Shadow Knight

by M. H. Johnson

  Jess’s grin was fierce, even savage. There were many questions she wanted to ask, but she was no fool. Having seized the initiative with her shieldbrother by her side, she had just managed to break through her enemy’s lines, and had only moments to act before her enemies regrouped. And a moment was all she needed. With a roar equal parts fury and triumph, Jess struck, her longsword crackling fiercely as it tore through the complex weave of protective magics she sensed radiating from her foe, plunging deep within her enemy’s shadowy hood, jarring momentarily against his skull before punching through. Her foe's horrified gasp resonated eerily through the chamber as he stiffened upon her blade, still alive and blinking for those horrid moments, body wracked by spasms as he collapsed to the ground.

  Gazing coldly into her dying foe's eyes, Jess ruthlessly tore her blade free of his skull.

  Jess pressed herself to Malek’s back even as both raised their blades high, prepared to face the onslaught of dozens of enemy soldiers turning about to strike, having gambled everything on that one dangerous gambit, charging into the very heart of their foe’s forces to kill the king before the pawns could regroup and take them down.

  And it appeared their mad gamble had worked. Malek laugh with triumph as their enemies faded away to shadows and mist before their very eyes.

  “Bloody hells, we did it, Jess. We did it!” Jess smiled in heartfelt relief as her closest friend turned to face her, his eyes shining with ebullience and the giddy joy of surviving impossible odds. Impulsively he squeezed her close in a fierce hug, their swords carefully to their sides, even as their peers hollered and cheered.

  Jess squeezed her shieldbrother back, blinking away awkward, unexpected tears she would have no one see, relieved beyond words that she had guessed correctly, that she and her shieldbrother and all the survivors would live to see another day. Or so she fervently hoped.

  She turned to face Eloquin even then approaching, humbled beyond words at the expression he favored her with, nothing less than fierce pride. “Well done, Jessica de Calenbry. Well done. You have proven once more that your insights are just as sharp in the arena of life and death as they are on the training grounds. We shall have to discuss your deductions and our subsequent victory at length, when time permits.” His expression turned grim once more. “For now, we must see to the wounded and call the alarm. I am going to need several of us to race to the Wizards Wing and alert them as to the events unfolding, even as the rest of us scout for enemy troops still within the keep. For whether you know it or not, Jess, most of your professors and peers lay trapped within dream, unable to waken, easy prey for any enemy who has breached our walls.

  Yet to this Jess gave an urgent shake of her head. “There is a reason why the shriek of your whistle has only reached your most dedicated students, master Eloquin! It is not that everyone else is trapped in some sort of enchanted sleep, or at least it is not only that.” She locked her eyes to Eloquin’s own hawk-like gaze, and he blinked, hissing his frustration and stepping back, as if he suddenly understood what she was about to say even before the words left her mouth.

  “We are dreaming, general," Jess solemnly declared. "We are not awake at all. And what's worse, I sensed the shadowy presence of enemies skulking past us, determined to kill us all in our sleep, even as we fight their counterparts who had successfully invaded our dreams!"

  “By the black abyss!” Eloquin cursed, turning to face his students, those with whom he had such a strong connection that they were able to hear his call and rally to his side, even in the realm of dreams; a pull Jess herself had felt. “We return to our quarters, men! We must rouse ourselves and combat our foe even as they seek to stab us unawares!” Jess’s peers all gave resolute nods, turning as one to leave when, to Jess’s utter surprise, Twilight spoke.

  “If you leave my mistress's sight at this moment, you are all dead men. Think! Your sleep has been aided by enchantment. An artifact is at play here, and I can tell General Eloquin knows exactly what I speak of. You won't be able to do anything but watch your own throats being slit as you try fruitlessly to waken!"

  More than a few of the students gazed at Jess and the cat perched so comfortably upon her mithril covered shoulder with looks of surprise, awe, or outright fear.

  “By the gods, she really does have a talking cat!” one student whispered in amazement.

