Black Dawn

by Andrew Dobell

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this Amanda? You’re not too close to it?’ Royston asked.

  ‘Are ye questioning my judgement because this might be my father?’

  ‘I have to ask the question Amanda,’ he said.

  She knew he had to. If this man turned out to be killing Arcadians for whatever sick reasons he might have, she needed to keep her head clear and not let her emotions cloud her judgement and do what must be done. She desperately wanted to know who this man was and the truth about her parentage, but if the worst came to the worst, she would be expected to do what it took to stop him. Could she do it? Honestly, she didn’t know, and until the moment came to make such a choice, she doubted she could answer that question with any honesty.

  ‘I want to do it, I need to know more about who this guy is. But don’t worry, I’ll do my job if it comes to it,’ she said. Could she, though, could she actually kill this man if it came to that knowing that he could potentially be her father. That was the key thing though wasn’t it. It was all maybe’s and possibilities, just his word and nothing else to go on. He could be lying, he could have just found out enough about her to throw her off the scent.

  Unlikely though as he had no idea that she would be there, and even she didn’t know about the power plant crisis until Maya invited her along on the mission.

  No, everything pointed to this man being truthful, otherwise how would he have recognised her?

  ‘If you’re sure, then great, go, and I hope you find what you need,’ Royston said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said before turning to Gentle Water. ‘Can we go?’

  ‘Of course, is it just you?’ he answered her.

  Amanda looked around the table.

  ‘Ooh, can I go?’ Liz asked, bouncing up and down in her chair in excitement.

  ‘Of course,’ Amanda said.

  ‘Awesome,’ Liz said and jumped up, moving around the table to Amanda and Gentle Water.

  Amanda looked at Maria, who simply and quietly said, ‘You go, I’ll be here when you get back.’ Amanda nodded at her with a smile of love and affection on her face.

  ‘We’ll monitor you from here,’ Shaun said. ‘Keep a link open to me so I can hear what’s going on.’

  ‘Can do,’ Amanda said, and immediately opened the Mental Link to Shaun and Vanessa. She turned back around to face Gentle Water and smiled. ‘Ready,’ she said.

  ‘It will take two jumps to get there, and it will be cold,’ Gentle Water said.

  ‘Good point well made,’ Amanda smiled, and pulled on the local Essentia to fix the ambient temperature of her body and the air closest to it, she also cast the same effect on Liz, warning her before she worked her effect.

  Magic suddenly flared from Gentle Water and wrapped about Amanda and Liz, folding in on itself and pulling them into it. With a rush of air and a flash of light in her vision, Amanda had a brief moment of seeing a lush landscape of dense jungle undergrowth, perhaps the Amazon Basin, before the scene changed once more and suddenly everything turned white.

  Amanda found herself stood on a snow-covered ridge next to Liz and Gentle Water. The wind whipped about them, blowing Amanda and Liz’s long hair wildly about their heads, forcing them to tie it back to keep it out of their eyes.

  The environment looked freezing cold. They were stood in snow half way up to their knees in a very bleak frozen landscape, Amanda still in her ripped jeans and short sleeved top she’d worn in Arizona looked very out of place. Liz wore slightly better clothing in her leggings, Ugg Boots and sweater while Gentle Water wore Jeans, boots and a jacket. She watched as he pulled out a woollen beanie hat from his coat pocket and pulled it over his bald head before she turned back to the scene before her.

  Mountains rose up into the misty sky, and in a depression that cut into the side of the range, she could see various prefab buildings had been set up, several of them linked together to create a complex of rooms. She could see the last dying remains of a now ineffectual Aegis that had been left to fade while within the camp, there were a number of hot spots of Magic, places where she guessed Magical traps had once been set up in front of the huge temple that had been cut into the rock face.

  From what she could make out, maybe a dozen people moved about the camp, working machinery as they dismantled the buildings and packed away. The large size of the camp meant that moving through the space would not be difficult and even without Magic they could mostly likely remain undetected by the people here. Always better to be safe than sorry, though.

