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Phantoms of the Past: Chapter 57 -Blizzards, Blackbirds, and Bargains: Part 2

Hiro frantically scanned the horizon for another way home while he tried to keep from panicking. He knew it was a hopeless search but he wasn't ready to admit defeat just yet.

“Baymax, are you getting any readings?” “The storm is interfering with my scanners.” The faithful robot replied after a pause.

Hiro gulped down his fear. Baymax was still with him. He wasn't alone. His brothers would find him.

“Let's go back to the controls then.” Hiro uselessly fiddled with the backup panel while Baymax continued his lookout.

It was a fruitless exercise. The power had been cut by the closing portal, and most of the electromagnets had remained on the other side so he couldn't restart the connection.

“Sooo… I need a generator and more portal magnets…” he muttered. The wind blew particularly hard after he said this, reminding him where he still was. He could have built those things in a few hours easily back at his lab, but here in the middle of nowhere? It was impossible.

Baymax interrupted his thoughts. “We should seek shelter. My sensors indicate that the temperatures are falling and your suit only provides protection for minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Hiro involuntarily shivered. “Yeah, and I'm sure the icy wind isn't doing your circuits any favors either. But where?”

“My sensors also detect a heat signature coming from that way.” He pointed in the direction of where the rocks had come from. Hiro gulped again. The last thing he wanted was to find out what had caused those monstrosities. The freezing wind however was getting harder and harder to ignore.

“Okay, but we need to be able to find our way back here after the storm.” He turned and patted the now dead control panel. “This is where the portal will open back up when Varian gets it fixed on his end.”

Baymax pulled out a roll of colorful bandages used for wrapping sprained ankles and such. Hiro quickly unrolled it and tied it around the podium, while Baymax secured the knot with an adhesive. As they flew away Hiro could see the bright purple and orange ribbon waving in the wind like a flag.

-----------------

"Oh,thisisbad.Thisisbad.Thidisbad.Thisisbad..."

Varian tried his best to ignore Honey Lemon's frantic muttering as he desperately worked the controls again. He was painfully aware that everyone's eyes were on him waiting for him to fix the portal. He was also even more aware that with every passing minute hope was slipping further and further away from ever finding Hiro again.

"It's no use." It was Sirque who finally stated the obvious as she laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "We need a new power source to get it running again."

Varian drew a shaky breath as he reassessed the situation. "O-okay, then we'll need to head back to my lab and grab the generator. The coordinates should still be in this system, so once we power it back up it'll open right back to where we left Hiro."

"What about those rocks?" Wasabi asked, clutching his injured arm. "Won't they just come through again as well?"

"Hopefully the rocks will have moved on by now." Varian didn't sound hopeful.

"Where would they go?" Fred asked.

"I don't know, Fred. They just... They just keep going. They spread out everywhere, but they won't double back around to the same place."

"How do you know that?" Gogo asked. Her voice lacked the usual sarcasm. She sounded genuinely worried, which only put Varian more on edge. Perhaps that was why his reply came out harsher than intended.

"Because they never have before." He snapped.

He fished out the short range portal magnets from his pocket. But as soon as a window opened up upon his lab, he heard Tadashi finally speak.

"How long will it take?"

Varian looked over to where his brother stood. Tadashi still hadn't looked away from the spot where the inter-dimensional portal once stood.

"How much time will it take to hook up the generator?" Tadashi asked again, still not turning around.

"I... I don't know. A couple of hours, maybe?"

Tadashi finally turned to look at him. His jawline was set in a determined frown. "And how long does Hiro have?"

Varian didn't have an answer to that.

Gogo spoke up instead. "It doesn't matter. The more time we waste talking the more time Hiro has to wait on us."

"What if there's a faster way though?"

She paused midway through the portal, one foot in the lab and the other in the snow, at that question.

"What do you have in mind?" Fred asked.

"Cardinist's scroll."

"No." Varian was surprised by the firmness in his own voice.

"I know what I said earlier, but th-"

"No. You don't know if it'll actually be faster and you don't know if it'll even work."

"That's why we need to try both."

That answer took everyone by surprise, and Tadashi lost no time in explaining his plan.

