Erick's Journey - Part Five

The goblins were rounded up, and each unruly hunter was tied so that their bound wrists kept their hands clasped against their speckled necks. Their knobby arms were splayed out, and through the crooks of both arms, long metal rods pinned the goblins in a line. The lengths of rope tied to their ankles kept their pace at a staggering crawl, but the trip back to the dwarf camp would be brief. Once at the camp, the goblins would be loaded into a horse-drawn cage to be relocated back to their own territory.

Two of the dwarfs in the party had been killed during the fight. In addition to the dwarf slain by the female gryphon, another was killed by a sling-volleyed rock.

But the mood of the party wasn’t even remotely grim at the losses. The rest of the dwarfs were cracking snide jokes while the bodies of their fallen comrades were wrapped in cloaks and carried back to the camp, which was in the forest to the west by nearly a kilometer.

Back in forest, the fallen dwarfs were given a proper burial, and then Ilaria set about tending to wounds while introduction were made. The leader of the hunting party was the only dwarf who Erick knew from four of his previous excursions.

Grom was well known in all of the Rhyndarhim provinces. Unlike most dwarfs, he rarely returned to the dwarf kingdoms during the winter. Instead he kept a home in the port province Silver Crescent.

Barrel-chested and thick-limbed, Grom was impressively tall at one hundred and fifteen centimeters. He seemed taller for the bushy shock of grey hair rising off of his round head.

Most of his face was hidden by some type of hair. His beard and moustache all but hid his mouth, and his bushy brows shaded his eyes, the sunken bridge of his nose, and parts of his forehead.

Though he had one hundred and two years of age, Grom was not the oldest member of his party. The distinction belonged to white-haired Dilen, who was surprisingly spry in spite of his hundred and sixteen years of age. After the two elderly dwarfs, there was a great chasm separating the captain and his lieutenant from the other five hunters. Raven haired Zeke was fifty-five, while Bron and Kirt shared the same age of fifty-three. Both were redheads, and could have almost passed for brothers. Next was Lorn, a chubby brown-haired dwarf who almost spilled out of the seams of his leather armor. He was fifty-two, while blonde, “fair” Olan was fifty.

In all their cases, the men were making their first tours of Rhyndarhim. All had faced similar risks on hunts and caravans within the dwarf kingdoms, but none had experience working in the wild lands beyond the Rhyndarhim provinces.

The revelation did not sit well with Darryl or Luther. But Grom had faith in his new crew of hunters, and the dwarf captain felt certain the men could handle any assignment Finrod had in mind.

He was feeling much less confident once Luther had finished talking. Several times, Grom had cast uncomfortable sideways glances at the cage.

Erick didn’t need to be a telepath to know what Grom was thinking. Every day of delays meant there was more risk of orcs being “infected” by the werekin curse. But there could be no fast dash into orc territory near Stout Hart. The party would have to head further west to goblin territory first, which would extend the trip back in the right direction to six days. That was assuming that they didn’t run into trouble along the way.

The alternative was killing the goblins to avoid the extra trip, but Erick knew that Grom wouldn’t consider the idea too seriously. He was too committed to his ideals of preserving the balance in Lissand to go through with such a cold-blooded act.

But the problem was, Grom was already contemplating that very same deed when it came to hunting down and slaughtering the cursed orcs.

Grom and Dilen took the news of Dimitri’s release well, both men nodding as though they’d been told to expect rain that evening. But the other dwarfs burst into protests, their words coming out so loud and fast that none could be understood.

Grom slipped his finger and thumb between his lips and whistled, cutting off their debates. “Stop acting like a litter of pixie-fed kittens! The job is what it is, and if you don’t like it, you can start walking back to Silver Crescent on your own.”

“It’s a bleak omen, Grom,” Lorn declared, and then he turned his head to spit at the ground. “The wyrm are naught but bad news.”

“Aye, some of them are,” Grom said. “But if his offer is genuine, we could use his help in tagging down the wee-wolves.”

The younger dwarfs divided off into their own private group behind the tents to mutter, but they offered no more direct protests.

Grom wasn’t joking when he said they could walk, and he would keep their horses and supplies. It was the rhyndarhim equivalent of withholding pay.

Grom let them vent to each other about dark omens, returning his attention to Erick though his expression of irritation didn’t diminish. “You’re making a name for yourself as a rogue, boy. Sometimes I wonder if any of the lessons I gave you made it through that skull of yours.”

