Mythos Read Online Free PDF Page B

More important, how did we get home?
    “Do you want to try a spell?” I asked after the not-quite-chaos had largely burned itself out.
    “I don’t think so,” replied Melchior. “I can’t reach the mweb, and if we really have landed someplace where the chaos has gone funny . . .”
    I nodded. All magic taps chaos for power, and the rawer the method used to make the connection, the more dangerous the magic. My shapechanging, for example, lies at the extreme wild end of the spectrum, a straight channeling of chaos that’s very dangerous even for a chaos power like me. At the far end lies mweb-based magical coding. There, the power of chaos is channeled into the ordered network of the mweb by webtrolls supervised by the Fates. When a webgoblin like Melchior runs an mweb-based program, he is using a carefully coded spell to achieve extremely predictable results.
    Between those two poles you have traditional spells, which use ritual and will to channel the power into a desired result. It isn’t as dangerous as wild magic, but it’s not even a little bit safe. You also have independent codespells, magical programs that use the methods of the modern digital sorcerer but create a direct chaos tap for power rather than draw on the mweb. We had recently upgraded Melchior to optimize him for the latter, but all of our upgrades relied on an understanding of a Primal Chaos that didn’t look like this stuff.
    “Any other ideas?” I finally asked.
    “Not a one.”
    “Me neither.”
    I heard a very high-pitched whistle, like a mosquito performing a spell, and something crunched in the grass off to our left.
    “I’ve got one,” said a half-familiar voice.
    I looked up and found myself facing—
    “Ahllan!” yelled Melchior, bounding across the grass to throw himself into the welcoming arms of the old webtroll.
    A bit over three feet tall and a bit under that wide, Ahllan has a massive jaw with huge, sharp tusks like a boar’s, a big nose, and lumpy skin the color of a peeled apple left out on the table for a day or two. Her claw-tipped fingers touch the ground when she stands straight, and the arms attached to them are as thick around as my thighs.
    “Where are we?” I asked. “What’s going on? Where have you been?” I had about a million more questions, but Ahllan held up a shushing finger.
    “We don’t have time for any of that. We have to get under cover.” She turned, still holding Melchior, and took a long step toward the front of the miniature York Minster. When I didn’t move to follow, she growled, “Forestdown Estates. It’s a tourist attraction, and we’re in the Canadian Maritimes. I’ll tell you all about it. Later. When we have time. Now come on!”
    She didn’t look back. Rather than be left behind, I trailed after her.
    “Melchior, you’ll go first,” she said, when we reached the front of the cathedral.
    She whistled a short burst of something very like binary and set him down so that one of his toes touched the steps. He immediately shrank to the scale of the cathedral.
    “Inside, quick.” Melchior went up the stairs and through the open door. “Your turn.” She whistled the codespell trigger again and gestured me toward the door.
    I went, shrinking as Melchior had. A moment later Ahllan joined us in the entryway, pulling the door firmly shut behind her.
    “That’s better. Come on.” Ahllan hurried toward the base of a flight of spiral stairs. “We need to see what happens next.”
    A few moments later, we came out on top of the cathedral’s south transept and dashed across to another set of stairs. Finally, we arrived at the top of the crossing tower. There, Ahllan whistled another short spell in pseudobinary as soon as she’d stopped panting and wheezing.
    “That should hide us from prying eyes, but we’ll have to be quiet.” She shook her head. “I can’t keep doing this kind of thing. I’m getting too old.”
    I really wanted to know what had happened to her since last