"Listen, you don't need all of us here to fix the portal. Some of us could take the scroll while you stay and work on it."

Varian pinched the bridge of his nose. "And how does getting half of us lost in the void help?"

"Okay, first off you don't know that we'll get lost and second, once you get the portal fixed then you can pull us out, provided that we don't find Hiro before you do."

"That's not how any of this works!" Varian yelled. "I can barely get the portal to focus on Corona, let alone the void, which isn't even a physical place! And you don't know how to traverse the seemingly endless abyss of nothingness to get to Corona either!"

"We need to try everything available to us. The more options we take the better chance we have of getting Hiro back."

"I'm with Tadashi on this." Fred spoke up.

Gogo rolled her eyes. "Of course you agree with Tadashi. You'd probably jump at any opportunity to explore an alternate world."

"That doesn't mean it couldn't help get Hiro back!" Fred defended.

"But... What if you don't find him?" Honey Lemon wrung her hands. "What if you just wind up getting lost instead?"

Wasabi agreed. "Honey Lemon is right. It's too risky. I vote no."

"Gogo?" Tadashi looked at his girlfriend pleasingly.

Gogo sighed in defeat. "You know I'd do anything rescue Hiro. And if you two idiots insist on jumping through a magical void to who knows where, I guess I gotta come along to make sure you don't get hurt."

"So we're three to three." Tadashi looked to Sirque. "I guess that makes you the tie breaker."

Sirque threw up her hands and backed away, "Oh no, this is between you superheroes. I'll help fix the portal, but I'm not going in there myself. And if you want to try some other way, that's your decision."

"Fine." Tadashi sighed. "Then let those who voted yes go, and the rest can stay with Varian as backup."

"No, that's not 'fine.'" Varian pushed back. "I'm not agreeing to that."

"It doesn't matter. I'm going to go get that scroll and try for myself even if no one helps me."

Both brothers stood at a stand still. They glared at one another for several seconds before Varian finally caved.

"Fine." He snorted. "I'll help, but first we bring generator back here. You can fool with the scroll while I work on hooking it up."

"Okay." Tadashi nodded.

-----------------

"A creepy fortress surrounded by a moat of lava... Okay, I think we've found the heat signature?" Despite the warmth resonating from below, Hiro shivered anyway.

The castle before them wasn't just overrun with the black rocks, it looked as if it was entirely made of the supernatural stalagmites. Hiro couldn't see where they began and where the regular stone walls stopped. But he did notice a door, a massive iron structure recessed under two crisscrossing black spikes.

"Well, maybe whoever lives here can give us shelter till the storm is over."

"I do not detect any life signs within the castle." Baymax stated plainly.

Hiro shrugged, resigned. "Then we know no one will will mind if we break in. Come on Baymax."

They flew across the chasm of lava and Baymax easily wedged the door open. Even though he knew it was abandoned, Hiro couldn't help shout out a timid "Hello?" as he stepped inside.

The ruined hall was as silent as the grave save for his echo. Lined along the walls were intricate tapestries, paintings, statues, and ancient artifacts like weapons and armor. Every now and then they would come across a door, but more often than not it only led to an empty room full of rotting furniture or rubble from caved-in walls. One or two even had massive holes in the roof and were completely filled with ice and snow. Finally the hall ended and they stood in a large high ceiling room full of shattered stone statues. Each ruined edifice was gigantic, as tall as two stories apiece, and not a single one was left intact.

Maneuvering around the massive dismembered stone limbs and eroded faceless heads, they discovered more doors leading to other parts of the castle. Most just opened up on to other hallways, but two proved interesting.

The first led to a seemingly empty chamber. The walkway fell away into a pit of black rocks and on the other side of that was a round black globe with holes all in it. Whatever it was meant to be, Hiro couldn't tell, but it looked as if it had been considered important by the people who had once lived there.

The second, and far more practical discovery, was the dinning hall. This room had remained nearly untouched by whatever disaster that had befell this place. There was a long wooden table with chairs in the center of the room. On the far end was a stone fire place surrounded by bookshelves and on the wall opposite from the entrance was a large glass window. It was by far the most structurally sound place that they had come across that day.

