by Hugo Damas
Hugo Damas
A Shadow Around the Sun
Shadow Conclave
First published by HDamas in 2018
Copyright © Hugo Damas, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Hugo Damas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
First edition
Cover art by Amir Zand
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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Contents
I. PROLOGUE
The Twenty-Third Of His Name
The Dark Beasts
Birth of the Shadow Conclave
II. THE GREATEST THIEVES
A Businessman
To Be Challenged
For the Worse of Everyone
Poor Little Boy
What a Freak
The Defending Champion
III. DARKNESS SPREADS
Legacy
Priorities
Web of Powers
Child of the World
End of a Dynasty
The One and Only
IV. THE ENEMIES WITHIN
Unparalleled Genius
Who is the Street Rat?
The Light of Hope
Chaos and Fun
V. EPILOGUE
Griff, Founder of the Tech Guild
Afterword
I
Prologue
The Twenty-Third Of His Name
A lone horse-rider approached the edge of a cliff. The horse was black, as was the man’s cloak and hood. He had finally gotten over the mountainous hills that surrounded the city.
In the distance, he could see the center to that entire region. Even through the eerie mist that enveloped it that night, faint lights still managed to peer through and glow in the otherwise pitch blackness.
Few locations in the world sported electricity, but only one had succeeded to implement it at a city scale, and that was Prusnia, the capital city of the free kingdom of Runsshia, the richest in the free world.
For all of those reasons, it was the prime target for thieves. Especially of world renown. Especially of his kind.
From within the cloak, the man retrieved a closed parchment. He opened it and said the words to activate it, all the while keeping his eyes on the city. He noticed how the mist was intensifying and gradually thickening.
The man closed his hands and performed the firm gestures required of the technique. Then, he looked down at the once blank parchment to find a new sentence written into it in the familiar handwriting of his handler and informer.
Have you arrived?
The figure drew upon a quill. He wrote the reply in his own handwriting, even though its tip was dry.
Yes.
Is the mist truly in place?
As reported. Visibility will be scarce inside the city.
There is news. Expect two competitors: Dark Runner, Sorcerer.
I understand. Further information?
Sorcerer approaches from the east. Dark Runner yet eludes. One of the Mist is silent in the north.
I will be making my approach from the south, he thought to himself in silence, so I should not meet with neither of them until I am near the palace.
Commands?
Kagekawa must always stand superior. As Shadow, you cannot leave the city with any less profit than the others.
I understand. I will contact you once I have safely exited the sensor field.
Skill and honor be with you, Shadow.
Glory to the Kagekawa.
The man nodded in agreement, writing one last sentence before closing the scroll.
Glory to the Clan.
He was The Shadow, twenty third of his name, a thief affiliated with the Kagekawa clan. Arguably the best thief in the world, he would now be forced to face two others bearing such claim to fame to prove that he was the best of them.
He did not know the origin of the mist, and as he breathed in, focusing and concentrating, he couldn’t help but feel an ounce of dread and foreboding tragedy emanating from it. But then, that was the environment that most benefited a thief.
Most of all the Shadow.
The Dark Beasts
The streets of Prusnia were usually well-lit by powerful light-bulbs within tall street lamps, but that night, the confidence in that power betrayed the streets. They were too tall and too far apart to surpass the mist enveloping the city.
There were spaces of complete darkness amidst every lamp, and in one of those, stood the Shadow. Two of the city’s militia passed him by, none the wiser.
“Man, I can’t see a damn thing in front of me,” said one.
“Tell me about it. I’m starting to forget what my nose looks like,” said the other.
“Lucky you,” the first said, laughing, “forgetting that ugly thing.”
The Shadow had left the cloak and hood behind with the horse. His real gear was simpler, though not any less prepared to be used in darkness. Black cloth wrapped tightly around his limbs, over a slightly lighter black top and pants, also tight and secured. His mask was the tone of the cloths, and his eye slits were the darkest part of the costume. They moved like his real eyes but showed no sign of having an iris nor anything else that might resemble eyes. They were just the dark slits of an otherwise featureless face. From hair to toe, he was equipped to interact with the shadows of the world.
Once the guards had gotten far enough, the blacker than black slits looked around the street and, once content, closed in concentration. His body melted into the wall, oozing through it to get inside the house.
Once inside, they opened again in the darkness of the environment. Its residents were fast asleep, so only a couple of candles lit the environment. Even so, the Shadow kept great caution as he searched the room.
Never steering far from the shadow on the wall, he went to a cabinet, browsing its contents. All of it was valueless, but for a ring. He eyed the ring closely, turning it around in front of him to appraise just how valuable the gem it sported really was. Satisfied, he pocketed the ring.