Erick smiled awkwardly and looked down. “Some of it must have stayed with me. I survived a fight with a gryphon, didn’t I?”

“Aye, and you rode right out into a gryphon’s hunting ground like you were eager to become a snack.” Grom sighed, and his wrinkled face filled with a mocking look of disappointment. “I taught you better than that.”

Ilaria sat down beside Erick, moving her fingers to gingerly probe at the wound on the side of his head. “I was rather impressed with your landing.”

“No, I’m sure it was a crash,” Erick said. “I can’t float or fly, and I’m not wearing a winged cloak, so I can’t claim that I was gliding either.”

Erick hissed when Ilaria pressed a bandage covered in a foul smelling salve over the wound. She raised his hand and guided him to hold the fabric in place before continuing her examination.

Voicing a sudden thought, Erick said, “Then again, I wouldn’t have had much of a chance to fight if someone hadn’t put an arrow in the backside of that gryphon to make it drop me. I wouldn’t have been able to outrun it either, but he had a wounded leg.” Erick raised his head to offer a grin to Darryl. “But I still had to kill it at close range by myself.”

Darryl returned the smile, and he got up, moving closer to offer Erick a hollowed cow-horn cup filled with dwarf mead. “Yes, but by then, the male’s partner showed up, and I was worrying about myself. I hope you’ll excuse me for being so selfish.”

Sipping from the cup, Erick watched the royal guard with a curious expression. Darryl laughed at his thoughts. “No, your father did not ask me to come along on this trip to watch over you. I volunteered for the job.”

Darryl pointed to Ilaria, adding, “He did ask Ilaria to ride with us, and he wants her to act as your mentor. But you still don’t have the focus to handle magic studies.”

Erick shook his head, regretting it when dizziness made his vision unsteady. “But why did you volunteer?” Frowning, he said, “I thought you didn’t like me.”

“You confound me,” Darryl said. “In your mind, I can see your desire to become a shadow hunter, like your father was before he resigned his post. But you only want to focus on fighting, and you won’t take proper lessons with your mentors at the guilds.”

“What’s proper here wasn’t proper back home,” Erick said, and his frown became defiant. “What do I gain by sitting in a tree for half my life, reading scroll after scroll? All of those lessons will still need to be backed up by real experience, and I already have that.”

Darryl sighed and shook his head. “But not in magic, you don’t, and you have so much potential as a mage. Even someone as weak as me can sense it. But you lack the patience and discipline to learn the craft properly, and you keep insisting that you can make do as a fighter. It may work out for the dwarfs.” Darryl paused to glance at Grom. “No disrespect.”

“None taken,” Grom agreed.

“But even if you were back in Milk Springs, you know that magic lessons would still require a lot of time devoted to studying scrolls,” Darryl said. “Maybe Dimitri can offer you some shortcuts, but what you know from him his still an abstract thought until you’ve cast the spells yourself.”

“He explained that to me already...or, he did later, I think.” Erick shook his head and pushed away the tangential thought. “But I don’t need to worry about studying now, do I? Technically, I’m studying every time I go to sleep.”

“If that’s true, why didn’t you try casting any spells while we were fighting?”

“Two reasons,” Erick said. He raised his hand and then extended his thumb. “One, because the only spells I know right now involve making portals in shadows, which does not help much in a fight.”

He uncurled his index finger. “Two, because it was an open fight in broad daylight, there weren’t any shadows dark enough to use, even if I could think of a useful way to make a portal help us.”

Ilaria nodded and sat back on her haunches. “Yes, that is the main disadvantage to working with shadow magics. We’re just about useless in broad daylight.”

“Right, which is when most other races prefer to do their moving and fighting. So I would suggest that knowing how to fight is far more important to a daoine sidhe than magic is. And to illustrate my point; Ilaria, how many spells did you cast while fighting the gryphon and the goblins?”

“None,” Ilaria said and laughed. “He has a valid point, Darryl.”

Darryl sighed and shook his head. “You’re not supposed to encourage him, Ilaria.”

She shrugged and turned her head to grin at the royal guard. “Perhaps not, but while the rest of us worked to take don a gryphon female, Erick faced the male by himself.” She waited for Darryl to make a snappy comeback, and when he didn’t, she cupped her hand around her ear as a mocking joke. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

Darryl rolled his eyes. “I swear, your whole race is incorrigible!”

***

Grom coughed loudly and smiled as Luther looked up from the fire. “I know everyone here but you. Tell me, how is it someone so big can move around the Rhyndarhim provinces without making a reputation for himself?”

