Doortastic

Pine trees thickened around the winding Rossgoyle road slicing through Darkbrook Valley, morning fog retreating into the hollows. The Gothic revival mansion dove out from the ocean of trees, a fortress-ship of gray stone, dark wood, parapets, stained glass, and gabled rooflines silhouetted against the cloudy sky that promised rain.

I parked the jeep in front of the mansion.

Shady emerged from the car without even bothering to open the door, simply flowing through the metal like a flickering, inverted flame.

“Showoff,” I commented as she resolidified in front of me.

“Practice makes perfect,” she stated with an imperious look. “Stretching out all me skill-muscles.”

Our hands reached simultaneously towards each other and we walked from the gravel lot, circling the mansion past Nexxali-demolished rose bushes to the back garden.

The oak tree at the cliffside had likely been ancient when my grandfather was young. Massive trunk, roots gripping the cliff edge above Darkfall Valley, branches spreading wide enough to shade a small house or two. Moss covered most of the tree, lichen painting the bark in pale green and gray.

The carving was still there, waiting for us, roughly the height of a nine-year-old’s reach. The bark had grown around the edges over the years, half-swallowing the heart uniting the letters of our names.

Shady reached out and traced the carving with one long, dark claw. The claw followed the curve of the S, dipped into the sideways eight and circled the A.

“The heart’s lopsided,” she observed.

“And who’s fault is that?” I asked.

“Yours.”

“What? You are the one with blade claws. Pretty sure that you carved it.”

“Ya, but you were distracting me by being a hecking funny chuppy.”

She swatted me with her tail. I caught it with my left hand and held on, and then pressed my right palm against the bark beside hers. Our hands overlapped the carving, covering it entirely.

“Activate Dagaz!” Shady declared.

Violet and orange sparks ignited at the contact points, dancing along the bark, illuminating the carved lines. The S glowed faintly silver-violet. The A flickered orange. The infinity Dagaz symbol pulsed once, twice, three times, then subsided.

We waited. Nothing else of interest occurred.

“Hmm,” Shady said.

“Yes?”

“It’s got a tiny, faded spark. Alas, there’s no gate here, nor a path forward.” She pressed harder, palm flat, spreading her long, dark fingers across the bark. Sparks ran up the grooves of the heart. “The resonance is there. I can def’ feel our imprint. Both of us, baked into the carving. Sadly, this isn’t much… A… Cute bookmark at most.”

“A bookmark?”

“We carved symbols everywhere as kids, Ashy. This.. feels like a nice ‘Shady and Ashy wuz here’ tag. The actual entrance to Neverland is hella deep in Darkfall, feeding upon its magical heart.”

I nodded and stepped back, studying the tree. The sparks faded where our hands had been, leaving only faintly luminous traces in the bark grain.

“We drew maps,” I said after a bit of contemplation.

“Hrmmm?”

“Directions… Instructions! Remember? You… insisted on me documenting every expedition.”

“True dat. A proper Administrator keeps records for his noble liege,” Shady agreed.

“Right. The maps! We put them IN the books!” I smiled. “Specifically…”

“The Pippi book. And the Peter Pan book!” Shady agreed.

“In the… library!”

We looked at each other. Then at the old mansion looming behind us across many layers of half-dead plants and wild weeds.

Shady grabbed my hand and giddily pulled me through the overgrown garden, past the decrepit fountain featuring a stone female angel missing her nose and left arm, past the uncovered well where Nexy’s gun had a nice swim, up the creaking porch steps and through the back door.

Yes, through it.

She didn’t bother to open the door like a normal person. Instead, Shady simply pulled me through solid wood as if the door wasn’t there at all. For a brief second the world became unnervingly cold and pitch black and then we were on the other side of the door.

“What the shit?” I sputtered, blinking and shivering slightly.

“No time for doors!” she commented. “M’ too freaking excited for this.”

The mansion’s dim interior welcomed us, morning light filtering through stained glass transoms in colored shafts. We passed rooms and halls crowded with shrouded furniture, the old den with its ancient TV, a conservatory full of dead ferns, a billiard room where the felt turned the color of mold decades ago.

“Do you even know where you are going?” I asked as we stopped at another dusty room, the curvy Wendigo looking left and right with a ponderous expression.

