Elsewhere

Chapter 13 — Elsewhere

Heat struck Vegon before the light did.

One moment he stood beneath a mountain in the buried remains of Tavalon, his hand hovering over symbols cut into a stone older than anything he had ever studied.

The next, the world became fire.

Vegon staggered sideways. His boots scraped across black rock hot enough that he felt it through the soles. The air itself seemed to burn. Sulfur clawed at his throat.

Someone behind him swore.

“Move!” Deacon shouted.

Vegon looked up.

A red sky hung over a broken landscape of stone and smoke. Far below, something bright moved through a great wound in the earth. Not water. Molten rock. It crawled between black ridges in glowing rivers, throwing orange light across cliffs that trembled beneath their feet.

Zook had already backed away from the edge.

“That,” Zook said, “is a volcano.”

“I am aware.”

“Good. Wanted to make sure.”

Another tremor rolled through the ground.

Jandar grabbed Vegon by the shoulder and pulled him back as a section of rock broke loose from the ledge ahead. It struck the slope below, bounced once, and disappeared into the glowing river.

“You can study it after we stop standing on it,” Jandar said.

Vegon barely heard him.

The stone was here.

Not the chamber around it. Not the four pillars. Not the buried streets of Tavalon.

But beneath their feet, cut into the black volcanic rock, lay the same arrangement of symbols.

Vegon stared.

There had been no sensation of motion.

No falling.

No disorientation.

No glimpse of whatever distance existed between Tavalon and this place.

The magic had simply removed one truth and replaced it with another.

Behind the waterfall, he had expected the symbols to unlock something. A door, perhaps. A sealed chamber. Some ancient mechanism buried with the city.

He had not expected the world to vanish.

“Vegon.”

Xil’s voice carried warning rather than curiosity.

“I see it.”

“That is not what I meant.”

Vegon looked toward him.

Xil stood with one arm raised against the heat. Even in the shifting red light, his expression was unmistakable.

We should leave.

“Yes,” Vegon said.

Deacon stared at him. “You sound disappointed.”

“I am trying to remember what I touched.”

“That would be useful.”

Vegon crouched over the stone.

The symbols were the same. He was certain of that much.

Four divisions. Repeating patterns that appeared to correspond to changes of season. Another sequence that seemed tied to the moon. Then the smaller markings—the ones he still could not identify. They were not letters. Not numbers. Not any arcane notation he had ever seen.

Yet when he had combined them in Tavalon and allowed a thread of magic to enter the stone, the structure had responded immediately.

Too immediately.

Modern magical work left evidence of itself. Channels. Matrices. Runes that directed force. Places where intention had been shaped and contained.

This did not feel shaped.

It felt finished.

A tool whose workings had become so refined that the workings themselves had disappeared.

Another crack sounded from somewhere above.

Zook glanced toward the smoke-covered slope. “Whatever you’re doing, do it faster.”

“I need the original pattern.”

“You were the one touching it.”

“Yes, Jandar. Thank you.”

“I’m helping.”

“You are speaking.”

“That is usually how I help.”

Deacon stepped between them. “Later.”

Vegon forced himself to look only at the markings.

Season.

Moon.

Unknown symbol.

He had touched them in an order.

He remembered the brief flare beneath his fingertips. He remembered thinking the response had been too strong and pulling back.

Then Tavalon had disappeared.

Vegon selected a different combination.

“Everyone stay on the stone.”

Jandar looked at the river of fire below them. “Wasn’t planning a walk.”

Vegon pressed his fingers to the last symbol and fed a narrow thread of power into it.

The stone answered.

The volcano vanished.

Cold swallowed him.

Not cold air.

Water.

Black, crushing water.

Vegon’s mouth opened in surprise, and the ocean rushed in.

He clamped his jaw shut.

Darkness surrounded them, broken only by a pale, wavering glow rising from the symbols beneath their feet.

They were at the bottom.

Vegon knew it at once.

The water pressed against him from every direction. Strange growths bent and shifted across the submerged stone. Beyond the edge of the platform, the seabed fell away into darkness.

Something moved out there.

Large.

Too large.

Deacon seized Vegon’s robe and jerked him downward.

The others were already reaching for the stone.

Jandar’s cheeks bulged as he held his breath. His eyes were wide, and whatever comment he wanted to make would have to wait.

Zook pointed frantically at the symbols.

Vegon’s thoughts scattered.

The moon sequence.

No.

The season.

He pressed one marking.

Nothing.

Another.

Still nothing.

His chest tightened.

The pressure in his ears became pain.

Xil caught his wrist and shoved Vegon’s hand toward the central markings.

Vegon understood.

Not random.

They had changed only one portion of the sequence.

