Rise of Shadows

by Vincent Trigili

  “Flame, can you relieve Phoenix on the bridge and have him meet us in the mess hall? I want to make sure our guest gets a good meal while we wait on the patient,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Flame and then sent back, “You can't send her back, Shadow. I won’t stand for it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Once we were all settled in the mess hall I said, “Sorry, we never got your name, Doctor?”

  She looked up at me and hesitated a bit, seemingly lost in thought, but eventually replied, “Leslie, but most people just call me Doc, or Doctor.”

  “Sure,” I said. I looked over her food choices and noticed that she had a wide variety of very healthy foods, and nothing that could be considered junk food. She is in survivor mode, stocking up on the best nutrition while she can, I thought to myself. “Doc, I should warn you that we know nothing about the man in the hyberpod.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  “As part of our defense of your vessel I boarded the battleship and discovered it had become a ghost ship. While on board I found him hiding under an energy shield while the ghosts pounded on the shield, trying to get at him.”

  “So he could be an enemy then,” she mused.

  “Yes, or he could be a friend,” I said.

  “He has suffered greatly, so there is a good chance he will be in a panic when we revive him,” she said. “I saw that you have restraints on your medical beds. We should use them to keep him restrained, at least until the panic passes.”

  “Won’t that cause him to panic more?” asked Phoenix.

  “Yes, it could, but we need to keep him safe, especially from himself,” she said.

  We continued to talk for a little while about various options for treating the patient and how long it might take before he was able to answer questions. She seemed to relax when talking about his case. I supposed it took her mind off her current situation. While we talked, I sent across our network, “Spectra, how much do you think she costs?”

  “Not much since she is not trained well,” she sent.

  “Shadow, are you thinking of buying her?” asked Flame.

  “It would be the least disruptive way to get her off that ship,” I sent.

  “Bad plan,” sent Phoenix. “Word would get out that we are slave traders, and that would seriously hamper our mission.”

  “Shadow, this is Aleeryon space. Slavery is outlawed. If she is one, the fact that she is in this region makes her free,” sent Flame.

  “And what would we do with her?” asked Spectra.

  “Do with her? We need a doctor, she is a doctor; it seems clear to me,” sent Flame.

  “And if she does not want to? Do we abandon our mission in order to take her somewhere?” asked Spectra.

  “Whatever we have to do so that she does not go back there, I am happy with,” sent Flame.

  “I think that we need to find out what she wants before we decide anything,” I sent.

  While we were talking, she finished her meal, and we headed back to sickbay. On the way there she asked me, “What do you plan to do with him?”

  “That depends on him. I am hoping that he will be friendly and possibly help us out here, but he could just as easily turn on us, in which case we would be forced to kill him. A third option would be that he is friendly but cannot or will not help us, in which case we can drop him off somewhere and move on,” I said.

  “Ah,” was all she said in response. She seemed lost in thought as we entered sickbay. Once inside she immediately checked the status of the patient and began making adjustments.

  “Assuming that he turns out to be friendly, how long will he need medical care for?” I asked.

  She stopped and looked at me for a bit, but did not answer. Instead she continued to fiddle with the settings on the hyberpod.

  “Leslie, how did you end up on that ship?” I asked.

  She looked up in fear and started to talk, but then cut herself off and looked back at the hyberpod. She just stood there standing still, trembling slightly.

  “Leslie, you are safe here. This ship is Alpha Academy property and, as such, you can speak freely here. We will not repeat anything you do not want us to,” I said. I could feel my integration training from my time in the Imperial Navy starting to take over, and I did not like it. I wanted her to trust me and not to be tricked into spilling information. “Flame, I may need some help down here, if you can,” I sent. “It would be good to have a female here to help her feel a little more comfortable.”

  Leslie was quiet for a while, but eventually said, “He will need to stay in sickbay at least a couple of weeks. Depending on how much damage was done, I am not sure he will ever fully recover.”

  I resisted the urge to ask her more about that and just waited. Eventually Flame came in, walked over to Leslie, and asked if she could help at all. Leslie had Flame get her various things from around the room, which she used to work a little on the magus. Eventually she stopped, looked at me, and said, “Sir, I have done what I can for him for now. He needs to sleep at least overnight before you attempt to remove him from the hyberpod.”

  “I see, then would you mind staying on board until he is at least stable? We lack the training to help him,” I said.

  “I cannot, I must return,” she said.

  “Leslie, I know you don’t want to. Please let us help you,” said Flame.

  With that Leslie broke down and sobbed heavily. Flame just held her while she cried. I do not know how long this lasted, but it seemed like an age had passed before she started to get control over herself. Then her story came out in stuttering, gasping breaths. She had a promising career in front of her as a doctor when her father fell on hard times and took a loan from the wrong kind of people. They eventually came to collect, and he could not pay, so they took all five of his daughters as payment and sold them into slavery. She did not know what had happened to the others, and she had no idea how long she had been a slave for because they kept her locked up in dark rooms, except when they wanted her for something.

