by Clayton Wood
“What'd he say?” he whispered.
“He said he didn't understand why he'd betray the Empire again,” Ariana replied with a shrug. Kyle stared at Ariana, then at Kalibar's back, his eyes widening. Wait, did Kalibar know about...? He felt his heart skip a beat. Had Darius told the Grand Weaver? No, it wasn't possible.
Wait, where was the bodyguard, anyway?
Kyle frowned, realizing that Darius had been gone for hours now. Where had the man been while they'd all been struggling for dear life? Or when Urson had faced those Void spheres? Kyle still remembered the screams of the dying, the blood spattering the lobby. For a man with seemingly unlimited power, Darius had done nothing to stop the wholesale carnage...which either meant that he had no idea it was happening, or that he let it happen anyway. Either way, it didn't bode well for any of them now.
“All the cell bars are broken here,” Goran observed. Kyle realized the surly Councilman was right. Not one of the cells was occupied, and the bars were bent similarly to the first one they'd seen.
“Do you hear anything, Ariana?” Kalibar asked. Ariana paused, then shook her head.
“Nothing in here,” she answered. “Nothing outside, either,” she added. Goran frowned.
“You can hear outside?”
“Sort of,” she replied. “It's hard to explain.”
“Let's keep going,” Kalibar interjected, pointing to a staircase ahead. “This should bring us up to the first floor, and into the city streets.” He turned to Goran. “Urson said he would have his men evacuate Erasmus, but there's no telling whether or not they were successful.” He paused at the foot of the staircase, taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly. “My Battle-Weavers went out into the city to retrieve the surviving Council members. With the Tower under siege, they'll have no safe place to convene.”
“And they'll go into the Tower unwittingly,” Goran added grimly. “Which means we either go back to warn them, or we leave them to die.”
“If we go back, we risk our own deaths,” Kalibar countered.
“And then no one in the Empire will realize that Xanos can do to anyone what he did to Ibicus,” Goran concluded. “If we die, Xanos will destroy the Empire outright, or create puppets out of any future elected leaders.”
“And we can't exactly send a courier to tell them,” Kalibar muttered. “No one would believe it from anyone but us.” He shook his head, running a hand through his short white hair. “But I can't just let Erasmus – or the Council – die.” He turned back to Goran, his tone firm. “I'll go back to the Tower, try to find some Battle-Weavers and fight. You take Kyle and Ariana...build up your magic reserves, then use your gravity boots to escape the city. Fly to Eastport.”
“Eastport?” Goran asked. Kalibar nodded.
“As you said, evacuation will give us time,” he reasoned. “The Tower is lost, for better or worse. Our only hope now is to make a stand elsewhere, and Spero is too obvious a choice.”
“No,” Goran countered.
“What?”
“I'm not going,” Goran clarified.
“It's a suicide mission,” Kalibar protested, but Goran cut him off.
“This has always been a losing battle, Kalibar,” he stated. He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “We were always going to lose,” he added firmly. “The only person who believed we had a chance was you, Kalibar...the entire Council thought you were crazy.”
“Well thanks,” Kalibar grumbled.
“That's why we nominated you,” Goran continued. “Unanimously, remember? Half of us didn't like you, or agree with what you did in your first term as Grand Weaver, but we all knew that you were the best Battle-Weaver we'd ever seen. The most reckless and most daring, mind you, but also the most successful. You made a habit of winning handily despite impossible odds, and we needed your kind of crazy if we were to stand a chance.”
“Well,” Kalibar mumbled. For the first time since Kyle had met the man, he appeared to be at a loss for words. Goran smirked.
“Don't let it get to your head,” he added. “I still think you're an imperialistic, morally suspect Populist.” He sighed, uncrossing his arms. “The point is, we're all dead men, whether we stay or run. I've spent the last dozen mornings watching the sunrise, wondering if each would be my last...living in fear. I'd rather die fighting than die running.”
“Okay,” Kalibar decided. “Then we fight.” He turned to Ariana.
“I'm not afraid of death anymore,” Ariana stated. “But I am afraid of living in fear. I'm fighting.”
