by R N Skye
The chime of a trolley traveling briskly down the street toward them caused them both to look up. Kaysee stood, looked at Leo and with a last sob said. “Leo I love you. But I could never be with someone good as you, knowing what I have done. And I refuse to live another moment with this vile thing inside me.” Before he could react she leapt in front of the oncoming trolley.
“NO!” yelled Leo helplessly as he tried desperately to grab her and missing by a thread.
The trolley’s magical sensors stopped it with incredible speed but not before a sickening impact that threw Kaysee several feet before her limp form tumbled to a halt.
~~~~~
The world seemed to halt; Brenner had been caught completely by surprise. The woman was broken and unconscious and he could sense her life fading. He knew if she died that he would soon follow. He was about to give up when he sensed the crystal sphere that he had tricked the woman into making, inside of her pocket. With his last strength he willed himself from the woman’s consciousness and into the protective containment of the sphere. “Stupid Elios half breed,” he laughed to himself. “I yet live another day. I will find Pechor and take half the lumen of this world in payment for him nearly getting me killed like this.” Suddenly the essence of Brenner was filled with pain. The crystal was cracking, a pressure more painful than he had ever imagined seemed to rip at his very being – his last thought: “I hate you Pechor – I hope you die!”
~~~~~
Leo wasted no time. Using his limited lumen senses he could see Kaysee’s life was fading and that she had a red energy flowing around inside of her; prodding at her life and energy but failing to grasp it due to the protective rings that she still wore. As he watched he noticed it beginning to move toward her left side where it began to exit her body. Looking closely he saw the sphere in her pocket. As the redness entered in to it Leo tried what he had only read in theory. Without realizing that he was using glyph mastery Leo hurriedly cast a golden protective cocoon around her to starve any possible residue left behind by the Allyant. Placing the red orb on the ground he cast again. With anger like he had never felt in his life he enclosed the same shield around the sphere and slowly began to shrink it until he heard the cracking of the crystal. He then made it smaller still and held it until he could tell that the all sign of the redness and the dark residue was gone.
Not yet proficient at any type of healing, Leo, quickly ran into the lab and grabbed an armful of the healing bandages that Ava had designed and ran back out and wrapped her the best way he could in the hopes that the healing glyphs would be sufficient to hold until he could get some help. Recalling that one of his former students, Alecia – now a beginning glyph mage - had a necklace that was designed by the Elios for healing he ran in and checked nearly every room looking for her but to no avail. Too late Leo realized that she was with his other former students, John and Lance, assisting the Luion army. I need Shane or Ava, he realized and he hurriedly used familiar levitation glyphs raising Kaysee from the road carried her into the building and as soon as the door was shut he pressed the glyphs that would open into Ava’s parents’ house. Stepping from what appeared to be a coat closet and into a well-furnished foyer to a living room, he carefully laid her down upon a couch. Checking again he could still see her life spark but it was barely a flicker.
“Help!” he hollered throughout the large home. “Ava, Shane, is anyone home?”
He was about to give up when the familiar face of Ava’s mother stepped wiping the sleep from her eyes from one of the rooms along the deep hallway. “Professor Wetz? Are you ok?” she asked seeing his distress.
“Thanks goodness mademoiselle Desmond, “there’s been a terrible accident. Kaysee has been severely injured and I need Shane or Ava desperately. I fear we may already be too late.”
Louisa’s mind was suddenly filled with the dream training that she had been receiving regarding the medical triage and stasis facilities and the functionality of her necklace. “Where is she Professor I may still be able to help her.”
Leo all but ran to the room where he had left Kaysee. Louisa took her amulet and began tapping the control glyphs on the back side and soon a small set of lights began to appear. She held the device over the still form of Kaysee and the lights flickered red and yellow. Without another word Louisa pressed a few more glyphs and another amulet appeared in her other hand. She pressed one of the large glyphs on the front and handed it to Leo. “Quickly, professor, put this around your neck.”
After Leo had donned the necklace, Louisa pressed another sequence of glyphs and a portal opened up in front of them near Kaysee’s pale body; followed by a gurney on wheels. “Help me get her onto the gurney and into the room; she has only a minute or less before she expires.” The two carefully took Kaysee through the door. As soon as the body passed the threshold it seemed to go ridged.
“What happened she is solid as a stone,” Leo exclaimed.
“Everything is fine now,” comforted Louisa. “She is in Stasis. Here, let’s take her over here.” Louisa indicated an area out of the way next to a number of unfamiliar artifacts. “She will be fine until we can get everything together to heal her.” Seeing Leo’s expression of worry and concern she wheeled another gurney next to Kaysee’s. “Here hop up and lie down you can rest a while and you will be on hand when she wakes up. Leo lay down on his side looking anxiously at Kaysee. Louisa reached down and removed the amulet from around his neck and the professor was instantly in stasis as well.
“There,” Louisa smiled, “We’ll have your friend healed as good as new and it will only seem like it was a minute to you.”
~~~~~
“Where did all of these soldiers come from? There were only supposed to be a couple of hundred.” Shane whispered as the scanned the large encampment. “I’m going to start listening to Shew when he says that you are a trouble magnet.”
