The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 89

Part 14

“Actually, you don’t have anything important planned for the rest of the evening, so you might as well take care of Balen here and three more of her friends tonight.” Alilia laughed as she and Talia stood and put their jackets on.

“Oh? And where are you going?” Mark inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“Girls’ night out.” she told him with a smile and a quick kiss. “We’re going to the pub to get drunk and flirt with young men. Don’t wait up!”

“You kids be good, we’ll be back in four hours.” Talia called into the living room.

“Where are you going?” Valentia yelled.

“To the pub to get drunk and flirt with young men!” she called back, grinning at Mark as he blushed.

“Can we come?” Helemia asked in an exaggerated pleading voice.

“What?! No!” Talia laughed in shocked surprise.

“Aww, we never get to go to the pub to get drunk and flirt with men.” Helemia whined in the most spoiled, irritating manner she could. “You’re mean!”

This was so out of character that Talia just stood there for a second in outraged amazement with her mouth hanging open, before she realized that her daughter had to be teasing her, and she broke up into hysterical laughter.

“Okay, whatever, take care, love you, bye!” Alilia laughed as she half-dragged Talia’s hysterically laughing form out the door.

“Ah, I’ll be busy for a while kids.” Mark called out as he met Balen’s smoldering stare. “If some girls come by, have them wait in the kitchen.”

“Sure Father.” Reggie called back.

“My time doesn’t start until we’re both in bed!” Balen told him in an intense whisper, and Translocated both of them into his bedroom.

Five days before the call, as the family was sitting down to the twins’ birthday supper, Reggie announced; “When we leave the time-bubble, I’d prefer that I not be referred to as Reggie anymore. On formal occasions I’d like to be introduced as Markhan Longstrider The Sixth, and the rest of the time I’d like you and everyone else to call me Six. Similarly, they’d like to be referred to as Val and Fire.”

Mark smiled as he appraised his children. The twins were seven, and looking more opposite every day. Reggie’s… Six’s, he reminded himself, Six’s blond hair and blue eyes both seemed equally lightened by the sun, and his growth seemed to be ever-accelerating. He was already a hundred and fifty-eight centimeters tall; the size of an average Finitran twelve-year-old. Fire’s black hair and violet eyes only seemed to get darker and richer, and she was still only ninety-one centimeters tall, the height of a four-year-old. Val’s white and black locks were thick and grew very quickly; she tended to tie a knot at the base of her pony-tail to keep the ends off the ground, and her violet eyes now seemed a touch lighter than Helemia’s. She was a hundred and one centimeters tall, just a touch taller than average for human girls her age.

“That’s fine.” he smiled. “You’re outstanding and accomplished citizens, and I’m sure you already know yourselves well enough to define you own identities.

“Have I told you lately how proud I am of my children, and how much we love you?”

“Yah, but that’s okay.” Val giggled. “You can tell us again if you want.”

PART 15

Finally the day came when the call to the gods was scheduled to be made. Seven years and eight months had passed since the time-bubble was cast.

After considerable discussion, it had been decided that wording of the call would simply be; ‘Open the time-bubble!’, and that it would be done with psionics only. After a bit of mathematics, they’d realized that unless a person or even a god was relatively very close to Hiliani, that there was almost no chance that anyone would hear any audible sound they made no matter how much power they used, considering that Hiliani was well over five thousand kilometers from the nearest land.

Every spark of magic power that the entire community of Homestead could store would be used to power the call’s psionic spell, and every psionicist among them would simultaneously cast the call with their inherent ability and with all their strength. The one and a half second call had been recorded as a Reading and stretched to three and a half minutes in duration, making the frequency lower than detectability. Only an automated spell designed by Valentia would allow them all to make the call together with perfectly coordinated timing and perfect ‘pronunciation’, and most of the participants wouldn’t even be able to detect that they were doing it.

If no one responded to the call, they planned to take two days to recharge their batteries and then try again, and they would repeat this for a month. Any further attempts after that would depend on developing different methods of making the call, since the first technique would be considered futile at that point.

Somewhat surprisingly, only thirty-nine Sylvan had chosen to attempt to leave Hiliani with them, and they’d all sworn Osbald’s Oath and the vows of The Game of Status and gotten the markings of the oaths. They were gathered on the beach at Homestead with Mark’s family, the unicorns, Kragorram, Povon, Karzog, and all of the possessions they were bringing with them, having given away the rest or left them in their homes for the next occupants.

A space was left on the sand beside them so that whoever answered the call would have somewhere to arrive in if they chose to make a physical appearance.

Around all of them were the rest of the population of the islands, including all the Sylvan. They filled the community, and all of those without a view of the beach were taking Readings from those who had one. Final visits and emotional goodbyes had filled most of the last three days, and now those who were leaving and those who were staying were all as prepared for the separation as they could be.

Talia cast a huge Illusion of an hourglass above her to show the time remaining. At noon precisely the final grain of sand fell through, the hourglass turned, and Valentia announced; “The call begins, and will last three and a half minutes.”

Almost complete silence fell as the call was sent. Slowly the sand in the hourglass trickled down, and the tension slowly built.

Less than one second after the last grain of sand had fallen, the sun leaped across the sky, making the time of day suddenly change from noon to about five hours to midnight, and judging from its location the season had changed from early winter to mid-summer. A being appeared on the open sand from a race that they had only seen once before, and that had been at the victory celebration at the end of The War of The Founding of The Just Alliance, when the gods had appeared for the first time in millennia and announced the end of The Withdrawal.

It was a god of a race that were the ocean-going equivalent of the selkies; she was almost five meters long, and she looked like a cross between an otter, a seal, a dolphin, and a whale, having some characteristics of all of those. “Yes, what is it?” she psionicly asked.

Reggie was quickest, and spoke before anyone else had a chance to do so. “You are Zubzubweeeet?”

“Yes, though your pronunciation is poor.” she answered. “I am Zubzubweeeet, Fifth God of The Mer. Do you require assistance?”

“We have urgent news for the Gods. There is a renegade Sylvan God of Stealth, and there were almost twenty thousand practically undetectable Sylvan living here when the time-bubble was erected. We’ve dealt with the situation in a practical way, but if there were other hidden communities of Sylvan within any of the other time-bubbles, their occupants might not have fared so well.”

“Also,” Mark added, “Some of our young and all of our People of Morning have found being confined within the time-bubble to be unbearably restricting, and it’s very likely that some of the communities in the other time-bubbles might also become psychologically stressed due to the isolation.

“We strongly suggest that you open the other time-bubbles to confirm that all is going well within them.

“We’d like you to re-establish this time-bubble, but we ask that you wait a few days before doing so.”