Scout

Experience and equipment had taken the edge off the crossings. What had once been a genuine gamble was now merely risky. He had been through it enough times to know how to prepare, how to mitigate the risks, and how to fight off the creatures that were drawn to him. But it was still a risk, and every time he crossed he knew that there was a chance he wouldn’t make it.

Sable moved first.

She left Kari’s back without sound. One moment a black shape at the edge of his vision, the next a panther dropping low into a flanking position ahead and to the left. He had learned not to question this. He drew his sword and came right.

The air ahead of them had that quality he recognised now: a faint shimmer, like heat haze, except there was no heat here. Just the cracked stone plain, the dark ambient nothing, and the cold seam in the air that meant something was about to come through.

He’d had three crossings before he understood what that shimmer meant. The first time he’d stood and stared at it. A scar along his left forearm still marked the lesson.

The rift opened clean. A sharp tear, not gradual. The creature came through still in the half-moment of transition, its form flickering between solid and something darker at the edges. A scout. Taller than him by a foot, the joints white against the charcoal skin, that long gaunt face turning as it oriented. Its broadsword arm was still rising.

Sable hit it from the left.

Not to bring it down (she knew better than that, knew the armour would turn her) but to lock the shield arm, to drive the shoulder, to force the rotation. The creature’s head swung toward her on pure reflex.

He was already inside its guard.

Two cuts. High and low. He didn’t think about it. At some point the thinking had stopped and the geometry had simply become something his body knew.

The creature folded. The smoky substance at its edges thinned and dispersed, the shape of it collapsing inward until there was nothing but a stain on the stone, already fading.

Sable sat back on her haunches and regarded him.

Clean, was what she sent him through the bond (or something close to it, the impression of clean, the way she communicated approval without language).

He let out a slow breath and checked the rift. Closed. Just the shimmer, already fading.

Scouts rarely came alone. He waited. Watched the air. After a count of thirty he decided it had come across on chance, drawn by the magic of the crossing, not directed. Unlucky for it.

Kari had held position. He scratched the horse’s neck as he passed, received nothing in return. He moved them forward.

The plane had no horizon. That was the first thing a person noticed: the cracked stone plain extended until the ambient glow gave out, roughly a hundred metres in every direction, and beyond that was simply nothing. Not darkness. Not wall. The scale was present the way a held breath is present: felt rather than seen, the body understanding vastness before the mind caught up.

There was no natural light source. The glow came from the plane itself, or from the air, or from something he had stopped trying to name after the first few crossings. It was sufficient. You could see what was moving toward you. That was what mattered.

Kari’s hoofbeats on the stone were the loudest thing in the world.

He knew the route the way he knew most things about the plane: imperfectly, and because it had cost him. There were no visual landmarks. Navigation was a felt thing: the gate ahead had a signature, faint and steady, and a mage who knew what to listen for could hold a direction by it the way a sailor held a star. He had taken three crossings to understand what he was feeling and another two before he trusted it.

Sable trusted it from the start. Her sense of the gate’s pull was cleaner than his and she knew it; she walked beside him now rather than ranging ahead, because the direction was already settled and the question was only what moved between here and there. He let her lead when the plane was active. She let him think he was leading when it was quiet.

They passed something half-buried in the stone. He didn’t look closely. He had learned not to. The plane kept what it took.

Traveling to another world was rare. Caelan knew there were others who could travel, but did not know where they travelled, how often, or how many. He had tried a number of exit gates, but only ventured into a couple. Most of the lands on the other side were as inhospitable as the intermediate plane. He had however found one that was safe, prosperous, and completely alien. Travelling to it was worth the risk in knowledge and wealth to be found.

This crossing was not to that gate. This one opened on stone country, hard and unkind, and the stone country had never given him anything without taking something first. He had a reason to go today. He kept it to himself, in case the plane could hear him.