Aetherial Annihilation (14 page)

"Justin, it would appear some of the portals used to launch the crystoids are still open."

Elyssa narrowed her eyes. "But if the ASEs failed a few minutes after the crystoids landed, how could you know that?"

"Apparently, one of the ASEs fell atop a crystoid. Once the meteor began projecting aether, it powered the ASE once more." Cinder cleared his throat. "The ASE rose back into its original position and took footage until yesterday before a gust of wind blew it out of the aether beam."

I jumped on the conclusion. "In other words, it recorded the portal still being open."

"Precisely."

"Which crystoid?" I asked.

"This particular one landed in California."

I looked up and squinted, but the bright blue sky hurt my eyes. "What did it look like on the other side of the portal?"

"It was cloudy." He grunted a bit louder than necessary. "I had only a glimpse of a land mass."

Elyssa tilted her head slightly. "In other words, the portal is in the sky directly above the crystoid?"

"In most cases, yes," Cinder replied.

I thought of another question. "If wind currents pushed some crystoids around during their fall, then how could the original portal still be right above them?"

"The crystoids may have opened new portals with their aether beams," Cinder said. "If you have an ASE available, perhaps you could see if there is another portal above your location."

"That's a good idea." I ended the call and turned to Elyssa. "Do you know if we have any ASEs here?"

"I don't. We'll have to ask the other Templars." A curious cow nudged Elyssa's arm and sniffed her. She leapt back and realized it wasn't an enemy ninja on the attack. Elyssa petted the cow and smiled. "Don't you worry, my pretties. I'll be back soon."

The cow lowed in response.

I chuckled. "Your new best friend."

We were about to head back when Viola and Ann rode around the base of a nearby hill in the pickup. They gave us a friendly wave and stopped along the rutted dirt trail.

Ann peered at us through her thick glasses. "Oh, hey there, you guys. Do ya need anything?"

"We were just headed back to the crystoid," I said. "We've got to see if there's a portal in the sky above it."

"A portal?" Viola leaned out of the window and looked up. "Where do you suppose it goes?"

"That's anyone's guess right now," I replied.

"I've got a telescope you could use," Ann said. "It's back at the house."

"That would be great." I pointed back down the dirt road. "Is the house that way?"

She grinned. "Just hop in the back and we'll fetch it."

Elyssa and I climbed aboard. Viola turned around the pickup and headed back. The bumpy trail made the ride a bit uncomfortable, but I enjoyed feeling like a country boy.

I raised an eyebrow and looked at Elyssa. "Yeehaw?"

She pumped a fist. "Yeehaw."

It took a good fifteen minutes to reach the house even though it couldn't have been more than a mile away. The homestead sat in a nice flat area in the shadow of a hill. Unlike the rest of the land, several groves of hardy trees grew around the house and outbuildings, probably to serve as a windbreak during the winter. A big red barn and a rusty windmill rose about a hundred yards to the west. Chickens clucked and strutted about, and turkeys raced away with frightened gobbles as the pickup pulled into the gravel driveway.

"Come on in, you guys." Ann headed for the house and we followed her inside.

A wonderful odor greeted my nostrils.

Ann must have noticed the grin on my face. "I'm making a nice big roast for dinner. You guys are sure welcome to stay and eat."

Elyssa chuckled. "We haven't even had lunch yet."

She nodded. "Around here, dinner is lunch."

"Oh." Elyssa looked confused, but didn't argue the point.

I knew I should say no, but my stomach urged me to say yes. "Dinner sounds great. Can I borrow the telescope in the meantime?"

"Sure." She took me into a family room and pointed it out to me. "Food will be ready in an hour. Don't be late."

"Wouldn't dream of it." My mouth watered in anticipation.

I took the telescope onto the main gravel road in front of the house and aimed it skyward. I soon realized how hard it would be to locate a relatively tiny hole in the sky especially without having the crystoid nearby for a reference. I switched to demon vision and located the shimmer of the aether beam. Thanks to the crystal clear sky, I was able to follow the beam with my naked eye until it vanished from sight.

