The Heavenly Host

“Darwaltho omnibois pertuum, fetenagathan larthow mewem. Dest naturume sanct vastros deum. Narth faltosth agck demolscrius bitem. Saveros tootos freeyum nathos, eternolom cretenexos verum. Argwolo beat sact fetenagathan. Barthfarlon omnibus bitem,” Tom intoned.

Nothing much happened. “That didn’t help.” He walked up to marble vault wheel and examined it. Clearly it could turn, and probably released giant bars inside the door. At the center of the wheel was a small insert, almost like a screw hole; probably the axis the wheel turned on. Tom passed his palm over it and pushed the arrowhead into the hole. He was still attached to arrowhead and so it took no time for him to start sending himself into the stone axis.

At first, he didn’t detect magic per se, but then suddenly he hit against what he guessed was the door itself. It flashed against him painfully. The door was definitely alive with magic; much more magic than the runes below. This was heavy magic; it vibrated with power. He closed his eyes to try and feel the power. Yes, the vibrations resonated with the magic in the arrowhead. This was Tiernon’s magic. He needed more of it. Tom reached back to what he imagined in his mind was the wad of divine mana within himself; that which he had taken from the umbilical cord but still had not digested, so to speak. He pulled on it and let it suffuse the threads of his own being, much like infiltrating the priests. This he sent up against the magic wall.

In his mind, his mana stream flattened against the wall of magic, the two sets of mana not quite in sync. Very close to being in sync; just not quite. He tried spreading his flattened-out stream, imagining it as a coat of paint upon the mana wall. He imagined his coat of paint absorbing the vibrations of the mana wall, synchronizing with them, relaxing and oozing into the pores of the mana wall until they were one. Relax, let go, sink into the wall of mana. We are one.

There — he was the mana wall, at least the part near the handle. He carefully let more mana, both his own natural and the undigested god mana flow into the wall, a trickle of animus riding along to guide it. Flowing, engulfing, becoming one with the mana wall, one with the door and the runes. At the edge of the door the mana vibration changed. The magic in the doorframe was different; it was locked firmly to the door’s magic, but different.

Tom tried to do the same thing again. It was exceedingly tricky, much harder this time, as he had to maintain the same frequency, or whatever it was, as the door, but also try to match the doorframe to infiltrate it and keep it all as one piece. It was hard, very hard. He could see what he needed to do, but trying to balance three different frequencies was extremely taxing.

He had no idea how long it took, but suddenly he was in. He could feel himself and his mana inside the doorway. He let more mana in. It was slow going because he had to shift and match frequencies, but soon he had engulfed the doorframe’s magic.

Now, he could see clearly what he needed to move the giant rods within the door; he needed the frame to let go. There — those were the rods he needed to release in the frame, pinning the doors in place. He suddenly realized that the archway was connected to the room. He could feel the room. The magic wall of the doorway was part of the overall magic wall shielding the twenty-by-twenty-foot room on the other side of the door. He could not tell what was in the room, but he could tell its size.

Tom willed the room to relax, to rest. He realized he needed to synchronize the magic of the room/doorway with the door. If he did that, he could make the pins slide and the door open. Relax, calm, and synchronize, Tom thought, willing the three parts of his mana self. Over and over, like calming a puppy.

There! They were all synched. He willed the doorway pins to move. Slurk, slurk, slurk... a fury of noises came from the wall as he did so. Tom began turning the wheel, now suddenly aware of the room and of his friends standing up after having been seated on the floor during this long ordeal.

The pins rolled back into the door. Now he needed to pull the door open. It was heavy and he had to push against the floor hard with his legs, but it swung open very smoothly. A cloud of very stale air escaped the vault as new, fresher air entered.

“Wow, how long was that?” Tom asked, slumping against the door. He had to slowly withdraw himself from the room and door. He palmed the middle of the wheel and willed the arrowhead back into his hand.

“About an Astlanian hour, I think,” Rupert said. “We watched you with demon sight. It was pretty wicked.”