Several of them had first- or second-hand accounts of unfortunate mundanes that got caught in the crossfire between various magi. One even told a horrifying tale of an entire town being wiped out as horrible, summoned creatures turned it into their arena to fight in at their masters’ bidding. Woman and children were ripped to pieces, and even the warriors of the town fought desperately just to escape with their families.
I was stunned by what I was hearing. Wizards were supposed to be the good guys, the champions of the realm, and should have been loved by all, but here they were considered to be a necessary evil at best. I had no idea how to respond to any of what they were saying, but I was sure of one thing: I would not let them know I was a wizard!
After a while, I got up and went over to our horses where I had spread out my sleeping mat. I reasoned that animals tend to have a much better sense of danger than I did, and any uneasiness in them would wake me. As I got ready to sleep Shea came over, put her hand on my shoulder, and asked, “You okay?”
“I guess as long as they don’t find out I’m an evil monster, I will be,” I said.
“You? Evil monster? By the Light, that must be the funniest thing I have heard all week,” she said.
“Are the wizards here really like that?” I asked.
She sighed and did not say anything for a while, but then relented and said, “Yeah, but not all of them. I know that some of them are better, but for the most part … yeah, exactly like that.”
“And these are the people you are sending me to for help?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, but you are one of them, and they are the only ones that can help you get home. There really is no other choice,” she said.
I sighed and then said, “I suppose so.” After that, I laid down on my mat and attempted to sleep, but it would not come. All I could think of were the stories I had heard about my fellow wizards and how horrible a people they were. One question kept burning in my mind all night long: if this is what it meant to be a wizard, then did I really want to stay on this path?
~~~
Elsewhere, the old man was sitting at his desk watching Dusty and Shea’s interactions with the rest of the travelers in a three-dimensional projection just over his desk. They watched until Dusty was tossing and turning in his bedroll, then the old man looked up at the steel-eyed man and said, “Excellent, the seeds are planted, and he will carry them to Spectra for us.”
“Your plan is working out masterfully,” said the steel-eyed man.
“Yes; now let’s check on our friend Shadow,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Be careful, Shadow!” I heard Flame yell at me as I entered the timelessness of the weave. The azure energy wrapped around me and for a while brought me a measure of peace. It did not matter how long I stayed in the weave because, when I left, I would re-enter time at just a moment after I left regardless of how long I had been in the weave. Since the weave was timeless, I was not sure it made sense to even think about basic concepts such as how long I was there for or how much time it took to find my exit. Still, I had a perception of duration to my stay, even if it took no time at all. I wondered if the aging process continued while I was in there or if I could add hours to my life by hanging out there.
This timeless nature of what the mundanes called jump space caused them to spend a tremendous amount of time and resources in an attempt to find a way to re-enter normal space at a different point in time. They reasoned that if they could do that, then they could travel backwards and forward in time, which would give them the ability to avert disasters, save lives, and travel to the future to get cures for diseases that we could not presently cure. In all the centuries that mundanes had been traveling through jump space no one had ever found a way to violate the basic principle that you always exit jump space a moment after you enter, no matter what you do.
I could not help but wonder about Dusty while I was looking for my exit. My team talked about him just about every day in an attempt to come up with a way to find him. Spectra kept insisting Dusty was alive and well and would find us eventually. She said he had the “soul of a survivor,” and it was very obvious that she fully believed what she said, even if I had no idea what she meant by that. I wanted to press her on this point, but her confidence was having a very strong positive influence on my team, so I dared not interfere with it.
“There!” I said to myself as I finally located the battleship’s energy signature. There was something not quite right about it. I had noticed it before I entered the weave, but I figured that would just make it easier to find. Once I was in the weave the power signature looked even more wrong. A cold fear passed through me as something deep inside me warned me not to continue on this mission. My service time, especially my combat duty in the Navy, taught me to trust my instincts, but I could not turn away from the plan. We simply had to know what was going on with that battleship.
It was times like this that I wished I had Grandmaster Vydor’s confidence in his god to protect and guide him. It would be comforting to have that to call on, but the fall of the Emperor taught me all I needed to know about gods. I mentally prepared myself to cast my cloak the moment I came out of the weave and then stepped back into time.
As I came out of the weave, I cast my cloak before even looking around, which turned out to be a good thing because all around where I exited were dead bodies. Within moments of getting my cloak up I started to hear a horrifying wailing sound coming from all around me at once, which shook my confidence to the core. I quickly cast the most powerful cloak I knew, Night Form. I did not like this spell because it cut off my ability to use my powers, but I could not shake the fear that the wailing was causing, and instinctively I had to hide. At my level I should know much better cloaking spells, but, typical of a spellweaver, I had completely neglected my secondary line; at least I had until Operation Foolish Hero. My limited ability to cloak made that operation more risky than it needed to be. Since then I had resolved to spend some time each week studying the concealment arts. Still, I had a long way to go to catch up with even a new apprentice like Dusty.
