The world was oddly blurry. Axl blinked several times, and the blur resolved itself into a face.
Domina was looking down at him, her gleaming green eyes filled with amusement. She smiled, exposing canine teeth that were just a touch too long.
"You've gotten clumsier with age," she said, her voice full of laughter. Then she gripped his arm, helping him sit up.
"Clumsier?" Axl reached up to feel his head. "Ow!" Even with his helmet, he had a tender spot on the back of his head. "What happened?"
"Well, you found the entrance to the hidden place… with your head," she answered, amused. "Fortunately, it's a hard head. How are you feeling?"
"Awful, but I'll live." Axl levered himself to his feet, glancing around, and blinked. "Wow… how long was I out?"
They were in a cavern of green ice. It looked very unnatural, with smooth walls and a very flat floor. It looked like the inside of an egg. Several pieces of equipment had already been set up, which was rather surprising. Morton and Shannon were with them to handle that part, but it should have taken several hours. Had he been unconscious that long?
"Long enough." Domina said with a shrug. "We're almost ready for the ceremony." Axl nodded, standing up with a wince.
Looking into the walls, he saw the people they had come to free. The ice was clear enough to show them clearly. There were two tiny faeries, male and female, barely the size of his outstretched hand. One was a Windpuff faerie, and had wings that looked like they were made of milkweed down. The other was a more typical faerie with butterfly wings. In direct contrast to them was a giant of a man. He was wearing black, blue and red armor, and holding a tremendous axe in one hand. He had long back hair, and his face was regular, handsome, with bronzed skin, but tusks jutted from his lower lip. It was an interesting appearance. The last person in the wall was a tall, slender woman with short, spiky raspberry-blond hair and milk pale skin. Her clothing was tight fitting, cream colored leather armor. A scimitar was strapped to one hip, a whip to the other.
Axl frowned, though, as he noticed something else about the room.
"The ice is already cracking?" He stepped forward, delicately touching a spot just in front of the Windpuff faerie. The green ice was indeed fracturing, and as he watched, a few more cracks spiraled outward. "Damn. This isn't good, we're late."
"The pattern isss done." Ysp announced, and Axl turned back to look at the centre of the cavern. Ysp was carefully bottling up a vial of dragon drool. It had been stored within the cavern itself, and preserved with the same magic that held the people in stasis. The volatile liquid had been used to eat a pattern into the floor.
It was not a pentagram or anything else recognizable. If anything, it resembled a very complex mathematic figure, with equations running along the outer edges. In fact, they were equations written in symbols any mathematician would have recognized. Although he would have been at a loss as to what they were describing. Magic was like any other natural force in some ways, and math was a potent tool to describe and control it.
Axl stepped into the centre of the diagram, planting his feet carefully. He closed his eyes, and called up his personal power in a wave of green. The scent of fresh cut grass perfumed the air, and a cool minty flavor filled his mouth. He had always tasted and smelled magic.
With his new processing power, he could control the magic with equations. When he had been human, he'd had to prepare them ahead of time, but now he could create them on the fly. It was a vast advantage over his original body, although the power was derived from Gaia, not himself.
Axl shuddered as he spun the power out like spools of silk. It settled into the equations drawn into the floor, then activated in a rush. The walls in front of the figures cracked with a sound like shattering glass, then crumpled like rotten cloth. The figures inside collapsed, falling out through the holes.
They all watched, interested, as they began to stir.
"Ohh…" The woman pulled herself up, rubbing his face with one hand. Her name was Namali, Axl remembered. The two faeries fluttered weakly, pulling themselves out of the ice. Their names were utterly unpronounceable for humans, so they were just called Tip and Pip. The giant slowly pulled himself up, groaning softly, and looked at Axl with burning red eyes.
"Master?" He asked, his voice deep and guttural. Axl tilted his head, remembering… his name was Azak, and he was a troll/human hybrid. Axl had received his service in return for something only a wizard lord could do. He'd given the man a new face. Axl could vaguely remember what he'd looked like before that, and it had been very attractive to trolls. But Azak had the mind of a man, and had wanted to join human society.
"Welcome back, Azak." Axl stepped out of the pattern, and took his old friend's hand with a smile. "Welcome back." Tip and Pip fluttered over to him, one landing on each shoulder. Axl smiled at them, enchanted all over again by their delicate, immortal beauty. Namali stretched, and turned around to look at her broken prison. Tiny white, feathered wings fluttered on her back. Namali was an Alactus, a breed of creatures that had given rise to later myths about angels. The stories weren't at all correct, though.
"Well, we're ready." Axl smiled. "Domina can catch you up later." As a dhampir, Domina had some psychic abilities. She would be able to implant the modern knowledge they would need into them. "Let's go." It would take them quite a while to get out of the mountains, and time was of the essence.
Axl had a definite feeling they were late.
