The Connected System

The portal was just as Harper had described. The cemetery was old and not that big. Surrounded by a stone wall, the grass of the cemetery level with the top of the wall, a couple of trees to one side. About two dozen gravestones, most having been destroyed or knocked over by the gaunts. The portal itself floated in the middle, hovering off the ground.

It pulsed and flared, small now but growing as they watched.

No gaunt had appeared since the end of the fighting. Loch hadn’t been able to watch the portal, he didn’t know how long it had been since the last one had been portaled in. He walked over to it, being careful to keep some distance. Cerie couldn’t confirm if it was one way or not and he wasn’t going to take the risk.

The fairy floated just over his shoulder, her natural green glow muted, mixing with the blue of the portal. Piper was below, just past the wall, watching. Harper and Davis were on the other side. Others spread out around the cemetery and the field, keeping an eye on the strip of woods surrounding it. There could be more gaunts or scavengers attracted by the noise and the smell of blood in the air.

Elora hopped up onto the cemetary grounds, effortlessly lifting herself in one smooth motion. The elf’s grace was amazing. Every movement seemed to be planned, efficient and smooth. Loch could tell Harper was jealous. They both moved like dancers and gymnasts. For Harper it came from years of training. For Elora it was just natural.

The former Silver Bark Clan scout was from another world, one that had been Connected for centuries. She had grown up under the Connected System. Everything that was new to Loch and the people of Earth was just the way life was for her. Her Clan was everything that Loch was hoping Clan Brady would not turn into. It had been driven by power, the weaker ones just pawns and resources to be used by the stronger. They were fodder, sent to fight the endless wars, to claim territory and resources for the higher ranked members of the Clan. That was typical for most of the Clans in the Connection, but the Silver Bark took it to extremes.

Elora had come from a small Clan family, very lowly ranked in the overall larger Clan. Coming to Earth through the portal and being a scout had been her way to advance her family. Her actions could have advanced them, and her, but only if she did what the higher ranked members demanded and did it in a way satisfactory to them. She had to risk her life at their whims or her family would suffer.

She’d finally had enough, breaking her vow to the Silver Bark and joining Clan Brady. To prove herself trustworthy she had made another oath, becoming a sworn Bannerman to the Brady Clanchief. To Loch.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Even more unsure with both Brian and Jenny asked to become Bannermen too. Luckily, they’d been so busy that he was able to push the conversation off. It wouldn’t last. He’d have to really think about what it all meant sooner rather than later.

Loch hated how power and strength was everything in the Connection. Even basic survival depended on it. Either the person having their own power or being under the control and protection of someone that did.

He pointed at the portal as it flared a bit, seeming to grow larger.

“Thoughts,” he directed at the two non-humans, the only ones there that would know anything about portals.

“I do not know how portals work,” Elora said. “I used them extensively but was not trained in their creation. That was something that only the Elders and Portalseers knew.”

She tried to hide it but Loch saw the small wince cross her features. Even though she had dissolved her oath to the Silver Bark, the Connection still had restrictions in place that prevented her from revealing Clan secrets. It was a method that prevented Clanmembers from jumping from Clan to Clan and bargaining knowledge for power. The Connection wanted the people to earn their power. There were ways around it, Cerie had said, but Elora did not know or was not capable of it. When she mentioned something the System didn’t want her to, she felt pain.

Loch knew that the small amount she’d just revealed, it must have been really painful.

“Portalseers,” he asked.

“The Class name for those with Portal Abilities,” Cerie replied. “It’s a Profession Class and not a Combat one. Rare as well.”

“As the fairy said,” Elora continued.

“How does it work?,” Loch asked, looking around the field. “I don’t think the gaunts had crafters.”

“Most likely a stone,” Cerie said, floating a little closer.

Loch had hated that about Cerie. The fairy was a Bonded Spirit, locked into the Codex Band by the Silver Bark and her only purpose had been as a source of information. She was their version of the old Alexa and Google. She’d been filled with all the information on Earth that the Silver Bark had been able to accumulate in the decades and centuries prior to Earth being Connected. She wasn’t really alive, just a being of pure energy. He’d found that part of her programming limited how she gave out information. She had to be asked direct questions to receive direct answers and wouldn’t always supply every last bit on her own.

When alive she had also grown up in the Connection. She was used to the Silver Bark, also used to the Connection, and was having a hard time when dealing with Loch and Piper who were new to the Connections. She forgot that things that were common knowledge to her was completely new to them.

It had angered him at first. She seemed to be deliberately withholding information, but that wasn’t true. She couldn’t help it, a combination of programming and dealing with total newbs. Loch was trying to stop being frustrated with it.

“Stone?,” he prompted.

