"What is that?" she asked. It was intricate, and looked a lot like a giant spell circle."I think it"s a teleport summoning circle, though I"ve never seen one that big!" whispered Alfred in awe.
"There"s so many lines and squiggles drawn all around it, how could anyone build something like that?"
"It probably took a lot of people. I don"t imagine there"s any one person capable of doing magic like that. We should get closer to inspect it, but be careful. It may teleport us to somewhere else if we step on it. I can read a little of the runes, but not many. I have a feeling this is another Bridgette thing."
"I can read a little of the runes, too. Maybe between the two of us, we can figure out enough not to bring Brigette to this. I"m afraid of what she might do if she caught sight of it."
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"True. Let"s go."
Aella teleported down to the pad, well outside the magical lines, and her eyes widened as it seemed to pulse in welcome to her. Alfred appeared on the other side, and it pulsed again.
"Welcome, crowned King of the Gargoyles, and Hero of Air and Fire. Welcome Hero of Light."
"Gargoyles?" they both said at the same time, looking at each other in shock and surprise.
Aella heard the tw.a.n.g of the bow first, and was already spinning by the time Alfred disappeared, to reappear next to the figure on the clifftop. The arrow imbedded itself in the ground where she had just been standing, still vibrating by the time Alfred reappeared with the old man next to her.
"Welcome, Hero of Earth," came the monotonous tone from the circle behind her.
"Hero of Earth?" they both cried together.
"My powers aren"t unlocked!" he cried, falling to his knees and covering his head. "The Church sent my parents here a long time ago, to oversee the portal, and it"s my job now!"
"What was your job?" asked Alfred with a frown.
"I am to summon monsters whenever the demons finish fighting the last ones. Please don"t kill me."
"What keeps the monsters from killing you?" asked Aella, looking around. There"s no way this guy had survived all this time without those monsters causing him trouble of some kind.
"I have a tunnel in the rock, that my dad formed when he was first sent here, that we used to hide from the monsters after summoning them. It opens up there on the ridge where you found me."
The Hero of Earth seemed more than willing to tell them whatever they wanted to know, as long as they didn"t hurt him.
"Why aren"t your powers unlocked?" asked Alfred, looking around to make sure there wasn"t anyone else about to attack them.
"When dad died, I was given the status of Hero, but I can"t use my powers. Mom said that it was probably because I wasn"t born in the human lands. The church guy who came to check up on us before mom died said they would unlock when I needed them, and that I didn"t need them to do my job."
Aella wanted to kill him, for all the trouble and death he had caused, but the man seemed harmless. It would probably be best to keep him around, so he couldn"t control the portal and summon more monsters.
"How does the church know to come check on the portal?"
"I send them reports using the communications device. It"s back in the cave. I can show you it? There hasn"t been anyone visiting in over twenty years! I take it since the two of you have shown up that the church is ready to end the war?"
"Not exactly," said Aella, glancing over at the portal. "Why was it your job to run the portal?"
"Oh! Well, only a hero can activate it. Mom never could, though she tried really hard after dad died. She had to tell me what to say when I was really little, to make sure it stayed active."
"Why can only a hero activate it?" asked Alfred, looking uncomfortable.
"Mom said it was because the heroes were gifted with the task to be able to do work for the church that no one else could. A gift from the leaders."
Aella and Alfred locked eyes before turning back to the man. It was obvious he didn"t know, and was just doing what he was told to do.
"Any chance this portal can summon things other than monsters?" asked Aella.
"Sure! I summon animals all the time, to eat. Want me to show you?"
"All right, but if you summon a monster, I"m going to skin you alive," said Aella summoning her dagger from that place within her that her magical items had disappeared to.
Swallowing in fear, he nodded quickly and turned to the portal. "I, Brian, the Hero of Earth, summon a young deer."
"Summoning a young deer. Thank you, Hero of Earth."
Before them, the circle began to glow, the magical lines rose into the air and began to spin in different directions. Aella and Alfred stepped back, pulling out weapons in case the young deer was something else, but after a brief glow, a young deer appeared, fast asleep in the center of the circle.
"It won"t wake up for a few minutes, so I generally kill them and take them back to the cave to cook," said Brian with a weak smile.
"It"s summoning sick," said Alfred in awe, putting his sword back up.
"Shall I summon something else?"
His pitiful look of hope reminded Aella of a child in the pits that had been too stupid to do much more than try to please everyone around him. He only stopped smiling when the others found it was more fun to beat him up than it was to have him do stupid silly tricks. She remembered he had crawled into a corner and cried until he stopped. The guards found him dead, still curled into a ball in that corner. She had been the only one small enough to reach him to drag him out for them to haul off. His body had been too stiff to bend, so they had carried him off, still curled up.
Shaking her head, Aella focused on the task at hand.
"Alfred, send for General Brimsey. He will be very interested in this. Brian, we need two dozen young adult deer. Can you summon them please?"
"Sure, let me grab this little fella here," he said, climbing to his feet and hurrying to grab the deer. It was just starting to twitch an ear and wake when he stabbed it quickly, allowing the blood to drain into the circle. It was then, that she realized the circle gained its power from the death of the deer. The blood soaked into the lines and disappeared. What else had been summoned here?
As Alfred disappeared, and Brian carried the small animal over to her, a chilling thought occurred to her. Had her people been summoned? Was that why the church tried so hard to keep them from finding the summoning circle? And what about the first king, Jozef? Did he know about the portal? How could someone forget about something like this? Unless that was also part of the magic that kept him locked away there?
"Brian, tell me what you know about this thing. Is it safe to walk on?"
"Well, as long as no one tries to summon anything while you are on it, then it"s perfectly safe. It"s dangerous to summon something while anything is standing on the lines. Sometimes it just kills what"s on it, but sometimes it can combine the two, especially if they"re both monsters, and will create an even worse monster. Dad did that. He was trying to summon a whole bunch, all at the same time, and they started to wake up before he could get away.
"Other than that, it"s pretty safe. Mom told me that this is what brought everything to our world. Before it was here, there was nothing but plants growing here. It was our job to bring more things here to spread out and populate our world. I"m not sure about bugs though, I think they were here with the plants, but all the animals and people came from the portals."
"Portals? There"s more of them?"
"Oh, yes! Mom said there"s another one in the south mountains, but it can only summon people like things, like you demons and such. There"s two over in the mountains of the human lands, but we don"t use them anymore. There"s not enough heroes to activate them all, and the church didn"t want monsters to attack the humans."
"What happened to your mom?" asked Aella, wondering at the simplicity of this man, and how the church could let him be in charge of something so dangerous for so long.
"She was killed when she went against the church. They wanted to take me back to be trained when they found out I was a hero, but she told them I would never be good at fighting. I got hurt when I was very little and my mind doesn"t work right. They took her to be judged, for going against the leaders, and gave me a playmate, to keep me company. Janice went away when she started getting sick, and her belly started to get real big. She said she couldn"t stomach all of the monsters; they were too scary for her."
Aella was astounded. The woman basically raped this man, and once pregnant returned to the church. They had left him here, to do his job, and once he died, his child, or grandchild, would become the new hero.