  “This is a dream, after all. And how many of us here have ridden together under Eloquin's banner the entire endless summer just past, fighting by Jess's side, trusting her intuition, no matter how strange her claims. So long as she's on our side, I don't care if she has a dozen talking cats!" Colin, one of the few Squires training also as a battlemages declared, flashing Jess a bemused smile as he rolled one powerful shoulder, leaking blood freely from what Jess was grateful to see was only a shallow cut.

  "But Eloquin, our master, isn't he..."

  "The seasons have no place in realms of Shadow and dream. Your foes strike where they are strongest, and they think us weakest." Twilight's cold analysis cut off all murmurs, more than a few Squires turning to gaze at him in awe.

  Neal, a sandy-haired Squire who was both good friend and brilliant tactician in his own right gave a slow nod, acknowledging the situation, turning to gaze at Jess with concerned hazel eyes. "Very well then, Jess. You assessed the battlefield well enough to strike our enemy at his one weak point, and somehow managed to save our skins. What do you suggest we do now?"

  Jess grimaced, turning to face her own familiar’s enigmatic sapphire gaze, but he only gave a slow shake of his head. “No, my Jess. It is you, and you alone who must understand what must be done. You must forge the connections. You must intuitively feel how it’s all put together in order to counter it, or there is no hope for these children at all.”

  Jess hissed. “I hate it when you say crap like that.” She allowed herself only a moment’s frustration, shutting her eyes and taking a deep breath, trying to sense how all the pieces fit into place: Shadowy beings able to kill their dreaming selves as they slept, the entire student body somehow pulled into the land of dreams. The complex weave of arcane strands that had enhanced the dark wizard’s magic, like no elemental spell she had ever seen before.

  Jess had no doubt that an artifact was in play.

  Her mind immediately hopped back to the aching realization that poor little Louise was somehow in dire peril, that somehow she was tied to the nightmarish occurrences at their school. It was an awareness that sent her heart racing with equal parts fury and panic. Ruthlessly she calmed herself, forcing herself to focus.

  How was she able to defeat those creatures in Shadow? As vaguely as she could remember it, though it was somehow far clearer now while she dreamed, she had used the power of her will, her life force, to counter the forces of death and shadow that had opposed her. And how had she channeled her will? What had been the conduit? The very conduit that had allowed her to face down her foes here in dream once more, able to cut through the same mystical wards other Squires had struggled futilely against, eventually helping Jess to take down the linchpin of the assault.

  Her blood. Her blood and Malek’s orbs, themselves linked to the lost arts of bloodmagic, had been the only things to penetrate the terrible wards of their shadowy foes; their life force trumping the power of Shadow and dream.

  Jess opened her eyes once more, grimacing only slightly as she reopened the cut on her cheek, causing Malek to flinch. "It's all right, Malek," she soothed, even though tearing open the wound made her nauseous with the sudden jolt of pain. She cupped the dripping blood in her palm, turning of a sudden to smack her hand wetly against a surprised looking Eloquin's face.

  “Awaken and alert the school we are under attack!” Jess cried, her mentor who was so much more than a mere professor nodded once before fading from sight. She turned to gaze upon her peers, happy to see only a few looking lost and uncertain, most understanding at once the purpose of Jess’s actions, smiling and nodding their heads in approval. Which was to be
expected, Jess thought. They were, after all, the brightest of all those students at Highrock with a talent for warfare, most being far better scholars than she could ever hope to be. Only on the battlefield did her colors ever shine.

  With all orderly haste, they proceeded towards Jess and her bloodied palm. She grimaced even as her peers winked. "Send us home, mistress of dreams. Let the crimson covered glory of your command triumph over the darkest magics of nightmare!" teased Neal, flashing a grin even as Jess smacked him hard.

  “Awaken and arm thyself!" she shouted with every clap of her stinging palm against the foreheads of her surviving peers, grimacing when she aggravated her cut for fresh blood as needed. Within a thankfully short period of time, all of them had been jolted out of the enchanted dream they were in, and back into the land of the living. Or so Jess fervently hoped.

