Jack Gregson & the Forgotten Portal (11 page)

“Water is going to kill that dark mist?
Seriously?” said David.

“The water at Diamond Lake is not any normal
water. Its purity will destroy many dark arts.”

“I know the lake, and how to get there,”
said Anthrow.

Suddenly the door to the store opened and
five men walked in. Unlike humans, they only had one eye, in the
centre of their head. They were impossibly large. Their muscles
were huge and bulging. As soon as one grinned at them, it was clear
to Jack they weren’t there to shop.

“Out of my store!” Vonsant yelled as a wave
of golden light left his hand and hurtled towards the leader of the
group.

Just as it was about to hit him, the man
waved it away with a laugh, a black mist leaking out of his hands
to consume the gold magic before it.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” The giant man
said chuckling. “Now, where is the Gregson heir? He has something
my master wants. Come out little one, and I promise we won’t hurt
your friends…much.”

The man’s companions laughed at his joke and
Jack was sure that even if he did hand himself over, his cousins,
Anthrow and Vonsant wouldn’t be safe from these beasts.

Jack put his hand in his pocket and gripped
the Chaos Pixie Orb slowly, hoping the men in front of them didn’t
notice his movements.

He glanced over to Anthrow who was watching
him with a stern face. He nodded once and then turned to the
leader.

“You’ve got the wrong people friend, I know
no Gregson,” said Anthrow.

The man in front laughed, a deep disturbing
sound that made Jack and his cousin’s cringe.

“Lie to me again small man and perhaps I
will hurt you…lots.”

“OK! You’re obviously a smart man. Maybe
there’s something you’d like more than a Gregson heir…”

“Enough!” the man boomed. “Where is the
heir? Is it that one?” he said pointing to David as he took another
step closer.

“Oh damn, now Jack!” Anthrow yelled as he
grabbed David and Rosie and dove under the nearest table.

Jack didn’t hesitate and thrust the orb at
the feet of the men in front of him.

He turned and dropped to the floor, grabbing
Vonsant by the arm as the orb hit the ground. The glass smashed as
he scrambled under one of the many tables, wondering what would
happen next.

Chapter Eleven

Chaos

Jarl jumped up from the broken glass. She was
finally free!

Pixies had no concept of time as they lived
forever, so she wasn’t sure if she’d been in the orb for ten
minutes or ten years, but as their kind got bored incredibly
easily, both options were too long in her opinion.

She used her tiny wings to fly to the
ceiling of the room and looked down. It was so boring! Tables and
tables of dusty junk littered the room, as if untouched for ages.
Five large men stood below, looking up at her and laughing. They
all looked the same! Two arms, two legs, one eye. Where was the fun
in that?

Jarl stroked her chin with one hand as she
checked that she had a full pouch of magic powder with the other.
What would make this room more fun?

She decided to start small, and sprinkled a
small amount of dust on the large man before her. Immediately wings
began to grow out the sides of his head. As they grew, they started
to flap, trying to raise the man’s massive body into the air.

Jarl realised her error right away. She’d
given him wings that could support his head flying, not his whole
body! With another toss of magic dust, she made his body disappear
and the head was off! Flying around the room, the funny man
screaming the whole time.

What next? The other four men seemed to be
scrambling to leave the room, but Jarl didn’t think it would be as
fun without them there.

She flew to the door they were running
towards and threw some dust on it. There was a loud crack, as big
brown eyes appeared through the wood. A mouth with razor sharp
teeth, roared open and snapped at the four men. It was big enough
to eat one of them whole. Jarl smiled when she saw they had decided
to stay.

Now it was time to get things really going
Jarl thought, as the flying head screamed past her. She grabbed a
large portion of powder in each hand and started flying around the
room, sprinkling it everywhere. The room came alive as she used her
imagination to bring the boring space to life.

She laughed in joy as the roof lifted off
the room as the person she’d turned into a balloon pushed it
towards the red sky above.

What was this? There were more people in the
room! Jarl hadn’t seen them before, as they were lying under some
tables.

