A/N: I'm still not getting too many reviews...hmm, maybe not so many people
are reading my story now, maybe because it is a sequel...oh well. Has
anyone else noticed that there are a lot of people getting sucked into
Tortall stories out there now?
***In Tortall***
The Midwinter festival had just ended and everyone in the Palace was sitting around lazily relaxing. Of course, they deserved the break. It had been hell trying to make up a peace treaty with the Scanrans and several more small wars had taken place in the process. King Jonathan had called it aggressive negotiation...ya right.
The king, Alanna, Raoul, George, Numair, Sir Myles, and Dom were sitting around a large, circular, wooden table, taking a short break before the Scanran "diplomats" arrived tomorrow and were discussing what they should do when the time came. Jonathan was sure that an agreement could and would be made, but the rest of them, especially Alanna, weren't so optimistic. George was visiting from Pirates Swoop and had decided to be present during the talk to back up his wife and to keep her calm, and was having a light conversation with Raoul about the punishment of pick- pocketing when something very odd happened.
Numair went still and his jaw dropped slightly. A voice had just appeared in his head, "Numair...Numair, can you hear me?" Dom, who was seated in between him and Raoul, stopped eavesdropping on Raoul and George's conversation and stared at the mage who had begun to look around wildly for the voice he was hearing.
Numair turned and looked at Dom as the voice subsided, "Did you hear that?"
The knight continued to stare strangely, "Hear what?"
"That voice?"
"Uh..." Dom's gaze shifted around nervously, "Noooo...Numair, are you feeling all right? Because you could always go back to your room if you're tired..."
"No no, I'm fine...what was that noise?" The mage shook his head and returned his gaze back to the paper he was looking at.
Then the voice appeared again, "Damn it Numair answer me!!"
Numair fell backwards out of his chair and thought, "Who are you?! What are you doing in my mind?!?" Everyone in the room turned to stare at him. George was smirking but everyone else seemed quite concerned.
Dom got up, lifted the mage's chair back up, and helped Nuamir to his feet, "Hey, what's wrong?"
"Shhh!! I can't hear the voice!!" The mage put his hands over his ears and focused hard on the noise, which was beginning to sound familiar.
"Finally!" Yes, he had defiantly heard that voice before, but who... "Numair, it's Tom..."
Numair's hands dropped and he said out loud, "Tom!?" He received more strange looks. He began to think in his head again, "Tom? What on the world...? How could you possibly...?"
He heard Tom sigh in exasperation, "I'll tell you all about it later, but right now, we need you to do something for us..."
"What is it? Are you in trouble?"
"Well, yes, sort of. We need you to open up the transdimensional portal again..."
"What?! Why? Certainly you are not thinking of coming back here?!"
"No! Not us!! There is an immortal in our world!"
Numair went silent. his brain seemed to momentarily shut down. To the rest of the people in the room it looked as if he had fallen asleep upright with his eyes open. Dom prodded him gently, "Um, Numair...?"
The mage let out a cry of disbelief causing Dom to fall back in surprise and land in Raoul's lap, "Oh gods!!"
Alanna stood up followed quickly by Jon, "What in Mithros's name is the matter Numair?!"
The mage jogged towards the large wooden double doors in the front of the room, "Tom...immortals...open portal..."
Alanna gave Jon a very confused look and everyone else in the room quickly followed the mage out of the room.
Numair bounded down the stairs of the entrance hall. If Tom was telling the truth, if it really was Tom..., and an immortal had somehow appeared in their world, the results could be disastrous! The voice popped back into his head, "Well of course I'm Tom, Numair! Who else would I be?"
Numair let out a breath of air in surprise. He had forgotten that Tom was still inside his head, "Sorry Tom. Now, you will have to bring the Immortal to the place where the portal opened up in your world three years ago..."
"You mean San Francisco?!"
"If that is where it opened up before, than yes, I suppose I do..."
When Tom answered back it seemed slower and a little shaky, "Can't...can't you open the portal up somewhere closer to our house, that isn't half an hour away?!"
"I'm sorry, but that would be impossible. I need to open it in the exact same spot or else I would risk opening it in some public place. Just think if I opened it up in the middle of a market! Anyone would be able to cross through!"
"Ya, I suppose the last thing we need is a door to Tortall opening right in the middle of a mall during After-Christmas sales..."
Numair ignored the last bit of what Tom said and rushed into the courtyard and Tom began to speak again, "Okay, listen, we are going to need about forty-five minutes to get to the place we were before..."