  ‘Let’s do this quietly,’ Amanda said, and with a working of Magic, bent light around them, rendering them invisible to the Riven Mortals in the camp. They moved forward, trudging through the snow, their Magic keeping them at a nice mid temperature, not too warm and not too cold. Amanda also took this time to bolster her Aegis, making sure her defences were in place and ready for any surprises they might find.

  Before long they were walking into the camp, through the outlying buildings, some of which were partially dismantled exposing their insides to the environment.

  Wandering through the remaining buildings, not getting too close to the workers, Amanda scanned the area carefully, looking for anything that might shed any light on Mr Black’s operation, sending her senses into the buildings and looking through the rooms inside. She discovered nothing at first, but when she found what she believed to be the operations centre of the site, she paused and brought her Magic to bare once more, sending her minds-eye back through time to see if she might see Mr Black himself. But her efforts were hampered when she found some kind of Magical barrier preventing her from scrying back to certain times and places within the building and the camp in general.

  She pushed further back and before too long caught sight of Mr Black as he was about to move into the tunnels within the temple itself. If that’s when he had obtained the item, then it appeared that the item itself did not like to be looked upon through scrying Magic.

  She looked further back and saw visions of Mr Black speaking with people in the control rooms and his arrival into the site. She also saw Angel, still hiding her true power. Angel seemed to be rather good at this, and if Amanda hadn’t known better from previous experience, she would have assumed her Magi rank be an apprentice or an Adept at best. She watched and listened to them talk, eventually finding herself watching a meeting between Mr Black and his team where he spoke of an Orb and his plan to use it to kill the Archons.

  She watched Angel’s face as she re-watched the conversation, and felt impressed by her self-control upon hearing of Mr Blacks plans to kill her masters.

  ‘Hey, guys, let me share this with you,’ Amanda said and allowed her two companions to watch the conversation as well, listening as Mr Black told of his plan to use the Orb, and Amanda guessed, the Lazarus Scroll as well, to kill the Archons. ‘What do you think?’ she said.

  ‘Good find,’ Gentle Water said.

  ‘Kill an Archon? How’s he going to do that?’ Liz asked.

  ‘That’s a very good question, I don’t know enough about these items to say if that’s even possible. G.W?’

  ‘I could not say for sure,’ he said.

  ‘That meeting looked like a closed one, I would doubt anyone here would know more than what we just witnessed,’ Amanda said, indicating the workers nearby.

  ‘Agreed,’ Gentle Water said.

  ‘Did you not look back through time to look at these things?’ Amanda asked Gentle Water.

  ‘I dislike using Time Magic too much, I have mentioned the Weavers to you before,’ he said.

  ‘Aah yes,’ Amanda said, suddenly remembering one of his lessons to her back in the Irish countryside. All Magic carried an element of risk, it didn’t happen often, but if you lost control of it, it could cause damage to yourself and others, but one of the riskiest forms of Magic was Time Magic. Messing about with the timeline was a sure way to gain the attention of the Weavers, shadowy creatures that policed the timeline and dealt harshly with those
who abused it. Few had met them and survived, but the stories of them were many. Some said that the worst offenders were simply erased from history, as if they had never existed, meaning we might never know how many people had been erased if we had no memory of them.

  The threat of the Weavers could often be enough to put even the most powerful Magi off of Time Magic entirely, preferring to avoid using it rather than tempt fate.

  To the best of Amanda’s knowledge looking back through time, speeding up or slowing time down or travelling forward in time didn’t really attract such deadly attention from the Weavers. It usually happened when someone travelled back through time or changed something in history that would affect things going forward. Basically, if you caused a Paradox, then you could expect a visit from a Weaver.

  Amanda hadn’t done any such thing, and even though the mention of the Weavers made her stomach do a flip and made her suddenly doubt herself, deep down she knew she’d done nothing to attract their attention.

