Emily in Thessolan
Copyright© 2023 by FinchAgent
Chapter 18: Emily and the Portal
The next day found Dorian and Talyndra in the heart of Lirethel, standing before a leaning, decrepit tenement building in the city’s oldest and most labyrinthine quarter, quite unlike the marble spires that flanked the main thoroughfare.
“Those posters really are everywhere,” Talyndra whispered, glancing at a wanted poster of Emily on a wall across the street.
“Good thing Emily isn’t with us,” Dorian whispered back. “Bounty like that, we’d have half the city after us.”
“Is it a normal human thing to hunt people like this?”
“Not usually without good reason,” Dorian said. “But Elara belongs to a powerful and ancient bloodline, and that means she can bend some of the rules.”
Talyndra rolled her eyes. “My grandma’s got warts older than your ancient human bloodlines. Anyway, are you sure this is the place?”
A trio of rats scurried out from under the building’s dilapidated doorway, earning a series of angry stomps from Talyndra.
“It’s a bit more rundown than last time I was here,” Dorian admitted. “But he’s definitely here. Top floor.”
They climbed five flights of narrow, rickety stairs that groaned under every step. The door to the garret at the top was unlocked. Dorian pushed it open slowly.
The room was a maelstrom of controlled chaos. Books were stacked in precarious pillars, scrolls were stuffed into every niche, and strange, intricate brass instruments lay half-dismantled on every surface. The air smelled of dried ink and burnt toast. In the center of it all, a small, wizened man was fast asleep in a large armchair, snoring softly.
Dorian and Talyndra exchanged a look. “That’s him, all alright,” Dorian whispered. “Hardly looks a day older.” He cleared his throat and spoke up, “Hail, Master Olenius! Your student has returned.”
The old man did not respond, continuing to snore in his chair.
Dorian frowned. “Still a heavy sleeper, then. But I think we have a good way to wake him up.” He smiled at Talyndra slyly.
Talyndra nodded, pointing at a stone hearth on one side of the room, flanked by a pile of firewood. It was surprisingly free of detritus. Dorian placed some of the firewood in the hearth and then produced a small, dry stick from a fold in his cloak and dropped it in the middle of the hearth.
Earlier, Emily had set fire to this stick, and Dorian had placed a spellbreak on it to suppress the flame temporarily. He now spoke the words to release the flame. The stick flared to life, and the flame quickly spread to the firewood, casting a warm, flickering light across the cluttered room. They’d figured out this trick during their time on the road, and this wasn’t the first time it had come in handy.
Talyndra smiled and twirled the index finger of her right hand. A pulse of green magic traveled from her fingertip and along a whirling path, as if along an invisible string, out of the window and down. “Message sent,” Talyndra said.
Back at the campsite, Emily and Aria sat on a smooth treetrunk before the ashes of the previous night’s cooking fire, waiting for the signal to teleport. Seeing no reason to burn any more perfectly good clothes if they could help it, both were naked, and Aria shivered slightly. “During my time as a statue, I forgot how ... sensitive skin is,” she said, shivering in the slight breeze. “It gives me a new appreciation for everything you’ve been through, Emily.”
“I’m surprised to hear that, given how often you seem to forget you aren’t wearing anything,” Emily replied.
Aria blushed, chuckling softly. “Being able to remove anything from my person without a chisel is still quite novel,” she admitted.
“I wish I could forget sometimes, and just relax,” Emily replied. “But having powerful, evil magic around my neck at all times, waiting to possess me ... that makes it difficult to take it easy. Every time I feel a leaf or a bit of moss on my skin, I worry that I’ve allowed the Nightmoss to gain a foothold.” She glanced down at the Stoneshell. “I haven’t had a moment’s rest ... except last night.”
Aria’s eyes flashed with curiosity. “You and Dorian returned to camp quite late. Did you ... enjoy the festival?” She punctuated this question with a sly wink.
Emily felt her own cheeks warm. “It was really nice, taking a break from all of this,” she said, gesturing at the necklace and her painted skin. “I felt so normal. Almost like I was ... back home.”
“I’m glad,” Aria said, her tone genuine. “You deserve some normalcy. Did he...?”
