Melody of Mana

Father had sent in a request for Dras to come and look at the gate they'd found. That was stupid and all of the people in the gate project agreed on it. Sure, I had no desire to go back to Ice's End, particularly after they'd failed to finish the job properly, but I was nearby, as much as that mattered, and not currently engaged. I was also the best at building these things, and really wanted to know what Selene had given them.

The girl herself hadn't yet come back to Durin's fortress. There were no gates at Ice's End as of yet, and all communication was still through our magic radios. Those were nearing the maximum of their workable limits, regardless of how much we all tried to make it work. We were now only able to communicate at night, for reasons mysterious to everyone.

The original army that had assaulted Ice's End had only one portal pair due to the simple fact that they were still in production, and had used it for infiltration. It was a risky call, but they'd felt it was the right one if they wanted to get in quickly. Sure, it meant that they couldn't get reinforcements, or easily retreat here, but the desire had been to crack the city as fast as possible, and they'd done that well if reports were to be believed.

Finding out that Lief and his merry men had managed to get a portal network of their own had caused some panic among the upper ranks of the Empire. There'd been a constant stream of people in and out as Durin mobilized basically everyone to figure out what the implications were.

A team with a gate (The newest one off of Dras' production line) had been dispatched to set up a portal at Ice's End as quickly as they possibly could. Until then I was cooling my heels and diving deep into any commands that might stop a gate from forming. The latter project hadn't borne a bud much less a fruit, but we'd see what we could find as time went on.

I was more than a bit surprised when I got a letter requesting me to join the meeting I found myself in on this bright afternoon, but I was an expert on these gates, and I was present.

"Welcome Alana, please come in," Durin said as I was led into the meeting room, motioning to a chair near the edge of the large table he sat at.

There were around a dozen old men and women of various persuasions seated. A few were younger, fifty or so perhaps, a few looked like they might blow away in a stiff wind, but I was by far the youngest person here. I recognized only a few from various events over the years, them and Mystien, who'd taken a place near the emperor.

One of the gathering, a man with greying blonde hair and dark eyes looked to our leader, and at the nod of confirmation began.

"Thank you for joining us, please call me General Lukas. We have precious few people who understand the portals, and even Mystien here believes you'd be the one to speak to on this. If reports are to be believed, we have a major problem, but one that leads to a number of questions we need answers to," he said.

I was happy Mystien was trusting me here. He might be a terrifyingly powerful wizard, and the master of all things water, but portals were my wheelhouse. He might have been able to tell them some things, but this gave me a chance to shine.

"I've several of my own, but I'm afraid that until I see the work, or talk to Selene I'm unlikely to have all the answers. We sent a request for the rune sequence she used, but the communications have just been too broken for it to come through properly." I frowned slightly, there really was a lot I needed here.

"Well, general questions then? Like how they made the portal pair so fast?" He asked.

"I don't know. I imagine that they had to make some changes somewhere, but what and where are unclear. Though I think they were probably torturing her to make her work faster, that's just a guess," I said.

"Can they make more of them?" He tried.

"Doubtful, they didn't have the stone we've been using to upgrade the core." There was a collective sigh of relief at that answer. I knew for a fact that it was possible for one of us to do a setup to upgrade someone after we'd gotten our own, Justin had told me as much.

"What about tracking where they went, or stopping them from working, can you do that?" A nervous looking woman inquired.

"No on both accounts. I've been looking into options for the last couple of days, something I should have thought of before, but there's nothing yet. I think it might be possible to do, but I'm not even sure on that account." There were a plethora of issues trying to lock down space, if the magic could even do that, and the few thoughts I did have didn't have any good method of implementation.

There were a few more questions, but most of them were either really basic, or boiled down to 'I'll need to look at this portal first' for answers. This gathering was in all likelihood a panel of the most powerful people on the continent, but that didn't mean they knew everything. Eventually they petered out, moving on to discussing things like how to improve security and what they should be on the lookout for.

"Are they using movable portals like ours?" One of the gathered men asked me, hoping to get an idea of what to tell his men to keep an eye out for. At my deadpan look he answered himself. "You won't know until you've seen it, right."

When it was time for everyone to leave Durin asked me to stay behind. Mystien stayed as well, and a few bodyguards nearby.

