Shades

by Eric Dallaire

  “Lord Hochmeister, if I may approach?” I asked, bowing.

  One of the wizards, wearing orange robes covered with arcane symbols, smiled with great satisfaction. Waving his hand, he directed the wispy stream of information to the Hochmeister’s glowing wrist-com.

  “There you are,” murmured the Hochmeister, grinning. “The details of your life are well hidden. Soon, those walls will fall and we will have your secrets. I name you now…Jonah.”

  “Yes, Lord Hochmeister,” I said, drawing closer with my hands outstretched. Each passing moment allowed me to process more about these knights. Combined together, they would be difficult to overcome. After observing the way they interacted and deferred to the elders, I pinpointed the critical members of their circle. If my attempts to parlay soured, I would need to incapacitate those senior wizards first. It was time to take my groveling act to new heights and to new lows.

  “Your Majesty, I humbly seek your permission to speak with Andrew Wright,” I said prostrating myself on all fours. It was my last attempt at diplomacy. “I believe he is hiding among your mighty army without your permission.”

  “Are you suggesting that I am not aware of everything within my domain?” the Hochmeister scoffed. “You face charges for assaulting my guards and now you have the temerity to insult my court? I'm inclined to skewer you and raise you as a shade for the siege team.” His smoldering eyes swept around the courtyard, seeking affirmation from his subjects. All of the knights nodded and raised their swords in agreement.

  “I urge you to reconsider...your Majesty.” The last word spat out with a disdain I was incapable of hiding. Under the cover of the bend-light echelon I invoked in the tunnel, my fingers traced symbols across the wrist-com’s display. Unknown to the Magier-Hochmeister and his orange-robed arch-mage, I had pierced the first tier of their local network, making quiet and slow progress through their security layers. Another few seconds and their network would be vulnerable. “With all due respect, sire, I must speak with Andrew now,” I continued, standing straight. The knights shifted and drew their circle around me closer, knowing my words would irritate their leader. A muted vibration from my wrist-com signaled that the network was open. Armed with the ace up my sleeve, I held my ground and dared to draw a dangerous line. “If you grant me access to him, you and your team will survive another week of the meta.duel.”

  Four hard, pounding heartbeats of silence passed. Then the Hochmeister let out a bellowing laugh that his knights mimicked.

  “You are a bold one. I'm impressed,” replied the Hochmeister. “But I will not suffer insolence in my own court. As for Andrew, do you really think I would just hand over my court Apothecary to an outsider?”

  The word apothecary repeated in my head. More puzzle pieces came together. I realized why Andrew seemed drugged when he spoke with Vanessa. He was dealing the Icarus drug for the Teutonic Knights, giving them the edge they needed for their duels. An edge they would want to keep. I reasoned that he sold any leftover supply of Ick to virtual tourists looking to score during their casting. They would not allow me to see him.

  “A pity. With your advanced echelons, I considered making you a squire.” The Hochmeister looked to his knights and wizards, pointing his staff at me to signal his verdict. “Instead, you will serve me in the afterdeath.” His guards and advisors rushed into action before he completed his last syllable. The wands, staves, and rods held by the wizards blazed. Guards brandished their shining blades.

  Before he could restrain me, I shoved my knight escort. No longer needing to worry about stealth, I allowed the bend-light echelon to end. My wrist-com flared blue as the symbols of a controlling echelon snaked around my arm. The binding energy shot out and ensnared the ruby knight's glowing hammer. Its defenses overcome by my hack, the hammer’s color changed from orange to the blue color of my display. Under my control, I felt the solid heft of the hammer's weight. Three of the younger knights, recognizing the power of the floating weapon, stopped and stepped back.

  “You dare?” screamed the orange arch-mage. He raised his fiery hands, determined to invoke a ruinous inferno echelon. While he was swift, he was not fast enough. With a swiping gesture, I swung the knight's hammer before he could summon his spell. The hammer caved in his skull and caused his v-casted form to disintegrate into sparkling dust. Per the rules of the meta.duel, his temporary death prevented his reentry for another two hours.

