An instant later they found themselves in another chamber, this one much larger than the one they just left. Seven portals sat in the room, and Gavin took a moment to take them all in.

  The team was standing a the circle labeled Aotearoa in one corner of the room. East Francia, Nipon and The United Colonies were marked on the walls above each other circle spaced every around the outside. In a triangle around the central staircase were three more circles labelled Salasthesia, Celestria, and Melmac.

  “Well there's our way back home.” Val said, pointing at the portal labeled Celestria.

  “Yeah, sure is. I'm pretty sure we want to go to Salasthesia though.” Gavin said, walking further into the room.

  “Why do you say that? Why not Melmac?”

  “You're just gonna have to trust me on this.” Gavin said, shuddering.

  “No arguing from me.” Sam said.

  “Me either.” Judy agreed.

  “This does seem too easy though.” again said, touching the runes on the dormant portal.

  “Take the wins where you can Gavin, it's not like you didn't get steaming piles of shit heaped on you back in Celestria.”

  “Like when?” Gavin said furrowing his brow.

  “Like when you got your arm bitten off.”

  “And your leg.”

  “And you were kidnapped.”

  “And nearly killed by a chicken.”

  “And-”

  “Okay, yeah, I get it” Gavin said waving them off “most of that stuff doesn't count anyway. Let's just get out of here.”

  He stepped onto the portal labelled Salasthesia and breathed out a sigh of relief, letting the Earth ordeal slump off him. His home world had dragged up a lot of old feelings for him, very few of them positive. He felt his tenuous hold on the planet slipping. It had a lot of things in it that he liked, but not a lot of people. He knew he would likely pop back, but he felt ready to let go of his ties here.

  Resolving himself to complete his task he activated the portal, sending power from his sword through the inlaid ritual circle. He feet the familiar surge of power as the anchor at the other end of the portal connected. He was developing an instinctual feel for how the portals worked as he used them, some of the knowledge buried deep in his mind surfacing to connect dots.

  He was mildly sure his original inability to get to earth through the first portal back on Celestria was because it required a link through the user to connect to another portal whereas these ones were all hardwired to go to one place and one place only. The original creator had designed it as a sort of auxiliary portal to the network that would allow him to use any of them as a back door to get home.

  He let the dimensional forces that pulled them between worlds wash over and past his team. Powerful ritual magic acting as a shield and barrier against being torn apart by the fundamental forces of the universe. The journey took moments, but Gavin felt the rush of sensation like a tsunami crashing against his consciousness.

  The room they found themselves in on the other side was nearly identical to the one they'd left, where the earth end had a portal for what were now known as Japan, America, New Zealand, and Germany, this one had a portal for Tintagel, Lyonesse, Glaslyn, Sarras, Celestria and Terra. The room was made of the same functional marble, free from embellishments or adornments. A spiral stairway in the centre of the room led down to the entrance chamber.

  The team descended the stairs, finding the ring of golems guarding the front door. Several were broken and scattered about the room, the walls marred and pitted, stains of rusty brown long faded into the walls and floor. The remaining guards stood unmoving at their positions, paying no attention to them as they walked out across the open floor. They were all showing signs of corrosion and weathering, and felt a lot more like statues than sentinels.

  Gavin pulled the door open and stepped outside. It felt like drawing in the first breath after coming up from a deep dive in the ocean. The magic of this world was like a physical presence, thick and heavy. The knights had spent weeks honing their ability to claw every last scrap of their mana from being sapped from them, but here it felt like the world was trying to infuse them with its own power. It was an odd feeling, like trying to drink from a hose turned to full and shoved in their mouths.

  They found themselves locking off the magic in the same way they'd done from earth, blocking the passage of ambient magic to their souls and consciously metering themselves the mana that they needed not just immersing themselves in it.

  Outside the tower were the ruins of what had once been a city. Wattle and daub buildings had fallen apart, choking the streets with debris. Off to the right at the top of a gentle hill a half demolished castle with high spires and fantastical parapets told a story of war. Walls had crumbled inwards, the ancient remnants of fire long since scrubbed clean by rain scarred the houses and shops surrounding it.

  The city sprawled up against a forest that had begun its inevitable reclamation of its ancient territory, vines, trees and grasses crawling across the streets as nature asserted its dominance against the efforts of the ancient civilisation.