Numair nodded even though Tom wouldn't be able to see him, "That's perfect. It will take me a while to set up the spell anyway...You must be careful, do not let to many people from your world see the immortal!"
Tom made a noise of understanding and disappeared from Numair's head.
George was the first one to catch up with the mage and walked up to him curiously to watch Numair mutter things under his breath and draw out markings of the freshly fallen snow, his breath coming out in puffs of vapor and dissolving into the air.
The ex-thief leaned against a tree, "So, Nuamir. What'cha doing?"
Numair looked up from what he was doing distractedly, "Somehow an immortal has entered into another dimension and seems to be going after Tom and his friends, probably because of their relationship with our own dimension..."
George looked confused, "Wait? An immortal is going after who now?"
"Tom..." Alanna appeared behind her husband followed shortly by the rest of the group. Sir Myles was last and rested against another tree gasping for breath.
George turned to her as Numair went back to muttering, "Who's that?"
Alanna grinned, "Oh, I forgot! You weren't in the Palace at the time were you?"
"At what time!?"
"When the three children from the other dimension came into ours. Remember? I told you about it when I got back home..."
Recognition filled George's face and he turned back to watch Numair, "Ohhh...ya, okay."
Jon rolled his eyes and turned back to the Palace, "Let's say we all head back to the Palace and finish our planning like we were supposed to be doing in the first place." He turned to Numair, "By the way, what are you doing?"
Numair glanced up, "Opening up the portal..."
"What?!" Jon whipped around and stared at the mage who was trying to avoid his gaze, "Why in the world would you want to do a thing like that? Don't you remember what happened last time they came?!"
"Yes, but it's different this time..."
"How?"
Numair hesitated for a moment before saying, "They don't want to come back...they want to send an immortal back..."
A look of shock passed over the king's face that was quickly replaced with a look of curiousness, "But how could an immortal get into their world?"
"I don't know...but I suppose that we will soon find out..."
The king sighed, "Great...one more thing to deal with..." He looked wearily around the group, "Well, come on then...we best start working again...Numair, you can stay here and let some guards know when you are going to open the portal...I don't want a dragon or anything like that hurtling through that thing and destroying the Palace..."
He walked back inside, followed closely by Alanna, Raoul, George, and Sir Myles but Dom lingered behind for a few minutes, and after the rest of them were out of earshot, turned to Numair, "Do you think they are doing okay?"
"I'm sure if anything horrible had happened, Tom would have said so..."
Dom nodded and strolled back into the Palace with a strange, anxious look on his face. It would really be nice to talk to Tom, Phi, and Alex again and see how they were doing. He shook his head as he re-entered the negotiation room. It was too bad that Kel was off on some mission instead of back home. She would have wanted to say hello.
***Tom, Phi, and Alex's World***
Tom snapped out of his trance and looked at Phi and Alex who were staring at him expectantly. Phi piped up, "Well?"
Tom sighed and walked over to the front door, picking up his coat on the way there, "Well we're going to San Francisco..."
Alex kept staring, "Tom...we would never be able to get there with that...thing trying to get us! You hear that?" there was a loud bang on the window, "It hasn't gone away!"
"I know. That is the whole point. We are going to lure it into the portal and send it back to Tortall where it belongs. Come one, grab your jackets...we have to get going. We have..." he checked his watch, "forty- four minutes to get there..."
Phi leapt up and bounded up the stairs. A moment later she stuck her head out of her bedroom, "How are we gonna get there?"
Tom stopped putting his jacket on. He had forgotten that their parents were gone and had taken their car. They could use Alex's car but it was parked in his garage and they wouldn't have enough time to get it with the immortal dive-bombing them. "How many people can fit on your motorcycle Phi?"
"Um...two. I suppose three could squeeze onto it but it wouldn't be at all comfortable..."
"Good enough!"
Phi disappeared back into her room and came down a minute later with boots on and she had changed from her black jacket to the brown leather one she used on her motorcycle. She grabbed her helmet on the side table and waited impatiently as Tom scribbled down a quick note to their parents in case they came home and Phi and Tom weren't there.
The three gathered by the door and Phi stared out the peephole to see if there were any signs of the horse thing standing right in their way, "Okay, my bike is on the side of the house..."
Tom nodded, "On the count of three then...one...two..."he unlocked the door, "...three!..."
