A Shadow Around the Sun

by Hugo Damas

  They covered the space in quick strides, swiftly reaching the wall. Once there, the Sorcerer whispered a few words and their clothes were pulled in towards the wall. Their feet hovered inches off the floor, and their bodies were pulled until they were inches off the wall. Once there, they started floating upward.

  Meanwhile, one of the guards finally left its position to go check the noise. He didn’t find anything and looked back for instructions. One of the others replied by lifting his long arms in annoyance, and the first thus responded by exasperating in impatient agreement. Clumsily, the guard started walking to circle the room, and luck would have it that he chose the direction that would take the longest to reach the Shadow’s hiding spot.

  When the guard was on the other side of the obelisk, and thus outside of the Shadow’s point of view, the Sorcerer and the Dark Runner were right on top of it.

  The Sorcerer grabbed Dark Runner’s feet, and the Shadow thought he could see her breathing in hesitation before she turned off the spell on Dark Runner. He fell down, but she grabbed hold of him by the ankles, her body rocking a few inches off its fixed hovering position. It was a good thing these guards did not share their senses, or they would have heard the quiet gasp of effort that she was unable to contain. Slowly, the Sorcerer turned her body vertically and then started descending both of them towards their prize.

  Meanwhile, the patrolling guard was near to obtaining an angle where it would spot the Shadow. Quietly, he drew a proper smoke bomb. At the same time, the Dark Runner reached for the large prize, with the straps of his goggles absorbing the sweat on his brow. The three guards were just below him, surrounding the pedestal.

  The Dark Runner bit his lower lip, tense and remarkably scared. The Shadow imagined that the man was not used to being afraid, and he couldn’t blame him for that since there was no telling whether they would be able to escape if he was seen.

  The Shadow gripped his smoke bomb, about to throw it, but then a loud and upsetting screech echoed throughout the facility with a deafening volume. Within two seconds of its repetition, it was clear what it was.

  An alarm! The Shadow realized.

  The guard who was about to reach the Shadow turned to the top of the obelisk, his gaze followed by that of his colleagues and the Shadow himself. They all saw the Sorcerer grabbing onto the Dark Runner who, in turn, had the glowing stone in his hands.

  The dark face and goggles regarded them all, looking very much like the kid caught stealing from the cookie jar.

  “You guys pressurized it, too?!” he yelled, with a remarkably comical tone.

  The guards didn’t find the question funny at all. They pointed and roared in anger just as a grey ball hit the Dark Runner in the chest. It erupted in a bright and sudden bang of flashing light that attacked eyes and ears while also erupting with smoke.

  The Shadow moved swiftly and nimbly, stepping over one of the guards and jumping off of him to reach for the two. The Sorcerer was already focusing her teleportation spell, and the Dark Runner held his free hand out to catch the Shadow.

  The guards most likely attempted to re-focus their senses in time to catch the two atop the obelisk but by the time they started yelling at each other, the Sorcerer had already teleported them away.

  Still, the alarm continued to blare. They had been seen.

  They didn’t waste time and started running. The alarm would throw a normal person’s senses off, the horrible screeching noise that it was, but not them.

  “Dammit! Why didn’t we think it could be pressurized?!” The Dark Runner whined, in a coughing fit. Reflexively, he brought a hand to cover his mouth. Clearly, the corrupted air was getting to him.

  “It was a giant rock,” the Sorcerer protested, “how do you pressurize a rock?!”

  The Shadow took a troubled breath, disappointed with himself. “Human logic is wasted in these circumstances. We should have been more careful.”

  “How’re we supposed to know how these aliens secure their stuff?! This was way unfair!” The Dark Runner protested.

  “We do not know what they are, but we took something from them. Whatever it is, it seems to be very important,” the Shadow said.

  “Clearly,” the Sorcerer agreed, followed by a cough and a momentary stagger in her movement. That made them all stop.

  “Whoah!” The Dark Runner quickly grabbed hold of her, concerned. “Are you okay, Sorce?”