“When a portal is first opened, a hole is ripped between the worlds. It is small, barely big enough for one person to slip through. And it takes a lot of power for just that hope,” Cerie said, motioning to the small portal floating before them. “A single Connected passes through with a Portal Stone. They place that Stone and it allows for more power to pass from the first planet to the new, allowing for a larger portal to be created. That is when the Portalseer and their guards enter the new world. The Portalseer then creates the much larger portal that allows more and more to keep passing through.”

“With restrictions,” Elora said. “The Silver Bark’s portal on this world only allows a limited number a day.”

“Why is that?”

“Power,” she replied with a shrug. “It takes a lot to maintain a portal across planets.”

“So there’s a stone somewhere that powers this thing and it goes to some other planet?”

“I do not think it goes to a planet,” Cerie said, flying a little closer. She still kept a couple feet away, drifting back as the portal flared. “The gaunts are not a native Connected species. You said that the Dullahan mentioned Death?”

“Yeah, a couple of times. The way the thing spoke, it wasn’t meaning death as in dying but as in a greater concept,” Loch cursed, shaking his head. “A Divine Being?”

“Yes. The other side could be a realm controlled by the Concept Of Death. It would not have needed to send someone through since it would have access on its own. That would also explain why the portal is so small and only sends one gaunt at a time. Even for Death, that is still a lot of power to be using.”

Loch cursed again, silently. Another Divine Being. From what Cerie said, they shouldn’t have been involving themselves on Earth this early, but they clearly were. Loch had already been approached by the Concept of The Storm, calling himself Thor, and accepted Thor as his Patron. Divine Beings granted their followers special boons or powers, in return they received a small amount of the follower’s earned Spirit making the Divine Being even stronger. They were all Connected, like Loch and the other humans, that had Advanced to the highest Levels and become more than they had ever been before. They become Concepts. They were the strongest beings in the entire universe except for the Connection itself.

And they liked to meddle in the affairs of Connected. Just not newly Connected. They wanted the potential followers to grow strong first. But this time, on Earth, it was different.

What was the Concept of Death doing? The gaunts were a form of undead, the Dullahan had definitely been an undead. Why had Death created both? To attack Loch and his people? If it could have pierced the barrier between worlds and created a portal to allow its creatures through, why pick Northwood?

“Could this be connected to somewhere else on Earth?”

That would make some sense. A larger base in a more central location with portals sent elsewhere to spread its influence.

“No,” Elora said. “It is linked to somewhere off planet. If it was to another on Earth, it would be larger and you could see through it.”

“Can whatever’s on the other side not see or hear us,” Loch asked.

“No,” Cerie answered.

That made Loch feel a little better.

“This portal is like any first created from planet to planet,” Elora continued. “It is one way.”

“Then why are we keeping our distance,” Davis Millman asked.

“In case something comes through,” Elora answered, her tone like an annoyed teacher answering stupid questions.

Davis glared at her, the elf ignoring him.

Loch was about to ask something else but stopped. What had Elora just said?

“Wait,” he said, turning to look at her. “Doesn’t that mean your portal here was one way?”

“Correct,” she replied, starting with the same tone she had used on Davis but quickly losing it. She was his sworn Bannerman afterall. One did not speak disrespectfully to their lord.

“Your people are trapped here?”

“For now. Every expedition to a newly Connected world is one-way until that expedition earns enough power and resources to open a portal on this end. Even then, it takes a lot to continue to power an interplanetary portal.”

“The Silver Bark here can’t communicate with your home planet?”

“We can, limited as it is, but that is only because a Portalseer is part of the expedition and can use an Ability to communicate through linked portal stones.”

Loch shook his head at how complicated the whole thing was. But it fit with the Connection. It wanted its Connected to strive to Advance, to push themselves to keep growing stronger. Nothing was handed to them. Even established Clans had to fight to expand.

And it fit with what he was learning about those Clans. They were willing to send dozens, maybe hundreds, of their people on a potential one-way trip with no chance of return. It was a risk for those going, but the possibility of rewards was huge. If they survived. That was why Elora had joined the expedition. It was her only chance to seize some momentum and power for herself and family. Anything she did would earn prestige for her and her family.

Except it hadn’t happened because of the Silver Bark she’d been saddled with. As leader, their actions reflected on her and they’d tried to sabotage her. She’d already hated her life in the Silver Bark and that had just pushed her over the edge. Elora had seen a chance at a new way of life with Clan Brady and she had seized it.

“How do we shut this down?”

That was the whole reason for coming to the fields and fighting the last gaunts. They had to shut the portal down or more gaunts would keep coming. One every couple of hours. That would be a nightmare to deal with, stationing people in the field permanently to do nothing but kill freshly portaled gaunts.

Shut the portal down and the threat would end.

For now.

“Find the stone and cancel it,” Cerie answered, her eyes scanning the cemetary grounds. “It should be under the portal.”