  No sign of life showed itself, not birds, insects, or rodents. The city was eerily quiet aside from a chill breeze whispering against the backs of their necks like the touch of a ghoul breathing down their collars.

  “What happened to this place.” Judy said looking around in wonder, “it's a wasteland”

  “War.” Sam said taking the first step down towards the road below.

  “Do we even need to stick around here?” Val asked watching the team begin their descent down into the city, “we need to find a way to get rid of that sword, I doubt we will find answers here.”

  “No, but the castle up there or one of these buildings might have a map, or something that will give us an idea on where we need to start looking.”

  “We don't want to try the other portal destinations first?” Val asked

  “Not necessarily, if we can find any information here, it might stop us from walking into danger blindly. If there was a war here, the other portals might lead to a hostile city.” Sam said.

  “I agree. Let's have a poke around here and see what we can come up with.” Gavin said.

  The knights moved through the dilapidated town, unease teasing at their senses. Gavin didn't initially portal them straight to their destination, instead choosing to get a lay of the land and potentially find something else of interest on the way.They discovered quickly that the town was bare. Shops were empty of goods, houses stripped of anything not nailed down.

  Finding nothing of value, they jumped to the castle. Gavin opened a portal on top of an undamaged section of parapet and together they stepped through. The air carried a distinctly different feeling of menace that crept into their minds the instant they appeared through the gothic arch. Reacting as one, they bought weapons to bear. It would be their first time using their new gear in anger should a fight break out, and all were eager for something to try them on.

  As a unit they advanced along the parapet through a half destroyed spire, finding the first sign someone had ever been here. Ancient suits of armour and weapons, corroded to the point of collapse lay forgotten within the chamber. They appeared to have rusted away where their owners had died. Sam had studied enough large scale battles to recognise how defensive formations looked when the defenders were overwhelmed, and to her eye this looked exactly like the aftermath of a siege that no one had touched following the victory.

  She led the way down through a stairwell out into the castle courtyard, the whole time feeling like enemies were closing in around them. Judy and Val blanketed the area with their vision powers, Between the two of them they should be able to spot anything, Judy having much sharper vision across a wider spectrum of light and Val able to sense obscured and invisible enemies.

  They stepped up into the ruined castle, through the main doors that had long since rotted to brittle splinters. Inside a rubble strewn tiled floor stretched out to form an elegant throne room. A tiered plinth at the far end of the room held two ornate thrones of gold and silver, lined with faded red leather upholstery. The room itself was filled with signs of a desperate battle. More rusted armour, corrupted by time piled across the floor. Long wooden tables had been upended and used as barricades, their feet slotting into precision crafted notches in the flagstones.

  Gavin pushed aside a pathway for them to walk, the sound of scraping and clanging metal triggering thoughts of Pippin Took drawing doom upon the party in Moria.

  ‘For a world so full of magic I'm surprised there aren't magic weapons and armour here, everything is mundane’ Gavin said through their telepathic link.

  ‘Maybe that's why they lost’ Val said.

  ‘Are we thinking it was monsters?’ Judy asked.

  ‘Must have been, there aren't even skeletons in the armour, I think it could have been an ooze type of monster that ate everything living and moved on’ Sam said

  ‘Then why the rubble? This place was blasted apart, not eaten by a slime.’

  ‘It doesn't matter right now, it happened a long time ago, we just need to find out where we are and what's going on here’

  ‘That's fair, let's have a look around’ Gavin said.

  The team set about exploring the castle, finding fewer suits of armour and weapons the further they were from the entrance hall and more signs of civilian life. Piles of clothes lay huddled in alcoves and side rooms, sometimes defended by one or two suits of armour. They found a library torn apart, books little more than dust held together by cracked leather covers.

  They searched through a suite of bedrooms, finding them mostly intact, though occasionally it looked like grenades had been thrown into the rooms, upending beds and gouging chunks out of the walls. They found a fair amount of valuables, gems and gold had weathered the time here unblemished. They left it all where they found it, not willing to touch the eerie jewelery.

  Part of the castle had been completely destroyed, leaving a great rent in the side of the elaborate stone work, above and below revealing a myriad of passages and rooms now open to the elements.

  “I don't think there's anything here” Gavin said, the first thing any of them had said out loud since entering the confines of the castle walls.