Suddenly, the Shadow heard a noise at the front door. A loud one, as if it had been crashed open.
Instincts kicked in, and he leapt back to the wall. The Shadow wasn’t really in time to phase through before the door to the room burst open. He froze, his awareness doing a double-take on his surroundings.
The room was a simple living room with a flight of stairs accessing the upper floor, and a door leading to what he assumed was the entrance hall, now broken down. Looking at the shattered door, he saw some kind of beast. The thing was on two legs, though the feet were long claws which shot out of the leg to pierce the ground. Its two arms were bulgy and muscled, also bearing four-fingered claws. The torso widened considerably as it went up from the legs, being thinnest at where the legs connected and broadest at what he could call the chest area. Its head was, for the lack of a better word, monstrous. It had huge fangs, and it slumped and bent forward as if protruding from the body.
What is that? The Shadow asked himself, while a second beast shoved its way into the room by lumbering forward awkwardly while clawing at the walls to keep steady. It didn’t seem like they were made to walk on two
legs.
The beasts were as black as the Shadow’s eye slits, which meant their hide was darker than the shadows and mists. On top of that, they possessed a distorting kind of aura, like a heatwave. Their eyes were pure white with nothing but a pitch black circle inside each of them. As he watched, they went around the white at blurring speeds until they stopped dead, facing the Shadow.
They are looking at me, The Shadow realized, but I cannot gauge their intentions.
The intensity of the stare was broken by screams and shouts coming from outside the house. The Shadow could wait around until definite evidence of their aggressiveness showed itself, but as another beast came into view through the door, lumbering towards him, he decided he wasn’t about to allow his death to become such evidence.
How fast are they? The Shadow wondered. Can I phase through before they can catch me?
Leaning forward, near-reaching the floor with the tip of their claws, they watched him with curiosity. As if trying to understand. The screams outside intensified but were put aside by steps thundering down the staircase. A man walked forth, strong and scared and holding a steam-powered rifle.
“Da void are you?!!” He yelled, not even noticing the Shadow.
The beasts turned to the man, startled, and the Shadow concentrated to phase through the wall. The man got off a shot against one of them, but the bullet did little else than delay the beast’s reaction for half a second. Quickly, it stepped towards him and swiped its claw with vile violence, tearing the man aside in a burst of blood.
In the time it took for that beast to do that, the second beast dropped forward in the direction of the Shadow, piercing the ground with its hands. They pulled, and the legs shot straight like pistons to launch the beast soaring across the air like a dark ghost.
The Shadow heard the wall being crashed against, but he was already safe in the shadow stream. Sounds, sight, every sense was now refracted in its attempt to get to his existence. He moved up, to the flat rooftop above.
Once he had emerged out of the shadowed ground, he stood to watch the scenes unfolding around him in the streets. The Shadow observed how many beasts were swarming the patrols and whatever individuals decided to venture outside their homes, and on top of that, many were invading the houses as well. They seemed to be impervious to any weapon and would walk around clumsily unless they leapt like frogs. Not exactly like frogs, he noted, their legs would bend to provide a slingshot muscle movement, and not exactly the piston-like jump he thought he had seen. They weren’t jumping, they were pulling and launching themselves.
What is happening here? The Shadow asked himself.
Knowing full well he couldn’t get a hold of his contacts to obtain instructions, the Shadow considered about what to do. The mystic mist was no coincidence, nor perhaps the choice of location. Though one would assume the beasts to be just that, beasts, what he saw were signs of an invasion, and that would mean intellect.
Outworlders, he wondered, doubtful. Out-planers, he considered, convinced. Demons, he thought, feeling superstitious.
It bothered him to no end that he did not know what they were, but whatever they were, the fact they had yet to spot him on the roof meant they did not possess some sort of supernatural senses. Most likely, they could simply see in the dark. That, the Shadow considered, was not the end of the world. Shadows were his allies, but his capacity for stealth was not limited to them. This meant he could go around, which in turn meant he could leave. Run for his life.
The Shadow would not be doing that. There were only two individuals within the city he could contact to trade impressions, and only one of them was bound to know more about the creatures.
Yes, the Shadow asserted, nodding to himself, I must find the Sorcerer. If anyone is bound to know more about these creatures than I, it will be one of the House of Magni.
With purpose set, the Shadow wasted no more time. His body blended into the dark mist around him and he began to move.
As he navigated the city, the Shadow could hear the sounds of battle within the dark mist that now filled the streets, but his heart was cold to the suffering of others.
What mattered was information. One cannot take action without information. The Shadow’s search for the Sorcerer took him east-bound, and it facilitated things that the beasts did not seem to be interested in the roofs, or the sky. They never looked up. So he simply kept to such heights as he moved, all the while listening to the screams and violence.
