Unlawful Passage

by CM Raymond

  “Bloody magicians,” Karl grumbled.

  No sooner did the words cross his lips then the sand between them and the charging army started to shift before his eyes. Out of the ground rose a giant mass of dirt that twisted and turned as it grew. The sand morphed into a creature nearly twenty feet tall. It raised its hands over its massive head and roared into the dead night air. Slamming the ground, it sent tremors through them all.

  The roamers stopped in their tracks, in awe of the monster rising to attack them. They were content to fight Baseeki warriors and outlandish magicians, but the creature was where they drew the line. Most turned to flee for the hills that stood above them, screaming in terror, but several brave warriors, hoping to buy some time, went on the offensive. Drawing their longbows, they shot wildly at the creature, their arrows flying right through and out the other side.

  “Wait!” they screamed. “It isn’t real. Damned thing is a trick.”

  A few more tested that theory, launching rocks and arrows at it. Slowly, the roamers reformed their ranks and returned to the beach to continue their onslaught.

  “Shit,” Hadley yelled. “That didn’t take very long.”

  “Must be losin’ yer touch,” Karl replied. As he spoke, a great wind rose up behind him.

  “It held them back long enough,” Ezekiel shouted over the noise. The old man stood ankle deep in the sea as a great storm swirled up around him. Lightning flashed all around, and Karl could see the eyes of the roamers, who readied themselves for their final push.

  “Come on wizard,” he snorted. “Enough with the light show. Strike ‘em dead already.”

  “Patience, Karl.”

  Hannah sprinted down the shoreline with Aysa close on her heels. “Shit,” she said, coming to Hadley’s side. “Pretty good one.”

  “Too bad they’ve found me out,” the mystic said, eyes still covered in white.

  A roamer charged toward Hannah, but before she got a chance to use her knife, a spear burst through his chest. Parker and Laurel jumped off the horse and joined their companions.

  Looking at the storm, and the few Baseeki still in fighting condition, Parker shouted, “I’m glad the big man’s on our side, but I don’t think his storm is gonna be enough to stop ‘em. Ezekiel’s powerful, but this army seems endless. We don’t have enough men.”

  Karl laughed as his hammer knocked a roamer’s leg clean off. “Thanks fer the pep talk kid, but I don’t exactly see a plan B here. We’re givin’ ‘em everything we’ve got.”

  Hannah opened her mouth to respond, but a loud voice caught her attention. She turned toward the roamers and saw a man standing in front of them—his face swollen to hell.

  “Hello, witch!” Altan shouted. “I’m here for your airship. It’s gonna make our business run a lot smoother. But I’m glad I get to kill along the way. I think we’ll stick your body on the front as a warning to those who oppose us.”

  Hannah glared at the man, cursing herself for her act of mercy. Cal was right, the roamers couldn’t be trusted.

  But Hannah was happy for a chance to make good on her promise.

  She looked across at her friends, fighting side by side to save a people that weren’t their own. She was worried for their safety, sick of the needless destruction raining down around them. But most of all, she felt a burning in her chest, a desire to make the world better, to wipe scum like this man off the face of the earth.

  It was a feeling she hadn’t had since the day Sal came into her world.

  She turned to Parker. “We haven’t given them everything... yet. I think we’ve been holding back.”

  Parker smiled. “So, what’s the plan.”

  “Let go.”

  Hannah closed her eyes and reached out to Hadley. Despite the chaos of the fight, she could hear his thoughts crystal clear.

  What do you need? he thought.

  I’m going to try something crazy, she replied. I need you to keep up that illusion for as long as you can.

  Sure, but they know it’s fake. What are you going to do?

  A wicked smile crossed her lips as she thought, Show them they’re wrong.

  Hannah opened her eyes. They blazed with a red fury. She held a palm parallel to the ground, then made a fist. Sand and rock and driftwood leapt at her command. She focused on Hadley’s mirage, while twisting her hands in a rapid pattern. All the elements that she raised from the ground poured into the creature, filling the work of his imagination with actual fragments of the earth.