  Taking a deep shuddering breath, she deliberately strode over to the score of sobbing, begging students, crippled and bleeding in the center of the vile rune that had been laid upon the center of the great hall. Eyes suddenly flashing, Jess hissed and snarled as she deliberately scraped her bloodstained blade across the tiles, marring the rune and reveling in the sudden hot rush of power roaring through her as the foul magics ruptured with a hideous shriek it seemed no one herself could hear, the vile sigil vanishing as if it had never been.

  “Awaken and arm thyself! Your injuries are but dream!” Jess roared, shocking all of the crippled students to stupefied silence even as she smacked each of the shaking children upon the forehead with her bloodied palm.

  And for the moment at least, the grand dining room, so recently turned to a place of horror and slaughter, stood empty of all save the accusing glares of the fallen. Jess took a deep breath, shuddering as the horror of what had occurred began to rock through her. She found her hands oddly shaking as she struggled to resheathe her blade, one pair of haunted eyes spearing right through her. Malek's powerful hands steadied her when she suddenly felt faint.

  “Focus, Jess!” Twilight’s voice cracked like a whip. He showed no mercy, giving her a firm nip upon her earlobe.

  "But that was Duggin!" Jess sobbed, gazing back into the haunted eyes of a young man who had been the source of so much pain and grief, before finally confessing his part in a scheme that had nearly cost Jess everything she valued most. Yet seeing him now, wearing the penitent's robe he had so feared, arms raised helplessly as he was cut down, denied even the chance at redemption and a life he could be proud of, broke her heart.

  “They butchered him! He was just a stupid boy who finally had the courage to face his shame. He could have been someone worthy of this school, of himself! And now that chance at a life worth living, at any life at all, is gone forever!" Jess choked back a bitter, furious sob. "My heart went out to him when I saw the panic in his eyes, everyone glaring at him with such contempt at a feast I remember only now. Even if he had played the fool, I saw how much he regretted it. Bloody hells, I saw myself in his eyes!"

  “If you give in to the horror now, all is lost, Jess. We are not yet done!"

  Jess grimaced and shook her head, unable to tear her eyes away from the awful massacre. So many of her classmates, faces once filled with smiles and laughter, now twisted in final rictuses of horror and death. It did not matter that so many had looked down upon her, she had shared laughter with all of them at one time or another, and her heart bled to see them so still and utterly lifeless. Young men and women who had such dreams of doing their families proud, marrying well and finding happiness and success in life, only to be butchered by merciless footmen cloaked in shadow for daring to defend themselves, for daring to defend their helpless fellow students against foul invaders who intended such ill.

  In that moment her horror and sorrow rekindled to fury once more. Cohorts of those monsters who had butchered her peers in this twisted dream were even now skulking forth in the waking world, eager to kill those sleeping students in the flesh that they had failed to murder in the realm of dreams. Jess locked her hot gaze to Malek's own, both sharing a moment of terrible regret, and a searing resolution to see justice done.

  “We are going to kill those bastards, Malek. Each and every one!”

  Malek, gentle brown eyes filled with tears streaming down his cheeks unbidden, grinned in fierce accord. “Damn right we are, shieldsister. But how do we get to them?”

  Jess turned her head to gaze into her familiar’s sapphire orbs once more. “Twilight?”

  Her familiar smiled. “I think you already know the answer, my mistress. You saw the strands of power linking that pathetic excuse for a wizard to something far darker. And you know what other trail we must follow as well, if we are to get to the heart of this dream and destroy our enemies where they lair.”

  Jess nodded curtly, understanding exactly what she must do. She reached one hand out for her shieldbrother, Malek instinctively knowing to wrap his hand within her own, never mind the blood, even as Jess felt herself somehow sink within her own mind, closing off all awareness save the odd strands of power she still felt reverberating through the massive hall. Fiercely she clamped down upon the sounds of battle and violence she still heard echoing through the great chamber, knowing they were but memories of those souls recently fallen.

  She shivered then. More than memories. She felt the weight of their very souls as they gazed at her helplessly, as if begging her to somehow save them even as she felt them slip away. It was a weight that pierced her heart.

