“I have that.”
Chapter Eight
The next morning Dahlia slipped on her lightweight tunic and pants then pulled her dark, auburn hair into a knot, preparing to run her troops through another exercise. Nel had been progressing nicely over the past week she noted cheerfully, especially since she’d assigned Fidelity to oversee his exercises in mental defenses. Fidelity’s mind was like her chosen weapon, a hammer that pounded at her opponent’s psyche until they crumbled. Not very subtle, but undoubtedly effective.
Dahlia grabbed her own weapons, a set of jet battle axes, and slipped them into the sheath strapped across her hips. An unusual pair, their make and material gave them a lighter weight but an unbreakable strength. She could swing them as fast as the normally lighter swords but back up any cut with their blunt force.
She joined her barrack members, already present on their training ground, and instructed them to pair off and work with their padded or wrapped weapons. Fidelity exchanged her hammer for the wooden one.
Dahlia strode among them as they practiced, correcting as she went. She caught sight of Borreal approaching out of the corner of her eye and drifted closer to him.
“Captain,” he inclined his head.
“Captain,” she returned the nodded greeting. “Any word on progress with the prisoner.”
“We’ve kept him awake. His mental state has greatly weakened and under persuasion from my guard he’s admitted to much but doesn’t seem to be able to divulge his reason for wanting the journal.”
“He’s admitted to being a spy for the emperor's forces and we’ve received some useful tactical information for our efforts,” Borreal continued, “but I’d like you to take a look and see if you can break the concealment that’s been placed on him. There’s no doubt in my mind that the concealment is not of his own making. He’s in no state to continue maintaining it.”
Dahlia nodded and waved Sabir over to her. He broke off from his work with a junior member and jogged over.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Oversee the rest of the team’s training then lead them on a run through the trees around the barrack. I’m going to accompany Captain Borreal.”
Sabir nodded and took over her post, walking through the paired soldiers.
She followed Borreal back past the main building and down into the area prisoners were kept. As they approached Macada’s holding cell she resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose. She knew the methods were necessary but she’d never been a fan of inflicting pain for the sake of pain. A fight and a kill were worlds different from the misery she knew could be housed here.
She braced herself and opened the door to his cell. The traitor didn’t look good. She imagined he wasn’t entirely sane any more. She didn’t look forward to touching his mind. Every time she touched something like that it left a lingering impression, like a scar on her psyche. She was careful to heal and care for her psyche so that the scars didn’t build up over time and drive her into the same misery and despair she’d witnessed.
She steadied herself and looked into his eyes. Natural windows to the mind, they were the easiest place for her to enter. She felt the rush of misery, hopelessness, and confusion surround her but she set out her own boundaries and waded through, brushing past the sensations but never letting them run through her or cling on.
She dug through to the edge of the wall she’d encountered in his memories enclosed in her trap. She approached it sideways, touching it without looking directly at it so as not to activate the mental construct that had been put in place to conceal the wall from her. Then she began to bind it in place so it couldn’t shift away from her as it had before. She located the root of the energy maintaining the concealment on the wall and then slowly disconnected it from the wall. Building on that work, she was able to work the concealment apart from the root. The energy composing the concealment collapsed in on itself, dissolving away and she was able to look directly at the wall.
It was built with spikes of an oily metal coated in a sick, green energy. She sent a bit of energy toward it and the energy turned the same sick green color and began to propel away from the wall. Before it could move out of range, the energy of the wall sucked it back in and held it as the contaminated energy sagged and dissolved.
Dahlia shivered, glad she’d learned not to touch anything unknown. This one was the nastiest she’d ever encountered. She set to work scrubbing it with her own energy, pulling out the sickness, isolating it, and then destroying it bit by bit. Every effort was a fight as the sickness attempted to overwhelm her scrubber and infect it. Occasionally she lost control and had to redirect more energy to bind and destroy the isolated sickness. The wall turned grey as her efforts to neutralize it paid off.