“Nothing’s working--AHHH!!”
And death.
Eventually, he reached a large gap in the middle of the city. To the average eye, it would simply look like a clearing in the middle of the mist, but thanks to the shadow lenses, he could see it was not so. A gigantic structure was standing amidst ruptured terrain, occupying the middle of the square, and its metal was very much like the beasts’ hide. A dark void that his sights could not pierce or accurately discern, but which was solid all the same.
Intrigued, he decided to get closer. The Shadow didn’t know what it was, but it was clearly something that had to do with the beasts. Soon, he found what looked like an opening, and circling it, he found a couple of beasts standing still.
Standing guard.
The Shadow hummed, quietly thinking. If this isn’t their transportation, it is most definitely one of them. It is hidden in the thickest part of the mist, and guarded, so it must be important.
The Shadow thought for a moment on what to do about the new discovery. He ended up deciding that he still lacked knowledge. I will be cautious about this and first see to gathering as much information as I can. I must keep this place in mind.
The Shadow turned and continued on his path around it.
Despite the delay, it did not take him too long to find her, though in the circumstances that surrounded him, too long was a very subjective term. The Shadow found her inside an odd barn at the edge of the city, but she wasn’t alone.
“What are these things?!!” Her companion asked.
“I don’t know, how many times will you be asking?” The Sorcerer responded, frustrated.
The fact the Sorcerer was not alone was significant information, though largely irrelevant as far as the circumstances were concerned. The Sorcerer was a world-renowned thief, twentieth of her name, and basically the Shadow’s counterpart for the House of Magni.
“Until they reply? I dunno, anything’s better than fighting, we can’t hurt them.” The man she was with was the Dark Runner, first of his name, though still a thief of great renown. The Shadow considered he might have sought her out for the same reason he was trying, but it was unlikely that he would have found her beforehand.
“They’re just looking at us,” the Sorcerer noted.
“Listen, we both know you can’t channel the teleportation fast enough. I’ll jump ’em, and you get out while I distract ’em,” the Dark Runner said.
“Are you insane? I am not leaving you here to die,” the Sorcerer protested.
The Shadow considered Dark Runner’s madness in relating to one of the House of Magni like that. He could not bring himself to accept such a mad hypothesis. Certainly, there was more going on than a love affair.
“Look, just--”
The Dark Runner suddenly jolted his eyes up, right at him, and the Sorcerers’ weren’t far behind. The Shadow knew they could see his eye-slits. In fact, he was impressed that the man had noticed his presence. Half the Shadow’s torso was hanging down from the ceiling, with the rest hiding behind the pool of shadows that made up its surface.
“Shadow?” The Dark Runner asked, surprised.
The Sorcerer wasted no time in taking advantage of all eyes turning to the Shadow, including that of the beasts. Quickly, she flipped and hit the ground with the butt of her staff, yelling out “DAR!”
The both of them closed their eyes, avoiding the flash-bang spell that would generate a screen of smoke, but the monsters had attempted to jump right at them and had all crashed into each other, or a
gainst the walls, visibly blinded.
“Do it now, Sorce!” The Dark Runner said.
The Shadow closed his eyes and melted into the ceiling, emerging above on the rooftop as if from a lake made of tar. A flash called his peripheral attention, and looking towards it, he saw The Sorcerer and the Dark Runner on top of another building.
“There’s nothing that can hurt them!” The sounds of fight and struggle continued on, somewhere below, in the now dark and misty streets. The Shadow paid them no mind.
He would talk to these two great competitors, world-renowned thieves, and together, they might just make the right decisions.
“That was close,” the Dark Runner pointed out.
“Why did you help us?” the Sorcerer asked.
“Do you know these creatures?” The Shadow asked in turn, wanting to establish the conversation around the one meaningful topic.
“No, we have no idea what they are,” The Sorcerer replied.
“PULL BACK TO THE PALACE,” a yell came from the streets below, “WE NEED TO PROTECT THE LORD!”
None of the three paid any mind to the screaming and death going on around them, somewhere in the thick mist.
“WHAT THE VOID ARE THESE THINGS?!”
“By the way,” the Dark Runner interjected, “I ran into one of your spies. Don’t worry, he’s alive.”
The Shadow eyed the two in judgmental silence. “What were you doing in that barn? There is nothing of value in there.”
The Dark Runner scoffed and crossed his arms, smirking knowingly. “Shows what you know, man. The most valuable thing to me was in there.”
Startled and embarrassed, the Sorcerer jerked her head aside, her voice striking like a whip: “shut up, Dark Runner.”
