(no subject)

[singindemonhq]

My journey through the Portal that used to lead to LA was delayed. Once these Gates start misrouting they can refocus again and again, changing the interfaces each time. They don’t always, or there’d be no hope of finding a lost party, but if they misroute while an operative’s at the other end then getting back to the starting point isn’t easy.

My people thought that Zranth had destabilised the Portals but sometimes the effects make me wonder if they’ve wakened some version of the nameless. Anyway, I was issued with an Experimental Portal Stabilizer and it wasn’t as easy to set up as it was supposed to be.

It’s at times like this that I really miss having Minions. Things like this are much easier when I can just tell Marty to do it - and even the Diran’s quite good at the practical stuff – I mean apart from being a trained assassin and so on. If this portal still leads to the dimension where it dumped them I’ll probably find them running the place.


When I smoked over to check out the terrain I knew I was nowhere near LA. I doubted that I was in the Sunnydale dimension at all. The air in Sunnydale smells scorched by car exhausts, but it’s the breath of spring compared with LA. The air on the other side of this Portal hadn’t a trace of smog and burned hydrocarbons – I don’t mean that it smelled clean, it didn’t, but it didn’t smell like the dimension I’d left.

The Portal base was near enough to ground level for me to drive the van through and back. That was going to be necessary. Normally a Gig Team uses a specially woven light mesh metal wrap to keep the party together but Marty must have taken that with him. A car or a van was the next best option, even if the Portal Stabilizer stopped the party from getting scattered. I was going to need transport if the Minions were injured or unconscious. (I’d thought about trying to take an ambulance but the humans would have noticed.)

I was getting a good view of the new dimension. The Portal opened onto a small level area where vegetation almost hid a few protruding rocks. I was at the base of a steep hill – it could even be the foothills of a mountain. There wasn’t a road in sight. The view the other way showed a thick, looming forest to my left, and I thought I could feel the faintest whisper of something not human.

There was a river or stream at a distance on my right, and that was bordered by a swamp that was the source of the stench. It stank like Corinth harbor during the plague years. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know why. There were the mind fires of … predators of some kind, but at a distance.

I couldn’t see a trace of humanity or civilization. If there were intelligent creatures here the van would draw as much attention as a dragon – or more, it depended on where I was. I was going to have to leave it by the portal anyway. I couldn’t see any roads.

It was getting dark when I smoked back and got the van. I drove it slowly at the portal. There was that moment of wrenching disorientation when everything realigned – and then everything seemed to happen at once!

The van dropped a couple of inches as I took it through – and the ground sank under the wheels! It started to skid and, as I maneuvered to control it I sideswiped one of the wizened trees. The dead wood broke at the base and the thing fell. The sound could have carried for miles in the thin air.


I now probably had the attention of everything in the area so I waited to see if something was going to come and investigate…