Page 30 of The Shadowed Oracle (The Bonded Worlds #1)
Chapter Seventeen
Raidinn and Tyla were too fixated on the screens of the control panel to notice Ingrid entering. She took hesitant steps toward them, wanting to help but not knowing how. Keys clacked, beeps from the monitors grew louder and faster, while the twins scrambled back and forth.
“I told you.”
Ingrid was so concerned with the unexplainable mess that she’d forgotten who else was in the room with them. The imprisoned Wrane stood in the very center of the cell, a slight sway in its stance as if readying to charge the bars and escape.
“I told you,” it repeated. “I told you they were coming.”
“Is it Sylan?” Ingrid blurted.
The Wrane only smiled that sharp grin in response.
“Don’t bother with it.” The clanging on the keyboards ceased, and Tyla’s voice rang out like a siren call in the emptiness. “Where’s Dean?” she asked.
“Right behind me. Or, he will be.” Ingrid stumbled over her words before articulating her biggest concern. “Do we have a place to hide, there, in Ealis?”
“Technically.” Raidinn lifted his fist, readying to put it through one of the monitors. “Problem is, we can’t get the fucking portal to work. They must’ve figured out a way to shut down our generator. We’re rebooting everything now using the backup source, but…”
Ingrid waited what felt like hours for more information.
She looked to Tyla for any sign of hope, for any sign of that radiant and soothing glow of hers, but found none.
Even she couldn’t muster any optimism. The two physically imposing immortals were hunched over the old computers like Neanderthals trying to discover fire.
Something was wrong.
“But… what?” Ingrid asked. “What is happening?”
“They don’t have a way to close the portal,” the Wrane answered in their stead, its voice carrying the amusement of a lover scorned. “Escape is futile.”
“What does that mean?” Ingrid refused to look at the cocky wraith as she asked the question. “Can we still go through? Can we escape?”
“We can,” Tyla said. “But the backup generator, it doesn’t give us full control of the machine. We’d have to…”
The two females locked eyes.
And in that moment, Ingrid knew.
“Once you go through,” the Wrane mocked. “The door will be left wide open. We will simply meet you on the other side.”
“There’s gotta be another way,” Raidinn barked, as if it were his sister or Ingrid who had spoken. “Dean. He’ll think of something. He’ll?—”
“I can close it,” a voice from the doorway crept in.
Dean stepped closer, dressed in full armor now. He made the final moves to the control panel, to a hidden switch below on the underside of the desk, then looked to Tyla, to Raidinn, then finally to Ingrid, as if he was apologizing.
“The backup is for emergencies only,” he said. “In the event of something like this, the portal has a failsafe. Security measures. We can go through without being followed. But after we do, everything will self-destruct.”.
The news sank in with everyone present in the room, including the Wrane, who was now pressing itself against the bars like a trapped rat trying to escape.
“Perfect!” Raidinn exclaimed. “Problem solved. We escape and no one follows us. I like the sound of it.” He quickly read the room, stiffening. “I mean aside from the… Dean losing his childhood home thing—sorry about that mate. Really.”
“You absolute twat!” Tyla pulled at her ponytail anxiously. “That’s not why we’re upset! We won’t be able to come back. Every portal in Ealis is guarded night and day. If our portal is destroyed, we can’t come back.” The repetition was like a deathbed confession, quietly accepting her fate.
Raidinn looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. “It might be a while, but I promise you, sis, I’ll find a way for you to come back. We will find a way. We always have.”
Tyla gave a single nod in response.
Ingrid moved toward her, reached out and held her hand, then looked to Dean and found solace in his focused tinkering. Judging by his expression, his plan was working. Now all she had to do was wait for the go-ahead.
“It’ll be okay,” Tyla said under her breath. “Rai, you’re getting your wish, so that’s something. We’re finally going.”
“Not like this.” Raidinn hung his head, falling into a bout of deep thought. “I’d always seen it differently. The two of us all dressed up. Bags packed. A plan. A whole itinerary for everything we’ve always wanted to do. Everything Mum and Dad told us about.”
“An itinerary?”
“Yeah,” Raidinn said. “What’s wrong with being prepared?”
“Nothing.” Tyla was smiling with ease now. “Just, I’ve known you your whole life and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you plan for anything. Not even university.”
“Hey! Low blow.” Raidinn threw his arms up. “Bringing up uni at a time like this? You know I?—”
He was cut short.
The ear-shattering sound of crumbling metal echoed off the cavernous walls.
Ingrid looked to the source. It was coming from the door to the basement.
Even with Ealis iron enforcing it, it was only a matter of time before whatever was on the other side came through.
The attacker knew exactly how to combat their otherworldly enforcements.
The three experienced world-walkers ran to the back of the cage without pause.
Ingrid only watched as they filed in a straight line, quickly climbing a ladder welded onto the prison bars and leading to the top of the jail cell.
Ingrid hadn’t even known it was there, yet she was all too happy to see it.
She didn’t need any further reasons to fall in line, but the sudden crash of iron tumbling down the basement stairs acted as a physical push, forcing her to join her friends.
She leaped onto the first step and hurriedly took her place next to the trio.
“They’re coming!” The Wrane cackled viciously from below. “My kin are here! Mother help me, they’ve come for your reckoning!”
Cuuu-lang, Cla-cuhhh-LANG.
A much closer, more urgent pounding began on the second door, the only thing now barricading them from whoever was on the other side.
Scraping, bending, tearing. It was unending, desperate and animal, unlike anything Ingrid had heard.
She did her best to ignore it by anxiously repeating a prayer-like mantra in her head.
Now. Now. Now we go.
She stared upward at the centermost point of the ceiling, at the strange symbol painted in black. It was lost on her to ask what exactly it was, or if it had anything to do with the portal at all. Was it some kind of catalyst? Or one of those hexes Dean had told her about?
She still had so many questions.
“What will it feel like?” Ingrid asked. “Going through? Will it hurt?”
Tyla answered first, short and sweet: “Yes.”
Raidinn forced a chuckle. “Hell yes it will hurt. We’re about to be squeezed through space and?—”
Complete darkness shrouded them, cutting him off. It was like all light had been sucked out by the portal, and the low hum of the computers disappeared along with it. Complete nothingness. Even the intruders stopped their barrage.
Then, just moments later, like the sound of some great beast coming back to life, the backup generator whirred and the computer screens flashed red and yellow lights so bright that they filled the entire room.
A numberless countdown began.
Beep… beep… beep beep beep…
Growing faster until there were no breaks in between.
The lights flashed strobe-like.
“Here it comes!” Raidinn called out.
Dean reached out gently and grabbed Ingrid’s hand. Her private, hopeful thoughts were now a low whisper.
“Now. Now. Now we go.”
But the room remained still. Whatever was supposed to happen wasn’t happening. Ingrid hadn’t been told what to expect, but she knew that much. She’d feel something if her body was being teleported to another realm.
The four of them could only wait.
And wait.
Standing there helplessly as the banging on the door became louder, harder, angrier.
Cuuu-lang, Cla-cuhhh.
With a deafening boom, the iron barricade burst open and flew across the room, turning stone to ash as it slammed against the wall.
From the ruinous hole that was once their last defense, a figure emerged, fading in and out of sight as the neon lights flashed above.
“My prince,” the Wrane whispered.