She was cut off as a pulse of green light traveled through the air, creating a crude arrow that pointed towards Lirethel. Emily beamed at the sight. “They’ve found him!” That meant their plan was working so far.
Taking Aria’s hand, she closed her eyes and pictured a Stoneshell fire. “Olenius’s study.”
The woods vanished in a roar of flame, instantly replaced by the cluttered garrett. Emily and Aria landed barefoot upon a plush rug, kicking up dust. The Stoneshell fire was warm against their backs.
Dorian and Talyndra beamed at them.
The sudden flash of light and heat in his study was enough to jolt the old spellbreaker awake. He sat bolt upright, his spectacles askew, his white hair standing out in all directions. He blinked once, twice, his magnified eyes taking in Dorian and Talyndra by the door, and then the two naked women who had just materialized out of thin air in the middle of his room.
At the sight of Emily, the Stoneshell and the glowing blue runes that criss-crossed her otherwise bare skin, a slow, delighted grin spread across his wrinkled face. He sprang from his chair with the vigor of a much younger man. “Fascinating!” he exclaimed, circling Emily. “Truly fascinating!” Turning to Dorian, he said, “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since you started writing to me.”
Doctor Olenius Vane was a whirlwind of focused energy. He had immediately shooed them away from the rug, insisting it was a priceless heirloom from the Sunken City of Y’ha-nthlei. “Mustn’t mix these magical energies, now, who knows what could happen!”
Olenius hastily scrawled a chalk circle over the wooden floorboards and ushered Emily into the center of it. “Now stand perfectly still, with your arms out to the side,” he said, producing a small telescopic device with a vast array of brass lenses.
Emily did as she was instructed, and the man began examining her from every angle with each of the lenses in turn. “Get your feet out a little wider ... yes, that’s right.”
She cast a doubtful glance back at her friends, standing anxiously to one side of the room. Despite Dorian’s best efforts, she still didn’t understand all that much about spellbreaking. Perhaps all the poking a prodding was necessary.
“You sure this is purely scientific?” Talyndra whispered to Dorian, as Olenius traced a line of Azure Essence down Emily’s side with a wizened finger, making her flinch.
“I’ll have a word if he gets too familiar,” Dorian said, loudly enough for his mentor to hear.
“And I’ll smash his head in with a piece of that hearth,” Aria said, flexing the Bronzeband. She stood holding the dress that Talyndra had brought her in front of her body, watching too anxiously to put it on.
But Olenius was far too absorbed in his investigation to note either of these threats. He now produced a silver rod from one of his endless array of pockets and passed it slowly over Emily’s skin. “The symbiosis is nearly complete,” he muttered, mostly to himself. The rod hummed violently as it passed over the Stoneshell.
“Could you remove the necklace for me, please?” Olenius asked. “Only for a moment.”
Emily hesitated, looking to her friends for support.
“I need to see this ... Nightmoss,” Olenius continued. He took a beaker from his desk and tossed out the contents, which sizzled violently on the floor.
With shaking hands, Emily released the Stoneshell’s clasp and pulled it from her neck, dropping it into the waiting beaker. Instantly, the gray shell turned black, and Nightmoss surged out of it.
“Ho ho, it’s lively stuff!” Olenius cried, his eyes almost popping out of his sockets. “That should be enough, thank you.”
The necklace jumped from the beaker and landed back on Emily’s chest, where a small burst of flame destroyed its Nightmoss covering.
Olenius set the beaker back down on the desk, the Nightmoss bubbling violently within. “Please hand me the Azure Essence, Dorian,” he asked.
Dorian produced a small vial of Azure Essence and handed it to Olenius, who retrieved his brass lenses. He then uncorked the vial and poured a few drops into the beaker, watching the reaction intently through the largest of his bronze lenses. “The Azure Essence acts as a retardant, yes, but it’s like trying to hold back the tide with a sieve.”
He then tipped the rest of the vial into the beaker. There was a small explosion as the Azure Essence attacked the Nightmoss. “By the Founders!”
Stepping away from the desk, Olenius applied his lens to the Stoneshell pendant once more. “The Nightmoss is woven directly into the Stoneshell’s enchantment matrix.” He then moved his lens up and along Emily’s neck and over her jaw, until he was staring her directly in the eye. “It’s also thoroughly permeated the aura of the bearer. They’re completely entangled.”