A week later…
"Well, finally." Duhallan wasn't looking too pleased when the group raggedly filed in. Axl lifted an eyebrow at him.
Their headquarters had changed a bit while they had been gone. A huge, holographic map had pride of place in the room. Axl had seen that type before, and knew it could display the globe and zoom in on specific areas. The Hunters used that sort of map to plan out strategies. As for the rest of the room, they had picked up ratty couches, chairs and tables. Not many people were in, though. Axl guessed that Duhallan was keeping everyone busy.
"Finally? Has something been going on that requires my attention?" Axl asked, as Shannon slumped into a couch with a groan. She and Morton had suffered the worst, and would need some time to recover.
"You might say that. The Twisted Lands are reasserting." Duhallan said sourly, and Axl winced.
The Twisted Land was not something he liked to think about. A relic of an ancient battle he had waged against a rival wizard lord, it had never healed despite his best efforts. In that long ago time, Axl had been forced to accept that some things just could not be fixed.
"I suppose that's not a huge surprise," Axl said with a sigh. "Last to go, first to come back. Where is it now?"
"A valley in Greece." Duhallan used the map to zoom in on the area. Axl could see the constantly changing patterns in the map, and the holographic generator flashed a warning about corrupted data. Duhallan shut that off with a snort. Everything about the Twisted Land was corrupted.
"Greece. Wonderful." Axl sighed. He was in for another long trip. "Is Allandra around?" She was a shuttle pilot at Hunter HQ, and they would need a shuttle to bring all the needed equipment.
There was no way the reassertion could be stopped. The forces behind the reappearance of the Twisted Land were just too immense. But without any attention, the effect could spread uncontrollably. They needed to make sure the valley made a smooth transition into… whatever it would become. There was no telling what that would be. The only certainty was chaos.
"Okay, I'll handle it. Namali, you want to come along?" If things went badly wrong, her powers could come in handy.
A little while later, they were in Greece. The valley was a barren, unpleasant place, uninhabited by any humans. Or any animals, for that matter. Even the plants looked sickly, as though they knew they were in a bad location for life. Axl and his team ignored the forbidding nature of the place, and set to work. After planting rods at the edges of the valley, they got down to the work of bringing magic back to the land.
"Get a load of THAT!" Axl said gaily, leaning over the edge of the floating platform. The railing held him in, but the platform itself was tilting alarmingly. "That's how it's supposed to look!"
The reintegration of the Twisted Lands was going perfectly. Pieces of stone were already breaking off and starting to float, but the effect was definitely under control. Allandra was strapped tightly into place on a chair, typing minute corrections into a terminal. The rods in place around the valley vibrated and glowed with each new correction.
The result was a carefully controlled destruction of reality. Which wasn't good, but was a thousand times better than the uncontrolled destruction that would have happened without the rods.
"Master, perhaps you should tie yourself in?" Namali offered, slightly concerned. Axl paid no attention.
"I remember that formation! Isn't it amazing how the morphic fields are reasserting themselves?" Axl had faith in Allandra's work, and no particular concern about problems. It had escaped him that Allandra didn't have that much faith, or she wouldn't have been wearing her harness.
"If the Master would please tie himself in?" Namali said a little desperately as a tremor went through the valley. She was busy tying a coil of rope around her own waist. She could fly, but in the Twisted Land gravity could become unstable, so flying wasn't the best alternative. "The valley is a bit unstable."
"Well, yes, it's supposed to be." Axl replied absently, leaning over a bit. "And down there-"
The sudden shockwave took him by surprise. The platform was tossed back and forth like a ship on heavy seas. Allandra concentrated grimly on her typing, and Namali was kept from falling overboard by her rope.
Axl wasn't so lucky, and yelped as he went over the side… then yelped as stinging pain lashed his chest. Namali's whip curled around him, flaying him through his armor but keeping him from falling.
"Master, may I respectfully say that you are an idiot?" Namali said respectfully, and Axl had to laugh.
"I guess I am. Sorry Nam!" She shook her head, and reeled him in hand over hand, until he could grip the railing and pull himself in. "Where's that rope you mentioned?" They would be here at least a day, and there was no point in repeating his mistakes.
A little while later, at Hunter HQ…
"X, we just picked up a massive energy surge." Alia frowned as she worked with her console. "It's very odd… not like anything I've seen before."
"Hm?" The blue hunter peered over her shoulder. He had stopped by to share some donuts with the navigator. "What on earth is that?" His experience was greater than Alia's, but he had never seen readings that far off kilter before either. "Maverick activity?"
"I don't know…" Alia chewed her lip. "It seems too powerful even for them. Some kind of natural phenomenon?" X frowned, looking at the readings.
"Perhaps… but it's all centered on that valley." He thought for a moment, then came to a decision. "I'll take Zero and go check it out. It might be important. So many weird things have been going on lately." Alia nodded.
"Good luck, X."