Haven: Book Seven of "The Liminality"

Chapter 8 - The Portal

Grehl stood in the interface zone shivering uncontrollably, and she could not tell how much of was fright and how much was the aftereffects of the ripples induced by the seam. The hunters seemed wary of her, as if she posed a danger to them. The unburdened and able members of the group fanned out round her with their weapons held at the ready.

The apparent leader, a bald and scabby medicine ball of a man with barely a patch of healthy skin across a body clad in only a loincloth and shoulder plates approached her cautiously. His eyes bore the confident glint of a predatory cat.

"So you're the one," in a voice that almost sounded like a cough. "You must be the Summoner."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," said Grehl.

"What are you doing here?"

"Taking a piss."

"Put her down!" He pointed to the ground.

Two arrows converged at her chest but vanished in the air before they could strike her. They catalyzed the seam like stones hitting the surface of a pond in a mirror calm. Her world went blurry as the ripples surged and engulfed her with an abruptness and power she had never experienced.

The temperature plunged. A low thrum, almost too deep to be perceived as sound induced a subtle throb deep into her bones. The hunters had vanished and she was no longer standing on a slope, but on a rolling plain.

The breeze carried a spicy note that cut through the foul sulfur of Sheol's smog. Though the air was far fresher, the landscape looked much like Sheol—singed and barren. One arrow protruded from an earthen bank behind her. She stayed rooted in place, frozen in fear, but expecting the hunters to join her momentarily.

A minute must have passed and she remained alone, even though the portal appeared to remain open. The sub-aural thrum indicative of an open passage persisted. The slightest movement spawned ripples in the air.

As she calmed, she found herself able to move, but didn't want to abandon the node. She couldn't risk getting stranded alone in a place that might be worse than Sheol. There were no stones nearby to build a cairn, only a loose dark grit that had been sculpted by the wind. She retrieved one of the arrows, and tried to imagine how she could use it in lieu of a bow against the hunters, and instead just stuck it in the ground to mark the node.

The landscape was so scorched she could not rule out the possibility that this might be some remote corner of her own blighted realm. The air told her otherwise. There was a sweetness to it that smelled to Grehl, like life. Above the acrid scorch, it carried a hint of decay and some faint hint of something resinous.

Another arrow came flying, this time from another direction. It missed her wildly as she was standing several paces away from the node. This portal was more opaque than most. She could not see the hunters, so she presumed the same was true for them. There was no shelter nearby, so she just stayed down on her haunches.

A pressure began to mount in her head and she knew what that meant. The seam was beginning to seal. She had never opened an interface in a realm other than Sheol. She did not even know if it was possible.

She rushed over to the node and invited the ripples back in. She resisted the seam's closure by exerting her will outward, but it had already progressed too far. Once a closing portal gained momentum, there was no stopping them.

She popped into the nether space between Sheol and the other realm, catching a whiff of the underarm stench of the lead hunter before she saw his blurred shape only a meter or so away. His back was turned, attention engaged by something across the slope, but upon sensing her presence, he wheeled about and lunged at her.