The Shadow Switch

The young mage bustled about in his room in the tower making the last minute checks and rechecks that would assure him a place in the future of Jardaan. He knew that he could make no mistakes in what he was about to attempt, or his life, and possibly all of those here in the city of Maritte, would be forfeit.
He thought back to several days ago when he had discovered the true name of some lesser demon of the abyss, only the hundredth level, if his resources were current and correct. He had no way of possibly knowing that the name he uncovered was not a demon, or any other denizen, of that dark plane. He was not knowledgeable enough in the ways of the weave to understand what it was anyway, even had it been spelled out for him.
Had the mageling done a bit more research, and taken the name to Gorkai the Yellow (unfortunate bestowing of cloak color, not a descriptive term, much to the amusement of his apprentices), current master of the North Tower, he would have understood that while it was in fact a word of power, it had nothing to do with a single sentient being. More like three billion sentient beings, give or take a couple of million.
Jieran, the mageling in question, finished the preparations to his satisfaction and began to prepare himself for the confrontation he expected, for even a denizen of the hundredth level of the abyss would be fairly strong and malevolently evil. He crossed to the brazier that held the flame that would contain the beast and uncapped it, marveling at the simple magic that caused the flame to leap every time, thinking what good it would do the common folk to posses such an artifact. For Jieran was not evil, or even slightly warped, he was just passing a trial, one of his own setting, but a trial none the less. He made his way to the place he had prepared for himself and sat, beginning his casting.
His mouth formed easily over the words leading into the initial chant, though as the difficulty grew, the chanting slowed to assure that there would be no mistakes. As Jieran arrived at the turning point, the naming of the beast he meant to summon, he stopped and let the power gather in the air around him. He drew a deep breath and, in a near whisper, breathed the word his research had found.
In the storm of power that followed, Jieran found himself unsure that he had conjured correctly since this was not how it was supposed to go. He was reassured, however, when the gate started to appear in the heart of the flame, though it was tinged a bluish-green, not the red he expected of the abyss. He thought, perhaps, that his translation was wrong, and his suspicions were confirmed when the gate fully opened. Spitting its contents at him, the gate snapped just as he lost his concentration, which left the room strangely subdued after the brightness and loud crackle of the portal.
Jieran quickly gained his senses and took stock of the situation. His floor was now littered with whatever it was that the gate had brought to him. As he took note of the strangeness of the materials, he realized that they were not from any were near Maritte, or possibly even Elassa. No, these things came from somewhere far away, and they were beginning to move. As one of the strange items turned over, Jieran reared back in silent amazement, and muttered a quick oath to the lady of magic, "Kadida, aid me, what have I done now?"
It was a female, a human female.

* * *

A short time earlier, or perhaps much later--it's hard to tell these things being all relative-- and far away from Jardaan, that human female was making preparations of her own. She had a performance that night, but had to take a little time from practice to go on "adventure" with her friends. She packed a picnic that would serve as their lunch, though knowing that redhead, he'd have it all devoured in minutes, she thought, enjoying a silent smile at the image.
She heard the signal from outside and went to the window to wave that she was almost ready. She put several drinks in for each, knowing that this would talk longer than any of them could stand to be out in the heat with just one, closed the basket, and stepped out of her house.
"Sure took you long enough!" the driver yelled in mock anger, a smile on his face the whole time.
" Well, if some people would learn to give me more than five minutes notice when they want something done--" she started in that same mocking tone.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just get in so we can get going."
She handed the basket up to one of the two in the back, and climbed in, just as the vehicle started bouncing down the road. "Gee, thanks for waiting for a lady!"
One of the blondes in the back gave her a mischievous grin, "Ya said it yourself, Robin, just one of the guys."
She smiled back at him, and found herself a seat amongst the clutter. "So where to today? City? The Ranch?"
The other blond spoke up now, "Well, Luke said that Allan was going to be out at the Ranch all day, so that's not an option, and with the pool open, City won't offer much privacy, so that leaves us to Lyon's I guess."
Robin felt a shiver pass through her, as it always did when she thought of her childhood experiences at Lyon's Park, experiences, she reasoned, better left in the past. But today . . . today she just felt that this was a bad idea, and said so.
"Robin, you never like going to Lyon's, so what's so different about today?"
"I don't know, Jake, maybe he's back, trying to steer me wrong again." Robin looked at the second blond again, "Chad, don't you feel the slightest bit cold?"
"In ninety degree weather! I think not!"
"She meant on the inside, and I think I know how she feels. But there's no way to talk David out of it, you know what he thinks of all of this."
Robin nodded her assent, "I know, I just wish that he would remember back to what happened."
