A bit late, today. Sorry about that! Between Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I was distracted and delayed.
In other news, I was able to NaNoWriMo this month. I passed 50k earlier this week, but I'm not quite done. I still need an ending! I'll be back to my more laid back writing routine and writing chapters of Mortified in December.
Thank you for your reviews! That's definitely a thing I'm thankful for. :)
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Chapter 172: Tollgate
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"Go," said Inanna.
"I cannot, great lady," tried Danny. Again. He was wondering if he was pronouncing something wrong. "This gate has a toll. Look." He gestured at the anemic, sputtering portal framed by the gate's arch. "Not even I could go through that, as it is, small as I am."
"I see that," said Inanna, sharply, through gritted teeth, "and so you have said. I say to you: pay it, and go through."
"Great lady, if I were to do that, you could not follow."
Perhaps if they had been farther from the Core, or if Inanna hadn't been demanding answers about why the destroyed ghosts' ectoplasm had all streamed one way, or if the Core wasn't urging him on, Danny would have been just fine with that. Sadly...
"Do you mean to say that you may pay this toll, and I cannot?" The way Inanna stressed the 'you' and 'I,' and the Sumerian words she used for them, denoted the relative positions and power of Inanna and Danny- or at least the way Inanna perceived them.
Danny thought she wasn't that far off.
"Not at all, great lady," said Danny, trying to be diplomatic, "but the toll here is one of power, of magic. It is of the body and blood of my race, of us in the great below. You are of the race of heaven, great lady, and your power, while greater, surely, does it not have its differences? I am not a wise man, nor am I very learned. I beg you, if I am wrong in this, forgive me. I only thought to speed you on your way."
"As you should," said Inanna, somewhat mollified.
Danny was only beginning to pick up her moods behind all her power. The later had at first blinded his less-than-fully-recovered supernatural senses. He was glad they were working at all, given all the strain he'd been under since his core was first damaged; he needed all the advantages he could muster.
"Now, show me how this 'toll' works."
Danny nodded. This would be unpleasant. How unpleasant, he wasn't sure. He'd never done this before. He floated to the gem set above the gate. This one was dull green. After a split second of hesitation, he put his left hand on the stone, and felt around the edge.
He found the sharp ridge quickly, slicing open two of his fingers. He hissed. It was sharp enough to cut, but not so sharp that it didn't hurt. He felt ectoplasm, drip from the wounds for a moment, then the green stone brightened as it drank the ectoplasm, and, with it, a portion of Danny's energy. The portal grew. He took his hand away, and, only a heartbeat later, it flickered, and shrunk again.
"This is the least stable portal on this path," explained Danny. "It must be fed, to make it usable."
Inanna clicked her tongue. "Stand aside."
Danny floated to the side. Inanna approached, and tapped the gem with her rod. The gem flashed, and the portal grew again.
She smiled proudly. "Learn from this," she said. "There is nothing in the lands above or the great below that is impossible for me. When I say something shall be done, it is done. When I say to the wind to blow, so it does, when I say to the mountains to move, so they do. When I say to a gateway to open, it shall. Now, I say to you: go, and do not think to flee."
Danny nodded, and ducked through the gate. The ride was even rougher than the gates before, Danny felt like he was a ball in an uneven tube, bouncing and scraping off the walls.
He caught on one part of the tunnel, and held on tight. He waited, and waited, until Inanna bounced by, just as undignified as he had been. His fingers caught on the breastplate, and he smoothly phased it off. With the damage it had suffered earlier, he was able to collapse it enough to squeeze it into himself.
He was getting full.
It took him a few minutes to catch up to Inanna again, but he managed to eel past her. When he finally emerged from the other end of the green gate, he felt beaten, sore, and scraped raw, even though there weren't any new marks on his skin.
He sighed, and looked for the next gate, the yellow gate, while he waited for Inanna to come out. It was nearby, easily visible, the distance between them shorter than for the others. That was good. Interestingly, it was also upside-down with respect to the orientation of the green gate. He tilted his head. It felt weird, but didn't really matter, just like in space in the material world, 'up' and 'down' were local concepts in the Infinite Realms
The bracelet next.
Ereshkigal's voice was faint. He was farther away from the Core, now. He nodded in agreement, even if he didn't understand why the bracelet was more important than the lapis rod.
It is easier. You will have to take the dress as well, eventually.
The last was tinted with amusement, and Danny cringed, embarrassed. Danny didn't really want to take Inanna's dress. He was fairly certain she wasn't wearing anything underneath. He was well aware of the tactical and practical considerations, of the need to get rid of all Inanna's weapons, and he wasn't about to ignore that, or let his culture's nudity taboos get in the way.
Inanna tumbled out of the portal. Danny waited quietly while she regained her bearings, and then as she discovered that her breastplate was missing.
Was it just him, or did he detect some fear behind her annoyance? Regardless, she covered it up well.
