by Zen DiPietro
After the second day of chase, their destination had become clear, even to Will, who couldn’t sense the mana that the manahi so clearly did. Their course nearly mirrored the one they’d so recently traveled on their way to Umi Cabal.
The convoy had stopped during late morning on the third day when low power cells demanded a recharge. Other than a few such breaks to power up and answer the call of nature, the troops had been in constant motion. They slept and ate while driving, rotating drivers at every maintenance stop.
“The question is whether the fortress will give Anguish an advantage.” Will rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. He disliked that his unkempt appearance did not befit his position as general, but there was no time to spare for trivialities. They’d barely spared enough time to pull their heavy coats back out from the gear once they’d moved back to the cold climate.
“The fortress is defensible, though its location in a low spot will give us an advantage,” Luc allowed. “Our thorough knowledge of the place gives us another advantage.”
“It gives us some tactical edge, but we don’t know if Anguish will have more creatures. We might face another army of them, or we might have already taken out what he had left. I have to think that if he had more of them, we would have seen them at the fortress or in Umi Cabal. We saw fewer than fifty of them when he took Meli.”
“We’ll make the most of the time we have before arrival to plan our attack.” Luc’s lips pressed into a thin line. “We have a few days yet to plan.”
“We’ll make the most of everything we have,” Will corrected. “Which is no small amount.” In spite of whatever awaited them, he had confidence in the battalion, Kassimeigh, and the other manahi. He didn’t know how Anguish had gotten by them before, but they soon would make up for it.
Chapter 16
The fortress was just as they’d left it nearly two weeks ago. Other than the psychopath who now occupied it, of course. The energy within the fortress had blared like a beacon that Kassimeigh had felt crawling over her skin long before they arrived there. The carts now rallied together on the precipice of the basin, while the people of the battalion took position just beyond the entrance of the fortress. Kassimeigh took this last moment to appreciate that she stood on the line between everything that happened in her life before this point, and everything that would come after. The gray of midday Apex shone down on the fortress, whose entire structure pulsated with frenetic rage.
She and the other mana-holders stood ahead of the battalion, along with Izzy. Kassimeigh joined hands with the other manahi and fused herself into the mana interlink. Together, they projected a protective mana shield around the eight of them. Izzy’s job was to seek some sense of Meli from within the fortress.
Izzy’s eyes flew open and she gasped. “Will!” she shouted over her shoulder. “The front gate!”
The collective roar from the battalion echoed a fundamental righteousness within Kassimeigh. The sound rang through the air, primal and grimly satisfied. There would be no suspended anticipation today, no interrupted aggression. Weapons and bodies would finally ply their trade, until whatever end awaited them. Already armed and armored, Will led the battalion forward, even as it seethed with untapped purpose. Kassimeigh envied their obvious singularity of purpose. The particulars of her own task remained uncertain.
Kassimeigh’s gaze remained on the battalion, though she was only peripherally aware of the creatures that staggered out of the fortress into the melee. Clangs and shouts of battle fell into the background without fully registering on her senses. She focused only on pressing her mana sense forward.
Interlinked with the manahi, she felt anchored to something tangible and measurable. Comfortable with that support behind her, she had no reservations about digging deep into her ability and wielding it with all due prejudice. Joss’s carefully harnessed mana fringed her senses, as did Azure’s conjuring. Orben, Thom, Lark, and Quillen’s mana signatures moved on the periphery of the mana tapestry they wove. Along with those details, she also recognized Luc’s particular mana glow as it masterfully minded and melded the power of all eight manahi. Kassimeigh let their solidity ground her as she pushed fingers of mana against the fortress, prodding and searching for a crack to exploit.
She felt the grimaces of distaste as the manahi sensed the uncouth ugliness of the mana, so different from their own collective mana glow, which manifested in smooth edges and refinement. The unbalanced rage from the foreign mana burned trails of blisters along the manahi’s senses. Carefully, Kassimeigh pushed her mana sense through the miasma, seeking the source of this unchecked fury. She felt Luc’s mana brushing by her own, also searching.