  “Hold it,” she uttered to Hadley. Her concentration was intense, and she felt like the power inside of her was about to break through her skin.

  She turned to Laurel. “It needs life. Can you help?”

  The druid looked in confusion, then suddenly began to understand the plan. She planted her hands in the sand, and as her eyes flashed green, roots from deep under the earth grew, wrapping around the imaginary monster.

  “Uh, Hannah,” Parker shouted as he fired his spear rapidly into the oncoming crowd. “I don’t mean to interrupt playtime, but what the hell are you doing?”

  “You’ll see,” she said, a wicked smile again creeping across her face. She turned and looked at Ezekiel, whose expression was a mixture of shock and pride. He nodded, and she reached her hand toward him.

  The storm responded.

  A bolt of lightning broke through the heavens. She clenched her jaw as it crashed into her; the heat and pain almost too much to bear. But she held on, and with a strength she didn’t know she had, she turned and directed the power back out. It sprung from her outstretched palm, connecting with the hodgepodge of sand and root and mental energy in front of her. The power from the lightning fused the mess together.

  Hannah screamed—and the creature responded.

  It roared, it’s cavernous voice echoing across the beach.

  The roamers took a step back, before Altan shouted. “Don’t be fooled by that whore’s tricks. You can run right through it! Slaughter them all.”

  The creature turned to look at Hannah, and she nodded in reply. “Go get ‘em.”

  The thing raised a leg high into the air.

  “It’s a trick!” Altan shouted, his voice dripping with arrogance as the creature’s foot hovered over him. “It’s only a—”

  The foot dropped to the ground, crushing Altan like a bug.

  The roamers fell backward in awe.

  Hannah turned and looked at the people around her. “Now, we have the help we need. Let’s gut these fuckers!”

  The creature ran forward, stomping roamers beneath its heels. The remaining Baseeki army followed behind it, shrieking in joy as they cut through anyone dumb enough to stand in their way.

  It was a righteous slaughter.

  Some roamers kept their heads and struck back at the creature. Each hit broke off a piece of its body, but not nearly enough to slow it down.

  A particularly brave roamer climbed onto the thing’s back. But it reached back and plucked the man from his shoulders, as if he were a gnat. The monster launched the man into a mass of his friends, knocking them down like they were weeds.

  Hannah smiled as she sank to the ground. The image of the creature she had brought to life faded as her world began to swim.

  Parker fell to his knees beside her, holding her upright with his arm. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

  Karl dropped his hammer, his mouth gaping and his eyes fixed on the ugly giant destroying the enemy. “What the bloody hell is that thing?”

  Hannah glanced up at him, the red glow slowly fading from her eyes. “Not sure. But it sure as shit is kicking ass!”

  She laughed, then promptly passed out.

  Epilogue

  The hum of the magitech core filled their ears. Hannah sat at the head of the long table in the captain’s cabin that Gregory had transformed into their headquarters. She could hardly keep the smile from her face as she watched each of the members of her crew file in, one by one.

  Faces were dr
awn, and eyes were dark with exhaustion, but she didn’t care. All of the members were weary with the fatigue that only working for a better world could provide. Karl walked in, giving a heave and humph as he landed solidly in his chair. The only one missing was Ezekiel.

  Karl glanced out the porthole toward the sun, which careened toward the horizon. “Scheisse, wizard! Always late.”

  Hadley jabbed him with an elbow. “Looked like the magicians used all their discipline saving your hammer-swinging ass last night, little man.”

  “Screw you,” Karl replied with a grin. “If that stuffed animal didn’t get in my way, I woulda finished ‘em all off myself. Damn wizards, every one of ya!”

  They all laughed, until Parker said, “Don’t include me in their ranks.”

  He swatted his hand at Parker. “Nah, yer good, kid. Though one of these days, I’ll get ya to use a proper spear that don’t need them magic rocks. Kinda cheatin’ if ya ask me.”

  “Yeah,” Hannah said. “He didn’t. But I’m asking something, what the hell happened last night anyway, I mean, after I dropped on the beach?”