“I spent a lot of time on the east coast,” Luther said.

 Dilen uttered a disbelieving chuckle that shook his wide stomach. “You must have done a lot of running.”

Luther shook his head. “No, not after I found my horse.”

“That’s no horse!” Dilen laughed until he coughed, his shoulders shaking as though he were having a seizure. “The elves ride horses, lad. What you’ve got there is a––”

“A nightmare.” Luther glanced over his shoulder at the stallion and smiled proudly. “It took me forever to track him down, but he was worth the journey.”

Grom chortled and shifted over to his native tongue. “What sort of orc goes wandering around in oversized dwarf’s leather, and smiles with a girl’s mouth?”

Luther covered his mouth, though he was laughing heartily before he shifted over to his native tongue as well. “The kind of orc who has a dwarf for a father.”

Grom sat up, his eyes bulging as he clutched his chest. His other hand shot out to grab Dilen’s forearm. “Dear gods in seven heavens! What an awful mental image!”

Erick was amazed to see that Luther was actually blushing, his grey cheeks becoming purple under the sudden rush of blood. Erick said, “To be fair, his father was drugged on one and a half thimbles of pixie’s tears.”

Grom whistled and grimaced at a sudden thought. “He didn’t marry her, did he?”

“He did,” Luther said, laughing when Grom and Dilen both convulsed.

“Ah, well, I shouldn’t talk.” Grom frowned and made a loud snorting sound while he sucked snot back through his sinuses. “It’s no secret that I can’t go home, cause the missus makes me nauseous. She was a lovely young lass.”

He sighed and shook his head, a whimsical smile bowing the gap between his beard and moustache. “I can still remember first seeing her and thinking how she had the prettiest beard in the whole kingdom. I just didn’t realize it was hiding the meanest mouth in the kingdom as well.”

Dilen laughed and patted Grom’s shoulder. “It’s all right. At least your wife doesn’t have a hatchet face, like my Minerva.”

“Aye, your woman could cut firewood with her nose.” Grom laugh and nodded to Luther. “What about you. Do you have a missus?”

Luther pointed at his face. “Looking like this, and knowing that I have a preference for neither orcs nor dwarfs, what do you think?”

“So it’s the real monk’s life for you, eh? I was wondering why you were wearing monastic armor.” Grom sighed and nodded. “It’s for the best, really. The only things that women give you are kids and headaches.”

Dilen laughed, adding, “Come to think of it, the kids give you headaches too.”

Luther shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind finding a wife. But where am I going to look? For that matter, what am I looking for? Something else exactly like me, or a mix-up of some other breeds?”

“Yeah, it’s long-shot odds that you’ll meet someone exactly like you,” Erick said. “I mean, how often do dwarves do something stupid like drink pixie’s tears and run off to mount orcs in the wild?”

A long, uncomfortable silence followed. The answer to Erick’s question was a subject the dwarfs didn’t like to talk about, that they often had problems with running off drunk to mate with something that, perhaps they shouldn’t have. Accurately described in Earth terms, they were merely alcoholics.

The problem was, with some of the more powerful drinks on Lissand, dwarfs could drug themselves right up to the altar from one drink. Those drinks could turn a dwarf into a stumbling romantic who would mate with anything vaguely female shaped.

Dwarfs did not always survive the experience. Some ran across water nymphs and drowned in the mating process. Some attempted to mate with dryads, only to be rejected. Which meant the dryad returned to her tree form while the dwarf was still mid-rut. Some were like Luther’s father, and they found a wandering orc female. However, in their cases, the female’s answer was, “No,” and orc women can be very firm in their rejections. The results were never pretty.

Even when a dwarf survived and returned to camp with their brides, the results usually weren’t pretty either. This was because dwarfs are lousy friends. The rest of the camp, being rotten bastards––usually drunk themselves by this point––would rush their “friend” and his bride to the nearest chapel or holy figure to have them wedded before the drink wore off. They did it to wait for the moment of sobriety, when a dwarf woke up, looked over, and realized what he’d done.

The screams were glorious, and they provided fodder for years of great drinking stories.

But Dilen and Grom weren’t drunk yet, and it wasn’t funny yet, either. Because then each of them would then have to admit that they’d married their wives after drinking heavily.

