by Chris Fox
“We’re moving out, people!” I called, then turned to Seket. “Take up the rear. I’ll walk with Vee and Miri on point.”
“I’ll get them moving.” The paladin spun and approached the civilians, then thudded the butt of his rifle against the ground with a hollow boom. “On your feet, supplicants. Walk slowly ahead of me. Stay within ten meters at all times.”
I considered asking the minister to pay Miri, but I hadn’t even glanced at the bill she still held. Maybe I could afford it.
“Wait, all you get is sixty credits?” I blinked down at the price. I sketched in a 100% tip, and tapped accept. “You know what? Charge me for getting to the surface. How do you guys even make a living here? How many jobs do you have to do a day? I know people selling donuts who out-earn you.”
I started into a fast walk, and Miri paced me as we moved to catch up with Vee, the refugees in tow. My suit insulated me from the smell, but I could see from the others’ faces that we were passing through some rancid shit.
Dark stains covered the walls and floor, and stepping in puddles left your boots sticky for…well, mine were still sticky from the last puddle.
“Back there,” Miri whispered as we walked. “Your artificer asked where I was. I’ve been shadowing you the whole time, and watching Aruni. When the Klaxon went off, just for an instant, his face…changed. He was someone else. Then he went back to being himself.”
“I’ve noticed a few odd things as well,” I whispered back as we fell into step with Vee. I raised my voice a bit for her. “We’re talking about Aruni. My scans pick up nothing from him…no magic of any kind. He’s ordinary in every way. Alarmingly so.”
“I think you might be right. There are a lot of strange things going on, other than this moon being consumed by unclean spirits, like it deserves.” Vee frowned at Aruni. She’d paused, which afforded the refugees time to catch up. Many were limping, though if any injuries were serious I was sure Vee would have tended to them. “The way Seket’s blasts tore that necromancer apart? That raw power is beyond what his rifle should be capable of. It doesn’t matter how strong the wielder is. The gun is limited by its own internals. It can only process so much magic. I can’t explain what we witnessed, but I’m wondering if Aruni can.”
“He can’t be trusted,” the minister whispered, close enough to my ear that I jumped. How had she approached so quietly. “Kill him, before he kills everyone.”
“You want me to what?” A loud and poorly timed bang came from behind, and I spun to see an elderly man picking himself up from a collision with an overfull refuse canister. The minister helped him to his feet.
Wait, the minister was beside me, advising me to kill Aruni….
I spun, but the minister’s double I’d just been speaking to had, predictably, vanished. I didn’t know what it meant, and decided to keep the whisper to myself for the time being.
We continued slowly up the corridor, every step purchased with courage.
“So what do you guys think the necromancer meant? Why did he let us go?” Vee asked. Her aura still shone clear and strong, but I knew it couldn’t last forever.
We’d need to get her a place to sleep before she could do it again, same with Seket.
“I think,” I wondered aloud, “that he believes we’ll tear ourselves apart trying to reach the surface. We carry the seeds of our own destruction.” I left out that the seed might be a literal spirit. The timing of my nasty little figment couldn’t be a coincidence.
Something was hunting us. But what did it mean? Was it a spirit? And, if so, why did it want me to kill Aruni? Why not attack outright? I needed time, and Quantum, so I could research this thing.
“Jerek!” The minister’s clear voice rang out. “Can we speak for a moment? Everyone? We need to decide where we are going to go, and what we are going to do.”
I glanced down the access tunnel with my enhanced vision, but saw nothing dangerous. A glance in the opposite direction gave the same. We were as safe as we were likely to get for the moment.
I toggled the group-wide channel in my suit. “Set up a perimeter around the minister and her group. Let’s get this sorted.”
Vee nodded, but as she passed I noted a haunted expression. Something had spooked her badly, though I knew asking would be futile, even if we had the time to talk about it. What had she seen, or realized?