“I don’t sense Meli,” Izzy informed them in a low voice. “If she’s in there, she’s deeply unconscious.” Izzy’s head snapped to the left at some battle sound that Kassimeigh did not have time to register. Engaging in a conversation while linking and probing the energy of the fortress already stretched the limits of her attention.
Kassimeigh marveled that the reader discerned anything but the wildfire of flaming energy boiling and bleeding out of the fortress. But then, Izzy had no mana sense. She was blind to what was so encompassing and obvious to Kassimeigh.
Tucking those thoughts aside to meditate on later, she observed, “Meli said she slept a great deal when she was with Anguish. Perhaps he’s put her into some sort of stupor.”
She refused to acknowledge the possibility that Meli might be dead. If that were the case, she was beyond their help.
“Do you have a sense of anyone in there?” Luc looked not toward Izzy but the fortress.
Izzy’s mouth pursed, and her brow furrowed as she concentrated. Finally her forehead eased and she let out a long breath. “I do sense a mind, but it’s fractured. There’s no reasoning, no intention, no self-awareness. It’s consumed within itself like white-hot flame, insanity. It’s . . .” Her eyes closed against the realization. “Anguish.”
“Good.” Luc’s jaw clenched. “At least we know we have him cornered. No more hiding or running away.”
“No,” Izzy protested. “Not Anguish as a person’s name. Anguish as misery, grief, torture. What I feel is the emotion, personified, without a conscious mind attached to it. I’ve never felt anything like it. I’m . . .” Izzy rubbed her temple. “It’s very painful to witness.”
Kassimeigh slipped her hand out of Azure’s to rest it on Izzy’s shoulder in a brief moment of silent support for her friend’s struggle. She shifted her attention and for the first time assessed the battalion’s maneuvers. The troops worked as one cutting through the creatures that no longer streamed out of the fortress door. She searched among the individual figures. Will, of course, drove the forefront, directing, assessing, and fighting hard. He showcased strength and skill in a beautiful display of mastery.
Justin stood not far from Will, covering the general’s flank. Kassimeigh’s sight failed to identify Arc in the distance with the archers, but her bond singled him out. She felt reassured that the battalion fared well.
She saw all of this in only a moment, but the moment was all she needed. She returned her hand to Azure’s and focused her full attention on the interlink.
“Now,” she commanded. She plunged herself into the combined pool of mana and merged with it. She guided their merged mana sense into the fortress, forging through the miasma of insane mana and diving into the core. She felt like they were swimming down into the liquid core of Terath, fighting a monstrously hot current of power.
Kassimeigh led the manahi in focusing their collective gifts to a minutely fine point. They thrust the blazing tip of it into the center of the blaring cacophony of power. Together, they thrust the spike of energy straight into it, impaling the crazed manahi with their own mana. Anguish writhed against the imprisonment, trying to get free. Kassimeigh wasn’t about to let that happen.
Outraged mana backfilled through the connection between the inside and outside of the fortress. Kassimeigh knew Anguish intended to destroy the connection, and, if possible, everyone connected to it. She and the other manahi stood firm against the onslaught that battered at their senses. Their individual selves and thoughts and awareness of pain disintegrated under the devastating heat of mana. Knowing only the link and the mana they held, they repaired the damage that ripped through them as soon as it occurred and kept their energy cycling, pushing back against Anguish.
Kassimeigh battled to maintain conscious thought. Relying on the same training that had allowed her to save their lives before, she centered her mind. Then she cut all ties to her survival and abandoned herself to Terath. She released her individual self, her desires, and her very life. The world slowed to a lethargic crawl around her.
She had almost expected to find she’d released her very form and become an amorphous vapor. Instead, she realized she still had eyes to open. Her gaze tracked across Izzy, then each mana-holder. Her attention rested last on Luc.
