Author notes:
Thank you for reading, and hopefully enjoying this story. Thanks to all the people who took time to review or mark this story as a favorite. I'm really happy to read what you have to say about what I write.
Special thanks to BarbarossaRotbart. His review gave me ideas on how to improve this chapter.
Special thanks to Narsil for helping me improve my English by proofreading my stories.
Guest: There is no problem for me regarding your review. You gave your opinion and gave reasonable arguments about what you disliked. That's a fair review in my book. Regarding its content, I understand your point of view but, to reply as the Dungeon Master of this campaign, I'm starting to up the Challenge Rating of the encounters the Scoobies wille come against to match their actual Average Party Level (between 8 and 10). As for the gods, their antagonist already exists actually. They Lords of the Nine may have lost a battle, but the Baatezu are subtle and patient.
"Hem, Cordy… not that I mind but didn't you tell me something about 'open displays of affection being banned from school grounds'?" asked Xander as he and Cordelia were driving out of the town.
Cordelia Chase had a quick glance for her boyfriend before returning her attention to the road. It was true that she had kissed him quite forcefully and said a few things that could be easily interpreted as the both of them going away for the week-end. It was true that it went against the rules she had set.
"I needed to make some things crystal clear. You know 'Charlie', right? He never got over the fact I dumped him and I think he's been stalking us."
One word immediately set off an alarm in Xander's mind: Charlie. Sure, there was a Charles at school, someone from the football team Cordy may have dated at some point, but the way she had said it… Thanks to the Lieutenant he was all too aware of a certain meaning this word could take and he had seen his girlfriend read something about the Vietnam War last week. She had pretended it was for history class but she had probably done it because she wanted to better understand what he went through.
Charlie… the Viet-Cong. Translation: the enemy is listening.
"You think he would even follow us right now?"
"I'm not sure, but he is very persistent."
She started to talk about different kinds of school gossip that he half-listened to, recognizing it for what it really was: chaff aimed at any listening enemy. As they were half-way to Oxnard, she finally pulled out in a place with a nice view over the sea and got out of the car.
"I found a bug in my room. The spy kind," she said as he joined her at the fence near the edge of the cliff.
He understood better why she had stopped here. The noise of the waves crashing below would make things very difficult for microphones.
"Your car?"
"Not sure. I thought Joyleen was overly cautious when she told us to only talk about some things when inside her wards… I was wrong."
"Do you know who?"
"No… so let's continue to call him Charlie for now. By the way, the kiss was not just a decoy… listen, I know you're much more than any of the jocks I dated will ever be. Last Monday with the vamps? Some of them would have pushed me to buy enough time to flee. Others would have been brave, but stupid, killing us both. Also… it's not like I can say I'm not part of the freak show now, right?"
There was absolutely no way she would tell him about the wacky dream that prompted her to take that decision. It had involved most of the Avatar cast and culminated in a Bollywood-worthy musical finale where Xander, dressed like an Earth Kingdom warrior, asked her if the Fire Princess was ashamed to love a commoner. She woke up screaming when she started to sing back a reply so saccharine she had thought about checking for diabetes.
"Well… welcome to the club?"
She punched him playfully in the shoulder.
"Joke apart," he continued, "I thought about that whole thing with the gods changing the world. We're getting a power-up but our enemies won't sleep on it for long. Also… I'm worried about the fact the gods are taking a direct interest in us. I mean… look at the Odyssey. Ulysses was pretty much a Chosen of Athena like Faith and…"
"And yet his whole story is a whole suite of catastrophes where he lost all of his men," she concluded in his stead. "Joyleen said that it was rare for the gods to intervene directly on Toril… we can hope things will calm down once they finish settling here."
"Let's just hope we won't die of their attentions before that."
He put an arm around her shoulders and felt very satisfied when she relaxed in his embrace.
"To get back on topic, Willow gave me a message from Joyleen – on a piece of paper that self-destroyed once I read it – telling the two of us to meet in one of the parking areas in Oxnard and to take clothes and shoes for the mountain."