"Alana, I would like to know what you view as the worst case for this," he asked once most of the people had left.

"I can't do the really big things, so I don't know the limits of what he could shove through that portal. It could be bad, but I think Mystien would be the one to ask about that kind of war magic. Depending on where he could get it, and how much mana he could supply he might be able to do something like drop rocks from really high, or drain a lake somewhere new. Don't know if he'd think to try that though."

Mystien began to furiously scribble. I'd apparently given him some idea, probably bad for some poor bastard years down the line. "Rocks from really high? Not sure how useful that would be," he muttered.

"Do not underestimate the power of gravity," I responded.

I doubted he could manage full on orbital bombardment, but a big rock from half a mile up was still a force to be reckoned with.

"I want a full report on this after you've had a chance to investigate. Until then take this." Emperor Durin slid a paper across the table to me.

It took me a full minute to read over it. As I did so I nearly felt my eyes pop out of my head. It was a writ that gave me the power to act with his authority for the purposes of my investigation. I could demand any resource, or command any troop save the personal retinue of some of the higher authorities of the empire. Even then it indicated there might be someone looking into it if one of those few did decide not to aid me. It was signed and sealed by Durin himself.

"This is... a lot of..." I tried.

"Don't use it unless you have to, but I want this done, and done right. You saved my life while killing one of your mentors Alana, I trust that you will not abuse this freedom." His tone indicated that his trust would still be checked on. I'd rather not have to pull this thing out, but it would do what it needed to.

"Thank you," I said softly.

"Think nothing of it. Gather the resources you need, and go."

Two days later word came in that the gate delivery team had reached their destination and checks had begun. These would take a bit of time, but by soon we were ready to go. I had a dozen guards who'd been picked by Ulanion or myself, and some basic gear. My hope was that we'd be able to get the sequences from Selene quickly, and be done with this.

The portal was ready for us when we arrived. Half of my squad went through, with Ulanion popping back to inform me that we had a safe path. I walked up to the glowing plane and stepped forward.

The other side brought me out into some kind of stone building. There were soldiers running about and a general air of 'very busy' everywhere. It didn't take long to orient myself, military outposts did always organize themselves in the same general manner, and head for the entrance. My brother met me as I approached the exit.

"Hello little sister," he said as he walked forwards.

"What no dad?" I replied.

"Dealing with some issues with the town. I assume you want to see it?"

"What I'm here for John."

He chuckled and led me forward. We seemed to be inside one of the larger halls or something that Lief had taken up residence in, so it wasn't a far walk. Before I knew it I arrived at a heavily guarded room and with a quick nod from John we were all let through. He wasn't a general or anything, but everyone knew he was an officer, and why we were here.

The first thing I thought when I saw the gate was, 'very plain' the second thing didn't occur to me until I got almost right up to it.

"What the fuck," I said as I looked around it. There was a place for a power supply, one of the standard ones, but that had been removed. There were also things in the doorway itself to prevent outside activation, all good practices.

"What the actual fuck," I repeated as I looked at the gate itself.

"Something interesting?" Brother asked, looking where I was.

"This thing's a freaking hazard." I was stunned.

"To us presently?" Ulanion asked, looking about for danger.

"No, to anyone going through it. You'd have to be insane to use this thing. We may need to break it, just in case."

"Um... what do you mean there Alana?" John asked.

"There's only one sequence on the whole damn thing, and I don't think it's a fake with the real one hidden. It just says to connect point A to point B, and defining the area that's it! Do... this is just wrong, dangerously wrong. Has anyone tried to activate it?" I asked.

"One of our wizards tried and failed... we figured they'd cut the power or something on the other side, or buried it or whatever," John replied.

"Yeah, none of that would work. There's nothing telling it not to connect, it's probably broken, and we should break it. Fuck, Selene was not doing these guys any favors."

"Er..." John really could be dense, but the others were looking at me weird too.

"There's no wards, no safeties, there's not even an on switch, or... like almost all of what is on ours."

"So it's easy to use?" John asked.

"It's like stringing a rope bridge between two hundred foot tall towers and not installing... any sort of guard or handhold. Sure, it works, but if anything slips up even a bit... I need to see Selene, now." John looked at me blinking for a second before I walked up and bonked his forehead with my fist lightly. "Now John."