“We need to establish priorities,” the minister’s clear voice rang out. She seemed unsatisfied with her authority, and stepped atop a bench I wouldn’t have used someone else’s armor to sit in, much less mine. “Water and food will be critical. Shelter comes next. We cannot make it to the surface without resting, so our top priority should be capitalizing on any shelter we find.”
I suppressed a twitch. The misuse of the word ‘priority’ triggers me. It’s singular. You get one. By having three or more, as many people do, you have none. Which was more important? Food? Water? Shelter? Was intel a priority? I suffered in silence as the minister continued.
“I believe I saw a shopping assistant with Jerek.” She scanned the crowd until she located Miri, and don’t think I didn’t notice that she didn’t use my rank. Again. I might have passed the Word to my mother, but I still ran the Remora. “Ah, there you are. Can you—”
“I’ve already taken a job, I’m afraid.” Miri duplicated her previous smile, a practiced tool in her arsenal. Also an effective one. “Captain Jerek has hired me to lead him to the surface, and I work for him.”
“Ah. Are there any other, ah, personal assistants available?” The minister scanned the crowd, but no one stepped forward. Irritation marred her features. “All right then. Jerek, could you order your glom to locate a suitable place to acquire supplies, then a place to rest and tend to injuries?”
I didn’t like the idea of taking orders from her, but everything she’d advised made great sense. Except for the insult to Miri. More and more I questioned Mom’s taste.
“Miri, can you find us a place with a foundry that can replicate food and, ideally, salt?” That basically followed the minister’s request, but made it clear the order was mine.
“Of course. There’s a Supply Depot, one of our local chains, but it will charge us for everything we make. If we try to override the security…well, it’s in a blue zone.” She glanced at Judge Aruni. “You’re rich, right? Do you have enough credits to purchase supplies for everyone?”
Again Aruni had been lurking in the rear of the crowd, as far from attention as he could get. Such a strange demeanor for a judge.
“We should murder them all,” Aruni’s cultured voice whispered into my ear, despite the clear impossibility since I was staring straight at the man. I glanced behind me, but there was no one there. No one visible.
I activated my sight, but no spirits were lurking. It might be possible they’d retreated into the spirit realm, but barring that I didn’t see how I could have missed anything. Had that been Aruni using a spell? What possible motive could he have had? I turned back to hear his response to Miri’s question.
“Yes, I am rich. I will pay for supplies. For everyone.” Aruni folded his arms, and looked none too pleased by the prospect. “Get us to this facility and keep me alive, and everyone sleeps with a full belly, whatever medicine they might need, and appropriate gear to make it to the surface. We’re all getting out of here. Together.”
“Yeah that cinches it.” Miri drew her pistol and aimed it at Aruni. “You aren’t an Inuran judge. What are you? There’s no way you’d help all these people without a deal in place first.”
“I am an old man.” Aruni shook his head, clearly disappointed as he strode to Miri until her spellpistol pressed up against his chest. “They’ll ruin me for this, it’s true. But I will get to do some good before my enemies exact the final price. It’s time to come into the light, and to make some amends at the very end of my life. I am guilty of a great many crimes, but not whatever it is you think I’ve done.”
Miri’s aim faltered, and she abruptly holstered her pis
tol. “We don’t age, so I’m not sure what you mean by the end of your life. All right. I’ll accept you at your word, if my employer does.”
“I do.” I directed my attention to the minister. “Miri will take us to this Supply Depot. We’ll move quickly, avoid combat, and rest when we get there. The longer we stand around here, the more likely something, or multiple somethings will find us. We need to keep moving.”
Many of the refugees nodded at that, and irritation flitted across the minister’s features. “Of course. Whatever you think is best in combat situations, Captain.”
A victory, if a small one. I’d take it right then. Not all of us were going to make it to the provisioning station alive—of that I remained certain.
8
The trek to the Supply Depot was clad in grim silence and stoic resolve. We were hurting, but no one complained and no one slowed down. The horrors we’d glimpsed were tiny things besides the unknowns we conjured. Or that I conjured anyway.
