Kasey could feel some of her rib bones popping so she decided to shed the girl from her back. She only needed to will it, and her fire wings appeared, scorching Misia’s hand and arms. Misia let go and stepped back, screaming in pain.
“It burns, I know," said Kasey with concern in her voice, “but you will be okay. You did a good job of cracking one of my ribs though.” Misia spit on Kasey again. Kasey sighed. I really don’t want to have to hurt this girl too much, but she needs a wakeup call. She grabbed Misia by the hair leading her up the stairway as Misia bit and clawed at her like a rabid animal. Kasey paid no attention as she dragged her out into the daylight. Misia screamed and fought Kasey even harder. The wisps of shadow and mist that emanate around all Kalat seemed to wrap around her trying to protect her exposed flesh from the light but it began to burn anyway.
The others rushed to Kasey’s aid but she shook her head and they backed away. “What’s wrong Misia?” There was a touch of sarcasm to her voice.
Misia growled, “You know what is wrong! I cannot tolerate the sunlight.”
Kasey smiled as she maintained a firm grip on her, “What do the Kalat think of the Miyka, Misia?”
She spat on the ground still trying to wrench herself free, “You are weak and feeble-minded fools!” she laughed even as her skin simmered.
“The Kalat despise the weak?”
Misia only glared, “I don’t have to answer your stupid questions.” Kasey nodded, “They do, Misia. They hate the weak. What is this, but weakness? All natural plants and animals grow and thrive in the light. …but you, Misia, must scuttle around in the darkness because the sun burns your flesh. Is that not weakness?”
“We find our strength in the darkness!” she yelled as if it was a battle cry.
“And your weakness in the light?”
“The light is our enemy!” she yelled.
“It makes you weak, look you aren’t even strong enough to fight me off. You are weak,” Kasey said pleadingly. Misia growled and howled as she tried to rip free, but she still could not shake Kasey. With a mighty shove Kasey threw Misia to the ground and straddled her so that she could not get up. She held her there until Misia stopped fighting. Finally she said in a sympathetic voice, “We are all weak, Misia, but with the Shepherd we can be strong.”
Kasey got up and walked away letting those words linger. She knew her battle with Misia was not over. In fact, the battle for her soul had just begun. She hated how violent the Kalat culture was. She always had to start the battle for the souls of lost Kalat with violence even though she detested it these days. In the past she had spoken to the Shepherd and confirmed her methods. “They are rough but necessary. Sometimes when a sheep keeps leaving the flock a shepherd must break the leg of the sheep. He does this with love. He breaks that lamb’s leg and then the lamb has to rely on the shepherd. He sets the bone to heal and from that day on the Shepherd does everything with that lamb over his shoulders. The lamb learns to take comfort in the shepherd’s voice. To some, this would seem horrible; but is it, compared to the fate the lamb would face if wondered off alone and eaten by wolves?” Kasey sighed, thinking of this lesson. It was something she knew in her gut, but the Shepherds words were always wise beyond anything she could express. I have broken her pride, now I will spend my days with her and show her who I really am. Who He is. As she walked away the others guided Misia back to her prison and tended to her burns.
3
In Trouble… Again
No light. How long has it been? I’ve lost count. Weeks, months. Myles sat in complete darkness. He found himself in some kind of stone holding cell. He had tried to teleport out which did not work. He had tried to make light with his mind but it didn’t work either. Myles had lost control. What is this place?
The stench of his urine and fecal matter was almost unbearable, but the darkness was what would likely drive him mad. Everything was black. What he would not give for a ray of sunlight. It might be blinding at this moment but he did not care. He missed the feel of sun on his skin and the smell of fresh air.
Myles tried to exercise in his small cell but there was little room for that and the rock of the cell was jagged. It was barely comfortable enough to sit or sleep on. Most nights he found himself sleeping against a wall because it was more comfortable than lying down.
