Chapter 1
As Lukas rolled out of the portal, he landed on his feet and took a good look around, all his senses primed for danger. The place hit him with its hot and stifled air and sulphurous stench, and a dozen memories, all bad.
Still he felt excited rather than afraid or lost in the past, not in the least because of the weight of the gun tucked in his belt. People often called him good or even innocent, though never naive, but to Lukas that didn't mean much. He was just himself, and now he felt powerful because he had a big gun and friends on their way.
Part of him wished to take those friends, and the gun, and search these luminescent tunnels for a few of those demons and teach them a lesson, get his revenge on them for what they had done to him. But that side of him was not very strong and he could ignore it easily, so he waited for Melissa to come through the portal, keeping an eye on the tunnel on both sides.
And the next moment her beautiful face came through, looking around but focussing on him, and he held out his hands to help her through. It was quite a squeeze, Melissa was built on a very luscious scale and tall as well, and as he helped her stand up the thought of her soft white flesh underneath her simple linen dress gave him a flash of heat.
But this was neither the place nor the time to think of making love, so he suppressed the feeling and kept a good look on the tunnels. His urges had gotten him in trouble often enough, but he hoped he was a bit wiser now.
Melissa's dad seemed to think so. He had not asked to speak with Lukas before they all came here, but he had spoken at length with Paul, and a few moments with his daughter, and both were in some distress afterwards. Lukas' newly awakened Gift had caught their strongest feelings, and both were worried that going to Lukas' world would damage their love for one another.
Jakob must have warned them that the different morals in the world they were visiting would not leave them untouched. Lukas knew this would happen, but he trusted in himself to right any problems springing up between them because they would be expected to share love more freely. He would keep an eye on their feelings, and if something went askew he'd just solve the problem.
The immovable bond between Paul and Melissa was the foundation of his own stability, the one thing that made his ever strengthening calling bearable, he was certainly not going to let that weaken even the slightest bit.
Everything would be all right.
As soon as she was on her feet, Melissa noticed Lukas keeping an eye on the tunnels, so she watched the portal for the next arrivals. Almost immediately, her own luggage came through, and Paul's, then Paul's head appeared, and she helped him out and on his feet as Lukas had helped her. When he was on both feet again, they simultaneously shouldered their backpacks and took a good look around.
They were in a large tunnel, natural or hewn, that was impossible to see in the dim lighting. Come to think of it, it was a miracle there was light at all, it seemed as if the walls gave off a slight luminescence, enabling them to see about ten yards ahead in both directions.
The air was hot and stifling, and smelled very unhealthy. It was a miracle that Lukas didn't suffer from a lung condition, having been kept captive here for months.
Melissa quickly checked on him, and he did not seem distraught by being in the place of his captivity once again, he seemed excited, actually. His voice broke the silence of the tunnel: 'This way leads to a large grotto, the other one leads outside, but you don't want to go there, it's horrible and dead and the stench is worse.
Actually, I suggest we leave this place as quickly as possible. My father told me we can stand in a group and activate the spell once. Will you do the honours, Paul? Your Greek is well-accented, and you have the most power.'
Standing close together and holding hands, Paul now spoke the spell Hermes had taught all three of them, and Melissa immediately felt it take effect, making her dizzy, the floor seemed to drop a few feet, she couldn't see or feel her body anymore, but before she got really scared she felt a hard surface under her feet and the dizziness stopped.
The smell alone told her they were somewhere else entirely, it was still hot, but the air was no longer thick, and though it was slightly musty, it was fine to breathe.
As she looked at her companions in the bit of light a long narrow horizontal slit in the wall provided, she could see Paul was fine, looking around him warily but also excitedly.
But Lukas did not look so good. He was flat on his face as if he'd been struck with something, and reaching out to him she felt he was shaking, tiny tremors running up and down his body. His breathing was heavy and slow, he seemed to be suffering some fit.
Lukas of course had been taken along on these spell-bound journeys since he was a young child, so he knew the dizzy feeling and the lack of sensory input, he knew it would only last a minute. But as soon as he had found his feet back on solid ground, he was struck with a very powerful feeling, like a lightning strike but only slightly painful, and the overwhelming force threw him to the ground.
For a moment he could not move, his body was shuddering with the power moving through it, and his nerves screamed at him from the tips of his toes and the bases of his horns, and everywhere in between.
His body was still paralysed with the shock, and there were tremors rippling through his skin, but he was not in pain and he did not feel bad at all. On the contrary!
The first thing he became aware of, was Melissa holding him and calling to him in a panicked voice. He couldn't understand what she was saying, there was a rushing noise in his ears that drowned out every sound from outside, and he could not move, yet. There was nothing he could do physically until his body had completed its transformation, so he moved his awareness to his own insides.
The main thing he felt was power, more magic power than he had ever seen accumulated in any being, except his father just before he went through the portal. The power was everywhere, it filled his senses completely, it caused the rush in his ears, and the tremors on his skin.
As he started to become used to being so full of power, his attention started to broaden a little, and he found other changes. His legs, already heavily muscled, now seemed stronger than mere flesh, they felt as a coiled metal spring, ready for explosive action.
His mind no longer seemed to have a boundary, very scary at first, to have no limit to his thoughts, but he also found he could concentrate to the exclusion of everything else, and realized he had in fact totally shut off his connection to his friends. It had been totally automatic, and it had been total, for a few moments they had just ceased to exist.
That was when he realized what had just happened, the detachment he experienced proved to him without a doubt that he had just come into his own, had been transformed into a god. Again, Jakob had alluded to this, Melissa's father had known that the feelings he experienced when healing people were not supposed to stick with him. The mental trauma he lived through with his patients again and again, the physical pain he shared as if he was hurt himself, he was supposed to be able to let that go, to be detached from it, as he was now detached from the two people he loved most in this world and theirs.
His Gift had come upon him in a world not his own, and he had used it to help people, but the things he experienced whilst healing became part of his own experiences, part of his character. He couldn't let go of them.
Jakob had known that as soon as he set foot on his own world, his body would transform to house his enormous Gift properly, with the amount of power it needed to be used, and the detachment he needed to stay sane. The fears he had had from the moment his Gift had started to grow out of proportion to his person were no longer based on reality, he could let them go.
But the love he felt for his friends was now also in danger of being lost, the friends who had come with him to save him from his own Gift, who were risking their lives, and unknowingly, their love for each other, all for him. He did not want to lose the intense love he felt for them in this new detachment and in the expansion of his mind, and fortunately with a bit of searching he found that he still had it, exactly as it had been.
He wanted to share his life with them so much, the crafting, the loving, the quiet life, hopefully soon enriched with some students and some children, sadly not his own, but Melissa and Paul's would be fine too, or even orphans.
He wanted to go back to Victorian London very much, and right now he wanted to see and feel his friends again as well as love them.
When he directed his attention outwards again, he saw both Paul and Melissa really close to him, but averting their faces, eyes closed as tightly as they could. He realized he was glowing with power, so he slammed a shield in place. As soon as the light was gone, they looked at him, in worry and wonder.
His body could move again, and how!, so he sat up on his knees and felt their intense relief wash over him, and over that, their intense love, and this made him so incredibly happy that he laughed out loud, gathered both of them in his arms, and said: 'Wow!'