"I guess this is as good as any place to wait out the storm." Hiro said as he made his way to the fireplace. He was in luck. There were logs still left in the storage bin in the corner, along with a flint and knife. It took a few tries but he soon had a small fire going. Having accomplished this he noticed Baymax was reading something laid out on top of the table.

"What did you find, Baymax?"

"A letter."

Hiro curiously titled his head as he tried to read the faded writing. It might as well have been gibberish to him. "Can you read it?"

“Vsem, kto naydet eto proklyatoye mesto. Ostavlyat'. Seychas.”

"I meant in English."

"Translating." 'To anyone who finds this accursed place. Leave. Now. What you seek has already been stolen.'"

"Well that doesn't sound ominous at all." Hiro said with a strained laugh.

Baymax continued. "'I, myself, am finally abandoning my post and ancestral home. I have led this once prosperous land to ruin with my folly and have paid the dearest price. I have been granted a second chance however, and will be rejoining my long lost son shortly. Take what you want, but don't say that I didn't warn you. Sincerely, King Edmund of Umbra.'"

"Wait. Did the note say Umbra?"

"It did."

"That's where Varian's dad is from... but there's no telling how far we are from Corona itself." He then went quiet as he tried to think through the implications of this and what actions might be available to them with this newly obtained knowledge. 'Not much' he decided as his stomach began to growl.

"I am going to power down to conserve energy." Baymax stated, interrupting his thoughts.

"That's a good idea. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the sun will come out soon so that you can recharge." As the robot folded back into his charging mode in front of the window, Hiro was thankful that he and Tadashi had added the solar panels to his charger case a few weeks ago. They were going to need that if they found themselves trapped for longer than just a couple of days. And with that thought, he had suddenly lost his appetite.

How were they ever going to get out of here?

-----------------

"We got the scroll", Tadashi announced as he and Fred arrived back at the park.

It had taken almost an hour and a half to move the generator, and other half hour to grab the scroll from HQ, as Varian couldn't spare any more portal magnets. Tadashi was trying not to panic even as time slipped away from him.

"How is it going?" He asked as he knelt beside Varian, as his little brother finished rewiring some cables.

"It's going fine, but it's still going to take time reboot everything. Plus Sirque still has to reprogram the replacement magnets."

"I've gotten three done." The acrobat thief said. "Six more to go."

"So we're looking at another hour and a half at least." Tadashi estimated. "Then what do we do activate the scroll."

Varian shrugged. "Read it."

"I can't read it. It's in another language."

"But you read the mind-trap."

"Yeah, and I still don't know how I did that. Also it doesn't work with paper. We already tried writing the last inscription down and I couldn't read it then. It's only when I'm holding that freaky paperweight."

Varian sighed, like he about to explain something very simple to a child. "You wrote the inscription down with just ordinary pencil and paper?"

"Yeeeah." Tadashi said slowly, unsure what Varian was getting at.

Varian tapped the scroll he was holding."That's not ordinary pencil and paper. It's magic. Possibly the same magic as Cardinist's paperweight."

Tadashi grimaced as he looked at the scroll in his hand. He had come to distrust magic in the last few months, and he really didn't want to experience that same 'out of body' mind trip that he'd been through with the previous talisman. But, if it was the only way to save Hiro...

"Okay, I'll give it a try." Tadashi stood up and faced where the portal had once stood. "Do we need anything else? Like candles, or a chalk circle, or some ominous chanting perhaps?"

Varian gave him an unamused look. "Just read the scroll. Or don't. I still think this is a bad idea anyway."

Tadashi rolled his eyes dismissively, but deep down he couldn't disagree. Had it been any other circumstance he'd be the first to condemn such a risk, but his brother...

He took a deep breath and unrolled the scroll.

Fred and Gogo walked over to stand behind him, both decked out in their now modified swimming armor, as he glanced over the strange symbols before him.

At first he couldn't make heads or tails of them. He was about to give up and complain when suddenly he recognized a word. It looked like "Open."

Then he noticed another word next to that. "Gate."

