by Adam Dreece
“I thought I killed you,” I say to the leecher. I put my hands down and tilt my head down too, but I keep my gaze up. Given that leechers are usually poor, desperate people, I’m hoping my posture will feed her need to feel powerful.
She’s dressed in a long black dress, wrapped in an old, knitted shawl that’s fraying. Her darker side looks less withered than last time, and there’s no sign of any wounds from my pistol. Maybe I shot her where she’s covered? Her face looks almost pained with concentration, a look echoed by the oners, except for the woman oner who’s been keeping me company.
The leecher smiles at the levi-car and then turns her attention to me. “While you wounded me, you killed one of them. Close though. Now it’s time for me to return the favor.” Her speech is distracted, similar to the woman oner. I glance at the others, no one’s moving a muscle. I can’t imagine how much mana it’s taking for her to control them all.
“You can’t kill me, not yet. You need me to drive. Where you’re going, you need to be able to outrun that fire storm.” I put my hands up, again keeping my head bowed.
She sighs and thinks.
I figure back at the bar when I met her, everyone there was probably a oner, maybe special ones like the woman. But the leecher wasn’t concentrating like this then… maybe something’s changed or maybe she can’t afford to exert full control the whole time. Peeking at the woman oner, I wonder if she’d managed to say anything to me that didn’t come from the leecher. No way to know.
“I have to thank you. If you hadn’t wounded me, I’d never have thought of keeping you alive and feeding off you. I would have ended you then, like I did the carnu. That was a feast on power like I’ve never had before. But sadly, unlike you weslek, I can’t keep the mana I don’t use quickly. It fades so fast. I sipped the mana from you as I got better, but you kept getting weaker. That was, until my oners told me of the mana pond. Imagine how delighted I was to learn that you could be rejuvenated without having to be conscious. All it cost me was some mana to keep you asleep while they coated you in mud, then they’d clean you up, and I’d get back ten times the mana in return. I hope you didn’t mind the shave, but it was disgusting. It was a fun few months. A shame my spies spotted the—”
“Months?” I run my hand through my muddy hair. “No way.” It makes sense though. I knew the wheat wasn’t that tall before. I’m not even sure it was planted yet.
She laughs. “What, did you believe this One?” she says pointing at the woman. “She’s a good liar, the best of the group. She’s also the most stubborn of the all my oners. There’s even part of the original person there, deep underneath the blessing. But despite her best, there’s no fighting the blessing and me.”
A shadow falls over the barn and I see panic flash on the face of the leecher. “Time to drive.”
“I’m not moving until you tell me what the yig’s going on.”
The leecher glares at me, but she knows I’m holding at least one decent card in our game.
“That’s not a fiery storm, that’s the floating city of Ashleek. The storm is ripping up every ounce of mana and life force it can find. The city’s set on a column of raging flame to charge itself.”
“What are you talking about?”
She laughs at me. “How do you think the wasteland was made? The rim exists because magic’s stronger there. They chain wesleks like you to the bottom of their cities and connect you to some monstrous machine. The entire city feeds on them and uses them, like I did you.”
My heart’s pounding like crazy. “What are you talking about? That’s…” Words fail me. A memory flashes of seeing a machine… There was an adept there… and… the Old Man, too. I must have been trying to stop it, but it happened anyway. Who was I? “They can’t do that.”
“Can’t? I lived in the under-city of Nashamere, it was the first. You’re a weslek, you know what it’s like to be part of the servant class, and what it means to be one of the rodents. People like me were the rodents, suddenly found to have a purpose, to feed the needs of the regime as fuel.”
I’ve got to find the Old Man. We need to stop this… Wait, I remember trying. Killing… who was it? Shaking off the memory, I focus. “It looks like we’re out of time. I can see the column of fire. They’re pulling the life force from the fields,” I say pointing at the barn door.
The woman oner head turns and she takes a step, then freezes.
The leecher’s face twists and contorts. Her hands jittering as the oners twitch, small groups of them moving in synch. Right before my eyes, the leecher’s face wrinkles and parts go dark, then patches start to change to ashy black, the skin looking like sun-beaten leather. She cradles an arm up against her chest as her fingers go black and the nails fall off, one by one.
Licking my lips first, I snatch my short sword and bury it deep into the leecher’s chest. Knocking her backwards, I scramble to my feet and on to the flatbed of the levi-car and dive for my bag.