Robin let her mind wander back, just for a while, to her childhood. Growing up in Aloma had never been easy, but this particular summer seemed like something out of a movie. She had been about seven years old, and had spent ever more time around her friend David this past year in school. It was difficult to spend time together now, since school was out, but they did their best. Much of the time they spent together was in the park that was literally part of David's back yard. One evening, near dusk, they sat out in the ball diamond's bleachers, which all of the old style parks had, just talking about the normal things when Robin saw something move out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head to look, she found herself impossibly close to a shadow, one that shouldn't exist, since the bleachers sat in the middle of an open field. Even stranger was the fact that in the center of this shadow, two tiny stars gleamed, a reddish-gold color that Robin would struggle to name most of her adolescent life. It didn't occur to Robin that this might be more than a shadow, or the pinpricks of light more than stars, when something that should have been even less possible happened: the shadow grabbed her arm. A touch on her arm just then startled her from her memory. She shook her head back into the present, and looked at Jake. "Do you think we'll ever be able to drag the memories back to the surface of his mind?" she asked with little hope that the answer would be positive.
Chad started to reply, but just then they made the entrance the park, and David stopped at the usual place.
"Everybody out!" David slammed the driver's door on the truck shut and came around to the back of the truck where he genteelly offered his hand to Robin to help her out of the back of the truck, "Milady?"
"Finally, someone knows how to do it right. I was beginning to think that none of you guys remembered I was of the other gender!" Robin looked around the park and felt that old familiar shiver pass through her. David noticed the look on her face, and grimaced.
"Come on, Robin, it's been years since whatever happened here took place. Even if there is something "different" about this place, surely it not going to affect us now."
"I don't know, David, it's like I told Chad and Jake, I just feel like this is wrong today, but this is just for a couple of hours, right? Besides, all of you are here and I just feel safer with the five of us together." Looking happier about being together, Robin managed to smile.
At this point, Luke spoke up, "Besides, Robin, we have a little help that wasn't available to you as a child." And he held up a silver pendant, one of four in the group that had been "charged" with power of some kind. His had a healing power, while Robin's was a protective sort. Chad and Jake had others, but David refused to wear one.
Robin smiled, "Thanks Luke. You know how much faith I have in you and the Goddess, but lets hope it won't come to that, at least not today. I've had the feeling, and you've expressed it too, that the time is coming for a showdown, but God," and she smiled again, embarrassed, "OR Goddess, I hope it isn't today."
"Okay, enough talk like that." Chad came up to the threesome, smiling broadly, "It's a glorious summer afternoon, and we're not going to get a better chance for the five of us to be in one place many times again."
"He's right guys, and lady, let's get started. Where were we?" And with that, Jake sat, opened his book, and took out his materials.
David and Luke simply shrugged at one another, and joined their friend on the ground. Robin, being "just one of the guys," soon followed, with Chad being the last to grab his gear and sit.
David, the consummate storyteller, sat up straight, and immersed them all in a tale. A tale of a far away place. A place that held dragons of all the colors of the rainbow, and then some. It held races of people never before seen on Earth, and held an Art that was lost to the modern world. The Art of Magic. There were gods and goddesses vying for power, monsters so strange and evil they could only be defeated by a god, or a hero of incredible strength, wit, and courage. There were whole lands to explore, places even those who told the stories had never heard from, or of. There were creatures of the deep, the earth, the air, and yes, even the fire. As David spun his tale, he would be interrupted occasionally by one of the four, making a suggestion, asking a question, or perhaps answering one posed by the story. The Storyteller would incorporate these things into the Story making it a living breathing, growing, changing thing. The tale took on a life of it's own, at least to the members of this small group, and they lived there, while never leaving the ground of their home. How long they sat involved is hard to say, for time has little meaning when one is elsewhere, but the involvement eventually came to a crashing halt.
"What in the name of Sharn is that?" Luke half whispered, half yelled. He pointed off to the east, the direction of the still climbing sun.
"What is what?" David asked, a little annoyed to be interrupted by something that had nothing to do with the tale. As he followed Luke's pointed hand, he realized what held his friend's rapt attention. One by one, the other members of the group focused on what their comrades had seen, and, to, where held captive by the sight. Not far off in the distance was a glowing disk of blue, hovering about a foot off the ground. It seemed to fairly pulse with energy, and appeared to beckon to the group to examine it.
For a long second, no one moved, until Chad finally found his legs and stood to take a tentative step toward the light source. "Am I seeing things here, or is this really a blue, floating, glowing, dot?" Chad asked incredulously.
"Well, if it's not there, and you're seeing it, then it's a group hallucination. I think we can all agree on the image before our eyes, can't we?" When this quiet question was met with murmurs of agreement from those assembled, he continued, "But the real question is, if it's really there, what is it, and where did it come from?"