Davis stepped forward, handing his spear to Harper. Glancing at the portal, holding his body away from it, he bent down and started digging at the ground. The dirt was loose, making it easy to move.

“I can feel something,” he said. “Not just physical by inside with my Core.”

He dug a little more. Light started to appear, a soft blue glow shining through the dirt as he moved it. Davis leaned back as the light grew stronger. He’d cleared away the dirt about six inches deep and a foot in diameter. Hard segmented crystal edges were revealed, covered in intricate linework. The blue glow was brighter pulsing in time with the portal above it.

“Is it safe to touch?,” Lock asked, crouching down and looking at the stone.

It didn’t appear to be much bigger than what Davis had uncovered, a fine layer of dirt still covering most of it.

“No,” Cerie replied. “You will not be able to use it, but anyone can touch it.”

“If I can’t use it, how will I shut this thing off?”

Loch waved a hand at the portal hovering in the air. He looked at it, level with the lower part. The edges were slightly brighter, flickering with a crackling energy border. Inside the border was a smooth light blue surface. It didn’t ripple or move with the pulsing, held tight by the border. Loch couldn’t see through the barrier.

What was on the other side? A world like Earth? Something else? It was a realm that belonged to the Concept of Death. Was it a giant graveyard? A perpetual night shrouded land of endless fog?

The stone and portal flared. Loch could feel the energy in his Core, the Spirit being drawn from the air around them. It flowed into the stone, which did something that changed the energy that came out. Loch wasn’t sure how, but he knew the portal was close to summoning another gaunt.

Loch reached down, touching the surface of the stone. It was warm. He could feel the energy coursing through the object. Little sparks as it danced, touching each of the many runes carved into the surface. Each time the spark of energy passed where his finger touched, Loch could feel a slight burning as the Spirit in the stone spoke to the Spirit in his core.

Moving his hand to slide his fingers around the stone on one side, he grabbed the other side with his other hand. He started to pull, surprised at how light the stone was. It looked like it should be heavy but there was barely any physical weight to it. He could feel a presence in the stone, a spiritual weight to it.

He stepped away from the portal, holding the stone in front of him. It was about the size of a basketball, multi-faceted. Runes covered the entire surface, he could feel the indentations under his fingers. It still pulsed in time with the portal.

“How do I shut it off?,” he asked again.

“I do not know,” Elora answered.

“Send a pulse of your Spirit into it,” Cerie instructed, her eyes glowing green, indicating she was accessing her internal data. “You want to stop the flow of Spirit going into the stone.”

Loch looked down at the stone. He could feel the Spirit as it danced around the stone. It didn’t move from rune to rune in a straight line, instead zig zagging through the crystalline structure. Pulling Spirit from his Core, Loch sent it down his arm and into the portal stone. He felt the stone’s Spirit react. It started sparking and crackling as he pushed his Spirit through the flow, searching for where the ambient Spirit of the world entered the stone. He found it, buried deep inside the stone. There was no path in like there was out. The energy just entered the stone in its center, a denser area where there was more Spirit gathered.

He pushed his Spirit harder, meeting resistance. The stone didn’t want to stop taking on Spirit. It had a task it was created for and would not stop doing that task. Loch pushed harder. He could feel that he was stronger but it didn’t matter. The portal stone would not shut off.

He was doing something wrong.

Pushing hard wasn’t working. He was trying to brute force it shut, using his strength. But hadn’t Elora and Cerie said the stone was created by a Crafting Class? Those Classes were strong, just not necessarily in physical strength like Loch’s Class and other Combat Classes. Their strength was in the intricacies of creation. They couldn’t brute force a solution, instead having to sometimes be slower, methodical and precise.

What he’d been doing wrong was approaching this like he would combat.

Taking a deep breath, Loch slightly pulled back his push against the stone. He kept up the pressure, but didn’t try to treat his Spirit like a blunt object. He weaved it around the gathered Spirit of the stone, lightly prodding at the mass of energy.

A minute passed, two and more. Loch didn’t know how long he kept at the stone. He didn’t let his concentration slip, couldn’t let it slip. If he was attacked, he’d have to start the process all over again and somehow knew it would be harder. It felt like events he’d had in games before, getting to an objective and needing uninterrupted time engaged with the objective before it could be claimed, activated or turned off.

Another example of video and other games being training for the Connection.

Finally Loch felt something shift inside the stone. One by one, the energy stream retreated from the runes, returning to the ball of Spirit in the center. Then that winked out, all the collected SPirit dispersing back into the world. The stone’s glow disappeared.

Loch looked up at the portal, watching it shrink. The brighter border started contracting, shrinking in on itself. The flat inner surface disappeared, just the border visibly. It started spinning, shrinking as it did until there was just a single bright point left.

It flared and disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

“That’s it?,” Davis asked. “That seems pretty easy.”