Chapter Eighty-Eight: 28 Days Later
Armed with our conversation and combat against the desire demon Nocnitsa, we returned to the hotel where the others were waiting. Gathering in one of the conference rooms, we explained the truth of our situation.
We were in the Fade. We had seen the Black City in the sky. The demons were warring for the territory we were sitting in. The reason it looked like a city from my world was at the whim of its ruler. That ruler was a demon called Ambition. This being seemed to be the same one that controlled the eagles that had been constantly following us around, both in the physical reality and in the Fade.
To put it another way, we were in Hell, and its denizens were restless.
Thankfully though, it was not all bad news. We had discovered a cache of very powerful weapons, after all, and the demons seemed to know nothing about them. We now knew where we were. So naturally, the first response to all of this was obvious.
Tam leaned across the conference table, seated directly opposite Dorian. The Tevinter Altus moved back slightly in his chair, as her violet eyes bore directly at him. "Can you get us home?" she asked the three mages, but did not change the direction of her gaze.
Of all of us, she was the least enthusiastic about staying where we were for even a minute longer. And it seemed she blamed Dorian, at least in part, as he had helped developed the magic that now separated her from her child. Something the Antaam of Qunandar and the entire coalition of Marcher states had failed to do.
"Yes, I can return us to Thedas," Dorian said soothingly, "And since we're in the Fade, we can go anywhere you like. The exact room we were sent from, your own city, the middle of Val Royeaux... And I can even get us back to the moment we left too."
It sounded a bit too good to be true, to my ear. The Altus reminded me of a car commercial at that moment, and I wasn't stupid enough to ignore the tiny text alongside it.
"Why do I get the feeling there's a 'but' you have left out?" I said, "Like how we're supposed to use magic when four of us are mana sponges?"
Dorian opened his mouth to explain, but Aurelia stopped him by grabbing his hand. He must've recognised that the news was best given by her.
"We can compensate for your condition by placing you as far from the edges of the spell as we can," she said, "Even so, it will take trial and error."
"What does that mean?" Julie asked, "Are we going to be bouncing around through time?"
"Pretty much," Dorian admitted, looking like he'd bitten into a lemon unexpectedly, "We'll be recreating Alexius' magic from scratch, remember? While I know all the equations, I have not yet accomplished it. It will be a matter of fine tuning the mana we put into each spell. I could do that on the first try easily... if it wasn't for you pesky Outlanders messing up the maths."
He gave me a look like I had just spilled wine down his front, though it was clearly a joke.
"We'll also need to create an artefact to channel the magic, like the amulet," Aurelia added, "That's not something we can do in a couple of minutes."
"How long?" Tam asked, impatiently.
"Two weeks if we were doing nothing else," Dorian said, "But I expect this place isn't going to let us work in peace, so if we're being realistic, a month."
"Unacceptable," Tam growled back.
"There is no other choice," Aurelia said icily, "You are not the only one separated from your family, Empress. You would do well to remember that."
Time to pre-empt the arrival of Tam's shotgun into the conversation, I knew. Normally, she was like a snowy mountain, all stately and outwardly calm. But on matters of family, she was pretty likely to send an avalanche down at you. In this case, an avalanche of buckshot.
"I'm sure you'll do it as quickly as you possibly can," I said, my tone of voice brooking no dissent on the matter.
Aurelia frowned, but nodded. Tam relaxed in her chair, seemingly placated for the moment.
Dorian pulled at his moustache in thought. "Oh trust me General, we have every reason in the world to get out of here as soon as possible," he said, "The number of demons in this place is already too many for my taste."
"And mine," Armen agreed.
There was a round of affirmative noises. The battalion of Pride demons we had seen marching through the streets had destroyed any illusion that the superiority of our firepower could last against a sustained assault. Earth bullets still seemed extremely effective against them, but even with the Coast Guard armoury in the question, we would run dry.
"We're going to need a better position than this," I said, "The hotel is nice, but we're trapped up here and can't monitor every street around us. We should move to the Coast Guard base or somewhere near it, so we can access ammunition easily and use the water to our advantage."
Leha cleared her throat to get everyone's attention. "Enough with the gloom and doom," she said, "We can get out of this. We've been up to our eyeballs in shit before, this is merely a new flavour."
"What a wonderful analogy," Dorian interrupted in monotone.
"Shut up, pretty boy," Leha said, before continuing, "Anyway, we've got a pile of nice stuff here that I'd like to take back. The mages seem pretty sure that's possible, but I gotta ask; how much exactly?" Now that was a question worthy of an answer.
The two Tevinter mages looked at each other, before Aurelia replied. "In theory, we can send as much as you want," she said, "The amount of volume we can place in a spell vortex is significant, and there's no reason we can't repeat the spell as often as we need."
Dorian winced visibly. "I would add one caveat to that, Tiberia," he said to her, "I can't recommend that we travel with a large volume or anywhere but the place we left. The magic will be difficult enough without taking half the city with us and changing the destination. It's easier for us to go back the way we came, as we can use the original spell as a beacon of sorts."
My Tevinter bride seemed to agree with that, but didn't find it a problem. "So we send what we gather back to Troy on its own," Aurelia shrugged, "There's an open hellgate on the beach we can use as the reference point. And once we have done that, we return to Redcliffe."
If Leha's eyes could light up with dollar signs, they absolutely would have. "Let me get this straight," she said, practically salivating, "We have a month to loot this place like Estwatch pirates on a rampage, and we can bring whatever we find back?"
"Yes, that is more or less what we're saying," Dorian answered cautiously, "Though I'm not sure that's wise. The demons..."
Leha slumped back in her seat, a broad smile on her face. "We're going to be so rich," she half-mumbled.
"Rich, powerful, advanced," Julie added happily, "Perhaps we'll even be able to build flying machines soon."
The idea of a Trojan Air Force touching off from an airfield and appearing over Starkhaven flashed through my mind. Prince Vael and his little bootlicks wouldn't have stood against that, I was sure. But then I recalled something.
