by Jay Swanson
“Did I...” he began to himself. “Did I really just do that?”
“No,” came the assertive response from the dark.
He jumped in spite of himself as he furtively scanned the darkness.
“I did.”
He finally recognized the voice. “Well thanks for waiting until the last moment! I thought you'd left me here to die on my own!”
“I did.” Alisia's form grew out of the darkness as she approached him.
“You di... you what?”
“Are you alright?” She appeared to be checking him over in the darkness.
“You left me here to die?”
“Try not to make a big deal about it. We need to go, their companions will be coming soon and now they'll know there's a Mage about.”
She grabbed his wrist lightly and started to pull him back towards the gorge.
“Not make a big de... you just said you left me here to die!” He was greeted by a silent tug as she led him westward into the trees. “Well at least do me the honor of telling me why you decided to come back!”
She turned abruptly, closing the distance between them as he came to a startled halt.
“I don't like being left owing debts,” she said simply as she let go of his wrist and turned to walk away.
“You d... she doesn't...” he mumbled to himself for a moment before she turned at the limit of his ability to see in the darkness.
“Well,” her hazy silhouette said from between the trees. “Are you coming or did you want to wait for more of your friends to show up?”
The memory of the Hunters jolted its way through his mind and he immediately started walking. He knew he'd find far less kindness in their hands than he would hers.
“I thought you killed those guys the first time!”
“I guess not.”
“Do you know where we're going?” he asked as she turned and kept walking.
“Not really,” she replied, almost in a self-satisfied tone, he thought to himself. “But as long as you learn to fend for yourself, we should make better time.”
She laughed lightly as the night moved ever onward and they made their way towards the Rent.
GENERAL FLAVIAN BRUTUS barked orders at the two colonels that stood in front of him. They were in a small office in the barracks that the City Guard called home. Their commander was a gray colonel whose honor at the end of his long career was to head up the Guard and the Mayor's security. It was his office the general had commandeered earlier that night. He only begrudged his superior ever so slightly for the inconvenience.
The colonel knew it was his responsibility to protect the city, but the general seemed to have it in his head that his own neck was on the line. The colonel was happy to allow the ax to pass.
“Do you understand me?” Brutus looked intently from one face to the other.
“Aye sir,” came the response.
“Then get to it.” Bags were forming under Brutus' eyes. “I'll be at the main gates in twenty minutes.”
“Aye sir.” The two colonels saluted their general and then moved quickly to give their orders to their own subordinates.
Brutus sank into the high leather chair that stood behind him in the small office. For what the room lacked in size, it made up for in luxury and pomp. This was actually nicer than his own office, he remarked to himself. The big general leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, resting his head in his hands as he rubbed his forehead. He had ordered every drain and air duct connected to the city walls under guard and had placed larger contingencies of soldiers at every entrance.
The Hunters only had three working shelters, devices that provided a radius of space within which the Shadow couldn't jump between states. It wasn't much, but it would have to be enough. Two of the things didn't even have functioning batteries and had to be plugged in to operate.
He wasn't sure they would prove tactically viable to stop Silvers, or whatever the thing was. Brutus sighed as he sat up and collected his hat from the corner of the desk. He stood, straightening his jacket before he clasped his weapons belt around his waist. All he carried were a pistol and his saber. If he had to draw either tonight, he was uncertain they would ever see use again.
Walking out of the empty barracks and into the full streets was another experience all together. It had been two hours since the original alarm had sounded and people were still mulling about the streets, curious why the perimeter lights had yet to be turned off. He pushed his way through the crowds, the people oblivious to his rank in the tumult and thus more difficult to get through.
He cursed under his breath as he tripped over a group of kids running gaily through the crowd. The damned alarms were supposed to be people's orders to get indoors, but no one listened anymore. Peace had made people soft, unreliable in a crisis. They saw these things as a spectacle, something to watch and criticize as it happened in front of them.
It took him longer than twenty minutes to make it to the city gates, but he eventually did. The gates were tall as they stood closed and locked in place, but only half as tall as the walls which ran continuously over them. Though thinner than the walls they were placed in line with the exterior to maintain a smooth outward appearance.
That way they also rotated on their hinges so as to line up evenly with the interior face of the entrance as if to create a simple hole to walk through. If you were guessing conservatively they were a few stories high at least. But they were also beautiful, ornately decorated on the interior. They were intimidatingly tall, twice as high as they were wide.
Brutus loved seeing the awestruck faces of visitors from other City States as they walked through them for the first time. Fear, that's what crossed their faces. The fear of Elandir; the fear of his city and his army. Perhaps someday they would know that fear in their own cities, but tonight he had other things to think about.
He passed through the ring of soldiers working on keeping onlookers at bay some distance from the gates. The area directly in front of them was broad and open. It served as the main gate to the city and provided plenty of space for traffic. A monument stood almost as tall as the gates in the center of the square. Although the term square was misleading for such a large, circular space.