“Nope,” Shady admitted. “This darn place has too many rooms and my memory of it is half soup. Quit staring at my tits and direct me to the library, you knob.”

“Hard not to stare considering how they’re constantly at my eye level.” I shook my head with a smile. “Follow me then, miss bossypants.”

We turned left, passed mottled up bedrooms I’d barely glanced into during my week of initial residence, and arrived at a set of heavy double doors at the end of the east wing.

Heavy oak, doorway carved with intertwining, Gothic vines blocked the way forward. 

I grabbed the brass handle and turned it. The door was locked.

Shady grabbed onto me and then the universe turned pitch black and cold once again. We didn’t end up inside the library as expected. Instead, my face met a hardwood door and Shady made a bothered noise. For a few, unnerving moments, it sounded like she was pawing at the door in the dark.

I existed in the icy darkness for another minute, and then the mansion hallway once again greeted me.

“Fregh,” Shady let out, rubbing her face. 

“Run outta door-passing juice?” I asked.

“Nah,” Shady said. “Door, frame and walls are made of celesteel covered in hardwood. Can’t phase through it. Someone didn’t want magic critters infesting this library, I guess. Got a key?”

“No.”

“Great.”

“We can go dig through the keys grandad left in his safebox, see if the library key’s there.”

“Which is where?”

“In… his office.” I said.

“Ugh, more walking,” Shady whined. “No thanks.”

“You have the leg muscles of a horse, maybe ten,” I pointed out, smacking her ample behind. “How are you already too tired to walk?”

“Diving through the Deep burns up mana,” she said. “Which my muscles also use. The air here is hella non-magical and I don’t have any hoard items tied to me, my dude.”

Ah. She needed to lick-claim magic stuff to feel better, right.

The Wendigo extended one black claw. The tip narrowed to a needle point, slid into the keyhole, and she wiggled it inside the lock. There was a click, then another, then a grinding sound.

Then a crackling sound.

“FUCK!” Shady yelped, pulling out her finger out of the keyhole. She jumped on one spot, flailing her right hand left and right.

“What?”

“Ffffffffhhhhgh,” she hissed. “Fookin’ door wannsss a very specific fookin’ magic key. Has an active ward.”

I examined her finger. The claw tip was smoking faintly, a tiny curl of silver vapor rising from the dark blade edge. The pad beneath had gone from velvety black to an angry, sparking blue-gray.

“You okay?”

“Eh, I’ll live,” she grumbled, sticking the offended digit into her mouth. “Wendigos heal hella quick, memba?”

“Sooo…”

“I can try kicking it down.”

“You just told me it’s made of celesteel.”

“I have sooper OP legs!”

“Which are tired.”

Shady made a look of disapproval ಠ_ಠ face at me.

“Hrmmmm.” I rubbed my bearded chin. “Wendigo leggos versus magic alien metal. It would be funny to see who wins.”

The Wendigo swatted me with her tail. 

“We could just get Kawhy to cut through one of the windows with a Corpse Seeker,” I suggested. “Ooooor, go look for a key.”

“Ughhh. Lame and effort. Also cutting a magic ward would potentially fuck up the magic library’s contents. I wanna be inside NOW.” She glared at the door like it owed her money.

“Maaaaaybe,” I contemplated out loud. “You could… claim the lock with your tongue.”

“What.”

“I watched Wattica claim a gun with her tongue last night. Could you… claim the lock with yours?”

“You just want to see me get face-zapped, don’t you?”

“It would be very funny, yes. But, also if you claim magic stuff you’ll start a hoard, and feel less drained, right?”

Shady’s glowing eyes bore a hole in my head. “Hol’ up, Misterrrr,” she stretched the last word with a deep growl. “Did you just tell me that you watched another Wendigo claim a gun with her tongue?”

“Uh-huh.” I agreed, shivering slightly as glowing eyes and teeth advanced towards my face with visible ill-intent. “It was very… educational.”

“How educational?” She growled even deeper, making my bones vibrate.

“Very,” I stated, doubling down because I’d already committed and retreating now would only make it worse. “Wattica had to lick the entire barrel of a peppermint Gatling gun to strip the Festivus belief matrix off it. Took her like twenty minutes.”

Shady’s pupils contracted to glowing pinpoints of car light beams.

