Chapter 7: The Art of Portal Combat

I sprang backward as a ring of light surrounded me. When I landed several feet backward, a portal sparked where I had been standing. My gaze flicked up when the horned birdman casually leaned over its portal and swung its lance-like beak with a thick neck corded with rippling muscle.

A yelp escaped my throat as I leaned back so far, I swore my spine would snap. By the time I recovered my balance, I just caught sight of the horned birdman as it stepped forward, with its wings folded behind its back, and fell into its own portal. I blinked stupidly and glanced into the stretch of snow that the portal revealed only to stiffen from head to toe when a new portal formed overhead.

I barely raised my guard before the horned birdman descended upon me. I parried the downward swing of the beast’s beak, more like a door blowing open before a bull, and my side collided against the narrow hallway’s wall. Shaking my hazy vision clear, I gaped at the indent the beast made in the tiles it now wrenched its beak from. Well, I guess it’s no wonder how it acquired walrus leather.

My heart wouldn’t stop pounding. The only sound that cut through my heavy breathing was a wail followed by the rapid clicking of a birdman’s talons. I performed a series of sidesteps backward before glancing up.

The horned birdman waited while I retreated before casually climbing into the portal in the ceiling.

Ludger pattered after me while dragging the decapitated salmon shark head.

"I understand this is your chief, but I can't exactly bring you to the Empire if my head gets caved in: however unlikely that outcome might appear. I don't need your help, per se, but if you could kindly tell this brute that I am just as set on preserving its palace as the rest of you—what the?"

Ludger tossed the salmon shark at me mid-run. It smacked me in the chest, my backside hit the ivory tiles, and I slid several feet down the hallway. "I know you put plenty of heart into this meal, but now isn't the time—hey!” I scrambled to my feet as the birdmen who had been holding back with Ludger swarmed around me: eyes fixed on the salmon shark. “What did I tell you all about the sting of my blade?" I was about to curse Ludger when I spotted the horned birdman shaking its head while scanning the throng that surrounded me from its portal.

The beast hummed to itself as it searched for some way to reach me through the birdman swarm that began clambering atop each other’s backs and reaching for the salmon shark.

"Watch it." I frowned down at the waist-high birdmen and strained under the weight of the decapitated salmon shark head. Once I managed to hoist it over their snapping beaks, I spotted Ludger shrinking away as its brethren pushed it to the back of the crowd.

Jumping to remain seen over their bobbing heads, the creature pounded its chest with a clutched talon before holding up a claw as if to say, “one minute.”

Before I could tell Ludger I wasn't in the mood for charades, I stiffened as hundreds of pinprick eyes stared unblinkingly at the salmon shark. Coils of light arced from their glowing eyes, and as their probing tips reached for the salmon shark, its frozen flesh squirmed. The thought of what would come next made me shudder. I clutched the salmon shark to my chest before I could drop it. Springing skyward, I flicked my rapier to meet the surrounding threads as they descended inward. "This disgusting hunk of flesh was prepared for me!"

Hundreds of snapping threads cracked the air.

Shrieks followed, but the birdmen didn’t clutch their eyes and slink away. They stared at me while cocking their heads to the side.

A shiver crawled up my spine as I glanced over both shoulders to find every birdman facing me: silent and staring.

The threads of light hung limply from their eyes and searched among the sparking ends that lay severed at my feet.

I slid through the crowd, and they would’ve toppled over if not for how densely packed they stood.

The birdmen weren’t picky about which of the severed ends they grabbed, but once their threads knotted themselves and became whole again, they watched me leave for the nautilus-shaped tree: occasionally glancing at the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Narrowing my eyes at the statuesque birdmen in case they decided to hound me while I had my back to them, I was about to sprint when a blunt force hammered me into the wall and knocked the air from my lungs. I yelped and clutched my side, but I kept my body bladed toward the threat and poised my rapier at where the blow had come from. Only once my shock vanished did I realize the salmon shark had been knocked from my grip. It was still skidding down the hallway before it rested before the nautilus-shaped tree.

A pair of arched eyes burned from within a portal that hung upon the wall opposite me. They didn't even glance at the salmon shark. Clinging from a web of sparking branches only distinguishable by their violet silhouettes in an otherwise stark-white room, the horned birdman raised its lance-like beak and bellowed a series of booming notes.

I whipped my gaze from the floor, walls, and ceiling as more rings of light burned to life with each whistle. The horned birdman disappeared from view.

My vision swam as I spun to face each new beak that seemed to swing at me almost at once from different portals.

While each blow was accompanied by the horned birdman’s burning eyes, the force with which its beak blew past my guard to jab through my padded leather coat as if it were silk made me think the entire swarm was upon me.

