His brother let out a long exasperated sigh and said, ‘No, it’s not. Those arrogant bastards in the Regent’s Meet must think they have everything under control and we’re no longer useful.’
‘Well, if I were inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, I would assume they just didn’t try hard enough to make sure we’d get the recall in time. From the looks of things here, it was a quick and dirty fight,’ said Gulamendis.
A sound behind caused them both to spin round, daggers and swords at the ready; but instead of a demon, they saw another elf, wearing the garb of a sentinel. ‘I’m wounded,’ he gasped as he clutched his left side with his left hand, leaning with his right against the edge of the doorway.
Laromendis motioned for his brother to care for the Sentinel and said, ‘I’ll see if he was followed.’ He hurried down the hallway.
‘Let me see,’ said Gulamendis to the Sentinel. The brothers’ upbringing on the frontier had given them both a fundamental education in field dressings. The wound was long and deep. He had already lost a lot of blood. ‘Let me bind it,’ said the Demon Master.
He cut the bottom of the Sentinel’s tunic, then tore away a long length of cloth, fashioning a crude bandage. The elf lifted his arm above his head, he was obviously in pain, but seemed slightly more comfortable once the make-shift bandage was in place.
Laromendis returned and said, ‘Nothing followed.’ He looked at the Sentinel. ‘They neglected to send you the recall, as well, I see.’
‘There was no recall,’ said the Sentinel. ‘The demons swarmed the hub and some of us counter-attacked to hold them off while others tried to draw them away so the galasmancers could shut down the portals.’ He pointed to blood and gore splattered across the walls. ‘We all tried to reach this location, but I and two others were cut off. The rest of the Sentinels and one galasmancer were heading here to use this portal. My two companions perished on the way, but I continued on.’ He paused. ‘I really didn’t think the portal would still be open. But…’
‘You had to see,’ finished Laromendis.
‘I had to see,’ agreed the Sentinel.
Gulamendis said, ‘It appears that those who got here didn’t make it through. That’s what’s left of them.’
‘But they got the job done.’ Catching his breath, the Sentinel said, ‘My name is Sentinel Arosha.’
Gulamendis introduced himself and his brother then said, ‘We’re sorry to hear about the sudden evacuation; it’s nice to know that this place was shut down before the recall out of necessity, and was nothing personal.’
The warrior looked confused by his statement, but Laromendis said, ‘Never mind.’ He glanced at the doorway into the huge room. ‘We need think of something very quickly because eventually…’ He looked at his brother.
‘The flyers and most of the smaller demons won’t trouble us unless we wander close to them, but the more powerful ones will sense we are here eventually.’
The warrior looked at him and said, ‘You know about demons?’
‘More than I care to reveal,’ he said, ‘but I think I know how we can avoid them, for a while longer.’
‘If only we knew how to open this damn portal,’ said Laromendis.
Gulamendis said, ‘Something has occurred to me.’
‘What?’ asked his brother.
Gulamendis looked at the bodies on the floor and pointed to one dressed in a robe, and said, ‘Arosha, is that the galasmancer?’
The Sentinel’s knees weakened, and Laromendis helped him sit. ‘Yes, and the others are the rest of my company of Sentinels.’
‘Then they didn’t have time to escape.’
‘Obviously,’ said Laromendis to his brother. ‘Your point?’
Gulamendis went to the body of the fallen portal builder and pulled a demon corpse that covered him, he then turned over the blood drenched figure. The dead elf clutched a yellow stone in his hand, so firmly Gulamendis had to pry it from his fingers. Holding up the faintly pulsing stone, he said, ‘He didn’t destroy the portal! He only pulled the power crystal from it.’ He pointed to the empty hole where the crystal should be placed. ‘The portal should open if we put this back in here, and we can get home!’ He reached down and pulled a small bag from the galasmancer’s belt and quickly tied it to his own.
‘It wouldn’t do any good,’ said Arosha. ‘For the time being, anything that travels through a portal from this world will be killed the second it steps through.’
‘Lovely,’ muttered Laromendis. ‘Now what?’
Gulamendis paused, then said, ‘We go somewhere else.’
‘Where?’ asked his brother.
‘Sorcerer’s Isle,’ said the Demon Master.
‘How do you propose we do that?’