"Might been something that comes sooner rather than later," I said, "The Coast Guard ships have helicopters on them. We could take them off and send them to Troy."
"Why not send the whole ships?" Aurelia asked.
I cocked an eyebrow at that. "You can send an entire ship?" I asked in reply.
"We could send both in one spell," Dorian replied, "Alexius brought a whole legion, remember? The volume of space you can put into a vortex really is quite large, particularly if you can measure the mana that is going to be inside it." Of course, measuring our mana was impossible, but the ships didn't have any.
I couldn't help but be impressed with the scale of Tevinter magical knowledge. None of the southern mages I knew had talked about such ideas to me. This seems almost like science rather than magic, which in truth is exactly what it is. But all of that didn't matter. It sounded like good news, and it lifted spirits immediately.
If you'll excuse the pun.
We relocated to a hotel right beside the Coast Guard base the next day, right on the waterfront. It wasn't as large, fancy or defensible as the Hyatt, but we only had to watch one direction and we had means of escape in the many small boats tied up alongside it. The ships we intended to take were right beside us too.
This building will be familiar to anyone who has visited Troy, but we'll get to that.
Still, by the standards of Thedas, we were living in the lap of luxury and we had every intention of bringing that luxury back with us. I must admit, we got rather wild with the looting.
While Dorian and Aurelia worked with some whale bone to carve and engrave the magic amulet we would need to travel back to our time, the rest of us fanned out through Boston, retrieving all sorts of useful things.
Armaments were quite naturally the first thing we wanted, and not just for our own defence.
The first week, we swept every police precinct, security company and courthouse. We hit the Federal Building, City Hall, and a auction-house for firearms too. We struck gold almost every time and filled three hotel rooms full of weapons and ammunition. Only way we could've got more was if we could somehow get the weapon ownership records out of the computers.
Leha returned to her classic role as quartermaster, keeping the two Tevinter mages company while cataloguing and sorting our finds. We had everything from the most advanced weapons of my own time to centuries-old designs that were even more primitive than the firelance prototypes that Julie had made back in Hearth.
I began to understand why all those zombie movies were so popular. The fantasy of just kicking in a door and taking stuff may seem strange to some, but once you've actually done it and found some really cool shit waiting behind said door, it's a real high. Particularly when you know what it means for your family and your country in a time of crisis.
I'm sure, dear reader, you are wondering where all the demons were? A week and no mention of them?
Well, that's the thing. During the day, we only ever saw wraiths floating around, usually acting oddly. No Shades came boiling up out of the T stations, I guess they preferred the tunnels of the subway to the street.
At night, it was a different story. We made the mistake once of going for a run after dark. It was the fourth night, and we were continuing our sweep of the Federal building. We had already cleared the obvious places and were checking office desks, managing to find a bunch of handcannons in drawers, going up floor by floor.
At around the same time we saw the original group, yet another battalion of Pride demons came marching through the downtown area. I immediately called for the lights to be put out, but it appeared to be too late. A number of the fiends looked up at us, while we stared back in near total darkness. This caused others to stop and do the same, until half the column was doing it.
We stayed absolutely still for what seemed like hours, until finally, the column resumed its march, those that had stopped running to catch up with those that had kept moving. From our position, we were able to watch them far longer than we had from the first hotel.
Though blocked by other buildings in part, we were able to track them going southwest through the Common and Back Bay, towards faint but strobing lights on the horizon. A magical battle was taking place, and given what we knew already, it seemed like the Pride demons were defending while Desire demons were attacking.
That was our impression at the time anyway. We made the decision to return to our base by sundown on every subsequent expedition after this incident, and it served us well, for a good while anyway.
Another thing we noticed after a week was that reality seemed a bit funny in the Fade, even in this realm crafted to be like Earth.
There was an ordinary summertime day-night cycle, and almost everything seemed to depend on it, but there were little things that were just... off. We noticed it first about our own bodies; our hair didn't grow and we didn't actually require sleep after that first night. When we did sleep, it was more like catching a daytime nap than a full night's rest.
Yet we were still able to eat and digest food in the normal way, and we definitely got hungry if we didn't have any. If anything, our appetites increased.
It wasn't just us either.
Nocturnal animals came out during the day. That made some sense, as they were actually spirits in animal form, but they still acted like their real counterparts in every other way. Flowers and plants didn't close their petals or leaves at night or follow the sun during the day, which was something Ciara noticed, being a keen gardener.
The strangeness of it all was curious more than irritating or concerning for me, though it was far more irritating for Tam, Julie and Aurelia. If you can't guess why, you need schooling.
With the firelances secure, we spent the bigger part of three more gathering anything else we might need or want to bring back with us. This is where we really pillaged like we were in the Armada.
The public library and the libraries of Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were the first stops, and we filled another set of rooms with books. Leha was less enthusiastic about sorting these, but we kindly kept books from sections together after her first complaint.
Of course, there was a limit to what could carry back with us in the truck and how long we could hang around in one spot safely, so we were ruthless in our choices. There was a lot of dry reading material on industrial processes, metallurgy, economics, law, etc etc. This was very much Julie and Armen's sort of thing, aside from the history and politics books.
The collection we gathered those weeks would become the seeds from which the University of Troy and the École Spéciale Militaire de Ilion would emerge, along with the far smaller collection I had already. Both are and hopefully will remain the foremost civilian and military universities respectively, though even as I write this, Val Royeaux and Markham City would contest the civilian title.
Beyond that, we had a few more things to round up. Computers, entertainment media (music, films), electrical generators, televisions, loudspeakers, expensive booze, even a bunch of cars, more fuel efficient ones than the armoured beast that the Humvee was. It was a juggling act of sorts, as no one else knew how to drive and teaching people wasn't the best idea. We got it done.
Lastly, there were the ships. We'll talk about those later.
In short, the plan was to advance our civilisation by a couple of hundred years. Needless to say, I don't think that's what Alexius had in mind when he attacked us. By the middle of the fourth week, the amulet was ready. The time to send on the bounty we had gathered and leave, or at least try, had arrived.