“W-what does that mean?” Emily asked, uncomfortable and not a little frightened.
Olenius stepped back, set aside his tools, and pushed his spectacles up his nose. His expression shifted from curiosity to something more grave. “The Nightmoss is a parasite of immense power and singular purpose. It was a key ingredient in the Stoneshell’s creation and is responsible for much of its power. But it is an all-consuming void, held in check only by the pressure of its natural environment. Outside that environment, it cannot be stopped.”
“Can you remove it?” Emily asked, her voice tight. “Dorian said you were the greatest spellbreaker in Lirethel.”
Olenius smiled at Dorian. “While I would be the last to argue with that designation, there are limits to every art. This isn’t a curse to be lifted or a ward to be undone. This is a magical lifeform that has bonded with another. To tear it out would be to destroy the Stoneshell itself.”
Emily gulped. “D-destroy the Stoneshell?” Her mind raced at the thought, and she felt a tightness in her chest.
“The Stoneshell draws its strength from the Nightmoss,” he explained. “They are, in some sense, one and the same. From what I understand, the Stoneshell was contained by the curses placed upon it centuries ago. But your ritual, my dear, blew the doors clean off the hinges. Now, its power is unbound.”
“So we bind it again?” Dorian suggested. “We reapply the curses?”
Aria gasped.
“I didn’t mean—not the same curses, anyway,” Dorian muttered.
“It would be a temporary solution at best.” Olenius waved a hand dismissively. “Like putting a lid on a boiling pot. The pressure will only build. And the cost in itself is great. One does not lightly cast curses.”
Aria glared at Dorian.
“No, no, the Nightmoss must be returned to a place where it is inert. A place of immense pressure and absolute magical nullity.” He stopped pacing and looked directly at Emily, his eyes sharp and serious.
“There is only one such place in all of Thessolan,” he said, his voice dropping to a somber whisper. “The Trench of Trule, at the bottom of the deepest ocean.”
“That’s where the Stoneshell comes from,” Emily said. “Where Thurseus Irontail mined the materials he made it from.”
“Precisely,” Olenius said.
“So if we return the Stoneshell to the Trench of Trule, the Nightmoss won’t be able to spread anymore.” Emily was already wondering if she would be able to enlist Caelum’s help for the quest. He might not be overjoyed to help her throw away an artifact with such significance in merfolk history.
“Speaking of spreading, look at that beaker!” Dorian cried, pointing at the beaker of Nightmoss on the worktable, which had eaten through the last of the Azure Essence and begun to overflow.
“Ah!” Emily cried, instinctively launching a fireball at the desk. The Nightmoss burst into flame, and the whole room filled with smoke.
After a few minutes of chaos, the fire was put out, leaving only a scorch mark under the now-destroyed beaker. Somehow, this was not the only scorch mark on the desk—if Olenius was bothered by the damage, he didn’t show it.
Talyndra had opened all the windows in the room, allowing the smoke to slowly waft out.
“Now then, where were we?” Olenius asked.
“You told us we need to return the Stoneshell to the Trench of Trule,” Emily said, tapping the pendant.
Olenius made a strange expression, and hesitated for a long time before replying. Up to this point, he had been unable to take his eyes off Emily, but now he looked everywhere else in the room. “That is ... half of the problem.”
“What’s the other half?” asked Talyndra.
Olenius coughed. “The Stoneshell is not ... it’s not merely a necklace. It is that, of course, but it is also the Nightmoss. And it is also the bearer.”
“What are you saying, Olenius?” Aria asked. She had still not put on the dress and hugged it close to her body.
Olenius looked gravely at each of them in turn and violently cleared his throat. The words seemed to catch in his throat as he spoke them. “I am merely saying that to protect our world from the threat of the Nightmoss, the Stoneshell must be returned to the Trench of Trule, the only place where its magic can be counteracted, nullified. And the Stoneshell Bearer must accompany it.”
A grave silence descended on the room.
“Okay, so Emily has to take the Stoneshell to the Trench,” said Talyndra, breaking the silence. “Guess she won’t be able to teleport there, but that doesn’t sound too bad, does it Em?”