He found the symbol they had used on the volcano and replaced it with another.

Magic.

The response came instantly.

The ocean disappeared.

Vegon fell to his hands and knees on damp earth, coughing water.

Around him, the others did much the same.

Jandar rolled onto his back.

For several seconds nobody spoke.

Water dripped somewhere in the darkness.

Jandar raised one finger.

“No.”

Deacon sat against the wall, breathing hard.

“No what?” Zook asked.

“No more of that one.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“I mean ever.”

Xil wiped seawater from his face. “I believe we can agree.”

Vegon coughed once more and looked around.

They were in a small chamber.

The walls were earth and rough stone, tangled with roots that pushed through cracks overhead. Moisture ran down one side in thin streams and collected in shallow depressions around the ancient platform.

There was no doorway.

No passage.

No stair.

Only the stone.

Zook moved around the chamber, checking the walls with his hands.

“No way out.”

Deacon looked at Vegon.

“Better than the ocean.”

“Marginally,” Xil said.

Jandar sat up and pushed wet hair from his face. “I liked the volcano better.”

“You nearly fell into it,” said Deacon.

“I understood the volcano.”

Vegon barely listened.

He was looking at the chamber.

A sealed room.

No entrance.

No exit.

Roots had grown through the ceiling. Water seeped through soil that had probably accumulated over centuries. Yet the stone beneath them remained intact.

Functioning.

Waiting.

He ran his fingers close to the surface without touching the symbols.

“This was connected to Tavalon.”

“That would be my guess,” Deacon said.

“No. Not just Tavalon.”

Vegon stood.

The others watched him.

He moved slowly around the edge of the stone.

“The markings are identical. The structure is identical. This is not a single device.”

Jandar looked down. “You mean there are more.”

“There have to be.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

Zook leaned against one dirt wall. “That answer is becoming popular.”

Vegon ignored him.

He tried to imagine the people who had built the thing.

A civilization able to create permanent points of travel across distances Vegon could not even estimate.

A system built so reliably that four centuries after the Sundering—after cities had fallen, mountains had split, coastlines had changed and much of the old magical knowledge had vanished—it still worked.

Badly, perhaps.

Dangerously.

But it worked.

The Citadel held ancient texts. Eticus had shown him fragments of magical traditions that no living wizard could fully reproduce. Everyone knew knowledge had been lost.

Knowing something and standing on it were different experiences.

Vegon looked again at the symbols.

They had not found a relic.

They had found infrastructure.

A road.

One that did not care that the civilization that built it was gone.

“Vegon,” Xil said.

He realized the others were waiting.

“We should return.”

Jandar stared at him. “Excellent. You remember how?”

Vegon looked down at the symbols.

“I remember what I did.”

“That was not my question.”

Deacon gave Jandar a look.

Jandar spread his hands. “He drowned us.”

“Temporarily,” Vegon said.

Zook laughed.

Even Xil’s expression shifted slightly.

Jandar pointed at Vegon. “That is exactly the sort of sentence I do not want my wizard saying.”

Vegon knelt again.

He could reconstruct it.

The first pattern had taken them from Tavalon to the volcano. The second had changed a single part of the sequence and sent them beneath the ocean. The third had brought them here.

That suggested the symbols were not commands in the normal sense.

They were an address.

Or part of one.

He traced the sequence without touching it.

“If I am right, we have not been telling the stone what to do.”

Deacon frowned. “What have we been doing?”

“Choosing where it does it.”

Jandar stared at the dirt walls.

“Choose Tavalon.”

“That is the intention.”

“Strong intention.”

Vegon selected the sequence he remembered from the first activation, then changed one marking.

Nothing happened.

Of course.

The magic was required.

He let his power touch the stone.

For the briefest instant, pale light spread beneath their boots.

Then the chamber vanished.

Ancient stone replaced damp earth.

Broken pillars rose around them.

The buried city of Tavalon stretched once more into darkness.

Nobody moved.

Vegon exhaled.

Zook looked around.

“Well.”

Jandar drew a deep breath.

“I never doubted you.”

Deacon walked past him. “You complained the entire time.”

“I complained confidently.”

Xil turned back toward Vegon. “Can you repeat the route?”

Vegon looked down at the stone.

“Yes.”

He thought of the volcano.

The ocean.

The sealed chamber.

“Yes,” he said again, quieter. “I believe I can.”

That was the remarkable part.

The stone was not random.

Dangerous, certainly. Their destinations made no sense, and whatever relationship the symbols once had to the world had clearly been disrupted.

But the system itself remained precise.

He could learn it.

The thought sent a thrill through him that had nothing to do with safety.

There were answers here.

Perhaps not written answers. Not the kind one found in books.

Better ones.

Answers built into the old world itself.