Such nuances of irony escaped men like Flavian Brutus however, and he took the entrance to his city for granted as he pressed towards a command post erected by the monument.
Brutus looked around for the colonel of the Guard but didn't see him. He grumbled under his breath about the finer points of the colonel's character flaws. After a minute he found the major who had command of the soldiers surrounding the gate. “Where's your damned colonel, Major?”
“He took a squad to quell some unrest that was breaking out near the market, sir.”
“He couldn't send you, Major?”
“Sorry sir, he gave me direct orders to watch over my own men here, sir.”
Brutus swore under his breath. It shouldn't have bothered him so much but it did. He looked around, seeing no sign of the Shade as of yet. He was worried that this was all for nothing; there were few things Brutus hated more than being made to look the fool. Then again the general wasn't sure which was worse, looking like an idiot in front of the city or having to face the King of the Shades.
“Where's the damned shelter?” he asked in order to get his mind off the situation.
“It's right over here sir.” The major walked him around to the side of the statue facing the gates. “There sir.” He pointed half-way up the tall, square pillar that made up the base of the monument. On top of it rested a towering likeness of Elandir's namesake, its founder and guardian. He stood holding a sickle in one hand and a large book in the other, representing Elandir's traditional success in agriculture and education.
“That box is the shelter?” He was looking just below the statue at what appeared to be nothing more than a large circuit breaker covered in buttons with a lever.
“No, sir,” the major responded politely. “That'
s the power supply and circuit breaker. That's the shelter.”
He gestured higher to a long metal rod sticking in the air with what appeared to be a mushroom's head at the end. The bottom half was twice the diameter of the top, as if it were an extendable piece of equipment. Nothing lit up or moved to show if it was active or not.
“And it's powered on?”
“Yes sir.” The major put his hands behind his back and turned to his superior. He seemed calm enough to Brutus. “It's covering the whole square right now. If he does enter he'll be exposed to our weapons and unable to assume his ethereal form.”
“His what?” The general turned back to his major.
“His... Shadow form sir.” The major waited to be sure the general understood.
“Ah, yes.” The general had heard about the Shadow being able to move between forms. He didn't really grasp the concept, but who would? “So we'll be able to kill the bastard.”
“Exactly sir.”
“Seems like a hell of a lot of trouble for one man.”
“Aye sir, it certainly does seem that way.”
They stood there on the steps of the monument, hands behind their backs, awkwardly staring at the shelter before the major finally let out a light cough.
“I'd best be back to making sure my men are at the ready, sir, if that's all.”
“Of course, yes. Get on with it then.”
“Thank you sir.” The major wheeled about after saluting and walked off towards a group of soldiers who were standing around talking.
He'd make a fine replacement for Silvers someday, Brutus thought for a moment before turning and surveying the scene. Lightning struck somewhere in the distance as thunder rolled through to prove it had. It would start to rain soon. That was the last thing he needed for morale right now.
There were a dozen vehicles lined in a semicircle around the gates, mounted gunners standing at the ready in the back of each with his machine gun primed and ready to unload. Surrounding the vehicles were a few hundred soldiers, each ready to take the place of the man directly to his front in case he should fall. The Shadow King would have a fight on his hands if he wanted to work his way into town this way, especially if he couldn't change forms.
Brutus began to feel better about the whole situation, and almost wished that the Shadow King would show his face. The rain began to pour as he thought of Silvers and bristled at the image of the man's face. He did wish that Silvers would show up. He wanted the chance to prove himself the better general. The better man.
As if in response to his wishes, the Shadow King arrived.
The giant lights hundreds of feet above on the walls began to flicker. Not many of them, just the ten or so that lined the space directly above the square at the gates. They flickered again as a hushed murmur spread through the soldiers and onlookers alike. Brutus took his place by shouting orders at the men in the square to stand fast. His voice bellowed again before the lights went out completely and cast their corner of the city into utter darkness.
Guns cocked and men knelt at the ready as they anticipated the action to come. Silence gripped the stillness of the air and wouldn't let them breathe. Every man woman and child within sight of the gates forgot to exhale as the tension reached its apex. Then, with a suddenness in direct contrast to which the lights had gone out, the gates burst open with an unearthly violence. The shock took every soldier in the square back a step. A single shot rang out in the darkness from the gate. The circuit breaker below the shelter began to spit sparks into the night.
A lone figure stood in the immense space of the archway, filling the entrance to the city with its presence as if it were truly twenty times the size of its body. It lowered its outstretched hand slowly as lightning in the distance highlighted its silhouette for a lingering moment. The pistol clattered sharply as it fell to the ground. General Flavian Brutus could almost swear he saw a smile cross the creature's face before he hollered at his men to open fire.
FIFTEEN
MERODACH WANDERED FROM room to room in the complex of chambers that lined his office. Some held live security feeds, others were just full of annals and archives. He was more interested in the security feeds and spent a good deal of time surveying the city as more and more people crowded into the streets.
