The mists of sorrow ms-7

by Brian S. Pratt

  “Not sure to tell you the truth,” admits James. Staring at the solid mass of gray coating the barrier, he wonders just how they will get out of this.

  When the gray mass surged over James, Jiron and Brother Willim, Miko came to a screeching halt and abruptly turned around and raced back to the others. The ‘tide’ of gray enveloped the barrier and continued on for another twenty feet before coming to a stop. Then, it began moving backward to the barrier. Ripples continue to form as more of the grayness seems to move toward where James and the others are trapped.

  Aleya shoots an arrow at it but it simply embeds itself in the ground and has no effect on the grayness.

  “Is one of them a mage of some sort?” asks Zyrn.

  After Reilin translates Stig says, “Yes.”

  “Thought so,” nods Zyrn. “It reacted the same way when a priest came to try to deal with it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Shorty yells.

  “How was I to know one of you was a mage?” Zyrn replies defensively.

  “So how do we get them out?” asks Aleya, fear for Jiron in her eyes.

  “I have no idea my dear,” replies Zyrn. “I would have thought they’d be dead by now.” Indeed, the gray covered barrier surprises him. Whoever is within there must be a mage of some power.

  “Do you feel that?” asks Brother Willim.

  “What?” questions James.

  “It feels like sap running through a tree,” he replies.

  James sends his senses out again and after several minutes begins to understand what the brother is talking about. Small traces of energy are surging through the grayness covering the barrier.

  “What do you make of it?” Brother Willim asks him.

  He concentrates on the surges for another minute before turning to Brother Willim and Jiron. “It isn’t magic,” he says. “If it were, I would feel it.” When he first saw the shimmering grayness, he thought that at first it might be a magical construct of some kind. But the familiar tingling that always comes with the workings of magic had been absent. “I think what you are feeling are electrical pulses,” he explains. “Not entirely sure about that but that’s what comes to mind.”

  “Electrical?” asks Jiron.

  “Yeah,” nods James. “Like lightning but on a much smaller scale.”

  Jiron glances to Brother Willim for confirmation but he just shrugs.

  Closing his eyes again, James once more sends forth his senses to try to figure this thing out.

  The grayness outside the barrier is constant and unchanging. Like a carpet of somewhat transparent gray, it diffuses the light coming through. Jiron gazes at it and a shiver runs through him again.

  “The pulses of electricity seem to be originating from one place,” James suddenly says, breaking the silence.

  “So?” asks Jiron.

  “So…” begins James, “that might be where the source of this is coming from.”

  “How far away is it?” Brother Willim asks.

  “It’s not close,” he replies. Opening his eyes, he turns to them and says, “Can’t be sure how far it is. Maybe a mile.” He stands there and thinks for a moment, gazing at the bubble surrounding them and the grayness covering it. “Somehow we are going to have to reach the source of the electrical pulses.”

  “How are we to do that?” Jiron asks. “Shouldn’t we first worry about how we are going to get out of here?”

  Gesturing to the barrier Brother Willim asks, “Can you move this while we walk?”

  “You mean push it under the grayness?” he asks. When Brother Willim nods yes, he thinks but a moment before he says, “Yes, I think I can.”

  “They’ve been in there a while now,” says Scar.

  They have done nothing but stare at the dome in the grayness where James, Jiron and Brother Willim are trapped since it first covered them. Miko had begun to try to use the Star in some way to rescue them, but Zyrn cautioned against it. He said that it was magic that it reacts to.

  Frustrated, all they can do is watch. “If anyone can get out of this it’s James,” says Stig.

  “You got that right,” replies Potbelly. “In fact, I remember Jiron telling us about the time they were in this swamp…” He then goes into the story about the complex in the swamp with the skull pyramids and the headless torsos.

  “Look!” exclaims Shorty.

  Cutting off his story at the point James had found the hidden entrance to the complex, he again turns his gaze to the shimmering field of gray.

  “What does he think he’s doing?” Stig asks.

  The dome in which their trapped comrades lie begins to move. Not toward them and safety, but deeper into the grayness. “Do you think he knows which way to go?” asks Scar.

  “Could be moving blindly in order to find the way out,” suggests Potbelly.

  Shaking his head, Miko says, “I don’t think so.” He’s been through too many things with James to believe he would engage in a course of action blindly. “He knows what he’s doing,” he states with conviction. I hope you know what you’re doing!

  Moving the barrier while still maintaining an air tight seal to prevent the grayness from coming in, at first was pretty hard. He had to keep the barrier beneath where they are walking stable so as not to trip them. At the same time, he needed to extend the forward area while retracting the rear.

  Originally he thought to treat it like a hamster ball, and just have it roll along. But he soon realized that was not going to be feasible, not with the three of them in here. Going slowly at first, he moves the barrier along the ground at a crawl. Though as he continually does it, he finds that it’s growing easier to do and soon doesn’t have to work as hard to keep it going.

  Another thing that’s been bothering him that he has yet to mention to the others is their air supply. There’s no way for the air within the barrier to be refreshed. The barrier itself is sizable so if this doesn’t take too long, they may be alright.