The small boy that had been carrying her was
one of them and he would definitely want to be included in the fun,
she thought as she flew towards them.

She reached for more powder, thinking she
could give one of them more legs to run around on.

No! Her pouch was empty! She would have to
return home for more.

Once again she flew up, above where the roof
once lay and looked down. Things were much more interesting now she
thought as she smiled and disappeared in an explosion of gold
dust.

***

“We need to get out of here!” Anthrow said,
as the table above them began to shake.

Objects had begun to fall on to the ground
around them, as they morphed into life. Jack saw that the globe
David had held just minutes before had grown what looked like
pigeon legs and was stumbling towards him. Some of the other globes
had joined together and were now like a snake, slithering across
the ground in search of food.

In the distance he could see a one eyed man
staring at his arms that had been turned into giant fish like
creatures, both of them hungry and trying to reach for the flying
head above them. Another one now looked like a massive punkey,
howling at the roof floating off into the sky.

It truly was chaos.

“Let’s go!” said Anthrow as he jumped out
from under the table and raced towards the door.

Seeing that it now had a giant jaw with
sharp teeth, he turned to Vonsant and yelled over the loud sounds
of the room “is there another way out?”

“This way!” Vonsant said as he rushed
towards the back of the store.

They ran after him, keeping low. The head
with wings had worked out how to control its movements and was
dive-bombing, hoping to get a bite out of one of them.

They ran through the door to the shops
backroom, which somehow had even more objects and artefacts piled
upon tables.

“This place is a mess,” said David.

“I know where everything is,” said Vonsant.
“Well I did,” he added as he looked back towards the store. “I’m
glad we’re alive, but I wish there had been a…less destructive way
to escape Theordens troops. It will take a while to clean this mess
up.”

“How do we get out?” Anthrow asked, looking
back into the front room. “I just saw that flying head leave the
place, it could be getting re-enforcements.”

Vonsant walked to the corner of the room and
peeled back the carpet to reveal a trap door in the floor. He
pulled the door open to reveal a ladder, leading down to the next
floor.

“This will take you down to my storeroom.
You’ll find a back door that has a stairwell that will take you to
the ground. From there you’re on your own.”

“Thank you Vonsant,” Jack said. “Sorry about
getting you involved in this.”

“You can thank me by stopping Theordan
invading your world. If he manages to do that…well there’s not much
hope for the rest of us. Remember what I said about the stone.
Someone from your household had to have placed it there.”

“Will you come with us Vonsant?” Rosie
asked. “It’s not safe here.”

Vonsant smiled. “Thankyou for your concern
young Gregson but I will be ok. This shop has been in my family for
fourteen generations and I don’t plan on being the family member to
close it down. Anthrow, please take these.” He said as he passed
him a small box. “Use your gifts to determine their powers. Where
you’re going, I think you’ll need them.”

Anthrow nodded his thanks and then urged
Jack, David and Rosie down the ladder.

Once they reached the storeroom, Jack ran to
the backdoor and pulled its large bolt free from the wall and
yanked the door open.

“Me first!” Anthrow said as he caught up and
took down the stairs. They were old, rusty and clearly not used
often, but they held the four of them as they raced to the ground
floor.

“This way!” he said as he ran down the alley
the stairs had led them to.

They raced towards the end where it met
another busy street, and Anthrow held out his hand for them to stop
as he peered out, making sure there was no-one waiting for
them.

“There are more of those one eyed giants at
the base waiting at the front of the building.”

“Why do they want Jack?” Rosie asked no one
in particular.

Jack had been wondering the same thing. When
they had encountered the Horde at the Grotto, he had assumed that
it was there to stop them recovering the blue emerald. But now it
seemed that Theorden was specifically after him!

His Grandmother had talked about ‘special
responsibilities’ that came with being the Gregson heir and that
she would begin to teach him what they were. He once again wished
she hadn’t been so secretive about everything while he was growing
up. Then he might have a clue on why he was being chased.

“I have no idea why they want him,” said
Anthrow as he kept an eye on the street. “But we have to assume
everything is related. Jack if Theorden is after you, it must have
something to do with invading Earth. You must have some knowledge
or power he needs.”