I rotated the telescope to an approximate angle and took a peek. It was still off by a few degrees. I used the finder scope on top and traced the beam with it. By alternating between the eyepiece and the finder, I was able to at last find the end of the proverbial rainbow. Even with it pinpointed, the portal was difficult to see thanks to the white clouds visible on the other side.

Nonetheless, it was a portal, perhaps to another realm, perhaps to another place in Eden.

Elyssa had remained quiet while I looked for the portal, but my expression must have told her I'd finally found it.

"What does it look like?" she asked.

I stepped away and let her use the eyepiece.

She grunted. "Definitely a portal, but no telling where it leads."

"One thing is certain," I said in a foreboding voice. "Someone isn't destroying all our aether. They're stealing it."

Chapter 12

Aether could be stored in magic batteries—that much I knew from using flying cars, sliders, and other magical gadgets. "Is there a battery big enough to hold that much aether?"

Elyssa looked up and tapped a finger on her chin. "I seriously doubt it."

"How does an aether battery work?" I asked.

"I have no idea. I've never seen or opened one."

I paced back and forth and quickly arrived at a conclusion. We needed to know all the possibilities with aether batteries. Since Shelton was busy analyzing the crystoid, I decided to call another expert who'd come through time and time again.

"Justin!" Adam Nosti sounded happy to hear from me.

"Hey, I guess you're aware of the global crisis."

He groaned. "Man, am I ever. Meghan and I are trapped up here in Oregon."

"Trapped?"

"Well, we can't use the Obsidian Arches, so you know what I mean." He huffed. "I didn't realize how reliant we are on magic. Meghan and I are practically climbing the walls we're so bored."

"Well, maybe you can help me anyway."

He chuckled. "Already on the job, eh?"

"You know me; I'm always looking for trouble." I gave him a rundown of current events all the way up to my discovery of the sky portal. "Here's the question—is there an aether battery big enough to store all that energy?"

"Yes." He sounded absolutely certain. "It's called Eden or Seraphina, or whatever other realms there are out there. The planet is like one huge battery and generator all in one."

"Sort of like a magical ecosystem," I said.

"That's exactly what it is," Adam replied. "Now, if you're asking if there's a manmade battery that could do the trick, the answer is a definite no."

"How do aether batteries work?"

"Man, I wish I could project an image, but that doesn't work in nom mode." He spoke with someone in the background, presumably Meghan. "Yeah, it's Justin. Sounds like we're back in action."

I gave him a moment to talk to her and then interrupted. "Can you describe the inner workings of an aether battery?"

"Yeah, sure," Adam said. "First, you need a silver vessel, then you seal it and use an aether generator to pump in the magical energy."

"It operates like a circle does?" I asked.

"Yep." He paused for a second. "Other substances can hold magic charges as well, but this method works the best."

A female voice spoke behind him.

"Hang on a sec," Adam said. Something scuffed against the microphone and muffled the conversation.

In the meantime, I imaged building a gargantuan silver sphere to fill with aether, and realized he was right about manmade aether batteries. Only the planet was big enough to store such a massive amount of aether.

"Okay, back," Adam said. "Meghan told me about some old-school batteries she kept at home that worked even better than silver containers."

That piqued my interest. "Really? How did they work?"

"We're not sure. These were originally owned by witches."

"Witches?" I'd never heard anyone called by that term in the Overworld. "Are they different from Arcanes?"

"Yeah, but they're into natural earth magic, blood magic, that kind of stuff." He chuckled. "You can specialize in witchcraft at Arcane University."

"Interesting. Tell me about this battery."

"The witches didn't call them batteries—they called them chalices." He grunted. "They said their ancestors found them near Thunder Rock hundreds of years ago."

"So they could be Seraphim in origin," I said.

He grunted. "Maybe. They could be Seraphim relics, or just something really weird caused during the backlash when the Alabaster Arches went nuclear." Adam cleared his throat. "Anyway, Meghan has a couple chalices at the house. They're round and encased in tanned squirrel hides."

"Squirrel hides?" I wasn't sure what to say about that.

"Yeah, don't ask me why." Adam chuckled. "She claims the chalices could hold an incredibly long charge, but she lost one of them over the side of a mountain during a mission, and it exploded when it hit a rock."

