CHAPTER 24 - CLOSING SHUT

  “How do we close it?” Levan shouted, slashing a passing Lost One across the side with his sword as it passed.

  It ripped through the oily skin, but the creature was already sprinting beyond him before the next one came.

  “Stick something in the portal!” Liam said, then cursed as an arrow whizzed by the next closest Lost One charging at them.

  “Stick what in the portal?!” Levan asked.

  “Limb, fist—body part! Any body part! Bare skin is best!”

  He knocked another arrow and, this time, the projectile flew true.

  The creature croaked out a scream and tried a desperate death-lunge, which Liam spun to the side of and let the corpse fall down the slope.

  “I won’t go through, right?” Levan asked.

  Wherever these things came from—he didn’t want to find out.

  “Can’t go through,” Liam breathed. “The portal won’t let you. It’s never happened. Just now how it works.”

  Levan nodded.

  Sprinting uphill was hard work, and Levan was beginning to doubt if this was a good idea for more than one reason, when the portal came into view.

  It was slick and a very, very deep blue, almost black. It was a slender oval hovering near the trees, one foot off the ground, and then perhaps six feet from top to bottom and four feet from side to side.

  Okay.

  There it is.

  Three more Lost Ones rushed out in the time it had taken him to say the thought to himself.

  One was drilled with an arrow, but two more of the monsters were quick on its heels.

  One leapt over the fallen Lost One, another came to drag the wounded one away from the portal. Before Levan’s eyes, two eager Lost Ones charging down the hill stopped short, twitching with reptilian reflex upon catching the scent of their fallen kin, before rushing back to fall on the wounded Lost One and begin tearing at flesh and limbs, eating it.

  “They’re cannibals, obviously,” Levan muttered to himself. “Why not? Why not have them be cannibals?”

  In the huff of exertion, it was louder than he planned, and Liam laughed.

  Rapidly, the red-headed boy stowed his bow, withdrawing the long knife at his hip.

  “I’ll go for it,” the boy offered, but Levan’s hand caught his wrist.

  “You’re an archer type, right?” Levan asked.

  “Someone’s gotta be!”

  “I’ll do it,” Levan said, and pushed his way forward, and Liam nodded, stowing the knife and drawing the bow once more, side-stepping to get a side-view of the portal and hill.

  Another wave of the creatures emerged, physically pulling themselves from the lip of the portal like their hands on a physical doorway.

  Teeth flashed, claws flashed, and large black orbs that belonged at sea-pressures not fit for humanity stared out into the night.

  All three fell on Levan at once.

  He immediately took a slash to the arm and another to the ribs.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Levan slashed wildly.

  One arrow stuck in the back of the Lost One he fought with, but it kept fighting. Another arrow, and the creature jerked and screamed a high pitch croak, but kept on fighting.

  “Trying, mate!” Liam said, drawing another arrow.

  He was gaining attention from others.

  One peeled off Levan to pursue the archer.

  Levan cut one down, and took another slash across the armor on his leg, though he thought it held.

  [ Leather Pants | Damaged ]

  Not for long.

  He was so close.

  Ten feet?

  Fifteen feet?

  But Liam was helpless, hand-shaking as he drew an arrow in the face of the charging Lost. Maybe it was one thing to snipe from afar, but with this thing hunting him down, his nerves were getting the better of him.

  Levan cut wildly, moving away from the portal and towards Liam.

  “No!” Liam shouted. “Close the thing!”

  Levan ignored him, charging at the creature’s back.

  His sword sank deep into his spine, and the creature twisted away from it, dead before he hit the hill.

  Levan was smiling, but Liam wasn’t. The boy was still fumbling with an arrow.

  “Behind!” Liam cried, hand shaking, arrow failing to knock.

  Oh.

  Levan spun, and his heart stopped with fear.

  The creature was midair, claws out, elongated with makeshift blades extending from each of his already elongated talons. They were on a collision course with Levan’s neck.

