11. The Portal

> “The laws of the Universe are just the same as any other laws: new ones need to be created to deal with new circumstances.” - Eldin, D’varshan Scientist

Ostri disappeared up the stone staircase and Athena heard voices. A few minutes passed before Ostri reappeared with another D’varsha following him. She seemed taken aback when she set eyes on Athena.

“An Aeseri? You never told me she was an Aeseri.”

To Athena all D’varsha looked roughly the same and would not have guessed Throna to be female unless Ostri had told her.

“I didn’t want to alarm you,” Ostri said.

“Alarm me? It’s the middle of the night and you wake me up telling me that someone needs to use the portal urgently. I was already fully alarmed. And now I find out it’s an Aeseri. Did you expect me not to notice?”

“If I’d told you would you have come down?”

“Well, no. Or maybe. It depends how you’d told me. What are you up to anyway?”

“It’s a lot to explain… can you just trust me and I’ll tell you afterwards? This needs to happen tonight.”

“You mean before anyone notices she’s gone?”

“No-one will notice she’s gone… Anyway, Athena? This is Throna. Throna as good as invented the portal, and is the only one who can get it to work properly.”

“The only one who can get it to work at all, you mean. Unless you count sending poor souls into the void somewhere as working.”

“Can you help?” Athena said, “The mortal universe depends on me getting back.”

Throna laughed.

“These Aeseri never change, do they? Banished to the Wastelands, no power, can’t even dig, and still think they’re the most important beings in the universe.”

“It’s no time for a philosophical debate,” Ostri said in a softer voice, “Can you… will you try to help her?”

Throna put her hands on her hips and stared at Athena.

“Will I try? Yes. Can I?” She paused. “I don’t know. Probably not. Almost certainly not. Nothing from the Wastelands has ever made it through that didn’t originate in the mortal plane, and nothing but D’varsha have come through from the other side.”

“No Aeseri has ever tried before?” Athena asked. She was surprised that she was the first to want to rebuild her mortal followers.

“I don’t know whether any have wanted to, but we have never let anyone else anywhere near the portal. We don’t even talk about it. You Aeseri cause us enough trouble without giving up one of the few things we have that you don’t.”

“But you trust me, don’t you, Throna?” Ostri asked with a smile.

“Hmm. I thought I did. But this isn’t exactly normal, is it? How do I know she hasn’t got some kind of… power over you?”

“Look at her. As you said: she can’t even dig.” Ostri gave her a few seconds, but not too long to change her mind. “I know you might not believe her that she needs to save the universe, but it might actually be true. She led the first battle against Lucathar all those years ago.”

“That Athena?” Throna asked, looking at the Aeseri in front of her in a new light.

“I need to get back,” Athena said.

“Hmm. I don’t think it will work. Most likely you’ll vanish, like the others. Where to, we don’t know. Are you prepared for that?”

“I am.”

“I’m not saying it’s death either. You know there are worse things than death, for an immortal.” Athena nodded. “Or even an ex-immortal, I guess,” Throna added, spotting the wound on Athena’s temple.

“I need to get back.”

“Hmm.” Throna turned to Ostri. “And I guess nobody else can know about it?” Ostri shook his head and grinned. “Then we’d best go out the back. It’s the fastest way to the mine shafts anyway.”

Athena followed Throna with Ostri taking up the rear. The undersized back door emerged onto a narrow passageway between tall walls. This might be quieter, Athena thought, but if anyone did come upon them there was nowhere to hide, and side passages were few and far between.

Throna walked confidently, though, treading the route she had taken almost every day for centuries. There was very little light to see by but she could have made the entire journey with her eyes closed.

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Athena, however, moved much more slowly, careful not to put a foot wrong on one of the many flights of steep stone steps.

They were soon at what looked like an almost featureless stone building, carved from the rock just like all the others, but with large metal shutters across its front. Throna slid the shutter open and bade the other two to step inside.

“Is this it?” Athena asked. They were in a room that barely held the three of them, and the only features were a set of levers on the wall. There was no way out except the way they came in.

Throna slid the shutter down and pulled one of the levers. Athena nearly fell as the floor moved with a jolt.

“We’re moving,” she said.

Throna laughed.

“You’ve never been in an elevator before?”

Why would I? Athena thought. I could get anywhere I wanted to be just by thinking.

Once she caught her balance she felt normal again.

“Has it stopped?” she asked.

“No. The portal is a way down.”

“What’s moving us?”

Throna laughed again.