That necromancer had spooked me badly, and the idea that some sort of spirit had grafted onto our group made things worse. Was it me or were people now eyeing their neighbors a bit more suspiciously? That had to be in my head.
Or was it? I badly needed sleep. Thinking had reached the blurry phase before monotone grunts, and my adrenaline was all used up.
“Contact!” Miri bellowed from about fifteen meters ahead. She dropped into a crouch behind a pillar. “I spotted three incoming.”
My shoulders sagged wearily, and I longed to lay down. That seemed like a bad idea in a looming firefight.
“Seket, get the civilians to a safe distance.” My pistol slid into my hand and I trotted toward the pillar behind Miri’s, about three meters away. “Vee, I need you up here.”
Feet pounded on pavement, louder and louder until Vee slid into a crouch next to me. She hadn’t put her helmet on yet, and her cheeks were flushed from the continuous exertion. Dark circles of exhaustion wreathed her eyes. “What did you need?”
“I’ll go low and you go high. When the targets come around the corner, let Miri take her shot, then finish any wounded.” I crept around the pillar and took aim with my nameless pistol. “You know what? Screw that. It’s time for a name. Equalizer.”
“Menacing,” Vee said in a tone that promised it wasn’t. “Get ready.”
To my surprise the pistol gave an annoyed thrum in my hand. Guess she didn’t like the name either.
I forced deep breaths as the targets came around the corner. I’m not sure what I expected. Wights. Zombies. Necromancers. That crazy dragon thing my suit had labeled soulshackled.
What I didn’t expect was a trio of average commuter-mages in the tattered rags of what used to be business suits. All three frothed at the mouth, a sickly grey foam leaking out as hatred leaked from their eyes. Nothing human lurked there. Something alien, something that hated us all, stared back.
But they were alive. Their chests rose and fell like bellows as they charged toward us. There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation. Their eyes landed on Miri, and they came for her.
We followed the plan.
Miri unloaded a pair of life bolts into the closest target, a middle-aged woman who’d kept her figure and her laugh lines. Each bolt caught a knee, and the suddenly legless woman toppled to the ground with an enraged cry.
Her companions leapt over her, and I timed my spell accordingly. “Old tricks are the best.”
I launched a gravity bomb spell at the area where they would land, and as I’d hoped, both screaming commuters thrashed helplessly in their suddenly zero-g environment.
Vee sighted down her wrist, and delivered a pair of life bolts, one to the heart of each helpless target. They thrashed and wailed, then their bodies went limp.
Moments later a river of dark fog rolled out of both mouths, and coalesced into shadowy creatures that strongly resembled wights, but were shorter and more menacing.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of third year Arcana instructor Li’s nasally voice reminded me that creatures not from our realm are vulnerable to their opposites, and to the other realms.
The opposite of spirit is dream. Did that mean I could use sleep spells to hurt undead? If so, why wasn’t that, like, a thing that people knew and did?
Oh, crap…it was a thing that people knew and did. I just hadn’t been one of the people.
The pistol hummed eagerly as I loosed a dream bolt at the first shade. The crackling pink beam slammed into the creature’s midsection, and it gave the beginning of a shriek before the spell consumed it and left nothing but a few stray magical particles.
I adjusted the barrel a few millimeters to the right, and dropped the second shade with a similar bolt. Any celebration ended as I released my gravity spell and the pair of lifeless commuters tumbled to the wet pavement.
Miri ducked back into cover and cradled her pistol in both hands as she waited for the last target to advance. “You want to finish this, lurker girl?”
Vee’s arm rose, her face locked in a mask of determination that made her impervious to the needling.
“No!” I raised a hand to lower her wrist. “We might be able to save them.”
The last possessed commuter charged around Miri’s pillar with both arms raised, fingers twisted into bloody claws that had already found at least one victim.
I snapped up my pistol and cast. The dream bolt caught the commuter in the side and the woman froze, then began twitching wildly. She collapsed and a low urgent moaning rose as the thrashing grew more intense.