  The Sorcerer sighed and nodded. “Just weary. I--”

  She was interrupted by a beast crash-landing right in front of them. This time, it did not wait in silence, but instead bellowed and immediately lashed out at the ground, launching itself at them.

  The Dark Runner yelled some very specific profanity that the Shadow was not familiar with.

  The Sorcerer was a bit more proactive. She stepped forward, putting herself in-between them and the beast before they could react. Holding her staff with both hands, she pushed it out with all the force she could muster.

  With a yell, a gust of wind rose against the beast’s advance. Her robes fluttered uncontrollably as the beast was slowed down and forced to land a few feet short of reaching them. The beast challenged the gust of wind, reaching for them with its long claws, but she raised her voice to a point where it became a bellow, and that somehow empowered the wind enough that it blew the beast back.

  The beast hit the wall and landed on its feet, undamaged. Meanwhile, the Sorcerer crouched down in exhaustion. The Shadow quickly threw a smoke bomb right at the beast’s face, intending to run. Instead, he felt a hand grasping at his forearm just as the beast came soaring out of the flash and smoke, this time unsurprised by it.

  They teleported away in the nick of time. When his vision returned, he saw the Sorcerer on one knee, holding her own chest as she heaved for control of her own breathing. Her hood was off, showing her blue hair: it was long enough to reach past her shoulders, but only for a little bit. Her forehead was wide open, and clearly frowning.

  “Sorce…” The Dark Runner crouched to look her in the eyes, but she just replied with a heavy sigh. And stood up.

  “I’m fine,” she said, setting her weary purple eyes on them. “But I have only one more teleportation in me,” she said, coughing once.

  “They will have covered all the exits by now,” the Shadow said.

  “And we only know one of them. And then we have the city to clear. I don’t think…” the Sorcerer trailed off, knowing it was unproductive to speak with hopelessness.

  “We need a diversion to uncover the exits,” the Shadow stated, calmly yet fatally.

  The Sorcerer nodded, but the Dark Runner did not agree. “What? Screw that, c’mon guys, we’re better than this, we can run for it.” His confidence was upset by another short coughing fit. “Damn it with this air.”

  It was a nice sentiment, but gullible. The Shadow would not jeopardize the mission for the sake of their own vain hopes. He had been bred and raised to do better.

  “You two are far more skilled at extraction. And I am the best suited to confront those things.”

  “Humpf, I’m willing to prove otherwise,” the Dark Runner said, ready to step up to the challenge.

  “No,” the Shadow stated.

  “Then we’ll both be a diversion! That way, Sorce’ll be able to escape for sure, that’s all that matters,” the Dark Runner argued, intent on sacrificing himself, it seemed. Still coughing and rasping his throat.

  “No,” the Sorcerer herself interrupted, “I am the one who’s tired. I will stay.”

  “Too tired to fight, too tired to escape alone, and I have a mask to breathe through so the air is not affecting me like it is you,” the Shadow pressed. He had to make them understand that this was the only way. “Hear me. It is vital we escape with that stone, yes, but this goes beyond escaping this vessel. We still have to escape this invaded Prusnia. You two can make it if I stay and fight.”

  “Stay and die, you mean,” Dark Runner said, but the Shadow noticed in his tone that
he was coming around to the truth of their situation.

  “I made my peace with death when I took this role, Dark Runner. Did you?”

  “’Course not,” he replied, without hesitation. He coughed twice and added: “there’s plenty I want to do, and lotta years I want to live, regardless of having my code name.”

  “Then live. Do those things.” The Shadow looked at them from behind his expressionless mask, not wanting to say what he wanted to say. But it would help, “with her.”

  Surprisingly, the Sorcerer was the one still unconvinced.

  “It is my fault that I am tired,” she said, sagely. “I will stay.”

  “It is because of you that we managed to steal it in the first place. It would have been impossible otherwise,” the Shadow argued, his temper slowly boiling with the stress of wasted time.