  With the connection between the mages broken and the Hochmeister startled, I seized on the confusion and unleashed my next echelon. During the Korean Cyber War, I wrote a backdoor hack into the firmware of the v-cast generator that no one else knew existed and to this day remained undiscovered. My hands gestured, like a sorcerer casting a spell, arranging code symbols into their proper sequence. As the guards circled around me, my echelon accessed a hidden archival subsystem in the v-cast network itself. Unknown to most, the virtual projector maintained multiple data copies of casters in case of an emergency, each catalogued with a unique identifier. Stated another way, a hacker with this knowledge could trick the device to print all previous copies of a person that it had stored.

  Showing the widest grin that ever crossed my lips, I completed the echelon, causing the v-cast generators to make a high-pitched whine. The room bathed in blue light as the projector complied with my request and created twenty-four replicated copies of my body. A virtual, semiautonomous army of Jonahs appeared in front of the surprised host of knights and guards.

  “If you want something done, do it yourself,” I joked. All of my clones wielded their own blue glowing stun-rods and stepped past me to engage the knights.

  Red-faced and furious, the Hochmeister leapt from his throne and sprinted toward the battle. With each giant stride, the flame on his staff burned brighter. One of my replicas attempted to intercept him. Without missing a step, the knight lord smote that clone into a pile of hot ash. Lacking true sentience and durability, these artificial copies would not survive for long, leaving me precious few moments to complete my plan.

  Avoiding a skirmish between a knight and a clone, I invoked a displacement echelon, causing my form to blur with my surroundings. By the time the spell completed, the knight cleaved that fake Jonah in half, scattering proto-matter particles. Not far away, another fake Jonah took the brunt of an ice shard spell, frozen solid, then shattered into pieces. It was unsettling to watch myself die multiple times. I sensed that intensive, lengthy therapy would be in my future. Assuming I survived.

  To cover my escape, I directed all of my remaining clones to engage the Hochmeister, hoping this would draw all attention to the center of the courtyard. They complied with the order, forming a pitiful wave of soldiers running into a slaughter. During their brief, futile rush against the giant lord, I crept across the battlefield to reach the siege weapons. When I reached the machines, my displacement spell prevented the shade guards from detecting me. Weaving between the dead guardians, I reminded myself that these large devices were not real, nothing more than digital programs that I could exploit.

  While the Hochmeister butchered the last of my clone army, I opened an access panel on the side of the catapult. With a local connection, it was a simple matter to gain control of all three siege weapons. At my command, the shades loaded a massive arrow onto the ballistae and prepared to fire. Instead of pointing the weapons at the Hochmeister, I aimed them toward the sky. After the shades finished loading all the ammunition, I commanded them to unleash a barrage at the flying black knights. They complied and all three machines flung a fiery storm toward the sky. With luck, the attack would disrupt the defenses and allow the bogatyrs to enter the fray. Before the attack struck its targets, the sound of my last clone dying turned my attention back to the courtyard.

  “No more tricks, Jonah!” the Hochmeister screamed, pointing his sparking staff in my direction. “You will die by my hand and serve in my undead army.”

  With no time to launch another attack, I invoked a prote
ction echelon as crackling lighting arced toward me. The spell worked, creating a set of blue plate armor that encased my body at the same time the energy bolt struck. Though I lived, the force of the blow pushed me back five feet. Enraged at my survival, the Hochmeister charged toward me. While running, his hand invoked a powerful swift-hack that bestowed improved quickness. With no time to cast a counter spell, I pulled out my stun-rod. In this fantasy construct it looked like an iron mace studded with thick barbed spikes.

  Growling, the Hochmeister raised the staff with such speed that the weapon became a blur. Against his flurry of attacks, all I could do was parry until he landed a glancing blow that unbalanced me. Seizing the moment, the Hochmeister struck his staff against my diamond breastplate, shattering my armor into photonic embers. A searing pain in my chest told me that he cracked at least two of my ribs. I looked up, expecting to see the deathblow. Instead, I saw a darkened sky, which made my heart skip with optimism. I needed to give the reinforcements time to arrive.

  “Sire, is it too late to submit an application for squire?” I joked, spitting blood from my mouth.

