Clearsight and the Portal

Summary
This story serves mostly to explain and introduce the External Portal. In it, Clearsight the Skyrix and Pontali the Taihoa repulse a creature attempting to force its way through the Portal.

Author
Spark (Magical Griffin)

Story
It was a beautiful day in the Tundra. Fresh snow covered the icy plains and shone like silver in the sun. Glassy frozen lakes reflected the harsh landscape like vast mirrors. A few tall pines stood like sentinels on duty, surrounded by low, scrubby bushes. Through all this scenery, a dragon was walking. If anyone had been there to see her, they would have been astonished at how much confidence she carried with her.

Clearsight the Skyrix strode purposefully onward. She was going on duty for another week and she absolutely refused to be late for a job of such importance. As she walked, she thought complacently about how well-suited she was for this particular task. Her white fur and feathers camouflaged her almost perfectly in the wintry landscape; she could easily catch prey off guard when she had a break from her work. Her elemental power, frostbite, was likewise attuned to the environment. With it inside her not much in the way of cold could ever bother her. And then of course there was the most obvious thing. She was a Skyrix; what’s more, she was of noble lineage. It was whispered that her family was descended from the original monarchs of Nirenis, from before the Council came to power. As such a royal Skyrix, she had some of the most powerful magic around, excluding of course the magic of the Hexalios, Aranga, and Solarizons. But those three obviously didn’t count. They were so rare that for the most part they might as well just be myths.

If she had five different mutations that set her apart from most of the rest of her species, that didn’t matter. She bore them proudly as badges of her long service in the powerful magical radiation that came from the Great Hyperspace Portal. Besides that, she felt that the whiskers and the extra ears made her rather more sensitive to her surroundings, which tended to be very helpful when guarding a portal from which indescribable horrors could emerge at any moment.

As she walked along, thinking such thoughts, she came to the entrance to the complex which contained the portal. She had to fold her wings tight to her body to get through the tunnel disguised as an ordinary cave mouth. Soon, however, she found herself in the base proper. A little further in, she showed her ID to an alert-looking security guard and was allowed to continue on. She kept walking, just as purposeful as ever. Her furry, clawless feet made scarcely a sound on the hard stone floors; Clearsight smiled slightly as she thought of the ungraceful way other dragons clattered across the ground with those long claws.

At last she had reached her destination. A pair of mighty wooden doors stood in her way, closed with locks both physical and magical. Around the arch of the doorway a curious runic inscription in Old Draconic was carved. The Skyrix hardly glanced up at that inscription -- she’d read the warning before -- as she undid the various locks and entered the room. It was a vast, round chamber, carved out of the living rock like the rest of the base. Taking up much of the floor was a circle of stone which looked rather like the teleporters used for travel from place to place by ordinary Inryans. There were, however, two main differences apparent at a glance. The first was that there were no runes marked on it for receiving a teleport from another portal; this was to prevent random dragons from accidentally finding their way through it. The second was that this teleporter was gigantic: it could fit four Chronoci with ease.

The Taihoa currently on guard in the teleporter room smiled and waved as Clearsight came in. “Hi there! So you’re my new partner for this? Gee, I’ve never seen a white Skyrix before. I’ll bet you’re really powerful!”

Clearsight was surprised not to find her usual partner, a black Zeipera by the name of Zamos, on guard, but she guessed that some problem had come up that prevented him from coming. That was too bad. She enjoyed talking with Zamos, especially since he was quite a fan of the royalty and loved to hear her stories about the days when kings and queens ruled Nirenis. She wondered what the name of this bright orange Taihoa was.

The Taihoa answered the question before she could ask it. “I’m Pontali,” she said. “I’m standing in for Zamos since he’s got a cold right now.”

Clearsight nodded politely and said in polished tones that she was happy to meet Pontali. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” she continued. “How long have you been working here?”

“I’ve only been working here for a month; the reason you haven’t seen me must be that our shifts didn’t align before now.”

“I assume you know why we’re guarding this teleporter? Why Inrya depends on us guarding it?”

The Taihoa nodded, the smile on her face turning into a more grave expression. “If any of the hyperspace creatures that live beyond the portal manages to get through us, it could destroy Inrya. It’s up to us to defend this border and keep our homes safe. Just because I’ve only worked here a month doesn’t mean I’m completely ignorant.”

Clearsight nodded in acknowledgement. “I’m glad to hear it. Would you like to take the first shift watching the teleporter while I monitor its energy output?”

Pontali agreed and sat down comfortably, curling her blue-tufted tail around her feet. She stared at the vast circle of runed stone, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Eventually her alert look faded a little and her head drooped. Clearsight snorted quietly, but kept working. Her research into the way the portal functioned might allow dragons to create more like it or to destroy this one if necessary. She would continue working even if her partner was distracted. As time passed, she was drawn into the fascinating magical science of the portal and forgot her earlier irritation with Pontali.

Her focus was interrupted by a yelp from the bright orange Taihoa. “There’s something coming through,” she yelled. “The gate spells don’t recognize what kind of creature it is, but it’s huge!”

Clearsight stood up into a combat stance. She began focusing her mana on her horn, building it up for an attack as soon as the creature should enter Inrya. Pontali was hopping from foot to foot, half excited and half frightened. The white Skyrix ignored her, paying rather more attention to the teleporter. Her sensitive whiskers could feel the approach of something gigantic just on the other side.

It burst through. It was a horrible creature, all tentacles and eyes and teeth; or at least it seemed so to Clearsight. She released the pent-up mana in her horn, sending a beam of power straight into one of the creature’s eyes. With a start, she realized that she wasn’t even seeing the entire creature; all it had poked through into their space was its huge, monstrous head. It roared in pain as her beam found its mark. A long tongue came lashing out of one of the mouths that would have knocked her off her feet if she hadn’t jumped aside in time. Looking to her right, she saw Pontali trying to fend off three tentacles with bursts of red-orange flame. The Taihoa seemed to be holding her own fairly well.

Clearsight turned her attention back to the matter at hand. She sent another beam into one of the monster’s eyes; it screeched terribly and began trying harder to force its way through the portal that had opened on the teleporter’s circle. A massive hand clawed the edge of the portal open a little farther and pushed on the surrounding stone for support. Pontali saw it and began attacking it with her fire. The hand was withdrawn, but the beast was angrier than ever. Clearsight saw that while the two of them could perhaps hold the monster at bay working separately, their only chance to drive it back out of the portal was to combine their strength. She called out to the brightly colored Taihoa: “Pontali! I have an idea for how to get this menace back into hyperspace where he belongs. Can you funnel your mana into the spell that I’m starting?”

The Taihoa nodded and Clearsight’s whiskers soon detected a stream of mana flowing towards her. She took it in and began the spell. The Skyrix raised her voice in a chant as the monster struggled to get through the portal. Spreading her wings wide, she focused the borrowed mana as well as her own on the creature’s head. Slowly she and the Taihoa shoved it back into the wilds of hyperspace whence it had come. At last they pushed it all the way back and the portal closed with a soft hum.

Pontali wiped the sweat from her brow. “That was amazing, Clearsight! I see why you’re one of the most highly ranked dragons around!”

Clearsight bowed slightly and smiled. “You did fairly well yourself, especially for someone who’s only been here a month. I look forward to working with you the rest of the week.”

Pontali grinned and replied, “From how it’s started, I think it’s going to be an exciting week.”

Trivia

 * This story was written as part of a random protagonist challenge.