  “But--”

  The Shadow uncharacteristically felt a sliver of emotion. Frustration sprouted within him since time was of the utmost essence, and so he suddenly reached for his mask with such an abrupt movement it alone interrupted the Sorcerer’s protest. He pulled the mask out, and then carefully squeezed his eye lenses out of his face, revealing they really were simply big contact lenses: dark and magical.

  He showed them his shaved and lean face, the scars in his chin, nose and right temple. He looked at them with his grave dark almond eyes and spoke even more gravely. “Katsuo begs of you! Go. Tell my clan I died with honor, for the sake of its glory. Tell all of the invasion that has begun, and put a stop to it.”

  The moment of silence was there, but it was shortened by the Dark Runner who placed a hand on his shoulder and glared at him intently and respectfully.

  “I’m Griff, and I promise you I’ll do these things. I…cannot tell you what this sacrifice means to us. To us all.”

  The Sorcerer looked at him, a bit teary-eyed, and sniffed.

  “I am Eliza…and I say it means everything,” she put her hand on his other shoulder. While the Dark Runner’s grip was an encouraging one, hers was a supporting one. “Fight well, Shadow, and live on in name…as every Shadow before you.”

  Katsuo nodded but said nothing. There was nothing to say, they had been convinced, and that was all that was necessary. He put his lenses back, waiting the customary seconds they needed to become part of the eyes. Then he put on his mask and then turned his back to them. Without another word, he ran, leaving them behind as they voiced nothing but a few coughs.

  Katsuo turned a corner and left them behind and never looked back. After all, though he was running to his end, there was no reason to hesitate. His end had already come years ago when the Shadow had begun.

  Katsuo ran. His steps sounded loudly against the floor.

  A monster was quick to appear in front of him, at a hall intersection, so he turned the other way before it could react, and kept running. He circled around another, stepped out of one’s leap by a hair’s length, and kept running. Turning a corner, he created a clone of shadows and sent it the other way, splitting the group hunting him.

  When he met head-on with one of the beasts, in the middle of a corridor hardly wide enough to fit it, he performed one of his best tricks to survive. The monster leapt at him, and he again stepped to the side while running, but the monster hit the wall to push itself into intercepting Katsuo, but it wasn’t really him. The monster overlapped against Katsuo, dispersing his image into the air as the real Katsuo formed out of the wall’s darkness on the opposite side.

  He ran back to the room they had robbed, leading what was now a group made up of dozens of enemies behind him. There was one of them standing guard, but the Shadow threw a smoke bomb at it and slid in-between its legs while it was dazed, allowing the thing to take the brunt of another beast’s leap, which would have caught Katsuo.

  When the smoke cleared, and the beasts began to crowd their way into the room, Katsuo was standing atop the obelisk-like pedestal that had held the stone they had stolen. They were quick to surround him, but then stopped short of actually attacking him.

  Instead, they watched him in dreaded silence, as if perplexed by him just standing there.

  “I have lived an honorable life,” Katsuo told them, regardless of whether or not they could understand. “And am ready for it to come to an end. Nevertheless, I will resist.”

  “YOOUUU!” The voice made Katsuo shiver. It came more from being startled than frightened.

  The Shadow looked down to see the leader, the one he had previously seen in the war room with the map. His throat seemed overly damaged as he spoke, almost as if he had never used it.

  “Where. Is the. Power?” His vocal cords gnawed at every letter.

  Katsuo’s mind ran fast. Power? Does he mean the stone? Why would he call it that?

  “Power?” he asked.

  “Tell,” the leader threatened, “or die.”

  “Were you not here a few seconds ago? Or were you not listening? I am prepared to die,” the Shadow said.

  The leader seemed confused about the notion, about the fact his threat did not incur effect. With the pure, crystalline irises twisted by confusion, its throat again scratched with effort. “How. Did you. Know a--bout it?”

  I could probe for information, he seems easy to manipulate. The Shadow thought. I will never be able to pass it on, but whatever time is gained on conversation, it is gained for those two to escape.