She was also much more suspicious. It was, Danny supposed, too much to hope that she was so careless, or gullible that she would trust him without question.
"We are more than halfway there, great lady," said Danny, hoping to appease her somewhat. "There are only three more gates, and then we will be as close to the Core as one such as myself can go." Danny could hardly believe it himself. He had four artifacts, four weapons of unbelievable power, inside him. His torso was actually rather crowded. He would need to find a different place to hide the next one.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, great lady."
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The 'flavors' of the four artifacts were swirling uneasily inside Danny by the time he and Inanna got to the yellow gate. Or were they colors? He might have been getting a little overwhelmed. A little. The wisps overloading him, and the effects of the amulet might have been good practice for this.
Which made Danny wonder, was everything that happened to him truly a matter of chance, of coincidence, and bad luck, or was there some kind of design in there? A plan, a hand of fate?
Well, that last would most likely be Clockwork. So... Maybe? Maybe not?
Probably not. If Clockwork had actively planned for this, he probably would have made sure Danny was more prepared. Because one thing he wasn't, was prepared.
You are doing fine, little love.
"Is there any special thing wrong with this portal?" asked Inanna as they drew close.
Danny looked at her, quizzically. "No, great lady. It is just like the first one. It, ah-"
There was a prod on his mind.
"It is just a little more... hungry, I suppose? It, um, I have noticed that I lose more things when I go through here."
Inanna made a sour face.
"I will go through first, this time," she decided, and immediately matched her actions to her words.
Danny dove after her, and streamlined himself to keep up with her. He kicked off his boots. They'd dissolve away from his body. He thought he understood what Ereshkigal had wanted him to do, by telling Inanna that this portal was greedy, and it was a good idea. It would be better to show her that he had lost something, too, that it wasn't just her things.
But he still had to take the bracelet from her, before they got to the other end of the portal. He reached out, just far enough to touch her trailing hand. He willed himself to go faster, and, at last, his fingertip brushed the gold bracelet, and he phased it off. He almost fumbled it, but he caught it, and phased it into his thigh. It only just fit, and it felt odd when he flexed his muscles. It was also hot, like the Amulet of Mattingly had been.
They came out of the portal. As before, Inanna took a few minutes to recover from the journey, then she noticed that her bracelet was gone.
Danny thought she had been angry before. He was wrong. She was angry now. She was furious. It burned within her, and it was strange, so strange, to see that kind of incandescent anger and no brightening aura, no flaring eyes, no fangs, no claws, no warping of the air with power, no flicker of ice, or fire, or swirl of ectoplasm. It wasn't that he had never seen humans get angry before, but this was the wrong context. Inanna had too much power, and, despite himself, despite what he knew, intellectually, emotionally, he read the sorceress more as a ghost, than a human.
Inanna was about to turn that anger on Danny. She had her rod raised up, pointed at him, her eyebrows drawn down, into a deep scowl, and her lips drawn back in a snarl.
Then she saw his feet. She hesitated, pressed her lips together, and lowered the rod.
"When I rule this country, I shall have these wretched things destroyed and replaced," she announced. "This is no way for a civilized person to travel."
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Getting the rod would be tricky. Inanna had a direct hold on it, and it tended to be just slightly harder to phase things out of someone's grasp than off of their bodies. People had more attention on things they were holding than things they were wearing. Normally, Danny wouldn't worry about it, the effect was negligible, barely noticeable. But Inanna was an outlier.
Danny was worried. Maybe it would be better to go for the dress first, even if he didn't want to.
No, this is the best place to take the rod.
Okay, but why?
The orange gate, as you think of it, is associated with lightning. The stone it uses was mined from the Mirror Mounts of Lei, which lie beneath the Great Storm That Has No End. Thus far, you have chosen the best order. The most auspicious, some might say. Your instincts are good, little gatekeeper.
And the rod generated lightning. He wasn't sure how the orange stone's origin would help, exactly. He wasn't entirely sure how the stones in the gates were connected to the portals themselves. Maybe the stone would absorb the lightning, if Inanna chose to use the rod?
They got to the gate. Inanna once again went first, this time without warning. Danny wondered, did she think that the order she went in would change whether or not she lost something? Did she think he had something to do with it? She must suspect that last, at least. She wasn't stupid.
Danny once again dove after her, as quickly as he could. She had more of a lead on him than before. He would be hard pressed to catch her. Still, he grew, closer, closer, his hands were almost on the rod, just one more reach and-
-and they tumbled out of the portal. But Danny was too close, too committed, his hand closed reflexively around the rod, and the difference between his momentum and Inanna's ripped it out of her hand. Danny spun end over end, stopped himself, and, before Inanna had finished gasping, he rocketed back through the orange gate.
He came out of the portal at speed, and turned around again, just in time to see Inanna emerge. He skirted her grab, she was too disoriented from the portal to catch him, and went back through.