  As they move through the grayness, he had thought there would be more of a resistance. The rate of the electrical pulses had increased as soon as they got underway which is why he thought something was about to happen. But nothing manifested. The way it reacted to magic, how it moves, he can’t help but think that it is somehow alive. Maybe not intelligent, but definitely alive. It almost feels like an episode of Star Trek where they meet an unknown life form. He wonders what Captain Kirk would do in this situation.

  Thinking about Star Trek makes him melancholy. He misses home and the things that he can no longer have or do. What he would give for a pack of M amp;M’s right now! Always a chocolate junky, he can almost taste the chocolate melting in his mouth.

  “James!” cries out Jiron.

  Snapping out of his reverie, he discovers the grayness has once again begun to seep through the edge where the barrier over their heads meets the barrier beneath them. With a thought he reconstructs the barrier sealing off the grayness that had seeped in, then pushes it out and away from the barrier.

  “Sorry,” he says slightly embarrassed.

  One last errant thought crosses his mind as he wonders if there is anything similar to the cocoa bean here on this world. Getting back to the task at hand, he puts his idle curiosity to the back of his mind as he concentrates on more immediate concerns.

  There’s no way to tell how far they’ve progressed within the gray coated bubble. As near as he can tell they’ve crossed at least half a mile. At one point they passed one of the swords with which Zyrn had marked the edge of the gray area, but that was some time ago.

  Grayness above them, grayness below them, it almost feels as if they are afloat on a sea of gray. If it wasn’t for the firmness of the ground beneath them, he could almost imagine being in a gray storm cloud.

  “Do you sense anything?” he finally asks Brother Willim.

  Shaking his head, he replies, “Only what I originally felt.” Nodding, James returns to the task at hand and they continue on.

  The contin
uous concentration on the grayness has built sort of a picture in his mind of the paths the electrical bursts take as they course through the creature. Creature? he asks himself. Actually he has begun to think of it as something alive. The pulses always follow the same paths, almost like blood being pumped through arteries. There is a definite rhythm to it and maybe it’s just his imagination, but he can almost feel a heartbeat.

  “This thing’s alive,” he says.

  “Alive?” questions Brother Willim.

  “I think so, yes,” replies James. “Nothing like we understand to be sure, but alive none the less.” Stopping, he turns to Brother Willim and asks, “Wouldn’t that mean this creature falls within Asran’s domain?”

  “I…I don’t know,” he stammers. Such a thought had never even occurred to him. Closing his eyes, he prays to his god for guidance and wisdom. After several minutes, his eyes open again. “You are correct in that it is alive. Now that you pointed it out, I can easily see it. But as to it falling within Asran’s domain, it does not.” He glances from one to the other then adds, “There are many living beings that do not fall within Asran’s domain. His charge is that of all things that live in nature. Whatever this is, it doesn’t live in nature or at least nature as I understand it.”

  “Well,” says Jiron, all nervousness due to their circumstances vanishing. “If it’s alive, we can kill it.” Now that he understands it’s a living creature, his confidence is returned. James gives him a grin and a nod before continuing on.

  Another ten minutes or so of walking brings them to a point where their skin begins to crawl. Not due to the workings of magic, but something else. “What is that?” asks Jiron as he rubs his arm in a fruitless attempt to still the sensation.

  “I don’t know,” replies James. Sending his senses out further toward the source of the electrical pulses he encounters what can only be called a void. “Oh man,” he breathes.

  “What?” asks Brother Willim.

  “I’m not sure if I can explain it,” he replies. “Give me a second.” The others fall quiet as he continues his inspection of the void. Maybe void isn’t the most apt term to use but it’s the best he can come up with. In his mind’s eye it appears to be an opening, a rip if you will. The electrical pulses are originating from the other side.

  “I think we found where this is coming from,” he tells them. “It looks like a hole, not a hole as you would understand the term. More like a way that is open between this plane and another. It’s through this hole in our plane that the creature has entered.”

  “Can we close it somehow?” asks Brother Willim.

  “Maybe,” he says, “though it might take some time for me to figure it out.”

  Jiron waits there with Brother Willim while James works on the problem. Then a thought comes to him. “Could this be the spot where that explosion happened?” he asks.

  “Maybe,” replies James. Could it be? Could I have ripped a hole in this plane of existence? He seriously doubts that. Back home on Earth they have had larger explosions than the one that the others said happened here and no such thing happened. Yet, magic doesn’t work there, nor do gods meddle in the affairs of men.

  Brother Willim clears his throat and then says, “There is something one of my brothers told me that may have some bearing on this.”

  Turning toward him, James asks, “What?”

  “Well, the night before we left to take your friends back to Cardri,” he explains, “a green star fell from the sky. He didn’t think anything of it, stars do fall from the sky at times. But it was the color of it that intrigued him, he had never seen one quite that green.”

  “That’s saying something, coming from a priest of Asran as it does,” remarks Jiron.

  “Indeed,” agrees Brother Willim. “He told me of it just before we left, said it fell somewhere to the south of the keep.”

  “Which is where we are,” concludes James. “There’s more to this than we know.” A star falls from the sky, one that is a color that even a priest of Asran thinks is odd. And it just happens to fall in the vicinity where the magic bubble detonated with dramatic effect? Hardly a coincidence, but what can it mean?