Zook had moved away from the stone.

“Vegon.”

Something in his voice changed the room.

Vegon looked up.

A blue glow shone between the ruins.

It came from farther along the broken street, beyond a collapsed wall where the old city disappeared beneath another mass of stone and earth.

Unlike the warm shimmer of their lamps, this light was cold and steady.

Deacon had already drawn his crossbow.

Jandar’s hand went to his sword.

Xil watched the ruins around the glow.

Vegon stepped off the Travel Stone.

The blue light did not flicker.

“That was there before?” Jandar asked.

Zook nodded. “Saw it from the other side.”

“Wonderful.”

Deacon glanced at Vegon. “Same magic?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you tell?”

“Not from here.”

Jandar sighed. “Of course not.”

They advanced carefully.

The glow grew brighter with every step.

They passed a fallen arch and entered what might once have been a courtyard. Much of it had collapsed beneath the mountain, but part of the original floor remained exposed.

The crystal rose from its center.

At first Vegon thought it had been placed there.

Then he saw how deeply it disappeared into the stone.

It was not resting on the floor.

It came through it.

A jagged column of blue crystal, wider than his shoulders at the base, narrowing as it rose. Light moved somewhere within it, but there was no visible flame or point of illumination.

The entire thing seemed to glow from inside.

Zook circled left.

Deacon remained near the entrance, watching the surrounding ruins rather than the crystal.

Xil approached from the opposite side.

Jandar stopped beside Vegon.

“So?”

Vegon stared.

“I have never seen anything like it.”

“That is becoming less comforting every time you say it.”

The Travel Stone had been elegant.

This was different.

Vegon could not have explained why.

There were no markings. No visible structure. No carefully arranged geometry. Nothing that suggested how the magic was controlled or what purpose it served.

Just power.

Cold light.

And the unmistakable sensation that the crystal was doing something.

Vegon took one step closer.

Deacon said, “Don’t touch it.”

“I was not going to.”

“You touched the last thing.”

“That was different.”

“It moved us into a volcano.”

“We learned something.”

“We learned volcanoes are hot.”

Jandar nodded. “Important scholarship.”

Vegon gave them both a look.

Then Zook raised a hand.

“Quiet.”

Everyone stopped.

Nothing moved.

Vegon listened.

A faint hum seemed to come from the crystal.

Then the light inside it brightened.

Xil stepped back.

“Vegon.”

“I see it.”

The air beside the crystal twisted.

There was no opening.

No door.

No visible spell.

One instant the courtyard was empty.

The next, a gnoll stood there.

Then another.

And another.

They appeared so abruptly that the first was already lunging before Vegon fully understood what had happened.

Deacon’s crossbow snapped.

The bolt struck the creature high in the chest and spun it sideways.

Zook met the second one before it reached Vegon.

Steel flashed.

Jandar moved past him, blade drawn.

“Apparently they use the road too.”

“No,” Vegon said.

A fourth shape appeared beside the crystal.

Then a fifth.

“They’re not coming from the Travel Stone.”

Jandar ducked a swinging weapon. “That distinction is not helping.”

Vegon backed toward a broken wall and raised his hands.

Magic gathered.

The familiar resistance came with it.

Always there.

A wrongness inside the power itself, as if every spell had to be dragged through something that did not want to release it cleanly.

He forced it into shape.

Energy struck the nearest gnoll and threw it against the crystal.

For a terrible instant Vegon expected the blue structure to shatter.

It did not.

The gnoll fell.

The crystal continued to glow.

Another appeared.

Vegon froze.

He had seen it clearly this time.

The creature had not emerged from behind the crystal.

It had not climbed up from below.

It had simply become present.

“More!” he shouted.

Deacon fired again.

“I noticed.”

Zook drove one attacker back, giving Xil room to move. Xil brought his weapon down with brutal precision, then turned as Jandar slipped behind another creature and struck before it could follow Deacon.

They had fought gnolls enough now that the creatures no longer surprised them.

The manner of their arrival did.

There was no warning.

No approach.

Each flare of blue light threatened another enemy.

Vegon watched the crystal.

There.

A pulse.

“Now!”

Deacon turned before the next creature fully appeared.

His bolt hit it the moment it became solid.

Jandar laughed once.

“That I like.”

“Watch the light,” Vegon said.

Another pulse.

Zook was ready this time.

The gnoll arrived and found Zook already moving.

The fight changed.

What had begun as an ambush became something closer to an execution.

The crystal announced its own reinforcements.

Blue flare.

Strike.

Blue flare.

Bolt.

Blue flare.

Steel.

Then nothing.

The courtyard fell quiet.

Vegon waited.

The crystal hummed.

Its light settled back into the same cold glow.