“You,” she enunciated sharply, “watched. Another. Wendigo. Tongue. A weapon. For twenty. Minutes.”

“Yes.”

“AND YOU DIDN’T LOOK AWAY?”

“She was claiming enemy ordnance! The fate of Earth was at stake!”

Shady’s tail lashed the wainscoting hard enough to crack the wood. “Was she… pretty?”

“She looked like she was trying to eat a candy cane the size of a baseball bat.”

“Pretty and she had a big tongue too, I bet. Wow, Ashyyy. WOW.”

“I didn’t say she was pretty, if anything she looked quite ridiculous.”

“Liarrrrrrrr. I bet you thought that it was… hot.” One hand came up with a whoosh of displaced air, claws snapping towards my neck as if Shady was about to decapitate me.

About ninety percent of me felt absolute, gut-wrenching dread, legs on the verge of bolting. 

Then, the distant Backmind let go of the Emperor’s body for a moment, focusing, directing the Front, reminding me that there was nothing to be afraid of. 

Shady had always been like this… and I… even when I was the most afraid… I always took charge of her, ever since we were two kids roaming the forests of Darkfall valley.

Yes, she was hella tall and her arms ended in ten kitchen knives that could shred me into ribbons.

Yes, I was a puny, magicless human.

However, I wasn’t alone. 

Behind me hung a tsunami of pure magic power, an Astral wave of fourteen thousand foxes observing my actions, each one a little soul Sage loved too much to dissolve. Far behind that, a liminal tree was rooted in the Sea of Tranquility, grown from the contrails of thousands of freed human souls… bloomed into existence by a Serval’s decades-long anthem of defiance against the Frontenachii Empire and my actions. And behind that… 

A brave, stubborn dragon girl re-learning to bloom life from her tears. Two vampire girls unbound from their hivemind “family”, trying to be human. A magpie Datamancer running on thirty two parallel consciousnesses, preoccupied with keeping my insane plans running on schedule. A gun in a humanoid body out on her first date with my best friend. A whole network of gun units being taught friendship and love by an unending, ever-growing pyramid of humanity coordinated by the aforementioned best friend. A dog girl freed from the clutches of a dungeon warship, wishing to find a pack she could trust, reaching out to our promises of a new home, waiting for me to find her up in lunar orbit.

And in front of me stood the reason all of it existed.

The Princess from Omnithornia. The one cryptid in all the infinite dimensions of the Omniverse who did so much to keep one… unremarkable human boy safe.

My adorkable Pippi Longstocking.

She was scary, sure. A mountain of antlered, claw-tipped, skull-faced nightmare fuel. But was there truly a reason to be afraid of her?

“Shady,” I said.

“WHAT.” 

I reached up and grabbed both of her antlers.

Her pupils blew wide. I pulled her skull-face down to my level and stared directly into two moons of liquid silver.

“Lick the door,” I ordered.

Silence.

”…Xcuse me?” 

“You heard me. Lick. The. Door. Claim the lock. Wattica did it to a dungeon-made weapon in twenty minutes. A mere Commander. Surely the almighty Princess Aquillianne Quantivia Frontenachii can handle a little, old magic lock.”

Shady’s left eye twitched.

“Are you… daring me?”

I arched an eyebrow.

“You’re daring ME. A Highborn princess. To lick. A freaking doorknob.”

“And the lock. Don’t forget the lock.” I moved her head via the antler-guidance until her dark nose rested against the brass knob. “Unless you’re saying Wattica’s tongue game is superior to yours. In which case, I completely understand. She is an experienced field Commander, after all. Much professional. Very extensive dungeon-conquerage experience with conceptual warfare artifacts. You’re basically a college dropout hiding in a dog costume.”

“WHAT did you just call me?” Shady let out a kettle, slash, chainsaw noise. “I will END you.”

“HOW will you end me?” I fired back. “Can I have a detailed list?”

Glowing eyes blinked at me.

“Such diresome spoopy threatses.” I grinned. “Alas, I don’t think that you’ve even got it in you to end a door lock.”

“I do too!” she growled indignantly.

“Go on then,” I laughed, bumping her wet snout against the handle. “Take your wendigon-ee-reee out on the door. Show it who’s boss round these parts.”