When the wall stood entirely grey she took a few minutes to breathe, balance, and recenter. She tried not to think about what this was doing to the mind it was contained in. The times she lost control the sickness spilled out into Macada’s mind and she could hear him scream on the edge of her awareness. Whoever had placed this did not intend to see it come down without destroying the attacker and the host.
She sent another bit of energy to test the wall again and this time there was no reaction. It merely stood. Good, the next part would be tiring but the mental exertion and risk would be much less. Once again, the process was slow. Bit by bit she tore open the wall until she could get enough of a hold to inject her own energy in and breach it.
The wall unexpectedly collapsed, its spikes recharging with the same sick energy and stabbing into his mind. She heard Macada screaming. Dahlia snapped up her own shield to avoid any spikes hitting her, it was too late for him. She risked a jab into the space beyond the wall and came away with a single vision: a face gaunt and waxy with colorless hair pulled back from a high forehead and grey, cruel eyes. She recognized Ahriman.
She panicked and shot herself out of Macada’s mind, letting it collapse in on itself. She snapped back to the physical room and his screams filled her ears. His eyes rolled back in his head as he foamed at the mouth, the mental destruction causing extreme agony.
“Kill him,” she heard herself say as if from a distance. “There’ll be nothing left and this is cruelty beyond what you can imagine.”
Borreal nodded to his guard and the man swept his sword down, taking Macada’s head from his body and ending the screams. The silence that followed was worse.
They sat in the office of Borreal’s set of rooms. Dahlia sipped a brew of ginger and green tea to try and remove some of the grime clouding her mind and the exhaustion that had set in.
“Dr. Ahriman?” He asked her. She’d just relayed what she’d seen.
“Yes, Captain. He was the same as the last time I saw him. All I caught was a single frame of the memory but I imagine he set the trap in the traitor’s mind. It had the same stamp of evasion and pitilessness that I remember.”
“The research leads are reviewing the journal but they’re being evasive about what relevance the information could hold. I’m not sure if they really don’t know or if they are purposefully being vague.”
“The memory of Ahriman’s research is enough to make anyone edgy.”
“Captain DeMorra, I’ll be frank, I saw your name in that journal.”
Dahlia froze. Chills from horrors remembered ran over her body.
“I need you to tell me what your name was doing in there.”
“I don’t know, honestly. I didn’t know he’d recorded anything about me. You know, of course, that he acquired permission to examine my abilities from the counsel.”
“I do. The writing is cryptic but he references an experiment you were involved in.”
“It was nothing voluntary. I have an uncontrolled amplification of anything I project. Fear, joy, sensuality, violence. It amplifies and then can resonate with anyone I come in contact with if not shielded. He caught it and poked and prodded at the effect as long as he could. He found what scared me or made me angry and then pushed me while I
was around his subjects and recorded the effects. Master Ko caught on shortly after this started and Ahriman wasn’t able to access me any longer. He was removed before I encountered him again.”
Borreal’s eyes softened and he pushed the teapot closer to her, “I didn’t know that, I’m sorry.”
“It was cruel but I’ve made my peace with it. It pushed me to hunt down every vulnerability I could and rip it out so they couldn’t be used against me again. The rest I came to terms with and learned to let the pain go so wouldn’t scar my mind any more.”
“Thank you for confiding in me, though I know I put you in a hard position to refuse. I’m sorry for that as well.”
“I understand.” Dahlia bowed her head and poured more tea. She had spoken the truth in that she’d come to terms both with how she’d been used and with the pain. The momentary effect of the memory was brief, if intense, and then it was gone. Her mind returned to its carefully nurtured balance.
Chapter Nine
Leaving Borreal’s office, Dahlia located her barrack members back in the main area of her barrack. If there was any chance Ahriman was involved in this then they needed to have their defenses ready. Often times drills to train mental defense left the trainee worn and vulnerable afterwards but she had developed an exercise that would reinforce their defenses. Unfortunately that required her to work intensely with each of her barrack members individually instead of enlisting Fidelity and Arreal to help. More strain for her but better for the soldiers.
