by Martha Carr
Maleshi’s eyes widened. “Crown be damned.”
She leaped from the back of the broken digger, sent a bolt of silver lightning into the machine Cheyenne had ripped apart, and ran toward the halfling. “Just don’t let go, kid.”
“Ya think?”
For the first time in countless centuries, General Maleshi Hi’et recoiled with a cold wave of alarm when she heard Cheyenne’s voice, dozens of otherworldly tones speaking as one.
“Don’t just stand there!” Cheyenne shouted, oblivious to the many-toned snarl in a spectrum of pitches erupting from her throat. She shot Maleshi a sidelong glance, the black flames dancing behind her eyes and shadowing her pale human face in dark light.
Maleshi blinked, and her momentary hesitation disappeared. “I’m on it.”
The nightstalker’s fingers moved quickly as she muttered her next massive spell. Then she clapped her hands together and spread them apart with a blinding burst of silver and pink light. The same pink shield wall she’d put up around the original unmonitored portal ridge rose from the chasm against the portal’s shimmering light.
Cheyenne let out a final roar of effort and pulled with all her strength. Her grasp on the earth’s energy held fast, and the activator measured the width of the crack in slowly decreasing increments. The fractured sections of earth slammed together with a boom like a hollow metal drum below the ground, and the portal’s light behind Maleshi’s shield wall flickered, dimmed, and winked out.
The activator beeped in her head and flashed a new update in bright yellow.
Detected threat contained. Volatile frequencies returned to normal levels. Shield application holding at 99%.
The thing measures spell effectiveness too?
The second Cheyenne’s thoughts moved away from closing the portal ridge, the black fire along her skin snuffed out, and she staggered backward. “Damn.”
Maleshi hung her head and stuck her hands on her hips, fighting to catch her breath. “That should keep things where they belong, for now, at least. Not sure how well it’s gonna hold.”
“Ninety-nine-percent,” Cheyenne muttered.
“What?”
The halfling tapped behind her ear and brushed her black hair away from her face again, smearing blood from her fingers and palms across her forehead. “This tech has numbers for everything.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’s just a halfling-using-O’gúl-tech-on-Earth’ thing.”
Maleshi snorted. “Sure. Maybe. Listen, I know this was a close call, but we need to do some serious cleanup right now before everyone else moving at normal speed starts seeing things they won’t be able to figure out.”
“I’m sure they already have.”
“There’s no reason to make it worse.” Maleshi worked one more spell and finished it by pointing with both hands at the pink wall of her shield. The light disappeared, leaving behind a jutting mount of ruptured and mostly re-sealed earth stretching in a jagged scar across the lawn on the VCU campus—that and the two wide holes dug by the war machines. “At least they won’t see that. Now, come help me move these damn machines.”
“You can’t make those invisible too?”
The nightstalker shot Cheyenne an unamused glance, her silver eyes flashing in the sun as they headed toward the broken machinery. “Of course I can. Gonna be a little hard to explain why a bunch of students and other staff keep tripping over huge, hard piles of nothing in the middle of the grass. We’re just getting these out of the way.”
“Right.”
Together, they hauled the broken, mangled carcass of the first O’gúl digger tank across the grass and between the Computer Sciences building and its neighbor.
“Right here’s good.” Maleshi released her hold on the machine’s outer shell.
Cheyenne held onto her end, her drow strength keeping that end of the digger slightly elevated as she stared at the nightstalker. “Seriously?”
“Not forever, Cheyenne. We’re picking up the pieces, and as soon as we get that magical battlefield cleaned up, I’ll make sure Corian gets his ass over here to help me with the rest. And I don’t even know why I feel the need to explain myself to you. Let’s go get the other one.”
“You’re explaining it to me because I’m not just somebody’s yes-drow.” Cheyenne dropped the hunk of O’gúl metal with a clank of loosened parts and followed Maleshi back toward the second.
“No one said you were.”
“Then there shouldn’t be an issue explaining a reason for something. I never said I disagreed with you.”
“Great.” Maleshi bent to lift the side of the second digger.
When Cheyenne stepped up next to her to help lift, the general leaned away quickly, blinking furiously as she stared at the bashed-in, shredded dome on top of the tank. “Did you just flinch away from me?”
Maleshi snorted and tugged on the war machine. “Just pull, halfling.”
The machine left a trail of flattened grass in its wake as they dragged it behind the building to dump it beside the first. It clattered to the grass, and two blue lights flashed within the exposed side before a spear of black metal punched through the opening with a loud hiss.
Cheyenne clamped her blood-slickened hand around the extended pole and ripped it free with another spray of sparks and flashing colored lights. The broken piece of war machine slid through her slippery palm and thumped onto the ground at her feet.
Maleshi stared at it. “Effective. What happened to your hands?”
“Needles, I think. Or something.” The halfling gazed at her palms. “This’ll be fun to patch up. And by the way, you ignored my last question.”
“Hmm.”
“Seriously, why did you get all jumpy when you were next to me?”
“Stand back, kid.” Maleshi cast a quick spell, staring at the remnants of the shredded war machines scattered across the grass. Each piece was encompassed in silver light, lifted two feet off the grass, and raced between the buildings toward where Cheyenne and General Hi’et were standing.