They burst out of the house and scrambled to the side yard. Phi jumped in front, followed by Alex then Tom. Alex wrapped his arms tightly around Phi's middle and tried to make room for Tom who was seated on the very edge.
The creature screeched and flew up in the air. Phi knocked out the kickstand, gunned the motor, and flipped down the visor on her helmet, "Hang on!"
She peeled out of the driveway and roared down the middle of the street, trying to get the motorcycle to go faster as the immortal swooped down upon them. Phi swerved out of the way just in time and drove faster down the street and turned out of the neighborhood and onto the highway.
Alex cried out as she dodged cars and swerved through the quickly moving traffic, trying to avoid their pursuer without getting killed.
People honked their horns and swore out the window as the three shot by, then screamed as the horse thing dove after them, beating the air with it's wings so hard that it caused gusts of wind to push cars off the road and into the ditches that lined the freeway.
Tom nervously checked his watch as he clung onto Alex for dear life and shouted, "We have thirty-one minutes left!"
Phi swore as she dodged a truck and after ten more hectic minutes, reached the San Francisco Bay. As they grew closer, the horse thing seemed to pick up speed and by the time they were over the Golden Gate Bridge, the immortal was going about seventy-five miles per hour.
Phi desperately gunned the engine again and broke eighty miles per hour as the passed over the middle of the bridge and broke eighty-five as they swerved off the main road onto an off-ramp.
She had managed to squeeze right through the tollbooths but the horse just went right through it as if it were made of paper, it's red eyes glowing and teeth shining eerily in the mid-morning light.
By the time they made it to Golden Gate Park, they had five minutes left and hurdled down the street into the parking lot. Phi slammed on the breaks and stopped for a moment, trying to remember which way to go.
Tom called out, "Go left! Left!"
She started the motor up again and drove straight into the forest, narrowly missing being torn to shreds by the horse. Tom glanced at his watch and gasped. They had exactly thirty seconds left until Numair opened the portal! He began to count down out loud, "...ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one!"
A bright light erupted from the middle of nowhere and the air seemed to split into. A rift in space ripped open and the three screamed as they hurdled, for the third time through the transdimensional portal, and into Tortall.
A/N: OK, they're finally in Tortall...yay! Come on people! Please, if you read this, review! I don't care if you even write anything, I just want to know how many of you are actually reading my story, because if no one is, there is really no point in me continuing to write more...
***In Tortall***
The Midwinter festival had just ended and everyone in the Palace was sitting around lazily relaxing. Of course, they deserved the break. It had been hell trying to make up a peace treaty with the Scanrans and several more small wars had taken place in the process. King Jonathan had called it aggressive negotiation...ya right.
The king, Alanna, Raoul, George, Numair, Sir Myles, and Dom were sitting around a large, circular, wooden table, taking a short break before the Scanran "diplomats" arrived tomorrow and were discussing what they should do when the time came. Jonathan was sure that an agreement could and would be made, but the rest of them, especially Alanna, weren't so optimistic. George was visiting from Pirates Swoop and had decided to be present during the talk to back up his wife and to keep her calm, and was having a light conversation with Raoul about the punishment of pick- pocketing when something very odd happened.
Numair went still and his jaw dropped slightly. A voice had just appeared in his head, "Numair...Numair, can you hear me?" Dom, who was seated in between him and Raoul, stopped eavesdropping on Raoul and George's conversation and stared at the mage who had begun to look around wildly for the voice he was hearing.
Numair turned and looked at Dom as the voice subsided, "Did you hear that?"
The knight continued to stare strangely, "Hear what?"
"That voice?"
"Uh..." Dom's gaze shifted around nervously, "Noooo...Numair, are you feeling all right? Because you could always go back to your room if you're tired..."
"No no, I'm fine...what was that noise?" The mage shook his head and returned his gaze back to the paper he was looking at.
Then the voice appeared again, "Damn it Numair answer me!!"
Numair fell backwards out of his chair and thought, "Who are you?! What are you doing in my mind?!?" Everyone in the room turned to stare at him. George was smirking but everyone else seemed quite concerned.
Dom got up, lifted the mage's chair back up, and helped Nuamir to his feet, "Hey, what's wrong?"
"Shhh!! I can't hear the voice!!" The mage put his hands over his ears and focused hard on the noise, which was beginning to sound familiar.
"Finally!" Yes, he had defiantly heard that voice before, but who... "Numair, it's Tom..."
