by Jay Swanson
The saber of the High General of Elandir lay broken on the steps of the city's monument. Gunfire spat again, but Merodach couldn't tell where it was coming from on the screens. He came back to reality and his ears perked up as his heart began to race. It came again, short bursts followed by men yelling and screaming.
Then he realized it was coming from the monitors behind him. He whipped around as the screens which displayed the internal cameras of his own tower flickered and went black. They were followed shortly by the rest of the lights in his office.
The Mayor stopped for a moment, his own heavy breathing grating on his ears in the still air of his chambers. He suddenly realized how very alone he was. The emergency lights began to blink on; far too slowly, he remarked, as he made his way through the dim light towards the lobby outside his office.
The doors between the lobby and his office had been barred shut and guards stationed by the stairs and elevators immediately outside. He didn't want to be alone any more. The thought of having his bodyguard physically surrounding him nearly drove him mad with its promise of comfort. He picked up the pace as he reached his office, the bright lights on the walls outside glimmering through the glass to his right as he almost ran.
Merodach slowed, gathering himself and smoothing his hair so as to maintain some form of dignity when he opened the doors. Shouting erupted from the lobby beyond as he twisted the heavy lock set in the doors. He could hear the thick bolts within slide slowly back into the doors from the walls and floor as the noise on the other side intensified. He stopped, uncertain of whether or not to lock the door again when he heard guns fire.
Startled, he backed away without thinking as a soldier's scream was cut short. Merodach could hear the body thud into the now unlocked door and slide against it to the floor. Dark blood began to pool and work its way into the room, causing the Mayor to shudder involuntarily. A silent calm emanated from the lobby beyond, belying the carnage he was afraid lay in the darkness.
The pudgy Mayor was about to take a chance and move to lock the doors when they started to open slowly. The darkness beyond them seemed to absorb what little light the emergency fixtures in his office could offer. The doors themselves swung half open until they gaped, small drops of blood arching out on the floor in their wake. One of the lights behind Merodach flickered brighter than the rest, allowing him to see the slumped-over form of the guard who had died just feet from him.
He was suddenly very, very aware that he was standing in the middle of his open office with nothing at hand to defend himself.
“Hello, Pompidus,” the voice in the darkness spat his name like a slur. “It's been a while, hasn't it?”
“Who's...” He stuttered, in spite of his efforts to sound in control. “Who's there?”
“I think you know who it is, Merodach.” The voice seemed to fill the room. “If you don't, I've certainly been giving you too much credit all of these years.”
Merodach turned in place, eyes searching frantically for the source of the voice. “Silvers?” He looked towards his desk; he had a revolver stashed there if he could just make a dash. “What the hell are you doing here, Silvers?”
“I would imagine that should be apparent to you of all people.”
Merodach glanced at his desk again as he started to edge toward it. “Why'd you do this, Silvers? You murdered your own men, betrayed your city. What are you doing?”
He just needed to buy a few seconds.
“Exacting revenge, to put it simply.”
Merodach still couldn't see Silvers, though he was sure he was still in the lobby. He could make it, he had to try. The Mayor made as best an attempt at a dash a man of his stature could hope for. He didn't go three steps before he felt a hand grab the shirt at the small of his back and in conjunction with a forearm to the back of his head he was shoved face first into his desk. He grunted but was silenced by the pressure in his back.
“Good God in Heaven, I've been looking forward to this.” The Shadow King slammed Merodach's face into the desk roughly with his forearm before turning him on his back.
The Mayor groaned as blood trickled onto his lip. “Just do it the–”
The Shade kicked his knee hard, causing the other leg to buckle under his weight as he was shoved to the ground away from his desk. Merodach groaned as he wiped his face with his arm and watched Silvers lock the doors to his office.
“Don't want you reaching for that gun under your desk, now do I, Pompidus?”
“How the hel–”
“You did your research on me, Merodach, but I've had my eye on you for longer. You didn't think I kept tabs on you and your staff? Ever since you were elected... I never trusted you for a minute, Pompidus.”
The Shadow King knelt in front of his prey, long silver hair falling over his cloak as he pushed the hood back over his head.
“God, Merodach, I've hated you for a long time. I just never felt I had the reasons I needed to kill you.” He paused and thought about that for a second. “No, I guess that's not true. I've always had the reasons I needed to kill you, the timing was never right.”
Merodach felt his knee with his hand. It was broken. Or dislocated. Or both, he couldn't tell but it was on fire and already swelling rapidly. He groaned again as he leaned back into his desk.
“You always were a rat bastard, Silvers. The only thing between me and running this damned continent. I was going to unite the City States into one country. One mighty, taxable, exploitable country.” He coughed, but never hid his contempt. “All I had to do was get rid of you.”
He grimaced in surprise as much as pain when the Shadow King slammed his forearm into his chest and then lifted him off the ground with ease. He held the pudgy Mayor there, half suspended, half having to support his own weight on his broken knee. Merodach yelled in agony as the Shade whipped him around and slammed him into the wall between his bookcases. The large painting that had been there a moment before crashed to the floor, broken into pieces.