  “Think it has anything to do with what’s going on here?” Jiron asks.

  “Hard to tell,” replies James. “It does seem just a bit too coincidental to me though.” Closing his eyes again, he once more sends his senses to the void. It could have been possible that he weakened the boundary and the meteorite punched its way through. Realizing he doesn’t know enough about how it came to be, he puts that train of thought aside for now and tries to come up with a way to close or mend the void.

  After studying the void for several minutes, he comes to realize that there are a multitude of micro bursts of power directed at the edge of the void. Excited by the discovery, he narrows the scope of his examination to one small section of the void’s edge. Then understanding dawns on him.

  Coming out of it, he glances to Jiron and Brother Willim. “The void is working to close itself but the creature is somehow preventing it,” he explains. “I can feel pulses of electricity that it is sending toward the edges of the void which I believe is preventing it from opening.”

  “Then if we can somehow interrupt the pulses,” concludes Jiron, “the void will close?”

  Nodding, James says, “I think so.”

  “How do you plan to bring this about?” asks Brother Willim.

  “I’m going to short circuit it!” he exclaims.

  “Do you think they’re still alive?” asks Stig.

  “Of course they are!” asserts Aleya.

  Stig has the good grace to look embarrassed. He had forgotten her feelings for Jiron before he spoke.

  After the dome in the grayness had begun to move, it continued along at a steady pace away from them. Gradually it grew smaller in the distance until they could no longer see it. Now, almost an hour later their worry for their comrades is steadily increasing. Surely something should have happened by now!

  A rumble in the distance brings them to their feet. From every direction clouds begin moving across the sky toward the area where the dome disappeared. The rumble they heard was that of lightning moving between the converging storms.

  “James!” Miko cries out jubilantly.

  “Are you sure?” asks Aleya hopefully.

  “Absolutely,” he says. “He did the same thing after we fled Cardri.”

  As the sun is blotted from the sky by the thickening cloud layer, the wind that had been but a faint breeze all morning long now steadily grows stronger.

  Then from their right they see a dozen people walking toward them. “They’re from a nearby village,” Zyrn tells them as the people come closer. Running across the sand, he quickly reaches their side.

  “Zyrn?” asks Bokka, a man he’s had dealings with before and a village elder too.

  “Bokka!” exclaims Zyrn as he greets him.

  Returning the greeting, Bokka looks up at the converging clouds with apprehension. “Something strange is afoot,” he says.

  “A mage is here,” Zyrn tells him. Indicating where Miko and the others are waiting, he adds, “Those are his comrades.”

  “Is this mage causing the clouds to move across the sky?” another asks.

  Nodding, Zyrn says, “Yes. He’s working to destroy the grayness.”

  “How?” Bokka asks.

  “That I do not know,” replies Zyrn. Pointing off toward the center of the gray area he says, “The mage is out there right now.”

  Above the area where he’s pointing is where the clouds are converging. Dark and black, the clouds are now darker than any this area has ever seen.

  It’s been a struggle to draw enough moisture to this dry area to form the storm clouds he’s going to require. Beginning to feel the strain of holding the barrier for so long, and now having pulled clouds from miles away, he holds the clouds steady as he removes the water flask from his belt and drains it.

  Brother Willim r
emoves his and offers it to him. “I still have plenty if you need more,” he says.

  Shaking his head, James says, “Not right now, thanks.” Replacing his now empty water flask back onto his belt, he returns to the matter at hand. He can feel the charged air in the sky above him. When the moment is right, he increases the polarity in an area away from the void to see what effect a lightning strike will have on the grayness before attempting it on the void itself.

  He continues to increase the polarity to the opposite of that which is in the clouds. Then all of a sudden…

  Flash! Boom!

  …lightning strikes the grayness in the exact spot where he had increased the polarity.

  James sends his senses out to pay close attention to that area. During the next couple pulses that come through the void, the ones that would ordinarily have passed in close proximity to the impact point of the bolt of lightning, fail to do so.

  “Yes!” he exclaims.

  “You killed it?” asks Jiron hopefully.

  Bringing his senses back, he glances to Jiron and says, “No. But I think I will be able to close the void.”

  “Good,” he says as James closes his eyes yet again.

  Sending his senses back to the point of impact, he sees that the pulses are once again passing through the area. So it’s only ‘paralyzed’ for a few moments. But a few moments may be all that will be required.

  Now, he sends his senses to where the void lies. Picking a spot as dead center to it as possible, he begins increasing the polarity to attract a bolt of lightning.

  Flash! Boom!

  Lightning strikes the void dead center. However, unlike the earlier strike, this one has less of an effect. It did ‘stun’ the creature for a very brief moment and the void began to close. But then it recovered and pushed the void back to its original size. If he’s going to do this it’s going to take a lot more power.

  Coming back to himself, he sits down on the bottom of the barrier and takes several deep breaths to settle himself. The air is beginning to grow stale, but not lethally so as yet. He sees Jiron gazing at him with concern. “I need a breather for a second,” he says. “This is going to take more than I anticipated.”