Dire Prophecy

by Zack Finley

  It sounded like many of them would be back at the keep bright and early the next morning to start the rebuilding process.

  The last errand of the evening was to 'port to the Augun Mage Guild. Argon and I weren't surprised there were no mages present that we could detect. We posted King Rufix's proclamations in both the public and the members-only area and called it a night.

  Argon was already dressed and had a cup of chee ready for me when she nudged me awake the next morning.

  "Daylight's wasting," she said, dancing out of my foggy grasp and firmly setting the chee on the side table. "This morning we have fruit and field rations."

  I groaned and covered my head, but it was hard to fool someone who can read your mind. I knew I was awake and Argon knew I was awake.

  Argon relayed her morning update from Tobron. Not much had changed in Augun. The mage accompanying the Augun King’s Guard to locate the heir reported widespread but uncoordinated fighting along the roadway. The protagonists were mainly thugs and other low life creating roadblocks to rob ordinary citizens. The king’s guard leading the expedition was reluctant to bypass the robbers, so there was a battle at each roadblock. Injuries to the king’s guard so far had been minor, but at the current pace, they didn't expect to arrive at the heir’s estate near Asme until late evening.

  Inoa hadn't come home last night; she and Cleon were still hard at work. Argon actually thought this was a good sign.

  Alba needed our help this morning with King Rufix. She thought we needed to do some further remodeling in his pelvis and hip areas. The pain emanating from this region was significantly higher than she would have expected. Argon had already advised Alba we'd be there as soon as she got me out of bed.

  I thought she should have held out for a nice breakfast as payment, but this got no sympathy from Argon as I trotted to the washroom. I didn't even get to finish my chee before we 'ported to the hospital.

  We still had VIP status, and a guard escorted us to meet Alba in the king's room. She slipped him deeper into a medical coma to avoid causing further discomfort during our procedure.

  I groused a little at Argon as we changed into medical smocks. I didn't know why we needed to wear this outfit anymore as the patient was unconscious and no longer had any open wounds.

  "You are just grumpy because you didn't get to finish your chee," messaged Argon, accompanying her comment with a gentle shove. "Don't give Alba any lip, she hasn't gotten much sleep since she became involved in this and she is very worried about Cleon."

  I felt appropriately chastised. Nevertheless, the smock still made no sense.

  Broken bones ached while they knitted, a lot, but the pain Alba had been blocking was more intense than could be explained by the patient's status.

  Alba, Argon, and I settled into the three-way bond we had used before and went hunting for the problem.

  I didn't know what I was looking for but trusted Alba to direct my unskilled talent where it would do the most good. While the pain was localized in the pelvis and hip area, that was like saying it was somewhere in Jaloa. This area was a complex nest of innards, bone, and connections.

  Locating the likely cause took nearly as long as I spent rebuilding the pelvis the first time. After what seemed like hours of fierce concentration, following every nerve and system, Alba pinpointed the problem as an errant sliver of bone. Once I banished the bone and the nerves in the area were soothed with a burst of healing magic, the pain levels plummeted.

  But Alba wasn't done. While we were in the neighborhood, she had us smooth a rough area in one of the hip sockets and remove some tiny bone spurs on the pelvis and several of the repaired vertebrae.

  She then had Argon stand the king up using force magic and simulate moving his legs in a walking motion. All while we monitored his pain level along with the reaction of his skeleton and organs to this movement.

  While she didn't want the king to bear his full weight, she had Argon lower him, so his skeleton was under some load.

  Once alignment of his skeleton met Alba's standards, she had Argon return him to bed. The king's muscles were weak. Alba planned to start him on physical therapy in the hospital pool as soon as he woke up.

  Argon spotted the healing amulet we had used for the king during transport and had me boost its charge since my healing power supply was still nearly full.

  We left the charged amulet and urged Alba to call if she needed our help. Argon slid her hand into mine and 'ported us away.

  I was happy with our destination, the Klee market. A real breakfast, finally. I ate two breakfasts and several cups of chee before I was satisfied. Healing was hungry work.

  When I started on my second breakfast, Argon left to browse the booksellers. She was being a little mysterious about what she was looking for. I knew I could find out by delving deeper, but also trusted she would share freely once whatever she was considering was more fully formed. There were enough random thoughts rolling through my head; I found I didn't need to share in all of hers all the time.

  Instead, I practiced my mind and eavesdropping magic. I was outgrowing my original mind-reading app. It was clumsy, inefficient and most of what it picked up was drivel. I needed a passive app that alerted me to the information I wanted but kept the minutia from bothering me. I also needed something to highlight those without a mental signature, either mages or those with mental blocks.

  My first revamp was a passive monitor that alerted based on keywords. I tried Augun as my first keyword and expanded the boundaries of my monitoring to the line of sight. I wasn't sure how much farther than that I could read, but it seemed a good first step.

  Perhaps because we were in the marketplace, there were a surprising number of folks thinking about Augun. I swapped between my new app and the old one and decided there was still a need for a read all app. I began tweaking my existing app to improve its efficiency and control. Having so many people around made it easy to test new configurations.