There was one more thing I had to do, and it might have ended up putting all of us in the gravest danger. Although Dorian would argue there were other factors, it is still something I am ashamed of, even as the prize I sought stands on my shelf as I write.
Day Twenty-Seven in the Fade.
I powered the Humvee down Route 9, west out of Boston. The armoured vehicle was full this time, no one left behind. We needed the firepower. So, five us of were in the seats, Julie was up in the roof hatch with a heavy firelance acting as a gunner, Ciara and Leha were in the opened trunk with two more, and every single one of us was in full Earth panoply.
Even Dorian had a helmet, radio headset and kevlar plate-carrier, though he did not take a firelance or handcannon and complained jokingly that it was the least fashionable thing he had ever worn. I believe him now, with a great deal of retrospective experience in the matter.
We were taking two chances doing what we were doing.
One, that demons wouldn't overrun our new base. That was a decent assumption at this point, we had kept a very strict watch with the very best optical technology at our disposal. No army of fiends came at us. It wasn't on a supply route, if you could call the path the Pride demons took at night that. The desire demons that had located us before had likely been dealt with by their enemies either, nor did they see us setting up shop.
Two, that we wouldn't die horribly in a demonic battle, which we were quite possibly heading straight for. Something that could at the very least get some of us killed. Maybe even all of us.
I had offered to go it alone, of course. A quick in and out, no screwing around. The others wouldn't have it. A mix of not wanting me to drive off and never come back, a desire to see the family home and So we locked up the hotel and got on the road.
What was it that sent us deep into hostile territory? My maternal grandparents' house.
There was nothing really useful there, except maybe an old Winchester that there was no ammo for. This wasn't the home of the gun nut side of the family by any means. But what it did have was memories. I wanted my children to know where I had come from, who their family was. There were framed pictures and photo albums that would let that happen, things far more personal than a tourist's picture of the Statue of Liberty or a wide shot of the Sahara Desert.
That was the mission.
It started well, which should've been a fucking clue.
The road was relatively clear, which was definitely not in accordance with my memories of Route 9.
"What was that?" Tam asked from beside me. I glanced at her, wondering what she was asking about before realising I must've mumbled something under my breath.
"It's nothing," I replied, "It's just that every other time I've been on this road, it's been jammed. With other cars." I always did have a habit of arriving or leaving the city at rush hour, when everyone was driving to work. My maternal grandfather might not have been a gun toting Reagan voter, but he sure she as shit swore like one when stuck in traffic.
I smirked at the memory, before dismissing it and keeping my eyes on the unreality in front of me. I was in a hostile AO, distractions could get us killed.
The journey continued, and things got weirder. For one, the blue sky had a smear of sickly green on the horizon, black clouds bubbling just within view but thankfully not moving towards us as we moved towards them.
"The Raw Fade?" I asked over my shoulder, pointing with a finger from the steering wheel.
"Looks like," Dorian agreed, his head appearing between the two front seats, "It looks like this 'Amibition' does have limits after all."
"Well, it's not like we've got anywhere else to go," I replied, "My parents live in Alexandria near DC, and most of my siblings are near there too. Another brother is in NYC. Either way, too far to drive with demons on our asses." I don't know why I was explaining this.
Maybe I was nervous. Maybe the house wouldn't be there, or wouldn't have what I was looking for, and all of this was for nothing. Or maybe I was stupidly excited to get an actual piece of my old life in my hands again, to see my birth family in something other than tiny wallet-sized pictures.
"Eh, guys, are we still going west?" Julie asked from up in the hatch, in Orlesian via the radio.
"Yeah, why?" I responded.
"The Black City is now directly ahead of us," she explained, "Doesn't that mean we've turned around?"
"The Fade is not like reality," Aurelia cut in, also in albeit accented Orlesian, "Sometimes the city moves, or perhaps we are moving towards the centre of the Fade rather than towards its edge. There are many theories about it."
Of course there were, I thought, rolling my eyes. "Nothing to worry about then," I stated, before one of the mages rattled off a few of the ideas, "We keep going."
"How much further," Leha complained, in Common, "This 'trunk' is hurting my ass!" The back of the Humvee was even less comfortable than the seats inside it.
"That's what you get for not bringing a pillow!" Ciara laughed, some schadenfreude kicking in.
"Not far," I said, answering my dwarva friend's question before she tossed Ciara off the back of the moving vehicle, "We're going to Natick. Two towns over." By car anyway.
We kept driving on. There was more traffic, sitting in rows as if frozen in time. If they had been properly parked it would've been a problem, but the brakes of the cars weren't on and we could just nudge them out of the way with the Humvee.
It was like something just beamed the drivers out and stopped the momentum of the cars. The ones that had been on the slopes of hills had already rolled by gravity, crashing into each other or the barriers long before we arrived. If only that was the full measure of the damage we were seeing.
"Look at that," I said, as we passed by a car that had been thrown upside down somehow, "Doesn't look like it was a crash. No tire tracks."
There was a smear of black ichor on the other side, only noticeable after moving by it. Something had squashed a Shade or two on that spot.
"It was picked up and thrown," Tam agreed, "Pride demons?"
"A range of types could have done it," Aurelia said, "Any other signs of fighting?"
We turned a corner and found the site of a massive fire; cars, demon corpses and trees all turned to carbon and ash. Whatever did it had to be a very major demon, or many lesser ones working together. Fuck.
"Yeah, plenty," I said, "Looks like we're passing the front lines."
"Yet no sign of the combatants," Dorian mused, his voice low, "They must've heard us coming and are waiting to see what it is." I was inclined to agree.
"Julie, shoot the entire magazine through that firelance if you see so much as a mouse," I ordered, "Don't worry about ammo. Feed them the lead in buckets." Magic wouldn't be an issue for her, naturally, but I didn't want anything with claws getting close to us. The armour was thick enough to withstand a lot, but our mobility was what would save our life if shit really hit the fan.
"Not a problem" Julie said back to me, clearly of the same opinion about the issue.
