I Married A Dragon (Prime Mating Agency)(64)

It seemed far too calculated and deliberate to be a coincidence, especially since on a few occasions the accidental portal opened on a day where the fluctuations were quite weak in comparison to the severe instability a couple of days later where nothing happened. If these were truly fluke occurrences, then something didn’t add up.

For this reason, Nero and I took to chasing phase shifts in the area where I suspected the culprit would be lurking. That didn’t yield much results, aside from me getting a chill from all the cool drafts announcing a nearby rift, and spending an ungodly amount of time traipsing in the darkness. At least, I got my minimum daily steps in.

We’d been at this exercise in futility for the past couple of hours, wandering around the ever-changing pathways of an unstable rift when Nero suddenly stiffened. He turned abruptly towards his left, looking at one of the larger corridors in our current rift. His eyes and the tips of his tentacles glowed a brighter purple, which I’d come to realize meant he was infusing himself with a greater amount of the shadows and probing the void.

To my shock, Nero began swelling, almost doubling his size, before wrapping four of his tentacles around me. My surprised gasp turned into a yelp when he hovered a little higher, and my feet stopped touching the ground. He then dashed forward, carrying me at dizzying speed. Our surroundings blurred, and I felt the familiar tingle on my skin of crossing into a different phase.

Nero covered my mouth with one of his tentacles as he slowed to a stop. Heart pounding, I nodded, understanding he wanted me to remain silent. Although my surroundings became clear again, it had a strange, dream-like glow. It took me a second to understand that Nero had both of us hidden in his stealth aura.

Flabbergasted, I stared in disbelief at the three Derakeens—two males and one female—standing in the central hub of the rift. Although I couldn’t clearly see their faces from this position, the lesser shadow horns on the side of their heads unmistakably marked them as Kwesars. By the way they huddled together, they hadn’t stepped into a phase shift by mistake and weren’t trying to get back outside. I knew beyond a doubt that they were what I’d been hunting for all these weeks.





Chapter 17





Kaida





The blue-scaled female rummaged in the medium-sized messenger bag dangling on her hip and retrieved a small piece of shadow obsidian. It looked smaller and more irregularly shaped than the shadow obsidian stones used to summon portals. She also took out a caster: a smaller, sleeker version of a nutcracker the size of a nail clipper. It allowed one to break a marked shadow obsidian stone to open a portal to the destination inscribed on the stone.

The two males—one green, one golden—stepped slightly away from her, and took on a ready stance. Meanwhile, the female placed the odd stone in the caster and broke it. The familiar thunderclap sound resounded, although muffled by the short distance between the triad and us. Sound didn’t carry in the void.

A large portal opened before them. While it looked stable, its creation appeared to further destabilize the rift. The pathways connecting to the hub we were standing in were collapsing or reshaping themselves. Many became shorter, their shadowy dead-ends moving up closer to us, and many opening a window into the real world.

I strained to hear what the triad was saying, but their physical reactions and the green male’s fist pump confirmed the summoning had yielded the result they had hoped for. It was a flawless portal, the destination close enough that I could see it as if peering through an open doorway. A purple mountain peak in the distance—whose name I couldn’t remember—identified that destination as near one of their major landmarks.

“Only a couple of meters off,” the male said with excitement. “You’re getting really good!”

The female beamed at him. Then, together, they worked on dispelling the portal. Understanding dawned on me as they struggled to close it. They were Scribe apprentices, testing the inscriptions they’d performed on bad quality shadow obsidian stones that would have never met the approval of their mentors. Remembering how easily Cedros dismissed his portals with an absentminded flick of his wrist further underlined the power gap between their different classes. Surely the Gate Masters would have had a much easier time of it.

I gave one of Nero’s tentacles a gentle squeeze as a thank you. He tightened his hold around me and rubbed his cheek against mine. This was the lead I needed. I continued observing in silence while they took turns cracking one of the stones they had marked. Each yielded varying results, from almost perfect to complete duds.

I was debating whether to call Cedros via my armband. As I couldn’t communicate telepathically with him like he could with me, we’d taken to wearing armbands with a com system that allowed me to reach him at all times. The memory of Nero chasing me around the house that first day still traumatized me. The golden male cracking one of his last stones took that choice from me.

The apprentices cursed, all three of them shifting into their battle form—which was much smaller than Cedros’s. The portal had opened onto a dark area bathed in purplish fog and filled with a swarm of aqrats. From what I could glimpse through the swirling vortex, they had been fighting over the carcass of some massive void creature. But the sight and scent of fresh prey commanded their attention.

As one, at least two dozen aqrats rushed towards the portal. Halfway through shifting, the three apprentices started breathing fire—normal flames, not shadow ones like Cedros had done—at the incoming beasts in the vortex. Simultaneously, they seemed to attempt to close the portal. Without hesitation, I tapped the emergency call to Cedros on my armband.