Into Darkness

68

“What kind of crazy idea is it this time?” she asked, sounding weary of such ideas and the likelihood that it would get them killed.

Richard waved off the question. “Do me a favor and keep making sure the Glee stay back. I need to be left alone for a while to study these symbols. They’re complicated.”

Vika waggled a hand at the stone. “What do you think all those are for? What is their purpose? You said before that they’re instructions, but instructions for what?”

Richard looked into her blue eyes. “Instructions to reset the gateway.”

“What do you mean, reset it?”

Richard wiped a hand across his face. He was already weary of this damp world. He dreaded the thought of living out his life among the Glee in this hot, red, often wet world. He supposed he wouldn’t have to live too long until one of them eventually got the idea to eat him.

“Well, when whoever brought this gateway here left it for the Glee to use, they had to reset it so that it would work for the Glee.”

“Maybe they didn’t really intend to leave it here,” she suggested. “Maybe the Glee captured them and forced them to reset it so they could use it. After all, we know all too well how vicious they can be.”

Richard pulled his lower lip through his teeth. “I suppose that’s possible, too. There is no real way to tell for sure.”

“So, what are you considering?”

He waggled a finger at the stone. “I’m thinking that if I can figure out enough of the symbols to activate it, I may be able to reset it.”

Vika cocked her head as she suspiciously scrutinized him with her left eye alone. “Why would you want to reset it? For what purpose?”

“Well, think about it. If I’m able to reset it so that it works differently, then they could never again use it to go to our world—or any world for that matter. They wouldn’t have the means to reset it to work for them, so that would render the gateway inert.”

Vika’s mouth twisted as she tried to follow his train of thought. “Why bother with all that? Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to just break it apart with your sword? If you did that, they certainly wouldn’t be able to ever use it again, right? I mean, you wouldn’t need to understand the symbols to do that. If you simply break the stone apart with your sword, that would be the end of it. Forever.”

Richard glanced over at the stone before looking back at her. “We don’t know what this thing really is.”

Vika was giving him a wary look, like she was trying to figure out what he could really be thinking. “You said it’s called a gateway. Obviously, it’s a gateway to other worlds. That’s what it is.”

“Yes, but what I mean is we don’t know what powers it, what makes it work. How does it send people”—he gestured with a hand in the direction of the throng of Glee watching them—“or Glee, or whatever, to another world? What if it uses some kind of magic, or what if inside it has mechanical components powered by magic like the omen machine used to have?

“I’ve found things in our world that are incredibly powerful and in many cases I have no idea exactly how they work or who could have made them or, for that matter, even where they came from. But I learned that they were profoundly dangerous, and had I tried to simply destroy them with my sword so that no one could ever use them, it could have caused unimaginable consequences. Some of those devices could have destroyed the world of life. In some things involving unknown magic that has the potential to be profoundly dangerous, such as this, here, you have to think it through before you do anything that can’t be undone.”

Vika glanced over at the stone in a new light. “So, you’re saying that it could be so dangerous to try to destroy it that you think it might kill us all?”

Richard shrugged. “I don’t know. From what I know about magic that’s a possibility. If I hit it with my sword it could kill me, or, for all I know, it might even unleash enough power to destroy everyone for miles around, or even render this entire world a dead rock.” He leaned closer to her. “Or, for all I know, it might even act as a weapon and send that destructive power to the last place the Glee used it to visit—to our world.”

Vika flipped her braid forward over her shoulder and held it in her right fist as she considered.

“You mean, you think it could possibly be dangerous to try to destroy it, even dangerous to our own world, so instead you are thinking it might be safer for us, and our world, if you try to reset it so that the Glee can’t possibly use it, and that would accomplish the same thing. It would render it useless and prevent them from ever harming our world again.”

Richard gave her a firm nod. “That’s right. For all I know, it could kill me if I try to destroy it, and then it would still be here and still work and remain a threat to our world.”

“Well,” she said with a deep sigh, “that’s not crazy, so it’s obviously not what you are actually thinking of doing. What is the crazy thing you are really considering doing?”

Richard showed her a small smile and gestured off to the other side of the ring. “Would you please go keep an eye on them. Once I start, I think I may need to keep going and I don’t want to have any nosy Glee interrupting me.”

Vika studied his face for a moment. “What are you not telling me?”

“I’m not telling you what you don’t yet need to know.”

Vika folded her arms as she looked at him from under her brow. “I’m here alone in this world with you. Forever. I’m going to grow old and die in the world along with you—if we live that long. We are in this together. Tell me.”

Richard pursued his lips. “We are starting to sound like an old married couple.”

She kept the look leveled on him. “Tell me.”

He sighed. “All right. Well, first of all, if I simply reset the gateway, it’s always possible that someone else could come along, figure it out, and reset it back again. If that happened, then they could use it for who knows what purpose. There’s more to it, though.”

“Like what?”

Richard gestured toward the gateway without looking over at it. “These symbols are starting to look to me like they could actually be a constructed spell.”