“Whoa.” Cheyenne stepped aside and watched the black metal fragments clunk against the diggers’ hulls when Maleshi’s magic released them.
The nightstalker nodded, dusted off her hands, and cast another illusion spell over the remnants to render all the evidence of the war-machine attack invisible.
“All right.” Turning toward Cheyenne again, Maleshi looked her up and down. “Fair warning, you’re gonna feel like shit when you slow down into regular space-time again.”
“What?”
“Take it from a war general who’s done this a million times.” Maleshi clapped a hand down on Cheyenne’s shoulder. “It doesn’t get better, even with an impressive track record like mine. Go ahead. The longer you stay in, the worse it gets.”
Cheyenne glanced at the nightstalker’s hand on her shoulder, and the woman removed it slowly. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as you’ll be in two seconds, or whatever passes for seconds in hyper-speed. I’m right behind you.”
With a groan, Cheyenne closed her eyes and slipped out of drow speed.
Chapter Seventy-Five
The second she fell back into regular time, Cheyenne couldn’t feel her legs. They buckled beneath her and she tumbled sideways, barely managing to keep her face from hitting the grass. She rolled and hit her shoulder instead.
A heavy wheeze escaped her chest, but she couldn’t form the words she wanted.
Maleshi cleared her throat. She now sat on the lawn beside the halfling and slowly lowered herself onto her back to stare at the blue sky. “What was that?”
“Why?” Cheyenne wheezed again and took a sharp, gasping breath. Her lungs exploded with tingling pain. Am I coughing or choking right now?
The terrified screams and shouts and the pounding of racing feet out of buildings and across the lawn took on more clarity beyond the muted pitch she’d heard at first.
Groanin
g, Maleshi slowly closed her eyes and swallowed. “The why doesn’t matter, kid. Just the fact that it does.”
The halfling managed to turn herself over onto her back, her hands thumping into the grass beside her. I have to be seeing four of everything right now. “Feels like being hit by a bus.”
The general snorted. “Yeah, a bus that injects morphine into only half of you. Just give it a few more seconds.”
Cheyenne blinked at the bright sky and finally got her breath back under control. The activator blinked in her vision, calm, silent, and ready for her next command. As soon as feeling returned to her arms and she could move them again, she pulled the silver coil from behind her ear and grimaced. “How did I not know about this?”
“There’s a first time for everything.” Maleshi pulled herself up into a sitting position and hunched over her lap. “My first time was during the raids at Holbrukfúrn. Of course, that was two dozen of us against five gremlin warrens, so moving just below the speed of light was pretty much the only way back then to not be overrun.”
“Right. And my first time just happened to be with hybrid war machines that can move as fast as we do.”
“Unfortunate, but yes.” Maleshi pushed herself to her feet, then offered the halfling a hand up. “Once you can breathe again, it’s pretty much downhill from there.”
Cheyenne took the woman’s hand and let the general pull her up. A brief wave of dizziness made her stagger, but she shook her head and it cleared right up. “So, now what?”
“Now we make sure that no one on campus was seriously injured. Or seriously traumatized.”
“By an earthquake and a bunch of flashing lights shooting up out of the ground?” Cheyenne licked her dry lips and shot the nightstalker a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure everyone’s traumatized.”
“I meant by magic. We want everybody to feel safe, Cheyenne. Reassured. A little shaken up is fine, but people losing their minds over what they can’t explain doesn’t do us any favors. Then you and I need to make some calls.”
“Sure.”
“Here.” Maleshi bunched up the ripped hem of her dress, glanced around them behind the building, then let out her glinting four-inch claws from within her illusion of human hands and slashed free two wide strips of tie-dye. “Wrap up your hands. I can grab you something later to help with all the punctures. What did you say happened?”
“That tank turned itself into an acupuncture board.” Cheyenne wrapped her blood-smeared hands, grimacing at the sharp pain beneath the pressure.
“Sounds fun. We’ll patch you up in a bit.”
“I have darktongue salve in my backpack.”
Maleshi blinked, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Have you used it before?”
“More times than I can count right now.” Cheyenne tied off the temporary bandages and used the back of her wrapped hand to wipe off her forehead as much as she could. “And yes, I do prefer that short-lived agony to walking around with half-healed wounds all over me. I need my hands.”
“Huh. You know, I always wondered if that masochistic streak just inherently came with being a drow. You definitely fit the description in that way.”
“It’s not masochism.” Cheyenne snorted as they walked between the buildings and headed for the front doors of the Computer Sciences building. “It’s pragmatism. No pain, no gain, right?”
“I understand the saying, kid. Just not the fact that darktongue is your first choice.” Maleshi held the door open for Cheyenne before following her inside.
Three terrified students ran toward them down the hall and skidded to a stop when they saw ‘Professor Bergmann’s’ ripped dress and Cheyenne’s blood-smeared face and wrapped hands. “Oh, my God, are you okay?”
“All good.” Cheyenne nodded and tried to skirt past them.
“Well, what happened out there? Is anyone hurt?”