"She really went with the 'Mission Impossible' message?"
"Yes and if you're asking yourself why me, it's simply because I'm the one with a car."
"Right but it leaves a little problem… I'm not exactly equipped for a hike."
"The rendezvous is for five PM, so we still have some time to shop properly. Don't worry, Joyleen gave me a budget for it," she said while taking several hundred dollar bills out of an envelope.
"What do we do if the car is bugged?"
"We'll leave it in Oxnard and make sure to only wear things we bought today, I think."
"What did you do with the mike in your room?"
"As much as I'm hating it, I let it in place. No need to let Charlie know that I know… but I swear that I'm going to BURN the asshole who did that," she replied while the air undulated around her, heating with her temper.
He kissed her, wanting to do something to distract her before she did something that would attract a lot of attention from the passing cars. He felt her surprise but she soon returned the kiss. After a minute, she broke it.
"I should tell you something about doing it without asking, but I know I was getting all 'hot'… and not in the boys' locker room usual meaning. Also, I don't know if it's those soldier boy memories but… no, don't bother with replying, I have a good idea of what a single man deployed overseas for over a year can do and I won't hold that against you… as long as you don't treat me like some napalm bomb ready to go off."
"The thought never crossed my mind. You're nuclear grade material, at the very least."
"And don't you forget it," she replied with a smug smile. "Let's get back in the car."
They were waiting in the parking area with their backpacks, Cordy's car being half a mile away, in another parking area. Shopping had actually been rather efficient as Xander had remembered that there was a military surplus near a garage he had visited once with his uncle Rory. Thanks to the Lieutenant, the thought 'two-day mission in a mountain area' had pointed him immediately at what to buy. They had just gone elsewhere for clothes. American fatigues were not a good idea if they wanted to go unnoticed.
An old, battered pickup truck soon arrived, Joyce at the wheel. While he could only approve of the discretion factor, particularly if they passed the border, Xander wondered if…
Knowing Joyleen, that thing is probably as much a piece of junk as the Millennium Falcon.
"Good to see you two already here," said Joyce as she stopped near them and motioned for them to climb in.
They put their backpacks with the rest of the equipment stashed on the rear platform and got in, Cordelia in the middle.
"Cordelia, what about your car?" asked Joyce.
"In another parking. I found a bug in my room this morning. The spy kind of bug."
"I see… annoying but not unexpected. We will have to determine when it was placed but that's for later. My home and this vehicle are clean and I would know if we were magically scryed upon," she replied as she drove away.
"You still didn't tell us where we are going?" asked Xander.
"Peru, first to the Old Peak… I mean the Machu Picchu. The Incas built their city on top of the ruins of my villa. Maybe they found that it was a great spot just like I did or maybe it was as an homage… anyway, the goal is that from there I will be able to orient myself and find the Vault."
"We're going to Peru?" asked Cordelia. "In that car? If I remember my geography correctly that's over four thousand miles."
"You remember correctly, but we're taking a shortcut," replied Joyce as she stopped in a dark alley near the city's exit. "We are going to travel through the Shadow Plane. Whatever happens, don't get out of the car unless I tell you to. Getting lost there is a very bad idea."
"Understood," replied both Xander and Cordelia.
"Good."
She started to chant and it was as if all the colors were suddenly drained from the walls of the alley, before they crumbled until only a few stones were left. What was revealed was… bleak. Black hills rolled under dark grey sky. Dead trees with tormented shapes and thorny bushes seemed to be only vegetation.
Joyce restarted the engine, though its sound seemed muffled. She drove away, following a dirt trail that wave its way through the hills. Xander looked behind and saw ruins where shadows that managed to be blacker than what surrounded them moved strangely. He could feel it. The things in the darkness were… alive? He wasn't sure it really applied to this place. What he was sure of was that they were watching them hungrily.