Olenius frowned at Talyndra. “It is not merely a case of taking the Stoneshell somewhere. As long as the bearer remains active, the Stoneshell and the Nightmoss will have an unseverable link to the world above, a foothold from which to grow. Emily must accompany the Stoneshell to the Trench, and she must stay there.”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
The room suddenly erupted with heated arguing. Talyndra was yelling, Dorian looked stricken, and Aria had started to cry.
“It’s the only way!” Olenius shouted, growing frustrated with the cacophony. “You can play at containment, perhaps even for the rest of her life. You can make new curses, twist this land and its people with new magical afflictions, and maybe that will help for a little while! But there will be another Stoneshell Bearer, and she will do all the same things as Emily, until the Stoneshell is once again at full power, until the Azure Essence is exhausted. And then the Nightmoss will consume everything.”
“You’re telling her to sacrifice herself!” Talyndra exploded, stepping forward. “You’re telling her to go to the bottom of the ocean and just ... die? That’s your brilliant solution?”
“It is the only solution that guarantees the permanent nullification of the Nightmoss,” Olenius stated. “A terrible choice, I grant you. But the alternative is for this world to be consumed by an unthinking, unfeeling, insatiable magical energy. One life, to save the lives of millions.”
“That can’t be the only way!” Aria shouted.
“It’s the only effective way,” Olenius retorted. “Others have been tried. I have done my research. Arctulus thought he could contain the Stoneshell’s power through curses. Victus, whom you’ve met, thought he could destroy the Stoneshell with a simple dispellation, performed at the Nightmoss’s most concentrated point. They were both wrong. Dangerously wrong.”
“But the Azure Essence works!” Talyndra protested. “We can keep painting her! We’ll get more from the Azure Coast if we have to!”
Olenius shook his head, his expression grim. “For how long? A year? Ten? A hundred? You would be treating a symptom, not the disease. And the Nightmoss is a powerful magical entity, capable of learning and changing. Eventually, the Essence will fail. And all you will have done is delay the inevitable and prolong the bearer’s suffering. Already, she is forced to go naked. What more shall she have to endure?”
Emily felt the floor tilt beneath her. She thought of her quest, her friends, her journey. She thought of the life she had started to build in this strange, vibrant world. To have it all end in a cold, dark trench at the bottom of the sea ... sitting and waiting until hunger, thirst, or pure despair took her ... it was unthinkable. Was that truly the future that awaited her in Thessolan?
“No,” Emily said, shaking her head, a single tear tracing a path down one glowing blue cheek. “There has to be another way.” And she knew there was.
“There is no other way!” Olenius insisted, his voice sharp with the certainty of a scholar who has examined every variable. “The magical principles are absolute! To neutralize the entity, the artifact must be returned to a state of nullity. It is the only—”
“Wait,” said Dorian.
Olenius stopped mid-gesticulation, turning to stare at his former pupil. “Excuse me?”
Dorian stepped away from the wall. His eyes weren’t on Olenius, but on Emily, a fierce, protective light burning in their depths. “You said the Nightmoss must be returned to a place of absolute magical nullity. You’re right. But you’ve only considered one such place.”
Aria looked up, wiping a tear from her cheek. “Dorian, what are you saying?”
Emily smiled through tears. “He’s saying that the Trench of Trule isn’t the only place that nullifies magic. There’s another place like that, and it’s called Earth.”
“You mean ... the world you came from?” Aria asked.
Emily nodded. “During the ritual, I went somewhere else. There was a knight there, a knight who had no body—an empty suit of armor. He—she?—it?—took me to see Evangeline, who explained something like this to me. That the only way to neutralize the Nightmoss would be for me to return to my own world, where magic doesn’t exist.”
Olenius raised an eyebrow. “Return to your world? Hmm ... yes, I did detect a certain discordance about you. I chalked it up to the Nightmoss’s influence, but perhaps there’s more than just that.” He picked up the brass lenses once more and passed them slowly over Emily’s body, stopping at the end of her long braid. Slow, dawning comprehension spread across his wrinkled face, followed by a gasp of pure, unadulterated delight.
