The Irispire Portal Read online

  "Mine shafts were leading into the city, sure," says the king. "All of them were abandoned and unstable, but should we use them we would emerge inside the second district. This is where they would have dug down for materials to supply their crafts."

  "But..." I say.

  "But the risk of doing so is great," says the king. "We do not know how far up the magma flows of the Caldera has reached. There could be rivers of magma running underneath The Laksona Plains."

  "How deep?" I ask.

  "Deep enough to keep the surface stable,” says the king, “but it puts all of my men at great risk. Those shafts were meant for workers, not armies."

  "We can go," volunteers Lev.

  "What?" I ask.

  "Yeah, why not,” Lev says. “King Hurdalin and his army will come knocking on the front door, and we come sneaking in the back."

  King Hurdalin smiles. "A coordinated attack. I like it."

  "All right it's settled," says Lara.

  "Let's get ourselves ready and make our approach," says Tamon.

  Forty-Five

  The Laksona cavern network is immense. It's the biggest underground tunnel system I'd ever seen. We emerge into a cave with an area of about fifty square miles — bigger than old Manhattan. Tamon, Kyle, Lara, Lev, and I come out of the wall, thirty feet up from the floor. Tamon finds a set of steps leading down, and we begin our descent. Hundreds of stalagmites, ranging from shin height to over twenty feet tall, and in thickness from one foot to thirty feet, sprout out from the ground. I can hear the sound of rushing water up ahead, about fifty miles by my guess, but being underground creates some distorted echo effects so I could be way off. The floor is uneven, muddy at parts, solid rock in others. There are pieces of worn down masonry here and there — broken arches, foundations, et cetera.

  Sometimes the cavern ceiling gets low enough so I can see it. At the top, equally thick, gigantic stalactites hang down. We are walking silently down a worn path that splits here and there. The path we're on closes up a bit, the ceiling slowly shortens, and after a few minutes we are walking through a tunnel as big as a Cathedral. Our torchlight catches glittering gems forty feet above us.

  The tunnel opens up after a mile, and the mile-high ceiling returns. Ravines and defiles are steeper here, and fifty feet below is the sound of rushing water. We continue and cross over a canyon using what looks like a natural stone bridge, but upon closer inspection is a nice piece of dwarven masonry.

  King Hurdalin and his army are approaching from a different connecting cavern. One that would lead them to the Laksona Plain head-on and emerge north of the city. We chose roundabout road which would lead us to the eastern end of the Laksona plain. The map showed markings denoting gold and diamond mines below the surface of the Laksona plateau there. That is our target. For sure there would be a deep route leading back directly to the city, and emerging where Laksona's former artisans can get their hands on supplies quickly.

  It takes another forty minutes of spelunking before the path we are on opens to the Laksona Plain, and nothing I've ever seen before could have prepared me for such a beautiful sight.

  Normally the entire cavern would have been in complete darkness but not today. Today, the three hundred square mile cavern is lit by an enormous glowing purple portal, directly above the Irispire. A beam of purple energy is shooting out from the top of the mile high stalagmite that served as Laksona's spiritual monolith. The portal is a circular tear in the Field Eternal, and from that tear, clouds of wispy purple energy are floating down into the city. Spirits of rage and fear are coalescing on the material plane, and are taking the forms of monsters. Powering this mass conjuration, are the lava flows of the Yellowstone Caldera which has eaten at the southern half of the great city of Laksona. A visible stream of Field energy looks like it's being sucked out of the bright red magma flows and drawn to the top of the Irispire, bolstering Marchosias' magic. I can imagine her up there, with her black wings spread, her bright red hair billowing like a raging fire.

  We emerge from the side of the cavern about a quarter of a mile up from the Laksona Plain floor. The entire cavern is lit up, and I can see giant boulders and stalagmites sprouting up from the ground, making it look like a wide rock forest spread out for miles. There are little trails between these features, which can be seen from our height.

  We descend from the hole we came out of by way of a series of ledges that Tamon had no problem navigating. The rest of us are having a tough go of it, our feet unsure on this uneven ground.

  "Holy cow," says Lev. "This looks terrifying."

