They camped that night several miles from the next rift. Michael felt that the last two were very close to one another. Definitely within one mile, but perhaps even closer than that. He was starting to gain some more precision in his ability to tell where the rifts were and what kind of dangers they contained. There were nuances to the dread they seemed to fill him with and those nuances seemed consistent enough that he could track them.
Michael woke before the rest of the camp and began his morning with his prayers and training. He could feel the warmth of the gods' attention on him even though they were maintaining the quiet he’d grown used to over the last few months. He wasn’t sure he really missed the gradually building whispers, but their ubiquity had grown familiar and he felt a bit of emptiness without them.
Hu approached Michael as he was working his way through his mace swings for the morning.
“Aren’t you worried you’ll be without strength when we actually approach the rifts?”
“No. I have more recovery titles and deeds than anything else. Lately I’ve been finding it hard to even break a sweat after an hour of intense training.”
“Well that I’m jealous of. I get some recovery from my title as a knight, but not enough to keep me from tiring. Yesterday's efforts alone have me craving an actual bed.”
“If we’re lucky you’ll be on a pallet by the day’s end.”
Hu chuckled. “I’d take a pallet at this point. Some nice straw with a cloth over it. Sounds like a dream.”
Ollie was yawning as he approached them, his canteen floating to his mouth for a sip of water as he wiped some dirt off the base of his staff.
“Talking about beds?”
They nodded.
“I had the best bed. Emu feather mattress, silk sheets I stole from an ex, pillows fluffy as a koala’s ass.”
“Emu feather? That’s a thing?”
Ollie shrugged. “I liked to keep things local.”
“What’s an emu? And a koala?” asked Hu.
“Big fuckoff bird that runs around kicking people and a bear that lives in trees.”
“They sound like something we’d see come out of a rift,” said Hu.
“We should all count ourselves lucky that there have been no rifts to Australia,” said Michael.
“I’m pretty sure that people here like bombshell blondes and beautiful beaches just as much as everywhere else. Not like they’d only have to deal with the wildlife.”
“Fair enough, but I feel like given this world's luck they’re more likely to get a flood of box jellyfish and bird-eating spiders than blondes and beaches.”
Ollie frowned and looked at Hu. “You all do seem to have shit luck. I’d still risk it for the beaches though myself.”
It wasn’t much longer before the rest of the camp was awake and they were able to get moving toward the remaining two rifts again. The militia members were all in high spirits, as was Hu. Laird didn’t seem the high spirited type, but his frown was no deeper than the previous day, so that likely amounted to a positive mood for him.
Hu went to scout the rifts while the rest of them waited and readied themselves for a fight. One of the rifts had a familiar feel to it, and given what type of portal would feel familiar to him at this point he guessed that it was one of those that held the horned men within it. The other was unique, as they all had been, but felt sizeable.
Hu returned quickly with a wide smile on his face.
“It looks like the rifts may be doing the work against one another for us,” he said.
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“Explain,” said Laird.
“The horned men from one are fighting what look to be giants from the other. There are dozens of dead on either side and they seem to have been struggling for some time.”
“Could we ignore them?” asked one of the villagers.
“We shouldn’t. If one gains the edge or they come to some kind of understanding it could be very unfortunate,” said Laird. “We also shouldn’t just rush in and try to take advantage. They could unite against us. If we take one out then the other would be freed up to fight us, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have anything left here in Hume that would be trapped here and enraged.” He looked at Michael. “Could you close two at a time?”
Michael thought about it for a moment, hearing the quiet words of the gods. “Yes.”
He nodded. “We should go, just the four of us. If we can slip close enough for Michael to seal the rifts at the same time then we may be able to avoid any losses or even wounds on our end.”
“We can help,” said one of the militia men.
“Of course you could, but we want to try to draw as little attention as possible so fewer is better. We’ll hold you in reserve for if we need help and to help clear the last of them.” He looked at Ollie. “Can you send up a signal they’d recognize?”
“How about a big red explosion of light?”
“That’ll do.”
With their plan set, the four of them muffled themselves and began to creep toward the portals. As they got closer the sounds of fighting became more clear with the cries of wounded beasts mixing in with odd yells and screams that oscillated between vaguely orgasmic and terrified.
Once the portals came into view Michael found himself pausing. Out of one stepped a dozen horned men and a few of the lizardfolk that he’d grown used to seeing. That didn’t cause him any hesitation. The other side did. Attacking the horned men were what looked to be walking caricatures of men and women. Their bodies were grossly misshapen seemingly at random. Some had small shrunken arms and torsoes on massive pairs of legs; others had heads that seemed to be balancing impossibly on small narrow necks. Their faces were all contorted into the most extreme expressions of emotions. Some seemed to be laughing, others crying, and a few had expressions of horror and pleasure. They charged at the horned men mindlessly, smashing at them wildly with their misshapen limbs and biting at them with oversized mouths.
The horned men seemed to have established a defensive position, driving at the monstrous giants with spears and the lizardfolk were channeling combined offensive spells to try and take them out.
Ollie tapped Michael’s shoulder to draw him back to the task at hand and they silently crept closer to the two portals. Luckily there were some rocky outcroppings that allowed them to have some cover as they made their way closer. Eventually they reached the last one before a wide clearing, though they still weren’t quite close enough for Michael to grasp the rifts in his will.
“I’ll crawl forward a ways and if they see me, you can help cover me while I close them.”
Laird and Hu exchanged glances with one another and then nodded at him.
“Don’t fuck up,” said Ollie.
“I’ll do my best.”
Michael got onto the ground and slowly began crawling forward along the ground, watching as the monsters from the rifts slaughtered one another. After he made it nearly twenty feet he felt that he could grasp one of the rifts. Another ten and he could grasp both.
He took his time as he reached his will out to them. In the past it had been about closing them as quickly as possible, but now he could take all the time he needed as long as he wasn’t seen. He gently held the edges of each of the rifts within his will and began to gradually close them. The horned men’s seemed to be more stable, and resisted his pressure more. The giants grew and shrank wildly, its character seeming to match the twisted nature of what emerged from it.
When the rifts began to push back at him, he clenched his will tighter and more forcefully, and they began to slowly seal.
The horned men all turned directly towards him as they sensed what was happening, but that proved a fatal mistake as the giants, singularly focused on whatever the nearest targets were, managed to break through their line. Michael finished clenching his will and both of the rifts closed at the same time.
The giants' faces all changed from random contortions to ones of anger and they began to attack the horned men even more forcefully. One of them noticed Michael and began heading toward him.
He quickly got to his feet and raised his sword. He caught a malformed arm with his shield, and stabbed his sword through the eye socket of the creature, hitting what he presumed was its brain as it tried to gnash at him with its teeth. He shifted his weapon from Rend to Ruin, trading a sword blade for a flanged macehead and feeling it expand in the creature's brain quickly enough to cause a small pop making its body go limp.
He readied himself for the next of them, and Ollie added a fireball to the mix at the same time that he signaled the militia. Laird and Hu arrived at Michael’s side, readying themselves for two more giants that were heading their way, ignoring the flames that licked against them.
The knights went low against the attackers, carving into the giants legs' and causing them to fall forward where Michael was able to crush their oversized heads with his mace. By the time the horned men had managed to realize what had happened and had cleared the giants that were fighting them, the militia arrived and they cleared the rest of them.
Michael had been in Old Hume for two days now. Five rifts were cleared, a village's health was restored, and enemies of the gods were slain. It was a good start.