His jailors came only when he slept. How can they know when I sleep and when I am awake? Too many questions nagged at him. Where did Haylale send me? What hell is this place? How can I get out?
“Hello, can anyone hear me?” he yelled again. No answer but an echo with the faint sound of dripping water. If it had not been for the water trickling into the side of his cell which was only a five foot cubic cell, Myles would be very thirsty by now. But he had not eaten on purpose in at least five days. He was hoping to starve himself to a point where his captors would show while he was awake. Besides, the food made a man want to starve himself to death. It was slimy and sometimes in the dark as he ate… it moved. Myles swallowed in disgust as he thought that he had eaten some mysterious living thing in desperation. He had killed it first, in the dark. It shrieked horribly and splattered everywhere when smashed it violently against the wall. After that it was three days before he would actually eat it. Pockets burst in his mouth and strange tasting juices came from them. Organs. Myles dry heaved thinking of it again.
There was no lock to his cell. Only bars in the stone. He had shaken each one, hoping he could loosen them. Myles would have been glad for a lock. Locks could be picked. Instead it was just him and the bars and the constant drip of water that had first made him sick for some time and then given him headache after headache. Sometimes he sang in hopes of drowning it out.
His mind drifted to the poison he had stored in the heel of one of his boots. No, I just need to find a way out, there has to be a way out. Myles still had some flash paper hidden in his hat but he knew that what light it gave would be momentary and it would not be enough for him to make out his surroundings. Besides he had felt his way around and there was no secret way out. Haylale had teleported him into this prison.
Finally, Myles heard footsteps. It must have worked! They are coming to try to force feed me! “Hey,” Myles yelled, “over here!” Myles could see a hovering ball of light and then the face of an un-naturally thin man wearing a lit up uniform. He had a goatee and dark hollow eyes. A Gauntman? But from what I heard from the Magi they are not from Soterion but from a world called Gnosis.
The man looked at a screen attached to his arm and looked back to Myles in confusion. “You must eat or you will die,” he said in a quick and tedious accent.
“Let me out, I don’t belong here,” said Myles. The guard turned around quickly and ran down the hall. Myles sighed. I can’t catch a break here. I should have known better than to go after Haylale by myself. Or with an army for that matter.
His body was stiff and weak. He shifted to lean against the wall. Myles had very little energy left. Time dragged on and he began to fade out and drifted to sleep. Soon he woke to a small noise in the distance. With the little power nap and the excitement of catching someone bringing food he jolted awake with a surge of adrenaline.
Myles heard footsteps again. The guard was back and there was another Gauntman with him. He wore a green cape and more decorative clothing than the guard. This guy must be a leader or some kind of nobility.
The noble looked angry. His voice was a higher pitch than what Myles would consider normal and he spoke quickly, however; Myles still had the translator that Omar had given him on him allowing him to understand the guard. “Fat monkey must eat, why for you don’t eat? You don’t eat, you die. You die, cause trouble for me. Can you even understand what I am saying, fat monkey?”
Myles cocked his head and looked down at himself . Fat? I don’t think anyone has ever called me fat. I haven’t eaten in five days! He looked at the noble and before Myles could speak he cut him off.
“Yes, you… tell me now how you got here,” he sn
apped. “We find you here with no way in.” Myles shook his head, “Look genius, do you think if I knew how I got here that I would be sitting behind these bars? I woke up, and I was here.”
The noble glared at Myles, “You are an intruder who has walked where he should not go. I have given you a chance to plead your case. We need answers. Now you will come with me and answer to the Pontiff.”
The man reached his arm through the bars and grabbed Myles, an electronic device on his wrist began to glow and then suddenly Myles was on the other side of the bars. Myles blinked. Teleportation! Omar would kill for one of these!
