’d passed through. Beside the hill, he could see a large lake and a small river flowed from the lake going through the garden and he could see it circling around and coming back to the lake on the other side. Light came from a lit sphere that hovered above the planetoid. It looked like a mini-sun revolving around the planetoid. His senses showed they were inside a large underground cavern and the regularity of the cavern walls suggested it was made and not a natural phenomenon.

As he was about to step on the path, the portal pulsed and Satt stepped out with her eyes shut tight. She opened it, saw him, saw where they were, and breathed a sigh of relief. Amita and Rana followed her, going through their own cycle of fear and relief. Rudra waited.

“She won’t come. She said she will guard the portal on the other side.”, Amita told him.

Rudra looked at the portal, then at her, and nodded. They started down the path towards the residence.

Suvi caught up with them as they reached the entrance of the complex. Two tall menacing statues standing guard on either side of the path in front of a fifty-metre tall arch. Rudra looked at Suvi, smiling. She glared at him, daring him to say anything. He didn’t and Suvi huffed.

Rose bushes extended from the arch, forming the boundary of the complex. The roses were as large as their faces, and thorns were as thick and long as their thumbs. The roses were all different colours, and some had two-tone petals. It looked like the rose bushes formed a hedge or were meant to. It was clear the maintenance was lacking, and the hedge was breaking down in parts.

A similar story became apparent inside. The garden and the path through were not exactly rundown, but neither were they fully in shape. Both had patches that looked maintained and patches that were run down. The friends could see automated constructs scuttling around, some fast, some slow, some looking good, some in need of repair. They however neither sensed nor saw nor heard any signs of animals or beasts or people. The plant life was abundant, and they saw many rare herbs, fruits and flowers, including the Crystal Night Queen. They also saw many that they didn’t recognise, but that looked potent.

These plants were useful. They could improve the body’s base characteristics and corresponding attributes, cleanse the body of impurities accumulated over the years, and strengthen the soul. Levels could increase with minimal side-effects by absorbing shakti from the right fruits or flowers. To absorb shakti from external sources, the shakti had to be pure, either aligned with a single prime affinity or neutral. Naturally occurring pure crystals were very rare. Impure crystals got cut and refined into pure crystals, losing a lot of the shakti. Certain plants and herbs could generate and store pure shakti in their flowers and fruits. These were rare but more common than pure crystals and increased in potency with age.

The team split up. Each collecting the herbs, fruits and flowers beneficial to their advancement. Storing plants in their storage devices required special devices or specially prepared storage. Suvi, Satt, Rana and Amita had the special storage yantras made of living silver with emerald inlays. They each had few such boxes, so they picked up known plants. Rudra had a quad-segmented storage ring that could store inanimate objects, living beings and plants without needing to use special yantras. Along with fruits and flowers, he picked up whole plants for replanting in Hope Cottage. He picked those that would be useful for Yashi or Bola and many of the unknown ones. He did not know the plants, but he could sense their stored shakti and picked the ones with extremely dense and pure shakti. No one picked enough to fill their storage. If these plants were available out there for anyone to pick, then the plants that were held securely would be way more valuable. They could always pick more on the way back.

The looting meant they drifted. When they stood before the door of the residence, the three-minute walk from the gate to the residence had taken three hours.

The residence and the grounds fifty metres around it were in good shape. The building was constructed from white marble but didn’t have a seam anywhere. It looked as if they carved it off a single block of marble, which was placed on a circular base made of green marble that extended a kos from each corner of the hexagon. Each wall of the ground floor was a hundred gaz and half as much tall. The walls formed a regular hexagon. A foot above the ground, a half-foot band went around the building, carrying pictures made of coloured stone depicting adventures and feats of a woman. There were no doors or windows, but when they stepped on to the green marble a white light flashed and a ring of white light circled each of them. The ring went from their foot to their head and back, sinking into the ground.

Amita gasped, and everyone looked at the building. An elaborately carved forty-two gaz tall arch door had appeared on the wall in front of them. It was open.

When they stepped inside, they found themselves in a large hall. The hall floor was made of colourful tiles and tapestries made of light covered the walls, depicting scenes from an alien civilisation. Scenes that kept changing, flowing from scenes of one city to another, from one world to another. The far wall didn’t exist, instead, a hazy curtain of energy separated the hall from the central courtyard, obscuring the view of the courtyard. Apart from this, the hall was empty except for a floating tetrahedral construct made of blue marble. Lines of yantric script and circuits moved around its body in golden bands. When everyone was looking at it, it spoke.

“Swagatam. Gyaan Saamraagyee, Agyaanta Vaadhak, Kaal Sarvshreshta Shishak, Rani Sarswati-sya sevak namah namah.”

Their units caught up quickly. This was a dialect of an ancient language discovered in ancient ruins and pretty well understood.

“Welcome. This servant of Queen Saraswati, Empress of Knowledge, Slayer of Ignorance and the Best Tutor of her Era, greets you.”

“Tavam pratyashi”, it asked Rudra. Are you the candidate?

“Yes”, Rudra replied, “Aham”

“You may proceed. Your friends can go with you to see the mistress. Once she dismisses them, they can return here for rest and refreshment. Or they can stay.”

As it finished speaking a section of the floor far to their left rose in a block, then parts of it fell down revealing a table with five chairs and soon food and drinks appeared over it, none of which was familiar to them. The hazy curtain separating the hall from the courtyard cleared up, revealing a woman in green robes sitting in the lotus meditative posture inside a glowing silvery lotus rising above a pond filled with a sparkling blue liquid. Lotus leaves ringed the stem and also formed a path to the edge of the pond. The pond filled the centre of the courtyard which was ringed with a variety of potted plants in varying colours. The rest of the courtyard was empty.

“Do we need to go to her now?”

“No. You may roam the abode if you wish. There are no secrets here that you can pry. The mistress will let you know when she wishes you to attend to her.”

“I am famished, I’m going to go check that table out.”, Rana said and hastened to it. Rudra raced him to the table, while the girls followed more sedately.

Satt kept turning to look at the seated woman. Amita asked, “What happened?”

“Didn’t anyone notice?”

“Everyone noticed”

The seated woman had the look and proportions of an exquisitely beautiful and powerful woman, except she was clearly over nine feet in height.