No more gnolls came.

For several breaths, none of them lowered their weapons.

Jandar finally looked around at the bodies.

“Well.”

Deacon began reloading.

“You already used that one.”

“I was going to say something different.”

“No, you weren’t.”

Jandar considered that.

“No.”

Zook wiped his blade and turned toward the crystal.

“That thing brought them here.”

Vegon approached carefully.

“Yes.”

Xil joined him. “You are certain?”

“I watched it happen.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Vegon looked at him.

Xil nodded toward the Travel Stone chamber behind them.

“The same kind of magic?”

Vegon studied the crystal again.

“I don’t know.”

That answer irritated him.

Not because Xil had pressed him.

Because it was true.

He could see no connection between the mechanisms.

The Travel Stone was comprehensible even when he did not understand it. It possessed rules. Patterns. A structure that invited study.

The blue crystal offered nothing.

Vegon stopped several paces from it.

“Do not touch it.”

Jandar smiled.

Deacon looked at Vegon.

Vegon frowned. “Yes. I heard myself.”

“Good.”

They examined the base.

The crystal descended directly through the old floor. Dirt and fractured stone crowded around it where the ruins had shifted, but there was no visible edge beneath the surface.

Zook tried clearing some of the loose rubble.

Deacon helped.

The more they exposed, the worse it looked.

The crystal widened below the floor.

Jandar crouched beside the opening they had made.

“So we dig.”

“Through an ancient city buried inside a mountain?” Deacon asked.

“When you say it like that, it sounds inconvenient.”

“It is inconvenient.”

Xil watched the glow. “And if disturbing it brings more gnolls?”

Jandar stood.

“Then perhaps we do not dig.”

“A rare moment of wisdom,” Vegon said.

“I have many.”

“Name another.”

“This one is enough for today.”

Vegon moved slowly around the crystal.

He wanted to know where the gnolls had come from.

The Travel Stone proved distance could be crossed. That no longer seemed impossible.

But those creatures had appeared without choosing markings, without touching a platform, without any action that he could see.

Was someone sending them?

Did the crystal call them automatically?

Were they waiting somewhere else for the same blue light to reach them?

He hated the number of possibilities.

He also wanted to spend the next week testing every one.

“We should tell Eticus,” he said.

Deacon nodded immediately. “Yes.”

Jandar looked disappointed. “That sounded far too responsible.”

“He may know what this is.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Vegon looked at the crystal.

That possibility bothered him more.

Eticus had been his mentor long enough for Vegon to understand the limits of the man’s knowledge, but those limits remained wider than almost anyone else’s.

Ancient magic.

The Sundering.

Lost traditions.

If Eticus looked at this and had no answer—

Vegon pushed the thought away.

“We still tell him.”

Zook looked toward the Travel Stone.

“And that?”

Vegon followed his gaze.

The ancient platform waited in the darkness beyond the ruined courtyard.

“That too.”

Jandar smiled.

“You are going to tell him you found a magical stone that can throw people around the world.”

“Yes.”

“After you used it repeatedly.”

“Yes.”

“Without knowing what it did.”

Vegon looked at him. “You came with me.”

“I am not claiming to be responsible.”

Deacon laughed under his breath.

It was a small sound, almost lost in the cavern.

Vegon looked from the blue crystal to the distant Travel Stone.

Two discoveries within a few hundred paces of each other.

One a surviving road from the old world.

The other something he could not name.

The buried city around them no longer felt dead.

Not truly.

Its people were gone. Its streets had collapsed. Four centuries of earth and stone had swallowed its buildings.

Yet its magic still moved travelers across the world.

Its crystal still summoned soldiers from somewhere unseen.

The Sundering had destroyed Tavalon.

It had not silenced it.

Xil stepped beside him.

“You want to stay.”

Vegon did not bother denying it.

“Yes.”

“That would be unwise.”

“Yes.”

“You intend to anyway.”

Vegon looked toward the Travel Stone.

Then back to the blue light.

“Not today.”

Xil seemed satisfied with that.

The others began checking the courtyard and the fallen gnolls while Vegon remained where he was.

The crystal shone without warmth.

Without sound now.

Without explanation.

He had spent years studying magic as something that could be understood if one learned enough, read enough, practiced enough.

Today an ancient stone had thrown him onto a volcano, drowned him at the bottom of an ocean, sealed him beneath the earth, and brought him safely back.

And that had been the understandable discovery.

Vegon stared into the blue crystal.

Its light did not change.

They could not pull it free.

They could not explain it.

They could not stop it.

And somewhere beyond Tavalon, perhaps far beyond it, Vegon could not escape the thought that something might know the crystal was still glowing.

The cold blue light filled the ruins.

And refused to go out.