Chaos erupts as the oners’ unified mind shatters. Some start reaching out for me, some turn to the leecher, and some run outside into the fire storm.
I pull my pistol out of my bag and slap the switch so it’s powered by my mana. As oners grab at me, I reach as deep into my core as I can to blow holes in as many of them as I can, but it’s pointless. In a heart-beat, I’m pulled down, my pistol lost, and I find myself being kicked and stomped on from every angle.
Suddenly everything stops. With a single, bloody eye barely able to open, I gaze at the leecher. She’s sitting beside me, being held up by a blood-soaked oner. Her face is pale; her breathing is shallow. The front of her dress is drenched in blood. She’s clutching her chest with one hand, and my short sword in the other. The woman oner is standing behind her, a statue.
“Why did you ruin everything?” the leecher yells, the roar from the floating city now starting to shake the ground.
“You were going to kill me at the first chance you got… or make me your battery again. And if you think you can outrun that?” I point with my chin at the yig outside, “You’re a fool.” Everything inside and out goes red. We must be at the outer edge of the mana-drain. I can’t even imagine the scale of what’s being done. There’s not much time.
I look the leecher in the eyes and growl. “I’m not dying today!” I force myself up and make a sloppy move for her. She stabs me right in the stomach with my short sword and pushes me over. The pain is horrible. My hands shake in front of me as I fight to stay conscious. Got t touch the hilt…
The leecher spits on me and screams, “Is that what you wanted? Is—” She’s cut-off as two serrated blades come through her chest.
Kicking the leecher aside, the woman oner looks down at me. Her expression should have tears with it, but it doesn’t.
I want to say something, but I can’t. The front of the barn vanishes as the roaring flame starts taking everything around us apart. Every breath is agony, and harder than the one before it. I feel like I’m drowning.
The woman oner grabs one of the strange, shiny tarps.
I look about with my one good eye. “Randmon, are you there? I’m sorry… Forgive me… I… no other way… I’m sorry…” I mouth. Coughing up blood, I try one more time to get my hands to the hilt, to no avail.
Glancing about desperately, I catch my reflection in the blade of the short sword, and my heart skips a beat. That face… it’s not mine. Old Man, is that you?
The woman throws the tarp over me and part of the levi-car and climbs underneath. She pushes me right under the body of the levi, right under the array of charging crystals, and pulls the tarp down tightly. That done, she reaches for my short sword. I use everything I’ve got to groan and shake my head. She nods, her eyes sorrowful.
There’s no air.
I can’t keep my eye open anymore. There’s a soothing touch on my hands, closing them. For a moment red shines through my eye lids and I feel tremendous heat, and then… nothing. The world’s gone.
The End
of
Season One
THANK YOU
FOR READING THIS BOOK
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Thank you,
Adam
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With a best-selling young adult series, The Yellow Hoods, well underway, and a successful episodic series, The Wizard Killer, I decided it was time to share my deep love of science fiction with The Man of Cloud 9. It allowed me to pull from my over 20 years of experience in software, from leading teams at a Silicon Valley startup and working on huge projects at companies like Microsoft.
Like many people, I wrote and wrote but did practically nothing with it. Maybe I would be an author someday. Then two medical events, one after the other, made me change my priorities. With the amazing support of my wife and kids, I kicked off a serious indie author career, and the response has been amazing.
I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with my awesome wife, amazing kids, and lots and lots of sticky notes and notebooks.
I blog about writing, life and more at AdamDreece.com. Join me on Twitter @adamdreece, on Facebook at AdamDreeceAuthor or send me an email [email protected]
PLAYLIST
Every now and then I get asked what albums I listened to when writing a book. Here’s what I primarily listened to when writing The Wizard Killer - Season One:
Game of Thrones season 3 soundtrack
Game of Thrones season 5 soundtrack
by Ramin Djawadi
Metallica by Metallica
Razor’s Edge by AC/DC
The Best of Southern California Punk Rock
This is War by Thirty Seconds to Mars
Enjoy,
Adam
An amazing steampunk meets fairy tale adventure series for those 9-15 years old and adults alike.
Pick up book 1
Book 5 is coming in Fall 2016
(Where can you get a sneak peek? Adam’s newsletter)
COMING AUTUMN 2016
In the near future, a brilliant mind stands up with a revolutionary thought. Will it cost him everything?
Adam Dreece’s first high-tech, science fiction thriller.
Recommended for ages 14 and up