  Once she settled back down I said, “I need you. You are the only one that can help him,” I said. “If you are willing to work as a doctor on this ship for a while, I will secure your freedom; however, you should know that we are a war vessel and are out here to fight. It will be very dangerous, and I do not know how long it will be until we see a spaceport where we can drop you off.”

  She just looked at me and mumbled a bit. I waited to give her time to digest everything and then said, “I can only do this if you ask me to. If you want to go back to your life on that ship, I cannot stop you.”

  “Yes, he won’t make it without my help. Please let me stay,” she finally spat out.

  “Good, Flame will show you to your private quarters, and I will go deal with your former boss,” I said.

  “Thank you, Shadow, I knew I could count on you,” sent Flame.

  I headed up to the bridge and had Spectra hail the freighter. When the captain came on I said, “Sir, it appears we have a small problem here. As you already know, we are working with the Aleeryon Navy to restore law and order to this region. This agreement obliges me to enforce certain laws out here.”

  He sighed and said, “I am losing my doctor, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are, and I assume you realize why?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Good, then we can part ways under good will and not speak of this again,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he said and cut the channel.

  “You should report him,” sent Flame.

  “To whom? This is not really Aleeryon space currently, and I doubt the Scorpion Gang will care. No, it is better to let him go. We have much bigger problems to deal with out here,” I sent. The big question I was left with was: why did the captain show us this doctor who is obviously a slave? He must have known how it would turn out.

  Chapter Forty

  At some point I must have fina
lly fallen asleep, but I could not guess how long I had been sleeping when I was awoken by Shea whispering, “Dusty, Dusty,” as she gently shook my shoulder.

  “What?” I asked. There was no sign of the rising sun yet, so I knew it was not time to get up.

  “We have to go, and now,” she said as she got our horses ready to ride.

  “Umm, why?” I asked.

  “No time for that now, just trust me,” she said and mounted her horse.

  I quickly followed suit, and soon we were quietly slipping away from the caravan. As we passed one of the sentries, she tossed him a coin and said, “You never saw us.” He caught the coin and turned his back. She then commanded our horses to pick up speed to a point where I felt as if my grip on the great beast would fail.

  Sometime after sunrise, she slowed us down, and I felt as if I would collapse from the effort of staying on while my horse followed hers at what seemed like an insane speed. “Shea, what is going on?”

  “Sorry, Dusty, I should have told you from the beginning, but we must keep moving. There is a river ahead. We can rest there and let the horses drink. Until then we have to get as far from that caravan as possible as fast as possible. Keep those magic seeing eyes of yours peeled. Trouble could come from any direction,” she said as she kept her attention focused on our surroundings.

  My magical awareness had faded, and I had not taken the time to recast it in days. It took a few tries but eventually I was able to cast it without the horse’s movements interfering with the spell. As soon as I cast it, I noticed that Shea was wrapped in a pure white power similar to what I had seen around Craig just before he charged into battle. All of the magic that I had seen before coming here was in weaves of color, sometimes with white mixed in, but always with lots of color. Color patterns were unique to each and every magus; whether they were sorcerer or wizard did not matter. Every single magus had their own magical signature on their powers. Even the old man that captured me had a distinct color pattern, yet the power around Shea and Craig was completely colorless. Since Craig was not with us there was no way he had cast this colorless power on Shea, so that meant that it was not unique to him, which was even more baffling than the lack of color.

  Shea held the lead rope on my horse while she seemed to steer her own horse without even looking. Her head continued to snap left and right as we rode. “Shea, I’ll take my side, you take yours,” I suggested.

  “Okay,” was all she said and then stuck to watching only half the world around her while I took the other half.

  We rode on until the sun was a little past overhead, when we finally reached the river. Shea quickly dismounted and led both horses to the water to drink. I hopped off and drew my axe to examine it. It bore the mark of the magus that created it with a unique color pattern as I would expect from any magus, which meant that magic did work the same way here, at least to some extent. However, that was not the strangest thing. The strangest thing was I saw some of that white power wrapped around myself. It was somewhat comforting to look at, despite how strange it looked.

  “Okay, Shea, I trust you, I really do, but I think it’s time you explained what is going on,” I said.

  She sighed and seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “Dusty, I should have said something sooner. I am sorry, but traveling with me has put you in grave danger.”

  I almost chuckled at that comment, considering the danger that I had been facing since leaving the school as part of Operation Show of Force, but instead I just said, “Go on.”

  “You see, there are many groups out to get me. Some want to capture me, and others want to kill me,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I am an alchemist, and no alchemist has been born for centuries. Some want to capture me and abuse my abilities; others want to destroy me so that the art is lost again.” She went on to explain that she and Craig had been on the run for the last decade, hiding in small towns and hovels from all kinds of people who were trying to capture her. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her face as she told me of town after town that was destroyed in their quest to get her.