“By the celestial spheres,” he whispered, scrambling towards a cluttered workbench and snatching up an astrolabe comprised of spinning silver rings. He held the device near Emily’s braid, and the silver rings began to spin violently, clinking loudly against each other. “Yes, that’s it! That’s it exactly! Instead of sacrificing yourself in the Trench of Trule, you merely have to return to your own world, taking the Stoneshell with you! It’s the perfect solution!”
“But how?” Emily asked.
Olenius looked her in the eye and then burst into guffaws. When he realized that the rest of the party shared her incomprehension, he stopped laughing. “You really don’t know?” he asked, puzzled.
“Of course not!” Emily shouted, her face red with anger. “I came here in a bathtub! Naked! If I knew how to get home, I would have done it right away!”
Olenius shrank back at Emily’s sudden outburst. “Alright, point taken. But the truth is, you’ve had a way to return to your world all along.” He lifted the end of her braid and held it before her eyes, pointing at the twisted black elastic band that held it in place.
“What?” Emily asked, bewildered. “That’s ... just a hair tie.”
“Oh no, it’s much more than that,” Olenius said. “It is a powerful magical artifact. A portal to another world.”
“Really?” Emily asked, carefully scrutinizing the hair tie.
“Try it if you don’t believe me,” Olenius said. “Take in your hands, pull to expand, and speak the name of your home world. That should be all you need to do.”
Taking the braid from Olenius, she pulled the hair tie off and let her hair fall loose around her shoulders. Since leaving Paja Abbey, she had worn her increasingly long hair in a tight braid to keep it out of the way when she needed to have the Azure Essence reapplied to her skin. Just like the hair tie had survived her fiery teleportations, it had survived the ravages of the Nightmoss. This, then, was the reason why. It had been a powerful magical artifact all along.
A wave of dizzying relief washed over Emily, so potent it almost buckled her knees. She didn’t have to spend the rest of her life in a dark, cold place beneath the waves. She could just go home. The thought, which had once been her singular obsession, now felt strange and bittersweet.
“She can go home,” Aria said, her voice cracking slightly. “She can save Thessolan and go home.”
“It is the perfect solution!” Olenius declared, clapping his hands together with a loud crack. “Elegant! Efficient! Far superior to a dreary demise at the bottom of the ocean! Whenever you’re ready, just say the—”
He was cut short by a blinding flash of light from the far side of the garret. The grimy window overlooking the alleyway exploded inwards in a shower of glass and splintered wood. A wave of force swept through the room, sending scrolls and instruments flying and toppling a pillar of books with a deafening crash.
An all-too-familiar animal shriek punctuated the destruction—the cry of a gryphon. A figure in armor of silver and gold leapt through the destroyed window and into the room, golden eyes blazing with malice. A cruel smile twisted Elara’s lips. “You’re looking a little less ... overgrown ... today, Emily.”
“Elara!” Aria gasped, instinctively stepping in front of Emily, though she was no longer made of nigh-indestructible stone.
“You!” Talyndra snarled, drawing her twin swords in a flash of steel.
Dorian grabbed several instruments from the floor and kicked a heavy table onto its side to create a barrier, already muttering the words of his most trusted spellbreaks.
Elara ignored them all, her gaze fixed on Emily. “You should be more careful, my dear,” she said. “Intervening in alleyway squabbles, throwing fireballs around, even signing autographs! I would keep a low profile if my face and bosom were on a wanted poster!”
She reached into a pouch at her belt and pulled out a roll of brown parchment, letting it unfurl. It was a copy of Emily’s wanted poster. A signed copy.
Dorian’s face went pale. “The merchant ... that wretch!”
“A cunning little weasel, tried to get much more out of me than his information was worth,” Elara sneered, letting the poster drop to the floor. “But it was a help. I knew you were in the city, and all I had to do was watch the skyline for a bit of smoke. “And then you attempted to burn this hovel down! Not that it wouldn’t be an improvement.”
She took a step forward, her armored boots crunching on broken glass, holding her staff ahead of her. It was carved to look like two intertwining green snakes. “But perhaps I have underestimated you,” she said. “That is the mistake I made in our last meeting. You have found a way to unlock the full power of the Stoneshell, and that was no simple task. Quite impressive for a girl who cannot even dress herself.”
“Don’t come any closer,” Talyndra threatened, drawing her twin swords.
