Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons 1)

With my third eye I saw the strands spreading out from our hands, still vibrating with our call. The center, the nexus, was between our clasped hands. I felt the tug again, and Kara gasped.

She must have felt it too. It was one of the strands. The tug grew stronger as the strand grew thicker and brighter. Its vibration felt like a buzzing in my ears and all through my body.

A crash came from behind us. I turned my head around. A stone had fallen out of the wall. The wall still held, but for how long now?

Watch.

I looked back at the strand that pulled at us as it thickened and vibrated and spiraled, suddenly no longer a straight string but more like a luminous coil, or a spring, and then the spiral solidified into a glowing disk.

Durch.

The word, sent out from our joined minds, from our lips, rang loud and powerful like an enormous ringing bell.

The crashing stopped for a moment on the other side of the wall.

There was another cry of rage then.

Maybe they realized how close we were.

I looked at the disk and it darkened, then swirled, a glowing whirlpool of many colors. Kara squeezed my hands tightly then, and I felt a buzz all the way from my teeth to my ears to my toes. Another stone fell out of the wall, making a cloud of broken stone and mortar.

They were almost in.

A hand was reaching through. But there was something wrong with it. The fingers were too long, for one thing, and they ended not in nails, but instead in... How could I describe it?

Little sharp points? Claws?

I shuddered and bit my lip, and tasted blood.

Kara squeezed my hand so tight then I thought my knuckles would crack.

No time now. Look. Now. At the Gateway.

There was a fire.

Smoke.

Wood smoke blew through my mind, and my mind cleared.

I looked again at the gateway. A clearing in some forest, it looked like. A smiling face, looking worriedly at us, with pointy ears and a nose ring.

Durch, Kara thought, and I echoed her.

Together our words joined our thoughts with a great thunder and roar.

There was a crumbling from the door, a cloud of sparks, and dust everywhere. I felt a rush of exhilaration, and then we were jumping, together, into the gateway.

I looked back at a snarling face. It wasn’t an animal or a person, but something else entirely. Its eyes glowed. Its forked tongue spat out a word of power covered in green glowing spittle.

I ducked. Great heat rushed by my right ear, but then we were through the circle and someone was pulling at our joined hands.

A burning heat tore into my leg. I turned and stared at a monster.

Two eyes like red hot coals, a mouth full of razor sharp teeth — the mouth round and wide open, and out came the forked tongue, ready to spit again. I felt Kara’s hand in my left and then another hand, large and firm, in my right. In my head I heard a word as it blasted out of my mouth and the mouths of those around me, and the word was VERSCHWINDEN.

The disk turned black and disappeared.

I fell to the ground as the world turned black.