  As one, they felt the general air of menace turn its attention on them. They felt like they'd just walked right into the path of a very dangerous enemy.

  “Shit, now you've done it.” Sam said watching as the shadows around them shifted and warped.

  A wall of violet and ash manifested up around the castle, a rippling dome of energy cascading above them, shrouding them in hazy darkness. The shadows coalesced into distinct forms back down the hallway behind them. Creatures like fire elementals formed from darkness and ash stalked towards them, baring fangs of shadow and terror.

  “I can't portal us out, anything beyond the wall feels like that Entropy dimensional space.” Gavin said.

  “What about inside? Get us back to the courtyard.”

  “I can do that.” Gavin said, stepping back through his portal arch.

  Back outside, more of the shadow monsters poured from every nook and cranny. They took every form and shape, some appearing as small dog-like creatures, some as hulking four metre tall abominations.

  As one they launched into action, Sam transformed into her awakened form, her long sword appearing in her right hand and her new weapon appearing in her left. She grasped the bulky machine gun easily in her animated hand, a thick leather strap winding itself around her forearm and bicep. With a howling battlecry she unleashed her fury, bullets barking from the muzzle in staccato beats. She charged forward, slashing with her sword as it sprang to life, trailing glittering silver light.

  An armory of swords appeared around Val. Where once she'd wielded two swords and animated two more, since levelling her power up, she was able to animate four. She had all six of the her swords out and ready to use. She followed Sam into the fray, her weapons a dervish of death around her, covering her from all sides as she pounced on the largest enemy in front of them.

  Judy shot herself into the air, her new rifle rhythmically tearing shadowy chunks out of the flanking monsters. She squeezed off several rounds a second, each one a heavily enchanted slug of radiant energy that detonated on contact with the press of enemies.

  Gavin had yet to test his new gun in the field. Much like Judys rifle, it had gone through multiple revisions in his head as he researched new and better designs. His old rifle and ammunition had been reforged into something that looked like it belonged in a semi-futuristic video game. It was a creation of his own making, drawing on several bullpup shotgun designs it held fifteen ten-gaugue slugs. It was enchanted to do one thing, and one thing only, deal damage.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  [Item: Kill Stuff Good Gun]

  [Type: weapon, firearm]

  [Rarity: Level 3, epic]

  [Description: it might hurt you, but it will hurt your enemies more]

  [Effect: Rounds shot from this weapon deal additional force damage]

  [Effect: Enhanced physical resistance]

  There was nothing fancy about this weapon, and Gavin used it now to full effect. Eruptions of magical energy exploded across the battlefield. It was designed for someone of a higher level to use, and Gavin had made no compromises to tone down its power to suit his strength attribute. He used his force of will and body of iron to protect him from the recoil, the gun thundering into his shoulder with a force he could just barely control. There was no room to use his Hexaheral dice to slice through enemies, his new weapon required everything he had to use effectively.

  He advanced behind his friends, blowing apart enemies in bursts of radiant light. Each slug disintegrating a handful of enemies in a cone behind its target as they were engulfed in shards of silver force. With each killed monster a small bead fell from its core, raining down like hailstones as the team slaughtered everything in front of them.

  They met in a clash of noise and fire. Gavin used his companions for cover, ducking through Vals swords and Sam's reach to avoid taking hits. He threw up bubble shields as often as the power came off cooldown.

  Val carved enemies as they came at her, her six swords barely keeping pace with the crush that kept coming thicker and faster. She used all of her abilities and special attacks as quickly as she could, feeling her mana and stamina replenish almost as fast as she could use them. She was the only one on the team that could use the level three stamina and recovery enchantments Gavin could make, and so he'd fabricated her several rings to keep her as topped up as possible.

  Their initial momentum soon came to a halt as more and more enemies poured from the castle in a flood. They crawled over eachother to get at the knights, appearing as waves of crashing death around them.

  Sam was the first to take a hit, discovering the concerning ability to monsters all shared. Where the claws of insubstantial darkness raked at Sam's back caused the vines that made up her body to wither and unravel. One got in through Vals guard and tore at her armour, the magical shield dimming considerably as it sapped away the held enchantment.

  “Not good.” Gavin said as he felt the stolen magic embolden the shades.

  Each hit drained a concerning amount of magic from their armour, each landed attack imparting a little power to anything not killed outright. Each killed enemy shared out its power to its allies.