  I never thought about it that way. Here I thought it was beautiful, and there Lev was reminding me we're in a cave full of monsters and magma. We get to the bottom and are surrounded by shadow. The only thing lighting our way from above is the portal hanging over the city about five miles away.

  "The Thadamar say the entrance to the mines is this way," Tamon says.

  I give him the thumbs up, but I have no idea where he’s taking us. Tamon swings and jumps from rock-to-rock — stalagmite-to-stalagmite like a stone ape. I'm down here playing follow the leader.

  We wend our way between rock formations, and once in a while, the way becomes a bit clear, and we aren't all cramped between huge boulders and outcroppings of rock. We snuff out our torches when we get close to the ruined city. With the red glow of the magma flows to our left, shining above twenty foot tall rock spires, and the large purple aura of the portal above us serving as an eerie sky, we had enough light to be able to move around and avoid rolling an ankle.

  We make it to a trail, and we follow it. We walk for another ten minutes, and the ground shakes around us, shifting beneath our feet, causing sand and pebbles to drop on us from above. The tremors continue for five whole minutes, and Lev is shaky as he steps forward. When the shaking stops, we walk on for another ten minutes until we come to a cluster of buildings. Some of the masonry has been displaced and moved around. The corners are rounded, and beneath them are piles of broken down rock. It looks like the ruins of a small mining town. There are the remains of thirty or so buildings; some are tall most are short, and we make our way to the mine entrance at the side of a tall cliff side.

  Tamon lights a torch for us before entering, then we begin our descent. Lev loosens his collar. There is a marked decrease in air quality, and a metallic sting to the air — stale and unmoving. Lev starts to gag but gains control of himself.

  We go down a set of worn steps, and into a wide room. It looks like a cave, but you can tell that masonry is supporting the walls of this place, carved out bricks have survived; a testament to the lack of eroding agents like oxygen around here. Around the floor are remnants of metal shovel heads and pickaxes, with minimal corrosion.

  We move from this room and go down one of the many tunnel entrances. We emerge in another room where there is plenty, and I mean plenty of crystals.

  Some of the crystals jutting out of the cavern walls are three feet thick and four feet high. "What are these?" asks Lev.

  "Diamonds," I answer.

  Uncut diamonds aren't the prettiest things. They look like dusty transparent rocks. And these are huge.

  "You're kidding me," Lev reaches out to touch one. "C-can we..."

  I smile at him and unsheathe the Destroying Angel. As we pass by a cluster of diamonds, I give it a quick strike, which, with an unbreakable sword, is enough to knock out a chunk as big as a softball. I pick it up from the ground and toss it to Lev.

  "There," I say. "That should further solve your money problem."

  He fumbles the diamond in his hands before getting a firm hold on the rock. "What the hell am I going to do with this?"

  "Don't worry I know a guy," I say.

  "You got a diamond guy?" Lev asks.

  "Yeah."

  “Let me guess, it’s Tamon,” he says.

  “You got it.”

  Lev shrugs and puts the diamond in his ammo bag. The diamond room is spacious, but with low ceilings.
I am the tallest out of all of us, and I feel like I have to crouch a little, lest the stone ceiling scrapes the top of my head. We head to the next chamber where the ceiling is much higher, and I can fully stand and walk. This room, like the other, is littered with mining equipment, but here there are rails and mining carts as well. The carts are at different stages of full. Some have pure uncut diamonds inside, and some have rocks with gold veins waiting to be worked on to get to the ore. Lev's eyes trail the gold in the carts as we pass.

  "Don't worry," I say. "If we make it out of this, we can come back and get some. Right, Tamon."

  "Yeah sure, lad," Tamon says. "No need to be filling your bag up now. We're going to need to move quickly up there."

  We walk out of the room, following a rail line through a tunnel. After twenty feet, we emerge into a large network of mining rails crisscrossing above and below us. It reminds me of the dwarven underways, and I am once again confused.

  "Do you know which one leads where?" I ask Tamon.

  "Easy enough to figure out. Let's see here..."

  The walls and bridges are all marked with dwarven symbols. We watch Tamon swing from bridge-to-bridge, using nimble arms and legs to navigate the intricate network of mining rail bridges. He swings fifteen feet above us and stops at an entrance to a tunnel. He reads the markings above the tunnel entrance, then whistles down to us.