Numair's hands dropped and he said out loud, "Tom!?" He received more strange looks. He began to think in his head again, "Tom? What on the world...? How could you possibly...?"
He heard Tom sigh in exasperation, "I'll tell you all about it later, but right now, we need you to do something for us..."
"What is it? Are you in trouble?"
"Well, yes, sort of. We need you to open up the transdimensional portal again..."
"What?! Why? Certainly you are not thinking of coming back here?!"
"No! Not us!! There is an immortal in our world!"
Numair went silent. his brain seemed to momentarily shut down. To the rest of the people in the room it looked as if he had fallen asleep upright with his eyes open. Dom prodded him gently, "Um, Numair...?"
The mage let out a cry of disbelief causing Dom to fall back in surprise and land in Raoul's lap, "Oh gods!!"
Alanna stood up followed quickly by Jon, "What in Mithros's name is the matter Numair?!"
The mage jogged towards the large wooden double doors in the front of the room, "Tom...immortals...open portal..."
Alanna gave Jon a very confused look and everyone else in the room quickly followed the mage out of the room.
Numair bounded down the stairs of the entrance hall. If Tom was telling the truth, if it really was Tom..., and an immortal had somehow appeared in their world, the results could be disastrous! The voice popped back into his head, "Well of course I'm Tom, Numair! Who else would I be?"
Numair let out a breath of air in surprise. He had forgotten that Tom was still inside his head, "Sorry Tom. Now, you will have to bring the Immortal to the place where the portal opened up in your world three years ago..."
"You mean San Francisco?!"
"If that is where it opened up before, than yes, I suppose I do..."
When Tom answered back it seemed slower and a little shaky, "Can't...can't you open the portal up somewhere closer to our house, that isn't half an hour away?!"
"I'm sorry, but that would be impossible. I need to open it in the exact same spot or else I would risk opening it in some public place. Just think if I opened it up in the middle of a market! Anyone would be able to cross through!"
"Ya, I suppose the last thing we need is a door to Tortall opening right in the middle of a mall during After-Christmas sales..."
Numair ignored the last bit of what Tom said and rushed into the courtyard and Tom began to speak again, "Okay, listen, we are going to need about forty-five minutes to get to the place we were before..."
Numair nodded even though Tom wouldn't be able to see him, "That's perfect. It will take me a while to set up the spell anyway...You must be careful, do not let to many people from your world see the immortal!"
Tom made a noise of understanding and disappeared from Numair's head.
George was the first one to catch up with the mage and walked up to him curiously to watch Numair mutter things under his breath and draw out markings of the freshly fallen snow, his breath coming out in puffs of vapor and dissolving into the air.
The ex-thief leaned against a tree, "So, Nuamir. What'cha doing?"
Numair looked up from what he was doing distractedly, "Somehow an immortal has entered into another dimension and seems to be going after Tom and his friends, probably because of their relationship with our own dimension..."
George looked confused, "Wait? An immortal is going after who now?"
"Tom..." Alanna appeared behind her husband followed shortly by the rest of the group. Sir Myles was last and rested against another tree gasping for breath.
George turned to her as Numair went back to muttering, "Who's that?"
Alanna grinned, "Oh, I forgot! You weren't in the Palace at the time were you?"
"At what time!?"
"When the three children from the other dimension came into ours. Remember? I told you about it when I got back home..."
Recognition filled George's face and he turned back to watch Numair, "Ohhh...ya, okay."
Jon rolled his eyes and turned back to the Palace, "Let's say we all head back to the Palace and finish our planning like we were supposed to be doing in the first place." He turned to Numair, "By the way, what are you doing?"
Numair glanced up, "Opening up the portal..."
"What?!" Jon whipped around and stared at the mage who was trying to avoid his gaze, "Why in the world would you want to do a thing like that? Don't you remember what happened last time they came?!"
"Yes, but it's different this time..."
"How?"
Numair hesitated for a moment before saying, "They don't want to come back...they want to send an immortal back..."
A look of shock passed over the king's face that was quickly replaced with a look of curiousness, "But how could an immortal get into their world?"
"I don't know...but I suppose that we will soon find out..."
The king sighed, "Great...one more thing to deal with..." He looked wearily around the group, "Well, come on then...we best start working again...Numair, you can stay here and let some guards know when you are going to open the portal...I don't want a dragon or anything like that hurtling through that thing and destroying the Palace..."