Billowing vapor rose from the woman’s mouth, and began forming another shade.
Vee’s arm came back up, and the sigils on her bracelet flared. A beam of pure brilliance, the stuff of the universe itself, carried the shade back into the spirit realm where it belonged.
“Nice shot,” I panted as I leaned back against the pillar.
Vee didn’t answer, but instead rushed to the side of the downed commuter. She placed two fingers against the woman’s neck, then looked up at me with a grin. “She’s alive. Sleeping, from your spell.”
“How about that,” I murmured. “You can evict spirits with dream bolts.”
“That’s first year stuff,” Miri pointed out as she approached. She rolled her shoulder, then knelt to pick up the unconscious woman.
“Yeah, even I know that,” Vee pointed out. “The first documentary I watched on magic talks about realms and their opposites.”
“I mean…you know what?” I holstered my pistol. “I’m just going to take point. Miri, see if you can find a civilian to carry that woman so you’re free to relieve me. Vee, could you, ah, send me a link to that documentary when you have the chance? I might have blown off first year magical theory.”
I started up the corridor and Vee fell in a pace behind me, her wrist ready to snap up if another spell were needed. She still hadn’t put on her helmet, and I think I finally realized why. Mine dulled my senses. Sure, you had speakers, but you were divorced from the situation. You couldn’t feel the air on your skin, and you only heard what the speakers did.
Anger marred Vee’s features as she eyed me sidelong. “You had a chance to attend an academy, and you blew off your classes?”
“Yeah, basically,” I admitted, and it hurt. “Briff and I really got into Arena. We were good, and we thought that maybe we’d even have a shot at going pro. I told myself that I already knew the magical basics, and for the most part I did. It’s the gaps that might get me, or us, killed.”
“That’s why you hired me,” Miri called from several meters back where she was passing her charge to a broad-shouldered Inuran woman who looked to play some sort of professional sport from her attire.
“How much further to the depot?” I called back as I paused next to the corner of a T intersection.
“A few hundred meters.” Miri trotted up to join us, unwinded by carrying a human adult for a significant length of time. I’d have been panting, though proud that I could at least do it now. I
noted she still had her spellpistol drawn. “Want me to resume point?”
“Do that. Vee and I will follow ten meters back.” I leaned against the wall as Miri disappeared around the corner. She really enjoyed the respite, brief as it was.
“Do you really think Aruni will buy everyone water?” Vee whispered as she crouched next to me.
“They’ll tear him apart if he doesn’t.” I rose reluctantly, and forced myself into motion around the corner. Vee followed, so I continued. “I think he’ll deliver. I don’t know what game he’s playing, or why we can’t piece together anything about his magic, but he does need us to get to the surface. If he betrays us I expect it will come when needs to make good on ruling in our favor against the Consortium. But if we’re alive to be mad about it that’s a win.”
Vee nodded thoughtfully. “There’s something about Aruni. He’s hiding something, but I don’t think he’s malicious. There’s something almost…familiar.”
A shrill whistle echoed down the corridor, and I looked up to see Miri signaling us to approach. I did so, and summoned what alertness I could. Even with my vision it still wasn’t easy. So. Tired.
I glanced around the wall where Miri crouched and blinked when I saw what had stopped her. A trio of steps ringed a raised building with nasty looking turrets dotting the roof. Those turrets were operating overtime, and with good cause.
Hundreds of wights surged toward the Supply Depot, right into the waiting embrace of those spellcannons, which lobbed explosion after explosion into their midst. Wight after wight died, and the cannons kept firing.
I rubbed my temples. “How do we get inside?”
“That’s solvable,” Miri offered, her attention on the building. “What I’m more worried about is in that window, there.”
I followed where she pointed and spotted a pair of eyes staring back at me. I could see enough of the uniform to identify an Inuran security officer.
“Think they’ll let us inside?” Vee asked, though hope had departed her voice.
“Nope.” I drew my pistol. “But we’re going to find a way in anyway.”