  Everyone at the table started to tell the tale at once, each accentuating their own heroics. Finally, stopping them, she turned to Parker. “Just you,” she said.

  Laurel snickered. “Now that you two are sucking face, you’re going to play favorites.”

  Hannah flushed, “We didn’t suck—”

  “Yeah,” Parker interrupted her. “In case you forgot, we did have an intimate moment before going down to the party.”

  “Of course, I—”

  He held up his hand. “It’s OK. My ego is strong. Let’s skip to the end of the battle.”

  Parker recounted how the monster that she and the other magicians had made together, each focusing on their own specialty, brought hell on Irth to the roamers until Hannah had run out of power and dropped to the sand, nearly unconscious.

  Thanks to the brilliant combination, the enemy was all but defeated. Many ran for their lives, but were overtaken quickly by the Baseeki warriors, thirsty for victory for their place over an enemy who had no home. Any who stayed to fight didn’t last long as Hannah’s crew struck down the remainder.

  “Glad you finished them,” Hannah smiled. “I felt like I ran to Arcadia and back after thirty seconds of holding that beast together.”

  “Surprised you did it for that long,” Hadley quipped. “It was one badass casting.”

  Gregory laughed nervously. “Glad I missed it.”

  “Aye,” Karl snorted. “Thing was a monster. I still might have a little shit in me britches.”

  They all laughed, while Hannah smiled and nodded her thanks. After the fight, the Baseeki people put them up for the night in their finest huts, taking time to tend to their wounds. Karl’s arm was still sore, where a sword bit his flesh. In his stubborness, Karl refused magical healing.

  “We rearick,” he had said, “fix ourselves… the old-fashioned way!”

  Most of them slept half the following day away, and it wasn’t until Ezekiel insisted on the urgency of their mission that most of them walked back to the Unlawful—the old magician teleporting himself and his still-comatose student back to her chambers.

  Just as Parker was finishing the story, Ezekiel stepped through the doorway and into their new headquarters. The old man smiled, turned to Hannah, and said, “Looks like we’re ready to begin, Captain.”

  She felt a flush fall over her. For a year she had followed his lead—though it had felt like it had been a lifetime—and now, he was ushering the eyes of the membership toward her. She still wasn’t sure why he would do such a thing.

  They all turned toward her, and she hesitated.

  Karl broke the uncomfortable silence hanging in the room. “Scheisse, it was good to stretch me damned legs, but I, for one, am ready to get this bucket of bolts moving toward our final destination. Whatta ya say, kid?” He nodded at Gregory.

  Hannah could feel him shift at her side. The engineer took the rearick’s comment for a command and moved to comply, but he settled back in when Hannah placed a gentle hand on his forearm. With a nod, she affirmed his presence in the room.

  Getting used to her command would still take some time for all of them, especially for Hannah herself, but the shift in perspective from Ezekiel’s leadership to Hannah’s was a necessary one, particularly for what lay ahead on their journey to save Irth.

  “Thanks, Zeke. But now, as you turn the command over to me, I want to turn the floor back to you.” She raised a brow to her mentor, and he raised one in reply. “Up until now, you have done well to gather us, train us, and even let us know that we are on some greater journey. I mean, the Bitch and the Bastard know we were all so damned surprised when you told us you hadn’t come back to Arcadia to defeat Adrien, but to assemble a team. I’d call that a big-ass pile of bricks you landed on us all.”

  The old magician’s eyes sparkled, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “Indeed. I expect it was.”

  “Right then,” she said. “Before I send my engineer to the cockpit, before I send any of my people one foot further toward the mission in your mind, I declare it is time for you to spill the freaking beans. What the hell are we doing out here?” She passed him a smile.

  Ezekiel pulled his bowl from his bag and started to pack it with some of the local Baseeki weed he had purchased off of one of the locals below. His hands moved deftly with the habit formed by a lifetime of the movements; his eyes never broke his gaze on his student, who was now his leader. Raising the stem to his lips, his eyes sparked a light red, and a flame rose off his fingertip.