  But she totally understood if someone didn’t want to take such risks and avoided its use altogether.

  ‘Right then, shall we check out the tunnels?’ Amanda said.

  ‘Lead on,’ Liz said.

  Heading towards the back of the camp and the front face of the Temple carved into the mountain side, they found a tent just in front of the entrance, placed there to help keep the elements at bay from those who had once worked inside.

  Feeling intensely curious, Amanda walked into the tent and saw a roughly circular tunnel bored into the ice that had filled the temple. Mats had been placed on the floor to prevent anyone from slipping and cables snaked down into the semi-darkness to lights and other machinery.

  Not wanting to wait or hang around, Amanda walked forward, dropping her invisibility effect as she went and started to descend into the depths. The wall mounted lights had been spaced well apart from each other and cast a dim light into the tunnels. As they walked, their shadows played on the walls, causing her to nearly jump a couple of times from the strange movements of them. The path seemed quite clear, and after what seemed like a very long time, they came to a short stretch of tunnel that had been made much wider and higher and had also been better lit than the tunnels that had walked through to get here. Work lights lit up the dead end of ice up ahead while silent machines stood about the space like strange monoliths of an alien culture.

  Amanda stepped forward slowly, looking about her but heading towards the well-lit back wall.

  ‘Careful,’ Liz said, her voice creating strange echoes that danced with the sound of their footsteps and movements through the ancient complex.

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Amanda said and continued forward.

  She stopped just before the back wall, stood amongst the machines, tools and work lights on stands, and looked at the wall before her. It looked like two things had been removed from the ice wall. At about waist height, a tennis ball sized, professional and cleanly made borehole had been cut into the ice. Nearby, a Robot arm that looked like it might be able to reach inside the hole stood immobile. Amanda guessed that had been where the artefact that Mr Black had referred to as the Orb had been resting. But above that, a huge hole had been created, or blasted into the ice, with chunks of it all about the floor around her, as if something had burst out of the ice itself.

  A quick look through time to try and scry on what had happened proved to be fruitless, meaning they would find little else of use here.

  Liz stood next to her now, with Gentle Water close behind.

  ‘Is that where…?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Amanda said. ‘Whatever yoke was in there is gone now, I can’t see us finding much else here,’ Amanda said.

  Suddenly a small monitor on a tall trolley popped into life with static on the screen causing Amanda and her friends to spin and look at it.

  ‘What the bleedin’ hell?’ Amanda said.

  ‘Aaah shit,’ Liz exclaimed, but Gentle Water remained quiet.

  Amanda eyed the monitor for a moment and stepped forward, sensing only electricity rather than Magic at work here.

  Then just as suddenly as it had turned on, a signal came through and a picture of a wrinkled old face appeared on the screen. She knew that face as it smiled at her, recognising Mr Black right away.

  ‘Amanda, you found my dig site. Well done. I’m afraid you’re too late, though, we have what we need from there,’ said Mr Black, his voice scratchy and worn.

  ‘Mr Black, what are you up to?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘You seem to be a clever girl, I’m sure you can work it out. I’m afraid I cannot divulge the rest of my plans to you. I’m sure you understand. You might be my daughter, but I’m just not able to trust you with that information yet.’

  ‘I only have your word on that, though. What proof do you have that I’m your child?’

  ‘Did I lie? I think you know better than that,’ he said.

  She did. She felt sure that he had not lied to her. She couldn’t explain it, like so much in her life these days, it didn’t seem logical, she just knew he’d told her the truth. ‘You didn’t lie,’ she said.

  ‘Then know that I am sincere when I say that I would love to spend some time with you and get to know you better, but my plans are too important and I cannot let anything jeopardise them. I’m hoping we can catch up later, once all this is over with.’

  ‘You mean your plans to kill the Archons?’ she asked.

  Mr Black frowned. ‘Good day to you Amanda,’ he said before the screen went dead.

  ‘Well that went well,’ Liz quipped.

