A double door gate stood in the center of the keep. It was nowhere near the size of the gate from August's fortress in the Far Reaches, standing only three to four meters tall.
No runes or jewels decorated it. Only a single steel bar held it shut.
August placed his hand against the gate and felt magic sealing it shut.
The seal felt old. Faded. That meant somebody had sealed the portal away long ago, perhaps even before the fortress fell and the binding stone was abandoned.
Whatever the case, no demons from the portal had broken into
the real world.
"Um, do we need to go through there? We only just activated the binding stone. Don't we have ages before any demons invade?" Jafeila asked.
"The portal may already be active.
The first step any Bastion should take upon claiming a binding stone is to confirm the state of the attached portal, and whether they need to suppress it," August explained.
"Already active? But how?"
August stepped away from the gate, realizing he had to explain a few things first.
Around him, the keep was being rebuilt by magic. Cracks in the limestone filled themselves in. Staircases folded out from the walls.
Sand appeared from thin air and melted into glass. Statues and suits of armor poured themselves into existence from molten metal and liquefied rock.
"You've been taught that demonic portals activate whenever a binding stone is used by a Bastion?" August asked.
Jafeila nodded. Her ears pricked up in anticipation of his next words.
Her tail curled behind her back.
"That's wrong. Well, not entirely wrong." August chewed on his lip as he thought on his next words.
"If we could keep the demons out by sealing away all the binding stones, don't you think that somebody would have sealed them all away decades or centuries ago?
Or that the Watcher Omria would have done so, given the goddess's prime directive is to protect Doumahr from the invaders?"
Jafeila nodded slowly, but said nothing.
August continued, "Each binding stone has a portal attached to it, but the portals can activate of their own will.
This gate is sealed to keep the demons out in case the portal does activate. Think of it like insurance, and it keeps demons from invading through unprotected portals.
If the portal is active then a demonic horde may be ready to invade any day now."
"Shouldn't we wait until we have an army before we enter, then What if we're ambushed upon entering?" Jafeila's tail shot bolt upright.
"Relax.
If there really was a demonic army large enough to be a threat, they'd have already broken down this gate and invaded," August said, giving Jafeila a cheery grin.
She glared at him. He ruffled her hair, squashing her cat ears. She darted away, cursing him.
"You seem too sure about all of this," she muttered. "I don't remember learning half this stuff."
"A lot of what you get taught in the academy is watered down so you don't get scared," August admitted.
'Or the trainers didn't know it,' he thought darkly.
"You're so much more experienced than I expected. I was told you were a new Bastion, so I expected somebody closer to my age and experience,"
Jafeila said.
She froze, including her tail, then looked at August with wide eyes. "N—Not that I'm not extremely happy that you're my Bastion, August.
Lord Straub. Bastion. Uhhhh…"
"Call me August," he said, crossing his arms.
"Really? Thank you." Jafeila paused. "So, how do you know so much more than me? We both came from the academy.
Everything is so complicated and obscure, but you seem like a master."
August's memory agreed with Jafeila that he was a brand-new Bastion, so he needed a convincing lie.
The Jafeila from his timeline was a great liar and could keep a secret.
He wasn't convinced that the Jafeila in front of him was the same. At least, not yet.
Fortunately, his memories provided a grain of truth he could rely upon.
"I am a new Bastion, but my father was also a Bastion," he said. This was true in this timeline and the last.
Although neither ever told August anything about the truth of being a Bastion.
One swore an oath to the Watcher Omria to not needlessly spill many of the secrets of Bastions, in order to limit the damage if the wrong people abused the binding stones.
A twinge of regret ran down August as he remembered that oath and the method he had used to travel back in time.
"Ohhhh, so you became one to follow in his footsteps?" Jafeila asked.
She frowned. "In your twenties?"
'Do I really look that old? Is it just the beard?' August shook his head.
"Not quite. I'll tell you the full story later." His memories were still jumbled, and he got the sense that he hadn't become a Bastion for the happiest of reasons.
People rarely did.
For now, they had a portal to investigate. He placed his hand on the steel bar blocking the gate.
The magical seal pushed back against him, preventing him from removing it.
August applied a gentle push from the binding stone. The seal snapped, and the bar slid free, grinding along a century of rust and crashing onto the stone below.
August pushed the gate open.
Beyond lay a volcanic wasteland. Huge cliffs ran along the valley the gate opened into, but they cast no shadow.
The ground was rocky, uneven, and lined with finger-wide cracks. An eerie purple light emanated from deep within those cracks, with no obvious source.
The rock itself was volcanic in nature, with the telltale glassy appearance and texture, and was a deep, dull gray.
There was no sun or moon in the sky, nor any other source of light. But the entire world was perfectly lit.
Soft, diffuse shadows were cast directly beneath everything. The sky itself was a hazy red, as if in perpetual sunrise.
"Only a few demons," August muttered, taking in his surroundings.
He wandered into the hellscape and scanned the valley further. Jafeila followed behind him, her scimitar out and ready for action.
"How can you be so calm walking into Hell?" she asked, voice low.
"This isn't Hell. Or wherever the demons come from," he said. "If it were, they wouldn't need portals to get here, they'd live here.
This is a place between worlds. A transitory world of some form. I wish we knew why it connected to our world, or how it sprung up next to the binding stones."
In the distance was a much larger clearing with a small mound of dirt and rocks in its center.
A trio of goat-headed demons sat next to it, doing nothing in particular.
August had never known what demons do when milling about in this world, and he didn't care to learn now.
There were two more demons closer to him, standing in the narrow part of the valley. The demons hadn't noticed the new arrivals yet.
"So, where's the portal? This place is so small," Jafeila said. "The portal isn't active, so you can't see it."
"I know that much at least." She pouted at him. "But I can't even see where it's supposed to appear.
Isn't there supposed to be some massive pile of rocks, or a spire, or something where reality tears itself open?"
August wordlessly pointed at the tiny mound in the middle of the clearing.
Jafeila stared at it for several moments, tilting her head. "Oh. That's it?"
"That's it. Which is very strange."
"Isn't a small portal good?"
He shook his head. "That's not how this works. The demons are always going to invade. It's in their nature.
That's why it's our nature to kill them."