“Not that we know of.” Maleshi stopped to calm the panicked kids while the halfling slipped down the hall. “It seems like it’s settled down now, but it’s a good idea to check wherever you can to make sure no one else is hurt.”
“Yeah. Definitely.”
“We can do that.”
“Good.” The nightstalker nodded. “I don’t think there’s been any damage to buildings, but spread the word that people need to get out now, just in case.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She nodded after them as they hurried away down the branching corridor. Then she asked Cheyenne, “Where are you going?”
“There’s a whole classroom hiding under their desks right now,” the halfling replied without turning around. “Figured I should tell them it’s time to come out.”
“Out back again in ten minutes, yeah?”
Cheyenne raised her hand and gave the nightstalker a wave of assent before turning the corner at the end of the hall toward her Advanced Programming classroom. She stopped when she reached the doorway and found chunks of plaster littering the hall. The door had fallen halfway off its frame, and her black Vans crunched across the debris when she stepped into the room.
“Holy shit. What happened to you?”
The halfling gazed around the room, where her students were crouched halfway under the rows of long tables or stood at the end of the rows where they’d braced themselves against the “earthquake.”
“Fell on some broken glass.” Cheyenne raised her bandaged hands. “All good, though. Looks a lot worse than it is.”
“Does it hurt?”
The curious kid’s friend elbowed him in the shoulder. “Dude, don’t be stupid. Of course it hurts.”
“What happened out there?”
“I thought I heard an explosion outside.”
“Is anyone else hurt?”
“What do we do?”
“All right. Slow down.” Cheyenne reached her desk and turned to face them. “I know everyone’s freaked out. The earthquake’s over. For now, it looks like everybody’s safe, but we need to evacuate the buildings and get to somewhere safer.”
“It’s not safe here?”
“I didn’t say that. This is just in case.” The halfling blinked slowly and leaned against the end of the desk. Mega energy drain. How the hell did she do this a million times?
“Hey, you look like you’re about to pass out.” The girl with the half-shaved head slid away from where she’d crouched beside her seat and took two steps toward her instructor before Cheyenne lifted a hand for her to stop.
“Just tired. I’m fine. See this, everybody?” She gestured to herself and nodded. “Calm. Collected. Not panicking. Get your stuff and head for the other side of the campus, or go off campus the other way. There was some kind of ground damage right outside this building, so if anything isn’t safe, chances are that’s right here. Go.”
Her students bustled into action, swinging backpacks and messenger bags over shoulders and filing toward the classroom door. “You’re coming, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Right behind you, as soon as I get my stuff. Hey, if you see anyone else running around inside, tell them to get out too. Buildings can collapse after something like this.” Cheyenne pretended to pack up her backpack as the room quickly cleared out. When the students’ footsteps faded down the hall toward the front of the building, she slumped into her chair and pulled out the brown glass jar of darktongue salve. “You and I are gettin’ to know each other, aren’t we?”
The lid slipped more than once beneath the rags around her hands, but she finally got the jar open and quickly unwound the bandages. She stared at the thick, gooey white salve inside and gritted her teeth. It’s gonna suck no matter how I do it. Go all in.
The second Cheyenne dipped three fingers into the jar for a giant scoop, the darktongue got to work on the tiny puncture wounds in her fingers. Growling, she pulled out the stringy goo and smeared it on her opposite palm before quickly rubbing the stuff into her hands like it was lotion.
She hissed as the searing pain of the darktongue worked its magi
c on her wounds. Still slathering the stuff around as much as she could, Cheyenne leaned forward and tried not to cry out at the pain burning through her hands. Somebody’s gonna think I got trapped under something.
When she couldn’t handle touching her hands any longer, she slumped over her lap, propping her forearms on her thighs and clenching her eyes shut to wait for the burning heat of instant healing to die down. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and she hadn’t realized she’d been breathing through clenched teeth until she had to open her mouth to take an actual breath.
“Holy shit,” Cheyenne hissed through her teeth, her arms sore from the tension of bearing through the pain, and then all the discomfort vanished.
She opened her eyes and wiped her hands off with the rags enough to see the perfectly healed flesh of her palms beneath. Sucks, but it works.
She gave herself another moment to recover from the exhaustion and the suddenly vanished pain in her hands, then she closed the salve jar and stuck both that and the bloody rags from Maleshi’s dress into her backpack. As she stood and slung the straps over her shoulders, a groaning shudder rippled through the wall of the classroom behind her. A thin shower of dust and plaster shivered down onto the rows of long tables stretching across the room, and Cheyenne headed quickly toward the door. The earthquake’s a lie, but the damage apparently is not. Time to get outta here.
On the way to meet up with Maleshi behind the building, she only passed two other people in the halls. One was a faculty member darting out of an office with a briefcase in one hand and a hastily snatched-up laptop and a stack of thin binders clutched to her chest. The other was a terrified-looking freshman with his fly still unzipped as he staggered out of the bathroom and stared in shock at the empty hallway.
Yeah, that’d be the worst place to experience an earthquake. Cheyenne almost laughed but managed to hold it together. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.” The kid blinked at her, then looked down at his soaked pants and dripping shoes. “I fell over, and I think I broke something in there.”