“Hold the pin, right where it is.” She wasn’t sure if she said it out loud, but she knew Luc understood the message as he stood with the other manahi, swaying under their duress. She excised her mana away from theirs, extricating it like one thread from a tapestry. She slid it around and through and away, then pulled it tightly around her to form an impenetrable exoskeleton.
As she stepped away from the wall of manahi, she became aware of sounds. Some of them might have been people calling her name, but details didn’t reach her. She walked past the last skirmishes on the field and sailed right through the front door of the fortress.
A twisted creature with a face jarringly human on one half and grotesquely bloated and contorted on the other screamed and rushed toward her. She barely spared it a glance as she continued to stride forward.
Kassimeigh didn’t reach for the sword on her back, but waved a hand dismissively and the thing fell to the ground. No apparent damage marred the outside of the creature, but she knew it would never move again.
She flicked away two more creatures as she approached the opening of the fortress, scarcely registering their existence except as an impediment to reaching her goal. Focusing her mana ahead of her like a searchlight, she felt the two opposing mana forces continuing their battle. The torrent of anguish railed bitterly, while the manahi remained focused and resolved even though she knew they teetered on the verge of collapse. Anguish battered them to the edge of straining desperation.
Kassimeigh knew when she’d been detected, because a scorching wave of mana heat swept down the corridor toward her. Without breaking her stride, she drained the fire of its mana before it reached her. She harnessed the sticky-feeling mana and recycled it back into the clean, inert variety.
She followed a familiar series of turns through the fortress. When she rounded the final corner, she saw what she had already understood. In the room where Kassimeigh had first exchanged names with her, Meli writhed on the floor. Her entire body contorted with rage. She screamed and struggled against the excruciating hold of the other manahi. Screeching, Meli threw every bit of mana she had at Kassimeigh, desperately trying to free herself. Kassimeigh gritted her teeth and absorbed the warped energy.
“Meli,” Kassimeigh mourned.
Inarticulate with rage and desperate for destruction, Meli reversed her mana and pulled it into herself. Heat curled under her skin, which began to redden. Kassimeigh recognized Meli’s intention to combust herself to flatten the fortress, along with everyone near it.
“No,” Kassimeigh told her. She reached into Meli and wicked the mana away as if taking a toy from a child.
Suddenly powerless, shocked, and without recourse, Meli rent her hands down her cheeks. Her fingernails tore bloody furrows in her skin. She screamed in anguish as her wide, sightless eyes stared ahead.
With care, Kassimeigh sat down next to Meli and used her mana to push the other woman carefully into a seated position. She clamped firm but gentle mana shackles onto Meli to keep her restrained.
“Meli, I know you can’t understand me right now but I want to tell you I’m sorry. Doing what must be done does not always feel like the right thing to do.”
She touched gentle hands to Meli’s forehead and fused her power to Meli’s. Kassimeigh felt herself sway under the sudden influx of Meli’s massive strength. The other seven manahi, spent beyond their means, disentangled themselves from Meli when they felt Kassimeigh link with her. Kassimeigh lost her sense of them as they dissolved their interlink entirely.
Kassimeigh pried open Meli’s mind and bled away the last vestiges of Meli’s power. Kassimeigh made herself a conduit, letting the entirety of Meli’s mana flow out of her, forcing it out beyond the fortress. Bereft of energy, Kassimeigh’s childhood friend sagged limp and empty against the shackles that held her.
Drawing closer, Kassimeigh drove her own mana into Meli’s brain and stared intently into the mad, sightless eyes of the dancer-gardener-hostess-murderer. As she edged her way through Meli’s mind, she sensed the fracture in the woman’s mana ability. It was like a crater blighting a beautiful landscape. Kassimeigh saw Meli’s memories like images on a viewscreen.