  “We’re gonna need the Tzaar Bomba strat again.” Gavin said, concerned as his shots were killing only their initial target and not the enemies around them as the fight progressed.

  “On it.” Sam said, activating her ability.

  Radiant light spilled out over the courtyard, scouring the shadow demons that advanced into the aura of death unphased. Gavin copied Judys spell to copy abilities and used it to steal Vals blind fighting ability, letting him feel what was going on around them as his regular vision became a wall of impenetrable light.

  Demon souls rained down in cascading waves, clattering to the stone as the ream took a brief respite from the combat, letting Sam harvest their enemy. They felt power flowing out of the shades at an ever increasing rate, strengthening them to the point they could stand within the aura to attack the party briefly before falling.

  “I’m not going to be able to keep this up” Sam said, sensing her ability take its toll on her faster than their enemies were dying.

  “Turtle strat then.” Gavin said summoning his fortress in amongst the battle.

  Judy descended first, pulling back to the fortress to land on a balcony, to continue her assault. Val and Sam retreated slowly towards the front entrance creating a killbox of destruction as they fought alongside eachother. Gavin was the only one to go inside, feeling his connection to his fortress strengthen the instant he was inside.

  Gavins fortress had gone over a metamorphosis in the past months. He was able to incorporate items in his inventory into the construction of his fortress, and he had access to a plethora of weapon schematics courtesy of some dubiously legal internet searches.

  Rotary cannons and machine guns bristled from new custom ports over his gothic castle. They weren't enchanted yet, and neither was the ammunition, meaning each individual bullet would do almost nothing, but he had several aircraft carriers worth of bullets and the ability to spew tens of thousands of them out every minute.

  A deafening crashendo of pandemonium battered down on them as the fortresses weapons opened up. Spent casings rained down around them, showering off armour with sizzling heat.

  The shades faltered, pressed back past Sam's aura under a barrage of devastating firepower. Sam let her power fade away. Her soul felt raw with the constant exertion, and she was glad not to have to push herself to the point she was unable to fight.

  Their respite lasted only a little while. The mundane armaments of the fortress weren't growing the enemies power the same way their abilities had been, but they were still sharing everything they'd accumulated amongst each remaining enemy. Each shade that fell represented a step towards an ever harder fight.

  They could tell the instant the enemies passed the threshold from level three to level four. They surged forward, suddenly able to sustain a critical mass of hits. Sam, Judy and Val rejoined the fight, forced to keep the enemies off their bastion. They focused on one enemy at a time, bringing each down with a combined effort while the fortress guns piled damage indiscriminately into the crowd.

  the shades emerging from the castle ebbed to a crawl. The shambling horrors manifesting more frequent as giant hulks of unreality instead of the smaller creatures that had been more common at the beginning of the fight.

  The knights could feel the fight building to a peak as they whittled the enemies down to a handful. Switching tactics they focused on spreading the damage out amongst each remaining shade.

  They felled all five in moments, timing their abilities to Kill each before the additional power could reach the others.

  With dawning realisation they felt the combined power didn't just fade away, it flowed back into the castle in a rush. A solitary shade rose up to absorb it all, growing in size and deepening in intensity as the foul magic bolstered it. They felt its level smash through the level four barrier, teeter on the very end of level five before ascending to level six.

  “Fuck a duck.” Gavin said as he felt the power outside his fortress balloon out to a monstrosity vastly more powerful to any monster he'd fought before.

  Gavin launched a barrage of stored missiles he'd held in reserve, jets of smoke railed out to obscure the explosions as his plethora of machine guns crackled with a mind shattering roar.

  The shade seemed not to care, rearing up to its full height dwarfing the team fighting below. It strode forward, raising a hand in a flash to scoop handfuls of the fortress out as if it were no more substantial than marshmallow.

  “Oh shit, not good not good.” Gavin said, alarmed, as he felt the monster consume his fortresses divine power.

  Hastily he pulled World Claimer from its stone and dismissed his fortress, the home vanishing in a blink and ejecting him violently to slam against the palisade wall. The shadow demon lurched forward, attacking a target that was no longer there. Violet light pulsed within the demon now, the team's weapons ceasing to fray at the edges of its formless body.

  “It's immune to our attacks.” Sam said, gritting her teeth.