“You know, Merodach.” The Shade's face was inches from the Mayor's; he didn't feel any heat radiating from it. “I might have let you live, at least a little while longer. I wouldn't have risked coming back here for you, but you had to push it. You killed the only people dear to me.”
The Mayor half laughed, half coughed. “Shadow don't love! How foolish do you think I am? I thought Silvers had his special mistress in the mountains, I never suspected you were the same guy.”
“A lot slipped past you, didn't it Merodach?”
The fat man coughed again. “I suppose enough to undo me here in the end. But the message stands, you traitorous piece of shit. Betray your people and watch as everything you love dies around you.”
“It's not only the things I love that will die around me, Merodach.”
The man that was once Silvers raised his fist as if to punch the Mayor in his soft chest, but instead he simply extended his first two fingers as if pointing a gun. Merodach recovered from flinching and looked the Shade in his deep gray eyes; broiling clouds of storm therein.
“We learned a few things from your Hunters over the years that your predecessor chased us, Merodach. They were good soldiers, probably the best the world has yet to see. They hunted us with demonic determination, and killed us with as little mercy. They murdered us in our sleep, they hunted us to our homes, and they killed the only people we were meant to protect.”
The Shade searched in Merodach's eyes for something he seemed unable to find. “I watched as every Mage I was charged to protect died in his own piss or was dragged off to your infernal testing chambers, Merodach. I was pushed back, always pushed back. Unable to defeat your damned technology, I could only watch as you murdered my people and those we were sworn to watch over.”
“I didn't kill your people, Silvers.”
“You carry their mantle with poise, Merodach!” The Shadow King yelled so loud that Merodach thought his ears would split under the assault. “You bear their stamp like you made it your
self, and you remain so proud of your own selfish ambitions; even in the face of your own death you can't see past the fantasy you've enshrouded yourself in.”
“Fantasy?” he coughed. “You're the one living the fantasy, Silvers. You're the last of your kind. How can the Shadow ever be brought back? There's no one left to do the work.”
Silvers stared long and hard into his beady eyes, savoring Merodach's confidence melting slowly back into panic like like the ice in the glass on his desk.
“As I was saying.” He glanced at his fingers that remained extended and pointed towards Merodach's heart. “We learned a lot from your Hunters as they murdered us. I remember one time in particular we caught a handful of the bastards and dragged them into some caves to have some time to ourselves. We wanted information, but in some way I think we enjoyed it. Perhaps it's only the memory that brings me satisfaction.”
The Shade paused, and smiled.
“Have they ever told you the stories of how Shadow can learn to control their dematerialization?”
Silvers’ fingers wavered and disappeared, the space they once occupied filled only by a thin cloud of gray mist, barely visible in the dark light. He slowly directed them out a little bit from Merodach's heart towards his shoulder as a flash of lightning lit the room.
“The Magi, wise as they were, realized that our immaterial form would inevitably mix with the elements. Whether the air or something more solid, when we re-materialized we would be occupying space where something else had previously been.”
He moved his hand in slowly towards Merodach's shoulder until his knuckles were only an inch away.
“The question wasn't so much whether we should be able to re-materialize or not, so much as what to do with what was once there.”
Merodach screamed as the Shadow King's fingers rematerialized in his shoulder. The Shade pulled them out slowly, leaving a hole in Merodach's chest that started to ooze blood immediately.
“I don't personally know how they answered that question, nor where your shoulder has gotten off to.” He wiped the blood off his fingers on Merodach's sleeve as the man writhed and screamed against the wall.
“Now, the beautiful part of this whole thing is that I can kill you one bit at a time. You'll bleed some, but unless I hit a major artery, you're not going to do so as rapidly as if I just sliced you up.”
The Shade let Merodach drop to the floor as he walked over to the desk and poured himself a glass of something far too expensive for the fat man's taste. The Shadow King looked like he enjoyed the drink as much as he'd ever enjoyed anything.
“God...” Merodach moaned quietly as he clutched his shoulder with his left hand. “Why are you doing this, Silvers? You were always an upright man. You were never cruel like... Brutus–”
“You took everything from me!” The Shadow King bellowed at the top of his lungs as he flung the glass against the wall. It exploded and rained back to the floor.
“You murdered the woman I loved and killed my child! My child! Do you have any idea how important he was? The beginning of a new race! You tried to have me killed in front of my own men! And all with that filthy dog of yours,” the last words slid out in disgust as distasteful to him.
He rushed over and kicked Merodach in the stomach, hard, then knelt in front of him as the Mayor coughed and clutched his gut. “You deserve far worse than I can contrive in this short span of time, so I'm going to make it as painful as I possibly can, and then I will hang you out for your whole city to see.”
The Shade pressed his forearm into Merodach’s chest again, effectively pinning him. He held out his fist. His fingers dematerialized again as he lowered his fist towards the Mayor's thigh. Merodach whimpered as he tried to force his way free but he was too weak. The Shadow King held him easily in spite of his protests. The Mayor could hear men yelling in the lobby now, banging on the door. They would be coming through soon, but he feared it would be too late.
