Hurricane #35: The Portal (Patreon)

Serrano hadn’t been quite sure what Snep had meant by “ritual room in the back” and had decided the wiser course of action was, for once, not asking. As it turned out, what you’d picture when someone said “ritual room in the back” was precisely what you got: a spare, windowless room with no furniture but a wooden table stocked with simple spell components. And, currently, her and Professor Irsaw. The floor, ceiling, and walls all looked like wood, stained a deep, almost black walnut. If you put in a few bookcases, chairs, and a couple of warm lamps, it would look…well, like a reading nook at a library. Webb—er, Julia—had said the half-dozen ritual rooms along this hallway were purpose-built for magic students, though. On a giant’s scale, the room was a fairly small cube, although she guessed it was close to two hundred feet on each side.

When they arrived, Professor Snep had immediately set about drawing a chalk circle with the precision of a compass, and was in the process of lighting the last of eight candles that each had to be three times her height equidistant around the circumference.

“Do you have giant four-leaf clovers?”

Still crouching by the candle, Snep looked up at her with a faintly pained expression.

She cleared her throat. “Uh, I remember that from my ritual, like it was, you know, faerie bait or something.”

“We don’t need clovers as bait, Miss Layotl. We have you.”

Her ears skewed. “Uh…”

“Not in such a literal sense. But given your…unusual connections to Faerie, you will be far more interesting than even the most unusual weed.” He rose to his paws. “Presuming the summoning works, which is far from assured, it shall be incumbent on you to conduct the negotiations.”

She swallowed, ears lowering further. “I dunno, Professor. We’ve kind of established I need to work on my diplomacy.”

“But not your sincerity, which may be more important.”

Julia tilted her head, but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure how to read that. Irsaw—it was Zoë, right? Could she call them Zoë?—nodded in assent.

“Let’s begin.” Snep turned off the room’s sole light fixture—it looked like an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, but it operated with a standard electrical switch, albeit one as big as the coyote’s whole body—and walked slowly around the circle once, completely, then walked around it again until he stopped and faced its center, directly opposite the table.

Then he began speaking, softly, in an archaic language that sounded almost familiar. What was he saying? She caught something like auditorium. Audience? Asking for an audience, maybe?

And, in just a few short seconds, he stopped speaking. What? That was it? Surely not, but he wasn’t doing anything, just looking across the circle at her. She fought the urge to look around self-consciously.

The candles flickered. One by one, they went out. She could hear wind, but it wasn’t the roar of one of Ulohne’s fierce storms. It was the rustle of leaves at dusk, a breeze over a creek.

A point of light grew in midair, about halfway between the floor and ceiling, in the chalk circle’s exact center. It slowly grew, not as a ball, but as a disc. No, an oval, perpendicular to the floor, a glowing demarcation whose inside swirled with mist. What did it remind her of?

Her eyes widened. A portal. It looked like the drawing of the portal she’d seen in the mythology book. Professor Snep slowly walked around the circle’s circumference again to stand near the table, hands clasped in front of him.

As the mists partially cleared, she could see the creek, see the forest. And see someone walking along its bank, striding purposefully. Angrily, given the scowl. He was another red wolf, similar to Sarah down to the long, flowing red hair, dressed in a simple short-sleeved tunic. It did nothing to hide how…well-sculpted he was. He could have stepped off the cover of a romance novel.

The closer he got, the more sure Serrano became that his angry gaze was fixed on her, specifically. Great. No, maybe she shouldn’t be paranoid. He might just be staring at the portal, wondering what the hell the interruption was.

He stopped on the other side of the portal, pointed at Serrano, and growled, “You!”

Cool. Another giant faerie wolf was pissed off with her before they’d even met. Cool cool cool.

She glanced at Snep. The wizard just looked back expectantly.

“Um.” She cleared her throat, looking up at him. “You know who I am?”

“Everyone in Faerie knows who you are, Stormbringer. Do you have any idea of the damage you’ve already done?” He bared his teeth. “What has caused you to hate us so, to risk the wrath of our Queen?”

Her ears flattened. “I’m not sending storms through Faerie. They’ve been stolen from me through Faerie. And how could I hate faeries? I didn’t even know they were real until a day before Sarah started trying to kill me!”

“The effect on our land is the same whether the storms are being pushed or pulled from you. And I know full well Guardian Sarah has been—”

“Sarah is dying!” Serrano screamed, clenching her fists.

He froze, staring down at her.

“They shot her with a crossbow bolt. A pure iron bolt. We don’t know what to do. But you do.” Please. You have to.

