John sat
against the wall staring at the blue smoke billowing out of the vault door. He
had never seen anything like this before in his life. This wasn’t magic. It was
something else, something with very odd physical properties. Each puff of smoke
was made up of a tiny cloud that seemed to have a life of its own, twisting and
turning until it fell into itself and disappeared. The clouds looked alive, but
not in any way that John could really comprehend. It was like those old
children’s pictures of snakes devouring their own tails.
He considered his options. It appeared that when the disc had been
disrupted that the vault had been dragged back with it to the disc’s home space
– wherever that was. If the space had been somewhere in the known world, then
he would have been able eventually to teleport out, although recovering the
vault subsequently might have been difficult, if not impossible. However, it
was quite clear that this wasn’t any part of the known world and so the
teleportation spell would be likely to fail or have seriously unpredictable
effects. He knew that his best bet was to find a way to shift himself and the
vault back into the known world, but he had no idea how that might work. He also
realised that although he was sitting inside what was probably the single
greatest cache of magical artefacts in the world almost certainly none of them
would help him at all. He stopped at despair for a second and then moved on.
He hadn’t dared to go near the door or try to open it, although he
could probably just push it open now that the threads that had locked it in
place were broken. Maybe he should just take a look? He dropped down on to his
hands and knees so that he could crawl under the worst of the clouds, and
slowly he made his way to the door. When he reached it he pushed it open and
peered out. All he could see at first was a lot more blue. He reached into the
pocket of his cloak, tentatively rolled up a baton of paper and inched it out
of the door. As it nudged outside the vault it went instantly translucent and
blue. His hand felt very cold. He snatched back the baton. As he pulled it back
into the vault its end reverted to white and slightly shiny. This was both
puzzling and very worrying. He’d have to take a closer look, but as carefully
as possible.
He peered up. He was looking out across a huge blue sky, full of the
same blue clouds that were rolling into the vault, but on a much grander scale.
They were above, below and in front of him as far as his eyes could see. The
sheer scale of it took his breath away – wherever he looked there were clouds.
He crawled backwards and realised, to his intense disquiet, that within the
clouds there appeared to be things moving. Or was that just a trick of the way
that the clouds billowed and seemed to envelop themselves? He strained to gaze out
into the strange light. There was something there, wasn’t there? There it was –
a grey blue thing flapping slowly through the ether, changing shape
continuously. It looked vaguely like a manta ray swimming through an endless
seething, azure, ocean. The ray appeared large, but with no landmarks to
triangulate by, he couldn’t tell exactly how big it really was. It didn’t
appear properly corporeal and it pulsed and flowed as if it were halfway
between a liquid and a solid.
He shuddered and drew further away from the door. What was this
place? He looked back. The ray-like
beast slowly turned in its flight and John realised that it would be soon be
heading his way. With dread fascination he watched it turn, turn, and then he
could see its head, its snout and its maw clearly as it slithered through the
air towards him.
That was odd, thought John, beginning to feel his hairs pricking on his
skin. I can see its head very clearly now. How could that be? A minute ago it
was nothing but a cloud shape, barely perceptible, but now it was very solid.
The ray was all too visible as it bore down on the vault with its wings
beating. The sound it made was like waves rushing up a beach.
‘Oh shit!’ he thought to himself, this was something quite unlike that
blue disc, this was something that could do really serious damage. Then he
realised – damn – this was almost certainly something that had been sent to
kill him by Kratos. He forced his mind from its strange reverie and slammed the
door shut. He immediately scrambled up, and sprinted back to the main vault.
What the gods could he do? Behind him he could hear the sounds of wood and
stone cracking and he turned rapidly to face the door. He could see the
grey-blue shape squeezing through a massive rent in the side of the vault where
the door had been.
He had to make himself ready. Following a long established routine, he
cursed inwardly, briefly covered his eyes and then whispered ‘tawela’. His mind emptied itself of all
fear and he calmly raised his hands again to meet yet another enemy.
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