What Came Through Behind Them

His notes for this day are short. There is one fight in them, and the list of what was taken afterwards is longer than the account of the fight. When the records are this thin, the order tells the day the way the Fragments do, and so will I.

And the crowd had fallen quiet, and something large had struck the ground, and they waited on it.
And then the way behind them opened, not once but three times, three portals where there had been none.
And a big one came through in armour, and he was of the drow.
And two came through beside him who were larger still, like bulls, with four horns each, and they were armoured too.
And they were pale, and they had the look of minotaurs, and they were not minotaurs.
For it is said of the nuar that they will tell you so, and that the wheel of Absalom is their home.
And these were enforcers, and no telling says for whom.
And the first shot of light went wide of the bulls, for their armour turned it.
And a harder blow came after, and it landed, and their armour did not turn that.
And they carried cryopikes, cold weapons, long in the hand.
And Kopalo looked on the drow, and the drow was held, and did not move.
And he stayed held for as long as a long breath, and longer, while the fight went on around him.
And a wisp rose up among them, and burned for a little while.
And no telling says whose wisp it was, or what it did. Some give it to Kopalo. This telling does not.
And the telling does not say how the fight ended, only that it ended, and that they stood.
And from the drow they took his ringwear, and a rifle of light with nearly all its charge, and three cells full,
and a grenade that stuns, and a whip, which is called a taclash.
And from the nuar they took ringwear also, and a rifle that freezes, and the cold pikes,
with their cells, two spent and two still full,
and three grenades that shatter, and a serum of healing.
And she who kept the record asked why the gear was set down so carefully, and the fight so briefly.
And the one who taught him said: Because he was still in the place, and did not know what else would come through.
And she said it was a list, and should be kept as one.
And both are kept.

— Fragments of the Keepers, the Kopalo cycle, as it is usually told

The Fragments give the hold more ceremony than the records do. His note says only that the big one was held, and for how long, and then moves on. It reads like a man counting. I would add only that he counted the batteries too, two empty and two full, which is the kind of thing a person writes down when he expects to need them.

Novitiates are taught a short Reading alongside this entry. It was never written about him, but it is hard to read it now without thinking of the three portals.

Note the way you came.
It is also a way in.

— the Observances, from the Readings on Shelter