“Don’t blame me for this,” Ari argued. “I’ve seen more action since I tied in with you than I did for the majority of my career.”
“Keep an eye out,” Shane said as he activated his instructor, I’m going to see if I can tie in a locator that will allow me to find the deployed blue dots. It should help me narrow the search for Captain D’roe.”
As Shane began reading up on what he needed Ari ducked into the shadows and began talking on his comm.
“I’ll tell him about the boat and thanks for the heads up on the flying artifact. It may be what he saw at the warball stadium recently. Things are calm here right now but everyone seems to be on alert and so far no sign of the D’roe. Shane’s trying to locate him with glyphs. Go and take out that activator but be careful. The whole Infin army seems to be up to something. When you get that done let me know and I’ll update you. If you can’t reach me set up operations in the lab out of my office. Good luck”
Ari stepped back toward Shane. “I just got off the comm with Shew. The Allyant pulling the strings on all of these wristbands seems to be flying that machine you saw at the warball stadium. He says it’s got some hefty magic and we best have an escape plan if we see any sign of it.”
Shane just nodded ad he concentrated on adding some additional glyphs to his hand held portal viewer with his scribe.
“He also said that the sloop was destroyed.” Ari waited for Shane to react, knowing how much sentimentality he felt towards his first magical inventions.
Shane stuffed his scribe back into its sheath on his belt and activated his viewer. Looking at the expectant Ari he finally commented. “Oh well, it was due to happen sooner or later. We can make a better one. Is Shew and Junior all right?
“Yeah, they’re going after the lumen activators and will report back in a little wile when they are done. I told them to set up shop in the office until we get back with them.”
Shane thought for a moment. “If that machine is flying around and it has magical weapons capable of destroying a ship then you best start working on some of the best shielding ever invented by a Sicam. Meanw
hile I’ve added a feature to locate and interface with the blue dot that we have put on the armbands.” Shane pulled out his viewer and began making scanning motions across the bivouac area. He cursed under his breath. At Ari’s unvoiced question he said, “I can find the glyphed armbands well enough but the problem is they are all over the place.” Shane showed the viewer to Ari. “I was hoping that most of the glyphs would be locatable by being boxed up and the stray location would be Captain D’roe. Evidentially they must have deployed them when they brought in all of these new soldiers. I’m showing locations all over the place.”
“Looks like we are going to have to do this the old fashioned way and look,” said Ari. Can you show me a bird’s eye view of the camp super imposed by a dot of every deactivated wristband; like we were able to see ships with using the nav device on the sloop?”
Shane made a few adjustments. “How is this?”
“That’s perfect,” said Aria as he began to look for patterns in the dots.” If my guess is right the clumps of dots in all of these groups are new soldiers and they have been mixed the more experienced squads. What that means is that we can eliminate clumps of three or more. My guess is that the captain is probably under suspicion and therefor either captive or being watched by an Allyant possessed guard or guards. So his dot will likely be one of the few that is an isolated blip and not near any others.” Ari paused, “if it was me I would have set it up as a trap. Put him in a secure but obvious location and then I would have left an area open with a token security and try to make it easy to lure in anyone that went looking for the bait.”
“Kind of like a bridge with only two guards, like we are right now,” said Shane a look of disgust on his face. “Are we that stupid?”
Ari nodded, “It has been bothering me since we found the increased number of soldiers here at the camp.”
Shane put away his viewer. “I think we are going to find out. We have a large group of soldiers forming up on the Jehhet side of the bridge and another couple of hundred marching our way from the camp.”
“We should probably relocate,” Ari grimaced.
Ignoring the oncoming soldiers Shane pulled out his portal device and made a few selections then reached up and climbed into a structure of beams and braces that had appeared above him. “Come on up we’ll hide here while we look for the Captain.”
Ari slid onto a large beam next to Shane; looking down he saw nothing but blackness as the portal closed. “Under the bridge?” he asked as he began to feel the moist air and the increase of the sound of the river.”
Ignoring the percussion of marching boots and the trickle of dust from above Shane nodded and began rescanning the area of the bivouac. “I see a group of tents here that are pretty heavily guarded and there is only one blue glyph in the area,” he spoke in a low voice loud enough for only Ari to hear. “Found him,” Shane stated suddenly.
Ari was doing something on his own portal device. Looking up momentarily he said, “Scan the entire area look for signs of a trap both mundane and magical. I’ll be right with you.”
Shane noticed that outside the tent there was half a squad of wrist banded heavily armed guards. On the inside of the well-lit tent there stood two extremely alert armed men without wristbands. Opening a small port in the far corner of the tent Shane looked with his lumen sight and saw that the two inside guards were what he suspected. They were controlled by Allyant seeds and very full of the red lumen. Captain D’roe was sitting apparently unconscious on a chair securely tied up to the chair and still wearing the deactivated wristband.
