Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Torin
I jerk awake when I feel Riley thrash against me. He seems to be asleep, but his arms are trembling as his magic surges.
“Riley? Hey, Riley, wake up.”
He groans and shifts a little but doesn’t seem to be coherent.
“Riley, come on. Wake up,” I say as I gently smack his cheek, hoping to stimulate him into waking up.
He groans again and his eyes flutter open slightly.
“Hey, I’m right here. It’s okay.”
The magic is swelling and I can see the stain creeping up his arms and legs, painting his flesh in the curse that consumes him.
“Kit, get Mickey,” I say as I carefully lower Riley back to the mattress and get out of bed. I hastily pull on some clothes and grab some for him. I’ve just managed to dress him when Mickey arrives.
“Is he having another attack?” he asks.
“I’m going through the Door. I’m… I’m going to take him with me…
please tell me I shouldn’t do this,” I say, realizing that I feel extremely anxious about it.
I hate this feeling. Before I lost my people, I never felt anxious.
I’m not used to the many emotions that I now feel when it comes to Riley.
Mickey bites his lip. “I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that if you find his horse, we could stop this. He wouldn’t go through this ever again… but you’re still not powerful enough. I’ll go with you.”
“No, there’s no sense in risking your life coming with me…
maybe I should leave Riley here, but I’ll have no idea where the horse is without him,” I say as I gather up my scythes, and then my hand hovers over the bow Conquest had dropped.
But I don’t know if Riley will wake up while I’m there, and if he doesn’t, it’ll just be one more thing to carry.
I choose to leave it behind, next to the medallion he found that belonged to the Death I’d killed.
“I’m going with you,” Mickey declares.
“You might die.”
“We’re not going to die,” he says, looking a bit nervous. “We’ll be fine. Yeah… for sure.”
I glance at him and decide that he can make his final decision when we reach the Door.
I gently reach down to lift Riley, carefully pulling him onto my back, and then wonder if I should tie him there so I can leave my hands free.
With Mickey following me, I hurry down to the stable and grab some rope and a saddle.
I lay Riley on the ground as he writhes and curls in on himself, and I try not to anxiously stare at him.
I have to keep moving. I have to stay focused even as worry floods me.
I cinch the saddle before sliding Riley into it and climbing on behind him.
Mickey has already summoned a mount for himself and follows us while Quill races across the land to the Door that led to the destruction of my world.
After we saved Riley’s world, I waited for the god controlling the horsemen to reopen it, to come in and kill me and take Riley from me, but so far, he hasn’t.
And I don’t understand why.
Is it because Riley… because Death has already done his part? Does the god no longer need him, so he cares little what he does?
Quill outruns Mickey’s mount with ease, but Mickey knows where we’re going, so I don’t bother slowing Quill down.
I know I’ll need time to fix the Door that broke when Riley went through it alone in order to save me from Conquest. I jump off Quill but leave Riley on him.
Riley sinks down onto Quill’s neck, his fingers gripping Quill’s red-and-gold mane tightly while Quill anxiously watches over him for me.
He’s bending his neck around to gently rub on Riley’s leg, nervous that the man is in such a state.
I kneel down, drawing on what little magic I have as I set to work restoring the Door. It’s not easy, but it’s easier than creating one from scratch when I don’t know the place we’re going to at all. By the time the Door flickers back to life, Mickey has reached us.
“You’re not going to be able to sneak anywhere with these souls following Riley.”
I look at the white orbs that I know will cause us a problem if they follow us through the Door, but I do notice that they’ve created a kind of ring around the Door, refusing to get any closer.
“Mickey… I need you to stay here. Previously, you brought someone back to life who could reopen this Door; I need you to call them out and wait here with them. Have them close the Door if something bad happens.”
“What would be the sense of closing it? There’s nothing here and they already know how to get to our world. You’re just thinking of excuses to keep me here,” Mickey says.
I am… because I don’t want to be the reason Riley’s closest friend dies.
I pull Riley off Quill and then hold my hand out.
There’s a flash of magic as Quill disappears, waiting to be summoned later.
I shift Riley onto my back and he anxiously clutches me, but his grip is so weak that he begins to fall backward.