Yet despite our readiness, no attack came. No demon came lumbering or running out of the buildings or trees to smash us, nor were spells aimed our way. The signs of battle were absolutely everywhere though, with stalagmites of ice impaling unrecognisably dead fiends, more burned sections, more tossed cars and trucks, and Wraiths haunting the corners.
Death stalked the Fade as much as it did the real world.
We made it to Natick.
My grandparents lived in a forest area near a large pond and a lake, just off Route 9. They were tidy people, and the houses around there were just as tidy. Colonial wooden-built types, painted blue with high, sloping dark-grey roofs. The sort of people that lived here were usually well-off families and retirees, for whom the disorder that seemed to engulf the Fade version of the town would've been totally alien.
There wasn't very much damage once we turned off, which lightened me up a bit. It occurred to me right then and there that we had made another assumption; that the house we were going for was still standing. Looking at the fruit of the demon war, that had been perhaps the most uncertain one of all.
Yet it was still there. The house.
It was a two-floor building in much the same colour and style as its neighbours, just a little bigger. It had been around a while, a century at least, but it had been renovated twice that I knew of. Old style, modern convenience. The forest was directly behind it, trees overhanging the backyard. A solid white fence, foot feet high, surrounded the back half of the property too.
I parked the Humvee outside, and we all got out. I stood directly in front, in the perfectly cut lawn, enraptured by the sight of it. No one disturbed me, seeing I needed a minute. My insides churned. I hadn't felt this homesick for a year at least. I had been too distracted by everything that had happened since our defeat at the hands of Gaspard.
"Looks rich," Leha remarked.
"They did pretty good," I replied, not annoyed at all that someone had woke me from my standing slumber, "My grandparents, I mean. Not as good as my brother. Oh, they were way more proud of him than me."
"Why?" Ciara asked, genuinely confused.
"He became a banker," I replied with a shrug, "I became a soldier. Twice, in fact. I went back in after my degree, became an officer."
My elvhen little sister gave a snort in reply. "Doesn't sound very impressive to me," she said.
"Bankers earn far more silver," Leha explained.
"Far, far, far, far more," I added for clarity, "Let's go in."
I made for the fence at the side of the house, rather than the front door. This triggered a cough from the Tevinter Altus.
"Wouldn't it be easier to use the front door?" Dorian asked, pointing at the entrance in question, "This doesn't look like a particularly secure building."
"You'd be wrong then," I replied, getting to the fence and reaching over it to unlatch the gate on it, "My grandparents' car isn't here, so I'm assuming they were out whenever the Fade took this place or copied it or whatever. It has an alarm that will sound very loudly if we try and break in. But I know where there is a key."
Everyone shut up and just followed my lead after that. I opened the gate to the backyard and led them through. I spared a moment to look at the dog house that sat in the corner at the back. Normally, on opening the gate to the backyard or appearing at the fence, you'd be received by a very energetic German Shepherd, trying to lick you or bite your face depending on whether you were friend or intruder.
I found the key to the rear door in the downturned fist of a stone gnome statue, one of considerable size and weight, and got inside. The alarm immediately complained, not sounding so loud that every demon in the county could've heard it, but warning me to input the necessary code.
It took me a moment to get to the box and remember the numbers, but I got it right the first time and was able to wave everyone else inside.
Andraste, even the vague smell of sugar, bread and lemon-scented floor cleaner was the same. At this point, I couldn't help myself. I wandered over to the coffee machine, like I had just come back from a deployment and was doing the traditional rounds through the family homes. I set out cups for everyone, because God help you if you failed to deliver coffee to anyone alive in the house.
The electricity was still running and the machine did its work.
The others just watched me as I waited for the water boiled and filled a large jar, like I was crazy but they didn't want to say anything. This annoyed me, but I waited until I had filled each of the cups to three quarters with coffee, and added my own milk and sugar, before addressing the others.
"What is it?" I asked.
"You seem too relaxed all of a sudden," Aurelia said, with her customary ruthlessness, "You were razor sharp out there." She gestured out the back door.
I saw her point at once. "You're wondering what the hell I'm playing at," I said, "Whether or not it's safe here."
I held up the coffee. "I never thought I would get to drink a coffee in my grandparents' house again," I continued, "I'm going to enjoy the moment. In fact, we should probably take some time before we go back. We're out of the way here, we have cover from the forest..."
"You want to take time to appreciate where you are," Dorian finished for me, "I probably would too, if I was trapped on a strange other world for three years with no way home, but this is more than a little reckless, don't you think?"
I couldn't deny that. I was being stupid... but I couldn't just loot the place rapidly and leave. Instead, I looked to Ciara and Armen, "We've got plenty of daylight left," I said, "Would you two mind taking watch on the front and back of the house? We'll be an hour at most."
The two elves nodded, and split up, Armen going to the front and Ciara to the back. They both took their coffee with them, Armen piling in the sugar quickly beforehand.
"Follow me," I said to the others.
I brought them into the living room. The place had been fixed up; new wooden floors, fresher white paint, new light fixtures. Still, the rest of the furniture was familiar.
By sheer force of habit, I slumped into my grandfather's couch chair in the corner. This was something I had done even as a child. I would run into that room and steal his seat, and he would pretend I had been too fast for him. A negotiation for the return of the chair usually resulted in some candy.
I felt like my body weighed twice as much as it actually did, like I couldn't get up out of the chair if I wanted to. Annoyed by this, I drank my coffee in silence.
"Sam, are you alright?" Julie asked, serious concern in her voice.
That shook me out of my nostalgic melancholy enough to realise what it was. "No," I replied, "I thought I had put all this behind me. Clearly I was lying to myself."
There was an exchange of looks. "Do you want to return to Earth?" Aurelia asked, so bluntly that the others winced.
I examined my feelings on that, finding the answer strangely quickly. "No, actually," I said, "I'm more invested in Thedas now than I ever was in Earth. It's just that my family back there have no idea I'm still alive... They probably think I'm dead, my body dumped in some hole in the desert."