  "This way," Tamon says.

  Both Kyle and Lara gather Field energy in front of them into gray crystals. We are still pretty close to the magma flows it seems. Then both she and Kyle gather more energy into two gray crystals and stick them to the small of our backs. I feel the Field energy course through my body through my spine and connect with my brain.

  "Now, remember..." I say to Lev.

  "Don't think about falling, gotcha," he says.

  Lev and I launch ourselves into the air, using our minds to tell the crystal where to fly us, and at what speed so we can go through the tunnel Tamon pointed out.

  Forty-Six

  I hear guttural laughter coming from up ahead. Kyle, Lara, Tamon, and I move forward, crouching, and stepping on the balls of our feet. I struggle to achieve full control of my body, trying to evenly distribute my weight so I can move as quietly as possible. The elves do it naturally. Tamon, in this environment, is as silent as the wind. Behind me, Lev's breathing alone sounds like it could wake the dead. I turn around.

  "I think it's better if you stay here a second," I whisper to him.

  "What?" Lev whispers back. "You're leaving me?"

  "Shhh, we're not leaving you. We're going up ahead to check something out."

  Tamon snuffs out the torch ahead of us. Kyle and Lara both dispel the glowing crystals on mine and Lev's backs, and the tunnel we're in gets dark. My heart races, and I try to maintain forward movement, trusting that I will find my footing and not stumble. I see the light up ahead.

  The tunnel we're in opens to a domed chamber, lit by several torches. The masonry is well constructed and is made from interlocked, hexagon-shaped bricks. The guttural laughter is coming from around the corner of the tunnel exit to the left. I peer around the corner, making sure to remain in shadow.

  There are four, human, 'should-be' guardians sitting around a rock table on stone chairs. They have four pulse cannons, leaning on the cavern wall beside them. I can hear their conversation, but we are too far away for me to make out what they're saying. They're speaking English, and are playing some sort of game. Dice? Cards? I don't know. Whatever sentries play to pass the time. Sentry duty is the worst. Long hours, and nothing to fill the time. Sentries get sloppy, lazy, and more often than not one can get the jump on them.

  The four of them are huge. Knotted trapezius and deltoids are nearly bursting through their collared shirts. Although they're sitting down, I can easily estimate that they're probably around six foot five when they stand up. They're thick too, and by the sound of it, kinda drunk.

  Smoke from their cigars floats up to the domed ceiling above. The room is circular, about eighty feet in diameter. And it looks as if a lot of the tunnels with mining rails end up here. We must be close. One of the passages on the upper floors of this place will most likely lead up to the city above — inside the second ring wall of Laksona.

  "These four shouldn't be a problem for us, eh?" whispers Tamon.

  "I don't know,” I say. “There may be more."

  "It matters not," says Lara. "They stand in our way. Therefore we should remove them."

  "Wait!" I grab Lara's wrist before she steps into the room.

  From the levels above come more voices, all of them deep and resonant. It sounds like more idle chatter. Three more guards appear from a tunnel entrance on the third level. I mark the tunnel they come out of. It may lead us where we want to go. I recognize them. Or at least I recognize their type. They remind me of Club Rapture security, and all of them wear belts with big, black, belt buckles.

  "They're ogres," I say.

  "What are ya talking about?" asks Tamon. "They may be big, but sure are no ogres."

  "Nyyx is right," says Kyle.

  All of us hear a loud shuffling behind us, and I grit my teeth with annoyance. I look into the room at the seven giant sentries. None of them notice the noise Lev is making, which to Tamon, myself, Kyle, and Lara sounds as loud as a subway train.

  "What's going on?" whispers Lev.

  "Lev, I thought I told you..."

  "It's dark back there," he says. "You guys are taking a long time. I don't want to be left behind. So what are we looking at?"

  "Remember those big guys at Club Rapture," I say. "Well, there's seven of them. Around the corner."

  Lev rubbernecks to look around the left side of the tunnel entrance. "Holy crap, maybe I should have stayed behind. Tamon, is there another way around?"

  "I still don't see what all the fuss about," says Tamon. "They look like regular human folk. All they have are those pulse cannons, and they're easy enough to work around."

  "No, Tamon, you're not listening," I say. "They're ogres. Thaddeus' creation. They've been modified."

