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“What are you up to?” Roy asked cautiously.
“I believe I can safely power the wall and activate the Dimensional Gate spell to open a door to Eden,” Henry explained.
Roy scowled. “What makes you think you can do better than Walter?”
“I can replace the requirement for the sacrifice. It just needs a steady and even flow of magic, which I imagine would be ridiculously tricky using sacrifices. I’m uniquely able to provide a steady flow of energy with my rift and my powerplant spell. The spell for the Dimensional Gate is tricky, but it isn’t dangerous in itself. Opening tears is easy but keeping them open is draining as they immediately try to heal themselves. With this gate spell, the load is carried by the crystals in the wall.”
“Where did those crystals come from? I didn’t see these veins of crystal anywhere else in the cave,” Roy said, looking around.
Henry shrugged. “I know, this wall seems to be unique, and I’m no geologist, so I have no idea what kind of mineral it is.”
“Henry! It’s time!” Tish’s voice echoed through the cave.
“On our way!” Henry yelled back.
Roy looked at Henry as they walked back to the hallway of doors. “What would the purpose be for this Dimensional Gate?” he asked.
Henry thought about that. “I’d like an easier way to bring Aadiya and Maliha to Eden for their flying exercise. I’d like to invite Tish and her family to visit as well. To know exactly how convenient it will be, I still need to power the crystals and activate the spell to see how long the door will hold the gate open. The spell was created before knowledge of the Wild Magic dimension, so this is all new.”
“Put a bookmark in that for now. We have new guests arriving,” Roy suggested, and Henry nodded as they left the cave. Roy closed the doors behind himself as Henry joined Tish before the first door. She was in her Faun state.
“We’re linking seven doors, starting with one for my eldest sister, Kristen,” she said.
“Picture the door in her home we are linking to,” Henry said. “Then touch the door with that image in your mind.”
Tish closed her eyes then reached out to touch the door. Henry touched her hand and activated the spell. Tish opened her eyes and looked at Henry and saw him smiling at her.
“Go ahead and knock,” he said as he stood back.
Tish grinned and rapped her knuckles against the wood.
The door immediately opened, and Henry felt a thrill rush through his chest as he saw the excited Faun faces of Kristen, her husband Lyle, and five of her six kids, Layla, George, Patrick, Craig, and Lorraine, ages sixteen to twelve. The parents stepped through tentatively, but the kids quickly pushed them further as they rushed inside.
“This is awesome!” George gushed.
Then they were all looking at Henry.
“My, aren’t you…” Kristen quickly glanced at Lyle’s slimmer physique, then back to Henry, “large!”
“Why are your horns so much larger than daddy’s?” Layla, the sixteen-year-old, asked.
Henry shook his head. “Mine are larger than normal.” That produced a burst of giggles, so he tried to rephrase it. “Your dad’s are normal! Mine are too big!” The giggling just got louder. He tried again, but Tish reached up and pressed her fingers across his lips.
Tish smiled at her niece. “Henry’s horns grew this way from being pushed from the ancient past to the present when he was just a baby. You won’t find horns like these on any other Fauns.”
“Satyr.” At their blank looks, he clarified. “I’m a Satyr. It’s another name for Faun.” They looked at each other. “I prefer Satyr.”
“Let’s open Gene’s door,” Tish suggested. Gene was Kristen’s oldest daughter at eighteen-years-old.
They repeated the spell activation, and Tish knocked.
When the door was opened by a young male Faun, he took one look at the gathered family and made a squeak noise, fainting through the door onto the floor. A petite and pretty dark-brown female Faun holding a baby was standing behind him with an embarrassed expression on her face.
Henry leaned forward and lifted the unconscious man into the vestibule, and his wife walked through the door. The young mother was so cute, and the adorable baby in her arms was a newborn. She smiled at Henry.
“You’re holding my husband Sam, I’m Gene, and this is our daughter Bean,” she said.
“I love the name Bean! How did you come up with that?” Henry grinned.
Gene shrugged. “She was just a tiny bean in my tummy when I became this. We weren’t sure if she transformed too.”Text content © NôvelDrama.Org.
“She’s beautiful!” Henry sighed.
“Okay! More doors to do!” Tish said, then looked to the family already through. “Memorize your door, so you know which one to go through to get home!”
Henry handed Sam off to Lyle, who rolled his eyes at his son-in-law’s state.
Tish and Henry made their way down the row, linking each to another door somewhere in Philadelphia. The parents and kids were all wide-eyed and excited to pass through a door and find themselves in the company of their other family members in the cellar of a mansion in New York State.