  On a nearby rock face overlooking the camp, the dark figure squatted on a ledge and shivered. She had been asleep in the ice for so long that she felt like she had been made of ice on first waking up. Her movement soon returned, though after breaking out of the ice. Draining two of the men she found in the tunnels of their blood had also proved to be very helpful. As she looked down, she saw three figures exit the tunnels, each of them Magi, and all three keeping out of sight of the Riven Mortals.

  She felt like she had much to do, it had been so long for her, trapped in that ice. But finally, she’d been set free. She could feel her power and connection to Essentia returning although her mind still felt a little foggy on some of the details of her life and her ability with Magic.

  She hadn’t forgotten the Orb, though, that item would be forever dear to her, and waking to find it stolen had been troubling, to say the least. Although, it could be that its absence from her vicinity could have been the trigger for her waking up. Whatever the reason, one thing remained clear in her mind. She wanted it back, and she would make the thief pay for their actions.

  Luckily for her, the workers she had eaten had also given her some rather useful information on just who it was who had taken the item, and where she might find him.

  - Nowhere

  She had been through this same ritual the past two days, but today would be different, today she would not hesitate, she would not be afraid and she would do as her Mistress asked of her. Then she would not be beaten or kicked or cut or violated again, she would receive praise and love from her beloved Mistress. She hated it when Yasmin was displeased with her, she loved her mistress and only wanted to please her.

  Yasmin walked in front of her, and Alicia found she couldn’t help but stare at her Mistresses behind as it wobbled up and down as she walked. She wanted to look like that, she wanted to be perfect in every way like her Mistress.

  Finally, they walked into the room and again the same woman sat on the floor before her, her face filled with tears and fear as Yasmin handed Alicia her huge Kukri dagger, it’s curved blade feeling heavy in her hand.

  ‘Cut off her arm,’ Yasmin said, her voice calm and measured as if she’d just asked her to pass the sugar.

  Alicia took the dagger and walked forward. She looked at what was left of the woman’s left arm, the one Yasmin had cut off yesterday when she had hesitated for the second time. She also remem
bered being dragged off by Nate who had raped her once again back in her room.

  She didn’t blame Nate, she had displeased her Mistress, the punishment had been warranted.

  This time, she didn’t hesitate, she just acted. Pulling out the woman’s right arm and bringing the heavy dagger down on it as hard as she could, burying the blade deep into the bone of her upper arm.

  Blood sprayed across the dagger and into her face as she levered the dagger free and swung it again to the sound of the girls screams. It took her 4 hits before the arm dropped away from the woman’s torso, and hung limply in her hand. She felt surprised at the weight of it.

  ‘Don’t stop there, she has 2 more limbs,’ Yasmin said in an offhand manner.

  Under the Sea

  Over the Pacific Ocean

  Dec 2nd

  The last time she’d been on a huge cargo plane like this, Angel had been on her way to the South Pole and the dig that had led to this moment. Things had progressed so far now that she actually felt somewhat surprised at how well it had gone.

  The huge main body of the plane stood empty apart from the people stood within it. Angel felt a little out of place, her outfit probably wasn’t really suited to what she was about to be involved in, but she didn’t really care. She liked looking good. She wore her usual mini wiggle skirted suit and blouse with stockings and high heels, and she stood listening to Mr Black, her feet apart at shoulder width to keep from falling over as the place flew through the night sky.

  Around her were twenty highly trained and very well equipped men and women in combat gear with helmets and masks, all in black with high powered weaponry strapped to their bodies. Through her Magical sight, she could make out a range of Magical items upon them, including powerful Force Shields and enhanced armour. These guys would be faster and more deadly than anyone they came up against. To her right stood Isha in similar clothing to the troops but without the guns, headgear and Magical items, next to him stood Mr Black in his long black woollen overcoat, leaning on his walking stick, and finally beyond him stood Echo Black, Mr Blacks other daughter. She wore flat boots, leather trousers and jacket, her black hair tied back in a ponytail.