Chapter One
“What the hell!?” I hear Kai exclaim as I finally exit the portal on the other side, my vision not adjusting as quickly as it should and making me feel even more disorientated.
“Hold on daughter, this will not be easy.” The goddesses musical voice whispers through my mind.
Well that sounds super ominous and not that I expected this to be a walk in the park but damn that warning just confirms it.
Then again a walk in the park sounds a bit boring if I’m honest, I need a bit of action in my life.
I’ve come to realise that when I’m in stressful situations I tend to focus on inane thoughts that really have no bearing on the current situation.
I’m calling it a coping mechanism and not a character defect, it sounds better that way.
The sound of hooves comes up beside me, thankfully distracting me from my spiralling thoughts and proving myself correct in said thoughts.
My vision finally clears and I breathe a sigh of relief, I do not like how vulnerable it makes me feel not having my sight.
“Whoa.” I say completely in awe as I take in the scenery around me.
It’s the same but different, and I’m aware that, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
We’re on a wide dirt track that stretches far in both directions, it’s obviously regularly used judging from the furrows in the dirt, I’m guessing from cart wheels.
All along the edges of the track are thick and imposing forests.
Whilst the trees look like the trees from the earth realm in that I can recognise that’s what they are, they’re also absolutely huge, bigger than redwoods, although there are some slightly smaller ones mixed in too.
Everything is in darker shades as well, the leaves are dark shades of green and what flowers I can see are darker shades as well, deep maroon and dark pink, they’re so beautiful.
Even the sky here is a darker shade of blue than you’d ever see during the day in the human realm, it’s closer to the colour you’d see at dusk just before night fully forms.
It’s actually one of my favourite times of the day.
Of course it could actually be that time of the day here, we left the academy late in the night so time could be different here completely.
I have no idea how long it takes to portal, even though it doesn’t seem that long whilst we’re actually inside it.
That could just be magic having an effect on us and not a true representation of time.
That’s also assuming that this realm gets dark like ours.
For all we know it could stay as this dusk permanently.
I feel wildly unprepared to be here.
Levi leans over from his horse and cups my cheek, bringing me back to the present as he checks me over.
“Are you ok Darling?” He asks, his eyes concerned.
“I‘m fine.” I smile softly, allowing the comfort from him. “Are you guys all ok?” I ask looking over them all in the same concerned way, everyone seems to be in one piece and surprisingly our horses are fairly calm, despite being in a foreign place.
“We’re all good, that was an entirely weird feeling though.” Jax comments, his horse moving beneath him, not in a distressed way but more just moving for the sake of moving, not that Jax seems to pay a blind bit of attention to him.
It seems that Jax’s horse, like Jax himself, has an over abundance of energy.
“You can say that again. At least it didn’t hurt, I guess.” Kai says. “I was sort of worried it would be like in the movies and we’d be ripped apart and then put back together again on the other side.”
“Thanks for that super graphic description, dude.” Jax says drily.
“Where are we?” Hunt asks changing the subject before Kai decides to embellish more. “I mean I know we’re in the Demon realm but where?”
“I have no idea, its clear that we aren’t supposed to be here though.” Mav explains his eyes continuously scanning the surrounding area.
I can see him logging all of the differences and I would be willing to bet that he is literally itching to examine everything closer.
“You guys shouldn’t have followed me through the portal.” Levi says firmly, running a hand through his hair. “As soon as Nicole said that it was taking me somewhere different you all should of stayed put. There was enough time for you all to stop even if there wasn’t for me.”
“Fuck off.” I say and they turn to look at me with their eyes wide. “What? That’s the most stupid thing he’s ever said to me. Of course we followed you. We’re family and we stick together.” I say just as firmly as he did.
“She’s right. Like hell were we going to let you go into the unknown by yourself.” Hunter says agreeing with me.
