Magic Portal (Legends of Llenwald Book 1) Read online

  Magic Portal

  Legends of Llenwald, Book #1

  DM Fike

  Avalon Labs LLC

  Copyright © 2021 DM Fike

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ASIN: B08ML11MBS

  Cover design by: Avalon Labs LLC

  To Justin, who escaped to Llenwald during his own long journey home.

  BOOKS BY DM FIKE

  Magic of Nasci Nature Wizard Series

  Chasing Lightning

  Breathing Water

  Running into Fire

  Shattering Earth

  Soaring in Air

  Legends of Llenwald YA Portal Fantasy Series

  Magic Portal

  Magic Curse

  Magic Prophecy

  CHAPTER 1

  A CRASH OF thunder outside the car woke Avalon Benton from an uneasy sleep.

  She bolted upright, her knee slamming against the steering wheel. Her green eyes reflected back at her in the rearview mirror, freckles dotting her pale cheeks. Frizzy red hair stuck out in all directions. She still had on her gawdy work uniform, a cartoon dragon flashing the peace sign surrounded by neon stripes. Disoriented, she checked the dashboard clock inside Babe, her father’s aging blue hatchback named after the famous ox.

  Two a.m.

  Beyond the windshield, yards of empty parking lot stretched outward, a silent lake. On the other side, orange lamp lights glowed like little matchsticks over the Fantasma amusement park. The Serpent roller coaster lived up to its namesake, a sleeping dragon huddled amid the outlines of smaller shacks. Other rides lay beyond it, twisted and eerie minions in the shadows. In the far distance, the Wasatch Mountains loomed, blockading the park to the east.

  Avalon wrapped her arms around herself for comfort. The university had finally kicked her out of student housing after a dismal spring semester. With nowhere to go and little left in her bank account, she chose to crash in her car after closing shift to save money. It had taken her two hours to fall asleep, and she certainly hadn’t remembered any clouds in the night sky. But this was a Utah summer, she reminded herself. Sometimes desert thunderstorms blew in out of nowhere.

  Except it wasn’t raining. Everything was as motionless as a painting. Not a weed in the fractured blacktop stirred, not a flag on the poles swayed. She shivered despite the warmth of the car. She felt exposed, sitting in the only vehicle left in the employee lot, even though she had parked it in a corner. She fantasized about staying inside Fantasma itself. If she stayed inside the Hall of Mirrors, where she worked during the day, she could at least pretend she was indoors.

  Avalon grimaced at her own overactive imagination. She would be just as alone inside the park. At least in the car, she wasn’t technically breaking the law. She gathered the quilt around herself and pushed the driver’s seat back down, willing herself to sleep.

  Another lightning strike lit the other side of her eyelids. A sudden, sharp gust of wind whistled through a crack in the window. Avalon rolled it all the way down, stuck her head out, and squinted upwards, searching for clouds but finding none.

  Where was this lightning coming from?

  Overactive imagination or not, she refused to sleep here. She jerked the car seat upright. Filling her backpack with her mom’s flip phone, her purse, and her quilt, Avalon scurried out of the car.

  She was going to break into the amusement park.

  She bypassed the staff entrance, lurking around the fenced perimeter where the water attractions nestled near the base of the mountains. She wished she could use her keycard, but then there would be a log of her entering the park. At least the dirty cameras mounted sporadically around were fake, like scarecrows for people. After trekking through the weeds toward the back, she attempted to bend the chain links, but they wouldn’t budge. Undeterred, she kept walking along the border, searching for any weakness to exploit. She contemplated climbing over, but after eyeing the barbed wire on top decided she enjoyed intact skin.

  A scurrying in the brush farther down the fence line made her jump. Avalon froze when something rustled the sagebrush. After a silent beat, glassy eyes formed in the dark. A stray cat hissed at her and bolted. As if by magic, he passed through the fence into the park.

  Avalon shined the weak phone’s light where the cat had entered. A decent-sized chunk of chain had been melted near the ground, the grass around it singed. The cat hadn’t phased through after all. It appeared big enough for a child to squeeze through but could Avalon?

  “Only one way to find out,” she whispered. Slinking on her belly, she inched forward. The ground felt surprisingly hot underneath her fingernails as if baked by the midday sun. Her hair caught on a loose metal wire, taking her time to untangle. Once free, she managed to wriggle through. She frowned at the dirt and scorch marks on her uniform but shrugged. Tomorrow’s problem.

  Avalon crept slowly through the park, avoiding the larger walkways, opting instead to navigate behind booths and between attractions. It took her longer to get to the Hall of Mirrors this way, but she remained safely shrouded the whole way. She stepped in a pile of slushy ice on the mat underneath the final slide of the Hall of Mirrors. Some kid must have dropped a cup before closing, although she hadn’t noticed it when she cleaned hours earlier. She brushed the ice into the weeds. She couldn’t afford to lose her job too.

