“This way,” Hagar said. “Don’t get any bright ideas about coming back here to try this on your own. This portal is a loaner.”
She opened the new door to reveal a gleaming black gateway, its surface rippling like a still pond brushed by a spring breeze. Hagar stepped through the portal without a pause and vanished into its dark surface.
“Where does this lead?” Niddhogg asked.
“No clue.” I shrugged. “It’s a chance to spy on the Shambala team. I’m not going to pass it up, and I could use your help. If you’re too scared though—”
“I’m a dragon,” Niddhogg scoffed and flapped his wings. He turned to face me as he drifted backward into the portal. “I fear nothing.”
I chuckled at the diminutive dragon’s words and followed him into the darkness. There was the usual lurching sensation as my body shifted from one point in reality to another. That was followed by the disorienting sensation of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Hahen had once tried to explain the theory of jinsei entanglement that powered the portals, but it had never really sunk in. All I knew was that I could step through one and exit another almost anywhere in the world.
Or, outside this world. The Far Horizon was only one of the many, many destinations beyond Earth’s dominion.
And, from the looks of the place I’d landed, it could have been on any one of them.
The ground was covered in a milky, opalescent mist that made it impossible to see my feet. Stone walls rose all around us and formed a natural cavern above our heads. Hagar and Niddhogg stood at the only exit. I moved carefully through the mist, probing each step before trusting my weight to it, and joined them.
“Well,” I whispered. “This is certainly something.”
The cavern was perched high up on the side of a mountain. A layer of clouds formed an impenetrable curtain a few hundred feet below us. The moon seemed impossibly close, and its silver light transformed those clouds into a glowing, slowly churning blanket. Sparks of lightning jumped through the cloud layer, and the rumble of thunder rattled us down to our bones. A single rope bridge led from the mouth of our cavern to another dark opening in the flank of another mountain ahead of us. Gusts of wind rocked the bridge from side to side. The ropes and boards creaked and clattered against one another. It sounded disconcertingly old.
“Is this thing even safe?” Niddhogg asked. “I mean, I can fly over there. But I don’t want the two of you to take involuntary skydiving lessons off this rickety old thing.”
“Let’s find out,” Hagar said merrily. She strode briskly onto the bridge, one hand on each of the ropes that supported it. The slats bent and bowed beneath her feet, and a few of them gave out alarming pops and cracks. She made it a quarter of the way across the gap without any of them falling, though. It was my turn to follow her.
“This is crazy,” Niddhogg muttered as he fluttered along behind me. “If the dragons catch us, we’ll never get out of here in one piece.”
“Maybe we should be quiet,” I said. “That’ll make it harder for them to find us.”
“Good point.” Niddhogg went silent. For all of two seconds. “It’s just, when I get nervous—”
“Hush,” I whispered. “We’re almost there.”
Hagar paused at the edge of the cave and peered into the darkness. I waited, a few yards back on the bridge in case we needed to turn and run. After a few breaths, when nothing attacked her, she turned back and offered me a shrug.
“Our people say we can see the training grounds from the ledge up ahead,” Hagar whispered to me once we’d all entered the cavern. “The Shambala team should be there for at least another half hour. Hopefully that’s enough time.”
“It will be,” Niddhogg agreed. “Let’s see what they have to show us.”
The three of us hustled across the narrow cavern to an even narrower opening in its wall. The moonlight illuminated it like a jagged crack of lightning in the darkness. It was wide enough for Hagar to squeeze through if she held her breath, and Niddhogg made it without effort. I was taller and thicker than my handler, though. I took a deep breath, let it out, and then wedged myself into the crack.
The stone clutched at the material of my robes, pulling it tight across my body and tangling my arms and legs as I tried to force my way through the stones. It was a tight fit, and I heard a few seams pop and stitches rip before I reached the halfway point. The narrowed, and a spark of panic burst through my aura. If I got stuck here...
“Tight squeeze,” Hagar commented. “Please don’t get stuck.”
“That doesn’t help,” I whispered.
I was wedged tight between the stone walls. A knob of rock pressed against my sternum, and another had wedged itself into my hip. My bones and muscles were strengthened by my disciple-level core, but that didn’t entirely blunt the pain. The harder I struggled, the worse it hurt. I was going to have a hell of a bruise by the time I got through this.
If I got through this.
I took another shallow breath and forced all the air from my lungs. At the same instant, I jerked hard toward the opposite end of the crack. My robes tore, the stone bit into my skin hard enough to cut me, and I gained