  As she was telling her story and apologizing for dragging me into her dangerous life, a thought struck me. “Shea, when you showed me the healing potion, you acted like it was common knowledge and that you were surprised that I did not know about it. If it was truly unique to you, why should I know it?”

  “Sorry, but your appearance was too much of a coincidence. I assumed you were after me too and was surprised to find out you knew nothing about the potions, especially since you knew so much about the healing herbs. Not Craig though, he trusted you fully. He kept insisting you were exactly what you claimed to be,” she said.

  “Well, so far you have not done anything to make my life any more dangerous than it was,” I started.

  “What do you call the army of goblins that chased us through the woods? Or the sorcerer with that trap on the trail?” she asked.

  “Um, random encounters?” I asked.

  “Hardly,” she said.

  “They were after you?” I asked. “How could you know?”

  She sighed and drew out her dagger and pointed to a strange symbol on the hilt. “This symbol represents a nasty group of men that have been the most persistent of my pursuers, and the goblins were wielding weapons with this marking.”

  “And that last sorcerer?” I asked.

  “I do not recognize him, but I assume he was just one more enemy in my long list of enemies,” she said.

  “He is the sorcerer that captured me, the one I had just escaped from before finding you,” I said.

  “So he was not after me? That’s a first!” she said. “We need to start riding; the horses should be ready by now.”

  As I mounted my horse I asked, “Why are we leaving the safety of the caravan?”

  “I overheard the men talking, and there is trouble on its way. I can only assume they are after me, and if that is the case then the only way I can protect the good people in that caravan is to get away from them,” she said.

  “We left good armed men though. Would not our chances have been better with them?” I asked.

  “No, they would be overwhelmed if it is the same group that took out my previous home,” she said. “Hopefully they will soon discover that I have left the caravan, and they will leave the travelers alone.”

  We rode on for hours in silence as I thought about what she said. She had apparently discovered a powerful tool, and that gave her powerful enemies. It should also have won her some powerful allies, but she did not seem to have any. This seemed odd; surely the rich and powerful would want the healing potions also and might pay well to keep her safe.

  After we set up camp for the night, I asked her about that, and she merely said that she would then be no better than a slave, and that was not a life she wanted to live. I thought that would still be better than the life she was leading, but I just let it go at that.

  Chapter Forty-One

  We rode on without incident for several more days. Each night we would camp without a campfire and each sleep half the night while taking turns at watch. The route was safe, but if the bandits Shea had heard about really were after her, then we did not want to draw any attention to ourselves. As long as we were careful and did not light a fire, it was highly unlikely they would find us this far from the trail. Fortunately, the nights were warm and comfortably humid, so there was no real need for a fire.

  As we rode, she told me all about her life. She just spilled it all out as if she could not contain the secret life she had been living any longer. Apparently, their standard plan was that she and Craig would find a small secluded town to live in, someplace way out of the way of the world. There she would secretly study her art and Craig would travel to trading outposts in the area to sell the potions and buy supplies. Eventually someone would figure out where they were, and they would have to run again. Sometimes they had enough warning to get away
before anyone was hurt, sometimes not.

  The time I found her was the closest she ever came to being captured. Had I not rescued her, she would probably have been killed before Craig could reach her. Apparently, they had been talking a lot about that incident while I slept or was otherwise distracted. They both agreed that it was too close a call and that they needed to come up with a new plan. Craig wanted her to give up alchemy forever so that they could leave behind this life of danger and start over somewhere far north where no one had ever heard of her. Shea hated that idea. She really wanted to master the art and could not bear the thought of never making another potion, but she did not want to trap Craig with her anymore. She wanted to let him go to live his own life.

  Finally, the last day of our ride was coming to a close, and soon we would reach the gates of Syncillia. As we traveled the last leg of the journey, I asked her, “What are your plans once I am safely delivered to the wizards?”

  “I just don’t know. For the moment, I intend to stay at the local temple of Light until Craig gets here and then work out our idea for heading north,” she said. She paused a long while after that and seemed to stare off into space. Then she finally said, “I guess his plan is best, so I’ll give up and hide.”

  “There has to be another option,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  We rode on in silence after that. It was not long before the massive city walls rose over the horizon, casting long shadows as the sun descended in the sky. The city had huge towers that glittered under the evening sun. These were spread around the walls at regular intervals, which gave the walls a menacing look, like a steel trap laid open and waiting for a bear. The city stood in front of two mountain peaks blocking the only path between them. There was a large series of moats around it, and the cliffs to either side looked unnaturally sheared off, as if some giant with a big knife had sliced them clean.

  “Behold the great Syncillia, the mighty fortress and gateway to the Northern Kingdom,” said Shea breathlessly.