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Sorren looked up from Alana. “No.”
“Afraid you’ll lose me to a dead planet? You already lost me to a human,” Akoni said flatly.
Auryn pulled Keon to his feet. Keon coughed once before he said, “It bears a second look.”
“Of course it does,” Akoni said bitterly, not looking at me.
Mahon stepped between the Wyrms and my consorts. “Don’t linger, roostlings.”
The Gate wasthe worst Black Dog Jolt in the cosmos.
I flapped through to the other side of the Gate with my horns still ringing and my brain still rattling in my skull.
A gust of cool wind hit my wings and lifted me like a kite, giving me a slightly better view of the temple complex before I regained my balance. The stars pressed down and spun my senses around like a compass needle, and instantly, I sensed Auryn being very, very far away. But there was another star, out of sight, butheavy.
Homeworld’s parent star.
Keon and Akoni had come through right before me, and they stood in dragon-form on the stones slightly away from the leystone. I focused through the storm-at-twilight daylight, taking in the low-hanging asperitas clouds that almost completely obscured the sky, whipped by high-level winds.
“Helena?” Keon nudged my all-torso-body with his snoot.
ItfeltnotEarth.Chirp chirp.
Keon nudged me again. “Your cosmic compass is off. Humans have a strong internal clock and position within the cosmos. You are completely out of position. Yourtimehasn’t changed, but your position has. I’d tell you to give yourself a minute to get your bearings, but it might take a lot longer than that.”
I’d managed up to this point, I could keep managing. Time to take inventory of the alien planet.
Except Alana hadn’t exagerated. There wasn’t much to take inventory of.
The temple “complex” was a single large nine-sided stone pad. The Gate sat on it. Nine stone steps led to a lower level, with the shattered remains of stone columns at each of the vertices, then more columns leading down a short stone gallery. The stone looked like the same stone that had built Atlantis—a sort of tempered granite or gabbro, perhaps.
I touched down and instantly scramble-flapped back into the sky.
Keon lifted a claw. “The pad is made like the hall in Atlantis. Scales in the stone. Much more crudely though, and not the same sort of purpose. These are shielding, not smothering.”
I coiled my body up and away, and flapped down to the lower level. The stones were normal stones down there. Then I flipped into land form so I’d be able to speak. “I don’t want to damage the Gate pad.”
“You would have to focus to do that.”
“How about I not take any chances? I thought you lot were sick of me taking risks.”
“Helena—” Akoni started to say.
I ignored him. This wasn’t the time or place, and we had bigger issues. Like planet-sized ones.
In addition to the cosmic-bell-rung sensation, there was a cold, unpleasant, brain-freeze feeling moving over my scales and horns and magic.
Auryn came through the portal in a rush of light that turned liquid and splattered the temple complex, leaving a glow all around him that quickly faded.
“Perhaps it is just this area that is a wasteland,” Akoni said.
“No,” I said, “can you sense that? In the background?”
“I sense a number of things. None of them especially good.”
“I sense… something,” Auryn said, clenching his finlets and wings down. “A…contraption.”
“Contraption?” Akoni cocked his head to the side. He was in land-form, and while he did not glow, he seemed to smolder and seethe like a forge.