"Is this one of the hell dimensions Giles told us about?" Cordelia asked, her voice sounding like sweet music to his ears, as it distracted him from the whispers he was starting to hear, coming from outside.
"As hell dimension seems to be what the Watchers call any other plane, yes," replied Joyce. "If you want to be strict about what can be called Hell, no. The Nine Hells is a name sometimes given to the home plane of the Baatezu I told you about. The Shadow Plane is different. It is what we Nethereses call a transitive plane, like the Ethereal and the Astral Plane. It is not evil but it has a different definition of what's natural than our world."
"Different, yeah," he replied, his voice obviously on edge.
He knew now what that feeling was. It was the same that the Lieutenant had sometimes felt in the jungle. Predators on the prowl, waiting for a mere moment of weakness to cull them down, making humans feel that they were strangers here. He realized Joyce was right. The big problem was that humans or half-elves were unnatural here. The local version of Mother Nature was just making them feel it. A lot.
"Can humans survive here?" asked Cordelia who had probably reached the same conclusion.
"Survive, yes. The atmosphere is breathable. There is water and some plants and animals are edible. Live now… that's debatable and I think you can guess why. One of my ex-boyfriends, a very brilliant wizard whose nickname would translate as Shade, developed a lot of magic related to this place. We actually developed the spell I just used together," she added with a smile that told of fond remembrance.
"Was he…"
"Yes, he was Umbra's father… anyway, the Shadow Plane has several areas but the one that interests us is the border where we are. It looks like a distorted reflection of the world it is touching but many things here are… inconstant. The shadow travel spell I used takes advantage of that instability, guaranteeing us a reasonably maintained road and that each mile traveled here will count for roughly twenty-five on Earth."
"So instead of four thousand miles, we only have something like two hundred miles to drive," said Xander.
"Yes. Given how the road is… five or six hours to get there, so that gives us some time to talk."
"You don't have something like teleportation spells?" asked Cordelia.
"I do, but those have limitations that make them impractical in this case. First, the place where we need to go is warded against that kind of spell and, before you ask, I did not set any bypass rule in the wards because I didn't want to include that kind of vulnerability in a place I wouldn't be able to check for a long time. As for the outside, I don't remember it well enough to form a clear mental image. Without that…"
"You may end up in the wrong place, right?" replied the former cheerleader.
"Exactly. In this case, range is also a problem. At my current power level, I cannot teleport far enough to reach Peru in one go. As you can guess from what we just talked about, any intermediary stop multiplies the precision issue."
"Hence the trip through emo-land," said Xander.
As they drove under that dark, starless sky, Joyleen broke the silence from time to time with anecdotes of her time on Toril. Both teens were quite happy for it. Trying to imagine fantastic places like the halls of the Dwarven kings helped to distract them from whatever could be lurking outside. Neither of them had any desire to sleep in that place.
"Color!" yelled Cordelia as she exited the pickup and knelt on the ground to press her hands on the grass.
She looked at the night sky, finding its starry blackness vibrant. She looked at her own hands, reassured to see their normal color and not the greyish paleness they had taken there.
"No offense," she continued. "But that was dreadful."
"None taken. I fared little better the first time Shade took me there… and I already had planewalking experience. The Shadow Plane may not be evil, but it is surely unnerving."
"I am so not looking forward to the return trip," replied the teenage girl.
"If everything goes as planned, we won't need to use this path… half past ten, plus two for the time zone change. We all need some rest. Xander?"
"I took out the backpacks but I don't see…"
Joyce smiled as she touched the truck, pronouncing a word in an unknown language. It immediately started to shrink and morph, soon becoming a half-foot long plushy car she put in her backpack.
"Now that's what I call practical magic," said Cordelia. "Any chance you can do that for my car?"
"Not in any practical way for you, unfortunately. While I can restore the car with a simple command word I can share with anybody, shrinking it again will need a new casting of the spell. There is a procedure to make the spell permanent so that a command word can shrink and restore the item at will but it's costly – rare components – and it would also key the item to me, making me the only one able to trigger the transformation."