Because of the frequency of these rushed marriages, there was a rhyndarhim joke that went, “If the dragons would tolerate them, the dwarfs would marry them.” But neither Darryl nor Ilaria chose to say anything, as they were busy trying not to think about Luther’s parents romantically entwined.

Luther was purple from the top of his head down to his shoulders, and he was thinking, There’s never a dragon around when you really need one.

***

Dimitri stepped out of the shadows of the forest, making an exaggerated show in holding out his arms for the dwarfs’ inspection. He waved for Erick to move away from the small fire that the dwarfs had built, and then the wyrm knelt down, resting both his hands over one knee.

Dimitri said, “You’ve had a busy day.”

“Yes, but a painful one too,” Erick said. “I’ve only got cuts and bruises, but it could have been worse. I could have been much higher when the gryphon released me.”

Dimitri laughed. “How high do you think you were when you fell?”

“Oh, not more than...two meters, maybe two and a––” Erick watched Dimitri shake his head. “How do you know how far I fell?”

“I can read the thoughts of everyone here, so I have a better perspective than you do.”

“Can you show it to me? Like you did with the invasion?”

“No, and I won’t be training you tonight either. You’ll need to recover before I can send you any thoughts.”

Erick considered an idea and watched Dimitri nod. “When I passed out, that wasn’t a spell. I was suffering from fatigue.”

“Mental fatigue, yes,” Dimitri agreed. “I packed quite a lot into your first lesson, so you will probably wake up tomorrow having a longer memory of our first conversation.”

“Why does everything always attach itself to that memory? Why not add itself to this conversation?”

“It’s just how your mind works to keep all of the details logical to you. Perhaps if it is more logical that our conversation tonight expands, then it will be so for you.” Dimitri laughed. “But it never has been for anyone I’ve ever known.”

“There’s still something missing; something you’ve hidden from me. Was it really painful inside the tree?”

Dimitri opened his mouth, but whatever he’d first intended to say, the thought died in his throat unuttered.

He hung frozen that way for many seconds before he said, “I spared you from that, because there is nothing to learn in showing you my punishment. It wasn’t the pain which made it unbearable, but the immobility. I was blind inside that tree for the first hundred years, and deaf.

“It’s impossible to describe having every cell, every fiber of your being violated and forced to endure in the same condition so long as the tree lives. It makes your whole body itch and burn at the same time, but you can’t scratch anything.”

Dimitri’s hand rose up to scratch at his arm absently while he glanced over at a tree. It was the first sincere gesture he’d made, and for once, Erick didn’t think of the wyrm’s actions as an act for his benefit.

Dimitri said, “Today, I almost dug myself up out of the ground in a blind panic. I had a flashback that I was inside the tree again, and I wanted to escape. If I hadn’t realized that I was really moving, I would have dug right out into the sunlight and killed myself.”

“How did you see out of your prison?” Erick asked.

“Eventually, I got used to the pain, and I was able to sense the thoughts of anyone who passed near the tree. I was able to fine tune my ability to see through the eyes of any animal. I followed anything that passed into my range, because no matter how low a form of life I was following, at least it was free.

“Before the mold started killing the tree, there was a flock of birds who migrated back to the tree each year. I think that was the happiest time during my imprisonment, because I could fly around with any of them for several miles.”

He read Erick’s thoughts and smirked as he shook his head. “No, I don’t have thoughts of revenge. I remained in the same condition without aging inside the tree, and my enemy has stayed outside to be ravaged by time. Certainly, I could raid Stout Hart and vent my wrath.”

He rasped a short laugh. “I could probably get away with it too if I didn’t try carrying out the last part of my plan to open portals to Earth. It’s a strange world we live in, Erick. We’re trapped by pragmatists who don’t care what we do, so long as we don’t affect the balance of power in Lissand. Then, once you do threaten the balance, they still don’t kill you, but, oh yes––you wish you were dead. If I were sane, I would get as far away from these filthy forests as fast as I could”

“But you don’t want to leave yet either, right?”

Dimitri stared at Erick, seemingly looking through him. “Where is there to go? When I return to my old territory, I’ll find someone else has staked their claim. I’ll have to find a new area to stake out, and if I try to raise a family in the wrong place, my wraiths will be picked off by the dwarfs, or by shadow hunters like Larin. They’ll be cut down in a few years, when they need hundreds to mature and become proper wyrm.”

“You don’t seem bitter about that,” Erick said.

“I’ve spent a few thousand years inside an elf prison. Anger might come later, but right now, the most overwhelming emotion I feel is gratitude.”