  And she gasped and shuddered as a terrible awareness overcame her, inexplicable, yet a truth she was utterly certain of. Those poor fallen souls were going the wrong way. Released from their mortal coils, she sensed, somehow, that a place of peace awaited them. A place of gentle renewal before journeying once more upon the great wheel of life and rebirth. Yet they were being brutally torn from their path of gentle ascension, forcefully compelled into a realm of unspeakable horror, its captives tormented by hideous nightmares without end.

  Jess shivered, sensing that this was the very same direction the artifact's strands of vile power streamed off to. And that was not all. For Jess felt the helpless cries of a living child also trembling through the ether, trapped in a place of pain and terror.

  It was a voice she knew all too well. Jess bit back a cry, terror flooding through her, seeing in her mind's eye a little girl whose hauntingly beautiful features would one day net her a garden full of suitors if she but lived to see her sixteenth summer, whose innocent laughter and fierce hugs always touched Jess's heart, no matter how cold and ruthless Eloquin's lessons had pushed her to become.

  Jess locked gazes with the man beside her. “Malek, do you trust me?”

  “To hell and back,” Malek grinned, and Jess flashed him a grateful smile. Always there for her. Loyal to a fault. She felt her heart swell with love for him, even as tendrils of dread slithered through her.

  “Funny you should say that, brother of my heart. We may be heading in that very direction. I think, somehow, these monsters trapped little Louise someplace terrible.” Jess shook, squeezing her eyes tight. “Malek, there is no guarantee we'd even make it back. The one thing I do know is that if we don't dare the journey, Louise and the souls of a dozen students will be locked in a place of torment and horror. Forever. So if you want to back out, my brother, there is no shame.”

  Malek’s dark smile made it quite clear what his feelings were in the matter. “Why are we wasting time with stupid questions, Jess? When have I ever not fought by your side? Let’s show those bastards what terror truly means!”

  Twilight, still on her shoulder, dipped his head. “You do your mistress proud, Hound.”

  Jess grinned fiercely despite the hot sting of pain she felt, drawing her naked blade across her cheek. “Then let’s give those bastards hell!” With that she and her brother-in-arms roared as one, feeling space itself twist oddly about them as Jess sent them hurtling in unspeakable directions, somehow following the faint crimson pulse of dark magics linking their scho
ol to the foulest of rituals, led as well by the cries of souls pulled from their promised refuge, and by the innocent tears of a child she loved. Moving as one, Jess and her companions raced downward to the edges of darkest Shadow, ready to combat whatever horrors they would face, together. That her familiar took the form of a massive panther of inky darkness, and her shieldbrother a great fiery mastiff howling his challenge to the very Void as they soared through stormy skies and seas of blood did not phase Jess in the least, for the realms they raced through were as much twisted dream as darkest reality.

  2

  An explosion of shrieking light and scuttling colors washed over her. Jess’s nostrils flared at the crawling sensation even as she shook the confusion away, finding herself in an amphitheater of perfect darkness, so snug she could almost stroke its edges, yet so vast she could almost sense the dark cavern of shadow choking the stars, endless miles above. Before her was a massive shimmering ball of crimson light, and she found herself able to spy within it as if it were a giant globe of rose-colored quartz. The scene within made her stomach churn with horror and fury in equal measure, and she realized it was she, trapped in that twisted dream, that gazed upon reality in all its depravity.

  The crimson quartz looked down upon an underground chamber; some ancient, vast structure of unknown origin that served a far darker purpose today than had been its original function, Jess had no doubt. The floor was covered in eldritch sigils painted with blood and dung, within which stood a number of robed and hooded men. Protection of some sort, Jess surmised. Protection from the hideous apparition that hovered over the stone pedestal upon which a screaming Louise lay.

  The young girl writhed and whimpered, covered in bloody runes, loops of twine cruelly biting into her flesh. Upon her bleeding scalp was a crown of thorns. Jess’s heart broke to see the innocent eyes of her beloved young friend, so normally filled with smiles and good cheer, were now stretched wide in terror, even as her poor exhausted frame let loose another ragged scream.