The symbols hadn't changed, and yet he suddenly understood them. But it wasn't anything like translating Japanese to English, or vice versa. That took a little effort. He had to stop and think about the right words, change the structure and stuff when doing that. This just popped into his brain, like it was data being downloaded to a computer.

" Open the Gate,

Oh Guardians of Mortality and Fate,

Unwind Time and Space Into the Great Abyss

Where Nothing Lingers Save Death's Sweet Kiss.

And Make a Road where Once There was None ."

Honey Lemon nervously bit her fingernail. Tadashi was in a trance and his voice sounded unnatural. She could have sworn that it was echoing, but then, they were outside.

As he spoke the space in front of him began to glow. First it was a bright swirling light about as big as a softball, but then it quickly grew until it was taller than a person and twice as wide

The inside of the glowing circle began to change color, a rainbow of iridescent light shimmered and then parted to reveal the void.

The same nothingness that had entrapped Abigail for a decade. Only it wasn't entirely nothing. There was also a stone road just floating in space. It seemed to have no end to it.

It was only after the road had appeared that Tadashi stopped chanting. He blinked, as if just awakening from a deep sleep, and then shook his head.

'It... It worked?" He have gasped in awe and half laughed in relief. Then he looked like was going to faint.

Gogo and Fred rushed to hold him up.

"Are you still sure about this?" Gogo asked, as Tadashi leaned on her shoulder.

"Sure I'm sure." Came his automatic response, but he didn't pull away from her support.

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Fred sang with confidence and than strode over to the portal. Only to stop short when he hit an invisible barrier.

"Hey! What gives?" He pounded on the magical wall and light waves spread from his fists where they hit, but he couldn't get through.

Varian looked thoughtful as he picked up the fallen scroll. He gave a hum as he glanced over it's contents.

"It's possible that the incantation will only work for the person who spoke it."

"Then how did the stupid monkey go through?" Gogo asked.

"It must not count as a person." Wasabi shrugged and then winced at the motion.

Varian pocketed the scroll. "Well we tried. Just as agreed. Now help me finish rewiring the cont-"

"I can still go through." Tadashi interrupted. He steadied himself as Varian gave him a warning glare. Tadashi ignored it.

"If the spell only works on the one who cast it, then that's me. I can use the portal."

"That wasn't the plan." Varian snapped.

"So we adapt. I just go on my own, and-"

"And nothing." Gogo said. "You're not going in there by yourself. It's too dangerous."

"Yeah, I'm going to have to go with Gogo on this." Fred agreed. "I'm mean it was one thing when we're all going together, but I don't know about solo mission."

"Guys please." He tried to step towards the window hanging in the air but Gogo held him back.

Honey Lemon also stepped between him and the portal. "Listen, we're all worried about Hiro. But if you go in there, alone, with no plan of getting back. Then all that will accomplish is us worrying about you too."

"Honey's right." Varian added. "At least with Hiro we already have the coordinates. There's no way to find you again if you get lost in there. Just help me with the generator and we'll get the portal up and running faster."

Tadashi looked at Varian's pleading eyes and gave in. Varian was right. He knew deep down that Varian was right. He had let panic cloud his judgment... same as the night of the fire ...

Damn it. When was he going to stop making that mistake?

"Okay... Okay." He nodded in agreement and gave Gogo a reassuring hug.

"Now you're seeing sense." Varian said and walked back to the controls. "Help me double check my wiring. I could use someone behind me with a flashlight."

"Ummm ... What about the big hovering doorway leading to nothingness just hanging here?" Fred asked.

"Leave it for now." Varian dismissed. "We'll figure out how to close it after we've gotten Hiro back. Just no one go near it."

Tadashi unfurled the scroll to read it again. "Surely the spell to close it is on here as well."

No soon did he say these words than did the scroll begin to glow. He suddenly heard various shouts of alarm from all of his friends, but they sounded distant for some reason. Then he flat something tugging on his arm. And it was strong.

Tadashi was being pulled into the portal against his will. One minute he was standing there, the next a flash of light, and then suddenly he was standing on the floating road hovering in space.

"Oh no."

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