Chaos Brides: Lorna, Guardian of the Elgin Gate

by

Jerri LaPoint

Synopsis

When Lorna Perry's much-loved husband dies prematurely, she has the choice of carrying on with her life and her career in engineering with purpose and determination, or curling herself up in a fetal coil and staring at the walls for months on end. Lorna chooses the latter. A condolence call paid by an old friend sends her on vacation to the Ozarks, there to be pampered by her old friend Jeff and his partner Marty. Accompanied by her faithful dogs Jack and Daphne, Lorna explores the Ozark countryside and discovers an abandoned stone cottage and a stranger with an interest in the caves adjacent to the cottage.

Lorna buys the cottage and the surrounding land, and is surprised to learn that her property includes an interdimensional gate, which she has the right to exploit to her own best advantage, once she learns how. The seven gods of Chaos become her teachers and friends, and she learns the magickal ways and means of gate construction and maintenance. With responsibilities come rewards, and one of her great joys is the services of a chef who can, and does, provide food wherever Lorna happens to be.

The caves next to the cottage are a mystery, having an entrance into the hillside behind the cottage, but being immeasurably larger than the hill itself. The stranger Frank tells the tale of treasures left in the caves in the past, and claims to be the rightful heir to any treasures recovered from the caves. He initiates a campaign to force Lorna to turn over the treasures. She is not amused by his efforts, having to hire lawyers to fight Frank's claims made to everyone from the local sheriff to the Internal Revenue Service.

Once her gate is fully functional, Lorna and the dogs take a road trip and visit her late husband's mother, who thinks Lorna should share the wealth left her by the late Joe. Lorna is surprised to learn that the stranger Frank has put her mother-in-law up to this, and refuses to be black-mailed for more than half the sum her mother-in-law requested. She leaves for home and finds Kenn, one of the gods of Chaos, hitchhiking on the highway. She picks him up and he presents her with a standard poodle puppy of extraordinary powers. Lorna names the poodle Erin.

Kenn is, to Lorna's eye, a thing of beauty and a joy forever, except for the fact that he is a professional assassin. Though their physical attraction is mutual, she refuses to consummate the relationship. He, of course, does not understand her point of view and they part company.

The stone cottage has been improved and enlarged until it is a mansion, capable of entertaining all of the guardians of the other gates. Lorna invites the whole community of guardians, and they are happy to take advantage of her hospitality. Though Lorna's background in engineering, combined with her new grasp of the magickal principles, has allowed her to improve upon existing gate designs, the guardians are not willing to follow her guidance in improving their gates.

You can't go home again, but Lorna does, and picks up Kenn, who is hitchhiking on the highway again. They discuss their estrangement and Lorna decides that Kenn is just the guy to accompany her to her home town of Squareknot, Iowa. She's always been the ugly stepchild of her large family, so isn't expecting to enjoy the visit. Newly engaged, they take up residence at a local motel and quite enjoy themselves until a note from Lorna's mother demands their presence at a family reunion the next day. Kenn's appearance is one of the reasons Lorna expects her family to reject her and her new fiance. With long blond hair, a tall slim build, and dressed pretty much like an elf, he's every father's nightmare and every brother's target. But a person should never underestimate the power of a pissed-off poodle, as Lorna's brother Eric takes a direct hit to the upper thigh from Erin's laser-vision eyes. Kenn has no problem in handling the prospective in-laws, and the gathering goes off much better than anyone could expect.

The stranger Frank is a perennial nuisance with his demands for treasure. Lorna decides to hold a scavenger hunt among the mages of recognized magestries to find the treasure, if any. She solicits the help of Questours Interdimensional, Incorporated to keep people safe as they search the caves. Questours comes in handy when a young couple allows their child to become lost deep in the caves. The scavenger hunt comes up empty as the treasure-seeking mages are confronted by a large green dragon with a magnificent flame and a prior claim. He has been collecting the treasures left in the caves for endless years, and Lorna decides that the stranger Frank is really out of luck.

Lorna designed and built her gate structures very carefully, using all her knowledge of magic and engineering. Her habit is to check every element frequently to make sure no interdimensional linkages give way. Other guardians are not so careful of their gates, and a shake of the New Madrid Fault causes one to collapse, killing the guardian and losing four travelers between dimensions. Lorna's dogs, led by the poodle Erin, go into the void in search of the travelers. The dogs are successful, but the eldest of the dogs suffers from exhaustion and almost dies.

Lorna and Kenn decide to enhance their magickal abilities by entering a magestry and being trained in the magic of personal energies. Lorna makes this decision in order to increase her knowledge. Kenn follows along in order to fight arcane battles without the necessity of having ley power available to him. He and the other gods of Chaos have lived in the Chaos Realm forever, and taken advantage of its position as the terminus node for all the ley power on this world. Recently, he and the other gods were shamed by the power of a ne'er-do-well who styles himself the Galactic Overlord, and the other gods join him and Lorna in going back to school. One who is adept at using the powerful ley lines and nodes has, as a most important task, learning to control the amount of personal energy used to perform any task, lest things blow up or melt down.

Lorna accepts the job of designing and building a new gate for guardian Aurora, who gets more and more squirrelly as the job progresses. The source of Aurora's discomfiture is a large stone given to her by the Galactic Overlord, with the warning that he was quite powerful enough without the stone and too powerful with the stone. Add a very powerful ley node into the mix and you've got enough energy to spin a guardian's head around and make her spit pea soup.

Another road trip to Squareknot, Iowa is undertaken by Lorna and Kenn with their three dogs. Lorna learns that Frank the stranger has been in town, drawn there by a large, powerful ley node to which he is sensitive without being aware of his sensitivity. Being what he is, which is dissatisfied by his lack of progress in procuring the treasures from Lorna's caves, he has spread the rumor that she owes him money. He is also going squirrelly, having rented an apartment with a direct view of the ley node. Because he doesn't understand the ley power thing but is sensitive to it, regardless, Lorna and the gods of Chaos decide to awaken his potential for using ley power. When they leave him to himself after the awakening, he is visited by a local representative of the Squareknot Ley Coven, an organization apparently respected in Squareknot, and unknown anywhere else. She shows him how to light a single candle rather than curse the darkness, and feeds him pie.

Everyone likes pie.