"Makes sense," said Xander. "Otherwise any enemy with the keyword could transform the car at a bad moment."
"Exactly. Now, where did I put… here it is!"
She took out some items from a small pouch: a small piece of marble, a silver spoon and a little door that seemed to be carved from a piece of ivory. Holding the three items in her right palm, she chanted another short incantation while she pointed at Xander and Cordelia with her left hand. There was a noise, like bolts unlocking and keys turning in locks and a faint shimmering surface appeared in front of her, maybe eight feet high and four feet wide.
"Here is our hotel for the night," she said. "Please do come in… and sorry for breaking the rule but this spell needs me to invite you in."
They passed through the shimmering surface and, of course, it led 'elsewhere'. No grassy plain here, a cozy living room that seemed really inviting right now.
"I know that I shouldn't be surprised anymore," said Cordelia. "But that's a nice trick… like the house's basement?"
"The house is a permanent version of that spell," she said as they entered and she closed the door behind them. "This place is what is called an extradimensional space. It's like…"
She took one of the napkins on the nearby table and folded it so that it made a shape resembling the Greek letter omega.
"Note that this is a very rough approximation of the phenomenon, but this is similar to what happens when an extradimensional space is created. When you're outside, you don't even notice it's here," she said, using her hand to mimic someone walking on the napkin's surface and completely bypassing the folded part.
"But now we're inside the fold… you know when you explain it, you manage to make magic becomes at the same time more and less scary," said Xander.
"Interesting thought. Can you elaborate on it?" asked Joyce.
"With Giles, magic is all like… that mysterious thing that will screw you over with all its hidden rules. With you it's like if Carter from the Stargate show was trying to explain me how alien technology works."
"There are different kind of magic but… I think we all need some rest," she said, seeing Cordy dozing against one of the foyer's walls. "Just one thing: one of the reasons I chose the two of you for this trip is that I know how the Shadow Plane can mess with your mind. You look at your hands, dreading to see color draining from them and you want to do something to feel alive. So… if you two are sure you want it, I will not object to it. Good night, you two," she finished as she entered one of the rooms.
"Did she just say what I think she said?" asked Xander.
"She did… and she's right. I can feel the cold of that horrible place in my bones," Cordelia replied, shivering.
"Hem… I don't know if it would be right, you know. Given… first time and all that."
"With the way we left school, everybody will think we're doing it anyway… so I say let's enjoy ourselves! Two things first so that that bit of embarrassment is out of the way: I'm on the pill – for regularity – and I broke my hymen while exercising in junior year… why the pervert smile?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Hem… just thinking that this is the Cordy I like: knowing what she wants and not afraid to tell people about it."
"Good answer. Now come here so that I can show you exactly what I want," she said as she took his hand and dragged him into one of the rooms.
Cordelia was thinking that the way Saturday was turning out was making up quite nicely for the creepy way that they had entered Peru. She was currently posing so that Xander could take a picture of her. Joyce had told them to enjoy the sights as there was little they could do to help her right now. So, here they were, just being a pair of tourists visiting the Machu Picchu for the last two hours.
She had an eye for Joyce who had been busy observing various points with binoculars and what looked like some sort of navigation instrument. She was also jotting down notes in a strange script where most letters were some variation of 'T', with a variable number of claw-like vertical curves for each letter. She guessed it to be the writing system they used in Netheril.
"Any luck?" she asked as she approached.
"Hmm… yes," replied the archmage while tapping her lips with her pencil.
"Strange language."
"This is Loross, the High Tongue of Netheril… I suppose teaching it to you all will be useful."
"The letters look a little like claws."
"Yes and… well, let's just say that this alphabet is not called draconic script for nothing."
"You… are dragons real?" asked Xander.
"Yes. Some are nice, other complete jerks but with all of them, always remember one thing: they're a very old predator species. You just cannot expect them to think like we humanoids do."
"What do we do now?"
"We find a nice secluded spot and we teleport on site," she said while pointing at a string of characters on her notebook.