“Who is ‘they’?” he asked after several seconds passed, voice a low growl.

“Agents who work for Mr. Sark,” Mrs. Webb murmured. “The man who’s truly responsible for all of this.”

The wolf’s eyes focused on her for a moment, but then re-focused on Serrano. He leaned over, snarling. “She wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of that bolt if it wasn’t for you, for her deciding to help you rather than dispatch you as she had been charged to do.”

“I know that!” she snapped back, then caught herself, swallowing hard and looking down. “I know that. And that’s why I have to save her.”

He looked away, too, sighing heavily, but spoke with less anger. “Damn her soft heart.”

“Soft heart?” Irsaw lifted both brows. “Are we sure we’re speaking of the same Miss Wylde?”

The giant faerie narrowed his eyes, then snorted.

“Help us,” Serrano said, her throat feeling hoarse. “Help Sarah.”

“I, myself, cannot. I suspect only the Queen can, and she will not be inclined to offer help to the Stormbringer at all, much less while her storms still threaten us.”

The hyena cleared their throat, then spread their hands. “After what we accomplished today with Serrano, the danger to Faerie from the storms should have passed, at least temporarily and perhaps permanently.”

Pointing up at the sky, somewhere beyond the edge of the portal, the wolf bared his teeth again. “Telltale clouds roil our horizon even now. If anything, these bode more ill than anything that’s come from you before.”

Serrano’s ears folded back. “No, they can’t be. We destroyed the router!” She turned to Webb in a panic. “You destroyed the router. Didn’t you?”

“Y-yes,” the mouse stammered, looking unusually flustered. “I must have. I…”

“She did,” Irsaw cut in. “I checked the radiation signatures before we left, ah, Sergeant Eddie’s hideout. The router definitely was not operational. Agent Ward said she didn’t think there were any backup units, and I do believe her.”

Serrano rubbed her forehead. “She might not have known about them.”

“Or Mr. Sark’s plan to…cut you out also involved cutting out the need for this router device,” Snep rumbled.

The faerie wolf stomped his paw. “Routers, hideouts, radiation, enough mortal nonsense!” He shook his head, then stepped through the portal completely, stopping just before the edge of the chalk circle. “Take me to Guardian Sarah, and I shall take her home. She should not die in mortal lands.”

“She shouldn’t fucking die, period!”

He eyed Serrano. “You are a very impudent little coyote.”

“Yeah, I am. I’m also apparently a storm goddess powerful enough to threaten Faerie literally without even fucking trying, so maybe you could dial the arrogant immortal schtick down a notch or two.”

He pursed his lips, ears lowering fractionally. “If I knew how to save her, Stormbringer, or how to convince the Queen to do it, I would.”

“Would you? It kinda seems like you don’t even like her.”

“I love her. But family is complicated.”

She blinked once. Him being another drop-dead gorgeous red wolf wasn’t mere coincidence. “You’re…you’re her brother.”

He bowed slightly, in a formal style with an arm across his waist. “Cormac Wylde.”

“Nice to meet you. Cormac, we’re going to go get Sarah, then bring her back to Faerie.”

Cormac eyed her again. “Surely you are not asking me to take you along when I return to Faerie.”

“Did that sound like asking?”

Professor Snep raised a brow. “You may be a vessel for a goddess, Miss Layotl, but you are also still mortal. I strongly advise against—”

“I can’t fix the storms happening there if I’m here.”

“You don’t know if you can do it when you’re there, either,” Irsaw pointed out.

“I know I can if I can get to Sark’s world, and the best way to do that is through Faerie.”

Cormac looked aghast. “You expect me to allow you to travel through Faerie to the land you say is truly responsible for the storms, only on your word? Are you mad?”

Serrano crossed her arms. “If you have a better plan, let me in on it.”

Cormac bared his teeth. Snep narrowed his eyes slightly; Webb fidgeted with her glasses.

“Sarah’s involvement with you is already considered a betrayal of Faerie, Stormbringer. Now you want to force me into the same position?”

“No, I don’t, Cormac.” She didn’t try to keep the frustration out of her voice. “But Sarah isn’t betraying anything. She learned that whatever the hell Sark is doing doesn’t just threaten this world—this branch—but it might threaten other branches, and Faerie, too. And bluntly, if your Queen could fix it just by pruning this branch or Sark’s, I think she’d have done it already. Like it or not, I’m your best damn shot.”

He stared down at her sullenly for what seemed like forever, then closed his eyes. “As you wish, Serrano Layotl. We will retrieve my sister, and go to Faerie together.”