  A giant heavy mailed boot landed on my chest as the Hochmeister placed his full, crushing weight on me. I could see the flame on his staff just inches from my face, the heat singeing my skin.

  “I submit to--”

  “No more words. Time to execute my judgment, Jonah,” the Hochmeister snarled, with a look of great amusement twisting his face.

  Before the killing stroke came, a bestial roar reverberated around the courtyard. As the ground shook, gale-strength winds whipped the courtyard, followed by the deep rhythmic drumbeat of flapping wings. Sitting atop a fifteen-foot-high three headed dragon, Sergei the Golden landed his fearsome mount right in the middle of the Teutonic Knights.

  My long-shot gamble had worked. I must have knocked out enough of the aerial black knights with their own siege weapons to let the bogatyrs and their reptilian steeds into the courtyard. Six more attackers, all riding red and green dragons, landed to spread more havoc. Within seconds the entire courtyard filled with scorching dragonfire and the screams and rallying cries from the two battling armies.

  Instinct activated my wrist-com. I flicked another defensive echelon onto myself, a shimmering, ice-hued cloak that would protect me against the dragonfire.

  “Surrender, Hochmeister. The day is lost for you, tovarisch,” Sergei challenged. Like the Hochmeister, Sergei projected a powerful-looking avatar visage. A hulk of a man, he stood over seven feet tall with a thick bushy black beard. An aura of glittering sunlight emanated from his jeweled helm. With a swift movement, he readied and hurled his renowned glowing golden lance. It was a powerful echelon attack. Its sharp pointed edge ended the meta.duel hopes for countless participants.

  The Hochmeister turned his full attention to Sergei, conjuring a large tower shield in front of his body in time to deflect the lance. All of the Teutonic Knights pivoted to engage the bogatyrs, sword against lance, wizards and giants against wild barbarians and dragons. War erupted. Resounding screams and cheers drowned out the arcane mutterings of battle spells. It was like the heroes and monsters of a bygone age had walked out of the pages of a Norse epic poem, wild magic brought to life by the mind-bending virtual reality trickery of the High Tower's science. The courtyard’s sky exploded like a spectacular fireworks display. To my knowledge, no meta.duel in recent memory could match the ferocity of this conflict. Doubtless, viewers and fans tuning around the world found the bloodshed entertaining. However, I was not keen to be a spectator and wait for the fight’s outcome.

  Cloaked and protected by my echelons, I survived the blast effects of an explosion and continued to search for an exit. Following the shadow of the outer wall, I discovered an unlocked door leading into the under-chambers of the castle. Slipping inside, I found myself within a torch-lined corridor sloping down into darkness.

  My fingers flicked to evoke the virtual console that fanned around my right hand. Tapping commands, I conjured a floating schematic of the castle in front of me. Skimming the layout, my eyes scoured each location for a hint of Andrew’s location. A room labeled as the Apothecary caught my eye. The location was on the opposite side of the dungeon. With the commotion of the battle shaking the stone floors, I did not bother to move with stealth. Holding the wrist-com in front of me like a lantern, I made my way through the winding corridors.

  After passing through three intersections without incident, I came upon a sloping tunnel leading to an iron door. Before I progressed further, the ground in front of me shuddered. At first I thought it was an explosion. Then a pile of stones near the door shook, floated into air, and swirled around like a dust devil. This whirlwind swept up nearby dirt clumps and loose rock, forging a body out of the earth around it. When the dust settled, a six-foot-tall earth troll blocked the door. I recognized it as mid-level AI sentinel. Its architect must have ordered it to guard the area, using the local v-cast generator to give it a body. It made sense that the Hochmeister’s fantasy-based construct shaped the program into a mythical creature. Its faceted face was a composite of shale, smooth granite, and bright ruby eyes. It would not be difficult to dispatch, but I needed to do it without attracting unwanted attention.

  “Easy, big fellow,” I said with a calm voice. “I don’t suppose you’ll give me three guesses to your password?” It made a hollow-sounding growl, which I interpreted as an emphatic no, and lumbered toward me. Its boulder head scraped against the ceiling sending sparks flying. Large, mineral-crusted fists rose to smash me into the floor.