“Water. The ground source is pressurised, we don’t know why, but it’s the only source of power we’ve been able to find. Electricity seems to behave differently here and we haven’t been able to make any kind of motor.”

Athena knew the concepts, although not the detail. Like so many things, the Aeseri had never had any need to experiment with such things. They spent more time on the mortal plane, those that had followers, and their powers there meant they had no need for anything else.

“Why is the portal so deep down?” she asked.

Throna looked at Ostri. He shook his head. Athena thought for a second.

“What have you found down there that we Aeseri didn’t know about?” she asked. Throna laughed but Athena was spared whatever scathing comment about the Aeseri she was about to make by the elevator suffering a jolt that almost threw her to the floor.

“It’s stopped now?” she asked.

“It’s stopped now.”

Throna lifted the metal shutter. What lay behind was of an entirely different character to the polished, sculpted stone in the main part of the fortress. The walls were roughly hewn and a corridor stretched into the distance. Stones set at regular intervals glowed and provided enough light to see by and corridors branched on either side.

“These are the mines?” Athena asked, but got no answer. What are they looking for? she wondered. She knew they were digging for metals, she had been told that much, but there was no reason to be on the astral plane if they weren’t looking for something they couldn’t find on the mortal plane. Else, why go to all this trouble?

“This way,” Throna said, exiting the elevator and immediately turning left.

Like Ostri, she too had a large key on her belt. Athena laughed at the primitive reliance on locks and keys, given the advanced technology the D’varsha had developed on the mortal plane.

She inserted the key into a smooth, stone door and pushed it open. The air took on a different smell, almost like smoke. Athena followed Throna through the doorway.

This must be the portal at last, she thought. The room was made of smooth polished stone that contrasted with the rough corridors that surrounded it. A circle of black stone on the floor marked the centre of the room and all around it were large, red-tinted discs, so thin they were almost transparent, mounted on stands on metal tracks with screws and locks to hold them in place.

“What are they?” Athena asked.

“Aeserium,” Throna said, “Very, very thin sheets of aeserium. They’re lenses, mounted on metal rails so we can adjust the focus.”

“But… how? I thought aeserium was unbreakable? How did you manage to get it so thin? And where did you get it from?”

The only aeserium Athena had ever seen was that which ran through Jashard. It was what made the Walls indestructible.

Ostri put his finger to his lips to silence Throna.

“We are D’varsha,” he said, “Didn’t you ever think that someone must have fathomed how to cut aeserium to make your citadel in the first place?”

“Yes, but I thought it had been constructed in the mortal plane and only became indestructible during the ascension.”

“That’s partially true,” Ostri said, “Except there’s no aeserium on the mortal plane. Well, none except what goes through with the Aeseri. Somehow your bodies shield it, but otherwise it’s an unstable element and transforms into carbon.”

“Carbon is what we built new life with in the mortal plane,” Athena said.

“Yes. On the mortal plane. Yet there is no carbon on the astral plane, and where there would be carbon we have aeserium. They occupy the same place on the periodic table.”

“The same… what now?” Athena asked, but Ostri just laughed. “You mean… we have aeserium in our bodies?”

“We all do here. And that’s where the lenses come in,” Throna said, “We focus on the aeserium here, and if it has matching atoms in the mortal plane the quantum bond takes care of the rest.”

“The quantum bond?” Athena asked, starting to lose the thread of the conversation again.

“She’s Aeseri,” Ostri said with a laugh, “You’ve already gone too deep into the science, Throna.”

Athena felt patronised, but had to admit to herself that, like all Aeseri, she had never even tried to understand science. Why would she need science when she could shape matter with her own power? She was a god. “Was” being the operative word.

“How do the Aeseri move between dimensions?” Athena asked.

“We don’t know,” Throna said, “It’s certainly not the way we do.”

“So… you don’t know if this will work on me?”

“We don’t. It probably won’t work. I have no idea what it might do to you. It’s up to you, though.” Throna looked at Ostri.

“I’ll get a bucket in case there’s a mess to clean up,” he said, only half-joking.

Athena looked at the black circle on the floor and at the aeserium lenses surrounding it. This could be the last thing she ever did. But then, if it didn’t work, she had no reason to continue anyway. She had already seen that a life in the Wastelands as just another fallen god was not one she wanted. She shuddered at the thought of pretending to be as humble as Sekardi and the others; at the thought of being beholden to the whims of Engella like Aguel.

“Let’s try it,” she said firmly, as if to convince herself as much as the two D’varsha.

Ostri shrugged and took a step back.

“It’s all down to you, Throna.”