“Kyle?” Kalibar asked. Kyle took a deep breath in, lowering his gaze to the floor. He wished he could be as steadfast as Ariana and Goran, but the truth was, he still wanted to live. He wanted to go home – back to Earth – and see his parents again. But he couldn't do that knowing he had abandoned his friends to die. Life with that kind of regret wouldn't be worth living.
“I'm in,” he stated.
“All right then,” Kalibar replied. “We stay and fight. But we need to be smart about it. The city is overrun with those Void spheres, and we know we don't stand a chance against them...so we need to avoid them.”
“We could fly above the city,” Goran offered, but Kalibar shook his head.
“Too risky,” he countered. “Their magical vacuum will take us right out of the sky if they find us.” He frowned then, stroking his goatee. “Those Void spheres seem to sense magic...I think that's why the last one followed the Battle-Weavers and not us. We'd already been drained, but the Battle-Weavers hadn't.”
“But we need magic,” Goran protested.
“We can disguise ourselves,” Kalibar offered. All heads turned to him.
“Like hats and fake mustaches?” Goran asked snidely. Kalibar smirked.
“No, like dirt,” he corrected. Goran frowned.
“How is dirt going to disguise us from those things?” he asked.
“Normally it wouldn't,” Kalibar answered. “Every rock and clump of dirt in the city was saturated with magic...but with those Void spheres absorbing all of the magic around the city...”
“Ahhh, I see,” Goran exclaimed. “That's brilliant, Kalibar!”
“What is?” Kyle asked.
“Almost everything in the world makes magic,” Kalibar explained. “Normally, dirt and rocks – minerals in nature – are saturated with magic. So if you covered yourself in such dirt, excess magic produced by your mind would still leak out past it. But if the dirt were depleted of magic...”
“Then it would absorb any excess radiation, no matter how slight,” Goran added. “We'd be effectively invisible, at least for a while.”
“Ohhh,” Kyle breathed. “But wait, aren't we depleted now? Our bones should do the same thing...absorb any excess magic.”
“Until our skulls become saturated,” Kalibar countered. “After that, magic has to travel through tissue to get to our spine...and tissue is terrible at holding on to magic. Leaking will occur.”
“Got it,” Kyle replied. “So we cover ourselves in dirt from outside, and then what?”
“Then we get information,” Kalibar answered. “Find a Battle-Weaver, determine the status of the Council and Erasmus if we can, and travel back to the Tower if we can't.”
“And if we encounter one of those Void spheres?” Goran asked.
“Well wait,” Kyle interjected, struck with a sudden idea. “The dirt is like an insulator, right?” Kalibar nodded. “So it's like a sweater for heat...it keeps heat in, even if it's really cold.”
“And?” Goran asked.
“Well won't the dirt stop the Void spheres from absorbing our magic?” Kyle asked. “Or at least slow it down?”
“By god,” Kalibar breathed. “He's right!”
“I am?” Kyle asked.
“You are,” Kalibar insisted, clapping Kyle on the shoulder and laughing joyously. “You clever, clever boy! It'll work...it's simple magicodynamics. It has to work.”
“But wait,” Goran countered. “Th
ese Void spheres create such a powerful magical vacuum, it'll suck the magic right out of the dirt.”
“Yes, but much more slowly,” Kalibar replied. “Just like a sweater in extreme cold. It could allow us to escape in time...with magic to spare.” He nodded at Kyle, shaking his head in admiration. “Kyle, if we make it through this alive, you're going to become one hell of a Runic.” Kyle gave him a weak smile, not at all sure that they would make it out alive.
“Let's go,” Goran interjected, rapping his fist on the metal door in front of them. He turned to Ariana. “If you would...”
Ariana nodded, grabbing the door by its knob and repeating her earlier performance. This time she made quick work of it, clearly having gained confidence in her abilities. The door snapped open, and the four of them strode into yet another hallway. This one was as dark as the others, but at the end of it – a few hundred feet away – there was a large door. Kalibar and Goran strode toward it.
“I hear something,” Ariana warned. The two men stopped, turning to stare at her. She paused for a long moment, cocking her head to one side. “It's like thunder,” she clarified. Then she shook her head, putting a hand on one wall. “Wait...feel this.”