The thought sickened me even more now that it had been spoken, and I drank again for relief from it. That didn't work. My desire to stay for long here turned on a dime, and I decided we needed to get the hell out of there. "I'll be back, you guys stay here," I said, "Everything in the bookcases is what we want, but there's some photo albums and other things that I'll go grab."
There was relief on many of my companions' faces. "Realised just how dangerous the situation is?" Dorian asked, "If so, I'm glad to hear it. Convincing you to leave was looking like an even more dangerous proposition."
I had not understood just how I was affecting the others. I must've been a wreck. I cursed under my breath, and looked at them all.
"Realised that being here isn't what I really want," I replied, "And what my priorities ought to be. I'll be back in a few minutes."
I went upstairs to my grandparents' room, which was perfectly made up, and began digging through the closet. I found the photo albums, flicking through them. My grandmother had pictures of everyone in the family she had ever met, but particularly of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I found the latest album and my heart seized with something like... terror.
It was obviously from after I had been taken to Thedas. The first few pages were all of me as an adult. A picture of me outside the recruiting station. When I got my first leave from the Army. Several pictures on deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, donated from my buddies in the unit. My graduation after getting. My return to the military, to OCS. Induction into the special UN unit for Syria... I could go on.
So many memories, forgotten behind a wall of newer ones and huge exertions.
The rest of the album was of my sibling and their children. They had grown up in the years I had left. I couldn't believe it. Samantha, the niece named after me, was a damn teenager now, and was big into cross-country sports and skydiving it seemed. My brother and his brood had increased in number; it seems he had twins, a boy and a girl. The boy was named Samuel.
I let the album drop to the floor and hung my head. I felt like my heart was being torn off.
"That bad?" came a voice from the door.
I looked up, and to my surprise, Mariette stood there. That was just... strange.
"Crying?" she frowned, "I didn't think you were the type."
I touched my eyes and found that they were wet. It was perhaps an exaggeration to say I was outright crying, but I was on the verge of it. How embarrassing, I thought. "Yeah, well, neither did I," I said, controlling myself and picking the albums up, "Surprised you're the one who came to see how I was though."
Mariette shrugged. "The others are terrified for you," she said, "They're afraid that they'll say the wrong thing and you'll run off, trying to find the portal back to Earth. They thought they knew you well enough, but you have looked more and more like a dead man walking, the closer you got to this place."
I scoffed. "That would be ironic, wouldn't it?" I said, "Doesn't explain why you're here instead."
"It was either me or the dwarf," Mariette smirked.
Leha's demeanour was famous even without Mariette being the Director of the OSS. "Okay, she might actually get me running for Earth," I agreed, smiling back too.
"We went through a trauma together," Mariette replied, actually answering the original question, "Something even those who love you can't even imagine. We kept each other alive at that time. It is... pathetic to see you like this. So unlike the man our entire realm respects and fears."
Understanding how selfish I was being, I straightened up. "Yeah, getting that impression," I said, "I guess I'll talk to Tam and Julie about it, when we get the hell out of here." A conversation I did eventually have, but will not recount in these texts.
"Good," Mariette said. She walked over and taking the albums from me herself, sat down on the double bed, "Are you ready to go back?"
As we were having something of a moment, the sort we had actively avoided since being drugged and stuck in a room together, I couldn't help myself. "Can I ask you something?" I said, "You haven't... You are still..." I couldn't form the rest of the sentence, so I just pointed to her belly.
"I am," she confirmed immediately, "I think I'm starting to show, actually."
"May I ask why?" I said, "Not trying to put pressure on you to change your mind or anything, but.."
"Tam argued against ending it," Mariette replied with a frown, "She is a very formidable woman."
My jaw clenched for a moment, wondering what the hell Tam might have said. "She didn't... threaten you, did she?" I asked, "Tam can be an authority when she wants something." A habit which was not helped by her crowning as Empress-President.
Luckily for us, she was almost always considerate of others... but she had a particular thing about family, and anyone related to her child was family in her eyes.
"Not really," Mariette said, "She did point out that my commission as Director depended on who the Chancellor was, and that the Impera were not likely to keep an Orlesian noble when Maya Tiberia comes to the office."
I scratched my chin. "So she pointed out that you might be jobless once this crisis is over," I thought aloud, "She does wield the truth like a knife, when she feels she needs to."
"It's the reason she's suited to her present position," Mariette grinned, "She's not wrong. I am not a baroness like my cousin. I do not have land to go back to even if I did repledge myself to Gaspard. I have no money. My parents are dead."
I exhaled through my teeth. "Don't worry about any of that, I'll find something for you," I said, "There's no need to go through... this for the sake of money, if you don't want to."
"Money was not the argument she was making," Mariette countered, "Social standing. Having a place at the table. Being known and respected and even feared."
"That matters to you?" I asked.
"I am Orlesian, what makes us superior is that we understand a great truth about the world," she responded, with no amusement in her tone, "That life is a competition. One that is harder the lower on the ladder you are. Troy is the ultimate expression of this truth; democracy formalises it. Tam quite rightly pointed out that I would be a member of an imperial household if I go through with it. It puts me only one rung from the top of the ladder."
I shook my head. "I'm sorry, but that sounds like a really shit reason," I said, "At least to me."
"I know, it's not something you could agree with," Mariette said, "If it helps, the decision is far easier because of who you are. Look at what you have accomplished in a few short years. Yet you gave up absolute power in favour of someone who is honestly more suited for it." So, she knew the coup was effectively managed by me. I should've known she would find out.
I did feel a twinge of pride swell in my chest at her assessment of me. It rallied me a little more.
"I suppose respect is a decent basis for our relationship," I mused aloud, "For love, I have Julie and Tam. For the realm, I have Aurelia, though she sees me as more of a source of genetic material."
"Lady Tiberia enjoys you, greatly," Mariette corrected me, "Though not entirely because of who you are. Certainly not in the way I did. Though maybe that was the drugs."
She was joking now. "Well, you're in a good mood clearly," I said.
"Of course I am," Mariette replied, "I got you out of the pit you were digging yourself into. That too is an accomplishment, considering how deep you already were."