  “Yeah, no shit.” Gavin said anger thick on his features, “it's eaten a chunk of our house.”

  Gavin stood, the sword radiating a depth of power he couldn't hope to comprehend. He stalked forward as his companions retreated from the demon's rushing advance, limbs of insubstantial void flared out, battering the three women as each failed to entirely avoid its lightning fast attacks.

  Picking his moment Gavin teleported forward to get behind the swing that sent Sam tumbling across the courtyard. World Claimer slashed across the demon, its edge rending a gaping chasm. He jumped again, avoiding the followup attack that came his way. He appeared behind it, the blade already plunging down.

  An inhuman scream shattered the battlefield, a rippling wave of energy throwing him back towards the castle. Barely arresting his wild tumble, he opened a portal, flying through to appear on the other side of the courtyard, his momentum carrying him straight back into the shade. He flew sword first, punching through it, feeling a wash of unholy energy crash over him as its remaining life force was torn to shreds. The barrier above them eroded in whisps of energy, scattering to the wind.

  “Fuck me.” Gavin said, slumping to sit on the castle steps.

  He wasn't especially injured, but his armour was a wreck, his mana stamina and health had drained down to uncomfortable levels in the brief instants he'd been in contact with the demon. He felt his team were in a worse condition than he was.

  They'd cut loose and unloaded on these creatures, but they fought on a different paradigm than they were used to dealing with. Usually Gavins armour took a good while to break through, they'd be battered around over the course of a battle slowly wearing down in grizzly attrition, these enemies were physically weaker than they were used to, but also mostly ignored all of their defenses. It was something Gavin didn't like in an enemy, mostly because he had no idea how to protect the team against it if they ever came across that type of enemy again.

  “Back to the tower and try another portal?” Val asked.

  “May as well, we could wander through the forest for a week and not find anything.” Gavin said.

  Around them were hundreds of variously coloured and glimmering marbles. Gavin drew them towards himself with his force of will, taking them into his inventory.

  [Item: Demon soul, Shadowmeld]

  [Type: Demon Soul, Shade]

  [Description: contains the false soul of a shadow-affinity demon.]

  The pile of demon souls stacked up in his inventory, ballooning out his stock by an order of magnitude. The affinities they were associated with were invariably some form of shadow related power, shadowmeld, night eyes, shadow strike, and call of the abyss seemed to be the most common, though voidwalker and star shot also made occasional appearances. The one that dropped off the boss monster was annul, something that wasn't in the list of known crystals in his user interface.

  Gavins portal was on cooldown so Judy opened a copy of it, waiting for him to reset her cooldown before they proceeded. Having World Claimer out made these sorts of encounters much easier to recover from, he forced out a wave of energy that they used to heal themselves up to full. Gavin could draw mana of his own level or below from the weapon, refilling his own supply and feeding it out to the team. Val and Sam had the ethereal blood power that increased their healing speed, and vastly increased it while they were at full mana. Sam could sacrifice her life force to dole it out to her companions and Val passively copied and shared out any healing she received. Between those abilities and the rings of mana, stamina and health regeneration they all wore they could get each other into fighting condition with only a short break through most injuries. Coincidentally that was about the length of time it took them to eat a pie.

  “So good.” Gavin moaned through a mouth of pastry.

  A not insubstantial portion of his inventory had been taken up with various baked goods from bakeries across his home country and he made gluttonous use of it now.

  “Not that your pies aren't good, but this is on another level.” Val said, tearing into a seafood pie they'd found in a Cafe not far from their hidden base under the mountain.

  “It's all good.” Gavin said spilling flakes across his armour, “these pies are made by actual professionals. I'm just a bloke who read a cooking skill book and used ingredients he'd never seen or heard of beforehand. Really, it's a show of what a great cook I am that I'm able to come up with what I did.”

  “Only you could talk up your own mediocrity to excellence.” Val laughed.

  “Rude.”

  “Guys, quiet, I see something.” Judy said, pointing off across the row of buildings.

  ‘What?’ Sam asked through their link.

  ‘Saw someone. A person, moving towards the castle.’

  ‘Definitely a person?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Definitely.’ Judy confirmed.

  ‘Take Gavin and track them down, find out if they're hostile. We'll be here and can retreat if they want to fight’ Sam said.

  ‘Roger Roger’ Gavin said popping the last of his meal into his mouth.