Once safely in my non-corporeal form I felt the fear subside quite a bit, which allowed me to gather my thoughts and investigate my surroundings. I drifted down to the floor to check the bodies to see if I could determine what happened here, but I could find no wounds on any of them. They looked like they had died a very long time ago, and if I had still had a nose I am sure the stench from their rotting corpses would have been overwhelming.
The ship was actively firing its weapons on the ore freighter, so that meant someone was likely to be at the controls on the bridge. I headed for the bridge as fast as I could, not wanting to stay a second longer than needed on this tomb ship. When I arrived at the bridge, I saw that the blast doors were sealed and an energy shield was erected in front of them. In front of the energy shield there was a pile of corpses of crewmembers that looked like they died while trying to get into the bridge. Judging by the scene I guessed that some of the crew retreated into the bridge from whatever was attacking and then sealed it off quickly, leaving many out here to fend for themselves. The door was sealed tight, and the energy field was running at what had to be its maximum power, which normally would stop any intruder; but as was typical of short-sighted mundanes they had only secured the door, so I drifted through the wall next to the door, which had no energy field to stop me.
Once on the bridge I was greeted by one of the most horrifying sights I had ever seen in my life. There were bodies everywhere that looked like they had died while experiencing great terror. The look of total, overpowering fear was now permanently etched into their petrified corpses. The arrangement of bodies hinted at them fleeing from something that was in the room with them, but being trapped by their own locked door there was no escape. There was no sign of blaster fire, nor any other weapon. The walls were unharmed, so whatever attacked them must either have been in the room before they locked the
door, or had come through the walls like I did, and it appeared that it had somehow eliminated all these warriors without using any weapons or spells.
While trying not to look at the scene spread out around me, I drifted over to the weapons console and saw that the guns were set up on an automatic firing pattern at maximum power, and the targeting system had been linked into navigation to keep the battleship at optimum range. The ship was completely under automated control, but the part that defied understanding was that the ship had plenty of power, and its fuel stores seemed to be nearly at maximum level, which meant it could not have been more than a couple of months since it was last at a space dock. Yet the bodies here looked like they had been dead for many years.
I did not want to cancel my spell merely to stop the weapons, as I feared that whatever attacked this crew was still on the ship and was the source of that wailing. The ore ship was in no real danger from the weapons, even if I left them firing for several more weeks, so I left the bridge and headed to engineering to see if there was more information down there. If the crew had had time to run from attackers, they would likely have run to engineering, as it was the most heavily-secured place on the ship. If there were survivors to find, that would be the most likely place to find them.
As I flew through the corridors in the ship, I consistently came across piles of bodies, and it looked like most of them were trying to flee whatever was attacking. Occasionally I would come across a group of warriors that looked like they tried to hold their ground, but even though their weapons were completely drained there was no indication that they had ever fired a shot. There should have been damage to the walls from those guns, at the very least scorch marks, but instead the walls were completely unharmed.
I thought about everything I was seeing as I flew towards engineering, trying to create a profile of the attackers. Since the evidence suggested that the crew of this ship fired their weapons in defense, and there was no indication that they had hit the walls, that must mean they had hit the attackers. Judging by the expression of hopeless fear on their faces, I would guess the weapons had no effect. Still, even in these close quarters I would have expected a good portion of the shots to miss and hit the walls, yet there was no sign of that.
So far it appeared that they were immune to blaster fire and could pass through walls. Their attack left no energy signature behind, nor seemed to harm non-living matter at all. They apparently could sow fear with great effect, and they understood battleship controls well enough to rig this ship to attack the ore freighter. As much as I racked my mind for more facts, that is all I could come up with, and it was not enough to clue me in on what could have caused this.
Chapter Thirty-Six
When I reached engineering, a very different sight greeted me from those I had seen throughout the rest of the ship. The blast doors to engineering were completely destroyed, and there were body parts everywhere instead of petrified corpses. I could tell by the blast pattern that the explosion originated inside the engineering section. I kept up my Night Form cloak and drifted into engineering. The room was a disaster area that literally looked as if a bomb had gone off in it. I began to wonder if the crew had lured the attackers in here in order to kill them, but the only bodies I saw were those of what I believed to be crew members.
Most of the computer terminals in the room had been destroyed by the blast, but energy fields that were still operational protected some of them. I was able to read their displays through the fields, and the information on them confirmed what I had seen on the bridge. This battleship could not have been away from space dock for more than two months, yet the bodies everywhere looked like they had died many years ago. I could not make sense of this puzzle, so I began to wander around engineering, looking for more clues.
