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___In the bluish wisplight glow, the sigils seemed to float, first above, then below the surface of the plate.
___Portunista knew what happened next was not exactly such a trick of eyes and light.
___As the follicle touched on the arabesque, a violet pierced the blue, spreading in an instant over the plate.
___Portunista heard the doorframe “click”; she pushed the handle…
___…opening the door.
___Gaekwar tried to speak; failed; and then in quiet awe began again.
___“Seifas…Did you ever actually look inside the door?”
___The dark man slowly shook his head. “No. None of us were ever close enough.”
___“Sooo…this might be normal,” Dagon judged. “Or might not.”
___Beyond the door, were branches—several hundred paces in the air.
___Purple misty twilight pooled within and under leaves. But up above…
___Pooralay regarded this, then looked behind him out the southern window. “C’rrect me if I’m wrong…but ain’t it darker here, than there?”
___“A couple hundred kilops west of here…” Portunista drank the sight, feeling insignificant. Could a magus really jott a tesser that far distant? No, it had to be the sigils.
___Othon sniffed. “And spring,” he added—then he sneezed.
___“So, it’s several thousand kilopaces north-northwest,” Jian concluded, sounding quite impressed. Portunista blinked. Of course: just as they were on the autumn upslope, spring would also be beginning north of the equator. Not too far north, however—this was more like never-ending summer.
___“What did we do wrong?” Gaekwar asked.
___“Nothing.” Portunista shook her head. “This is it. The hair worked fine. This is his security. This is not his laboratory. This is how we go there.”
___“Anywhere out there,” said Dagon ruefully.
___“No, wait—think about it,” she answered. “Qarfax needed sigils on the door to go this far. The next door must be relatively close, even if he tessered to it.”
___“Yeah, but why’d he bother doin’ this at all? He c’d just brick up th’ door, an’…I dunno…‘beam’ h’mself right t’ th’ lab fr’m in his room,” observed the thug. “Y’re sayin’ th’ lab is really b’hind this wall, an’ when we find th’ next door it’ll lead t’ where this’d norm’lly go. Right?”
___“Because he was a researcher?” Portunista shrugged. That sounded less than confident. “Depending on what he was doing in his lab, then ‘beaming’ to it might be dangerous. And this,” she waved, “might be an experiment, too.”
___“A mighty large number of ‘mights’,” Dagon snorted.
___“Okay, fine,” retorted Portunista. “There’s a few more minutes here…I mean out there…before the sun will set completely—so we’ll just fan out and look.”
___“In the treetops,” Gaekwar dryly said.
___“It isn’t all that hard!” the maga exclaimed in exasperation. “Look, the trees are woven close together; branches large, plenty of handholds…See?!”
___She demonstrated this by stepping through the door.
___It shot away, in an arc, to the right, behind her.
___She turned in time to see the portal close and vanish.
___Anger turned to ice.
___“Spewing blinding bile…”
___She was alone. In a forest. Deep in the Middlelands. Thousands of thousands of paces away from her brigade. And night was falling.
___In an Eyeforsaken tree!
___…in the distance, an inhuman shriek erupted.
___Answered by another, distinctly closer…
___“Okay…okay…”
___She spent a minute muttering this at various speeds.
___Nothing was okay. But she needed time to seize her fear.
___First things first.
___Slowly, carefully, Portunista reached to balance on a limb.
___Slowly and even more carefully—her hand was jittering so, it took a quarter- minute—she put the follicle into the smallest pocket on her belt.
___“Think it out,” she told herself.
___She was doomed if this was just a trap. Dead…? Not necessarily; but she might need a year or more to walk to southern lands.
___She was young and strong. She could make it. Probably.
___Assuming it was not a trap, the real door to the laboratory should be somewhere near. Probably on the ground: it would need a framework which would be more difficult to have constructed up in the trees. She could jott some wisps to help her search—although those might attract whatever had screeched in the distance. Maybe morning would be a better idea…She even could spend some days to quarter the area; fruits that might be edible hung from the trees.
___On the other hand, her friends—her officers, she corrected herself—would not go back to her brigade and leave her here. Well, Dagon might…but she was certain the others wouldn’t. Because…
___…well, because they were her friends.
___They certainly didn’t have much other reason to be loyal to her. But she’d bet that right this moment, they were searching for another hair.
___Jian would certainly be; and she realized, she would bet her final drop of blood on that.
___Although he’d probably do the same for Dagon, too.
___That thought only irritated her. But the combination of annoyance and of…hope…helped to further clear her head.
___So. Where could she expect the portal to appear?
___Behind her? No, she couldn’t hope for that. Qarfax would have wanted the next invader attempting the door to be befuddled.
___And yet, the next one through the door, on any normal occasion, would be Qarfax—who would not appreciate disorientation every time that he stepped through. So, the door would probably reappear along some limited positions…such as on a circle!
___Yes, she thought as she peered through the dying daylight; the door must always vanish moving right: branches with older cuts had grown above the fresher cuts.
___And in an arcing path!
___So. She felt much better now.
___Now she had more hope.
___Several minutes had passed already; her friends should open the door at any moment. Somewhere on that radial arc; probably forty-five to sixty degrees on either side of straight across from where she stood—because if it was seen when it returned, it wouldn’t be so fuddling as a trap!
___Qarfax was a clever man; but she was clever, too. She was also willing to bet that she could find the other door, if she was wrong about this door returning—or about her…friends.