Soon they were at the last door. Tish pulled Henry aside. “This will be my sister Steph’s place. She is really nervous about meeting you. She may talk… excessively.”
“Got it,” he said with a smile. They linked the door, and Tish knocked.
Steph pushed the door open, tripped, and stumbled through right into Henry’s arms. She face-planted against his broad chest then looked up in surprise. Henry grinned down at her.
“Hello! You must be Steph! You’re just as lovely and bold as Tish said you’d be,” he teased. Steph’s face lit up with a brilliant smile.
Tish had filled Henry in on Steph’s tragic discovery after the Skyfall Event.
Steph’s husband David hadn’t attended the party that night. He wasn’t there in the backyard soaking in the Wild Magic and the love of his family. He wasn’t part of the biggest group hug the family had ever done, and he missed being saturated with the Wild Magic pouring through Tish’s rift. He didn’t transform into a Faun like the rest of the family.
He’d missed all of these wondrous things because he spent his evening in bed with his neighbor’s wife, Gloria. When her husband Rick got home from his sanitation engineer night shift at four in the morning, he found David’s clothes piled on the chair in their bedroom, but his socks were on the bed with the sexy lingerie Gloria swore she only ever wore for him. There was a condom on the bed, too.
Steph received a ranting, angry call from Rick on her cell phone the next morning. He’d said some nasty things, and that’s how Steph discovered her husband’s infidelity and how it ended with the tragic twist.
Their three kids no longer had a father. He hadn’t been a very attentive one to begin with, but now he was gone.
Tish said Steph had taken a terrible hit to her self-confidence as Gloria was not particularly pretty or fit, but she’d taken David from her.
Henry was a little dazzled by her smile, and she seemed to notice as it just got brighter. Her hands slid across his broad chest to land on his biceps.
“Tish didn’t mention you were so… strong!” Steph said a little breathily.
“It’s been a gradual increase of yumminess,” Tish chuckled, and Steph’s laugh was identical, deep and hinting at a slightly wicked naughtiness.
Steph pressed her body against Henry’s, and he had the beginnings of an automatic and immediate reaction. Her eyes widened, and her pink tongue darted out to lick her lips. This triggered a second throb, which she definitely felt. He cast a quick desperate look at Tish, and she picked up the hint as she swooped in to scoop Steph away from Henry as he stealthily turned his body away from the gathering of Tish’s family.
“Steph and kids, make note of the symbol on your door. That’s how you get back home tonight.” She faced the rest of the family, who were still milling around in the vestibule. “Come on, people, let’s clear this area and move to the dining room for breakfast. Kids take the stairs. Adults take the open door to the left.”
The kids charged up the long, winding stairs with excited screams as the grateful adults just stepped through the doorway to find themselves in the main hallway, where they were greeted by Meixiu welcoming them to her mansion. With all the kids charging through the home, the expensive breakables had all been moved to safety, and Henry added protective shields on the paintings to prevent accidents.
Henry took slow breaths to calm himself and opened his eyes to see Dayshia watching him with a hungry look in her eye. She’d also seen his reaction to Steph’s touch.
“Are you ready to help me open a door to Beth’s?” she asked as she bit her lip.
“Dayshia, please!” he gasped quietly as he began to react to her.
She smiled with satisfaction and closed her eyes as she pulled up the image of Beth’s front hall closet door. She felt Henry’s hand on hers, then his mouth was next to her ear. “It’s all yours.” Tingles shot straight down her neck to her nipples, which stiffened immediately.
“Henry! My niece and nephews are on the other side of this door!” she squealed quietly.
He just gave her a raised eyebrow as she was equally guilty. She looked away but not before he saw her smile, acknowledging his point was made.
Taking a deep breath, Dayshia knocked on the door.
It immediately opened, and Beth gave her sister a raised eyebrow as well. “You’re late.”
Dayshia pointed to the group still moving through the door at the end of the hall. “Tish has thirty-four relatives on their way upstairs. Introductions later. Memorize the symbol on the door as it is assigned to your place.”
“Hi, Henry!” Beth said with a smile, and he admired her glowing eyes. Her smile grew a little at his appreciation and did again when he dipped forward to kiss her cheek.
“Hi, Beth! Chris,” Henry said and shook Chris’ hand. He shook the kids’ hands too.
“We can follow them to the dining room for breakfast,” Dayshia instructed.
Chris was watching Henry, so he returned the gaze. “Do you work out?” the man asked.
Henry shook his head. “Not in any traditional way. I don’t know why I’ve developed these. It might just be a Satyr thing.”
Chris nodded as he followed his wife and sister-in-law through the door.