  “Did you think we were so helpless?” Katsuo faced the leader’s dark, evil eyes, with his own sharply deadly ones, even though it was likely they couldn’t be seen behind his mask and lenses. “We knew you were coming, heralded by this damned mist. We know you and your weaknesses, and so you have lost the war before it even began.”

  It took a second for the man to react, as if he was translating what he had heard to himself. Then, the man grinned. And then he laughed. And then they all laughed. The chamber filled with amused and patronizing laughter as all their voices reverberated off the walls and each other.

  The Shadow now understood that the beasts were likely armors of some kind.

  “You. Know nothing,” the man said, content.

  That reminded Katsuo of something. Suddenly, his mind tracked back to his past, to when he was surrounded by all his clansmen, those of his child-like age. They also laughed then.

  “Laugh away,” he had said in protest, “but the honor will be mine!”

  Another memory flashed through his mind, one in which he was a bit older. Katsuo threw a diamond ring at the ground, and that silenced a room filled with grown-ups and his fellows. The diamond was shaped like a crown and easy to identify, Katsuo would never forget it, just as he would always remember the look on all their faces. Especially on the face of Mitsue, who many considered to be the favorite for the role.

  “The crowned ring of the Shogun! Now a property, a trophy! Of the Kagekawa clan. I will succeed the Shadow!”

  This naturally took his mind to the day he became the Shadow. He was barely an adult and was sleeping on a tree branch. An old man dressed in the rich but simple kimono of the clan leadership came to him. He had been his mentor as a child.

  “The decision has been made,” his voice had sounded out, knowing Katsuo was listening, “when the sun rises in the morrow, your eyes will be covered, your body dressed, and you shall live out the rest of your days as the Shadow.”

  “It is an honor,” Katsuo had said, betraying no emotion. It had been beaten out of him many years before that. “I am grateful.”

  “Your parents would be proud. The Shadow represents the Kagekawa in the underworld, along with The Darkness and the Head of Mist. Thief and Assassin, and spies, all three the world’s best.”

  “The best.” Katsuo had hesitated. “Honestly, I cannot be sure I am capable of such a feat.”

  “We are never sure of anything, junior Katsuo.”

  “Wrong,” Katsuo had stated, firmly. He jumped down to stand before his mentor and regarded him levelly. “I am sure of my commitment. And I am the best amo
ng my brothers. That much I know for sure.”

  The old man had bowed to him then. Katsuo remembered his tone of voice was not one of pride, nor of relief nor any such feeling. It simply lacked any shred of doubt.

  “And so you become the Shadow, master Katsuo. For the glory of our clan.”

  “Your land,” the evil voice spoke, pulling Katsuo’s attention back to the present, “will fall. But you. Don’t have. To.”

  “I am a man of my land, and I will die before it comes to harm,” the Shadow proclaimed.

  Again, a few moments of lagging understanding. The man then produced a slight blink. “So. You will.”

  The man pointed at Katsuo, a commanding gesture. In response, two of the beasts leapt against the obelisk. Katsuo threw a smoke bomb at the ground, but the flash of light went ignored by all the beasts. They were now prepared for it.

  From the smoke, some Katsuos surged, quick and fast and impossible to discern. All of them clashed and dissolved against several different beasts. Confused, they were alerted by Katsuo’s voice.

  “What seems to be the problem?” They looked up at him, noticing he was standing upside down on the ceiling, held up by his ankles being submerged in a dissolved shadowy mist. “Did you see a shadow?”

  The leader grunted something, and the two monsters grabbed unto the obelisk and propelled themselves straight up to catch Katsuo, who let himself fall into them. He attempted to spin around their claws but failed, suffering a deep cut in his right thigh, and worst yet, his left foot was cleaved straight through.

  Landing, the Shadow dashed and ducked under a claw, losing a piece of the back of his head, but at the same time, the swing hit another monster to his side just as he heard the first two leapers crashing against the ceiling.

  The Shadow rolled to the side, hopped and landed atop a claw and then jumped over the foe so another claw could smack another claw aside, and unfortunately, a bit of his back was sliced off as well.