"You told us you didn't have any precise… those inscriptions are math, right?" asked Cordy. "You did something like calculate the longitude and latitude of the place."
"Exactly."
Officially, the place was just a small mine subject to much sneering on the part of the officials who processed the concession in Lima. Those officials thought that the gringos were really stupid and that there was nothing worth extracting there. The way they had set up their affair was so amateurish that it could only comfort them in this opinion.
Had they listened to some stories of the old people from the area, they may have changed their minds… but they were modern, rational men and they scoffed at the old stories. Had they sifted through the old archives from the time of the Spanish conquest, they may have wondered why Pizarro had gone against his love of riches and ordered the old Incan tunnels in that area collapsed, despite rumors about a fabulous treasure. He had even decreed that anyone reopening them would be executed… but again, the bureaucrats were busy men who worried about the present. They had no time to wonder about the past. All they saw were the dollars the gringos had spent for a valueless piece of land.
Little did they know that this particular affair had been directed with great care, to be sure that they would be the ones handling the case… because they were modern, busy men with no time to wonder about the past. The gringos who had acquired the place were much more than they seemed. If you managed to unravel the smokescreen of the amateurish mining venture, you followed a complex trail of shell companies that ended in the Pentagon.
Knowing this little detail, the rather rigid stance of the middle-aged man who observed a bas-relief was better understood, despite his civilian clothes. He had been called in recently, after the scientists and minimal security initially assigned to the site had bitten off a lot more than they could chew.
At first, it had just been the old Incan tunnels, or rather underground maze. They had encountered some Indiana Jones-like mechanical traps but nothing careful progression couldn't overcome. The bas-reliefs they had found here, like the one he was observing, had already gotten the scientists all giddy. They followed the usual style of Incan art but their theme was not usual. There were many carvings of a goddess with pointed ears teaching men about agriculture.
No, the real problems started later, once in the 'Atlantean' part of the tunnels, he thought as he resumed his walk, making sure to follow the marks that would prevent him from getting lost in the labyrinth.
He couldn't deny that the Incas were good builders. He could see how their asymmetric stonework had managed to endure despite earthquakes, often faring far better than European-inspired constructions. The great subterranean hall he was entering now… it had no equivalent.
He placed his hand on the stone. He knew it to be so smooth and the walls so perfectly aligned that you could have a laser raze the surface from one end of the hall to the other. There was also the fact that the stone wall was not made of several pieces. One of the scientists had told him that the only explanation was that the builders of this place had some way to make diorite – one of the hardest rocks in existence – liquid.
He looked at one of the vats lighting the place. A bright, blue-white flame was rising from it. Twenty of those had lit up when the science team first entered the hall. Later, they had managed to discover that the flames were actually some kind of hologram, shedding light, but no heat.
Finally, his eyes fell on the reason he was there. There was a broken metal statue near the far end of the hall, in front of a big metal door his demolition experts were still looking for a way through. The door was part of the problem. It was made of some kind of black metal. They had managed to get enough of a sample to analyze it and the results had left the scientists in awe.
He wasn't sure what 'stable trans-uranic element' meant but he knew that a tungsten sabot round from the team's anti-materiel rifle had barely managed to scratch the door. He knew that it was made out of an alloy of iron, vanadium and that new element. He knew that that metal had insane heat dispersion and mechanical resistance properties. Without surprise, one of the eggheads had immediately nicknamed it adamantium after the super-metal from the X-Men stories.
The Spaniards may just have seen an obstacle but… if we could find how to produce that thing and put it on tanks...
The Spaniards. His men had removed the corpses but they had found dead conquistadores in the hall, their bodies crushed. The reason why had very quickly become evident when the twelve-foot-tall statue guarding the door had animated with the clear intention of squishing them. The scientists had barely managed to retreat inside the Incan tunnels where the… automaton could not follow them. After that, he had come with soldiers and enough firepower to destroy the thing.