Full of appreciation for her efforts, I laughed, then kissed her on the cheek for good measure. There was a brief flash of want for her and the drug, but it didn't ruin the moment. "Well done," I conceded.
And without warning, the world went dark.
At first, I thought I had been blinded by something. In a complete panic, I rubbed at my eyes and blinked rapidly. It didn't seem to be a chemical agent and they did start adjusting, which was a great relief. Mariette looked at me, with fear. No doubt I had the same emotion written all over my face.
"What the hell just happened?" I asked over the radio.
"It just turned dark," Ciara replied in a fluster, "Sun went down in just a few seconds!"
"That's never happened before," Julie said, more calm, "What's the cause of it?"
"The ruler of this realm decided to change it," Aurelia explained, "For what purpose, I do not know."
There was a noise from someone's throat, like a gasp. "Maker protect us..." Armen muttered, "The temperature... it just dropped like a stone. It's freezing out here!"
"Snow is falling," Ciara added, "The sky is full of clouds now."
I tore across the bedroom and ripped the curtains out of the way. She was right, there was snow. And it wasn't a light sprinkling either. If I had to guess, I would have said we were heading for a blizzard. We were not equipped to handle those conditions, and the Humvee could be immobilised if we didn't hurry.
"Right, we need coats," I said, waving Mariette downstairs again, "And we need to get the hell out of here."
We raided the closets of my grandparents house and those beside it for winter clothing, finding what we needed easily. In fact, the next door down even had ski gear, which we gave to Julie, Leha and Ciara, as they would still be riding where they had been before. We also stripped the beds of blankets for the latter two, so they could wrap up entirely. Lastly, we put snow chains on the tires of the Humvee, they had been stowed inside the trunk in a side box.
It took less than twenty minutes to get all of this done, and the weather was getting worse. Afraid of what the hell was going on, I ordered everyone back to the Humvee.
And shit hit the fan.
"Contact rear!" Ciara said, just as I was opening the door to climb in.
Immediately, all of us stopped what we were doing and pointed our weapons back from the vehicle. It was hard to see, the darkness had fallen completely and the snow wasn't doing wonders for our night-vision equipment. There were at least a dozen figures emerging from the trees near a house, about six houses down, with a few more coming into view.
I lowered my weapon, given what I was seeing. No one else did. "Looks human," I remarked, over the radio, "Unarmed." That was so unusual that I couldn't help but take a moment to try to understand it.
"There are no humans here, Sam," Aurelia replied flatly, "Shoot or let's go."
"The snow is getting heavy," Dorian added, "I hope this thing can handle it."
The numbers had doubled now, but they were more or less walking normally. They weren't wearing summer clothes, so it wasn't the real inhabitants of the place.
"They don't seem like a threat," I said, "But there are a lot of them."
As if they heard me, all the figures in the distance turned, directly towards us. Their eyes glowed through the falling snow, and their mouths dropped open. A great moan went up, not only from those we could see, but from every direction. The fucking things were all over the forest. And the ones down the road charged straight at us, still moaning.
A lurch of disgust filled me. I thought I knew what these were. I didn't even bother giving the order to fire. I brought my weapon up again and opened fire. By the time I did, everyone else had already begun. Tracers filled the air as we began picking and downing targets, the muzzle flashes reflecting light back off the snowflakes in the air. The figures went down as easily as ordinary people... but their numbers were growing.
As my weapon clicked dry.
"Aurelia!" I shouted over the bursts coming from Julie up in the Humvee's perch, "Waste the fuckers!"
My Tevinter companion lifted her naginata for a second, before waving it down at the targets. Three points of light fanned out, one heading for the middle of the road which was now full of both corpses and shambling demons, the other two going wide left and right. Three balls of fire erupted like volcanoes on contact with the ground, consuming half the street. Houses and trees caught like matches, spouting black, acrid smoke.
I shielded my face from the light by holding out my gloved hand over my night vision goggles, the sudden brightness of the incendiary attack giving me after-images of human-shaped shadows on my vision. The others did not have the same instinct, and tore off their goggles as the enhanced images were too bright. I cringed, knowing that they must be hurting.
All except Aurelia, who was holding her head high and looking to me for approval. I patted her on the shoulder in response, and moved back to the front door of the vehicle.
"Everyone back in the Humvee," I ordered. I was obeyed instantly, and the moan went through the air again around us, as stragglers began clawing their way over the fences of yards. They were finally close enough to get a good look at.
Zombies, walking corpses in other words but with a strange twist; they were all dressed in various forms of Thedosian fashion. Peasants, soldiers wearing armour from a strange variety of eras, nobles and rich merchants in ridiculously unsuitable formalwear for a snowstorm.
"Lesser hunger demons," Dorian said from behind my seat, "Tend to show up in big numbers during Blights, because of crop failures and the like. Needless to say, I'm glad we're in these thick false-furs." By false-furs, he was referring to the winter coats we were in.
"They feed off of the feeling of hunger?" I asked, turning on the engine.
"No, they feed off of the actions of the hungry," Aurelia said, "Acts of gluttony sustain them in normal times, but when the peasants starve, they begin eating anything to fill their bellies. Including each other, if the harvests fail repeatedly."
Deciding that was a great cue to get the hell out of there, as I had no desire to be eaten like I was an extra on an episode of the Walking Dead, I looked straight ahead to the road and slammed my foot on the gas. A couple of the hunger demons managed to get their hands to the door, only for their grip to be torn away as the Humvee ran away at a speed that no biological creature could maintain for long on mere legs.
The snow made turning a bitch, and I had to slow down so I didn't slip in the snow and slush, but the snowchains were doing their job and we didn't crash. I got us back to Route 9 and put us heading east back into bizarro-Boston. The weather was now a deep-winter night, as opposed to the deep-summer day we had experienced twenty-seven times already.
"We're going straight back," I said, "Back to base then back to our time. You mages cool with that?"
"We're ready," Aurelia replied.
"Are we going to bother sending everything back first?" Tam asked, "This place seems to be more dangerous now."