He walked back inside, followed closely by Alanna, Raoul, George, and Sir Myles but Dom lingered behind for a few minutes, and after the rest of them were out of earshot, turned to Numair, "Do you think they are doing okay?"
"I'm sure if anything horrible had happened, Tom would have said so..."
Dom nodded and strolled back into the Palace with a strange, anxious look on his face. It would really be nice to talk to Tom, Phi, and Alex again and see how they were doing. He shook his head as he re-entered the negotiation room. It was too bad that Kel was off on some mission instead of back home. She would have wanted to say hello.
***Tom, Phi, and Alex's World***
Tom snapped out of his trance and looked at Phi and Alex who were staring at him expectantly. Phi piped up, "Well?"
Tom sighed and walked over to the front door, picking up his coat on the way there, "Well we're going to San Francisco..."
Alex kept staring, "Tom...we would never be able to get there with that...thing trying to get us! You hear that?" there was a loud bang on the window, "It hasn't gone away!"
"I know. That is the whole point. We are going to lure it into the portal and send it back to Tortall where it belongs. Come one, grab your jackets...we have to get going. We have..." he checked his watch, "forty- four minutes to get there..."
Phi leapt up and bounded up the stairs. A moment later she stuck her head out of her bedroom, "How are we gonna get there?"
Tom stopped putting his jacket on. He had forgotten that their parents were gone and had taken their car. They could use Alex's car but it was parked in his garage and they wouldn't have enough time to get it with the immortal dive-bombing them. "How many people can fit on your motorcycle Phi?"
"Um...two. I suppose three could squeeze onto it but it wouldn't be at all comfortable..."
"Good enough!"
Phi disappeared back into her room and came down a minute later with boots on and she had changed from her black jacket to the brown leather one she used on her motorcycle. She grabbed her helmet on the side table and waited impatiently as Tom scribbled down a quick note to their parents in case they came home and Phi and Tom weren't there.
The three gathered by the door and Phi stared out the peephole to see if there were any signs of the horse thing standing right in their way, "Okay, my bike is on the side of the house..."
Tom nodded, "On the count of three then...one...two..."he unlocked the door, "...three!..."
They burst out of the house and scrambled to the side yard. Phi jumped in front, followed by Alex then Tom. Alex wrapped his arms tightly around Phi's middle and tried to make room for Tom who was seated on the very edge.
The creature screeched and flew up in the air. Phi knocked out the kickstand, gunned the motor, and flipped down the visor on her helmet, "Hang on!"
She peeled out of the driveway and roared down the middle of the street, trying to get the motorcycle to go faster as the immortal swooped down upon them. Phi swerved out of the way just in time and drove faster down the street and turned out of the neighborhood and onto the highway.
Alex cried out as she dodged cars and swerved through the quickly moving traffic, trying to avoid their pursuer without getting killed.
People honked their horns and swore out the window as the three shot by, then screamed as the horse thing dove after them, beating the air with it's wings so hard that it caused gusts of wind to push cars off the road and into the ditches that lined the freeway.
Tom nervously checked his watch as he clung onto Alex for dear life and shouted, "We have thirty-one minutes left!"
Phi swore as she dodged a truck and after ten more hectic minutes, reached the San Francisco Bay. As they grew closer, the horse thing seemed to pick up speed and by the time they were over the Golden Gate Bridge, the immortal was going about seventy-five miles per hour.
Phi desperately gunned the engine again and broke eighty miles per hour as the passed over the middle of the bridge and broke eighty-five as they swerved off the main road onto an off-ramp.
She had managed to squeeze right through the tollbooths but the horse just went right through it as if it were made of paper, it's red eyes glowing and teeth shining eerily in the mid-morning light.
By the time they made it to Golden Gate Park, they had five minutes left and hurdled down the street into the parking lot. Phi slammed on the breaks and stopped for a moment, trying to remember which way to go.
Tom called out, "Go left! Left!"
She started the motor up again and drove straight into the forest, narrowly missing being torn to shreds by the horse. Tom glanced at his watch and gasped. They had exactly thirty seconds left until Numair opened the portal! He began to count down out loud, "...ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one!"
A bright light erupted from the middle of nowhere and the air seemed to split into. A rift in space ripped open and the three screamed as they hurdled, for the third time through the transdimensional portal, and into Tortall.
A/N: OK, they're finally in Tortall...yay! Come on people! Please, if you read this, review! I don't care if you even write anything, I just want to know how many of you are actually reading my story, because if no one is, there is really no point in me continuing to write more...
