The Golden Amulet (PJO, Sequel to The Silver Ring)

Chapter 51

"Remember when I explained to you how my teleporting ability works?" Rosaline asked me.

"Yeah," I said, fidgeting with a roll of gauze. "It was kind of a letdown."

We were in the infirmary. Rosaline had refused to talk about her discovery until we were safe and sound, sitting on the medical bed that was next to Psi's. Normally, this would've taken a lot of walking, but Rosaline simply just teleported us there.

Psi was still asleep. Impossibly, his hood was still on, so I didn't know if he had some sort of concussion from Rosaline's karate chop, or if he was simply just unconscious. Nevertheless, I trusted the doctors, so if he was just lying there with nothing plugged into him and nobody watching over him he must've been fine.

Or maybe he was in a deep coma. In that case, I don't think anybody would've minded.

The medical ward was one of the biggest departments in the Chaos base—which made sense. Soldiers got injured often, and you needed a huge medical staff and space to properly and efficiently take care of them. It took up roughly a quarter of the base and had enough beds to seat half of the deployed army comfortably. Psi was on one that was roughly in the middle, so we could see everything. Just like any other medical department, everything smelled strongly of antiseptic, and every few rows of beds there were medical "stations," where doctors went to get supplies like bandages, medicines, and IVs.

However, as we watched, only a few doctors were scurrying around, checking their patients—who were only a few to each. I figured that the rest were on break, or training—doctors were also soldiers, albeit part-time and not that experienced in fighting—before the real fighting started during the invasion.

Rosaline looked at me curiously. "A letdown? How so?"

"How on earth can a primordial have such a limit on her power?" I asked. "It's so unfair."

Rosaline looked at Psi, whose chest was rising and falling normally. "I don't know. But it's not part of my domain." 

"It isn't?"

"No." Her tone had turned to one of sadness. "An old friend taught me how to do it."

I could tell that she still had not processed whatever she was disturbed with, so I didn't press. I placed a comforting hand on top of hers and said, "I'll be here whenever you want to talk."

Her eyes shined with gratefulness. "Thanks." She cleared her throat, pushing all her vulnerabilities inside, and forced out a smile. "Anyway, there's one ambiguity in my ability which allows me to sort of . . . crawl past my limitations."

"How so?" I asked, intrigued.

"I told you that I have to have visited the place . . . will you stop that?!"

I realized that my fidgeting was starting to annoy Rosaline. I immediately stopped. "Sorry. I have ADHD."

Rosaline sighed. "As I was saying . . . STOP IT!"

My hands had subconsciously started playing with the gauze again. Rosaline snatched it from me and threw it across the room. It rolled towards the opposite wall, unrolling at the same time, like an elongating flag in the wind. 

"Finally," Rosaline muttered, relieved. "Where did you even get that?"

"From one of the doctor "stations," I said grumpily, knowing that I would have to try hard not to fidget, and I wasn't looking forward to it.

"Is that even allowed?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "My hand just kind of gravitated toward it."

"If you fidget again I will personally tie you down," Rosaline threatened as my finger twitched.

"Okay, okay!" I said, sitting on my hands to forcefully stop.

"As I was saying," Rosaline started again, "I can only teleport to a place if I'd been there before. But I don't have to be in the exact spot."

"So you just have to look at the place to be able to teleport to it?"

"Kind of. The tricky part is that, in order to teleport somewhere, I have to be within its boundary."

I stared at her, confused. "So you have to be in that exact place."

"Not really . . ." Rosaline sighed, frustrated that she couldn't explain it. "Remember when I teleported us to the ground to chase Adriana?"

"Yeah. It was terrifying."

"Well, I hadn't stepped on the spot the portal teleported us onto."

"So then how were you able to teleport us there?"

"The place was part of this Chaos base, right? And I had been in the base before. So, technically, I had been in the boundary of the place."

I sat up straighter, trying to wrap my head around this. "So . . . if you stepped foot into Deeplige, you could teleport anywhere in Deeplige."

"Exactly," Rosaline said with a brilliant smile. 

"How does the cave help with that? Last time I checked, Deeplige wasn't that close to this Chaos base."

"The cave isn't physically connected to or a part of the Void base," Rosaline corrected. "You saw those torches, right? Void soldiers set those up—the cave was probably some sort of hideout they could stay at. But the cave is technically a part of Deeplige."

"How?"

"I'm not really sure," Rosaline admitted. "I kind of have an auto-updating map of the places I can teleport to in my brain. When I stepped into the cave, a huge chunk appeared on the map . . . about the size of Deeplige. Plus, it was at the center of Planet Void, so that was the only accurate guess."

There were so many new things in that sentence, but I didn't know where to start.

The door to the infirmary flung open and a dozen Void soldiers poured in, shooting everybody's attention to them.

"This is an invasion!" the Void soldier in front said, who I assumed was the leader. "Give us all the medical supplies or we'll kill you all!" He pointed the sword forward.

I glanced at Rosaline. It seemed as though we were never not in trouble.