"We have to," I said, "The things we've gathered might be vital to the war effort against the demons."
"Not to mention the survival of our civilisation," Julie added, "The number of discoveries alone..."
We were about halfway to our destination, when we got pre-warning of what was going on ahead. Flashing light alerted me to activity ahead, the strobes visible at the top of trees and on the sides of buildings. The battle we had wanted to avoid was directly ahead of us, somewhere.
Trying to keep us quieter than whatever was happening ahead, I slowed the vehicle, moving along behind stopped cars before popping out from behind them. I was rewarded with the sounds of battle. Magical discharges cracked in the air, and the smell of burning once again filled our noses.
We crested a small hill, and found the way before us blocked. Two full battle lines of demons were arranged against each other across an intersection.
Facing in our direction, Pride demons of various sizes were in a loose order, probably to give themselves the room to swing the giant mago-electrical whips they were wielding. The lightning produced by each of their strikes electrocuted a half dozen of their opponents. They were two ranks deep, and any stragglers that got through were immediately handled by the rear rank.
Between us and them were Shades, in close order, trying their best to get close to the far larger Pride demons, where their claws could deal damage. Rage demons were flinging fire from seemingly random positions behind that, targeting both Shades and Pride demons.
Here and there, desire demons darted about, trying to find a weakness to exploit and occasionally finding one, only to be grabbed up and smashed.
The falling snow was being blown away from the site, and the half a foot of it on the ground was already soaked with blood.
"Think they'll get out of our way if we use the horn?" I asked sarcastically, as the battle continued, "What am I talking about? This is Boston, they're probably all Massholes."
"They'll turn on us," Tam said, with absolute certainty, "We are alien to this place, nothing unites a disunited land like a common, foreign enemy."
"That's not exactly how it works with demons," Dorian countered, "But at the very least the thralled Shades and the Desire demons controlling them will attack. And there are a lot out there."
There was a ruckus in the back seat area, as someone moved awkwardly. "We blow straight through," Julie said, crouching from the hatch, "It's the only way."
Biting my lip, I examined what was in front of me, and couldn't see any other way. Yet the plan sounded utterly disastrous. The Pride demons had enough bulk to stop the Humvee, maybe, provided we were slowed by those they were fighting.
"Target the Shades and anything else fighting the Pride demons," I said to Julie, "Do you see the gap between them, just by the traffic lights? I'm going to drive us through it, but we'll only make it if we're going fast enough that the Pride demon's second line can't react. If we hit enough of the small ones, we're not going to escape, got it?"
She nodded and returned to her standing position in the perch, an act which was followed by the sound of her cocking the heavy firelance.
"Leha, Ciara, don't shoot at anything after we've passed by," I ordered, "We don't want to provoke them into coming along with us. Give it a few minutes, and only if they're still following do you shoot. Got it?"
"I hate the Fade," Leha sighed, before actually responding, "Got it."
Dorian appeared between the front seats again. "Have you done something like this before?" he asked, "Because I'm not too proud to admit I'm worried right now."
"No," Tam answered from beside me, "But it will work." She glared at the Altus, a clear message to get back into his seat and let me handle it. Last thing we needed was a crisis of confidence from anyone. Dorian did as she wanted, but exchanged a glance with Armen, who shook his head, a warning to not interfere.
I took in and expelled a large breath. "Right," I said, "Three, two, one..."
Once again, I hit the gas pedal and the engine rumbled to life, the battle's noise once again drowned. The downslope of the hill compensated for the reduced grip the tires had, and we sped forwards as quickly as I hoped. My heart pounded with excitement at the first step going so well, even as Shades and Desire demons turned with heads cocked at the strange roar now growing louder from behind them.
Julie waited to fire until she was sure to hit, but sent long bursts into the rear of the Shade battle line, sweeping the weapon from side to side just enough to clear one and a half times the space we would need to get through. The Desire demons simply bounced away, taking the hits badly but still very mobile.
We hit the flat intersection and the Humvee shook as it ran over the corpses of the dead, many of them bursting rather than standing against the force. The snowchains were able to grip flesh as well as snow, and no doubt a rain of offal was falling in our wake. We hit maybe two Shades head on, the engine screaming in complaint as they tumbled underneath the vehicle.
Unfortunately, steering while riding over fresh corpses mixed with snow was another matter. The gap between the Pride demons veered away, and instead, we were heading right for two Pride demons. I grit my teeth, trying to change our direction enough without skidding us off the road entirely.
It wasn't working, and our forward momentum was going to carry us straight into their huge hands. Julie, by now, had ducked back down into the hatch for her own safety. There was no shooting our way out of it. Sheer terror stopped my breathing, as I saw the Pride demons moving to stop us... Or so I thought.
A second later, we were past the battle, the Humvee chomping through the snow, the only noticeable damage being a headlight which was now projecting yellow instead of white light because of the Shade blood that was coating it.
I managed to breath again, but terror was replaced by utter confusion.
"What the hell just happened?!" I asked at the top of my voice, "They had us!"
"They got out of the way," Tam replied, in disbelief, "The Pride demons let us through."
"Impossible," Aurelia said, "Why the hell would they?"
"Fear of injury?" Dorian suggested, "We are in a heavy piece of metal going very fast."
"I know what I saw, saarebas, they deliberately parted," Tam growled back, "What does it matter? We're through, you just concentrate on getting us back home!"
The early morning of the twenty-eighth day.
We spent the rest of the journey in complete silence, our pace increasingly slowed by the snowdrifts that were building minute-by-minute. The mysteries of the place were truly piling up too. There were so many questions now. Were the Pride demons on our side for some reason? Why? Had we only survived here because we had been allowed to? If so, for what purpose?
But in the end, no one spoke because it didn't really matter. The moment of redemption had arrived. We were going home.
We just about made it into the Coast Guard base before it was too difficult to drive, and we had already prepared to leave as soon as we got back. We parked the Humvee next to the rest of the vehicles we were planning to take back, themselves loaded with useful or desirable items, and hopped out. There were piles of things under tarps that we had set up, now covered with snow. We made a circle in the middle of them, and Aurelia summoned a magical flame to keep us warm and let us see straight.