  After a few long draws, he returned her smile through a long smoky exhale. “Seems you’ve had no problem assuming the mantel of leadership.”

  “Yeah, I know I’m still the new girl,” Laurel said, “but I’m preeeetty sure she can do anything.”

  Hannah glanced at Laurel and then over to Gregory. “Still working on dancing, but that’s another story. Let’s hear it, Zeke.”

  The old wizard leaned back in his chair and threw his boots up on the table, crossing his legs at the ankle. “OK, it’s storytime. I told all of you that the Oracle, Lilith, was a being of great power. But she’s been locked in combat with a being whose strength surpasses her own for the last forty years. It’s why I left Arcadia years ago, leaving the place in the hands of Adrien—my first student, whom I trusted.”

  “We saw how that worked out,” Karl grunted, his cheeks turning red from the ale.

  “Yes, Karl. He wasn’t ready for the power. Maybe he never would have been.” Ezekiel placed his feet back on the floorboards and drew from his own mug. “But I had no other choice. She needed me, and frankly, whether you want to hear it or not, Lilith’s welfare was more important than the common good of just one city—even the city I had built with my own hands.

  “And it’s why I returned—because my help wasn’t enough. An army of darkness like Irth has never known threatens to invade our world from another, violent creatures who want nothing more than to consume and destroy. We have a chance—a small one, mind you, but a chance nonetheless—to keep them out of Irth forever, stopping the war before it ever really begins.”

  Silence blanketed the room. Even Hannah was at a loss for words. She had gotten pieces of the puzzle from him for nearly a year, but now the full picture was coming into view, and she didn’t expect it to have anything to do with soldiers from another world.

  Hannah sighed in relief when Parker finally said, “Shit, Ezekiel. With all due respect, don’t you think this is something you should have told us earlier?”

  Ezekiel looked out the western porthole, his eyes finding the gentle, moonlit waters below. With the slightest nod, he said, “I was hoping you could enjoy a trace of peace now, before we arrived at our destination. Because once we get there, we’ll be fighting tooth and nail every step of the way.”

  Karl slammed his fist on the table, shaking the mugs of ale. “Praise the moun
tains! I’m tired of all this sittin’ around shite. If there’s a war to fight, then ya can count on me to be on the front lines.”

  Everyone’s heads nod. Hannah spoke up, “And you can count on all of us to be right by your side.”

  The gravity of their situation sunk in. Each member of the team had a million questions, but none of them yet dared to ask them. A noise from behind an old crate, which belonged to the previous captain, grabbed their attention.

  Like a sober man, ten years younger, Karl was on his feet and across the room. His arm shot into the shadows, and he pulled out a hooded figure, holding them by the folds of their robes, the hood dropped back exposing Aysa, face twisted up and glaring at the rearick.

  Karl laughed. “Look what I caught. It’s kind of scrawny, I say we throw it back.”

  Aysa balled her only hand into a tight fist and swung her long arm at Karl’s head, connecting with his chin.

  “Scheisse, girl!” he yelled, dropping her to the floor.

  Getting up, Aysa dusted herself off. “Look who’s talking, tiny.” Then she turned toward Hannah’s crew. “So, you’re heading off to fight a dark, demon army from another world. I thought maybe you could use another set of hands.” She raised her one arm. “Hand, really. But it’s strong as hell. Tell ‘em, Karl.”

  ****

  Hannah felt goosebumps rise on the back of her neck as she stood on the deck of the Unlawful. Though she wasn’t sure if it was the feeling of the late spring air cutting through her hair or Parker’s hand that was caressing her back beneath her shirt. Either way, she was happy, even knowing they were racing toward certain death.

  It didn’t take long for the crew to agree that Aysa should come with them. She fought with the spirit of an Arcadian rebel and added some fire power from a distance with her perfect aim with a rock. Even Karl, with a bruise on his chin beneath his beard, agreed. The girl was right, they were going to need all the help they could get against the army of darkness that Ezekiel had spoken of.

  She craned her neck to watch the land below cruise past. “We should have brought the others,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  “What’s that?” Parker smiled.