It was not long before I found one, and a major one at that. Hidden behind spent fuel rods and storage drums; there was the distinct red glow of a magical shield under heavy attack. I quickly moved to see what was up and saw a human curled up in a ball, shaking in fear under a magical shield while some unseen force pounded on it. It did not look like the shield would hold up for long.
I rapidly canceled my Night Form spell and wrapped myself in power, working quickly to bend the fear magic that was all around me into a power shield. Once I had that secure I called out, “This is Battle Wizard First Rank Shadow Weaver of Alpha Academy, stand down your attack at once!”
Then I saw them, horrible and ancient-looking creatures that might have been human once, but now were not much more than rotting skeletons with flesh hanging off their bones in random places. They flew through the air with fluidity and grace, as if they were more spirits than physical beings.
Fear magic slammed into my energy shields in massive waves, and I could barely even stand under the attack. They cackled and howled as they flew about, sending their attacks at me. I moved between them and the figure on the floor, struggling with all my might to keep both of us safe. I could not counter-attack. All of my power and focus was tied up by their attacks.
“Spectra!” I cried out telepathically.
“Get out of there, Shadow! Those are soul eaters!” Spectra sent back in a panic.
This concerned me greatly; she is usually much more coolheaded, even under stress. “But there is another magus trapped here. I will not leave him.”
The soul eaters continued to bob and weave all around me, trying hard to get the man on the ground behind me. He was completely overwhelmed by their fear magic and would be no help.
“Shadow, I can open a gate. Think you can get him through and prevent them from following?” she hurriedly asked.
“Yeah, just open it right under him. They cannot get at him as long as I am still standing,” I sent.
“Under him! Brilliant!” she sent.
Soon there was a faint, blue glow under the man’s shield, so I reached out and unwove his shield, allowing him to fall through the gate below him. Before I could move to follow him, the soul eaters charged my position. I did not want to risk them getting through that gate, so I unwove its power and pulled it into my shields.
“Shadow?” sent Spectra.
“Sorry about that, but they were rushing the gate. I will need to get away from them somehow before I can leave,” I sent.
“Those creatures are deadly, Shadow; you must get out of there,” she sent.
“I intend to, but first I have to secure engineering so that we can destroy this battleship with them on it,” I sent.
“What should we do with this magus?” she asked while sending an image of the magus still curled up on the floor, shaking in fear.
“Use Phoenix’s sleeping dust on him, and keep him safe till I return,” I sent.
While we talked, the soul eaters had backed off their attacks on me and flew around me, darting this way and that, looking for a weakness in my shields. They would not find one, but I was not sure I could hold out under a sustained direct attack. Their reduced attack allowed me slowly to gather more power from the ship around me, and I used it to weave a bubble of energy that I pulsed out around myself. With each pulse the bubble of power grew larger, and it forced the foul creatures further from me. I had to work quickly because I was confident they could break through the bubble.
I ran towards the primary engine core where I knew I would have a tremendous amount of power to tap, and I reasoned the shielding there should give me a measure of protection from their attacks. Before I could reach the core, several of the creatures swooped down directly into my path. I dug my feet into the floor and stopped my charge. “Phoenix, Flame, get the Dust Dragon’s shields to full power and attack! Focus your fire on the battleship’s weapons, but stay at max range and be ready to dodge behind the ore freighter when the battleship blows. Spectra, I may need an exit, so I need you at the ready,” I sent as I raised my hand in the air and summoned my staff. It took me nearly a decade to craft this staff, and this would be my first time using it in battle.
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br /> “So it's a fight you want? Then a fight you will get!” I called out, and I swung the staff down in an arc, slicing power through the air at the creatures in front of me. A brilliant arc of power launched from the staff and slammed into their front line. They were completely unprepared for my attack, and it hit three of them square in the chest, sending them flying back into the shielding that protected the engine core.
That was the opening I needed. I continued to pull power from around me to strengthen my shields as I resumed my mad charge for the engine core. The creatures quickly recovered from my attack and flew at me, pounding and clawing at my shields. While pushing on to the engine core I tried to use my staff to beat them back. They were extremely fast and nimble, so it was rare that I actually contacted them, but when I did it felt like I was hitting an extra soft pillow instead of a living creature. Their attacks came hard and fast, turning my mad charge into a slow and laborious walk. Still, I was making progress, and that was key. If I could get this engine to blow like the last battleship, it should destroy all of these creatures.
“We have begun our attack run, Shadow. I assume you have a plan to get off there?” asked Spectra.
“Not really, but we need to destroy this ship before these creatures find a way over to that ore freighter,” I sent.
“Of course!!! The laser drilling they are doing. Once a hole is cut in that freighter they can ride the beam in,” sent Spectra.
“Flame, take out that laser! Use whatever you need to, but take it out now,” I sent.
“With pleasure! Just get back here, Shadow!” sent Flame.
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