Kyle put his own hand by Ariana's, and felt the wall vibrate ever-so-slightly under his fingertips.
“It's an earthquake,” he exclaimed. Kalibar frowned, striding up to Ariana and putting his own hand on the wall. A few seconds later, Kyle felt another vibration.
One, two, three...he counted. Four, five, six...
He saw Kalibar's eyes close, his lips moving ever so slightly.
Twenty-one, twenty-two...
Another vibration.
“Earthquakes don't come at regular intervals,” Kalibar murmured, stepping away from the wall. “Neither does thunder.”
“Explosions?” Goran asked.
“Again, too regular,” Kalibar replied.
“Then what?” Goran pressed. Kalibar shook his head.
“I don't know,” he admitted. “Everyone stay quiet...Ariana, keep us informed if you hear anything unusual. The exit is straight ahead.” Ariana nodded, and they resumed walking down the hallway toward the door beyond. The cells were deserted, as before, but the floor was stained in places with what looked like dried blood. Flies buzzed around a few motionless lumps laying on the floor further down the hallway.
“Prison guards,” Ariana whispered. Kyle frowned; from here, he could barely make out the shapes. They eventually reached the bodies, and Kyle held his breath at the smell coming from them. He'd seen his fair share of dead bodies recently, the sight hardly triggering the fear and revulsion he'd had the first time. All he felt now was vague sadness, and a kind of morbid curiosity. He wondered if something was wrong with him, that he was so cavalier about the dead now.
“They haven't been dead long,” Kalibar noted as he passed by. They continued forward, passing an intersection of hallways on either side. Kyle glanced down the left hallway, seeing more dark shapes lying on the floor. To the right, even more. The stench of blood was almost overwhelming, and he switched to breathing through his mouth. They kept moving, now only a hundred feet from the entrance.
“It stopped,” Ariana murmured suddenly. Kalibar and Goran slowed down, glancing back at her. “The vibrations, I don't hear them anymore.”
“Keep going,” Kalibar murmured. Kyle glanced at Ariana, then swallowed in a dry throat, the hairs on his neck rising on end. The exit was only fifty feet away now, the floor ahead sticky with dried blood. The stuff sucked on their boots as they walked, the sound echoing through the hallways. They reached the exit at last, stopping before the door. All eyes turned to Kalibar.
“We go outside, and find depleted soil,” he stated. “If we can't find any nearby, we'll have to drain it ourselves, then cover ourselves with it. Ariana, you're our lookout. If we're spotted, stay together unless I say otherwise.”
They all nodded silently.
“Let’s go,” Kalibar said, opening the door.
* * *
Rain fell in heavy sheets across the stone steps leading up to Stridon Penitentiary, splattering into deep puddles on the road below. Lightning arced through the sky, followed moments later by the low rumble of thunder echoing through the city. Black smoke rose from the tops of the buildings in the distance, the wind carrying it at an angle through the sky, creating long fingers that reached over Stridon, as if poised to crush the city in its dark grasp.
Kyle stood just outside of the prison entrance, for the moment protected from the torrential downpour by the stone overhang above, supported by massive columns on either side. Ariana stood at his side, Kalibar and Goran ahead; the two men were peering out into the darkness. They spoke with each other for a moment, their words lost in the storm, then turned back to Kyle and Ariana.
“If we take the main road,” Kalibar said, pointing to the wide road ahead, “...it'll be two miles to the Gate Shield. We should cut through the side streets.”
“How are we going to get beyond the gate?” Goran asked. It was a good point, Kyle knew; the Secula Magna was surrounded by a magical fence that generated a massive domed gravity shield over the entire campus, preventing anyone from getting in unless they went through the front gate.
“The Gate Shield is down,” Kalibar explained, pointing off into the distance. “We should have been able to see it from here if it were up.” He gestured for them to follow him down the steps and into the street, his boots sinking ankle-deep in the water. Goran followed, as did Kyle and Ariana. It was only then that Kyle realized that Ariana was barefoot; ever since they'd revived her in her room, she'd been wearing a simple shirt and shorts, and nothing else. Her pale, delicate feet dipped into the chilly water, but she didn't seem to notice.