“But I don’t know anything!”

“Then as heir to the Manor, there must be
something you can open, close or destroy…something! We must get you
to safety.”

“We need to go to the first knot, to the
lake.” Said Jack.

“It’s too dangerous. If the water of that
lake is the only way to defeat the Horde at the manor, then it will
be heavily guarded. It’s best we get you to safety, hide where they
can’t find you.”

“No.” said Jack. “I’m not hiding. It’s my
home in danger, my planet. If Theorden thinks I can help him with
his invasion, then I have to do everything I can to prevent
it.”

“We could be running right into a trap,”
said David.

“Then we don’t run, we sneak. If there’s an
obvious way to get there, we go the unobvious way. I’m sure if we
continue on to Diamond Lake, we’ll find more clues as to who stole
the Blue Emerald.” Jack said, looking at his cousins and waiting
for them to respond.

“I’m coming with you,” said Rosie. “We need
to stick together.”

“Fine! Let’s do this,” said David after a
pause. “Where do we go first?”

“We need to return to the Grotto. Jack’s
right, stealth is needed to get to the first knot. There is a
portal that leads there that very few people know about. It puts
you right near the lake. There’s just one catch though. In order to
get to that entrance, you need to travel to Coran.”

“That doesn’t sound too difficult. Where is
the portal to Coran?” asked David.

Anthrow looked at Jack and said, “We passed
it on the way here.”

Jack swallowed hard, as he guessed what
Anthrow was going to say next. “Coran is where Theorden lives, the
portal we walked past that reeked of evil. We have to go through
that, to his world.”

“Yes,” Anthrow said. “The only other portal
there is months of walking away, and likely to be guarded. Also no
one is willing to travel by sea on Bowlandose. There are a lot of
very large beasts in the water on this planet. They’d eat a ship
whole.”

“So let me get this straight,” said David.
“In order to stop Theorden we need to travel to his home planet,
which is probably overrun by the Horde. If we manage to avoid it,
we travel to a portal there that will take us back to another part
of the Grotto, where there is a secret portal to Diamond Lake, and
quite probably a trap. If we manage to avoid the trap and throw the
stone in the lake, we would have destroyed the Horde in the rear
garden. We then have to travel back to the Grotto, to the one
portal that goes back to Earth…One that we know has a trap waiting
for us. And if we somehow manage to get past that and through the
portal to home, we still are no closer to knowing who stole the
blue emerald?”

“Sounds about right,” said Rosie smiling
grimly.

“Does anyone else think that sounds
completely impossible?”

“If we want to stop Theorden, we have to
try,” replied Jack.

David sighed and then shrugged. “Well then.
What are we waiting for?”

Chapter Twelve

Magic

“Now, Rosie!” said Jack.

Flames shot out of a fiery red ring Rosie
was wearing, a massive fireball hitting a rocky wall in the
Grotto.

“I did it!” she exclaimed.

“My Turn!” said David, as he balled his hand
into a fist and aimed it at the same wall. Anthrow had given him a
blue ring, and after a moment a bolt fired out, sending shards of
ice flying through the air to shatter against the rock.

“Don’t do it again,” Anthrow said to Rosie
as he saw her take aim. “Each ring only has three charges, so you
only have two left. Best to save it.”

Once they had left the alley, the four of
them had snuck back to the portal and returned to the Grotto.

Anthrow had then decided it was time to
introduce magic to the three of them, in the hopes they could
defend themselves if they encountered anymore of Theorden’s
thugs.

“It’s better to spend an hour preparing than
rushing in and getting yourselves killed,” he’d said.

Jack looked at the box of rings Vonsant had
given Anthrow before they had left the shop. There was around
twenty, each with different magical powers. Anthrow had explained
that while there was a lot of magic in the Universe, not very many
people were in fact capable of making it. The different worlds
relied on people like Vonsant to imbue and create magical items for
them, whether it be a tool a carpenter used to cut wood, or a
weapon to defend your family home.