  Above the corridor, more explosions from the courtyard shook the dungeon. With the bogatyrs and knights still battling, any noise I made fighting the troll would go unnoticed. I readied my wrist-com, a veritable spellbook of attacks and defenses. Not worried about a commotion, I pointed at the creature, rotated my hand, and unleashed a tier-4 sonic attack echelon. The virtual equivalent of a sonic squealer struck the monster, shattering it back into piles of dust and rock. Before the v-cast generators could reclaim the proto-matter, I tapped my wrist-com and hacked the sentinel’s instruction code. After manipulating its core programming, the security defense fell and I took control of the AI. My first command was for the rock troll to return to duty. It was like watching its destruction in reverse. The stone and dust elements combined to reform a new body. After tapping more commands into my console, I ordered it to remain in the corridor and attack any knights that approached.

  With my guardian watching the tunnel behind me, I opened the final door of the dungeon and entered the apothecary. The spacious room hummed and bubbled with activity. A crisscrossing system of tubes funneled bright-colored fluids into smoking beakers and tubes. Alchemical tomes and spell books filled shelves hung all around room. A brass apparatus with copper wiring used hydraulic pumps to transfer a viscous yellow fluid into a large glass decanter. It was the unrefined, pure form of the drug Icarus.

  In the center of the room stood a round wooden table covered with ancient and modern devices. An antique mortar and pestle rested next to a glowing computer display. I saw a silver shape cresting over the top of another crowded bookshelf; a skullcap of a v-cast device attached to the head of its user. Walking around the shelf, I saw Andrew sitting in a plush red chair, his mouth agape and his glazed eyes staring but not seeing. While he was present in the room, his mind was elsewhere.

  I pointed at him and connected to his console. My fingers touched and translated encrypted symbols floating across my display. It was easy to break through his defenses. Andrew’s programming talents were average, but his execution was poor. Within moments, his security system failed, revealing his mind’s location. His form shimmered before me, revealing that he was v-casting into the courtyard. He took the form of an axe-wielding Teutonic knight. At the moment, he was grappling against a muscular Russian warrior.

  “Hello, Andrew,” I announced. At the tip of my fingers waited a disruptive, deadly echelon. With a flick, this pro
gram would force an ocean of babble-junk data through every sensory channel of his v-cast rig, short-circuiting his mind. Tempting, but he needed to stay alive to reveal more information. Instead, my middle finger selected and invoked a binding echelon against him.

  “Jonah!” Andrew yelled in surprise, leaping up from his chair. He jerked upright, causing the skullcap to fall off and disconnect him from the v-cast. Somewhere in the courtyard above, his virtual form disappeared from the battle. Scrambling to his feet, he raised his rust-colored wrist-com to prepare for an attack. Though he moved fast, my echelon executed before his program fired. My program connected to the nearby proto-matter tank, causing it to materialize a quartet of floating iron shackles. The bindings flew and clamped onto Andrew’s limbs, spreading him out like DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man. Hanging helpless in the air, he would not be able to invoke any counter hacks, making the impending interrogation easier. Seeing him prostrate and frightened did nothing to assuage my thirst for vengeance. Sheer rage overwhelmed me. My hands trembled. Bile stung my mouth. With a mere thought and a flick, the shackles could fly apart and have Andrew drawn and quartered. Justice would be done. He betrayed his own sister and my love. Thinking of her caused me to pause. Vanessa would not do that. She would show mercy and compassion. Those thoughts spared his life. I needed him alive to find her.

  “Why, Andrew?” I demanded. “Why did you do this? To your own sister?”

  “Let me down, now,” he protested. “The knights, my brothers, they'll be here soon!” He was right about that. Time was against me here so deep in enemy territory. This needed to proceed faster. With a pinching gesture, I tightened the grip of the shackles. Then my hand waved, pushing him against the stone wall.

  “Not before I'm done with you, Andrew,” I hissed, drawing near to him, placing my face close enough to smell his foul breath. “Trust me, there is no permutation in this scenario in which you walk out unscathed. Unless you talk.” I raised my stun-rod, letting the warmth of its energy just graze his cheek.