When the mana had first come to Meli, so suddenly and strongly it caused her to destroy Umi Cabal, her mind had split into two parts. The part that touched mana twisted into deformity, while Meli’s true self remained the other side, safe from the mana. Mana use forced away the real Meli, giving the damaged part of her brain control of the whole. Kassimeigh realized that the only way to make Meli safe from her own fractured mind was to destroy her mana sense.
Kassimeigh bored into Meli, forcing her mana through mental corridors that didn’t want her. She charged into places she should never go. Her skin crawled with the invasion, with the violent intimacy she forced on Meli. Traversing the crater in Meli’s mind, she examined the physical damage of her first mana use. The mana had skewered Meli’s brain like a bolt of lightning. Trying to distance herself from the pain and confusion, Meli had unconsciously incinerated the entire village. Afterward, with the mana spent, she’d been surprised by the scene surrounding her. Ever since, she’d experienced life in a blind duality, not understanding her existence or the world around her.
Kassimeigh forged further into Meli’s mind and saw an argument over trade in Sorrow that sparked a rage and resulted in Meli reducing the second town to dust as well. The creatures had started out as an attempt of Meli’s disabled mind to make friends in the quiet towns she visited, and then continued for apparently irrational reasons. In the end, they had become her servants and army, loyal to her even though the rational half of her mind feared them.
Kassimeigh probed further. She tested, prodded, and finally found the epicenter of it all. The source of Meli’s mana sense. Refining her mana to the point of a needle, she pierced Meli’s mind.
A concussion blast exploded in Kassimeigh’s chest, leaving her unable to draw a breath. A shock of death and loss flashed on Meli’s face. A light went out, never to rekindle.
Meli had rejoined the majority of the population and the justice sat on the cold stone floor, trying to find a breath. She wiped her face with her hands and let all of the mana she’d harnessed drift away. She’d had enough of the stuff for one day. Maybe for a lot longer than that.
“Kassimeigh?” Meli’s voice brought Kassimeigh back to the present. Confused green eyes stared at her. “When did you get here?”
“Not long ago.” She tried to sound normal, although she barely had enough air to get the words out.
“Oh. I’m glad you’re here. Anguish was here, and I was scared. I thought maybe he’d hurt you, like he did the others. But he isn’t here now.”
Kassimeigh felt very old and terribly sad. “I know. We found him, and he won’t be back.”
Meli’s s
weet face grew radiant. “Really? Oh, that’s too good to be true. If anyone else told me that, I wouldn’t believe them, but I know you’d never lie to me.” She brightened even more. “We should have a special picnic today, to celebrate.”
Meli’s trust and affection hurt Kassimeigh. She felt unworthy of them. Wishing she could conjure a smile for Meli, Kassimeigh simply nodded.
Kassimeigh peered through the library window, then frowned at the hazy gray Apex sky. The constancy of it chaffed her. Even when it seemed like the whole world had shifted on its axis, that damn sky was stubbornly unchanged.
The landscape had more to offer the eye but afflicted her for a different reason. Rather than the previous boredom of rocks in every size and shade of gray studding the vista, verdant acres cavorted across the horizon sporting trees, hardy grasses, shrubs, and other cascading greenery.
This was her second day of being harassed by the view while she waited for Izzy to minister to Meli and the manahi to repair carts and soldiers alike. The entire outfit was due to leave at first light in the morning, and Kassimeigh knew she would not miss the fortress, or what the land around it represented. At least her remaining time was limited. She had only the evening and that night to wait.
She turned her back on the window, preferring instead the view of the fortress’s small library. It was really just a tiny room with some printed books neatly arranged onto three tall bookcases, but with the window to let in some sun and a pair of cozy chairs, it offered a place of respite from the troops’ boisterous celebrations. Kassimeigh wanted no part of those, in spite of the troops’ attempts to cajole her into them.
“That view is incredible. Makes me want to grab a tent and disappear for a couple weeks.” Arc, of course, experienced the new surroundings as another opportunity for a nature excursion. Kassimeigh supposed she should have expected his enthusiasm.