“Exactly, all for one and one for all!” Kai exclaims throwing his hands into the air and making his horse dance underneath him. Not that he seems to notice, it doesn’t even seem to effect his balance at all. I’m glad to see that he hasn’t had an adverse reaction to riding like he said might happen.
“That’s from the three musketeers,” Levi says drily, “I appreciate the sentiment though.” He chuckles.
“Until we have more information I think that it would be a good idea to keep our glamours up. It could be like the earth realm where their supernatural sides are their glamours and not their human glamours and even when they have their human sides showing its only very subtle. It could be that here only certain supernaturals can be allowed to have their glamours down or if you have your glamour down it could be like a declaration of war or some shit,” Maverick starts, his thoughts quickly getting away from him.
Seeing our looks he takes a deep breath, “What I mean is I just think its better for us to keep them on. As soon as we’re somewhere safe I’ll start going through the Demon realm book that we got given and Nicole insisted we bring to see if there’s any more information in there that can help us. ”
“Ok, that sounds good. I hope its not like Earth realm though.” Levi says. “We’ll all help you go through the book though, we can find answers quicker that way and it’s not fair for you to do it all yourself even though I know you don’t mind.”
Mav nods and smiles in response to Levi.
Its going to be hell if we have to keep our glamours up here especially since we don’t have a private place where we can let our glamours down and let our true selves free.
“Do you think Creep sent that bull thing after us at the stables?” Jax asks.
“Probably, it seems like something that fucker would do. Did you get a good look at it though?” Kai answers him, “It looked like it was half dead.”
“Gross,” I shudder remembering the patchy fur and oozing sores of the bull like creature.
It looked like what I would imagine a zombie bull would look like. Except with extra parts, which just made it that much grosser.
“Either Creep or someone who has something against us changed our destination or the goddess Nyx did and I sure as hell hope it was her. I don’t know why she would send Erin, Cole and the others somewhere else though.” Levi says.
“I hope it was her too. If it was Creep then we know we’re in for a world of shit, at least if its Nyx then we know there’s a good reason for it.” Kai says.
“Well what do we do now? We can’t exactly just stand here in the middle of the road. Our horses are getting restless and we definitely look suspicious as fuck right now.” Hunter says.
“I guess we just follow the road until we come across a town.” Maverick suggests, “There has to be something at the end of this road. Just let me do a bit of reading before we start off though. Last thing we want to do is accidentally offended someone and end up in their version of a jail cell or dead. We’ve already been warned that the Supernatural world is far more brutal than what we are used to. ”
“That’s actually far more sensible than just riding blindly into a potentially hostile environment. Either way though we need to get off of the road, we’re vulnerable out here.” Kai replies, his horse still dancing beneath him.
“That’s a good point. We’ll treat this like the many missions we’ve done before where we end up in a less than friendly area.
However we must use more caution this time.
On our missions before at least we’ve known the capabilities of the surrounding people.
Here we know next to nothing. We’ll move further into the woods until we can find a safe place to set up camp then we can get a fire going and all study the books so we are at least somewhat prepared. ” Levi orders.
“Agreed.” Hunter says and we turn the horses around, following Levi as he picks a direction into the forest. “I might be able to catch us something to eat, hopefully they have rabbits or deer here similar to the Earth realm.” He adds.
“Why does it always feel like we are dealing with half the information that we actually need?” I ask.
“Because we are. That’s sort of what being an Enforcer or at least working in law or the military is. Granted we do normally have a basic understanding of where we’re being dropped.” Jax answers.
“Don’t worry Beautiful we’ll make camp and get reading. Nicole was insistent that we bring the demon realm books with us so there must be some decent information in them somewhere.” Kai reassures me and I grin.
We ride through the thick forest for a while longer making sure that we’re far enough away from the road that we won’t be easily found but not too far away that we can’t find our way back.
I am completely trusting the guys with this.
My sense of direction is akin to a blind and deaf landlocked walrus and no I’m not being dramatic.
“Here looks good.” Hunter says as we come across a small clearing near a stream.