"Whoa. So they're kind of unstable."

"Yeah. She didn't take her other one with her anymore after that."

I tapped a finger to my chin. "What's inside the squirrel skins?"

"Meghan says the witch she got them from said they used something called xanthracite, but beyond that, she doesn't know what it is or how it looks." He made a thoughtful noise. "If we could get back to Atlanta, we could find out."

"The Obsidian Arch network is somewhat functional," I told him. "We'll ask an arch operator up there to open a gateway."

"Oh, man, that would be amazing." He told the news to Meghan. "Just let us know, okay?"

"Will do." I ended the call. "Babe, can you arrange for the arch operator up their way to let them through?"

"You got it." Elyssa made a few calls. "The closest arch is in northern California, a few hundred miles from them, but they'll let Adam and Meghan through when they get there."

"I'll let them know." I texted Adam and he soon replied.

We're already packing the car. Talk soon.

Elyssa and I walked back to the crystoid and looked up at the myriad symbols flashing above it. Shelton and Bella were engrossed with whatever information it displayed. Behind them, the open omniarch portal to the Grotto shimmered.

"How's it coming?" I asked.

Shelton blinked and looked down at us. "Well, the crystal is an aether sponge. Once it's full, it discharges extra energy skyward through the shards at a seventy degree angle."

"Why doesn't it discharge energy into the ground?"

"The energy takes the path of least resistance." Bella pointed up. "It's just naturally easier for it to project into the sky."

"We looked through a telescope and found a sky portal," I said. "All this aether is going somewhere else—probably right here in Eden."

Shelton's eyes flashed. "Where?"

"No idea. Maybe we could send an ASE up the aether beam and through the portal."

Shelton snapped his fingers. "Awesome, yeah. Be right back." He went into the portal behind him and vanished from sight. A few minutes later, he returned with one of the marble-sized ASEs in his hand. He flicked it into the air. It spun and hovered in front of him. Shelton tapped the ASE and it projected a holographic control screen. He programmed in a flight pattern to keep it in the aether beam.

A moment later, the ASE flitted away up into the sky.

"It'll be back in a couple of hours," he said, face eager. "I can't wait to find the jackasses behind this."

"Any idea how to disable the crystoids?" Elyssa asked.

Bella shook her head. "They constantly draw in aether which also makes them grow." She pointed to a holographic outline of the crystoid. "In the short time we've been studying this one, it's grown in diameter by two millimeters."

I groaned. "In other words, these things are constantly expanding?"

"Yup." Shelton nodded. "Within a week, this thing will be double this size."

"Imagine the explosion if a crystoid that large goes off," Elyssa said.

I didn't need to.

Ann's pickup truck pulled up a few minutes later and Viola waved to us. "Lunch is ready," she announced.

We piled into the back and rode down the bumpy trail to the house. Two Templars inside unfolded a card table and chairs. Pixie and Boris arrived a moment later with a tall willowy brunette.

"This is Tasha," Pixie said. "Tasha, this is Justin, Elyssa, Bella, and Shelton."

Tasha's eyes went wide and her hands covered her mouth. "Oh my god," she squealed. "You guys are like my biggest heroes ever."

Shelton took off his hat. "Just doing my job, ma'am."

Bella rolled her eyes.

"I'm sorry to sound like such a fangirl," Tasha said. "But after seeing the Skywraiths in action, I decided a flying broom air force is exactly what the Arcanes need."

"Yeah, the Blue Cloaks stick with flying carpets," Boris said. "I guess that's okay if you can't fly a broom."

Pixie nodded. "Boomsticks are where it's at."

"I think it's a great idea." I walked to the food, grabbed a plate, and piled on some food. "Tell me more."

The others followed and loaded their plates, then we sat down at one of the tables.

Tasha sat down across from me, her eyes bright. "There are plenty of amazing broom flyers, but not all of them are Arcanes. I think we need to implement real boomstick training into the curriculum at Arcane University."

I swallowed a mouthful. "Have you passed that by the school leaders?"

The light in Tasha's eyes faded a little. "Things are a mess at the school. I spoke with Headmaster Galfandor, but he said it would need to be cleared with the other school deans first."