"I don't know," Luke put in, "but it's beautiful." As Luke found his own feet finally able to carry him within a meter of the disk, he stared at it with admiration, tinged with fear. "You know what it reminds me of? No," he declared finally, "that's just too weird, not to mention impossible, isn't it David?" Luke put the question to one of his best friends in this, his adopted hometown. He knew that he need not explain his thoughts, for David knew him almost as well as he did himself, and vice versa. "I mean really, that's all just fiction, right?" Luke posed the last question with a little desperation, and more than a hint of hope in his voice. He knew he spoke for all of them with that hope, for there was not one present who didn't have his own reasons for being glad if his thoughts where correct.
"I don't know, Luke. I know it certainly appears to be a gate, but like you said, that's just fiction." David replied, hiding well the trepidation his mind was feeling. "At least it might have been fiction--until now."
Robin turned to David with his last comment, the disbelief plain on her face, "You don't think this is actually a manifestation of Magic, do you?" At this, Jake spoke up, "Why not? Magic is just something we don't understand, right? Well if this is a gate, I sure as heck don't know how it works, do you? Do any of you?" Chad, probably the most impulsive member of the group, suddenly posed a suggestion, so ludicrous it inspired a derisive snort from Robin, but one that seemed like the only course of action that would bring any answers. The other males quickly agreed that it was their best alternative.
Robin stared at them, shocked, "You mean to tell me that you actually plan to enter this thing? As in walk through it?" When she was met with only nods and expectant looks, she threw her hands up in an exasperated gesture and walked over to the assumed gate. "Do you have any idea where this thing leads? Do you know that it's not one way, if in fact it isn't just a glowing blue dot, rather than a doorway? Do you know what waits on the other side?" When she was given a chorus of no's to each question, she began to gesture wildly, suggesting that the course of action they were planning was impetuous, if not suicidal. In the flighty course her hands took, she brushed the glow, her fingers sliding through it as if it were air. She didn't notice, but others were paying attention.
Luke saw the action, and then noticed a subtle change in the scene. The formerly pure blue disk was now lined in a bronzish color at the very edge. It wasn't a significant change, and one that Luke thought might have been caused by a new angle of the Sun, so he decided not to mention it. Luke could not know, having been elsewhere as a child, that the glow was exactly the shade of those stars that had startled Robin so many years ago.
"Unless you have a better idea..." David started, "I think it's probably our best bet."
"Okay, how about this...throw something through the thing first. Then we'll see what happens." Nobody could disagree with that logic of the suggestion, so they did just that. After tossing three bricks through the light, and noticing that they all landed without incident on the ground on the other side of the disk, they decided to take another tack. Luke picked up a brick, and standing as far back from the source of light as possible, slowly put his hand through the surface. When no one said a word, he just assumed that it came out the back like the bricks alone, but as he started to draw his hand out, Robin finally found her breath. "Luke, ohmigod... Luke, you've got to see this. Give me the brick, and you stand over there." Luke did as told, and handed the brick to Robin. David, wanting to see it from the front, was around the side with Robin. She slowly leaned forward, putting her hand ever closer to the disk. As she touched it, the bronzish glow intensified slightly, just enough to draw Luke's attention, but again thinking it was a trick of the light or something, he didn't say anything. Suddenly realizing that he couldn't see Robin's hand, he was speechless, and the glow was forgotten. Managing finally to snap out of his reverie, Luke went around to the front of the gate to stare at the point where Robin's arm and the disk met, and marvel at the wonder in front of his eyes. "Amazing, isn't it?" Robin asked, her face flushed with excitement, "I'm sorry I ever doubted you guys."
"No problem at all, Robin, but I'm curious, does it feel any different?" Jake asked, slowly becoming accustomed to what he was seeing.
"Well, a little, really...kind of...tingly. I can't explain--"
"It does?" Luke's face registered surprise. "I didn't feel anything different. In fact, until you said something, I thought my hand had just come out the back like the bricks."
"Here, let me see." David stuck out his hand for the brick. Robin started to pull her arm back out of the portal, but was startled by the sudden flare up of the bronze glow at the edge. "What the--" Just as David started his yelled question, and insubstantial hand, it seemed nothing more than a shadow, reached out of the spreading glow and grabbed Robin, pulling her in. The four men hesitated only briefly for a look between them before jumping two at a time into the glow.
Upon emerging, the four friends were momentarily stopped by what they saw before them. If any scene could have been less like the one they just left, it would be the one they witnessed there. They had entered a graying land, deep with shadows and plains stretching for miles in three directions. Off to the north, and none to far away, was a mountain. It wasn't really the largest any of them had ever seen, but it was disconcerting, because it sat alone, not part of a chain. From their point, it looked to be dotted with small caves and cliffs, from dog size, to holes that would have swallowed David's house. The top was lost in the featureless gray of the sky, broken only by arcs of lightning, seemingly coming from and going nowhere.