Shane scoured the area around the tent and saw that many of the troops were now headed toward the bridge. “Ari, tell me if this sounds like how a trap would be set up. First you have the bait where you would suspect it to be – an obvious location well-guarded. Second you have a limitedly guarded entry point set up so that your target could easily get close enough to find your bait. But knowing that your target is smart and would likely pick up on the weakness as a devised weakness you have large patrols rotate to the weakness so that your target won’t think of it as a trap or that the weak point is the trap. Now if your target is very bright he may get past that so the bait is surrounded by some very tough looking guards. Additionally the next level of protection of the bait is a pair of magically enhanced soldiers that would take a mage to remove. At the end of it all is your bait. Tied up to a chair without even a gag to ‘say run away it’s a trap.’ Wouldn’t you call that suspicious?”
Ari thought for a moment. “Check the chair and see if there is an explosive or something magically dangerous about it that can be triggered by either the guards or by removal of the captain. Or even by having more than three people inside the tent. I really think you’re getting the hang of this operational field work, Shane. If you ever get tired of this magic stuff, we could do a lot toward keeping bad guys under control for whoever comes out on top of this war.”
“I don’t think it would work out,” commented Shane in return. “Ava would see what we were up to in a heartbeat and wouldn’t put up with it. She already made me promise to be safe. Somehow I feel I’m pushing the limits of that by what we are doing right now.”
“Enfer,” cussed Ari, “Leslie made me promise the same thing. I told her I’d be careful.”
“That’s what I told Ava,” responded Shane as he continued examining the chair. “We are being careful aren’t we?”
“So far, but we still have a long night and an even longer day tomorrow ahead of us. What really has me worried is that there are only about five thousand troops here. And Allion has had enough time to conscript nearly a million. I’m trying to find the rest. I’d bet Shew’s false teeth that this is a feint. I think the real target is the border. If what Shew said on his last comm is correct I’m willing to bet the king is assembling a mass of troops up north somewhere and is planning on destroying your wall with that flying magical dart then invading Luion.
Shane concluded his reexamination the tent and the contents and then the chair. Ari’s suspicions were correct. The chair was infused with red lumen and there was a crystal that had glyphs of an unfamiliar nature that seemed to have energy built up captured within. “I think I have it figured out,” Shane said at last. “The chair is definitely trapped. I’m going to try and defuse it from here.”
Deciding that the energy inside the crystals were likely created to be the explosive Shane slowly drained the energy away from them to outside the tent. Once the energy was released he bled away the red lumen that was set to trigger the explosion. The chair was once again a chair only. Turning to the Allyant controlled guards he was about to shield them from their host when he saw that they both had rings with crystals similar to the chair worn on each of their fingers. Dismayed at the way the Allyant disregarded the lives of his men, Shane busied himself with defusing those crystals as well. Eventually the explosives around the soldier’s fingers was removed, Shane shielded the soldiers from their hosts and then drained away the red lumen. Leaving the shield up long enough to starve any Allyant residue he finally removed the shielding. To his dismay both soldiers collapsed and died. The lumen had been all that was keeping them alive, their life spark had been bled dry.
“The traps are defused and the tent is empty except for D’roe,” Shane said to Ari. “How do you want to go about winning over these soldiers and then stopping whatever the Allyant is up to?”
“I’ve been working on that,” Ari answered distractedly. “One more second,” Ari paused as he concentrated with his eyes closed. “There, I think that about does it.”
“What,” asked Shane?
“I have everyone but us and anyone inside the tent where the Captain is stuck to the ground with your glue glyphs,” Ari said smiling. “Comm Shew and get him and the little brother over here and let’s go get the Captain.
Ari and Shane entered the tent and carefully cut the captain free. The Captain nearly fell from the chair, stopped only be Ari’s quick reaction and ref
lexes. “He’s been beaten and drained. I think the only thing that has kept him alive has been the feedback glyph, “Shane noted as he examined the unconscious man. “Get him on the floor and let’s see if we can heal him up and get him some strength.”
A few moments later Shane’s heal glyphs began to make a difference and the man began to stir. “Captain D’roe. My name is Shane Chanson; we have your family safely out of Jehhet and in a place far away from the influence of the king. It’s a place that your family legends call Coenor.” Shane said calmingly as they helped him sit up.
“What about Chy’nette” he asked with concern as he stood and glanced at the dead guards on the floor. “How did you sneak up on them? I’ve seen them kill just by a touch. They were the king’s special guards.”
“Your wife is fine,” said Ari. “The king had some sort of magic placed on her but we were able to safely remove it.”
“You spin a good yarn, invisible man, but where’s the proof I asked for,” The captain said suspiciously looking at Shane.
No sooner had the captain spoken, a portal opened and Shew and Oscaar Junior entered the tent.
“Ren,” shouted his ebullient brother as soon as he saw him. “You are not going to believe what has been going on today.
The five men soon caught each other up on the recent events. Shew eyed Shane from the corner of his eye at his unusual silence when he retold about the sinking of the sloop. “Are you going to be ok with that boy?” He asked. “I know how you set store by your inventions.”
“Its only stuff,” Shane answered unemotionally, “I can remake it if I have to – even better than before. I’m just glad you guys are okay. I’m thinking that I need to employ fail safes and emergency devices next for time.”
“Fail safes?” asked Shew. “What the enfer do they do,” he asked in his standard cantankerous manner.