She decided to work from her lieutenants down. Reasoning that, though their defenses were the strongest, they were also most likely to be targeted. Especially if she was a target. Locating Sabir she pulled him into her walled garden located off her office. She explained which drill she wanted to work and then began. She lit a perimeter of candles similar to the ones in her room so she could lower her shield and focus all her efforts on his mind.
She spent the next while poking into his shield, identifying areas that were vulnerable, working with him to build them up, and then poking at them some more until she was sure they were solid, no cracks. She’d found that once someone became aware of their vulnerabilities through gentle probing their awareness and ability to self monitor grew and the fixes they worked out were sustained.
Sabir sent in Arreal and she went through the same exercise with him, working her way through her entire barrack until night had long past fallen and she was exhausted.
Normally the exercise wouldn’t have taken so much out of her, even repeated so many times. She was just already so strained after encountering Ahriman’s barrier in Macada’s mind. She shook her head wearily, put up a very light shield, and returned to her room. Once she’d closed the door she immediately lit her own perimeter and released the last of her effort that held her frail shield in place. She sunk to her knees and sat back on her heels, letting her mind fall silent and rest.
Her door opened and she leapt to her feet, adrenaline pounding, axes in hand. Kenny appeared, holding a teapot. His long black hair was disheveled as usual and hanging in his face. He’d foregone a shirt again.
“Seriously? You didn’t think to knock?” she snapped at him. “What if I’d taken your head off?”
His smile was oddly disarming, “You’re too slow right now. I think I could have blocked it.”
Dahlia growled at him. This was not a good time for her to deal with him.
He held up the teapot, “Peace. I bribed Nallia to make this, she says it’s good for your mind. I figured you’d had a rough day. Noticed you weren’t with your barrack on their run and then I felt energy exploding in the prison. Thought you’d have something to do with it. Can I sit down?”
Dahlia dropped her axes, nodded in resignation, grabbed two cups, and plopped down at the table across from him. Whatever was in the brew it smelled wonderful. The pressure behind her eyes lightened just from inhaling the steam.
“Thank you,” she said grudgingly.
“Least I could do, though from what I gathered you killed my prisoner. After all the effort I took to take him alive,” his tone was light. Dahlia supposed it was meant to be a joke.
“I triggered an implosion,” she glared at the cup as though it had contributed to the event.
“Oh, that all?” His grin broadened as he watched her sip the brew. It was spicy and a bit bitter but the storm in her mind quieted and the exhaustion was held at bay.
“There’s alcohol in this.”
Kenny was still grinning, “Well yeah, I mighta added something. Don’t tell Nallia. She wouldn’t like me messing with it.”
Dahlia finished the cup and felt her eyes grow heavy, “There better not be anything added to this besides alcohol.” She tried to glare at him.
“Nah, I wouldn’t do something like that.” His face was a mask of innocent as Dahlia’s eyes grew heavy and slowly drooped closed.
She felt him scooped her up as if she weighed nothing and place her gently on the bed. The last thing she heard before falling into a deep sleep was the sound of the door shutting behind him.
Chapter Ten
Dahlia woke up feeling clear headed and not like she’d taken a psychic beating the day before. Whatever had been in Nallia’s brew had been life saving.
She reassembled her shield, extinguished the few candles that were still burning and replaced the ones that had burnt out during the night. She planned to drill her barrack members on weapons practice today, check their mental defenses again, and then release them for free form practice for their own abilities.
She tied her hair into a knot again, put on clothes more suited to training in the heat than her jacket was, and collected her axes from where she’d placed them when Kenny had appeared.
Her soldiers were assembled and she lead them to the training ground, instructed them to pair off, then walked through them, offering corrections.
She wasn’t surprised to see Borreal approaching with his own barrack. He sent his men to pair off then approached her.