From everything Myles had heard from the Magi, the Gauntmen were hostile toward all other races. A meeting with this Pontiff would likely go worse than his meeting with King Alagaar. If there was any time to make a break for it, it was now. Myles followed the noble up the long tunnel. They passed several other cells such as his own and there were people of other races in the cells, even a Drakoni. He studied the device around the noble’s arm and saw what he thought to be a release button on it. The globe of light they were following was also some kind of hovering electronic device. Myles would have to move with lightning speed.
He would have to rely on his other senses like the blind swordsman had taught him to do while traveling with the circus. And he needed to act quickly while the adrenaline was still pumping through his body. He took one last look to memorize his surroundings. Myles grabbed the globe and rammed it against the tunnel wall disabling it and quickly sliding it into one of the pockets of his sleeves. Then he took one of his knives and used it to switch the release on the teleporters the noble and the guard had on. The two arm bands fell and Myles collected them as the men scrambled. He tried to put one on his arm but it was too small. He could not activate it until it was shut and around his arm.
Myles doubled back to where the two idiots were fumbling in the dark. He knocked them out with ease. Their bodies were so frail. He ran out of the tunnel into the middle of a very large city. He could smell the salty air of an ocean nearby. I must get to a ship. Myles tried to imagine himself at the distant docks but it still didn’t work. In fact, it seemed to gain him attention, instead. There were guards coming towards him who wore sharpened metal armor with spiked helmets.
The Knife Guard. Sapphira, the Gauntman Magi, had said that she’d been a part of the Knife Guard. They were skilled warriors trained to use their entire bodies like a knife. Myles had only been able to best Sapphira one-on-one in sparring a few times; now he could count about ten of the Knife Guard. He tried again desperately to imagine himself at the docks, but his nose started to bleed like when he overexerted himself. Something was blocking him. Luckily, Myles remembered that he had the invisibility device that Omar had given him. He activated it and smiled when the guards stopped approaching in shock. He didn't have time to celebrate, though. In unison the Knife Guards reached up to touch a button on their helmet visors and all eyes focused on Myles again.
He shrugged, tipped his hat, gave the guards a mischievous wink, and ran for it. The guard closest to him jumped forward putting his hands flat together in front of him and pointing his toes as if he were a thrown knife. He sailed through the air towards Myles faster than he thought possible. The sharp gauntleted hands hit Myles in the shoulder blade. It was as if he had been sliced by a sword leaving a big gash on his shoulder. The pain sent a wave of weariness through him. No, I must keep moving, or I will collapse.
The fear of being in that cage again sent another surge of adrenaline through him. Remembering his training with Sapphira, he knew some of the moves to expect. Every move the guard made was graceful yet precise. He blocked a few chops and butterfly kicks but Myles had a hard time blocking full body strikes. For being so thin, the guard was really hitting with a lot of force. Myles shuddered to think how many stitches he would need.
He ducked and rolled out of the way of another full body attack as the other guards started to surround him. As another came at him, he grabbed the guard by the feet and thrust him towards three others knocking them all down. That created a gap for Myles to run through. It wasn’t in the direction he wanted to go but he had no other choice. Myles would have thought they would be faster runners because they were so thin and their fighting style was so fast but he pulled ahead of the guards out-sprinting them.
As he surveyed the city for shadows and good places to hide, he tried not to be taken aback by the super advanced technology. The island city seemed to have very little foliage. It was made up of metal and glass. There were domes of glass supported by metal frames and large curved sky-scrapers that looked like buildings of residence. The buildings had tracks that led from one building to the next, carrying glass tubes full of people. There were also flying shuttle craft that buzzed about the city, but from Myles’ vantage point he could see that none of them left the city limits.
The highest building that Myles could see was in the center of the city. It looked to be made of white sheet metal and glass. It was a tall cylindrical building that ended in a loop at the top where Myles could see greenery where he guessed a garden was. Upon the building was what looked to be a sigil or stately symbol. It was a butterfly with eyes in its wings. There were people dressed in fine shimmering cloth like the other noble and Gauntmen wearing tall hats with the butterfly symbol on them that looked to Myles like priests heading in and out of the building.
