157 An irregularity Both the fissure and the portal overlapped, causing the anomaly the skeletons were seeing. When the portal began to expand, it forced the fissure to grow as well.
As the fissure expanded, something seemed to shift within it as the void swallowed the portal and it distorted uncontrollably. What the skeletons didn’t know was that after the fissure swallowed the portal, the same happened on the other side.
************
A few minutes earlier, in Elder Louis’ laboratory.
It took less than a minute for a portal to open inside his laboratory and Elder Louis walked through it along with the zombie dragon. The order’s mages were as careful as possible with the requests and orders of the elders, as they could easily make or break the life of any mage in the order.
The portal took him to one of the order’s branches, where the portal network was located. The order’s portal network could open portals in almost any part of the world as long as there was a crystal with previously registered coordinates, but all portals would still connect to that place.
It was a silver tower over 200 meters high, with only 5 floors. The tower was entirely made of concrete mixed with divine mithril, a superior version of mithril. There were no windows or anything to give an outside view, its surface was smooth and immaculate despite being built a few decades ago.
The tower stood on the Adula continent, in the city of Blumue, in the Makima empire. Despite the discoverer and creator of the portals being a native of another continent, the elders of the order had decided that it was too dangerous to leave such an important asset in a continent where they did not have full control, so they chose to build here.
The first floor was the biggest and where most of the portals were. Great arches made of mithril inlaid with teleportation crystals were placed at regular intervals on both sides of the wall.
.....
Elder Louis had just walked past them and looked around with some contempt, but quickly recovered. Several tower employees and wizards were walking around, going in and out of portals to who knows where. The purple light from the portals did not allow the elder to look beyond the portals.
The second floor was the feeding room, since the order wasn’t stupid to put the controls and the place where the runes were fed in the same place. The fourth and third floors of the tower were reserved for guards and sentries, as the tower was one of the order’s greatest assets and required maximum protection.
The fifth floor was reserved for important figures and where Elder Louis would have appeared, if not for the zombie dragon that came through the portal right behind him. A red carpet and luxury furniture don’t go well with a 50-foot zombie dragon.
“Dark elder, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Would you like to drink some tea or-” An employee approached and with a professional smile tried to cajole him, but Elder Louis’ response was cold.
“The crystals I asked you to track. Have you located and opened the portal yet?”
“We are working on it, elder. As you may already know, it takes a few minutes for a crystal to be tracked, so soon we will have your portal ready.” The employee spoke in his best professional tone, but his eyes were traveling between the elder and the terrifying zombie dragon behind him.
In fact, it would take almost half an hour to find the coordinates of a crystal, but since the request came from an elder, they tried their best to speed up the process. But it wasn’t enough for Elder Louis.
“Hurry up. I want this portal ready in less than a minute.” Louis spoke arrogantly and stopped looking at the clerk, pulling out a pocket watch and checking the time, as if to prove his point.
“E-elder, please understand that this is impossible. We are already doing everything possible to speed up the process, but it will still take a minimum of 10 minutes until the portal is operational.” The official tried to explain as calmly as possible, but the elder would not listen to what he considered to be just excuses.
“That’s your problem. And you’re going to have another problem if my portal isn’t open in 55 seconds.” The elder spoke still looking at his pocket watch.
The official realized that there was no point in arguing or pleading and ran as fast as possible. He was desperate because he knew the elder’s threat was serious.
The elder was known for many things and his ruthlessness was the greatest of them. He was arrogant and looked down on everyone as inferior, getting rid of anyone who bothered him or got in his way.
There were not a few who had failed him, or just failed to meet his unreasonable demands and had their careers completely destroyed. Elder Louis had no qualms about using his influence or dirty tricks to destroy the lives of those beneath him.
The panicked employee managed to advance the tracking of the crystals and in less than two minutes the portal was ready to be opened.
“You made me wait for over a minute. I hope you’re prepared for the consequences.” Elder Louis spoke coldly when the employsee returned to report.
“But-” The employee tried to plead, but Elder Louis ignored him and walked past him. Other employees who worked with him felt sorry for, but they didn’t dare to confront the elder, certain that they would join him if they were to try to challenge Elder Louis.
“As soon as the purple portal appears, enter it. Remember, kill all the black skeletons and spirits you see. Don’t think about anything else, don’t do anything else.” He repeated as he ordered the zombie dragon to position itself in front of the arc starting to light up with power.
The dragon stopped in front of the portal and Elder Louis joined the team controlling the portals in the control room, much to the team’s chagrin.
It was a small glass room in the corner of the floor, a little over ten square meters.
“Loading the portal.” One of the team members spoke as he lifted one of the levers on the control panel in front of him. The controls were done in a non-magical way, as many employees who worked for the order were not magicians.
Many of the administrative roles were taken care of by civilians in the order, as mages weren’t big fans of dealing with paperwork.
The runes around the room lit up with energy, as did the runes on the portal.
The teleportation crystals embedded in the metal arc were quickly filled and a paper-thin purple light appeared in the center of the arc, but the employees quickly noticed something amiss.
“Hey, what’s that?” One of the employees who had sneaked up to get a good look at the zombie dragon asked, seeing the small black light in the center of the portal. “Control team, there’s something wrong with the portal!”
The fissure that overlapped the portal had appeared on both sides, causing the same distortion effect that had occurred in front of the fortress walls. The difference is that here, none of the staff or mages had any idea what was going on and it made everyone panic.
An alarm began to sound as the tower’s defensive enchantments were activated. A multi-layered barrier formed over the concrete surface, each of the barriers having a different element, but all possessing enough power to resist spells cast by an ancient dragon.
“Someone tell me what’s going on!” Elder Louis demanded in an authoritative voice, looking cautiously at the portal. He silently took the staff out of its storage ring and began casting his best spells, just in case.
His voice seemed to have brought some order to the panicked officials and one of them managed to stutter out a reply.
“Something seems to be interfering with the portal, although that should be impossible.”
“Is it possible to stop it?” The elder asked, immediately realizing the stupidity of his question. It was impossible to stop a teleportation crystal after being charged. The mithril bows were only responsible for changing the nature of the teleportation to a portal, but the crystals were already fully charged.
‘Damn it. This is sure to get me into trouble later on. But the priority now must be to minimize the damage before-‘
“Wait, stop!” The desperate screams of the employees brought him out of his reverie.
The zombie dragon rushed forward just as the portal began to form, following the orders the elder gave him. The dragon didn’t know what a portal was, but the purple light was the signal to move forward.
Elder Louis ran out of the control room in an instant to stop him, but it was too late. “Fuck!”
Only half of the dragon’s body had entered, but the sphere’s dark middle had sucked in the rest of its body. The sphere began to distort as the darkness swallowed the rest of it, sucking in the air and everything around it.
Having something physical inside broke what little balance the purple energy and purplish black had. The portal that was supposed to be two-dimensional had become three-dimensional, creating a void in its midst and forcing the zombie dragon inside to exist in two spaces at once.
“Argh! Help!” The surrounding servants and mages were also sucked into the distortion, further increasing the size of the distortion until it engulfed the mithril bow encrusted with teleportation crystals.
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