___And she bet the follicle would unlock it. And, Qarfax wouldn’t likely run the same trap going out; she could probably open the door, once she was inside, and step out onto the stairwell landing like the door was normal.
___And then she would demand to know why no one had come to help her…! Where were they?
___As if on cue… “Portunista!”
___She couldn’t exactly discern the direction among the baffling branches, but it wasn’t far away.
___And it was Jian.
___Of course. He would insist on going first.
___“I’m over here!” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth, trying to give him a better direction—she found that she was smiling wider than her cupping hands! She forced herself to gain composure—mustn’t let him…mustn’t let them…see how glad she was to—
___—thrashing leaves above her—!!
___her body hurtled forward and down, instinctively diving away from the sound…
___…off her branch…!
___Too shocked to curse, she threw her arms in all directions, scrambling for a handhold in the tumbling world around her, eardrums shuddering under the hideous scream above.
___Her body struck another branch, and seized it…tasted blood—she must have hit her mouth…
___More shrieks near but not so near; the nearest creature held its cry. She looked—she thought it must be ‘up’—toward a shredding thrashing, vision spinning dizzily, a stormy blackness, pounding with a strength and speed like lightning, at the branches in its way.
___She licked her teeth and swallowed blood, and whistled.
___Blue light burst above her—glinting from a razored beak.
___An enormous hunting bird screeched in surprise—in other circumstances its expression might have been amusing!—flinching from the intervening ball of eldritch power. It seemed no monster, other than its size…although its proportions didn’t seem quite right…
___The wisp, however, could only bluff not block the creature; despite its seeming composition of a thousand radiant needles, it held neither heat nor mass. A hungry kitten could, in perfect safety, bat it easily.
___The giant killer bird looked very hungry.
___And it saw her in the light.
___She broke the bind and doused the light; without a pause she whistled up another wisp as far away as she could jott.
___The bird’s head snapped in that direction. Portunista stilled herself, in fear and dizziness. Take the bait! she silently pleaded, adding spice by drifting the wisplight idly off along a tangent.
___Other avians now descended on the light; but her particular persecutor only pondered skeptically.
___How intelligent were these things…? She had to hurry; her body was cramping from clinging to the branch, unable to gesture for a different jott. She angled the wisp behind the bird, bringing it marginally closer. It turned to watch, but not completely around.
___“Go away!” she desperately commanded, under her breath. She had to hurry, because—!
___“Portunista!” Scourge the man…! Couldn’t he tell he shouldn’t be coming closer?!
___No, she realized—because he wasn’t afraid of anything…
___More shouts distantly rose, shouts for her—but her stomach wasn’t curdling for those shouts.
___By now she could determine Jian’s direction.
___The raptor could, as well.
___It swiveled its head, locking with lethal precision.
___Her mouth was twisting along with her stomach…
___—she heaved herself into a scrabbling run along the branches, whistling lights in all directions. But not toward him. She heard the creature be- hind her shriek and dive in chase. But not toward him. She pulled herself through vines and branches, trying to climb and arc around to where the door might be.
___But not toward him.
___“Jian!” she shouted toward the damn-fool man. “Go back! Back to the door! Keep low! Birds will attack you through the trees!” That sounded inane, but she didn’t care. “I’ll meet you there—just run!” He’d better run…she’d flay him alive if he made her wait for him at the door…!
___She could hear the others, shouting for her and shouting for Jian—
___Wait…no, she couldn’t wait!—the rotblooded bird was gaining on her…! but—
___The shouts were coming from the wrong direction!—not from where she thought that Jian had come!
___Snarling, she veered to the right—four talons plowed the wood behind her.
___“Jian! The door has moved—after you went through! Don’t listen for me—listen for them! They’re where the door is now! Run that way!”
___The creature shrieked again behind her, this time with a different pitch. What—?
___Talons crashed in front of her! She darted left and down, wriggling past more branches in the deepening darkness, tasting wood-chips in her teeth. She must have been detected by another bird, which the first had tried to drive away.
___She ripped a fingernail pulling herself across a branch. Two birds…she had to get around them—
___No! This was a cul-de-sac! Too many branches, too many trunks! Had they driven her here? She had to go back—!
___An avian head smashed through the thinner branches above, striking where she would have jumped. The black eye glared—in triumph? hissing—freezing her blood, freezing her muscles, her instincts overriding her will, crushing her down, yet knowing, knowing, a murderous claw was pulling back to strike—
___“MOVE!!!” she screamed to herself—but there was nowhere left to go—
___—the avian eye blinked twice in wide surprise.
___“bw-SCREE?!” Almost a question…And now a grunted exhalation, from it and from—
___“Hi there, ‘ista! Whoa!” Jian leaped cheerfully onto the feathery back, dislodging the balance of the bird, which looked at least as shocked as Portunista, flapping and scratching and slipping its wings and talons every which way, before—
___“Whoa…?” Jian’s eyes were popping, too!—he scrambled gripping on the bird’s rotating body like a barrel, rolling over, rolling off…
___Rolling off the branch!
)
), and her mental perspective is not entirely healthy to begin with–and then gets worse! Giant killer birds aren’t as comical as I was expecting them to be, especially in such a high-stress and low-light environment (although I kept one comic beat when Jian jumps on that one to distract it); there is no way on God’s green earth that Portunista would consider her situation in any way whimsically daring and adventurous. And then, once she thinks Jian has died, she loses her mind in grief and shock–but in a murderously vengeful way. That made sense to me as a way she would bounce back after (and still in) a high-threat scary environment where she has just lost someone who meant more to her than she had consciously realized yet.