  "What do you mean?" Tamon asks.

  "Unfortunately, for you to know what I mean we'd have to fight them," I say. "And I'd rather not do that. There must be some other way."

  "Well...there may be I suppose,” says Tamon. “But we would have to go back, and see where we can better exit. There may be other chambers like this one serving as a hub for materials before being taken up to the city, but that could take—"

  "Enough of this," says Lara. "The longer we tarry, the more we risk failure."

  "What do you suggest, we take on these things head-on?" asks Lev.

  I look back into the room. The seven human behemoths all stand up with deep and rumbling laughter. The four that were seated all walk over to their pulse cannons leaning on the wall of the chamber. They pick up their cannons and walk over to stand in line with the other three that came from upstairs. Six of them all charge their cannons, and the chamber echoes with heavy electric whirring. Then one of them, the one that led the other two coming from the upper levels, starts counting down. On the other side of the chamber, the wall opposite the seven gigantic sentries, are three targets all carved into the wall with pulse cannon blasts. The seven open fire, laughing heartily. Their shots ring out with loud repeating womps and crash into the opposite wall, breaking off bits of rock and sending debris all over the room.

  "Not exactly the smartest group," says Tamon.

  "They're restless and bored," I say.

  "What do you want to do, Nyyx?" asks Lev.

  "Lara's right,” I say. “We can't go back. For all we know, King Hurdalin and his army are already up there, and the attack on Laksona has—"

  Before I can finish my sentence, war horns peal out from up above. The seven behemoth guardians all look up. Dust and rock fall from the ceiling as rumbling steps stampede on the ground above. The seven guards roar with excitement. The one that led the other two down here smiles, an
d gestures to the other four, urging them to come up and join the fight. The four below look at each other and consider. Then they press a button on their belt buckles, revealing a glowing red crystal surrounded by electronics. They key in a sequence on their belt buckles. Their crystals glow bright, and red energy surges through their bodies. Their muscles grow, their clothes rip off, their skin turns pinkish gray, their eyes burn red, their faces deform, stretching and twisting into monstrous faces while teeth and tusks protrude from their gums.

  Tamon's eyes widen. "What sort of creatures..."

  Lara screams out a war cry. The etchings on her erolith armor glow bright orange as she gathers Field energy into a spinning orange crystal in front of her. She shoots out a bolt of fire, streaking across the room like a laser beam. It hits an ogre in the middle of its back. The thing roars and turns around firing its pulse cannon. Lara launches herself into the air, avoiding that first pulse cannon blast and the six that come after it with deft aerial maneuvers. Then the orange crystal in front of her spins rapidly, she sweeps her hands out with a flourish and sends out multiple flaming shards at each ogre, hitting true with each one. The force of her blasts burns and push the ogres back. The smell of burnt, ogre flesh fills the room. Then comes the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of Lev's AR-15.

  Kyle leaps into the air to join his sister, unsheathing two silvered katanas from his back. He gathers Field energies into a white crystal in front of him, and shoots white beams of frost at any manufactured ogre he sees. Tamon puts down the duffel bag of guns, grenades, and ammo he's carrying, tumbles in, rolling and bouncing off of rubble. He unlatches his battleaxe in mid-somersault through the air, and comes down on one ogre, splitting it from shoulder to chest. His axe is stuck in the massive ogre body. The ogre grabs him and flings him to the wall.

  I charge in, unsheathing The Destroying Angel. I slide on my knees to avoid a pulse cannon blast. Then I quickly stand up and go into a full sprint. The ogre fires another shot, and I dodge the blast of purple energy. As I run to the one shooting at me, I see silvered bullets hit it in the face. It grinds its jaw through broken teeth, and shoots a pulse blast at Lev. As it's distracted, I leap into the air and bring the Destroying Angel down on it, slicing it from right shoulder to left hip. The thing falls gurgling, yellow-brown ooze spilling out of the cut I gave it. I pick up its pulse cannon, and I shoot a blast at the one shooting at Lara. I knock the ogre to the floor with the blast, and as soon as I do, Lara unsheathes her silvered shortsword, swoops down from above, and sticks her sword right through the ogre's throat. Then she flies away to engage another ogre.