A strange vibration, high-pitched and fast, almost a buzzing, could be felt through the soles of his sandals. He blinked away tears and found himself semi-crouched within the energy bubble his son had erected an instant before the explosion.
Beyond the shell everything was white to the point of there being no horizon, no sky above or ground below, nor sea beyond a shore. As his eyes adapted to the brilliance he could see faint hints of variation, and after another moment faint shifts in the whiteness, as if colours were present beyond the boundary of the bubble.
They floated above the bottom of a crater thirty or forty feet below them. The only remnants of earth and rock were beneath their feet, encased in Magnus’s sphere.
‘Are you holding us up, son?’
‘The spell is, and we’d better be ready for a rude landing when it releases. I can’t keep this sphere intact and move it.’
‘Maybe I can help,’ said Miranda. She closed her eyes and the sphere slowly settled to the bottom of the crater.
Everything was still confounding to the senses as energies continued to cascade around them, every visible spectrum shifting madly outside the bubble. Pug pushed Magnus’s protective sphere gently and it expanded enough that they could all stand easily. After a few more minutes passed, details in the crater wall became recognizable. Slowly, the blinding light faded and varying hues of ivory, palest gold, a hint of blue emerged. At last the brilliance disappeared.
They blinked as their eyes adjusted to natural daylight, which was dark in comparison to what they had just endured.
Pug looked around. They were perhaps fifty feet below the surface, surrounded by what appeared to be glass.
‘What happened?’ asked Miranda.
‘Someone tried to kill us,’ answered Nakor, without his usually cheerful tone. ‘We need to get out of this hole and look around.’
‘Is it safe by now?’ asked Magnus.
‘Be ready to protect yourself and we’ll find out,’ said Nakor. ‘I think it’s going to be very hot for you two.’
Magnus studied the little man for a moment, nodded once, and glanced at his father. Pug tilted his head slightly, indicating that he understood the warning and both men encased themselves in protective spells without a word exchanged.
Magnus closed his eyes for a brief moment and the sphere around them vanished. Pug knelt and touched the glass beneath his feet. ‘Odd …’
‘What?’ asked Miranda.
‘The energy … I expected it to be more … I’m not sure.’ He looked from his son to Miranda. ‘Both of you are more adept at sensing the nature of a given spell. Does this feel like just an explosion to you?’
Miranda knelt next to Pug. ‘Feel like an explosion? We lived through it; it was massive and loud.’ She touched the glass beneath them. ‘Oh, yes, I see what you mean.’
Magnus did likewise. ‘This … the explosion was the by-product.’
Nakor looked at the three kneeling magicians and said, ‘Please?’
‘The energy released was the result of a spell that wasn’t just some spell of massive destruction,’ said Magnus, standing. ‘We need to go.’
Pug waved his hands without comment. All four rose upward and floated towards the edge of the crater.
Magnus said to Nakor, ‘As best I can tell, that spell did two things. Besides obliterating everything within a fairly large radius, it also moved us to … I’m not sure where we are, but it’s not where we were when the spell was triggered.’
They reached the lip of the crater and Pug said, ‘You are right, Magnus. We are not where we were minutes ago.’
‘Where’s the sea?’ asked Miranda.
They looked to the south and where waves had lapped the shore just minutes before, only a long, sloping plain remained. To their rear there was a rising bluff and hills beyond that roughly resembled what they would have seen on the Isle of the Snake Men, but these hills were denuded of any plant life – no trees, no brush, not even a blade of grass could be seen.
The devastation was complete: nothing moved save by force of the wind. There was sand everywhere: years past this land had turned to desert. They were at the edge of a vast, deep crater, and like the crater, the land around had been fused by the blast, its surface nothing but glass of coruscating colours, as smoke, ash, and dust swirled upward, admitting narrow shafts of sunlight. The wind was blowing the smoke northward, clearing it away quickly. On this world nothing burned, for there was nothing to burn, and the rocks and sand that had been turned molten were rapidly cooling.
‘I think we’re still in the same place,’ said Nakor. ‘I mean, an analogous place, as when we travelled to Kosidri.’ Pug, Magnus, and Nakor had discovered that on the other planes of reality the worlds were identical, or at least as much as the variant conditions of that reality permitted. So wherever they were was a world similar in geography to Midkemia. ‘But I think the energy state here is going to prove troublesome soon.’
Pug nodded.
Miranda said, ‘I feel a little odd.’
Magnus said, ‘I remember how we adapted when we travelled to the Dasati realm, father.’
‘But this time it feels … different, obverse?’ said Pug.
‘A higher state than either the demon realm or Midkemia,’ agreed Miranda. ‘As if there’s too much air?’
Nakor grimaced. ‘We could be overwhelmed by it if we do not tread cautiously.’
Each fashioned a protective spell that returned a tiny bubble of protective energy around themselves, reducing the more intense energies in this world to a level their own bodies could accommodate.
‘If it’s a higher energy state,’ said Magnus, ‘we did not go into a lower realm. But a higher one. Which means—’
‘We’re in the first realm of heaven?’ suggested Miranda.
Contemplating the desolate landscape, Nakor quipped, ‘It’s obviously overrated. There’s more to offer in the demon realm.’
They were silent for a moment as they contemplated the barren world around them.
Pug looked at his son and said quietly, ‘I neglected to say thank you. Had you not returned …’
Magnus embraced him. ‘You’re my father. No matter how much I may disagree with … what we talked about … I will never leave you when you need me.’
Father and son held each other for a moment, then separated, returning their attention to the moment. Glancing at Miranda, they saw she had tears on her cheeks. She reached up and wiped them away and in an angry tone they both knew well, said, ‘Damn these memories. I know they are not mine! I know it!’ She crossed her arms across her chest. A bitter chuckle was followed by her observing, ‘Part of me remembers a time I’d have happily torn your heads from your shoulders and devoured your still-beating hearts.’ Then she glanced up and in softer
