He paused to look over his shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“No,” I hissed. “There’s something distorting the light up ahead. I think it’s magic.”
“I know.” He turned toward me. “It’s a portal and it’s okay.”
A portal? Like the ones in the storybooks about galeons and phaanons? No. Those were just make believe.
Weren’t they?
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
He sighed and raised his arms. “There is a land connected to ours, but we can only access it through certain entry points.”
“You’re taking me to Phaantasia?” I balked, taking a step back. “It’s real?”
“Of course, it’s real. Where do you think phaanons came from?”
Long before Earth fell under the shadow of magic, two ancient races tore through the veil between worlds. The phaanons and the galeons arrived immortal, otherworldly, and terrifying in their power.
No one knew where they’d come from. Not truly. Some whispered they were born of starlight and twisted by time, others claimed they clawed their way here from parallel realms or bled through cracks in the fabric of reality. But what was known was that they came from somewhere else. This unknown magical realm was called Phaantasia
People also whispered that long before the first rift ever opened in our world, the war between the galeons and phaanons had already waged for generations in the magical realm. The cause of this conflict varied depending on who told the tale. The truth was no one really knew.
And now Ace talked about Phaantasia as if I should’ve known all along it existed outside the cautionary bedtime stories.
“Phaantasia?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“Phaantasia,” I let my mouth form the word again. “And you have the audacity to try to explain Phaantasia to me as if I’m a moron?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know how much you knew. Clearly, you doubted its existence.”
“Of course I doubted. But I know more stories about it than an average five-year-old,” I said. “And you’re just dropping its existence into conversation like we’re going to Vitor instead of a phaaning mystical place from fairytales.” How did he know about portals? What exactly had he been up to all these years?
“Do you want your familiar healed, or not?”
I hesitated and glanced at Nala. Ace had saved us. He’d marched into a storm and rescued us from a pack of hungry wolves at great risk to himself. He could’ve let us die. He could also be saving us now to use us later, but I’d cross that bridge when I got there. I looked around the forest, taking in the lush green foliage of the bushes, healthy needles of the evergreens and vibrant colours of the flowers. Would Phaantasia look the same as our realm? Would it smell like dried pine needles, sun-ripened blackberries and wild roses? Would I be able to come home?
“How will we get back?” I asked
“Same way we get in,” he replied. “From what I can figure out, there are a smattering of portals throughout the forest, and they all open to different pockets of Phaantasia. I don’t know if the pockets connect or if their world was broken when the war spilled into our realm. Phaantasia seems to mirror ours, though, so concrete landmarks like mountain ranges remain the same as will the location of this portal. It’s like a simple doorway.”
Simple. Right. Nothing about any of this was simple.
Something in the bushes caught my eye. I turned toward the sparkling light. Metal jutted out from under the bush, just enough to catch a beam of sunlight breaking through the canopy overhead. An arrow. I stepped to the side of the path and reached down to pull the arrow from the bushes by the shaft. The arrowhead glistened in the sunlight.
“Think it’s one of theirs?” Ace asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“Same fletching.” I sniffed the arrowhead. “Smells like the same coating.”
I held it out to Nala. My familiar whined and hid her snout behind her forelimb. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Ace straightened and turned back to the portal. “We should go.”
I nodded and shoved the arrow in my quiver. “They’re everywhere.”
“All the more reason to get moving.” Ace stepped toward the shimmering light. Despite all the warning bells blaring in my mind, I followed, stepping through the waver in the air and into Phaantasia.
