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That debris had been pretty old, so Walter must have made his attempt to open the portal to the old magic realm a long time ago after discovering the link to his magic was weakening but well before he got Mab’s reliquary from Stanley.
Henry found himself standing in front of the double door set Roy got for him. He was examining it carefully, looking for damage, but he saw none.
“Can you two help me carry this?” he asked as he moved to one side. Roy had carried the other side before, but the twins managed it. They took frequent rests but eventually carried it down the short hall to the crystal veined wall.
Henry looked at the baseplate on the new set of doors and realized it was wider than the stone floor’s channel.
“Shit,” he sighed.
“Shit,” Aadiya repeated.
Henry frowned. “No-”
“Shit,” Mahali copied her sister.
They smiled at him, and he didn’t have the heart to scold them. He’d used the word first, after all.
He moved the door frame right back against the wall and had the ladies brace it there. The channel on the floor was covered by the baseplate. When the twins stepped away from it, the door stayed where it was. Still, he thought it should be braced if there might be kids in here.
“I’m going to go bring back some of those two-by-fours to brace the door. Can you wait here and make sure the door doesn’t tip and fall? I’ll be right back.” He gestured for them to push the door back if it tipped, and they nodded.
He walked back to the vestibule and grabbed some of the boards, some nails, and a hammer. He was no handyman but thought he could probably handle this. As he was walking back, Aadiya and Mahali almost bowled into him as they ran around a corner on their way to him. They were wide-eyed with fright.
“What happened?” he asked as they clung to his arms. Aadiya was pulling him to see what happened, while Mahali wanted nothing to do with that. She hissed at her sister.
He pulled them both into a hug. “Calm down. It’s okay.” He could feel their hearts pounding, so he had to see what happened. He assumed he was going to see the doors lying on the floor as it likely tipped forward.
“I need to see,” he said calmly and kissed their temples. That seemed to do it, and they let him lead them back. As he rounded the hall corner, he looked at the floor, but the doors hadn’t fallen. He slowed as he got closer as something was significantly different.
The door set was no longer sitting on the stone floor but in it. The baseplate was seated in a new, wider channel in the stone floor, with no step up. The outer frame was still resting back against the wall, and when he reached out and tugged on it, there was no movement. The base plate seemed to be firmly in the grip of the floor. He looked closer, but he could see nothing to indicate how it was affixed to the ground. Weird!
He took a grip on one of the handles and turned it. The door opened smoothly to show the veined stone of the wall behind it. Once more, he dragged his right ring finger across the crystals, but there was no longer a tingle. The magic was depleted.
“Huh,” he said and stepped back to consider the situation. His mind went back to Baba’s spell. He thought it was doable, but it probably wasn’t a good idea just before a bunch of kids stumbled upon it.
There didn’t appear to be any danger of the doors falling, so he gathered up the wood and the tools, and they walked back to the vestibule with the ladies. They left the headlights in a basket by the door to the cave. He’d talk to Roy once he got here.
He climbed the stairs to the main floor as he contemplated Baba’s spell for the doorway. It was tainted with evil as the process for powering the crystals in the wall, which maintained the spell, was the consumption of life energy from multiple sacrifices. That wouldn’t do.
First, he needed to confirm that the crystals could store Wild Energy. If they could, he’d determine a way to replace the need for the sacrifices with feeding power from the rift inside him through his hydroelectric powerplant program to even out the fluctuations.
Henry found himself at a standstill on the steps with Aadiya and Maliha looking at him in concern. He chuckled and touched their cheeks. “Sorry, I got caught up in my head thinking about stuff.” They smiled in relief as they pulled him the rest of the way up. He made his way to the front sitting area and made himself comfortable on a sofa. The twins immediately curled up on the cushions on either side of him with their heads on his chest as he rested his arms along the back of the sofa. He heard them purr contentedly and smiled.
As his eyes watched the slowly brightening skies out the big windows, he let his mind return to working on a program to safely automate charging the crystals in the wall.
They were going to power a doorway to Eden.
-=-
As people showed up at the mansion, activity picked up, and noises from the kitchen drew Henry’s attention. He eased himself from the couch, but the twins woke as well.