I bet whoever leads this place lives or works at the top of that building. Myles turned towards the building as the guards chased after him. Heh, going in there would be kind of like being chased by the cops and deciding to run into the White House to get away. Myles observed that it was the cleanest, well-kept building in the city. Outside of the building there were those that looked like priests prostrating themselves before a statue of the butterfly symbol. This is a holy building to them, something sacred. Myles thought back to one of his getaways. He had run into a "haunted" buildings and the natives would not follow. The odds are stacked against me but that is when I shine the most, I’m going to get out of this place one way or another.
He sprinted right into the building and got into an elevator-like mechanism. There were buttons with glyphs that Myles guessed were numbers. The glyphs got larger as the buttons went up the panel of the elevator. He pressed the button with the largest glyph on it. A loud siren began to whale and water began to spray from a nozzle at the ceiling. Myles sighed and rolled his eyes. Of all the buttons I hit the fire alarm. Myles quickly hit the button again and it stopped. At least my luck worked that time. Then Myles tried the next largest button under the fire alarm and lights flashed on the buttons as he passed each floor. No one got on with him on the way up. The elevator stopped one floor before the top. Likely only accessible by important people. Gotta find another way up. Myles checked the tube he was in and found that the top could come unhinged easily. He opened up the ceiling and lifted himself into the elevator shaft. He found a ladder there and climbed it to the next set of doors. There was a lock on the doors that looked like it was designed to release when the elevator reached the top. Myles braced himself on the thin platform in front of the doors and took out his lock-picking kit. The lock was very complex but after a few minutes he managed to pick it.
After picking the lock Myles force the doors open revealing a white painted hallway that lead to the left. He walked down the hallway and came to an all-white room with all white furniture. To offset the blankness there were pieces of colorful art hung upon the walls. There were colorful bursts of shapes on some kind of sheet canvas. He scanned the room and saw a Gauntman seated at a desk stacked with papers. Above his desk was a map of Soterion and to either side of the room were whit curtains. The map was not like the other maps of Soterion he had seen. The map included the larger continent to the east that Myles had seen coming into Soterion’s atmosphere. It was the land known as Tanniyn’erets by the Raphad. The map was marked and sectioned out by Kingdoms.
Myles approached, believing that the i
nvisibility device would work since the man did not have a visor like the guards did. He also knew that it was only a matter of time before the guards found where he was and exposed him. He looked over the man’s shoulder to the paperwork that the man was going over. He held out a page and scrolled down it with his finger causing more words to appear. There was strange writing that Myles could not read, but he did recognize a 3D image of Omar on the page.
Myles could hear the clanking of the guards' armor. He dashed behind one of the white curtains. One of the guards spoke, “Pontiff, we are sorry to bother you. But there is an intruder in the tower and we have followed him here."
As the Pontiff cleared his throat and began to address the guards, Myles jumped out behind the Pontiff seeing that the guards were bowed before the Pontiff. Myles hit the Pontiff with a right cross as hard as he could. It worked; it knocked the man out completely. These people were dangerous, but their paper thin bodies were very frail. Before the guards could approach, Myles had a knife at the unconscious Pontiff’s neck. The guards stopped. “Please, don’t harm him. Take one of us instead,” said one of the guards.
Myles shook his head. “Oh no, this chump is my ticket out of town.” He grabbed the paper that had the image of Omar on it. Myles tossed the paper to the floor. “Read it,” he said as he pressed the knife closer to the Pontiff’s neck.
The guard who had spoken reached down and grabbed the paper very slowly. He read, “Magi. Origin: Earth. We are not sure how they traveled to Soterion. Their science, though archaic, could be a threat to us sometime in the near future. Leader: Omar, Race: Akana but with a different biological make-up. Suggested course of action: assassinate the leader and destroy all sources of knowledge and technology.”
Bridgeworlds: Deep Flux Page 5