  I was cheerfully playing with the controls when Argon returned from her book buying expedition. She felt smug as she slid back into the chair at the table.

  "Now what?" I messaged.

  "Let's find those missing mages," she replied.

  We double-checked our spell combinations. We had settled on lethal and non-lethal variants. The lethal variants were heavy on firepower and the non-lethal used paralysis and stun. We were already in combat synchronization when Argon signaled me to teleport to our first location.

  We'd chosen the country home of an influential financier for our first trip. He was an important member of the mage guild and was located just outside of Flom. Nothing had been heard from Flom for weeks.

  The estate was ransacked, and smoke was still drifting from the rubble of one corner. There was no way to tell whether a team of assassins or opportunistic thieves and vandals caused the destruction. The only positive aspect of our search was the absence of bodies. Whether anyone but the looters had been there recently was not clear. The wanton destruction seemed more the work of vandals than thieves.

  Looting and stealing I could understand, but slashing or smashing furniture, doors, windows, drapes, everything seemed like overkill. They could have sold most of the smashed objects at the market.

  We spent some time searching for a secret mage bunker, but if there was one, we couldn't find it.

  The damage wasn't confined to this estate. A pall of smoke draped nearby properties. We suspected we’d see the same destruction but had to check them, too. We decided to follow the smoke.

  We spotted the first bodies hidden in the undergrowth along the side of the road. There was a gruesome mix of men, women, and children. The murderers had clubbed some of the victims and stabbed others. They had then stripped the victims of anything valuable.

  I couldn't tell whether the murderers cut down the villagers in a running battle or just rounded them up and executed them.

  I had seen worse, but it was Argon's first senseless massacre involving childre
n. I could only hope it would be her last.

  Argon's agony at spotting the children had nearly overwhelmed me before she clamped down on it. I tried to comfort her but she remained shut down and aloof. I felt her walling off her emotions, just as she had done with the youngling in the hospital. I pulled her away from the scene. She came with me but with zombie-like steps. All I could do was comfort her and try to protect her.

  The bodies were at least a day old.

  It only took her a few moments to pull away, announcing we had a job to do. My emotional read on her showed she had found a way to keep her emotions in a tight band, not high, not low.

  "It is my way of coping," she sent. "At times like these emotions are your enemy. I cannot help these children nor can I find those who committed this atrocity if I am weakened by emotion."

  I remembered clearly the first time I saw a group of dead children. I was a rookie, and I nearly lost it. My more experienced teammates, shielded me until I regained my bearings. Sometimes warriors exposed to such senseless violence never make it back. All I could do was be there for her.

  We soldiered on. An extended search of the area revealed more senseless destruction and occasional bodies. We spotted no living soul, neither survivor nor perpetrator.

  Argon used her animal magic to capture two basas, which we mounted to ride toward the town of Flom.

  The swath of destruction ended abruptly about a mile from where we caught the basas. It looked to me like the death squad had dispersed for their own reasons. There was no sign they'd run into effective resistance, they just stopped. I suspected we still had a group of marauders bedded down somewhere nearby.

  We spotted armed men in front of several intact estates, but they did not encourage us to approach. They were angry and had already fought off several attacks during the night.

  I used my newly tweaked mind-reading app to learn what we could from the guards. To a man, they didn't know who had attacked but were prepared to respond ruthlessly to anyone nearing their positions. They all blamed the lawlessness on the Augun King’s Guard.

  We were alone on the road for much of the ride into Flom. Once the density of the buildings increased, we began to share the road with pedestrians and an occasional delivery cart. Nothing like the city traffic, but much better than the eerie silence we faced earlier.

  The mental images generated by the people on the street painted a bleak picture. The attack on the king was old news and was only relevant to life in Flom because it precipitated the withdrawal of the king’s guard. With no one keeping the peace, the town had degenerated into lawlessness and chaos. Armed groups roamed the town and surroundings in the night taking whatever they wanted.

  No one I monitored knew who the criminals were. The marauders showed up soon after the king’s guard pulled out of Flom. No one knew where the king’s guard had gone, but most thought they marched to Augun and abandoned Flom.

  The marauders broke into the king’s guard garrison during one of the forays into the city and trashed it. We caught no mental signatures of any secret police, either.

  I com-carded Lt. Valso and apprised him of the situation. He advised none of the Flom garrisons had arrived in Augun and he suspected the assassins had killed them. Augun and I agreed to 'port a few squads of Augun King’s Guard to Flom immediately to begin restoring order. He planned to send a backup team upriver from Augun as soon as he had the manpower assembled.

  We agreed the level of destructive violence seemed designed more to breed fear than to provide criminal gain.

  We shut the basas up in the garrison and 'ported to Augun to pick up the king’s guard. Sergeant Bomes and 10 men awaited us in the Augun ballroom. We moved the first four immediately. Argon then stayed in Flom to brief the sergeant and reinforce the group during the transition. I shuttled back and forth until we had the full group at the Flom garrison.