This time, he managed to stick the rod into his leg, phasing it into his femur. He came out of the portal, found the next one, the last one, and flew towards it, putting on as much speed as he could.
The red gate, the last of the Tantric Gates, hung in front of him, impossible to miss. It would be impossible for Inanna to miss, too. He'd have to use it to get the dress off of her, and then hope there was something near its other end that he could hide in, or behind. There was nothing near either end of the orange gate.
Danny looked over his shoulder. Inanna was just coming out of the orange gate, and she was mad. Her face was blank, but Danny knew she was mad, he could feel it. He kept flying. He had to get to the red gate before Inanna. To do otherwise would be death, he was sure of it.
He had to get there, he had to get there, he had to get there, oh, Ancients, he could feel her getting closer. He was so close, but so was she. Desperation let him put on another burst of speed.
He almost made it.
Almost.
Inanna collided with him when he was a hair's breadth away from the portal, and they tumbled through, tangled with each other.
This wasn't what he had planned, but Danny's plans often (always) fell apart, so he usually was not particularly attached to them. He took advantages and disadvantages as they came, and did the best with what he had.
What he had right now was several handfuls of a loose, flowy dress that was largely attached to a very angry person who had conquered several countries and could do magic. He shoved as much of it as possible into himself, sometimes pushing it through the other artifacts. That would probably come back to bite him later. But for right now, he was only focused on getting Inanna's dress off of her.
Okay, that sounded wrong.
The dress tore at Inanna's shoulder, where the fight with Bilulu had put a rip in it. Danny tugged harder, evading Inanna's grasping, but confused, hands. He put out his feet, and sunk his toes into the 'edge' of portal's 'tunnel.'
Inanna, still at the mercy of the portal's current, was swept on, her dress still in Danny's grasp. He tried to push the rest of the dress into him, but lost his uncertain grip on the side of the portal. He fell out of the portal, only to be seized by Inanna.
She held him up by the neck, and looked him up and down.
No, she had grabbed his neck, but she was hanging by it, not holding him up. He was holding her up. She was no longer flying under her own power. She was falling, using Danny and various mental tricks to stay in place.
Danny immediately stopped flying, turning himself into dead weight, not wanting to give Inanna any help. He succeeded in dropping down a few feet, but Inanna quickly compensated. She then grabbed an edge of the dress Danny hadn't been able to get inside himself, and pulled. Danny shrieked, his scream edging into the inhuman harmonics of his Ghostly Wail. He wasn't strong enough to pull that attack off, however, especially not past the pressure of Inanna's hand. It didn't even make Inanna wince.
The scrap of dress tore, but the majority of it stayed in Danny. Inanna stared at the scrap of cloth in her hand as it disintegrated, then returned her attention to Danny. She shook him, hard, and shouted something incomprehensible.
Well, it probably would have been perfectly understandable to a native speaker of Sumerian, but Danny wasn't one of those. He just wasn't good enough at Sumerian to keep track of what she was saying under these circumstances.
It didn't really matter. It was probably all curses and threats anyway.
She shook him again.
"Traitor! Where is the Core?" she demanded, harshly.
Danny, naturally, knew exactly where the Core was. Just as naturally, Danny pointed in the exact opposite direction.
"Now, what should I do with you, little traitor? Hm? I have a special death already playing in my head."
Danny twitched his head minutely. He wasn't going to beg. What was the point?
At least, that was Danny's intention. The Core had other ideas. They were close enough here for it (for her?) to reach out, and not just touch Danny's core, but hold it, envelop it, as it had done when he fought the GIW and fell too close. This time, it was gentler about it, but it was no less thorough.
Danny was already struggling, but his motions grew more desperate. He began to shake. He began to cry.
"Don't-" said the Core with Danny's mouth. "Don't- Please, don't. Don't take me to the Core. Anything else. Anything, please, but that end-" he choked as Inanna tightened her hand.
She had looked surprised for a split second, and then intrigued. Danny knew what a person revising plans looked like, and that's what Inanna was doing. She was changing her mind, changing how she wanted to kill him.
Her smile was nothing but cruel.
"I had heard things about how most of your race is too weak to even approach the throne of your own country. You were not my first traitorous guide, and, oh, how they all whimpered and complained, and made excuses, that, oh, no, they could not go near, lest they be boiled away into steam and mist. Perhaps you shall be dissolved, and I shall have my mes back after all." Inanna drew Danny towards her, so their faces were close. "And did you think that I was fooled by your little lie? My eyes are sharper than the desert hawk's, my ears more discerning than the hare's. I know the Core does not lie where you point, that Ereshkigal, my sister-queen, does not wait for me in that direction. No, I see the way you move, I see the direction you fear me to take, and that is the way we shall go."
With that, they began to fall towards the Core.