“To me?”

“Yes,” Dimitri said. “You felt sympathy for me, even a desire to know more about why I was punished. Thousands of people have come across my prison, and those who knew of me accepted the history behind my capture. But you questioned it. You felt there had to be something more to the story, and of course there was. You trusted me enough to let me share my story with you.”

Erick smiled awkwardly. “So you admire me for being a pragmatist?”

Dimitri laughed and shrugged. “Yes, but perhaps I admire you because you embody the philosophy so perfectly. You don’t long to change the world, only to become a part of it. You travel out here because you want to learn more about other races.”

“You can teach me about all of them, can’t you?”

“Yes. With my help, you could become a great shadow hunter.” Dimitri shifted his weight onto his other leg and turned his upper body while he looked at Darryl. “Your guardian has a valid point about your discipline, so there is a limit to how much I can teach you without inviting disaster. Magic is not as simple a tool as a sword, and if you can’t maintain focus, even the simplest spell can backfire and harm you in some way.”

Erick nodded. “So you can’t teach me focus, can you?”

“No, that will have to come from inside you, and you can’t fake it either,” Dimitri said before he stood up. “Get some sleep, and we’ll continue your training tomorrow night.”

“Wait,” Erick said. “You never did say how far I fell.”

“Seven meters.” Dimitri pointed to the cage across the camp, and Erick realized that all of the goblins were staring at him. Laughing quietly, Dimitri said, “The goblins are still chattering about you being a messiah, because they think you’ve risen from the dead.”

***

Luther snorted as he woke up. He rolled over to glare at Olan, whose snoring was so unbearably loud that he was waking up everyone in the camp. After listing to the snores continue for over a minute, Luther considered throwing a rock at the dwarf’s head.

He heard a soft laugh from above him. “Go ahead,” Darryl said. “Twice now, I’ve thought about notching an arrow and putting him out of our misery.”

Luther sighed. “I don’t see how Erick can sleep through––where is he?”

Darryl rolled from his back onto his shoulder to point down to where Erick slept at the base of the tree. “He’s right––hey!”

In the place where Erick had been sleeping, a black shadow flickered. Every few seconds, the inky shape would rise and become vaguely humanoid in appearance, and then it would melt into a nebulous puddle.

Darryl dropped to the ground beside the base of the tree, his slender blue eyebrows drawing together when he reached out to confirm that the shadow had no substance. He raised his head to frown at Luther. “He’s right here. I’d swear to you he is.”

Grom was up by then, though sleep still burdened his limbs and caused him to shuffle. “Is it one of the wyrm’s spells?”

“Yes, it something I’ve taught him. I think he cast it to protect himself from Olan’s snoring.” Dimitri’s laughter floated from out of the forest, making pinpointing the source difficult. He walked out from behind a tree and bent over in a courteous bow which made everyone wary. “I’m afraid this is my fault, and I admit I expected that it might happen. This is probably why he was grey after his first training session.”

Darryl glanced at Ilaria when she dropped out of the tree. “Can you go into the portal and call him out?”

Ilaria frowned. “No, not if he’s asleep. He is sleepcasting, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he woke up long enough to cast it,” Dimitri said. “Now he’s drifted away from the portal entrance to avoid listening to Olan. Speaking of––” Dimitri nodded when Kirt poured a cup of water on Olan’s face to wake him. “Thank you.”

Darryl got up and walked to stand in front of Dimitri. “You could reach him, couldn’t you?”

“No,” Dimitri said. “He’s asleep, so he has his guard up. The only one of us who could tap into his thoughts while he’s sleeping is you.”

Darryl frowned and shook his head. “But he doesn’t trust me. I don’t think I could get him to wake up if I tried.”

Dimitri dropped his head to stare at the shadow with a thoughtful expression. “There is one possibility.”

Darryl stared at the wyrm with an uncertain expression, his already thin mouth shrinking down into a tight line. “I don’t know if I want to open my mind up to you. Erick trusted you, and look at what happened.”

“You have a valid point.” Dimitri laughed quietly. “Seeing as how you are the only person who can reach Erick in this condition, I suggest you get to work.”

***

The human city is alien to him, and he has only glimpsed a similar kind of human habitat a few times through scrying pools in his childhood.

Now he is standing in the middle of a city street, and he raises his head to stare up at the cloudy night sky. Then the sheer size of the buildings creates an enthralling presence that leaves him feeling numb and slack-jawed.

