The name he is given in English is Aloeus. He weighs over fifteen tons. A hundred feet from nose to tail and a wingspan half again that long. Muscles ripple under leathery black skin with every wing beat, as each sweep hauls his serpentine bulk into the sky.

Aloeus is unconcerned about the fact that his soaring is impossible by the rules of Earthly physics. His flight is as much through the forces that pour through the Portal as it is through the mundane air. More than any other creature, Aloeus is a creature of those forces. His mind is knit by strands of magic, and magic—as much as muscles and sinew—holds his wings against the biting wind tearing across the sky three thousand feet above the city of Cleveland.

He sees those forces as he soars above the city. Where a human being would only see sky and clouds, a brilliantly lit skyline, and the roiling clouds by the lakeshore—the constant vortex marking the Portal itself—Aloeus saw in a spectrum that humans could barely imagine, much less perceive. The Portal is a font of mystical power, visible to Aloeus’ eye, and to the mind behind that eye. Glowing, pulsing tendrils of power twist and whip out from the Portal, pouring through the streets like rivers of mana, flowing into the sky like an inverted waterfall.

Aloeus breathes the power like air, feels wisps of it glide through his mind, tugs against it with his wings.

The power has its limits, but Aloeus cannot see them this close to the heart of it all, the Portal. The irregular edges of the magical flood are far from here, just short of Canada to the north, just short of Pennsylvania to the east, halfway to Columbus to the south, Sandusky to the west, and perhaps about three miles up. If Aloeus could see the edges of the mana enveloping northeast Ohio, he would not be flying this fast. Here, though, practically on top of the Portal, Aloeus is immersed in the forces that keep him alive.

The forces that keep him practically immortal.

While it would be disastrous for him to leave the sea of magic that pools around the Portal, there’s no danger of that
here
. While the turbulent flood of magic ebbs and flows around him, like the air, or water beneath the surface of the ocean, it is always
there
. It may be more or less dense and spots might temporarily deaden, but unlike the fickle edges far from the Portal, the magic never fades this close to the source. He would have to fly three miles straight up for that to become a danger.

These facts are fundamental in Aloeus’ world. Very basic assumptions that he takes so much for granted that he isn’t aware—or, perhaps, does not want to be aware—that they
are
assumptions.

Of all the creatures in the world, magical or not, Aloeus should know better.

Unconcerned, Aloeus tears through the night sky, black as a thunderhead, and as powerful as a tsunami. The citizens who care to look up at the cloudless sky see him only as a tiny eclipse of a star or two. A few people, working very late nights or very early mornings in some of the skyscrapers around Public Square, look west in time to see Aloeus’ demonic silhouette against a swollen setting moon.

As to what his last thoughts are, no one can know and I don’t care to guess. He doesn’t see it coming; if he did, he might be able to do something, maneuver, avoid it. . . .

Around him, the impossible happens. A dead spot in the mana sea. Aloeus doesn’t even have time to understand the enormity of what is happening. As the magic disappears, his mind dies. Aloeus’ brain, the meat circuitry that regulates his physical body, is not complex enough to house his mind. The thinking part of Aloeus, his identity, lived in the mana that, until moments ago, had lived in every cell of his body.

His conscious mind is dead.

However, he is not unconscious. The higher functions are gone, the eyes that saw as much by magic as by light are now half blind, but, like any brute animal, Aloeus can feel pain.

Other books

A Knight in Central Park by Theresa Ragan

none

The Borderkind by Christopher Golden

Moonbreeze (The Dragonian Series Book 4) by Adrienne Woods

Two Ravens and One Crow - 4.5 by Kevin Hearne

Thirteen Roses Book Five: Home: A Paranormal Zombie Saga by Cairns, Michael

Temptation’s Edge by Eve Berlin

SEALed at Midnight by Cat Johnson

The Heart That Lies by April Munday

The Low Road by A. D. Scott