“Aren't you cold?” he asked. Ariana looked down, then shrugged.
“No,” she replied. “I mean, I know the water's cold, but it doesn't bother me,” she added, sloshing forward with the rest of them. They walked forward silently for a few minutes, then Kalibar took them left down a narrow side street. A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, followed by a rolling thunderclap. Unlike Ariana, he was freezing.
“Can we shield ourselves from the rain?” he asked Kalibar. Kalibar shook his head.
“We need to conserve magic,” he replied. “Huddle together,” he added. The four drew closer together, Kalibar and Goran in front, Ariana and Kyle behind, their shoulders touching. They were shielded from the wind a bit this way, but Ariana didn't provide any body warmth.
“Kyle's idea won't work in weather like this,” Goran grumbled, glancing up at the thunderclouds above. “Even if we find depleted dirt, it'll wash off of us as soon as we put it on.”
“Or we could just use a gravity field as an umbrella,” Kyle countered. Goran frowned.
“Right,” he muttered.
“Not that there's anyone around to attack us,” Kalibar observed. Indeed, the streets were strangely barren; they hadn't encountered another person since they'd left the prison.
“Where is everyone?” Kyle asked.
“The main battle was at the Tower and the Southwest Quarter,” Kalibar answered. “We're to the east of the Tower.”
“Hey guys,” Ariana called out from behind. Kyle turning, realizing that she'd dropped back, and was standing at the door of a building to their right. She pointed at the sign above the door...which of course, Kyle couldn't read.
“Good eye, Ariana!” Kalibar exclaimed, slogging through the flooding street toward her. Goran did the same, and Kyle followed behind. Ariana tried to open the door, but it was locked. Kalibar gave it a try, closing his eyes and bowing his head over it for a moment, then pushing it open easily. He stepped in, gesturing for the others to follow.
“What's going on?” Kyle asked as he stepped through the door. Goran frowned, turning to him.
“Didn't you see the sign?” he asked. Kyle blushed, shaking his head.
“He can't read,” Kalibar explained, stepping forward in
to a large room with countless wooden shelves built into the walls. They held crystals of all shapes and sizes, some as small as a ping-pong ball, others larger than a watermelon. Their innumerable facets glittered faintly in the muted starlight. Kalibar conjured a small, faint light in the air above their heads, rays scattering in glorious colors and patterns across the wooden walls as they were refracted by the crystals.
“He's illiterate?” Goran asked incredulously.
“He can read and write,” Kalibar clarified, “...but not our tongue.” Goran harrumphed, clearly offended by Kyle's deficiencies. Kyle felt his cheeks burning, and he stared at one geode – a group of white-blue crystals – to distract himself. Then he frowned; the crystals were white, with a slight blue glow emanating from them.
“This one has magic!” he exclaimed, pointing to the geode.
“They all do,” Kalibar replied with a weary smile. “This is a gemstone shop, after all. The magic-sucking spheres must not have passed through this street. Everyone load up on as much magic as they can.”
Kyle turned back to the geode, pulling on the magic therein, seeing rays of faint blue light rise up out of the white crystals and fly toward him. He felt the power burst into his mind, then slowly trickle away as it redistributed. He kept pulling, feeling his skull vibrate, then his neck. It was a subtle sensation – one that he had never noticed before – but he could definitely sense his bones filling with magic. He supposed that they'd always been filled to the brim, so he'd never noticed the slight vibration until its absence.
He soon depleted the crystal, or at least pulled as much as he could out, so that taking any more required more effort than it was worth. He turned to another geode, and pulled the magic out of it as well. After repeating the process on a few more gems, he felt like his entire body was humming.
“Everyone filled up?” Kalibar asked. He got three nods in return. “Let's move out,” he stated, thrusting a few gems in his pockets. “Take a few for the road,” he added. Kyle stuffed a few small geodes in his pockets, then followed Kalibar and Goran out of the shop and back into the street. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, the wind dying down to a breeze. The sound of thunder was more distant now, the storm having passed on. A gravity shield appeared around Goran.