“Captain DeMorra, you’re looking refreshed today, I’m glad.”
“Indeed. It’s amazing what a decent sleep will do for you.”
“I hope you don’t mind the suggestion but I seem to be without a partner, would you like to spar? I’ve found that a good match helps to clear my mind.”
“I’d be happy to. My barrack could definitely learn something just from watching you.”
Borreal smiled, “Don’t think flattery will convince me to hold back.”
Dahlia returned his smile, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She turned to her barrack, “Alright Barrack Ten, clear the field! I want you to watch Captain Borreal. You can experiment with replicating his methods after.”
Unbidden, Borreal’s men stopped as well to watch their captain spar with the tall, young captain of Barrack Ten.
Dahlia retrieved her axes from the sheath on her hips and gave them a spin, warming up her wrists. Borreal pulled out his sword, average length and thin, black like her axes.
They circled each other, both out of fighting stance, merely observing, watching for the smallest opening. Dahlia went on the offensive first, darting to her opponent’s side and lashing out with her right hand, spinning on her foot to move behind him and follow through with the weapon in her left. Borreal countered with little effort and spun the opposite direction so they wound up facing each other. Dahlia changed the trajectory of her weapon so it made a tight sweep across his midsection.
Borreal stepped lightly back then rocked forward, striking towards her left side as her swing caused her to expose her it. Dahlia let the swing take her further to the left, kicking up at Borreal’s sword hand with her left shin. The kick barely landed as he pulled the arm up and brought the sword around, chasing her as she wheeled back.
Dahlia brought her ax up to catch his sword and lashed out a fast kick to his knee, forcing him to step back again, stopping his advance. He pivoted back onto the other leg to circle to her left. The sword sw
ept up and zipped towards her again. Anticipating it she was able to meet it with the heads of both axes, rotating them to choke the blade. Then she twisted, forcing the blade down and opening up Borreal’s chest for a strike. She planted her foot in his chest as she held the sword, not doing much damage but forcing him back so she could continue to press her attack.
Borreal skipped back, taking the blow and watching her come. He lashed out as he moved. Dahlia pivoted out of the way but barely in time. She was forced to retreat herself as the blade snapped quickly after her.
They continued on, Borreal’s experience and slight speed advantage evenly matched against her reach and dual weapons. Then Dahlia misstepped. She saw Borreal land heavily on his left so she rammed into him, hoping to send him off balance. Too late she realized it had been a ploy. She pushed him backwards but he grabbed onto her arms, rolled over his back and kicked her in the chin while she was off-balance. She saw stars but managed to counter his next two thrusts by throwing her weapons up into a makeshift shield. She was overwhelmed playing defense though, unable to continue countering. She swept the axes apart to create space but Borreal had anticipated her and slipped through. They stopped with his sword tip resting on her chest.
Dahlia smiled, stood up, and bowed, “Once again experience wins.”
Borreal acknowledged her bow with one of his own, “Perhaps. Thank you for an excellent match.”
Dahlia motioned the barrack members back onto the training field and spent the rest of the morning pointing out where they could improve their footwork. She wasn’t the least bit disappointed in her loss. Borreal had been a captain for more than forty years before she even joined the ranks. His appearance was deceptive. Once someone with abilities reached a certain age they virtually stopped aging for the next two to three hundred years. Often around thirty but she’d seen some stop as young as twelve and as old as eighty.
Once her squad was dripping with sweat and baking in the noon summer sun she had them all troop back to the barrack for a midday meal and another session with her reinforcing their psychic defenses. Then she released them to practice their own abilities so she could catch up on the paperwork that had been mounting in her office. When she’d been a young lieutenant she’d been astounded by the amount of paperwork a military force could produce. Now she was numb to it, an obnoxious part of the job that she’d rather not delegate too much of. Sabir, ever more diligent than she was, had a habit of cleaning up after his captain that made her feel guilty.
Dahlia: A Novel of Dark Desire Page 4