The Gates of Night

CHAPTER 4

This vehicle has just transitioned through a planar barrier. Your companions are suffering from vertigo and nausea as a result.

As always, Pierce knew Shira’s thoughts as much as he heard them. When he looked at Lei, her discomfort was a simple fact. Glancing at the dark elf warrior, Pierce could sense the extent of her injuries, how she hovered on the edge of death. He carefully set the injured woman down on the ledge that circled the chamber.

“Was that it?” Daine said. The scraping sound of Harmattan’s attack faded away, and the glowing lines on the floor pulsed.

Lei opened her eyes. “Yes,” she said. She lay back against the floor, her legs still crossed. “We’re safe now.”

“Safe? We seem to have very different ideas of safe,” Daine said, scratching his back. “Still … good work, both of you. Where are we?”

“Nowhere.”

“And how far is that from somewhere?” Daine said.

“About as far as can be. Until I complete the sequence and open the door, we’re caught between worlds. We’re … hypothetical, if you will.”

Ethereal.

“Ethereal,” Pierce said, echoing Shira’s thought.

“That’s right. We can stay here as long as we want.” Lei spread her arms, stretching against the floor. “I’m completely exhausted. If I’m going to tend your wounds-or help our drow passenger-I’m going to need some sleep first. We should be safe here.”

“Should be?” Daine said.

“Nothing’s certain.” Lei shrugged. “I’m not exactly a seasoned planar traveler. It’s possible there are, I don’t know, crystal orb-eating ethereal whales drifting about-”

There are no crystal orb-eating ethereal whales. Pierce refrained from sharing Shira’s observation.

“-but if so, I’ve never heard of them. And if something does attack us, I could finish the transition with a word.”

“And then we’ll be somewhere,” Daine said.

“Yes.”

“And that will be?”

“Thelanis.”

Daine sighed and sat down. “I hate to disappoint you, Lei, but I don’t even know if that’s a city, a country, or a plane of existence.”

“Ignorant savage.” Lei sat up. “It’s a plane. Have you heard of the Faerie Court?”

“A magic realm filled with baby-stealing spirits, bottomless cauldrons of gold, and sinister hags who curse arrogant princesses?”

“You don’t have to go to Thelanis to find a hag,” Lei said. “But that’s the one. According to the stories, it’s much like the world we’re used to. There’s just more magic around. Spirits in the water and the trees, that sort of thing. What’s important is that it’s supposed to be one of the easiest realms to travel to or from. The reason we have so many faerie tales is because people accidentally fall into the realm, or because the spirits of Thelanis-the fey-make their way to Eberron. So not only is it not a lake of fire or endless tundra, but with luck we should be able to find a path home.”

It’s not quite that simple. Again, Pierce chose to ignore the alien thought.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Daine said. “Sovereign and Flame, what have we done? Tashana, Lakashtai … I don’t know what to think.”

“So don’t,” Lei said. “Sleep.”

Daine sighed, but he finally nodded. “You’re right, I suppose.”

“Was there ever any doubt?” Lei pulled blankets and pillows from her pack; the magical satchel held an astonishing amount of supplies, and within moments Lei was laying out two bedrolls.

“Do you have enough for three?” Daine said. He’d made his way over to the wounded drow woman and was studying her wounds. He carefully lifted her off the ledge.

“I only packed for the two of us.” Even Pierce could hear the slight chill in Lei’s voice. It wasn’t much of a surprise. Daine had had dealings with these dark-skinned elves, or drow as they appeared to be called. But Lei and Pierce had been captured by drow, Lei almost killed by them. This woman had helped to rescue them, and it was clear that she was of a different tribe from their enemies. But the half-drow Gerrion had also rescued them from one enemy, only to betray them at the end. This woman was a stranger, and after Gerrion and Lakashtai it was hardly surprising that Lei would be suspicious of strangers.

Then Pierce noticed something-an anomaly, a trivial detail that had slipped by even his keen eyes in the excitement.

“My lady,” he said. “Your hand.”

She glanced over at him. “What?”

“You are no longer injured.”

Lei dropped the blanket, and Daine almost dropped the woman he was carrying as he rushed to Lei’s side. She held her hand out, as if it were a treasure. Earlier in the day, the warforged Hydra had severed the smallest finger on her left hand. Her glove was still damaged, but her finger was fully restored. She wiggled it in wonder.

“I … I didn’t even notice,” she said. “I think it’s been back since I woke up. I knew something felt strange.”

“How is this even possible?” Daine said.