“It’s okay. Go back to sleep,” he suggested.
They stood as well and tilted their faces up to him, so he gave them kisses. Then they moved to a loveseat before the window that was getting rays of sunlight. They curled up together and wrapped a wing around each other as they snoozed.
Henry walked back to the huge kitchen where an explosion of organized chaos was unfolding. Breakfast preparations were underway. He slipped into that swirling energy to give his friends kisses and hugs. He topped up everyone’s energy and got smiles.
Roy and Mary appeared in the doorway to greet everyone. The latter looked fresh as a daisy, but Roy looked a little tired, so Henry pulled him into a hug and sent him a surge of energy.
“Woah! It’s okay, lad! I’m just a little tired from, well, never mind.” He smiled awkwardly at Henry as he recalled Henry’s surprise appearance in Mary’s bedroom. “I guess I can skip coffee this morning.”
“Can I show you something the twins and I discovered in the cave this morning?” Henry asked.
Roy looked at him with interest. “Something good?”
“It could be,” Henry confirmed.
“Don’t be long! We’re going to need to open the rest of the Magic Doors soon!” Tish called out from her spot next to Meixiu at the stove.
“We’ll be in the cave. Just call out when you need us, and we’ll come back,” Henry replied.
She nodded, and Henry led Roy downstairs. They met Camila in the vestibule as she stepped through the Winter door. Moments later, Marisa stepped out of the next door with Natalia back in her carrier.
Henry stepped forward and gave the ladies a kiss, charging them up and kissed the baby too.
“It’s almost time to open the other doors,” Camila reminded him.
Henry smiled. “Roy and I are just looking at something, but we’ll be back soon,” he said.
He paused then went to the spare door. He touched it and linked it to a broom closet in the main hall. He opened the door and pushed it all the way back. Now they had a way to bypass the climb up the long staircase from the vestibule.
“Thank you, Henry,” Marisa said in relief.
He smiled at her and Camila, then joined Roy.
“Let’s put this stuff into the parking garage at VRL,” Roy suggested, pointing to the garbage, lumber, and tools. Henry linked an unused door to the door they’d used the previous day. Then he and Roy moved the stuff through until the vestibule was clean once more. Roy flagged down one of the artificial men and gave him instructions on putting the tools away and disposing of the rest.
Once back in the mansion, Henry released the link on the door and grabbed some headlamps before heading into the cave with Roy.
As they walked down the slope, Roy looked at him. “How did Walter light this place?”
Henry snorted. “He had torches which he spat fireballs at.”
“Fuckin’ show off,” Roy grumbled.
Henry laughed. “Yeah, he was. I was thinking of suggesting LED lighting to Meixiu.”
They arrived at the short hall.NôvelDrama.Org (C) content.
“This is where you’re storing the doors?”
“Actually, Aadiya found this hallway boarded up. We removed that and found a set of double doors exploded into bits, scattered all over the floor in front of that wall. The bottom frame was set into a channel in the rock floor. We cleaned up all the debris and took it out to the vestibule. We brought the new door back here, but it was wider than the channel in the floor. I went back to get some boards to brace the doors against the wall, but the channel had widened to accept the doors when I got back. There was a trickle of old realm magic stored in the crystal veining of the wall, and now it’s empty.”
Roy frowned in concern. “Dormant magic can be a dangerous thing.”
“Yeah, I checked the rest of the cave, and it’s good. This area was boarded off and now contains no magic,” Henry said.
“What was Walter trying to do here?” Roy asked.
“I checked Baba’s spells and recognized this one as a Dimensional Gate. Walter was trying to open a gate to the realm of the old magic. He got the powering of the crystals wrong, and the doors exploded when the energy was released from the wall in a burst.” Henry looked to the wall of the corridor. The stains on the rock now took on a sinister meaning. He walked back and reached up to touch the holes where the restraining bolts were screwed in. “He was powering the crystals with the lives of sacrifices.”
“Shit! Those are bloodstains?” Roy exclaimed.
Henry nodded and walked back to the wall and touched one of the veins with his index finger. Then he fed a little Wild Magic into it. He waited and then provided a little more. It took, and he nodded. It would work.