AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Gate was still there, but instead of being the sad chunk of rock framed by some thick wood boards, the stone was still a slow-turning black disc. The black disc consumed sound, and it consumed heat, leaving the entire Gate cave covered in a thin layer of frost.
It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn't much to look at, but the Gate didn’t need its containment stones. Just the leystone and a very determined Chaos dragon. Apply cosmic duct tape and popsicle sticks and zip ties and we could all high-five and get a beer.
The second time should be easier than the first, now that my brain had had time to process and catalog everything, and I better knew what to expect.
Alana stared at the swirling, infinite blackness.
I asked, “Ready?”
Ready was not the right word. There was noreadyforgo through a cosmic portal to another planet.
She turned towards me, soft expression hardening to stone and coral. “Yes. Open it.”
I shed my dress and shifted into amphiptere form. My senses rotated and my brain flipped to dragon mode, filtering in perceptions through my scales and wings. I extended gossamer threads and ribbons along the leystone, and I now sensed the other leystone, across the impossibly vast, slowly rotating darkness. The intensity of the ancient, intact magic tingled against my scales.
Auryn? Check. Akoni? Check. Keon? Check. Stars? Distant, but there. Cosmos? Rotating. Hekon? Still wearing bells. Dekka? Still salty. Name? Helenaof Earth.
Safety check complete.
The lattice pattern on my wings seared hot pink and the tips of my scales matched it, then began to smolder and diffuse. I felt along the tiny bits of starlight and firmament for the switch.
There.
Power from the core poured towards the leystone. I shaped it and dispersed it to the nine lattice points on the leystone. If it had been in a proper housing, this would have happened automatically. It was like putting a slightly too-small fitted sheet on a thick mattress.
Hot-pink lines formed along the blackness from the invisible vertices. I wove ribbons of magic, tugged the last corner into place, and gave the entire thing a final pull-start crank.
The Gate turned over like an obedient lawnmower.
Whooshand a rush of frost coated everything in the cave.
Now for the brute force part.
I channeled more of my own magic into the tube to extend it to the other leystone light years away.
I squished the cosmic toothpaste back into its tube, my scales searing and smoldering and my wings going numb as the natural order of the weight of stars pushed back.
Coming through, excuse me, sorry, yep, just let me slip by...
The gravity well from the Homeworld leystone came into range and pulled my magic towards it. I leaned back so the rush of celestial toothpaste didn’t slam into the stone and crack it, holding it just above the well’s edge. I wrestled it back and set about hooking it into the lattice points ofthatleystone.
The other lattice secured, I gave a final shove of all the raw magic I had.
The Gate roared, everything bent/wobbled/twisted/flipped for a split second, and the cosmic rock tumbler spit me out as it started its slow motion.
I flopped onto the cavern floor in a tangle of serpent body and wings. My horns were too damn heavy. My scales felt hollow. I rattled like a cheap plastic crystal chandelier.
Auryn approached, but he was sobrightand so intense it scalded. I chirped in pain. Keon knelt down next to me and wrangled my head into his lap. I sighed contently as I flopped into his gravity well, where it felt so still. Cool side of the pillow on a hot summer night, while Auryn’s distant burning star held me in its grip, spinning me around like a good little planet.
Trickles of magic returned to my charred, drained scales. It was Auryn, our tethers replenishing my own magic by consuming some of his nearly infinite strength. The Distant Star was a battery for a Chaos dragon, as they rotated each other like a close, binary star system. But the two stars—one dark, one bright—tore each other apart in various ways.
The Gate’s blackness had been replaced with a cosmic vista: a single pathway illuminated by hot-pink stars stretching over a terrifying expanse of cosmos.
I righted myself with effort, horns still too heavy, and arranged myself in my best baby cobra pose, which made me shorter than Alana.
She said, “Andthatwill take me to Homeworld.”
I shifted my scales. Still plastic-y and empty feeling.Chirp.