I was so focused on keeping upright as I staggered backward that I could hardly do more than hold my rapier up against a flurry of blows that hailed down from all sides. Jolts shot down my arms that made my jaws chatter, but I searched for an opening in the beast’s ever-changing guard when its eyes erupted with sparks. My arms burned under the full weight the birdman pressed against my rapier, but I flicked it under and around the beak before swiping at the threads.

However, rather than shooting at my face, the threads crawled up the horned birdman's brow and disappeared beneath its hood. My rapier clinked against the beast’s metallic scalp.

My heart pounded against my ribs as my eyes swept everywhere in search of the violet threads. I only noticed that the horned birdman had withdrawn a wickedly-curved hunting knife made of bleached bone when it jabbed at my sword arm with a force that made its thick folds of walrus-hide crack like a whip.

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Sparks ran up the knife’s length, and my mind filled with the image of Ludger removing the salmon shark’s guts.

A violent shudder wracked me from head to toe, and I did something between collapsing and scrambling away from the knife: barely a quarter the length of my rapier.

The knife missed stabbing me through the arm and ripped into my coat’s sleeve.

I wrenched my arm back to tear myself from the knife, but I froze once I spotted the threads of light peeking out from beneath the hem of the horned birdman’s robe. They had twined up its talon to tap the base of the bone knife until it surged with violet electricity. The edges of the knife wavered before embedding into the leather coat: seeping in fiber by fiber until bone and leather merged.

Pulling me off my feet, the horned birdman hauled me into its portal.

Oh, frozen stars above! This isn’t a game, is it? I heaved while planting my boots against either side of the portal.

I quaked as I resisted, but the horned birdman steadily pulled me in until my arm passed through the other side and became numbed by whirling snow.

The beast shook its head solemnly before clutching one of the ivory bricks at the edge of the portal with a talon.

While this magic did stretch my understanding of electrical engineering, my heart stopped once I realized what would happen when the ring of light was broken.

The horned birdman nodded before gesturing behind it to the edge of the snowy horizon that stretched behind it as if I could even make the journey after this.

I yanked at my arm over and over without caring that it felt ready to tear at the shoulder. Just when I considered going slack against the unshakable hold, something gripped my shoulder.

The leather on my sword arm’s sleeve tore, and I was pulled loose from it. I didn't even look at Ludger, for who else could it be, when the creature scampered in front of me, looked me over for even the tiniest scrapes, and sighed wistfully while running a claw along the gash it had made in my coat. I was too busy gaping at the portal.

As the horned birdman yanked the brick loose, the framework snapped and closed in on itself. The leather sleeve that hung inside soundlessly cut in half.

I was so busy staring at the lump of cleanly cut leather that I only realized the horned birdman had appeared behind us when Ludger leaped before me and squared its shoulders against its chief.

"You could've killed me!" I tried to screw up my slack features to glare at the horned birdman, but I could barely form a coherent sentence while I trembled.

The horned birdman raised its beak.

I laughed between ragged breaths at the thought of retreating and raised my guard to meet the beast while my quaking legs continued to give out beneath me.

Violet light pulsed from the portals that dotted the hallway.

I lowered my sword a fraction and gaped.

I hadn't noticed the portal Ludger had used to bypass the crowd of birdmen who now glanced at each other and chattered in confused undertones.

The portal’s framework wavered and stretched outward, but they weren't supposed to get bigger. Otherwise, Ludger would’ve made ones I wouldn’t have had to crouch down to get through. "Ludger, you've already proven yourself, remember? You can stop singing."

But Ludger wasn't singing. It tugged on the horned birdman’s robe, and its chief could only stare at the walls while ushering its brethren away.

Ludger’s portal hissed as it overlapped with the ones its chief had managed to evenly place: even during its rage. Heat washed over me from the plumes of sparks that overflowed from the portals’ edges. Circuits crisscrossed from the frameworks of light through the cracks between the bricks. They stretched down the hallway before joining with oncoming circuits that spread from the portal that led to Ludger’s home. But that should’ve faded by now! I paled when I recalled the portals Ludger had viewed the world through and the bricks it had left shifting in the ceiling. Perhaps this brute hadn’t just been badgering Ludger about the magical equivalent of turning gas lamps off after leaving a room. The cracks between the bricks spread wider, and the light they held burned white. Sheet lightning surged from the fissures, coursed through the roots, and my ears filled with the creaking of frozen wood.

My gaze whipped from the walls of thrashing roots to the marble egg nestled within the nautilus-shaped tree by a few fraying fibers. That's how you electrify an egg! Now it should be tangible enough proof even for the headmistress.

I froze midstep when fossilized bark cracked, the marble egg became buried behind a wall of spiraling tree roots and branches, and the nautilus-shaped tree unfurled.

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