  Skulking her way to the front, Avalon passed the mirrors around the outside of the maze. She found herself reflected every which way. Tall Avalon. Fat Avalon. Fuzzy Avalon. They all stared at her accusingly as she approached the podium. Avalon ignored them as she dashed up the entrance steps onto the platform.

  Avalon didn’t even see the fairy statue as she stepped onto the main floor of the Hall of Mirrors. Instead, she collided with him, falling directly into his arms.

  Avalon scrambled to her feet, phone illuminating this new object. The detail on the light fairy knight was amazingly lifelike. He crouched with one hand to the floor, the other drawing his sword around his torso. Translucent butterfly wings sprouted from the back of his sky-blue tunic with sea foam green trim. His every feature declared a readiness to fight: belt askance, chestnut hair tousled away from his pointed ears, gray eyes piercing, pleading.

  She glanced over at the other three statues that had always been part of the attraction. The dwarf had long lost the tip of his nose, the wizard had a head too big for his torso, and someone had painted the princess’s teeth black. They looked like the tired toys they were. Compared to them, the fairy stood like a stallion among pigs.

  “Who brought you here?” Avalon asked the fairy. “The new owners?”

  Of course, the statue did not answer.

  “Whatever,” she grumbled. “I don’t care. I’m going to bed.”

  The Hall of Mirrors didn’t have a lot of open space, but it did have a storage closet in the back where the staff stored brooms, buckets, and other cleaning supplies. Avalon shoved all the janitorial equipment to one side and spread her quilt on the floor. It was a tight fit, but it would work. She bunched her jacket into a pillow, then tucked herself into the makeshift bed. She desperately needed sleep.

  Despite her bone tiredness, Avalon couldn’t get comfortable. The blanket was too cold on one side, too warm on the other. Lying on the wooden platform was like stretching on bare stone. Th
e jacket slid underneath her head, flattening almost as soon as she tried to prop it back into place.

  Avalon tossed and turned until she found herself locked in a stare with the fairy statue across the rows of mirrors, bathed in soft moonbeam. He appeared vulnerable somehow, caught off guard in the Hall of Mirrors entrance. His lips were slightly parted, as if about to shout a warning.

  Avalon pitied his panicked expression. She dug herself out of her quilt and tiptoed to him. “I’ll help you out, just this once.” She reached out to touch him.

  A static shock jolted her fingertips.

  “Ow,” she muttered, shaking her right index finger. Gingerly, she poked the statue again. No static this time.

  Avalon wrapped her arms around the statue and twisted. The fairy was heavier than he looked, probably all that plastic in his wings. She finally managed to gain leverage with her heels, spinning him so he scanned more purposefully into the park. He seemed more at ease in this position, even if his expression had not changed.

  “You’re welcome,” she told him.

  Avalon returned to the storage closet. The ground remained uncomfortable. She still couldn’t get her jacket pillow situated quite right. But as she watched the fairy statue guarding the Hall of Mirrors, she relaxed. The weather could do whatever it wanted out there. Her breathing evened out, and she fell into a peaceful sleep.

  CHAPTER 2

  HER PHONE RANG at six thirty the next morning.

  Avalon’s body ached after laying atop the wooden platform all night. She couldn’t locate her phone, jostling the contents of her backpack for it. A neck cramp stole all of her focus for a few agonizing seconds. When she finally found the stupid device, she had missed the call.

  She flipped it open and read the name. James Skog, her doctor. Why was he calling? Did he know about the eviction?

  She dialed him back.

  James answered on the first ring, his voice low and precise. “Hello, Avalon.”

  “Hey, what’s up?” She attempted to sound casual.

  There was a slight awkward silence. Then, “You forgot your appointment yesterday.”

  Ah. She did the mental math and realized it had indeed been roughly four weeks since her last appointment. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can you make it today?”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  She ran her hands through her grimy hair. “I’m not in the best shape, but I can be there in a half hour.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  After he hung up, Avalon rubbed her fingers along the phone’s edge to comfort herself. Her father let Avalon have the phone after her mother could no longer use it. Avalon imagined channeling her mother’s strength for the upcoming visit.

  She would need it.

  Thanks to Miasmis, a rare hereditary disease that ran in her family, Avalon would never be free of monthly check-ups. She wouldn’t require injections anymore, thankfully, but she couldn’t avoid the brain scan that detected if the disease had returned. Avalon clutched her mother’s phone close to her heart as she counted her blessings. Check-ups were no big deal. She no longer dealt with the ugly spontaneous bruising, the splitting headaches, or the blackout seizures.

  She was alive.

  Squeezing the phone one last time, she shoved it in her pocket. She gathered the rest of her stuff into her backpack before heading for the podium.

  Avalon paused as she passed the fairy statue. His eyes squinted directly into the morning sun. She shifted him around so the new day’s light wouldn’t blind him.

  “Thanks for looking after me last night,” she said.

  He scanned the horizon for an unseen enemy.

