faerie rift chronicles 01 - faerie rift Read Free Page B

focused on rationally processing anything with his body pressed up against my back. Even if part of my mind rationally agreed with him, this was not a trivial decision.
    I had to push him away.
    "Just give me some space for a minute, Thane. You and I both know the danger that the Fae Realms face. What we don’t know is the potential consequences of opening a long-term portal. Essentially, what you are talking about is a tear between dimensions. As far as I’m aware there just isn’t a precedent for that sort of thing. We could be dealing with a whole new set of problems, just because we didn’t exercise the appropriate amount of caution in this specific scenario.”
    “You and I have been trained to take risks.”
    “We might have been trained, but if I’m not mistaken, don’t we need a human to open up the portal?”
    He nodded.
    “How in the nine hells do you think we are going to find a willing participant within the human realm?”
    “Correction: You — not we.”
    “Great, Thane. Real comforting — we would need someone who wanted to open up a portal for its own merit. That’s not the type of thing that humans just go out and do for a night on the town.”
    I shook my head, practically fuming over the details of what Thane was asking of me.
    “Martyr on a Stick! Sure, there is a cultural history to draw on here, but most of the time, the stories are about wayward travelers, and children. Even then, how long does the portal last? Certainly not a damned Rift.”
    “It would have to be an adult male, and a virgin. I trust you’ll be able to figure out what needs to get done. Besides, we have already gathered as much research as possible.”
    “Oh yea. A virgin? That ought to be fun. Let me guess, a blood ritual on a full moon as well? What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull? You know as well as I do that we don't have any data to support that kind of speculation."
    "It's a brave new world for all of us, Aria." He shrugged, as though that simple motion could dismiss all of my concerns. "All I know is that if we don't take action, the Fae are going to run out of resources, and we will move into a sequence of extinction. Honestly, I don't see any other path of action which will take place quickly enough to provide the help we need."
    "Aren't you at least a little bit concerned that we don't have a clear idea of why the Void is approaching?"
    “Our Metaphysicists are working around the clock on that question. Policy makers are speculating about how we can use our social systems to adapt. Engineers are all working on structural alternatives for energy consumption theories."
    I shook my head, knowing that everything he said was true. I myself had taken up the question within the Think Tank I had been assigned to after the revolution. They might have called it the “Eccentric’s Argument and Debate Club” for all of the good it did. However, they congratulated themselves on placing me somewhere that resembled a non-violent application for the skills that I had developed during my years as a field agent.
    “We don’t understand why the Void is approaching,” Thane went on, “and there is not enough time for us to figure out a solution without sustaining major casualties. We need access to a denser form of energy, and the Material Plane has always provided that for us in the past."
    "Yea, on a personal level. We don't even know if whole scale systemic support can be achieved. The ecology of the Fae Realms would have to operate parasitically on the Material Plane until there was some type of homeostasis, and nobody knows what that might look like. We don't even know if opening a portal on a permanent basis is a viable option."
    “We owe it to ourselves to try, and I know you’re the woman for the job.”
    He had already broken me down. At that point, I wasn't doing much more than stalling, and he knew that. Thane could read me like a book. We had done too much together. There was too much history. Had