There weren't many cameras up as the whole concept had been distasteful to Elandir's citizens. But he had managed to get a few set up in critical defensive positions around the walls in particular. They weren't much better than the cameras installed in the outposts; greenish tinted black and white images that crackled and wavered at maddeningly sporadic intervals.
Nothing was happening outside. People amassed for short spans in front of gates or the tunnels the river ran through, but they would wander off again as boredom pressed the uneventful nature of the evening. Even the soldiers were beginning to relax, leaning on their rifles or even sitting by their posts. Merodach wished he'd installed loudspeakers near every camera so he could yell at the soldiers to get their lazy corpses back to soldiering.
The circle of the broad city sat quiet however, as nothing passed to break the eerie silence beyond the walls. He tried calling Brutus, even a few other officers that might be near a phone, but the only people he could get were snot-nosed clerks who knew even less than Merodach about the evening's events.
A few hours passed before the Mayor began to let himself relax. Perhaps this was all just a big mistake, it was possible he was overreacting. But the images from the outpost haunted him. He knew what he had seen and he knew that it was no coincidence. Why kill those men? The Shade could have easily passed by unnoticed and arrived in Elandir without causing such a stir.
Merodach worried that it was Silvers' way of letting him know he was coming. If the point was to terrify the Mayor, it was working. He couldn't get the thought of having his face split open out of his mind. The images he had seen left his imagination with inspiration and plenty of room to run with it. What he needed was a good drink. That would take the edge off things.
He walked back through a couple of rooms and into the hallway leading to his oversized office. It was dark outside, pitch black in fact, and the bright security lights ringing the city on top of her walls washed away any hope of seeing the stars. Not that Merodach cared for such things.
He walked up to the windows and stared out into the night beyond, the air conditioning units below still working lazily, glinting with the artificial lights to either side. The shelf they rested on jutted out a stone's throw from the tower, but at about the same level as the tops of the walls.
The lights themselves were massive; three times the height of the average man and just as wide. They were pointed in three different directions, intended to illuminate as much of the walls and surrounding territory as possible. The first in a line would be pointed at the ground to the outside of the wall, the second after it would be pointed towards the inside of the wall, and the third shone on the top of the wall facing back towards the first two.
This pattern was repeated all the way around the perimeter of the city and it cast dramatic shadows everywhere Merodach looked. Shadows through which dark enemies could slip. He shuddered as the knot in his stomach tightened.
As if in response to his paranoid premonitions, the lights over the city gates began to flicker. They faced west and stood half way between the Northern Tower, where Merodach's offices were, and the Southern Tower directly opposite his own. He turned and walked over to the western wall of his office where the windows continued for a dozen paces or so.
He stopped and stared down the line of the wall towards the Gates in the distance as the lights flickered more violently and went out. The concussion of explosives attached to the gates could be felt all the way in his office as their large gears were rent and the massive hinges permitted their charges thrown open.
The rain intensified, pounding and rolling down the windows in waves. The water made it maddeningly difficult to see what was going on below.
; Darkness enshrouded almost an eighth of the city for a moment before it was lit up in the strobe-like fire spit by hundreds of guns unloading their munitions into the night. Merodach couldn't see anything, fidgeting with his hands as the flashes died down in the midst of a cease fire.
He almost jumped out of his socks as he bobbed up to his toes to try and see what had happened. Suddenly more flashes could be seen, sporadic, dull compared to the concentrated fire of a moment before. The fat Mayor couldn't take it anymore, shuffling as quickly as his short legs would take him into the security chamber. The feeds covering the gates were mostly blacked out, though flashes from the gunfire lit up sections of the screens as he focused every monitor on the scene.
Finally lights started to come back on in the area. Street lights at first and then eventually the perimeter lights above the gates. To his surprise Merodach hardly saw any bodies on the ground. There appeared to be a few men shot in the crossfire, but he didn't see the telltale slashes and gaping wounds that the Shadow King's blade would leave behind.
He scanned the screens, looking for any evidence that the Shade had even been the cause of the explosion, searching more frantically as the soldiers looked around in their own dazed confusion. Medics were being called in to tend to the wounded, and then Merodach noticed a concentration of officers at the monument of Elandir. They were gesticulating wildly, pushing soldiers back and hollering for medics.
Merodach couldn't see through the crowd from this angle. He looked around at the other monitors but didn't see any better from which to get a view. The Mayor was about to pick up a phone in his frustration to call down and demand an answer to what had happened. But then the crowd of officers on the steps of the monument parted for an approaching doctor.
It wasn't the doctor that caught his attention, or even the movement of the officers on the screen. It was the glint of bright steel that shone as the shadows parted from the stairs. It was a sword lying on the ground, and not just any sword. Merodach recognized it immediately. His jaw dropped with his drink as it crashed to the floor in the silence of the ringing in his ears.
