The Gate
I started working on the “Demon Dog” concept today. Decided to share.
Energy glowed and crackled at the edge of the gate. It had been months since anything interesting had happened, and the sudden change of glow from pale yellow to electric blue had the guards standing to attention. It had been months. The extra boost to double the shield’s power over the gate was jacked to max and, although the color simmered back to yellow, the crackling energy pushed outside the gate to burn the ground around it.
Something shot through the gate with meteoric speed. A monster with the wingspan of an old Cessna 140, covered in dark red scales like the dragons of mythology. But it wasn’t a dragon. Nothing from that world was anything like the creatures of myth. The scales peeled back from the creature’s face like chain mail. At any time it could slink off the armor if it wanted to be faster, but as the guards suspected, it wasn’t going to lower its defenses so easily.
It would’ve kept going through the air too if the backup nets of magic tech weren’t doing their job. The entire park several yards around the gate was meant to keep citizens out and monsters in. The creature pulled at the first net of woven magic and wires until the magic shocked and drained it, and the struggling beast shrieked in a human cry of pain. It fell into a heap on the ground, writhing while the guards stood still and waited for the movement to stop.
It wasn’t their first day on the job, but it was the first time they’d ever witnessed death.
Sarumat* navigated the river of swirling grey energy. It was like sludge this late into night. Sludge that encroached and smothered any positivity Sarumat had left. The others had laughed at them for searching so desperately for a source of positive energy. A grain of it would’ve fed them for days. They would’ve preferred a grain of positive to a whole slough of negative energy. It formed rivers of sludgy gray that went for miles across bleak prairies, and over gray mountains. There was a tunnel where they were heading. It was bright with reflected moonlight no matter how deep into the mountain it went. The surface of the tunnel as they passed through it was close and tight. They had to sit in their already small boat, and duck their head to pass through.
The walls were smooth and worn down by the hands and claws of their class. The workers driven to the creation of tunnels for energy to flow. Useless tunnels that remained unnecessary in a world where the energy could flow wherever it wanted. But the Upper Class* wanted it to go through the mountains like the rivers on earth. They wanted to mimic gravity, and water, and land.
Even with the glow of the energy, Sarumat felt confined. They had to duck lower and lower until they were practically lying down in their boat, waiting for it to pass through. Though they knew it wouldn’t pass completely through. After all, it was their turn to carve into the mountain and finish the pass.
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