After only a moment of taking this in, the memory of what brought them here returned full force, and they quickly searched the horizon for Robin and her assumed captor. In the distance, they could make out two figures, one walking, the other being dragged and kicking. Without a second thought, all four of the men took off at a dead run, spaced so as not to trip over one another. Chad sent a yell out after the pair, just before he put on a burst of speed. They all saw the figure turn, and plant his feet.
All Robin could think of since she been pulled was getting away and back to her friends, but when she heard the yell, the single thought of getting away took precedence. She tried to turn, and struggle against her assailant, but her had her pinned, unable to move. She felt the turn, and the stop, and tried to struggle again, but to no avail. When she heard this strange person making sounds, she could barely notice out of the corner of her eye that his hands were moving. At first she thought it might be an attempt at some kind of communication, but then it hit her. When they immersed themselves in the Tale, and a character cast a spell, this is how her mind's eye always pictured it for her. At the thought of a spell, and how many offensive spells she knew this creature could posses, she struggled harder than ever before, but again it was no use. As she let her head fall forward in defeat, her nose collided with something soft and slightly yielding, and she focused to see her captor's arm in front of her face. Grinning and knowing that this would break anyone's concentration, she let her head fall forward again, but this time sank her teeth into his arm.
The shriek of pain and anger that followed was enough to let her know she'd been successful, but, thankfully, the two didn't have time to discus the matter because moments later the first of the pair's pursuers caught up. The scene really couldn't be described as a fight, as it was much closer to a four man mugging. With the assailant already off balance, it was no problem for Chad to grab Robin on his way by, and the three following to knock the former captor around a bit as they made for the mountain, since the enemy was now between them and the portal.
Running again at breakneck speeds, with Robin not much better off now that she was as she was still being dragged along, Chad led the way toward one of the midsized holes in the face of the rock. With the foiled villain hurling curses from behind them, they ran into a cave about fifteen feet in diameter and were again stopped in their tracks.
Floating not three feet away from them was another portal, just like the first one, only this one was bigger. It filled the cave, and from the looks of things, there were no ways around it. The five of them either went through it, or they went back outside.
Luke turned to look at their only other avenue of escape, and quickly decided that out was not an option. "Guys, he's standing out there, about twenty-five feet from the entrance, and he's just standing there...not really doing anything, just kind of fuming."
"He's probably still ticked off that I stopped his spell and you guys grabbed me." Robin put in, over her shoulder as she stooped to examine the floor near the disk, "Is there room for us to slide under?"
"Some of us maybe, but not all. And what did I hear you say about a spell?" David's ears had picked up on her comments, but he was only half listening. "You've got my full attention now, so say it again."
"Oh, when you guys were running at us, and he turned around, he started gesturing and talking like I always imagined it would be if you could really cast spells, but maybe I'm wrong."
"Well, with this portal in front of us as evidence, I don't want to make any assumptions that you are wrong. Luke, what's he doing now?"
Jake and Chad started forward to see for themselves, and were nearly knocked off their feet when Luke turned around and bolted back toward the portal. "We have to go through! Now!" When he was met with only questioning stares, he tried to stammer out the reason for the urgency, "Big...ball...rolling...BOOM!"
Chad laid a hand on his shoulder and tried to calm him, "What are you saying Luke, that there's some big ball rolling at us?"
"Not quite yet, but if I remember the casting time right, it should be in about 15 seconds." Luke said this with a calm manner that certainly did not reflect how he felt.
At the mention of casting, David quickly ran through his mind all the spells he knew of that would produce rolling balls, but drew a blank, so he decided to go the cave entrance himself to see what Luke was stressing over. What he saw was a giant ball of flame rolling through the air at them, "Fireball!"
The group turned, almost as one, and seeing the destruction roiling their way, quickly came to a decision.
With Chad on one end, Jake on the other, and David, Robin, and Luke in the center, they lined up in front of the gate. Chad hollered out, "Hold on tight, everyone! On the count of three! One... two... thr--" And this proved that the companions had waited an instant too long, for in the middle of the third count, when the five of them had started their leap, the fireball hit the cave. The spell was mis-aimed, or it would have killed them all instantly, but as it was, with the full force of the blast hitting the outside mountain face, the winds were enough to fling all five of them headlong into the disk, knocking them unconscious. In the last instant before dreams claimed her completely, Robin would hear a voice swearing a name she recognized from somewhere, but the thought was fleeting as the blackness swept over her, dragging her and her friends into a deep sleep...

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