  Last breath, a part of his brain thought, slowing time for him. Last breath, the next will have metal in it, and the one after that won’t come. Last breath.

  He breathed in the cool night air in a trembling hiccup as the creature flew at him.

  This was it.

  This was death.

  His heart felt warm in that last moment.

  I’m glad I volunteered to help, he thought, wondering if it might be his last.

  Then a shape moved from beneath, crashing into the creature like a rolling boulder.

  Burton.

  Attention all, passengers—The B-Train has arrived.

  ****

  Burton dwarfed the creature, tall as the man’s torso.

  No—a third the size.

  Suddenly ten feet tall, making his loose green tunic and heavy leather pants look like a t-shirt and jorts, the leader of the Lads crashed into the creature and kept going. He barreled up the hill, casting a shadow as long as the night.

  Trina was hot on his heels, and Posey with her.

  He went straight to his cousin, gripping him on the shoulder, and shaking him out of his shock.

  “There’s too…many, Lads!” Burton grunted from farther up the hill. “Retreat!”

  At first, Levan thought his eyes might have been playing a trick on him—but the man was shrinking. He had been ten feet tall, that was no trick—and the shrinking was no trick either.

  From ten feet to nine feet, Burton plucked a Lost One scrambling up his broad back and tossed the thing off by the wrist, while others attacked his legs.

  Nine feet to eight feet, and Burton started swinging the sword wildly, bogged down by four or five of the creature, rapidly returning to his usual height.

  He and Trina looked at one another.

  Like Liam, and like probably himself, the wear of battle made her look un-put together compared to the tight ponytail had indicated.

  “No one’s dying cause of you,” she said, and ran up the hill towards the struggling Burton.

  Not exactly what he’d thought she was gonna say.

  He started after her.

  No. Close the thing.

  He peeled off, regaining the ground he’d lost chasing Liam’s pursuer.

  He made his way toward the portal, sword point extended, and charged forward.

  He felt the grip of the thing start when he passed the sword through, and understood what the archer had meant. There was a sort of dialogue opening up, but it wasn’t until Levan’s gloved wrist that enough of him had passed through to trigger something.

  [ Codex > Portals | A Chosen Soul— ]

  “Not now, Codex!” Levan yelled. “Just close the thing!”

  [ 8 Codex Entries Suppressed ]

  [ Close Portal? ]

  Yes.

  Levan’s momentum kept him running, carried by his feet more than anything. He expected to pass through the closing portal, into the trees, heroic. Doomed, maybe, but having closed it.

  His footsteps took him elsewhere.

  The mental dialogue had taken time—but fractional time, moving at the speed of thought. He trudged through the space as the portal closed, and for a single instant...

  Levan’s eyes lined up with the plane of the portal as it closed, and for that sole instant, it was the light of that other reality that hit the rods and cones of his eyes.

  Then everything swirled together. Forms changed, the environment blended, his vision warped back and forth, in and out, and he had to remind himself his feet were still on the ground to prevent him from feeling like reality had changed and left him behind.

  [ Planar Event: A Chosen Soul Has Activated A Portal ]

  His heartbeat pounded in his chest, as the blurring, rotating world smeared like a wet watercolor painting turned on its side.

  First, the trees changed.

  The forest, rich and green, oak, pine, and birch near Garrow’s Claim changed. The landscape modulated and burped, swelling and flexing before…

  Settling.

  The “trees” were now giant mushroom stalks that littered the landscape, watching like stick-made headstones of paupers’ graves.

  Everything had changed.

  Everything was different now.

  No, no, Levan stumbled, heart pumping and a shadow-panic flowing down his veins and all throughout him.

  No, no, no. Please, no, Levan thought as his momentum carried him on. He staggered forward, collapsing to his knees.

  His pants felt wet, sinking into the watery black sand.

  As if to mock him, the gentle tide washed in, and back out again.

  And then, in silence, he was alone.