We still needed more for that than we would have needed to destroy a pair of tanks. That thing ate four M136 missiles and God knows how many AP rounds before going down. Four HEAT M136.
He understood why when he was able to examine the statue. It was made of solid steel without any moving part. He had no idea how it could move or how it was able to breathe out that hemotoxic gas. What he knew though was that the thing had not been like some of the creatures he had fought over the years. It was not malevolent, just a machine doing what it had been programmed for. And his bosses wanted the technology that created it.
"Dr. Burkle," he said to the young woman walking in his direction.
"Colonel McNamara, I think I have something," she replied.
He nodded and followed her toward the table where her computer was resting. He had met Winifred Burkle for the first time in 1996. The promising PhD student had been on a very short list of 'need to have' people for the clandestine agency he belonged to, the Initiative. With an interest in both science, history and fringe theories, she was just perfect. Thankfully, the background checks had raised red flags concerning one of the UCLA professors she was studying under. They had discovered that Oliver Seidel had been killing students that could overshadow him by using a portal ritual. He had executed that bastard personally and… well, he might consider the young scientist the daughter he never had. In two years, her fresh outlook on the whole supernatural problem had done a lot to improve the Initiative's efficiency.
"You remember what I told you about how the magical events we observed provoked strange electromagnetic signatures? This place is a real goldmine for that. Look."
She displayed several graphs. While he had no idea of the high level physics behind it, he had enough tactical awareness to realize the thing she wanted him to notice: all the signatures had common patterns.
"I could cite you Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters but I think you see what I mean. This place… it's as if after years of looking at badly scrawled gibberish we just found neat handwriting and consistent grammar."
"The inscriptions we found are tied to it?"
In various places of the hall, they had found engraved writing. Given the number of different signs – most being some kind of variation on the general T shape – and repetitions, they thought they were facing an alphabetical language. Without anything to compare it to, though, they were stuck.
"I think it's used as a kind of computer code. The golem also had it, in a compartment in its head, just as the Jewish folklore would have it. With that last point, my gut feeling is that this place gives a lot of credence to the theory that modern magic is the legacy of an advanced civilization."
"I see… did you make any progress in dating this place?"
"No. Maybe the rooms beyond the gate will tell us something more, though."
Almost a mile above the people of the Initiative, three people materialized on a small, rocky outcrop. Cordelia immediately leaned against the cliff at her back, not wanting to even think about the long fall that would await them if they were to slip.
Xander risked a glance down, then another up. Just as he thought, the place needed climbing equipment to be reached, or maybe rappelling down from a chopper. Both approaches would, however, encounter the same issue. What Joyce was now examining was just a narrow depression in a rather chaotic cliff.
"How did you locate this place?" he asked.
"You have to play a little geometry game with some local landmarks," replied the Netherese as she used her magic to clean a surface.
She set her hands on the surface, her fingers held in a curious shape that… the words 'secret handshake' came to his mind and he understood as a rune started to glow on the surface. Without surprise, a section of rock slid back with a rumbling sound, revealing a tunnel.
Cordelia didn't wait a second and entered the place, flashlight in hand, soon followed by Xander and Joyleen. Once they were all in, the archmage let her hand rest on another plate and the rock slid back in place. Beyond them, after maybe twenty feet of level tunnel, stairs went down into the darkness.
"You didn't have any entrance at ground level?" asked Cordy.
"There is one but taking it is… unadvisable."
"Why?"
"This place was not built as a safe. I just stashed my things in the secondary upper level because I knew this place was built to stand the test of time."
"What was it… please, don't tell me it's a prison…" said Xander, feeling Murphy laughing at him.
"It is. We built it to hold an enemy that the Powers That Be barrier prevented us from properly disposing of. It cost us a lot of the resources we could have used for the colony actually."
"What k… of course that's some kind of big, ugly demon. Maybe one of those Obyrith things you told us about," said Cordelia.
"Correct," replied Joyleen. "Disturbing its sleep… would be unwise."