I swiftly loop the rope around him, and Mickey helps tie the half-conscious man to me.
I make sure there’s a quick release on my front so I can hurriedly drop him if I have to.
“So… if… if you really think it’s best for me to stay out here, I will.
I had an idea last night that I talked over with my undead…
though maybe it’s too risky. I could have that mage reopen the Door in my world but have someone stationed here.
If you needed help, I would send undead through that Door to distract them so you could get back to this Door.
But I don’t know if it’s unsafe to open the Door in my world that we managed to close. ”
I let this idea race through my mind. “It’s not like they couldn’t make a Door at any point if they chose to. They’ve decided not to… but we don’t know why. Don’t open it unless we need help, but how would I get word to you if we did?”
He holds a hand out. I look down at the winged atrocity with creepy black eyes and strange legs.
Even though it’s only the size of my palm, the thing is out of nightmares, but the way Mickey’s holding it out to me tells me he wants me to take it.
“I brought him back from the dead. Isn’t he adorable?
You just tell him, ‘Go to Mickey,’ and he’ll fly through the Door you came in through.
He’s very good at doing what he’s told. Tommy will stand out here and the second he sees him, he’ll send up a flare which will alert Joy, who will wait near the Door to my world, and she’ll pop through and call me.
And I’ll be waiting at the new Door in my world.
It won’t be… instant, but we’ll try to be fast.”
“I thought all you did during your time off was sleep,” I say.
Mickey shrugs. “Sometimes I think.”
I take the creepy thing and it just like…
sticks to the front of my shirt with its weird little hands.
I shiver when I look down at it gazing up at me, face twitching like it’s smelling me and thinking about what it’d be like to eat me.
It would struggle to do so since it’s so small, but I bet it would give it a valiant effort.
“Stop looking at Toast like that; he gets offended easily,” Mickey says.
I just give him a grunt with no promises and pass through the Door with Riley tied on my back, Kit on my shoulder, and Mickey’s nightmare on my shirt. I glance down and grimace when I find it staring at me with its beady eyes again.
Then I look up to face the world I’ve just stepped into.
It’s eerily quiet as I find myself standing in what looks like a swamp of some kind.
There are trees with vines hanging down that remind me of the vines that stretched through the Door.
I watch them for a moment, waiting for them to reach down and grab me, but they remain inanimate.
I gently nudge Riley. “Riley, can you tell me which direction I should go?”
He seems to acknowledge my voice because his hand tightens on me, but he doesn’t answer. “Riley, please,” I beg.
Kit chirps before leaping off my shoulder and rushing to the edge of the small patch of ground the Door rests on. She looks off in a certain direction, and I can’t tell whether she can feel the horse too or is going off Riley’s desires, even when Riley himself is struggling to comprehend them.
I step into the water, judging how deep it is before committing, but I discover it’s fairly shallow. Kit leaps onto my shoulder as I trudge ahead, hoping I’m heading in the right direction when I really have no way to know whether Kit’s just curious or really does sense something.
While I keep moving forward, I continually check Kit to see where her attention is fixated.
I try to travel as quietly and carefully as I can, not wishing to draw attention to myself.
I have no way of knowing if this realm is large like Riley’s where it stretches on and on—when he told me I hadn’t even seen a fraction of it, I was rather surprised—or if this realm is small like mine, small enough that Quill and I have made the trek around it multiple times.
The last time I made the trek across my world was when I hunted down bodies to bury before realizing that I just couldn’t do it all.
I don’t know whether I physically couldn’t or mentally couldn’t.
But at one point, as I stood there with my hands bleeding from that rough shovel I’d dug into the dirt again and again… I just gave up.
I climbed onto Quill’s back and we went home… and I didn’t leave for a long time.
I debate calling Quill out, but I’m well aware we’ll attract more attention if I do and right now, with such limited magic, I’m not going to be able to handle much attention.
When I reach the bank, I climb out of the water and Kit leaps down.
She worriedly looks back at Riley, so I nudge him again, hoping to wake him enough to tell Kit something, even if it’s just a thought that helps her know which way to look.
“Riley, come on,” I say.
He groans, stirring and curling in on himself. It causes his body to tighten on mine as he squeezes me.