He screamed as the shade pulled his fingers back out of the leg, revealing another gaping hole that went down through the bone. The lights flickered on as power was restored to the office.
“Looks like the cavalry has arrived at last.” The Shade turned as the violence increased in every loud bang that hit the doors. “Too bad they're late as usual. That was the one thing Brutus was right about, I always told you. The City Guard needed to drill more regularly.”
“Go to hell, Silvers.”
“The beauty of it is that I can't, Merodach.” The Shade smiled, self-satisfied. “Which goes to show how little you know of the Shadow. But you can, and you will. In fact I'll send you there now.”
He raised his fingers and pointed them straight between Merodach's eyes. The Shade's smile quickly turned to a frown as he looked at his hand. His fingers wouldn't make the jump. He flexed his hand quickly and tried again but they stayed put.
He punched the fat man square between the eyes in frustration and jumped to his feet. Running to the door he could hear the hinges cracking under the blows and knew he was out of time. They'd brought the one remaining mobile shelter. He would have to run now or risk getting mangled beyond repair.
He turned to face Merodach who lay half propped up against the wall, crumpled, bleeding. The metal doors bent in so violently they cracked the wall they were secured into.
There was no time left to deal with his enemy. He whipped around and pulled out his sword in one long, smooth motion, throwing it from the folds of his cloak and shattering a section of the windows behind Merodach's desk. As if on cue, the doors burst open behind him, sparks and shards of metal exploding into the room as the pneumatic battering ram was thrust back into the lobby.
Ten Guardsmen, rifles raised, ran into the room and focused all their attention to their left as the cloaked figure cleared the Mayor's desk. The first few knelt and opened fire as the soldiers behind them filed in and lined up their own shots. They barely got any off before he had dove out the window and landed on the roof of the circulation unit below.
The Shadow King rolled and was on his feet as lightning struck the wall to the east. Sprinting for the edge of the roof, he pulled his sword from its lodging in an air conditioning unit without missing a beat.
The soldiers lined up in the windows above. They took aim, fired, and hit nothing but the rain as the Shadow King dove off the end of the roof and into the darkness beyond.
SIXTEEN
ARDIN WOKE UP screaming in a cold sweat. Breathing heavily, he clutched his heart and closed his eyes, trying to calm himself as best he could. Alisia, awakened by his scream, sat up and asked if he was alright. Ardin didn't bother answering, he barely heard her. His heart was sinking, stomach writhing, the grief he had hoped to leave in the mountains relentless. He could see them in his dreams: his mother, his sisters, burning away in their home as the timbers fell in on their hands, outstretched, seeking salvation.
His father, executed in a shed like an animal. His brother bludgeoned, bleeding, breathing so shallowly. And he had done nothing, nothing at all, to save them. There was nothing he could use to assuage the torment that racked him in his sleep. There was nothing...
“For God's sake, Ardin.” She finally broke through enough for him to hear. “Are you alright? You look like you're going to be sick!”
“I'm fine.” He exhaled deeply one last time and opened his eyes to look at her. “I'm just... I dunno. I'm fine.”
She stared at him for a while as he picked up his gear and tied his shoes. “What happened to you?”
He looked back up at her as he finished tying his shoes. “What do you care?”
“Look,” she started. “It's just... you're not doing so well.”
“Forget it.” He stood up as if to start off. “We'd better get going.”
She sat on a log as she put her boots on, glancing up to see Ardin staring off down the river. He looked hardened. She could tell he'd seen things he should never have. He wasn't such a bad looking kid, she thought to herself. He just looked
like he needed direction.
They headed off downstream after a silent breakfast of stale, broken bread. They'd come to the river the night before and had stuck to it so far. She was certain there was a ford ahead, it was the end of summer and the river was only at half its full breadth. There should be a shallow enough point at which to cross sooner or later, she assured him.
They walked at a slower pace today. Ardin's feet were getting worse again with every passing mile; his boots starting to deteriorate. Alisia just walked silently next to him as he tried to darken the morning light with his brooding.
The lighthearted kid she'd met a few days before seemed to have left in the night only to be replaced with a sulking teenager. She should have grabbed a pair of boots off one of those Hunters.
“Do you think there's any justice in the world?” he asked finally.
She didn't really know what to say in response. “I hope so.”
“You hope?”
“I mean yes, I think there is.” She only sounded half certain of the statement. “If there isn't, then what's to make up the difference for all of this?”
They continued in silence for a while longer. The sun was glinting off of the river now as it cleared the high walls of the gorge. Parts of it were tall, sheer cliffs. Others were just steep hills covered in large rock outcroppings that often looked much like small cliffs themselves. There was a decent swath of flat land by the riverbed, however, which was what they stuck to for the most part. The riverbed, though dry for twenty or so paces in, didn't make for the most stable of footing.
“What happened, Ardin?”
“Where are we going anyways?”
She sighed, and gave up. “To the coast.”
“That's it?” He glanced at her incredulously. She noticed his arms were crossed and wondered how long he'd been walking like that. “Just make it to the coast... to...what?”
