Hark: A story I promised to write a long time ago. Sorry, Chalmira, here's the first chapter at last. Jarlaxle and Entreri end up in our world, or to be more precise, my former hometown Mikkeli. And all of you people who ask "why is this in English if they're in Finland" (and probably also ask why do German officers in American movies speak English. I only ask why do they speak English with German accent if we should think they're speaking German, not English with German accent... THAT makes no sense.): try to survive with this terrible mistake. I promise to use some Finnish words somewhere, if it makes you feel better.
Disclaimer: Entreri and Jarlaxle belong to R. A. Salvatore, I'm just borrowing them again.
Chapter One; Portals and snowflakes and magic, oh my!
Somewhere north of Neverwinter, Faerun:
Two figures were walking in the snowstorm, getting more lost every second. No skill, learned or magical, would help them to find the road, find the village that had to be near, find anything but more coldness and snow.
"It's magical," Jarlaxle shouted over the roaring wind.
"Really? How did you work that out?" Entreri shouted back, almost slipping over. That made him even angrier. They had been walking for what felt like a day, although in reality, he knew, it had been more like a couple of hours. But the coldness was getting to him, despite of his warm clothing, making him tired, making him feel old. Making him feel cold.
"That's easy, I just..." Jarlaxle started to shout and then stop, staring ahead of him. Entreri stopped too. There was something dark there, growing fast as it came closer. The assassin started to draw his sword, but realized it would do no good. Not here, in the middle of the cold snow, the icy wind numbing his body and mind.
"It looks..." Jarlaxle shouted, turning towards Entreri, and then the wind hit them, knocking them both over like they were small leaves. There was whiteness, Entreri saw it all around him, but it wasn't cold like the snow. It was something else, almost... soft and tempting, calling you to sleep. And then there was the terrible pain, the scene before his eyes became a mass of coloured spots and then he hit the ground.
Somewhere in The Place Which Is Real:
"Oh shit."
"What is it?" Tre'kher the Third, assistant guardian of the portals M-MM, asked, turning to look at his colleague, Andy, who was staring at the screen in front of him.
"A portal accident between two worlds."
"Shit. How bad is it?"
"Not all that bad," Andy said, scrolling down the numbers on the screen. "A too large concentration of magic in one place created a portal, but only two people went through."
"Where did they end up in?" Tre'Kher asked, getting up on his chair and sidling to watch the monitor over Andy's shoulder.
"Well, this isn't good," Andy replied, staring at the figures on the screen. "Only two went through, which is good, but they ended up in a world that has no magical energy. Which means that bringing them back won't be that easy."
"And it's the holiday season, we have too little staff for opening any extra portals," Tre'Kher moaned. "We'll have to locate them, which means sending people there to find them, open the portal to move them here, then open another portal to move them back to their own world... How can we find the necessary people to do this?"
"You know, there might be a way," Andy said, opening a new window to the screen and going through some figures with great speed. It helped to have three pairs of eyes, all connected to the brain so that he could operate the different information each pair sent at the same time. "The world they were thrown into is a popular place, many people go there on holidays. If we find one of our staff there, they can locate these two and open a portal there. After all, they have the necessary amount of power to get back here, so once the portal is open all of them can come through. It'll be a lot easier than sending someone there, since we're understaffed as it is. But if there's nobody there, we have to call someone in."
"Ok, see if anybody's there," Tre'Kher said, hoping there would be, but in reality holding on to his pessimistic nature. Andy opened some file, inserted some figures and then grinned. "Yes, there are two of our employees there, together. I'll call them as soon as I find out the more precise location where the portal threw those people. Let's hope all goes well..."
Mikkeli, Finland
It had been snowing earlier. This hadn't made a great difference to the scenery since it was early December and there had been snow on the ground already for couple of weeks. At least in this part of Finland, Anna thought when she stepped out of the bus and started to walk towards the marketplace. Or so she'd been told. She was carrying a heavy green bag and a black back bag. There was an airline tag on the green bag and she still couldn't believe that the bag had ended up to the same country as she did. It should have ended up in New York, and she should have got a bag belonging to a 30-year old dominatrix. This had happened to her friend once, so the likelihood of it happening to her was very small. But you had to hope for some excitement.