“I don’t know,” Lei said, shaking her fist happily. “And you know what? I’m not going to think about it until I’ve slept for, oh, a few days.”

“Well, I don’t feel right about leaving an injured woman on the hard floor,” Daine said, carefully laying the dark elf down on one of the blankets. “So I suppose you and I will just have to share.”

“Or you’re going to have to sleep on the hard floor,” Lei said. But she was smiling, and she let Daine pull her down to the other blanket.

Lei and Daine slept. The wounded elf still lay unconscious. Pierce studied the patterns on the walls. He always felt a vague discomfort when his companions were asleep. Even though he knew the experience was both harmless and necessary, it was completely foreign to him. The only time a warforged lost consciousness was if it was critically damaged, wounded so badly that it would need to be repaired before it could awaken. Early in his life, Pierce had assumed that sleeping humans were injured, and he’d been concerned that his companions might never awaken unless treated by a healer. He quickly learned better, but nonetheless, watching others sleep had always made him uncomfortable.

Now Pierce found there was another emotion at work. He knew Indigo would say that sleep was a weakness, one of the many flaws that made the so-called “breathers” inferior to the warforged. But watching Daine and Lei sleeping side by side, he felt a strange envy. The battle with Indigo, Lakashtai’s betrayal … he wished that he could escape it, if only for a moment. He wondered what it would be like to dream.

You were not made for dreams.

How would you know? It was a strange sensation, trying to communicate with Shira. There was no sense of a separate presence, just thoughts that appeared in his mind as if they were his own.

Because you were made for me.

You are thousands of years older than I am, Pierce thought. That makes no sense.

It makes no sense. It felt as if he was agreeing with himself. It is still true.

Memory flooded through Pierce. A time of war. Shira’s people were endangered on two fronts. They needed to escape their homeland before an impending cataclysm destroyed it, and they were fighting a fearsome enemy to claim a new home. He saw the creation of warforged … no, not warforged, but creatures much like them. These were soldiers, but they were also vessels of hope. Shira was the first of her kind to attempt the transition. Her essence had been fused to the sphere, where it could be bound to any vessel of hope. But only days after she had merged with her first vessel, she had been captured by the enemy. Her vessel was destroyed, and she was sealed away in the darkness of the vault.

That doesn’t mean I was made for you, Pierce thought. It sounds like any warforged would do.

Would they? A new memory emerged, but this was one of his own. Harmattan speaking to him at the door to the vault-

This is a relic of this ancient land, a key of a most unusual nature. Only a warforged designed to interface with it can make use of it. Hydra, Indigo-it will not interface properly with their auras.

What makes you think I can use it? Pierce had asked.

Because I could, if I still had a body. And you are my brother.

The memory faded, and the next thought was Shira’s. It may make no sense. But it is true. You were not made for dreams. You were made to escape them.

Pierce let this thought go. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Shira. Her knowledge and analytic powers were certainly useful. Even now, as he glanced around the chamber, Shira identified the symbols carved into the walls as one of the languages of giants, translating each word that he looked at. But as much as it was pleasant to have a companion, it wasn’t the same as speaking with Lei or Pierce.

Or Indigo.

That was the heart of it. His mind still lingered on their last battle. He could remember every motion, and he walked through it in his mind, tracing the injuries she’d given him. The sight of Daine transfixing her with his blade, the surge of emotion he’d felt watching her fall, even as Shira whispered about the magical resonance of Daine’s sword.

She would have won their fight. Without Lei, without Harmattan … Indigo would have defeated him. Somehow, it didn’t seem fair that he should still be alive. He could see the battle in his mind, and he knew that he had lost … or would have. He couldn’t even blame her for wanting to destroy him. He had betrayed her for Lei. He’d intended to imprison her in the ancient vault. Harmattan must have saved her, while Pierce had simply betrayed her again.

He remembered those final moments, looking down at her on the floor of Karul’tash, the gaping wound in her abdomen. Lying there as if she were asleep.

But warforged didn’t sleep. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between a warforged that had been destroyed and one that had simply been rendered inert.

Like Indigo had been.

Pierce knew that his friends would have wanted to finish the job if they’d known there was some chance of Indigo being restored. But Pierce couldn’t bring himself to mention it. No artificer would ever find her in the depths of Karul’tash, and Harmattan’s hands weren’t nimble enough for such work. Surely the monolith would be her tomb. But somehow, he’d found that he couldn’t betray her a third time.

In the end, she’d won their battle.

Pierce pushed the memory away. He studied the inscriptions on the walls, seeking to bury his guilt beneath this task. And once again, he wished he could sleep.