The wind had picked up and was blowing in from the harbour, which made us very glad for the ski goggles and scarves, but even with radios and the shelter provided by the boat workshop, it was hard to hear each other.
"What do we send first?" Aurelia said, her voice raised.
"We might want to send the least valuable things first," Dorian responded, "We haven't tested the amulet on an actual spell, only the pathways." This was gibberish to me, but he was talking to someone who knew what he was going on about at least in theory.
"The ships," I said, "They're got interesting technology but we're not going to be able to use them on Thedas for long. Send them first."
Aurelia nodded, a gesture that was almost hidden by the bulk of her protective clothing, before looking to Dorian again. "Wide portal?" she asked.
"I should think so," he said, "Better to know how stable a vortex we can create for one. We might have to send everything else in smaller ones, that might take longer than we have."
Aurelia gestured for everyone to follow her and extinguished the magical flames, stepping out of the circle. She brought us to the edge of the workshop again, in sight of the piers where the two Coast Guard ships were floating, now surrounded by bobbing ice. The wind was far more powerful here, but we all stood our ground. She reached for the amulet and held it up, as it shook in the air.
Green Fade energy swirled as the portal vortex opened above, the wind being sucked up into it, The amulet stopped moving and glowed green.
"Physical location, good. Temporal location, good," Aurelia muttered, her radio catching the words, "Now!"
The vortex suddenly fell straight down, enveloping the ships. From top to bottom, they both disappeared into it, until the vortex even cut into the pier and took that along as well. It took a full minute for the magic to complete, but in the end, the ships were gone. With the vortex gone, the wind hit us again, and we shifted ourselves behind the workshop again for shelter.
"Did it work?" Julie asked.
"It did," Aurelia said, clearly triumphant.
Of course, what she didn't know is that she had dumped the ships on the beach at Troy, not in the water. Their keels were both broken, they would never be able to go to sea even if we dug them out of the sand. But she was essentially right, the magic had worked.
"The hotel next," Dorian said, "Doing individual rooms is going to take too long, it's best if we hurry. That level of magic has probably attracted every demon in this realm. We're going to have visitors in not too long."
"Great," I said, "Get working on it, the rest of us can set a perimeter." The two Tevinter mages walked off towards the hotel, flinching when they once again felt the full force of the wind.
We guarded, the way into the base, while the time magic was spun again and again. The hotel went through, then the car park, both spells taking chunks out of the waterfront and being filled again by the harbour as soon as they were complete.
One by one, the stacks of equipment were sent next, testing that we could move smaller volumes too. In truth, doing so was far more accurate.
The hotel would be deposited on a hill north of Troy, fully intact but nowhere near the target destination at the beach. At least, by the standards of a human being. I am writing this chapter from a room inside it, as it has become our family retreat.
The car park would land on the Isle of Dogs, requiring us to build a barge to ferry the vehicles across the bay. The stacks of equipment on the other hand would land on the beach by the Fade rift, exactly where Aurelia wanted all of it to land.
Lastly, it came to us.
"That's the last one," Dorian said, "Only us now."
"Contact!" Ciara shouted, "Shades!" The staccato of firelances confirmed her statement, soon followed by the sight of her and Leha trudging through the snow as fast as they could. Behind, Shades glided over the top of the powder. At least a hundred of them.
The rest of us formed a firing line and began targeting the demons, bringing them down while the two others escaped their clutches.
"Where did these come from?" Leha asked, half-shrieking as she struggled to move on account of her height.
"Subway," Mariette replied, "Must be. But why now?"
Pain shoving its way to the forefront of my attention, my legs were kicked out from under me and I was dragged face first through the snow for a few seconds. It felt like a year, and my eyes burned with the cold. Whatever was doing it had grabbed me by the neck of my coat. I tried swinging wildly, hitting the offending wrist as hard as I could, but it wasn't forceful enough for me to get free. But it did stop the dragging, at least.
I was flipped onto my back, and in the dark, snowy night, Nocnitsa stared down at me, forked tongue flickering over her lips. "Good evening, boy," she mocked, "Did you miss me?"
Anger electrifying me, I kicked as hard as I could at the nearest leg, which buckled and sent her sprawling into the snow. Thinking more clearly, I reached for a combat knife at from my belt and stabbed towards her, but she rolled out of the way.
"Nice try," she said, no longer mocking but angry.
Out of the swirling snow came the butt of a firelance, connecting with the demon's chin. Nocnitsa span on the spot, a taloned hand going to where she had been hit. Tam appeared holding her shotgun, and pumped three buckshot shells into the demon's face. There was no ignoring that wound, and the devastated corpse slumped into the snow.
"Thanks," I said, but Tam ignored me, instead grabbing the same spot on my coat and dragging me backwards through the snow. My orientation changed. Tam was dragging me down a surviving pier, some of the others following us. There were more Desire demons on the rooftops, and the Shades were boiling into every space between the buildings I cared to look at.
They were marshalling the numbers for an assault that not even our weapons could deal with, and we needed Aurelia's magic to get home, so she couldn't use it to repel the assault either. Worse, the harbour was now frozen completely, and the Shades were beginning to venture out onto the ice.
"Fuck," I said, as Tam finally pulled me to my feet at the end of the pier, "We need to go now!"
"We do have eyes," Armen replied flatly.
"Your wish is my command," Aurelia said, all sarcasm. She shoved all the non mages to the middle of our group, and the mages to the edges. We had forgotten that those of the Outlander blood needed to be away from the edges of the coming vortex, but she had not.
The Shades shrieked and charged, but Aurelia was directly in the line of fire for us to shoot them. But apparently, it did not matter.
"Too late, you filth," she declared, and raised the pendant.
The vortex sparked green smoke around us, and once more, we fell through time and space.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry for the lateness of this, but on the bright side it's a longish chapter.
Special thanks to Ganoniscanon for his reviews, they really encouraged me.