The illusion is almost perfect if not for the lack of color in the world. The detail of every object is washed in shades of grey, turning everything into moving shadows.

He has to be dreaming. The thought is confirmed when he leaps from the ground and rises into the air. He drifts closer to an office building, and he ascends slowly to peer inside the rooms.

Some interiors are obscured by a kind of metallic drapes. The rooms that he can look into are all so similar to each other that he has trouble telling if he is making progress or just looping between floors.

But when he looks up, the top of the building is much closer, and he speeds his climb to emerge out of the urban jungle. The windows blur, and then they vanish. But he continues to climb for a few more meters before he drops his head to look around.

His lips part, and he gasps at the sight of the city spread out in front of him. He turns in a slow circle, and everywhere he looks, the city stretches out to the horizon.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Dimitri asks.

He spins toward the building and looks down.

Standing on the rooftop, the wyrm smiles and offers him a wave. Dimitri’s white skin is light grey in the dream, and his hand blurs, creating smoke trails with his movements.

He asks, “Did you make me dream this?”

Dimitri nods before he says, “Indirectly, yes.”

He drifts down to land on the gravel-lined rooftop, and then he walks to stand in from of the wyrm. “I don’t understand. What’s happening to me?”

“Dreams are a combination of memories and desires,” says Dimitri. “This city was one of many that I had observed during my first three nights of freedom. However, I observed them through a scrying shadow, and your desire to see them in their proper scale has created this world inside a portal. Your eyes are open, and you are floating in a real place.” Dimitri shakes his head. “But you aren’t awake, and I’m not really here. Darryl has tapped into your mind, and I’m relaying this hallucination of myself to you through him.”

He asks, “So Darryl can hear all of this?”

“Yes, and  he already knows why you’ll come out of this portal looking grey. But we can worry about waking you up in a moment. I want to tell you something about this place you’ve created.” Dimitri pauses to gesture across the city skyline. “The city you see is called Los Angeles. In this one city alone, there are more humans than the combined population of half the Rhyndarhim provinces. Millions of people live in this one location.”

“Millions,” he repeats, and then he shakes his head. “How do they live so close to each other without going crazy?”

Dimitri laughs. “They may very well be crazy. But aside from their criminal element, these people live in relative peace, even in their cramped conditions. It’s remarkable progress for them.” Dimitri’s smile becomes nostalgic, and he glances toward the horizon. “I remember when they were still tribes squabbling with each other over hunting rights.”

Dimitri is silent for a minute before he laughs. “Before they were pushed off the Earth, the elves were fond of saying that the humans had the potential to do great things, or terrible things.”

Dimitri raises his hand and sweeps it out in another gesture toward the grid of buildings and towering skyscrapers. “Look around you, Erick. This is their potential. They have pushed away every race different from them, and now they believe it has always been this way. They don’t even believe in us anymore.” Dimitri pauses to look around, and then he asks, “But is that great, or terrible?”

He can’t answer, and he can only stare at the wyrm uncomfortably before finally shaking his head. “I’m not sure.”

Dimitri says, “It’s okay, Erick. I’m not sure, either. The humans live in relative peace without us, but they’ve destroyed the natural balance of their world in the process. Those two extremes form a looping paradox in my head, and I don’t know whether to feel angry or amazed by the sight of these modern human cities.”

He nods his agreement, and then he frowns at a random thought. “I’m creating all of this?”

“Yes,” Dimitri says. “It’s really an impressive display of your power. Since you’re bringing it up, maybe we should start thinking about waking you up and guiding you back to the portal entrance.

He says, “But I can just wake up and drop the spell, so what’s the problem?”

“It’s not so easy.” Dimitri points up at what looks like the only flickering star in an otherwise completely cloudy sky. “You’re drifting inside the portal, moving further away from the entrance while you sleep. You can get lost if I don’t wake you up and guide you out of the portal.”

He asks, “How do you propose to wake me up?”

“I’d like to test a theory, actually.” Dimitri walks to the edge of the roof and looks down, waving for him to come closer. “Do you see that car down there?”

He moves to the edge and leans over the side. He nods and says, “Yes?”

Dimitri pushes him off the edge, and as he falls, he hears the wyrm shout, “Try not to hit it!”

Dimitri’s theory was sound, and Erick woke up just before he hit the ground. Then the city vanished, and Erick plunged into endless darkness. “Dimitri?” Erick whispered.

“I’m here,” Dimitri said. “Just follow my voice, and I’ll get you outside.”