Portal- Stories

Out with the old, in with the new...world, that is. Tabitha Price, an average bookseller in an average town, doesn't expect life to get much more interesting than the books she reads. But when a friend accidentally sends her to another world, Tabitha learns that sometimes, living in a fantasy isn't all that fantastic. In this new world, wars rage across the country, monsters roam free, and knights are sent to scavenge from the dead. It's dreary, confusing, and Tabitha is sure she's going to die at any second. Her only chance is to find a group of adventurers to protect her. That can't be too hard, right?

It started with the white room: a table, two chairs, a vase holding a flower the world refused to name, a window with white curtains and a cherry tree swaying beyond. Then came the throne hall, the silver crown, the open link of a chain, and a ring that is more door than circle. When a shadow with a black crown tore a hole through the ceiling and showed a gate of panic, the only answer was to make a place that could remember: a pond. Now the keeper stands watch with unlikely allies- Pyro, a red dragon crowned in silver, forged as guardian of the water; Mira, a silhouette split into two ravens, one returned in human shape; Emme, chaos incarnate, who swims backward and makes the surface laugh; Quakstein, the standing stone, who teaches the shore to stay; Martin, lantern-setter and finder of roads (and once, of Raylene, whose absence still bends the light). The pond writes in ripples. The ring wants to help. The crowns chime when a decision is true. And far off, the edited hole practices being a doorway that never lets go. Soft magic. Liminal spaces. Found family. A quiet war of patience.