  Sgt. Bomes, who was originally from Flom, was confident they could barricade the garrison until reinforcements arrived from Augun. He planned to start a series of two-man daytime mounted patrols, using our recently acquired basas. It wasn’t much, but it would serve to spread the word the king’s guard was back while waiting for reinforcements to arrive. Bomes was sure he could recruit some retired king’s guard living in Flom to help.

  We gave Bomes a com-card and told him to call if he was in danger of being overrun or learned more about the perpetrators. We also left several mage-only com-cards and asked him to give a card to any mage they encountered.

  We explained we had not located a single mage in Augun since rescuing the king and that finding the local mages was one of our major assignments. He seemed doubtful until I pointed out rebuilding Augun would be a lot tougher without help from local mages.

  Sgt. Bomes was a good leader. He projected the confidence his men needed to hear even though he was scared inside. He had only been a sergeant for a short while, which likely spared him the fate of the other enlisted leadership during the coup.

  He would call us if conditions warranted, he cared too much for his men to risk them in an uneven assault.

  We planned to post one of the king's proclamations at city hall on our way out. He announced he would put one up on his garrison wall and anywhere else he thought would get the attention of the locals.

  We sat on the steps of Flom city hall, drinking water from our packs and nibbling on waybread. My mind-reading app confirmed we were attracting a lot of curiosity. None of the residents were willing to break cover and approach.

  We might have looked relaxed, but we were prepared to respond to any aggression. I was monitoring the mundanes. Argon was searching for blocked minds. Once I determined a mundane was basically harmless, I marked them with my new app then they disappeared from my active view. This allowed me to prioritize those I was monitoring.

  Argon identified one building with several blocked minds she believed were mages. We decided to stroll over and check them out.

  As we began to move, we waved to the first Augun King’s Guard patrol riding slowly down the main street.

  I reopened my mind-reading app fully to assess the local reaction to the patrol. While relief was the overwhelming sentiment, many residents still felt substantial residual anger and resentment. No one within range had any desire to fight with the patrol. It also seemed likely if the patrol were attacked, several of those I was monitoring might actually go to their defense.

  We wanted to get close to the mage nest before attempting to probe them. That didn't mean we were going to approach them like gunslingers in the old west. We 'ported back to the garrison and Argon used her invisibility magic to hide our arrival. Disembodied shadows could give us away on the street, but with the sun high overhead, we decided to risk it anyway.

  We wanted to be in a position to go into the mage building and stun or paralyze them before Argon attempted a more invasive mind scan. Of course, our approach would be different if it was a family huddled together in fear.

  Argon had been consulting with Inoa about the best way to crack mage mind shields without detection, but this was her first shot at applying those new tactics.

  While I continued monitoring the minds broadcasting around us, I was in a familiar copilot spot closely monitoring Argon's actions.

  Finding the weakest mind shield was the first step. I could tell there were five persons inside the building. Three were in the main room; two were walking around in the other rooms.

  Inoa said choosing the right target was more a matter of intuition than logic. She couldn't point to a single characteristic that stood out. After studying a group of targets, Inoa just knew which one was the most vulnerable.

  I wanted my fiber optic probe, to help assess the risk involved. I prepared a series of spells, first to banish the wall blocking access to the three mages, then to paralyze and stun them with one command.

  Argon chose to crack the one who was pacing. She also staged a wall removal plus paralysis and stun spells targeting the moving pair. She coul
d trigger both our spell sets the instant she realized they had detected us.

  Inoa's technique worked passively by slowly eating away at the shield until it thinned just enough to allow a strong mind mage to read what the mind shield was protecting. Because it was subtle and didn't deplete or crack the shield, only a very strong mind mage could detect someone was targeting them.

  Someone using this technique would have to be the patient type who never crunched their Tootsie Roll pops. Not something, I would excel at.

  Success came suddenly, with Jahan's shield giving way. Through Argon, I could see his thoughts, even though he was still a blank in my mind-reading app. Good to know the technique worked.

  I watched the skilled way Argon sucked Jahan dry. Jahan was clueless about our mind tap with Argon slipping out of his mind without leaving a trace.

  The secret police had hired three mage brothers, including Jahan, to bring a barge upriver from Augun to Flom. The job was underway when the assassination attempt on the king went down. Only at the pick-up did the brothers learn they were transporting a group of heavily armed pirates, robbers, and slavers.

  The three bargemen rebelled initially but backed down when confronted by Augun Secret Police Chief Arbos. They didn't want their barge confiscated nor did they want to be imprisoned. During the trip upriver, those they were transporting increasingly horrified the brothers. They suspected there was at least one mage spy on the barge amongst the cutthroats and were careful in their planning to escape. There was a growing certainty their payment for successful completion of this trip was death.

  During the night before the planned arrival in Flom, they steered the barge into a known river hazard, holing it and causing the barge to sink. They then teleported to safety.

  They knew their actions would provoke retaliation by the secret police, so they went to ground even without knowing the outcome of the wreck. While they hoped the secret police would conclude they died in the crash, any mage would know better.

  The brothers didn’t want to bring down the wrath of the secret police on their families, so they hid out in this empty house in Flom instead of joining their family. Two of their friends joined them once all the barge traffic on the river dried up.