  What was she expecting? A response? Sighing, Avalon threw her belongings over her shoulder and jogged down the steps onto the concrete below. She navigated the narrow alleys back through the park toward the hole in the fence, staying within the shadows of booths and cardboard signs just in case the cleaning crew arrived early. She thrust her backpack through the fence first, then wriggled her own way through. Sprinting to Babe, she unlocked the car, started the engine, and headed for the freeway.

  Avalon adjusted the sun visor to shield her own face from the glaring dawn. Salt Lake City had grown so big that even now early traffic was picking up. She stuck to the right lane and barely drove the speed limit, causing most other cars to whiz past her. Once she pulled off at the first University of Utah exit, she relaxed, catching a glimpse of the “U” painted on the mountain above.

  She remembered her father driving Babe when they moved into town. His words echoed in her mind. “No matter where you are on campus, don’t be nervous. If you can see the ‘U,’ remember, I can see it too from my office. Remember that ‘U’—” He leaned over to make the sign language symbol of the same letter. “—are not alone.”

  A familiar ache lodged in her chest. Her father would be disappointed in her now, homeless and abandoning college. She stabbed at the radio console until she found an upbeat song, cranking up the volume to drown out her thoughts.

  While not directly on campus, the Saluzyme building stood within walking distance of the medical school, folded neatly into a steep hillside. She drove past the company’s familiar green hexagon logo. The lab ran at odd hours, so it didn’t surprise her to find the adjacent parking lot full. She parallel parked Babe nearby. Getting out of her car, she punched in her code to the building and pushed open the frosted glass double doors.

  Avalon would never get over how much the place had changed since her father’s accident. While the restoration team had largely preserved the building’s facade, they had also upgraded the interior from a cramped 50s style academic office to a more modern cutting-edge medical facility. One thing that hadn’t changed, though, was the sheer amount of potted plants that littered the lobby. It widened into a two-story foyer with a water feature and a tree climbing out from the center, rising toward the skylights. Cushioned chairs huddled amidst the foliage like animals in camouflage. Construction tape still blocked off the first-floor labs, but Avalon would thankfully not need to go there today.

  The receptionist waved from behind the granite desk as Avalon stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. Even the interior of the elevator had three ferns on top of pristine tile and a mirror running along the back wall. The previous elevator had felt like a coffin, lumbering from floor to floor. Avalon welcomed all the changes. The remodel helped her disassociate Saluzyme from the place where her father took his final breath.

  The top floor opened into a plush landing with floor-to-ceiling windows and even more plants, some of them flowering as they leaned toward the sunlight. A peek through the western windows showcased a fantastic view of Salt Lake City below. Boxer, a hulking man with a square frame, guarded a set of closed office doors. The mop of scraggly hair on his head hid his ears, contrasting with his black suit and shades. She’d never once seen him smile.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Boxer scowled in response. “You’re not on the calendar today. You were supposed to be here yesterday.”

  A neutral expression would have made him look positively cheery, Avalon thought. “I missed the appointment. James told me to come today.”

  He tapped the Bluetooth speaker under his hair. “Benton is here,” he said, a hint of accusation in his tone. He did not sound convinced that she should be let in.

  A muffled voice replied, and Boxer’s scowl deepened. He keyed in his code but made no move toward the heavy doors. As she struggled to crack the doors open herself, she supposed she might hate surprises too if she worked security like Boxer.

  James glanced up from his enormous mahogany desk, vines running along the front side. He removed his reading glasses and stood in his perfectly pressed collared shirt and slacks. Several decades her senior, he maintained the physique of a much younger man due to his strict diet and exercise regimen. With graceful movements like a dancer, he stepped around the table, ev
ery shoulder-length silver hair in place. He never tied it back, not even during treatments. His rigid cheeks held a slight smile with no lingering irritation from the call this morning.

  “How are you?” he asked as way of greeting.

  “It’s been a rough couple of days.”

  He cocked his head to one side, his face concerned. “Care to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  James sized her up, determining whether to push the issue. “You know I don’t mean to pry. I worry about you.”

  “I know.”

  He decided to let it go, motioning to a door on his right. “Shall we?”

  She followed him into his personal examination room, the one he generally reserved for clinical trials or special patients such as the Bentons. It had all the equipment you would expect in a normal doctor’s examination room—an orange hazard box for discarding used needles, cabinets for tongue depressors and latex gloves, a sterile table with one-time use paper—but with one exception: the awenencephalogram or AEG.

  James referred to the AEG as a brain scanner on steroids. The machine itself consisted of a strange helmet with suction cup electrodes for attaching to various parts of the scalp. Wires snaked from the helmet into a monitor, which in turn fed into a computer. A modified dentist’s chair sat underneath it. The electrodes would monitor for the specific abnormalities that signaled a Miasmis episode.

  Avalon shivered and kept her distance from it.

  James switched on all the machines, and the room whirred alive. Classical music drifted over the room’s speakers. He already had her thick patient file on a desk next to the computer. James liked to joke how old fashioned he was, reading paper printouts even though the modern medical world required digital storage.

  She changed into a hospital gown behind a room divider, then sat on a bench next to James.

  He faced the computer screen. “Any major medical problems last month?”