She had left two weeks earlier, apparently a day before the snow came. She had spent wonderful time in London, visiting her friend who now lived there. After days of intensive shopping she had found Christmas presents to all family members and friends who deserved presents, and had bought some things she was certain she couldn't live without, like the soundtrack for the British (and, in her opinion, the one and only) Queer as Folk television series, or the white, fuzzy toy bunny that walked around and stopped at some point to wriggle its nose. Of course she hadn't bought batteries for it, but you could get batteries from Finland as well, whereas it would be more difficult to find those toy bunnies.
She had been prepared for the snow and the cold, and was wearing a warm sweater under her leather coat (which wasn't an ideal winter coat in Finland, but had been good in London), but her toes were staring to freeze in the shoes that were not designed for too cold weather or for many pairs of socks. She walked fast, glad that she lived close and didn't have to wait for a bus like some poor people on one side of the market place. They must've been freezing. Then again, they were dressed more sensibly than she was.
She almost slipped when crossing a street, cursing the shoes for lacking the "staying-at-least-moderately-upright-in-winter"-quality, and walked the rest of the journey a bit slower, looking at the brightly coloured windows of stores. The church looked impressive in the darkness, with some light illuminating it. She walked past it, towards a bunch of tower blocks that all looked the way most tower blocks do, ugly. There were already some Christmas lights on some of the windows. She liked the normal, light coloured ones (She was wondering whether light was a colour. Yellow, then.), but hated all the blue and green and red ones that blinked or winked or whatever. They made the whole light idea pointless. Light was supposed to be a golden dot in the horizon, calling you, giving you strength to go on. Those blue and green and whatever ones were ridiculous, turning Christmas into some kind of Coca-Cola winter festival with lots of things to buy and then show off to the neighbours and other people you didn't like.
All those advertisements, showing one hundred things you needed for Christmas, half of them depicting an American Santa Claus, who lived in North Pole and had short, sleek, pointy-eared elves as his little helpers... The true Finnish Santa Claus, Joulupukki, was based on a pagan animal character, a goat, and he lived in Korvatunturi, in Finland, and certainly did not drive a Coke truck. And he had helpers, called tonttu, best described as gnomes, who were short and bearded and didn't wear stupid tights and speak in squeaky voices. There weren't many things Anna believed in, but a Finnish Joulupukki was one of them, the true Joulupukki, not the one overly Americanized... dude. She didn't really believe in Joulupukki, but she liked the character, and the story behind the character. A piece of old "pagan" tradition in the modern world.
She reached her tower block, opened the door and stepped into the wonderfully warm hall. Her flat was on the third floor, and although she usually climbed the stairs, she was cold, tired and carrying a heavy bag, so she used the lift. She opened the door to her apartment, kicked the pile of ads that had arrived in the last couple of days (her friend had been there to water her plants regularly, and had piled the other ads and post near the door), turned on the lights, put the bag down and closed the door behind her. Then she sighed with relief. Home at last.
After ten minutes she had water boiling for tea, and she had turned on the tv to watch ten o'clock news that would start soon. In the next day she would have to mail the translation work she had done during her trip, and then she could take it easy until the next year, when she would start as the substitute teacher in the nearby highschool, teaching English. She would have the job for a year and then, if the actual teacher who was now on leave for personal reasons, would decide not to come back, she might have a good chance for a permanent job. It would be great. She had lived in Mikkeli from August, doing freelance translation work and also working as a substitute teacher in an elementary school for two months, and she liked the town. It was small, sometimes annoyingly small, but you could get to Helsinki in three hours to do all the fantasy novel shopping you couldn't do in Mikkeli. Other than that, it was fine.
Anna watched the news, drinking her tea and trying not to spill it on her month old sofa, which her parents had bought her. When she had been a student, she'd had an armchair, which was in the corner next to one of her bookcases, but after she had moved to the two room apartment, it had seemed a bit empty with only the things from her former, student time studio apartment, and so her mother had insisted that they would buy her a sofa. It was a nice red one that would turn, in case she had visitors, into a bed. Before she'd only have an old mattress to offer to any overnight guests.
After the news she turned off the tv and was about to start to get ready to go to sleep when she had a strange sensation. Then there was a flash of white light behind the window. She dropped the remote control and heard the batteries fall out and roll under the sofa. The light faded and there were two loud thumps. She rushed to the window, pulled aside the curtain and stared at the yard, where there were two figures laying very still in the snow. She stared for a moment and then snatched her cell phone and keys, put on her "not-for-winter" shoes and her leather coat and rushed out. Unusual coldness met her when she ran to the yard and towards the two figures, who now were trying to get up.